From Sinn Féin, September 20, 1913. The following letter was written in the aftermath of a riot at a banned trade union meeting on Sackville Street attacked by the Dublin Metropolitan Police, leading to the deaths of two workers, James Nolan and John Byrne, with over 300 injured on 31 August.
Mr. Thomas J. Clarke, Parnell Street, Dublin, writes to us:—
Sir,—Will you kindly allow me the courtesy of your columns to touch upon one phase of the recent happenings in this city.
I have witnessed a number of fierce riots in Ulster in bygone times, was present when buckshot in volleys was fired into an unarmed crowd in Dungannon, which so infuriated them that in their frenzy they closed in on a strong posse of police who were sweeping through them with fixed bayonets and the crowd with naked hands came to grips with the police and put them to flight. I saw brutal things done that day on both sides. As might be expected there was much bloodshed—one man killed outright and a long list of wounded was the toll.
Later on I witnessed the Bowery hooligans1 and New York police have a ‘set-to.’ The fight was fierce and some savage acts were witnessed.
It has fallen to my lot to get considerable first-hand knowledge of the ruffianism of the criminal classes of London’s underworld. Yet nothing I know of during my whole career can match the downright inhuman savagery that was witnessed recently in the streets and some of the homes of our city, when the police were let loose to run amok and indiscriminately bludgeon every man, woman and child they came across, in many cases kicking them on the ground after felling them with the baton. They have wrecked the homes of dozens of our citizens, smashing windows, fanlights, doors, furniture, china, pictures—everything breakable. Murderously assaulting the inmates, irrespective of age or sex. The new-born babe at its mother’s breast wasn’t safe any more than the sick mother herself. In one instance she was dragged out of bed and clubbed, and the poor wee babe got it too and showed the result in a black eye. An avalanche of evidence is just now available to sustain everything I am stating.
Dublin, with its people, the most easy-going and peaceful of any city I know, is staggered by what has happened. Totting up the ‘casualties’ we find two dead and about a thousand maimed and battered citizens have received treatment in the public hospitals and private surgeries of the city. A bloody holocaust, surely! But a fitting one to be dedicated to Dublin Castle and its idea of ‘Law and Order.’
In the course of my business I have occasion to come in contact with all classes of our citizens—Catholic and Protestant—journalists and other professional men, as well as businessmen and tradesmen, and the ordinary working man, almost everyone I have met during the last week or so has spoken about the action of the police, and only one note have I heard—that of wrathful indignation against Dublin Castle and its methods.
When Dublin Castle is mentioned in this connection, let it not be forgotten that the recent shocking exhibition of police brutality is nothing new in our city. There are still people amongst us who carry on their persons scars and infirmities—results of the Police Riot in Phoenix Park on August 6th, 1871, when the people were bludgeoned right and left there—the bludgeoning was carried on right down into the city. But very few are aware that it is on record that Mr. John Mallon (Assistant Commissioner of Police) has stated that ‘the police were to blame for the riot,’ and that ‘the two senior officers (of police) were drunk’ that day. Then, again, in 1881, Mr. Frederick Moir Bussy, a prominent English journalist connected with the London Press, writing later about what he witnessed states:
‘In Dublin… I have seen the police smash the heads of the people and kick women and girls on the sidewalk of the principal street… As we were well aware that most of these fellows (the police) had changed uniforms before leaving barracks that evening so that they should not be identified in case of accidents, or at least be able to prove an alibi in the event of being summoned according to their numbers.’
This statement of Mr. Bussy is startingly significant in the light of ‘conflicting evidence’ in the Coroner’s Court the other day.
An enquiry into the conduct of the police has been demanded by the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the city. Is this ‘enquiry,’ my Lord Mayor and City Fathers, to be engineered by Dublin Castle? Is that what you want? Is that what the great bulk of the citizens want? I would undertake to say that 80 per cent of the citizens would answer ‘No’—we know what the result of such a machined enquiry would be.
The interests of the city—the lives and property of the citizens—not to speak of national dignity and the dictates of common humanity—demand that there should be and must be an independent enquiry—free of Castle control—an enquiry free to probe and search in every direction—even up to the private chambers of Dublin Castle, and bring out into the light of day and before the gaze of the world’s opinion, whoever and whatever was responsible for this blood lust of official hooliganism in our midst.
Even as it is the machinery of the police department of Dublin Castle is busy at work. We can see it operating in various directions. For instance (apart from the Police Court incidents), a D.M.P. Inspector called upon a friend of mine, who is a B.A. of Trinity College, and tendered him an apology for two policemen who had without the slightest provocation brutally assaulted him in the presence of several witnesses. The Inspector gave this written apology on condition that the gentleman would drop the matter.
1 Cartlann: The Bowery Boys were a nativist, anti-Irish Catholic criminal gang based in Manhattan, New York City, led by William Poole, better known as ‘Bill the Butcher.’