IRA Terror on Britain's Streets 1939–1940

The Wartime Bombing Campaign and Hitler Connection

Dick Kirby

• Publisher: Pen & Sword True Crime
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781526786425
• eBook ISBN: 9781526786432
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It is little known today that, in January 1939, the IRA launched a bombing campaign, codenamed The S - or Sabotage - Plan on mainland England. With cynical self-justification, they announced that it was not their intention to harm human life but in just over a year, more than 300 explosive devices resulted in 10 deaths, 96 injuries and widespread devastation. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and many other towns and cities were targeted. On 25 August 1939, detectives in London defused three devices set to detonate that afternoon at 2.30 and arrested four terrorists. At the same time an identical bomb exploded in Coventry city centre killing five civilians and injuring 50, the highest body count of the campaign. Numerous arrests were made nationwide but ill-trained personnel and additional national security resulting from the threat of Nazi invasion caused the campaign to falter and fade away in early 1940. The author, a former detective, is well qualified to write this book, having spent 18 months in Northern Ireland combatting terrorism, for which he was commended by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Imbert, for displaying 'courage, dedication and detective ability'.

CHAPTER 1

The ‘S’ Plan

O’Donovan’s plan was hugely ambitious, but unrealistic given the resources available. He believed that both propaganda and direct action should be utilized. The initial concept was to concentrate on military subjects, aerodromes, dockyards and stores, but this was rejected since these establishments were well guarded by military personnel. What was not mentioned (but was an inescapable fact) was that in the event of attack, the military were likely to open fire, and that would never do. Armaments factories were also considered; however, their security was thought to be too strict. Attacks on the country’s fire brigades and water supplies were seen as being counter-productive. Not for long, though; both these aspects of Britain’s key services and industries would later be targeted.

Instead, it was decided to concentrate on telephone and telegraph systems, underground cables coupled with gas and electricity supplies, government offices and banks, in an effort to disrupt and do the maximum damage to the British economy. These targets, they felt, were far more likely to succeed.

During 1938, O’Donovan took time off from his job as a manager for the state-owned Electricity Supply Board and spent five months training volunteers in the art of bomb-making. Potassium chlorate was mixed with paraffin wax and heated in a saucepan using a wooden – not metal – spoon. The resultant mix was then placed in a container, but to set it off, a fuse connected to a detonator was required. The ingredients needed were sulphuric acid, magnesium, sugar and balloons. Sulphuric acid was sealed in a wax container and then inserted, initially into one balloon or two inside each other, although later, condoms were considered more reliable. When the balloon was squeezed, the wax container would break, permitting the acid to escape and burn through the rubber, then come into contact with the magnesium, which would burn, melting the sugar surrounding the fuse. That would then ignite, travelling along to the detonator to set off the volatile mix – which, due to its similarity in looks to the popular poultry stuffing, became known as ‘Paxo’.

Next, on 27 December, teams of saboteurs were infiltrated into the mainland. Charles Casey, Seamus McGuiness and Eoin MacNamee went to London; Rory Campbell and Patrick Fleming travelled to Manchester, and Joe Deighan, Gerald Quigley and Michael Cleary to Liverpool; Jackie Kearns and Sean Fuller arrived in Birmingham, and Peter Walsh in Glasgow. Some of these names will resurface in the pages that follow.

They were the professionals; some of the pupils trained in Dublin and elsewhere proved to be adept at bomb-making; others, given the paucity of their education, proved less than reliable. These volunteers were infiltrated into England’s main towns and cities and told not to mix with other Irish people or go to clubs or dance halls frequented by the local Irish population (since they were likely to be under surveillance by the police and/or the security services). Many of them, who had never previously strayed from their villages, were like fish out of water. They were likely to be betrayed by their accents, as well as by suspicious English landladies, and if they were caught, this might drag in their more sophisticated counterparts, who were able to adopt English or Scots accents. All types of explosives, including ‘Paxo’, dynamite and gelignite, as well as funding, were brought into England by members of Cumann na mBann, the IRA’s women’s organization; they would be less conspicuous and less likely to be known to members of the security services.

O’Donovan was keen to emphasize that the IRA’s intention was to avoid casualties, and without further delay, it’s time to review this ambiguous statement. O’Donovan wanted people to believe that he wished to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, but it makes sense to kick this ridiculous and hypocritical piece of cant straight into touch.

When bombs are detonated in a public place, it is inescapable that before very long, someone is going to be seriously injured or killed. Clear? It is to you and me but was not, apparently, to the fanatical or the gormless depositors of those bombs.

But the ambiguity can be cleared up: when O’Donovan was referring to ‘casualties’, he meant harm coming to any member of the IRA – nobody else.

Now for the letter sent not only to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, in London, but also to heads of government and political parties worldwide, in justification of the atrocities that would follow. Dated 12 January 1939, it read:

Your Excellency,

I have the honour to inform you that the Government of the Irish Republic, as having its first duty towards the people, the establishment and maintenance of peace and order, herewith demand the withdrawal of all British armed forces stationed in Ireland. These forces are an active incitement to turmoil and civil strife, not only being a symbol of hostile occupation but in their effect and potentialities as an invading army. It is secondly the duty of the Government to establish relations of friendship between the Irish and all other peoples and to achieve this we must insist upon the withdrawal of British troops from our country and a declaration from your Government renouncing all claims to interfere in its domestic policy or external affairs. The Irish people have no cause of hostility to any European nation, even those nations whose natural development may bring them into conflict with British interests, and we are desirous of making it clear that we shall in no event take part in a war of aggression against any people or permit the nation to be regarded as having any community or identity of interest with Britain that would make us liable to attack by British enemies. The occupation of our territory by troops of another nation and the persistent subvention here of activities directly against the expressed national will and in the interests of a foreign power, prevent the expansion and development of our institution in consonance with our social needs and purposes, and must cease. Neither the Government of the Irish Republic nor the Irish people are actuated by any feelings of hostility to the people of Britain. Rather would we welcome a better understanding but this can be brought about only on the basis that each of the two peoples should be absolutely free to pursue its own course unhampered by the other. We shall regret if this fundamental condition is ignored and we are compelled to intervene actively in the military or commercial life of your country as your Government are now intervening in ours. The Government of the Irish Republic believes that a period of four days is sufficient notice for your Government to signify its intention in the matter of military evacuation and for the issue of your Declaration of Abdication in respect of our country. Our Government reserves the right of appropriate action without further notice if upon the expiration of this period of grace, these conditions remain unfulfilled.

Signed on behalf of the Republican Government and the Army

Council of Oglaigh na h-eireann

(Irish Republican Army)

Stephen Hayes, Patrick Fleming, Peadar O’Flaherty, George Plunkett, Lawrence Grogan, Sean Russell.

The idea that all British troops could be withdrawn in four days was nonsensical, as the signatories knew it must be, even if the British Government had decided to acquiesce to these demands, which they most certainly would not have.

A phone call was made by the Home Office to Dublin: did de Valera’s Government intend to wage war on England? They did not. Therefore the letter was stored away in that section of the files that all Government departments (including the police) reserve for what are colloquially known as ‘nutters’.

It would have made sense for the letter to be forwarded to the Special Branch, who were better aware of the activities of the more nihilistic inhabitants of the Emerald Isle than their Foreign Office counterparts; but it wasn’t.

* * *

The campaign commenced, as promised, on Monday 16 January 1939, with the first detonation occurring at 5 o’clock in the morning. A bomb exploded, tilting one of the pylons of the electricity grid which crossed the Alnwick and Rothbury Road, Northumberland, although the electricity supply was not disrupted; nor was it when a bomb exploded on a bridge carrying cables over the Grand Union Canal to Willesden power station, or following an explosion at the control room for the Central Electricity Board at Southwark.

Several men, one of them carrying a suitcase, had been seen at Southwark shortly before the explosion. Glass from their shattered windows rained down on many sleeping residents nearby, who were cut and shocked and many of whom rushed out into the streets. The blast blew out the windows of the Noah’s Ark public house, as it did at the Queen’s Head, where the door was practically torn from its hinges; and one of two curates asleep in St Peter’s Curate House, next to the electricity control room, was covered in broken glass from his shattered bedroom window. Every window of the Thames Embankment Rescue Mission at nearby Summer Street was blown out.

Almost simultaneous explosions in Manchester covered a half-mile radius. Witnesses to the damage caused by an explosion at the William Deacon’s Bank in Whitworth Street stated that it looked as though it had been bombed. Flames burst through a large hole in the pavement, the exterior and windows of the building were badly damaged by flying pieces of flagstone, as were the roofs, 50 feet above street level, of Lancaster House and the Union Bank, 25 yards away on the opposite side of the street. One piece of flagstone punctured a hole in the roof of India House, which was 80 feet above street level. Almost opposite the art gallery in Princess Street, another bomb exploded, shattering underground electric cables and causing an escape of gas.

But by far the worst damage in Manchester that day was caused by a bomb which exploded at the corner of Newton Street and Hilton Street. It had been planted under three manhole covers leading to electricity cables and it blew 24-year-old Albert Ross high into the air, sending him crashing into Thomas Wash, who was walking a few yards behind him. Mr Wash survived, suffering from severe shock; Albert Ross, with both legs fractured and his spine broken in two places, did not. He died in the Royal Infirmary three hours later. So much for the IRA’s sanctimonious crooning four days earlier that they ‘had no feelings of hostility towards the people of Britain’.

Traffic was badly disrupted, and although it was initially suggested that the explosions were the result of an electrical fault, Captain C. W. Ede, an Inspector of Explosives for the Home Office (who would figure prominently as an expert in the Broadgate bombing, six months later), arrived to make an inspection. For hours afterwards, a gas main blazed in a 12-square-foot crater at the site of the murder, and workmen had to dig at eleven points in the street to relieve the gas pressure.

By now, Walter Tricker, the Home Office official responsible, had come to the conclusion that his decision to file away that IRA letter of ultimatum might have been a trifle hasty; it was retrieved and sent to New Scotland Yard’s Special Branch – furthermore, it was leaked to the press.

Two bombs attached to a pylon carrying high tension cables across a field at Great Barr, just outside Birmingham, had exploded shattering three of the four steel legs, one of them being blown 45 yards away, although the cables were not brought down; a third bomb failed to explode. At 6.20 that morning there was a severe explosion on a steel bridge carrying some of the main extra high-tension trunk feeders from Hams Hall power station and two of the principal water mains supplying the station. The bridge was distorted and two of the cables were severed. But a large unexploded bomb comprised of stolen dynamite which had twin cables of flexible wire attached to it was discovered wedged in position beneath cables on another bridge, a short distance away from the scene of the explosion.

This brought Detective Chief Inspector Leonard Burt of C1 Department at the Yard, a highly experienced detective with twenty-seven years’ service, racing to the scene, together with Mr H. E. Watts, the Chief Inspector of Explosives at the Home Office. They both waded knee-deep in mud to inspect the device.

‘Thank goodness this is your job’, Burt remarked to Watts. He then added, rather nervously, ‘Do these things often go wrong when you dismantle them?’

‘Sometimes’, the expert replied laconically as he got to work, and after a few tense minutes he qualified his remark by telling Burt, ‘But these won’t!’

So that was one device which had been recovered intact, but there were more: a bag containing dynamite and gelignite was found by a passer-by attached to an electricity pylon carrying supplies over the Manchester Ship Canal at Barton, between Manchester and Warrington. The alarm clock had been set to detonate the explosives at 6 o’clock. Unfortunately, the bomber had failed to wind the clock up sufficiently and it had stopped at 12.35, so that, too, was sent to the Home Office for further examination, as was another unexploded bomb found at Clarence Dock, Liverpool.

However, despite Walter Tricker’s rather gormless response to the IRA threat, Special Branch had a template for arrests: the list of names found in the jacket of the IRA team at the Dagenham address some six months previously. But of course, the IRA were unaware of this – and when Special Branch got to work so quickly after the initial explosions, the terrorists came to the conclusion that the IRA teams in England were riddled with informants. This put the bombers on the back foot from the start.

CHAPTER 2

Arrests

Given the number of terrorists involved, Special Branch quite clearly had insufficient personnel to cater for the numbers of searches and arrests to be carried out; therefore the Commissioner, Sir Philip Game, who as a lieutenant colonel during the First World War had won the DSO and been mentioned five times in dispatches, and was known as the ‘listening’ commissioner, listened to Albert Canning, the head of the Special Branch. Sir Philip authorized the secondment of a number of experienced CID officers, mainly from Scotland Yard and especially from the Flying Squad. Formed in 1919, this very tough band of adventurers were hugely disinclined to take ‘no’ for an answer, from anybody.

At 6 o’clock on the morning following the explosions, Detective Sergeant Coveney and Special Branch officers went to the Roundwood Road, Willesden address of Lawrence Lyons which, his landlady stated, he had taken in the name of ‘Turner’. Coveney searched Lyons’ room, finding a 6mm rifle and twenty-four rounds of ammunition. Later, at Littlebrook Power Station Construction at Dartford, he saw Lyons and arrested him. When he was later charged with possession of the rifle, Lyons replied, ‘I object to the words “with intent to endanger life”.’

Ten minutes after the first search, Detective Inspector Frank Bridges searched a flat at Viaduct Street, Bethnal Green which was occupied by Charles James Casey and where, under the bed, was found a brown suitcase containing two Colt revolvers, a Mauser pistol and seventy rounds of ammunition; Casey acknowledged the items were his property and he also admitted that he did not possess a firearms certificate. Additionally, he had no reasonable explanation for his possession of a mortar and pestle, a quantity of white powder, an exercise book containing chemical formulae and methods of making explosives, a book on machine gun tactics and a membership card of the IRA.

At 8.40am that morning, Detective Inspector Arthur Newton raided George Brendan Kane’s address at Harold Road, Sutton where, in his bedroom, he found a locked suitcase; upon opening it, he found a Mauser automatic pistol and three rounds of ammunition, plus a spare magazine, wrapped up in a shirt. Kane admitted it was his case; inside it was an envelope addressed to Harold Kane. However, when Newton asked if he had a firearms certificate, Kane replied, ‘No’ and pointing to the pistol said, ‘It’s not mine.’ He was also in possession of a four-page report giving locations of gasworks, electric power houses, post offices and sorting offices.

One of the most interesting finds was at Mornington Crescent at 6.05am on 18 January, when Detective Inspector Harold Keeble impolitely kicked in the door of a room occupied by Daniel Fitzpatrick and two seventeen-year-olds: Jack Logue and Francis James Burns. Keeble found an attaché case containing eighty-eight 2oz cartridges of gelignite tied up in brown paper bearing a Liverpool address and a galvanometer,1as well as a brown suitcase containing white powder, seventeen electric detonators and coils of fuse. Another suitcase held white powder, and the room contained an abundance of brown adhesive paper, a home-made copper wire sifter and brown paper bags. Two further suitcases were empty but contained traces of white powder. There wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The ‘S’ Plan
• Chapter 2 Arrests
• Chapter 3 Court Appearances
• Chapter 4 The First of the London Trials
• Chapter 5 The Remainder of the London Trials
• Chapter 6 Charges in Wales and Manchester
• Chapter 7 Arrests in Birmingham, Scotland and Liverpool
• Chapter 8 The Panic Spreads
• Chapter 9 The Attack on Hammersmith Bridge
• Chapter 10 An Overheard Conversation
• Chapter 11 More Bombings – and More Arrests
• Chapter 12 Cherchez la Femme!
• Chapter 13 Another Own Goal – and More Arrests
• Chapter 14 Lavatories, Hotels and Cinemas
• Chapter 15 Railway Stations and More Arrests
• Chapter 16 Murder, Arrests and New Legislation
• Chapter 17 A Password – and a Nunnery
• Chapter 18 A Dreadful Conspiracy
• Chapter 19 Broadgate
• Chapter 20 The Hunt for the Murderers
• Chapter 21 Arrests for the Broadgate Bombing
• Chapter 22 Dirty Work at Dartmoor – and War
• Chapter 23 Ill Feelings in Coventry
• Chapter 24 The Broadgate Trial
• Chapter 25 The Defence for Barnes
• Chapter 26 The Defence for Richards
• Chapter 27 The Defence – the Hewitts and O’Hara
• Chapter 28 The Summings-up and the Verdicts
• Chapter 29 The Appeals
• Chapter 30 The Aftermath – Explosions and Arrests
• Chapter 31 Terror in Oxford Street
• Chapter 32 Arrests – and the End of the Campaign
• Chapter 33 The Nazi Connection
• Chapter 34 What Happened Next?
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Plate section