‘Incident’ at Clones was part of bid by Michael Collins to overthrow new NI state

Historian GORDON LUCY looks back at the killing of A Specials on their way to Fermanagh and Tyrone in 1922
The rifle used to kill IRA commandant Matt Fitzpatrick at Clones railway station in 1922The rifle used to kill IRA commandant Matt Fitzpatrick at Clones railway station in 1922
The rifle used to kill IRA commandant Matt Fitzpatrick at Clones railway station in 1922

Despite his pacific utterances, in the early months of 1922 Michael Collins sought to unite pro- and anti-Treaty factions of the IRA in a campaign to destabilise and overthrow the new Northern Ireland state through heightened terrorist activity in Belfast and across the border.

Fermanagh and the Clogher Valley were the scene of a particularly high level of IRA activity.

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The Ulster Gaelic Football final was to be played in Londonderry on Sunday January 22. The previous evening six cars had left Monaghan to convey the Monaghan players to Londonderry. They were stopped by a B Specials check point at Dromore. After a search the Specials discovered weapons and incriminating documents in the cars and arrested 10 of the players.

Eoin O’Duffy and Dan Hogan were both the leading lights of the GAA in Co Monaghan and the leadership of the IRA in the county. The Gaelic Football final was intended to provide cover for an operation to spring three republican prisoners under sentence of death from jail in Londonderry.

On the night of February 7/8 the IRA mounted cross-border raids to seize 100 prominent unionists in Fermanagh and the Clogher Valley and hold them hostage to prevent the execution of the republican prisoners. Actually, the raids were wholly unnecessary because the lord lieutenant had already commuted the sentences to 15 years of penal servitude. (The three republicans were released in 1925.)

The IRA raids failed to go according to plan in many instances. For example, IRA men surrounded Brooke View Lodge, the home of Ennniskillen solicitor and MP James Cooper. Cooper was alerted by a noise, and, grabbing his gun, fired shots at the men through a window. The IRA swiftly aborted their plan.

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J N Carson, another prominent Fermanagh unionist, was not so fortunate. He heard a car drive up his lane at 4am. The IRA knocked on the door and ordered Carson to come down. Instead of going to the front door, Carson ran out the back. The IRA broke down the front door with a sledgehammer, and met Mrs Carson coming down the stairs, who fainted. They ran through the house and out the back door and fired shots at the fleeing Carson, wounding him in the shoulder. Carson fell and was captured. He was held for a fortnight in Co Longford, before he was given a car and ordered to drive back to Fermanagh.

In all, the IRA succeeded in kidnapping 42 prominent unionists, including Captain Coote, son of William Coote, MP, and Anketell Moutray, the elderly and fearless Tyrone Orange county grand master and president of South Tyrone Unionist Association. He must have almost driven his captors insane by singing psalms, hymns and patriotic songs at them.

These raids infuriated border unionists. In response additional troops and A Specials were deployed in Fermanagh and Tyrone and the B Specials were mobilised for the first time since the Truce.

One detachment of 18 A Specials was sent from their depot in Newtownards by train to Enniskillen. Although they were in uniform, only six of them were armed – with pistols – in compliance with police regulations in force during the Truce.

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They were travelling by the most direct route through Co Monaghan, changing at Clones and taking the train from Dublin for the onward journey to Enniskillen.

With the benefit of hindsight, while permissible, it would have been wiser to have despatched them by a longer route wholly within Northern Ireland.

Upon reaching Monaghan, word was sent to IRA Commandant Matt Fitzpatrick in Clones, who decided to arrest the men at the railway station.

When Fitzpatrick and his men arrived at Clones station, some of the Specials were in the station buffet, some were on the platform and some were seated on the train.

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Fitzpatrick, armed with a sub-machine gun, approached the carriage in which some of the Specials were sitting and shouted, ‘Put your hands up and there will be no shooting’.

There are conflicting accounts of what happened next.

According to one account, the failure of the Specials in the carriage to comply immediately resulted in Fitzpatrick firing into the compartment, killing or wounding the occupants.

An alternative version suggests that a special constable on the platform drew his revolver and fired the first shot, killing Fitzpatrick.

While there may be uncertainty as to who fired first, there is no doubt about the outcome. Five members of the Specials – Special Sergeant William Dougherty and Special Constables Robert McMahon, James McCullogh, James Lewis and William McFarland – were shot and killed. Eight others were seriously wounded and four were taken prisoner.

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Those who were in the buffet managed to escape through the kitchen and safely made it across the border into Fermanagh on foot.

Whether the incident could be legitimately described as a firefight is open to question because it was too one-sided, and many civilians were wounded in the incident.

When the blood-stained train reached Lisbellaw, the village’s overwhelmingly unionist population was outraged and drove those suspected of Sinn Fein sympathies from their homes.

In Belfast the repercussions were much more serious as it triggered four days of rioting, shooting and bomb-throwing resulting in 31 deaths.

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Nationalists and republicans regard what happened at Clones as ‘an invasion’. If an invasion is defined as a military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter the territory of another geopolitical entity, to describe what occurred at Clones as invasion is a gross exaggeration. Certainly, there was no hostile intent on the part of the Specials. Unfortunately, Fitzpatrick’s egregious conduct resulted not only in his own death but in a great many others.

However, the IRA’s seizure of ‘the Pettigo triangle’ in May 1922 may legitimately be regarded as an invasion.

Unionists (and the unionist press) regarded Clones as ‘a massacre’ which perhaps it was, but there are no objective criteria for what constitutes a massacre. To avoid the emotionally-loaded terms ‘massacre’ and ‘invasion’, what happened might be more accurately referred to as ‘the Clones incident’.

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