THE 'THREE MACS' DOMINATE THE MOVEMENT

He had in October upheld Margaret Buckley’s contention that the post-1926 Sinn Féin was the same as that of 1923-26. But he maintained that the 1923 organisation was not the same as that of 1922.

Therefore, Mrs Buckley and Others had a better claim to the funds lodged in the Free State courts in 1922 than had de Valera. Yet these were not awarded to the 1948 Sinn Féin.

Judge Kingsmill Moore on November 19 ruled that there was jurisdiction to award costs to the plaintiffs out of the funds in dispute. This was authorised under the Judicature Act, 1877 of the British Parliament.

There was no doubt that the plaintiffs (in this case Margaret Buckley and Others) “had reasonable grounds for the belief that they and they alone were the persons by law entitled to these funds, and until the matter had been fully investigated it would have been exceedingly difficult for their Counsel to have advised them that they had no right to the funds.”

He was satisfied that the plaintiffs made a bona fide claim. He noted that the Leinster House legislation of 1947 — the Sinn Féin Funds Act — stated that the plaintiffs were entitled to costs incurred up to the introduction of that Bill.

He went on: “I must bear in mind that although my judgement has not decided to whom the funds belong, it has advanced to some extent the solution of that problem, and if a subsequent action should be brought for a declaration that the funds are bona vacancia or for a declaration that they are divisible among surviving members of the 1922 Sinn Féin Body, a considerable amount of ground that would normally have to be traversed in trying such a case has already been covered by the present proceedings.

“The litigation has undoubtedly cleared the air for the trustees and for the Attorney General and rendered it easier to bring a subsequent application to settle the ownership of the funds in dispute.”

For these reasons he gave the plaintiffs the costs of their outlay (expenditure) including outlay in connection with the preparation of Briefs, together with two-thirds of their profit costs.

He did not give them the whole of their profit costs because he felt “the proceedings could have been conducted more expeditiously, in addition to which I must have regard to the fact that there may still be certain questions left outstanding which will require determination in a subsequent application.”

So the question at issue had only been partly — and not finally — resolved. But Margaret Buckley and her colleagues received their costs.

It is presumed that the defendants in the case, the Attorney General and Another, also got their legal costs out of the Sinn Féin funds of 1922.

It was popularly believed in 1948 that the funds, then totalling about £24,000, were eaten up in lawyers’ expenses. There has been no further litigation in this regard over the subsequent fifty years.

VALUABLE PUBLIC RECORD

It is necessary to return to the subject touched on in last September’s SAOIRSE — the General Army Convention of 1948, the first since WWII. In importance it was on a level with that of November 1925, the first after the Ceasefire and Dump Arms orders of 1923.

Bell says: “Many of the delegates attending the Army Convention in September 1948 had come to elect an Executive that could be relied on to appoint Tony Magan Chief-of-Staff. Magan was a hard man, tightly disciplined and utterly painstaking.

“He had very few close friends and come formidable enemies within the Army. Several capable men on (Willie) McGuinness’s staff, Don Adams, (Paddy) McNeela and Seán Ó Neill, were not particularly impressed with him, but at first at least, when his name came up they were not violently opposed.

“The Dublin people in particular felt that the Army needed a steel core and that Magan could supply it. The fifty delegates included most of the active men, (Micksie) Conway, (Larry) Grogan, O’Neill, McGuinness, (Gerry) McCarthy, Paddy McNeela and Don Adams.

“There were two men who were new to the post-war IRA but fine, old Republicans. Paddy McLogan had been in the Army since 1913. He was in Mountjoy with Ashe (and on hunger strike with him) in 1917 and in 1921 was locked up in Belfast under an assumed name (Patrick McLoughlin) while the RUC hunted for him for murder (sic).

“A publican from Portlaoise, he was a traditional Irish conspirator, an heir to the Fenians and the IRB, quietly weaving involved nets, placid in temperament and ice cold in contention, but easy to trust.

“He had been a significant figure in the IRA since the ’twenties (he was Chairman of the Army Executive 1925-38 — Ed), a Republican abstentionist MP for South Armagh from 1933 to 1938, and to many of the young men seemed a second Tom Clarke, steeped in the Republican tradition, the Father of Republicanism, the austere plotter from a previous generation.

“Tomás Mac Curtáin was the second man. Son of the martyred Mayor of Cork, he had suffered as much for his ideals as any living Republican. Snatched from the gallows at the last minute, he had endured the long purgatory of solitary confinement in the cold cells of Portlaoise prison.

“The tall, calm McLogan, the great bearded giant Mac Curtáin, and Magan, the iron man, would form the triumvirate which was to dominate the IRA for the next decade.

‘QUIET LOBBYING’

Apparently Magan’s health forced an interruption in his tenure as C/S and the IRA did not fully come under his direction until 1950. Magan’s staff included Grogan as QMG, and Gerry McCarthy as A/G as well as several of the men who had worked for McGuinness.

“In spite of the new leadership, many in the Army had grave reservations for the immediate future. Cork proposed a resolution, presented by Mac Curtáin, that the IRA was not sufficiently representative to be called the government of the Republic and therefore did not have the right to take life.

“While this was obviously true, Mac Curtáin’s resolution was a little too bleak for the more optimistic delegates. McLogan, Chairman of the Convention, tempered the proposal by suggesting the addition of the words — until such time as the IRA has been reorganised. The amended resolution was passed and the major pre-occupation of the Army continued to be reorganisation.

“The purpose of the reorganisation was at last clear since the Convention accepted two resolutions: First, support for a military campaign against the British in the North; second, no aggressive military action in the 26 Counties.”

Further, it was agreed that a Republican political organisation was needed to complement the Army and to harness popular support. These policy resolutions would in time be stated publicly and would become the bedrock of the reorganised Republican Movement. The three “Macs “ would lead and implement these policy decisions.

(More next month. Refs: The Secret Army by J Bowyer Bell and High Court of Justice Margaret Buckley and Others - V -the Attorney General and Another. Judgement of the Honourable Mr Justice Kingmill Moore delivered on the 19th day of November 1948.)

Correction: Judge Kingsmill Moore’s judgement of October 26, 1948 included: “They appeared to me perfectly sincere believing not only in the righteousness but also in the rightness of their claim.”