Maurice Twomey ( ga, Muirgheas Ó Tuama; 10 June 1897 – October 1978) was an
Irish republican
Irish republicanism ( ga, poblachtánachas Éireannach) is the political movement for the unity and independence of Ireland under a republic. Irish republicans view British rule in any part of Ireland as inherently illegitimate.
The develop ...
and the longest serving
chief of staff
The title chief of staff (or head of staff) identifies the leader of a complex organization such as the armed forces, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a principal staff officer (PSO), who is the coordinator of the supporti ...
of the
Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Early life
Twomey was born in 1897 in
Clondulane
Clondulane () is a village in north County Cork, Ireland, 3.5m east of Fermoy, just off the Main Fermoy-Dungarvan Road. Originally built as a camp for the workers of a Cork Milling Company grain mill, it now has a population of over 400. Clondula ...
, near
Fermoy,
County Cork, Ireland and was educated by the
Congregation of Christian Brothers.
The son of a
labourer at Hallinan’s
Flour Mills
A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separat ...
in the town, Twomey went to work there at the age of 14 where he rose to the position of works manager. In 1914 he became active in the
Irish Volunteers.
Character
Twomey was a dedicated and well respected Irish Republican who successfully dealt with factions within the Irish Republican movement. "He was dedicated to Irish freedom and nothing else mattered to him. Compromise was not in his vocabulary."
War of Independence
By 1918 he was
adjutant
Adjutant is a military appointment given to an officer who assists the commanding officer with unit administration, mostly the management of human resources in an army unit. The term is used in French-speaking armed forces as a non-commission ...
of the Fermoy Battalion and a year later became an adjutant of the Cork No. 2 Brigade. He took part in an ambush of
British troops in Fermoy in September 1919, one of the first attacks on British soldiers in Ireland since the 1916
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising ( ga, Éirà Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the a ...
and one of the first of the
Irish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence () or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-mil ...
.
During 1920 he helped direct IRA
intelligence in his brigade area. He was staff commandant of
Liam Lynch’s 1st Southern Division when he was captured and imprisoned on
Spike Island during 1921. He managed to escape from the prison by rowing boat along with
Dick Barrett, Tom Crofts and Bill Quirke.
Civil War
Twomey opposed the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, although he was critical of the tactics adopted by the anti-Treaty forces headquartered in the
Four Courts. He was influenced by Oscar Traynor's opinion that the garrison would destroy the Republic during June 1922. The Four Courts episode had showed the leadership that it was out of touch with the reality of the awesome power of artillery. Twomey concurred with Liam Mellows that if a government was to be formed in the interest of labour, it must be a republic.
During the
Irish Civil War
The Irish Civil War ( ga, Cogadh Cathartha na hÉireann; 28 June 1922 – 24 May 1923) was a conflict that followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United ...
, Twomey became adjutant general on the staff of
Liam Lynch, IRA Chief of Staff, and was with the commander when he was killed in the Knockmealdowns mountains on 10 April 1923. Twomey was
imprisoned in the same month in Dublin.
IRA Chief of Staff
During 1924 he became involved in the reorganisation of the IRA, inspecting its southern divisions that summer and its northern units during 1925. First elected onto the IRA Executive at the November 1925 IRA General Army Convention, he became a full-time IRA activist. He disguised this by describing his profession as "
journalist", justified somewhat by his regular contributions to the IRA weekly
newspaper, ''
An Phoblacht
''An Phoblacht'' (Irish pronunciation: ; en, "The Republic") is a formerly weekly, and currently monthly newspaper published by Sinn Féin in Ireland. From early 2018 onwards, ''An Phoblacht'' has moved to a magazine format while remaining an ...
''. During ''1926'' he was acting
IRA chief of staff
Several people are reported to have served as Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army () in the organisations bearing that name. Due to the clandestine nature of these organisations, this list is not definitive.
Chiefs of Staff of the Irish ...
in the absence of
Andrew Cooney, and in 1927, he was confirmed in that position.
In the summer of 1925, the anti-treaty IRA had sent a delegation led by Pa Murray to the
Soviet Union for a personal meeting with
Joseph Stalin, in the hopes of gaining Soviet finance and weaponry assistance.
A secret pact was agreed where the IRA would spy on the
United States and the
United Kingdom and pass information to
Red Army military intelligence (
GRU)
spymasters in
New York City and
London in return for £500 a month.
The pact was originally approved by
Frank Aiken, who left soon after, before being succeeded by Cooney and Twomey who kept up the secret espionage relationship.
Twomey was not himself an ideological
Marxist-Leninist (though there were some communists in the IRA at this time such as
Peadar O'Donnell), he saw the arrangement purely as a means to gain the IRA badly needed funding. Twomey also repeatedly accused the Soviets of being "shifty" and "out to exploit us."
Nevertheless, London-based IRA
spymaster Seán MacBride passed specifications of "submarine detection sonar and aeroplane engines for bombers, military journals and manuals, and gas masks"
to the USSR through
Berlin-based GRU operative
Walter Krivitsky, whom ciphered IRA communications referred to only by the code name "James". Meanwhile, the IRA's main
spymaster in America "Mr. Jones", whom historians Tom Mahon and James J. Gillogly have identified as
Daniel "Sandow" O'Donovan, passed "reports of the
army’s
chemical weapons service, state-of-the-art gas masks, machine-gun and aeroplane engine specifications, and reports from the
navy,
air service and army" to the Soviet GRU.
Twomey was considered a
Socialist, albeit one who put practicality before ideology. Twomey considered himself a moderate, had a deep sense of history, and the belief that Ireland had the resources to provide a good living for all of its people. His policy as chief of staff was to allow individual members of the IRA to join left-wing groups, but not to let the IRA itself become attached to any
political party. He simultaneously feared undermining support for
Fianna Fáil and thus handing power back to Cumann na nGaedheal; but he was also apprehensive about the IRA being seen as attached to Fianna Fáil.
In 1930, Twomey married Kathleen MacLaughlin of
Donegal Donegal may refer to:
County Donegal, Ireland
* County Donegal, a county in the Republic of Ireland, part of the province of Ulster
* Donegal (town), a town in County Donegal in Ulster, Ireland
* Donegal Bay, an inlet in the northwest of Ireland b ...
and had two children in the early 1930s.
Saor Eire and Fianna Fáil
In 1931 Twomey tried to quell different factions within the IRA (those seeking to establish a social programme vs those against it) by permitting IRA members to create
Saor Eire
''Saor'' is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word for "free".
Saor is a Caledonian Metal band from Scotland formed in 2013 by Andy Marshall. The band is currently signed to Season Of Mist.
*Saor Éire
Saor Éire (; meaning 'Free Ireland') wa ...
, a far-left political party. However, Saor Eire quickly found itself under attack from both Cumann na nGaedheal and by the
Catholic Church in Ireland for being a Pro-Soviet organisation, with the IRA painted as guilty by association. Simultaneously, the Cumann na nGaedhael government gave itself emergency powers and began arresting IRA members. Both Twomey and the IRA decided that in order to hold off Cumann na nGaedheal, they would need to rally around Fianna Fáil.
In February 1932 Cumann na nGaedhael called a snap election, hoping to catch both the IRA and Fianna Fáil on the backfoot. However, Fianna Fáil were able to secure victory. To the surprise of many, Cumann na nGaedhael choose to respect the result of the vote and stood aside to let Fianna Fáil into power. Initially, many Republicans and members of the IRA were overjoyed with the result. At first Fianna Fail seem to signal goodwill to the IRA by releasing many IRA prisoners. However, it quickly dawned upon the IRA that Fianna Fáil were not going to declare a Republic, and this put them in an awkward spot. A week after Fianna Fáil came to power, an internal document produced by the IRA leadership asked two fundamental questions: "can Fianna Fáil’s methods and policies achieve the Republic?", to which they answered No, and "can the IRA launch a successful revolution against the Fianna Fáil Government?", to which they also answered No. Both Twomey and the IRA were unsure how to proceed. In Twomey's own words "nobody had visualised a Free State which Republicans were not supposed to attack".
Following the election of Fianna Fáil,
Tom Barry and Twomey clashed over the direction going forward. Barry wished to see Saor Eire ended (believing its policies never gain mass support, and in fact, this made Saor Eire an undemocratic concept) and for the IRA to reconcile with Fianna Fáil. Twomey instead thought that the social programme of Saor Eire could and would gain democratic support.
On 21 May 1936 Twomey was arrested in his house in Dublin under Article 2A of the
Irish Constitution. On 18 June 1936 the Fianna Fáil government banned the IRA. The following day Twomey was tried and jailed for three years for membership of the newly proscribed organisation. Under the IRA constitution, his tenure as IRA chief of staff ended automatically upon his arrest. He was imprisoned in
Arbour Hill Prison and the
Curragh from 1936 to 1938. During his period of imprisonment his family depended heavily on money sent to them by
Joseph McGarrity of
Clan na Gael, a US-based IRA
fundraising
Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...
organisation. On his release, Twomey became
adjutant general on
Seán Russell's
army council. He travelled to
Britain and inspected the IRA's units there. Twomey concluded that the IRA was in no position to launch a campaign and withdrew from IRA activity. In 1939 he opened a
newsagents and confectioners in Dublin's
O'Connell Street.
Post IRA life
Following a crackdown on the IRA by
Éamon de Valera's government, he was
interned for two weeks during 1940. He remained close to the IRA, giving assistance to republicans deported from Britain and mediating in disputes between IRA factions. While he did not take an active role in politics after the 1940s, he did speak at a number of republican
commemorations, most notably at the restoration of
Wolfe Tone's grave at
Bodenstown in 1971. He never claimed an IRA pension from the Irish government or gave an account of his record to the
Bureau of Military History, set up to record the recollections of participants involved in the struggle against British rule.
He was badly injured in an accident in 1971 and was deeply affected by the death of his wife Kathleen Twomey in April 1978. Twomey himself died in October of that year. The presence at his funeral of members of
Fianna Fáil and
Fine Gael,
Sinn Féin The Workers’ Party and
Provisional Sinn Féin, the Irish
labour movement and old IRA comrades from the 1930s was evidence of his enduring popularity.
Twomey's papersfrom his period as IRA chief of staff, consisting of 28 boxes, are now kept at the Archives Department of
University College Dublin.
References
Bibliography
* Dalton, Charles, ''With the Dublin Brigade 1917-1921'' (London 1929)
* English, Richard, 'Green on Red: Two Case Studies in Early Twentieth-Century Irish Republican Thought', in D George Boyce et al. (eds.), ''Political Thought in Ireland since the Seventeenth Century'' (London 1993)
* English, Richard, ''Ernie O'Malley: IRA Intellectual'' (Oxford 1998)
* English, Richard & Graham Walker (eds.), ''Prisoners: The Civil War Letters of Ernie O'Malley'' (Swords 1991)
* Greaves, C Desmond, ''Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution'' (London 1971)
* Hanley, Brian ''The IRA. 1926-1936'', Dublin (Four Courts Press 2002).
* Williams, T.Desmond (ed.), ''The Irish Struggle 1916-1926'' (London 1966)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Twomey, Moss (Maurice)
1897 births
1978 deaths
People from County Cork
Irish Republican Army (1919–1922) members
Irish Republican Army (1922–1969) members
Irish spies for the Soviet Union
People of the Irish Civil War (Anti-Treaty side)
People from Fermoy
Spymasters