all members of G Division and the police were not our enemies, and that indiscriminate shooting might result in the death of friends. We discovered afterwards how many of them were our friends.’
‘Collins only picked four of us for the Squad that night – Joe Leonard, Seán Doyle, Ben Barrett and myself in charge,’ according to O’Daly. ‘He told the others that he had special work [for them] to do, but he told the four of us that we were to leave our employment and that we would be compensated for loss of work. We were to have a fixed point where we could be mobilised, and I gave him No. 10 Bessboro Avenue, North Strand, where I had relations and where I practically lived at the time.’
The special work for McDonnell was to go to London to investigate the possibility of killing prominent people there. ‘I was approached by Dick McKee and asked to make myself available to go to London for special duty with the object of looking the situation over in London and coming back and reporting as to the possibility of wiping out the British cabinet and several other prominent people including editors of newspapers, etc., who were an tagonistic to this country’ he recalled. ‘I went with Liam Tobin in charge and George Fitzgerald who remained with me for two weeks.’
‘Our chief job in London was to familiarise ourselves with the then Ministers of the British cabinet, their haunts, habits, etc.,’ George Fitzgerald explained. ‘We were to attend any meetings at which they were tabled to speak or any function at which they were to attend. In addition, we were to get any information we could about the geography of Whitehall, especially No. 10 Downing Street. After about a fortnight of this work Mick McDonnell left us and returned to Dublin.’
‘I first reported to General Mulcahy at Harcourt Street and made an appointment to go to 41 Parnell Square that night and meet Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, General Mulcahy and a few others,’ McDonnell noted. ‘I could not report favourably owing to lack of assistance on the part of the London Volunteers and to the impossibility of making a simultaneous swoop on the entire cabinet and the other people who were earmarked for execution. Michael Collins who had lived in London and knew the situation existing there, agreed with this report, but Cathal Brugha insisted that it could and should be done.’
Wiping out the British cabinet had long been one of Brugha’s pet ideas. He knew it would be a kind of suicide mission, but he had already led a similar team to London to kill cabinet members in the House of Commons in 1918 if they had introduced conscription in Ireland. In the course of his planning he had gone into the parliament building to check out first hand the possibility of killing the cabinet there, but the whole thing was called off when the conscription plan was dropped. Brugha was a man of great determination but rather limited vision. He was as ‘brave and as brainless as a bull’ noted Mulcahy.
‘I then told him it would take at least thirty of the best men we could find and they did not hope to return alive, but he still agreed it would be worth while to lose thirty good men,’ McDonnell noted. ‘This ended the matter as far as I was concerned and I did not go back to London.’
Collins was still supposedly wanted in connection with the illegal drilling in Skibbereen, but the attorney general had ruled that ‘no further proceedings need to be taken’ in regard to the Longford charges. Collins felt secure enough to move back into Myra McCarthy’s Munster hotel at 44 Mountjoy Street. He bragged that the police were afraid to arrest him. In October 1919 he went to Britain primarily in connections with plans to spring Austin Stack and Piaras Beaslaí from Strangeways jail in Man chester. He had taken a particular interest in arranging Stack’s escape over a number of months, first from Dundalk Jail, and then from Belfast Jail, but each time Stack was
‘Collins only picked four of us for the Squad that night – Joe Leonard, Seán Doyle, Ben Barrett and myself in charge,’ according to O’Daly. ‘He told the others that he had special work [for them] to do, but he told the four of us that we were to leave our employment and that we would be compensated for loss of work. We were to have a fixed point where we could be mobilised, and I gave him No. 10 Bessboro Avenue, North Strand, where I had relations and where I practically lived at the time.’
The special work for McDonnell was to go to London to investigate the possibility of killing prominent people there. ‘I was approached by Dick McKee and asked to make myself available to go to London for special duty with the object of looking the situation over in London and coming back and reporting as to the possibility of wiping out the British cabinet and several other prominent people including editors of newspapers, etc., who were an tagonistic to this country’ he recalled. ‘I went with Liam Tobin in charge and George Fitzgerald who remained with me for two weeks.’
‘Our chief job in London was to familiarise ourselves with the then Ministers of the British cabinet, their haunts, habits, etc.,’ George Fitzgerald explained. ‘We were to attend any meetings at which they were tabled to speak or any function at which they were to attend. In addition, we were to get any information we could about the geography of Whitehall, especially No. 10 Downing Street. After about a fortnight of this work Mick McDonnell left us and returned to Dublin.’
‘I first reported to General Mulcahy at Harcourt Street and made an appointment to go to 41 Parnell Square that night and meet Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, General Mulcahy and a few others,’ McDonnell noted. ‘I could not report favourably owing to lack of assistance on the part of the London Volunteers and to the impossibility of making a simultaneous swoop on the entire cabinet and the other people who were earmarked for execution. Michael Collins who had lived in London and knew the situation existing there, agreed with this report, but Cathal Brugha insisted that it could and should be done.’
Wiping out the British cabinet had long been one of Brugha’s pet ideas. He knew it would be a kind of suicide mission, but he had already led a similar team to London to kill cabinet members in the House of Commons in 1918 if they had introduced conscription in Ireland. In the course of his planning he had gone into the parliament building to check out first hand the possibility of killing the cabinet there, but the whole thing was called off when the conscription plan was dropped. Brugha was a man of great determination but rather limited vision. He was as ‘brave and as brainless as a bull’ noted Mulcahy.
‘I then told him it would take at least thirty of the best men we could find and they did not hope to return alive, but he still agreed it would be worth while to lose thirty good men,’ McDonnell noted. ‘This ended the matter as far as I was concerned and I did not go back to London.’
Collins was still supposedly wanted in connection with the illegal drilling in Skibbereen, but the attorney general had ruled that ‘no further proceedings need to be taken’ in regard to the Longford charges. Collins felt secure enough to move back into Myra McCarthy’s Munster hotel at 44 Mountjoy Street. He bragged that the police were afraid to arrest him. In October 1919 he went to Britain primarily in connections with plans to spring Austin Stack and Piaras Beaslaí from Strangeways jail in Man chester. He had taken a particular interest in arranging Stack’s escape over a number of months, first from Dundalk Jail, and then from Belfast Jail, but each time Stack was
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