My Family in 1922

 16 January 2022

On this day 100 years ago, the British Government handed over power to the Free State Government in a quiet ceremony in Dublin Castle. 

Within a month, the new state had recruited 3,000 members of a new national police force, the Civic Guard. The new recruits were given three months training and then dispatched to former Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) stations around the country.

My uncle Daniel Hickey was one of these recruits and was posted to Clonmel. In his 20th year at the time, he was the third of 11 children, 4 boys and 7 girls, and the second of the four boys. The first boy stayed at home and was to take over the small farm on the death of the father, William. The third went into horse-trading, but this business was bankrupted by the economic war with Britain in the early thirties; he then became an insurance agent. The third boy was only 4 in 1922. He emigrated to London when he was a teenager, but suffered hardship there and died of pneumonia and malnutrition just before the Second World War. The girls mostly married small farmers.

On that hand-over of power in 1922, the bulk of the members of the Irish Republican Army became members of the army of the Irish Free State. These had formerly been "The Irish Volunteers," who, on the outbreak of violence in 1919, had sworn loyalty to the Irish Republic. The Irish Army now officially retained the name "Irish Volunteers," but under the Gaelic form "Óglaigh na hÉireann," still officially the name of the Irish Army.

Éamon de Valera was the nominal head of the opponents of the Treaty who wished to hold out militarily for a republic. He had spoken to great acclaim in Tullamore, County Offaly, in 1917, when, newly elected as a Member of the British Parliament for County Clare, he had spoken in favour of the Sinn Féin policy of abstentionism, which led to the Irish members of parliament withdrawing from Westminster in 1918, and setting up their own Parliament in Dublin. Now he came back to Offaly and spoke at the bridge over the Shannon in Banagher. One of the young people present at that meeting was my father, Frank Killeen. The mood was against Dev. I never heard my father quoting anything from Dev's speech, but he never forgot the shout from a heckler in the crowd, "Why didn't you go yourself?"

In the summer of 1922 a Civil War started when the Free State Army fired on their former comrades who had rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty and taken possession of the Four Courts building in Dublin. The Civil War lasted about a year. 

My mother, then approaching her seventh birthday, was told that her sister, Josie, just four years' older, had "run away with the circus." This was a metaphor, but mother took it as literal, and never doubted it for decades afterwards, though her brothers and sisters knew the contrary. When I was growing up, (in the 40s and 50s), mammy corresponded with Josie every year, at least at Christmas. When I asked her how Josie, who had run away with the circus, had become a small farmer's wife, she said she did not know, that she was only a child when it happened. The War of Independence tended to draw the young people into the violence. Josie, though only 11 by my mother's account, did not run away with the circus, but ran away with the irregulars who were fighting against the Treaty, and later married one of them, Tom Hyde. Suffering depression from his experiences in the War of Independence and Civil War, Tom was a difficult person to live with, but they remained together till death and raised a family of three fine children. Josie's family did not become reconciled with the rest of the Hickey clan, all of whom were on the Treaty side, until after Tom Hyde died, around 1970.

Uncle Dan, like the vast majority of the police recruits, had given active service with the Irish Republican Army in the War of Independence, from 1918. 

Initially, a former RIC officer was appointed as Deputy Commissioner of the Civic Guard, and other former RIC officers held high rank in the force. However, the recruits objected to serving under representatives of the former enemy, and this Deputy Commissioner and these Senior Officers were discharged from duty. Commissioner Michael Staines retired in September, 1922, and General Eoin O'Duffy was appointed Commissioner in October.

In February 1923 an Act was passed officially establishing the national police force and it was named "An Gárda Síochána." The Laws of England, operational in Ireland before the formation of the Free State, were declared to apply in Ireland.

In 1927, auntie Josie was critically ill in hospital and was given no hope of recovery by the medical profession. Her relations brought a famous faith healer (whose name I  forget, like lots of other details)  to her death-bed. Josie recovered and went on to lead a long life with her husband, Tom Hyde, in his small mountainy farm in Rear Cross. They say that when the Angel of Death is sent out to capture a soul, he never goes back empty-handed. This folk-belief was strengthened by the story of a particular Italian Saint, revered in Ireland at that time (but whose name I can't at the moment recall) who, when the Pope was very ill, publicly prayed for God to "take me and save the Pope." The Pope recovered and the Saint died. Shortly after Josie recovered, the Angel of Death took Uncle Dan, who had been elevated to the rank of Sergeant of the Gárdaí, in a sudden death.

I don't know what my father was doing in those days. The first of the family, John, was a bit of a lad, had been expelled from the house, and had joined the RIC. The second son, Rody, was staunchly proper and obedient, and in line to take over the family farm. The third child, a girl, had been expelled because she became pregnant outside of marriage.  Frank was the first of the family born in the 20th century. He and his younger brother, Patrick (Packie), were caught up to some extent in the nationalism of the time. Frank, with Packie and Michael Gibbons, organised an annual festival on the 1st of February, called the "Brídeog," and this indicates to me that they were probably members of the Gaelic League, ostensibly to revive the Irish Language, but also to engage in  cultural activities and prepare for national independence. Frank and Packie had a game where they used Pig Latin to have secret conversations without the rest of the family knowing what they were saying. Frank was apprenticed  as a carpenter/ coach builder. The mill in which he worked (and to which he cycled to work every day) was burnt down in one of those years. I believed this occurred in 1922, but, in my research on the Internet, the only matching event was the Battle of Clara in 1920. John was discharged from the RIC on its disbandment in 1922 and went to England with his wife. Frank joined the Gárdaí in 1925 and received 2 years' training before being assigned to Store Street Station in 1927.

My mother, Sheila Hickey, moved to Dublin around 1931. She was the first person from Cappamore Convent School to take up a position with the Civil Service of the new state.

She would have met my father at dances (céilithe), but they only became close in 1937 when her brother, Jerry, died in London, and Frank was a comforting presence. They married in June, 1939. By this time Frank's career in the Gárdaí was going nowhere.

When Frank joined the Guards in 1925, there were few jobs going in the country. Before the Great War, people used to emigrate to America for work, but this seems to have dried up at this time. Daddy became a kind of voluntary recruiting agent for people from Lusmagh. For example, he recruited several girls as trainee psychiatric nurses in St Brendan's Hospital, Dublin, and I guess he found jobs for boys as well.

House-visiting was the principal social event of married couples in those years. During the dark months (from September to May), we had a constant stream of visitors, friends and relations of both my father and mother. They traced relations and revisited multiple adventures and exploits of their sporting and working lives. Many were the stories of the adventures of two young police officers, "Tony" and "Tiny." "Tony" was my father's nickname, and "Tiny" was the nickname of a big, mighty, guard. Partners together in Store Street in the early years, they were fearless in the pursuit of justice. My father  received a medal for exceptional policing.

However, in 1932, when de Valera became Taoiseach (prime minister), General Eoin O'Duffy was dismissed as Commissioner and Eamon Broy appointed in his place. He brought in his own followers from the Civil War in high positions and set up a "Special Branch" which became unofficially known as the "Broy Harriers." My father's generation of gárdaí were, of course, schooled under the British regime, and had left school at 14 years of age. A new recruitment drive now took place to attract people educated under the Irish Free State to Leaving Certificate (18 years old) level. These new recruits were given a promise of promotion within 7 years, which, of course, diminished the prospects of promotion of those already in the force.

There was, also, a change in policing policy. The new broom set out to enliven the police activity of the state, and jumped-ups Smart Aleks took over from Old Buggins (old in fashion or experience, not years). This brought a change in policing that my father did not approve of. O'Duffy's men tried to be close to the community and prevent young people from moving into lives of crime. For example, when my father and his colleagues would observe young inner-city folk watching for an opportunity to snatch hand-bags, they would talk to them and advise them to go home. Under the new regime, guards were to be judged by the number of arrests made. So the new upwardly mobile members, instead of warning the young people, would arrest them for "Loitering with Intent," that is, the intent to commit larceny. So these young gárdaí collected a mighty score of arrests and were heading for the heights. This policy became unstuck in time. Some of the young lads who found themselves in Jail on small sentences, turned jail into a university, where they learnt about the Law and about prisoners' rights. So, in the 1960s, the right of gárdai to arrest for "Loitering with Intent," was challenged and went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh ruled that "the intent must be proved; the opinion of an Inspector of the Gárdaí is not sufficient evidence." The law was now in disarray, and the Parliament had to come up with a new formula to give Gárdaí the right to stop and question citizens.

So, in 1932, my father's chance of promotion was thwarted by several elements: his educational standard was no longer considered sufficient; he lacked knowledge of the Irish language; younger members had a guarantee of promotion; he was seen as obstructive to the new policing methods (he was unlikely to hold his opinions to himself); he maintained an attitude that arrests should be avoided if possible (whereas the new bosses wanted plenty of arrests); he was seen as old O'Duffy school, rather than new Broy school.

Of course, it can validly be asked whether four extra years subjected to indoctrination and solely academic learning in an all-male school was a better education than the practical skills absorbed in growing up on small farms and in trades like carpentry, and the survival skills obtained in real-world experience of guerilla war. The Irish Language of the vast majority of these new gárdaí was not a practical skill, but a mere box ticked on an application form. A real language skill can only be obtained by actually speaking the language in real-life conversations, not by answering written questions in an examination paper.