Man Of No Property

By C.S. Andrews, Niall Andrews and David Andrews

‘In the spring of 1924 I was released from internment where I had been held for a year since the end of the Civil War in what was then the Irish Free State. I was a little over twenty-two years of age.’ So begins this extraordinary memoir, in which C.S. (‘Todd’) Andrews gives a personal history of his varied and distinguished career in public service to the Irish state. The early chapters cover what were, for Andrews and his fellow republicans, difficult years under the government of Cumann na nGeadheal. Andrews describes the ambience of Universtiy College Dublin, where he resumed his studies after the end of the Troubles, and writes with insight and sensitivity of the founding of Fianna Fail, which forced anti-Treaty republicans to decide whether to accept the established political order. Andrews chose the constitutional path, and after Fianna Fail came to power in 1932 his working life, which had begun modestly in the Irish Tourist Association and the ESB, was transformed by his appointment as managing director of the Turf Development Board, later Bord na Mona. This visionary enterprise, undertaken in the face of ridicule from those who saw the bogs as an irremediable symbol of backwardness, was immensely successful, and Andrews gave to it nearly three decades in the prime of his life. Andrews’ work for Bord na Mona, and later as chairman of CIE and RTE, brought him into daily contact with Eamon de Valera, Sean Lemass and the other leading political figures of mid-century Ireland, and Andrews writes of these men with an analytical and often acerbic eye. He makes a spirited defence of his closure of uneconomic railway lines and of his handling of labour disputes during his tenure at CIE, and rites bitterly of what he saw as the betrayal of Fianna Fail’s idealistic origins by those who sought to enrich the party by cultivating big business. Man of No Property is the plain-spoken, often controversial testament of a singular figure in twentieth-century Irish life, and is necessary reading for anyone who wishes to enderstand the evolution of the Irish state in its first half-century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press
• Release date: Jul 6, 2001
• ISBN: 9781843512479

Book preview

Aftermath of the Civil War

In the spring of 1924 I was released from internment where I had been held for a year since the end of the Civil War in what was then the Irish Free State. I was a little over twenty-two years of age.

I did not need to put pen to paper to list the assets and liabilities with which I faced the future. I am sure that I knew them. My greatest asset was my home and parents; my mother ran a creamery shop in Terenure over which we lived, my father had a small auctioneering business in Capel Street. They were prosperous businesses in a modest way. Whatever material success they attained, my parents did not change their modest but very comfortable way of life. My brother, Patrick, had joined the Free State civil service while I was away from home. This fact had not been mentioned to me in letters from home lest he be penalized because of my anti-government activities. His job added to the family income. Since he was my only and very much younger brother and we had no sister, I was the only one to be provided for. As our parents’ lives were totally devoted to the welfare of their two children, I felt enveloped in a cocoon of security than which no one can have a greater asset.

I had what I think was a good if academically undistinguished secondary education, thanks to the Christian Brothers. They had encouraged in me a natural curiosity, a taste for literature and a deep interest in the history of Europe and Ireland. I was interested in the theatre and the theory of drama. I liked paintings. I was, for my age and circumstances, unusually well informed even though the only intellectual equipment with which I was endowed was an exceptionally good memory. I had attended university for two terms before my career there was interrupted by arrest and imprisonment by the British. Two terms were not very long but they were sufficient to give me a taste of the pleasures of university life, though not a mature appreciation of the value of higher education. Not to have been to a university is often a source of regret, sometimes of very bitter regret, to those who have had very successful careers in business or politics or the public service.

Whatever one asserts about the use of force for political ends, its morality and stupidity, it is nevertheless true to say that, in the popular estimate of any nation, volunteer soldiers who have seen active service enjoy greater esteem than any other section of the community. I had fought in the Black and Tan War and in the Civil War. By the standards of most wars the amount of fighting I did was trivial, but it was enough to earn me the chrism of combat. I had travelled on foot through most of Leinster, Munster and three of the Ulster counties. I knew most of the leaders of the IRA and I had acquired friends all over the country through my travels and through my prison associations. I received gratefully the open-handed hospitality of rural Ireland. It was unusual for someone so much a product of the pavement to have the good luck to have visited the homes of so many people outside his native environment. I was indifferent to possessions of any kind except books, of which I had accumulated a small collection. I was ambitious to the extent that I did not want to form part of a congeries of clerks totting up columns of figures day in, day out. Considering the low baseline from which I was starting this aim did not seem unattainable, even allowing for the unprivileged position in which we Republicans found ourselves at the end of the Civil War.

I was good at games, particularly at football, handball and swimming. I had played from time to time cricket, hockey, and, at one stage, billiards and snooker. I was a good shot with a rifle but at targets only; I disliked killing wild things. I had fished in the rivers Dodder and Liffey for trout with worms and flies; I did not regard fish as being in the same category as birds or animals.

Those were my assets. My principal liability was a feeling of self-consciousness – at times literally painful – arising from my ungainly build and unprepossessing facial appearance. From this flowed a compensating aggressiveness and self-assertiveness which antagonized many people. I held strong opinions on most topics of common interest at the time. I was intolerant of views with which I didn’t agree. My opinions were rarely the subject of deep thought, but rather a reflection of my many and deep prejudices. I lacked the concentration necessary to be a student and an academic, which is what would have appealed to me temperamentally. I lacked the intellectual capacity to understand philosophy, with which I would have liked to come to terms. I suffered from the very considerable disadvantage of never having been out of Ireland nor having met any foreigners, even Britishers, except in the army of occupation. Although even as a schoolboy I had a sceptical view of the more absurd practices and pieties of religion, I was uncomfortable about the break I had made with the church at the time of the virtual excommunication of Republicans by the hierarchy. It was a loss to me not to belong.

I was nearly totally ignorant of the usages of mixed society, despite the efforts of my mother to persuade me to attend dancing classes. At school, in the IRA and even in my short spell in the university I associated exclusively with boys and men. I was by nature impatient. I always wanted to pass on to the next thing to be done, with the result that I did nothing very thoroughly. I had difficulty in coping with even the few simple mechanical appliances that came my way. Mending a bicycle puncture sometimes resulted in my father having to buy me a new tube, since as often as not the tube was ripped in my attempts to remove the tyre. I was so maladroit that my mother would not allow me to handle china. I had an unusual capacity for knocking things down. Photography and fretwork were the only hobbies I cultivated which required some measure of manual dexterity. Thus equipped I entered the world of the mid-1920s with no very clear idea of what I wanted to do to earn a living.

The defeat of the Republic had been a matter of great disappointment to me. As the climax of the Civil War was reached I had been close to the events associated with it. I saw all the devotion to the ideal of the Republic, supported by bravery, endurance and an indifference to self-interest, crumble through lack of political expertise. The leadership of the IRA (and of course its enthusiastic members like me) had become largely the victims of shibboleths of their own creation. They turned too late to de Valera, the one man who could have led them out of the political morass where they had got bogged down at the time of the 1922 Army Convention. Eventually he did succeed in using to advantage the stepping-stones embedded in the Treaty settlement to open up the way for re-establishing the Republic. But from the time of his release in July 1924 until he came to power in the twenty-six counties, there was a lapse of eight years. It seemed to me and my like an interminable period. Eaten up by bitterness and adhering to ‘principle’ – that fatuous word so all-pervasive and such a darkener of counsel in the story of the Republic – we wasted valuable years giving allegiance to an ineffective, and largely imaginary, underground government and army before de Valera and Seán Lemass broke with Sinn Féin and the Second Dáil to form Fianna Fáil.

During those eight years we saw the Free State administration entrenching itself and showing all signs of retaining power for ever. A mutiny in the army might have dislodged them but the government bought it off successfully. They had learned the truism that there are few problems that money will not solve. They accepted the theory that whatever economic prosperity the nation might achieve could only result from its capacity to sell our agricultural products in the British market; hence the catch-cry: ‘One more cow, one more sow, one more acre under the plough’. Our role in the world was to be an agricultural annex of Britain or, as some of them referred to it, ‘the mainland’.

They had adopted without noticeable change the governmental institutions of Britain. The procedures in the Dáil were identical to those operating in the House of Commons, leaving aside a few details such as Black Rod. The Courts followed the same judicial practices, wigs and all. Poynings’ Law was refurbished in the shape of an appeal to the Privy Council. The civil service as it existed before the Treaty had been kept undisturbed in structure and nearly intact in personnel.

Although the Freeman’s Journal ceased publication at the end of 1924, to the satisfaction of us Republicans, the remaining Dublin dailies continued to publish the British Court Circular and as late as September 1927 the Irish Independent gave the Irish public the interesting information that: ‘Queen Mary, who has been staying with Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles at Goldsborough Hall since last Friday, leaves for Balmoral today. The Duke of York will leave Balmoral tomorrow when he will re-join the Duchess of York and Princess Elizabeth at Glamis Castle. The Duke and Duchess are expected to visit Edinburgh next Wednesday for the unveiling of the Scots-American War Memorial.’ It also told us that ‘Lord Decies is taking the waters at Vichy’ – thus providing the Irish dimension.

Implicit in all this was the assumption that we were still part of the Empire. That, too, was the assumption clearly exemplified in the composition of the Senate. In fact, not merely had the Free Staters adopted the British system of government but they accepted and proceeded to imitate the British social system, having at its pinnacle a governor-general in lieu of a king and a senate in lieu of a house of lords. The first governor-general, Tim Healy, did not fill the role successfully. He was too old and too thoroughly despised by the mass of the people to be a centre of social attraction. Not even the most ambitious social climber would want to be ‘received’ by him. It was the common belief that the government had been persuaded by Lord Beaverbrook to appoint him. The viceregal lodge was a generous reward for the man who had wrecked Parnell.

A fair argument in favour of the acceptance of the Treaty was that it would provide stepping-stones to the Republic. When Michael Collins died that possibility was no longer realistic, as those like Liam Tobin and Frank Thornton, his closest military collaborators, found out to their cost. Tobin was relegated to the post of aide-de-camp to Tim Healy and Thornton was eased out of the army. Fortunately Thornton, unlike Tobin, had somewhere to go, and he went.

The Senate consisted of sixty members, thirty of whom were to be nominated by the President of the Executive Council, W.T. Cosgrave. Cosgrave had been selected for the post for no better reason than that he was the senior survivor amongst the Free Staters of the old pre-Treaty cabinet. He had the additional cachet of having been ‘out’ in 1916. Cosgrave had been a publican and, like every successful Dublin publican, he had yearnings towards respectability. Ordinarily, however successful a publican had been, he could never have hoped for upper-class social acceptance. But now he had arrived. Not merely was he accepted by what remained of the ascendancy but he became their well-respected patron. He had joined what Brendan Behan called ‘the horse Protestants’. In his nominations to the Senate he stated without equivocation that the government ‘stood absolutely on class’. His nominations, with few exceptions, consisted of members of the landed gentry and wealthy unionists. It would have been difficult to imagine them using the stepping-stones said to be embodied in the Free State charter to achieve a Republic.

The ethos of the Republican Movement before the Treaty had been egalitarian. We assumed that except for the usual tendency of tuppence-halfpenny to look down on tuppence, the Irish nation in the mass was a classless society. There was no social immobility based on birth or inherited wealth. To us the make-up of the Senate was just one example of how far the Free Staters were prepared to go to keep in step with the manners, customs and values of the British. Some of the senators were men of distinction by any standards; some had little to recommend them except wealth and the Protestant religion. Neither wealth nor religion seemed good reasons for their selection. It was wrong-headed policy to treat Protestant Irishmen differently from their fellow citizens in any circumstances. It was part of the Republican ethic that all Irishmen were equal and should be treated equally by the organs of state.

The senators, distinguished or not, had one thing in common: they were strong supporters of the Treaty and had a bitter hatred of us Republicans. The Clerk of the Senate, Donal O’Sullivan, a scholarly and priggish socialite who refused to hang the ritual portrait of Collins in his home because Collins used bad language, wrote a well-researched history of the Senate disfigured by the partisanship of the time. Over the years Republicans of whatever kind have acquired the image of being anti-intellectual; they live, it is said, on their ignorant emotions. O’Sullivan’s book, scholar though he was, is a clear statement of that point of view. As a nasty polemic directed against de Valera and all he stood for, it encapsulated all the contempt for Republicans felt by him and his kind. It is not to be wondered at that Republicans were short on intellectualism since the bulk of the professional and literary class was solidly behind the Free State.

The Free Staters plunged deeper and deeper into the mire created by the Treaty. Having been out-manoeuvred by the British in the matter of the Boundary Commission, they represented the betrayal as ‘a damn good bargain’. Except for the damming of the Shannon and the foundation of the Electricity Supply Board – no small achievement, it must be admitted – and a half-hearted attempt to start a sugar-beet industry, they contributed nothing to the economic development of the country. An intense and expensive effort was made to revive the Irish language; through pedagogic inexperience the campaign had little success. It was dominated on the one hand by pedants and on the other by native-speakers of rural origin and background. If in Ireland the word ‘peasant’ could be used without offence the bulk of native-speakers could be classified as peasants. They hardly provided the best foundation on which to base the revival of the language. Furthermore, the revival effort relied too much on money and material rewards; dispensing money was not a good way to evoke patriotic enthusiasm. Nor was the effort assisted by us Republicans. As in every other project initiated by the Free Staters, we opted out. Unfortunately we did nothing to promote the language ourselves. My belief is that from the time the Volunteers took the Oath of Allegiance  to Dáil Éireann and became the IRA, interest in the language movement among Republicans began to decline. Certainly at the end of the Civil War it scarcely existed.

Economic depression had begun to take effect after the relative prosperity of the Great War years. What jobs the government could create, such as public works on roads and drainage schemes, went to demobilized soldiers and supporters of the Free State regime – not an unreasonable policy to be expected from the government. There was a mini-diaspora of Republicans; it is estimated that 100,000 emigrated between 1924 and 1927 – principally to the USA. It is probably from that nucleus, or their descendants, that succour has been coming to the Provos in our day.

Even though military activities had ceased, the IRA organization had not yet disintegrated and when they were released from jail many of the Army Executive went underground. On the political scene Sinn Féin – the political wing of the Republican party – continued to exist with some semblance of reality. It is true that the great Sinn Féin party taken over from Arthur Griffith had come apart after the Treaty and only a rump of the organization remained faithful to the Republican cause, but it was a rump sufficiently strong to have ensured a surprising measure of success in the election of 1923. The party workers in that election were all older men – most of the younger members were in jail or on the run – but in the face of threats, harassments and actual physical assault, often by trigger-happy CID men, their efforts ensured that the ideals of the Republican movement did not go by default and were openly proclaimed.

Unfortunately, and contrary to what might have been expected, the return of the prisoners from the jails and internment camps did not accelerate the growth of the Republican party, the nucleus of which had successfully survived the Civil War. In fact, there was a decline in numbers and financial resources. It became increasingly evident to the Republican leadership, and more evident to the rank and file members of the organization, that there was no hope of attaining power and undoing the Treaty debacle while abstention from the Dáil was part of policy. In addition, the Party made no effort to deal with the economic and social problems which at the time offered a fertile ground from which to draw mass support. Hence between 1924 and 1926 there was a general sense of depression among Republicans. In Dublin especially the problems of purely personal survival of those IRA men who did not emigrate left them with very little heart or enthusiasm for ‘the cause’. The first evidence of a recognition of the realities came from Seán Lemass in the columns of An Phoblacht. He had stood as a candidate for a by-election in 1925. To everyone’s surprise – that is to say to the surprise of all us Republicans – he was elected. We regarded the election as an event of no significance. We didn’t dream that any consequence would flow from it, nor, I think, did Seán Lemass. He was Minister for Defence in the Republican Dáil. He owed no allegiance to the Free State and, like the other members of Sinn Féin, he had no intention of taking his seat in the Dáil. In a series of articles published about this time he analyzed the shortcomings of the party, the futility of pursuing its current policies and the need to concentrate on politically realizable objectives. The Lemass initiative, which later became known as the ‘New Departure’, caused a major furore in Sinn Féin circles. It also marked him out as a future leader and maker of party policy.

My immediate impulse following my release was to make contact with my friends. My most intimate friend, Hubert Earle, had been released from Gormanstown internment camp where he had spent nearly two years from the first week of the Civil War. My first visit was to him. I found him at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning, unshaved and unwashed, sitting in his pyjamas playing the piano. He was in a state of depression. He had no welcome for me at all. He blamed me for persuading him to oppose the Treaty against his better judgment. At the best of times Earle was dyspeptic. To his dyspepsia had been added anxiety about the continuation of the County Council scholarship allowance which was helping to finance his university studies. He was not sure whether it would be paid or not, or if he would be able to complete his master’s degree course in chemistry.

He hoped that, having got his M.Sc, he would get a job as a junior chemist in the recently formed state laboratory. The stipulation that he would have to sign a form pledging allegiance to the Free State regime did not upset him at all. He had washed his hands of any kind of politics and had no aim beyond getting a job with a salary sufficient to support him. He once declared to me that if he got a job opening and shutting doors at £5 per week he would be satisfied; the odd thing about that statement was that he meant it. He dreaded responsibility of any kind.

My riposte to his ‘door-opening’ pronouncement was to assert that if I was a member of a sodality I would prefer to be carrying the banner than walking in the ranks of the procession. Or if I was playing football I would prefer to be captain of the team rather than merely a right-half. It is a curious phenomenon of Irish life that, particularly in political circles, ambition is regarded as almost a dirty word. I think that if a politician is worth his salt he should be ambitious for advancement. In life there are the leaders and the led. I suppose it is a matter of temperament, but to me to be the leader is much preferable to being the led.

In the IRA Company of which we were members during the Black and Tan War, Earle could not be persuaded to take charge of a squad. He was a man of above-average intelligence. As a chemist he had an unusual capacity to set up complicated apparatus for experimental work. Earle could easily have become a specialist in that field but he preferred the idea of opening and shutting doors. He got his M.Sc., and his job in the state laboratory. Eventually, just before he reached the age of retirement, by the process of Buggin’s Turn he became State Chemist. He was, I think, grateful that he did not have to carry the burden of the post too long.

I listened to his tirade against me and against all Republicans with amusement. I asked why, if he felt so badly about the Movement and if he thought that he had made such a mistake, he did not sign the form which would have secured his release from Gormanstown. He found it difficult to admit that he could not bring himself to ‘let down his fellow prisoners’, to some of whom he was very attached, particularly one Rosie Behan, who became notable in later life as the father of Brendan Behan the writer. Many years afterwards I was having a drink with Earle in a pub in Merrion Row when a big boisterous young man came in calling loudly for a large brandy and joshing the barman. Earle, who always found noise disagreeable, looked with distaste at the noisy one and to my surprise accosted him: ‘Young man, are you by chance a son of Rosie Behan?’ Brendan acknowledged his identity with some embarrassment and became even more disconcerted when Earle demanded: ‘Will you for jaysus’ sake keep your voice down; you’re the dead spit of your father but you’re no credit to him.’

When I felt Earle had purged his emotions sufficiently I persuaded him to shave, wash and dress himself and to come home with me to dinner. He was very welcome at our house and had already visited my parents since his release. We spent the rest of the afternoon, the evening and late into the night swapping experiences of the Civil War and the internment camps. He had no current contact with or indeed information on either the IRA or Sinn Féin fronts. Nor had he much information about events in University College outside his own immediate interest. He went into the chemistry department in the mornings and worked very hard under Professor Hugh Ryan, one of the few of the staff of UCD who were Republican supporters. Earle’s only diversion was singing in the choir of Rathfarnham church, which provided him with an opportunity to meet girls, of whose company he was very fond. Political attachment did not interfere with his pre-Treaty friendships. Earle also developed a taste for alcohol, to which he always referred as C2H5OH. In his later years he used to cast scorn on the commonly held belief that one should not mix the barley with the grape, in the form of whiskey and wine, at the same drinking session. They were all C2H5OH to him.

In almost every respect Earle was different from me in his way of life and even in his physical appearance, I being tall and thin, he being low-sized and pudgy. Yet for years after the Civil War we spent most Saturday afternoons and evenings together, even after my marriage. We had virtually no interests in common. He read only the headlines of the newspapers. We had different tastes in books; he refused to read anything except ‘whodunnits’. Our very close friendship has been a lifelong surprise to me. He was slightly older than I but much more intelligent. He had considerable musical talent and very deft hands. He presented himself very well. He had a beautiful speaking voice, to which I attributed his success with women. While inclined to be irascible he was neither malicious nor offensive and he was always polite to older people. But apart from what girls he acquired from time to time, he had no close friends except me. While he confided his problems to me and I could influence him in almost any way I wished, I could never take him seriously. Being a good raconteur he amused me with an endless supply of stories, mostly erotic, and tales of his amorous adventures, most of which I disbelieved.

Earle was not typical of the IRA man coming back from the wars. Generally they were not so detached from politics and the state of the country as he was, nor did they feel so tolerant of the Free State and its cohorts. For my part, I would not associate with any active supporters of the government nor with anyone who was or had been in the Free State army or police force. Initially I made the mistake of thinking that everyone I met who had not taken the Republican side in the Civil War was personally hostile to me. It took me a while to realize that this was far from being the case. Most people I knew were glad to welcome us back into the community even though they might have disapproved of our beliefs and activities. The fact of having been active ‘Irregulars’ gave us a certain cachet among the public at large. They instinctively felt that we had staked our lives and our liberties on our beliefs.

Having dealt with Earle, my next concern was to get in touch with the IRA, which was still in existence though largely underground. Its headquarters was hunted for continuously by the CID and the Free State army. I had some difficulty in making a contact because locally, in Terenure and Rathfarnham, the organization had fallen to pieces. Kenny, who was the kingpin of that area, had been forced to emigrate to England in search of work. My other principal contacts were missing: Ernie O’Malley, the hero of the Civil War, was still suffering from the effect of his war wounds and John Dowling, the director of organization, had gone to join his brother in America for a long holiday. Finally I got in touch with my friend and schoolmate Frank Kerlin, the assistant director of intelligence. Kerlin was one of the few officers of the headquarters of the IRA who distinguished himself in the Civil War; in addition, he had escaped arrest. He took me to see Michael Carolan, the acting director of intelligence, who had his office in the house of the county librarian, Róisín Walsh, at Templeogue. I knew Carolan well – we had both taken part in the Mountjoy hunger strike in 1920. He was a Belfast man with a quiet, soft, cultured (and cultivated) voice, which makes even a Belfast accent attractive to Dubliners. Thanks to his hostess, who was a strong Republican, he had acquired the loan of the first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses published by Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. He showed it to me with great enthusiasm, thumbing rapidly through the pages until reaching the famous Molly Bloom soliloquy, on which he dwelt with shocked surprise which I knew he did not feel – nor did I. I had heard something of Joyce and had seen, rather than read, some discussion of Ulysses in the New Statesman, but it had passed me by. The same could not be said of Molly Bloom. This was my first introduction to Ulysses, which later became for me a source of entertainment and much enjoyable conversation with other Joyce enthusiasts over the years.

Kerlin and I discussed the political situation and agreed that there was no possibility of the IRA ever again becoming an effective military force. Nevertheless, the pretence went on. In July 1924 all the Civil War prisoners including de Valera had been released from jail, and a full-scale meeting of the IRA Executive, presided over by Dev, was held in August. The following extract from a report from the chief of staff, Frank Aiken, to the Executive gives a measure of the cloud-cuckoo-land in which the leaders of the IRA appeared to be living in 1924 and which I, of course, inhabited as well:

Commission on Regulations and Organisation: For some time past GHQ staff has decided to get out a definite set of regulations regarding discipline and court-martials. A Commission has been appointed for that purpose, and will make recommendations to GHQ as soon as possible. A Commission on organisation could not have been set up to any purpose until after the Executive meeting. I suggest that this Executive should discuss the organisation of Army and say definitely whether name of unit and ranks of the officers commanding units are to be based on sizes of area or on numbers. For the work before us I believe they should be based on numbers as far as possible.

In the summer of 1924 the released IRA men were merely milling about wondering what to do next. Much of my time was spent renewing acquaintance with my family. I spent a couple of nights in Summerhill with my grandmother, making my peace with my Uncle Christy, with whom I had quarrelled about the death of Michael Collins. By that time Christy had settled down, married and was rearing a family, still in Summerhill but living in premises across the street from my grandmother in number 42 where I had been born and spent the first nine years of my life. The dairy business had been transferred with him so that 42 was again a private house – really a lodging-house – where my grandmother survived on the earnings of her Corinthian son, Simon, who spent all his time absorbed in horse racing and race meetings. I was delighted to see my grandmother, even though she constantly talked of death and of the wonderful reward she expected in heaven. If ever anyone had the death wish it was my grandmother. With her profound faith and considering the hardship she had endured in this life, I could well understand that anything she was likely to experience in the next would be an improvement. In the matter of religious practices – Masses, Communions, prayer, meditation and pious reading – nothing was omitted that would bring her esteem in the sight of God. On the purely human level she was kind to everyone, undertook every housekeeping task, cooking, cleaning, sewing, knitting from morning until night. She combined successfully the virtues of Martha and Mary.

She had a great welcome for me, as had my reformed Uncle Christy and his new wife, who was a cultivated woman. She was a dressmaker who had learned her trade in Paris. I visited the few friends I knew in the neighbourhood, including the Waldron family whom I always regarded as West British in the extreme. Waldron senior had been head porter in the Bank of Ireland. I met the only son, Leo, my contemporary, and was almost incredulous to find that not merely had he served in the IRA but had been a member of the full-time Active Service Unit. He had taken a neutral stance in the Civil War, having joined the technical branch of the Department of Education. Curiously, his parents had no idea of his sympathies or activities.

I made a trip by train down to Tullow to see Aunt Lily Murphy, my godmother, to whom I was devoted. Alas, I found that the economic circumstances of herself and her brother Patrick, for whom she kept house, had deteriorated. They had owned considerable house property but their only livelihood now was a small pub run by Patrick. My father always attributed their declining circumstances to their inordinate devotion to religion. Patrick’s talents – he was a man of more than usual intelligence – were wasted in a bar-room even if he had any interest in selling drink, which he had not. In his heart he felt that to be a publican was an unworthy occupation. He found it difficult to reconcile his conscience with the liquor trade. During the weekday evening services he turned the key in the bar door and went to church instead. As I knew from previous experience, the Rosary with innumerable little trimmings filled the half-hour immediately before bed time. Aunt Lily was just as devoted to spiritual matters as Patrick. Between them they seemed to be indifferent to the things of this world. If they had lived in India they would undoubtedly have been on the road with the begging bowl. Perhaps the customs of India do not admit of women with begging bowls, but no doubt Aunt Lily would have found some alternative vocation directed towards the salvation of her immortal soul. I spent a weekend with them conforming to the customs of the house. I refrained from any comment on the bishops’ condemnation of those of us who had opposed the Free State by force. The Civil War had caused Patrick and Lily deep distress; for them, who had an idealized image of Ireland as the most Christian country in the world, fraternal strife was a disaster for which prayer was the only remedy. Patrick and Lily Murphy were happy people. They had all the material goods that they desired. The expression ‘consumer durable’ had not then been invented but, even if it had, it would have had no significance for them compared with the consolations of religion which filled their lives.

A Circle of Friends

On returning from Tullow I had planned to go into UCD to arrange with Dr Coffey, the president, about resuming my studies – this time in agriculture – but this had to be deferred in response to a request from Carolan that I should check, in consultation with the local commanders, on the state of the IRA organization in counties Kildare and Meath. With some reluctance I agreed to the task. Having spent some days in Carbury with Tom Harris I was compelled to report that, so far as Kildare was concerned, the IRA was no longer viable nor was there any prospect of its revival. Michael Hilliard in Navan wasn’t quite so pessimistic, but his attitude was that of a young man who would never be prepared to accept defeat on any national issue; in fact the situation, as I saw it, was equally hopeless there. Having conveyed this information to headquarters I also made it known to Kerlin that I couldn’t be relied upon to undertake any further missions of this kind. I had to take some steps to provide for my future and I felt that it did not lie in full membership of the IRA.

I did not resign from the IRA but I did not want to be asked to leave Dublin. I asked for and got indefinite leave. There was once a stage in my young life when I would have been prepared to spend all my time and energy in the role of a revolutionary, but not any longer. Some months later I took on my last country assignment. The remains of the Republicans executed during the Civil War were handed back to their relations in October. The bodies of Liam Mellowes, Rory O’Connor, Dick Barrett and Joe McKelvey were taken to the Hardwicke Hall where they lay in state for a few days. It was noticeable that no massive crowds came to pay their last respects. With the current headquarters staff still on the run, there was a scarcity of senior IRA men available to represent GHQ at the funerals and I was asked by Carolan to stand in.

Following the ceremony at the Hardwicke Hall, Mellowes’ coffin was brought to the Carmelite Church in Whitefriar Street, where Mass was said before leaving for Wexford. Only a few of us followed the hearse bearing his remains to Castletown cemetery and only a few sympathizers came to the graveside for the burial. Someone said a decade of the Rosary and the mourners dispersed. The proceedings were monitored by the CID, and harassed by this show of force none of us were quite sure whether we might not be arrested or worse. The CID shot and killed John Hughes, a Republican mourner, at a similar ceremony in Dundalk cemetery. We Republicans were completely at the mercy of the police. We were in fact outlaws.

But before that valediction to the IRA and while the arrangements for the resumption of my university studies were still in the air, something occurred which affected my whole future life. Shortly after returning from visiting my relatives in Tullow, I was stopped on the street in Terenure by a stout, red-faced, heavy-jowled, elderly man whom I had never seen before. He asked if I was Todd Andrews. When I answered yes he said that he had heard a lot about me from some of his friends and he wondered what I was doing. I replied that I was thinking of studying for a degree in agriculture at UCD but had not fully made up my mind. At this stage he introduced himself as William O’Brien Hession and went on to say that he was in practice as a public auditor and accountant and would like to make a proposal that he thought would be of interest to me. We discussed the matter further that same evening at his home in Terenure; and I learned something of his background. He was a Limerick man who had emigrated to South Africa after the Boer War and worked in the government service as an accountant until his retirement. Returning home after the First World War, he had set up a practice as a public accountant in an office in O’Connell Street. He was a member of the Society of Incorporated Accountants. He questioned the wisdom of my seeking to obtain a qualification in agriculture, maintaining that there was no future in it unless there was a prospect of owning one’s own farm, and went on to suggest that I might take up accountancy. I told him that I had thought of that possibility but had abandoned the idea as it would involve payment of an apprenticeship fee of £200 and I was not prepared to ask my father for that not inconsiderable sum. He assured me that this was not an insurmountable obstacle. He would be prepared to give me my Articles of Apprenticeship together with £1 per week in pocket money if I agreed to work in his office. At the same time I would be free to study for a commerce degree at the university, which would reduce my accountancy apprenticeship by two or three years. At the time it seemed a very attractive proposition, and although I had no enthusiasm for a life spent poring over figures I thought that it might lead to a career less uncertain than the prospects offered by agriculture. I asked him for a day or two to think over his generous proposal. He agreed and then we went on to talk about the political situation. I left him refreshed, having listened to a tirade of abuse directed at the Free Staters collectively and individually which drew me sympathetically to him.

It transpired that one of the people who had spoken well of me to O’Brien Hession was a close friend of mine named Tom McMahon, a County Council engineer who had the distinction, amongst my friends, of having a job and a motor-car. Tom McMahon was still active in the IRA. He told me that O’Brien Hession was a very decent man who had supported the Republican movement both before and during the Civil War. McMahon was also able to give me some information about O’Brien Hession’s auditing business, which was not very large and which included Liam O’Doherty, whom I knew slightly when he was O/C of the Fifth Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. I also consulted Dermot Lawlor, with whose brother Fintan I had been very friendly at school. He had taken a B.Comm. degree at UCD and was working as an articled apprentice in an accountant’s office. He advised me to accept O’Brien Hession’s offer, which, knowing the situation in the profession, he thought to be magnanimous.

I did not discuss the proposal with my parents, simply because I knew that they would agree to whatever course of action I chose to follow. Even my mother, now that I was home safely, was very proud of me; they felt that whatever I did was right. Before finally committing myself I discussed the position with Denis Coffey, the president of UCD, who gave me a very warm reception. He also felt that I would be well advised to take up O’Brien Hession’s offer and was able to assure me that I would be credited with the first year’s exam in commerce even though I had not done the course. This was early in June 1924. I had until October before my second-year lectures in commerce began.

I reported to O’Brien Hession’s office and was introduced to Liam O’Doherty and the one other member of the staff, named McGrath. It was obvious from the start that O’Brien Hession was not a dynamic businessman. On his rare appearances at the office he made a habit of sucking peppermints in a futile attempt to stifle whiskey fumes. In practice McGrath and O’Doherty ran the business, which consisted of one large and very valuable client and a number of small accounts. My worst fears were realized when I was handed sheets of figures to be checked. Boredom and terror at the prospect of a lifetime spent wrestling with figures took possession of me. Under Dermot Lawlor’s tuition I had acquired some rudimentary knowledge of book-keeping and accountancy, but I learned nothing of value in O’Brien Hession’s office. My promised stipend of £1 a week was paid only sporadically; as often as not it was forgotten, perhaps because of scarcity of funds. How McGrath and O’Doherty fared in this respect I cannot say. Although I spent a lot of time talking to O’Doherty, the discussion was always about political events in which we were equally interested and equally partisan. It became clear to me that my apprenticeship articles would not be forthcoming without exercising considerable pressure. This I was not prepared to do because within a few months I came to realize that auditing, which was the only career open to a professional accountant at that time, was not one I wished to follow. So when the College opened I bade adieu to O’Brien Hession and to the auditing profession. We parted on very good terms and continued to meet occasionally in the evenings, getting off the tram in Terenure and walking home together, although for my part conversation was limited

Reviews for Man Of No Property

[thegeneral_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second half of Andrews' biography takes us from his release after the end of the Civil War to his retirement from the public service. A hard hitting book Andrews cannot be criticised for not calling a spade; a spade. Very hostile commentary toward the main protaganists of the Provisional Government/Cumann na nGaedheal/Fine Gael party. His experience at Bord Na Mona is interesting nonetheless as is his similar managerial time with CIE and the RTE authority. His chapter on de Valera is quite heartfelt. A useful book for any economic history student and for anyone analysing the genesis of Fianna Fáil.