In the early 1960s a young Limerick man called Des O’Malley began practising as a solicitor in the family firm. Just ten years later, in 1970, he would be given the job of Minister for Justice and find himself on the frontline of an unprecedented crisis that seemed to come out of nowhere. He recently recalled a much more innocent time: ‘I practised law in Limerick between ’61 and ’69 and I used to spend at least one day every week on criminal law. But there was really very little crime at all in Limerick, it was petty crime all the time and it was nearly all disposed of in the District Court. I used to appear in the Circuit Court and I can recall at the start of sittings, the county registrar presenting the judge with a pair of white gloves to signify that there were no indictable crimes in the city or county of Limerick, returned for trial in that term. And that used to go on, term after term, all over the country. I don’t think there’d have been white gloves given to the judges in Limerick in the ’80s, ’90s, the 2000s or that there ever will be again.’
Around the same time as O’Malley was starting to work as a lawyer, former Detective Superintendent Mick Finn had just graduated from the Garda training depot, which was then based at HQ in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. After a brief stint in Fitzgibbon Street Station, in the north inner-city, he transferred down the road to the C District HQ at Store Street Station. Over those first few years as a cop in Store Street, Finn witnessed, at first hand, the social factors that led to the area’s steady decline into serious organized crime: ‘People who initially got involved in crime did so out of need, running into shops and stealing bits and pieces, sometimes out of hunger. As they grew up they became a part of different gangs and some were fortunate enough to be weaned away from it. One of the main factors for young people falling into crime was their family conditions. In a lot of cases circumstances were not good, families were dysfunctional and they had nobody to show them the way. It is an accepted fact that deprived areas will produce criminals. And it is always those areas that the police will concentrate on because criminals live there. Crime is a consequence of how they were reared, where they were reared and what was available to them during their early times.’
As an organization, the Garda Síochána had fallen into a state of complacency in 1966. It reflected the demeanour of the State since Independence – it was inward-looking and insular. If senior management had looked across the water to Britain, where armed robberies had become commonplace since the early 1960s, they might have made some preparations for what was coming. But the Garda authorities were notoriously reluctant to keep in step with a dramatically changing world. A stiflingly conservative ethos also frowned on innovation. As a result the Gardaí didn’t have the planning, equipment or numbers to confront the well-armed and organized criminal gangs when they arrived on the scene.
On the afternoon of 27 February 1967, crime moved to another level when three masked raiders burst through the front doors of the Royal Bank of Ireland in Drumcondra, North Dublin. They ordered everyone to put their hands up. Two of the raiders, armed with revolvers, covered staff and customers, while the third jumped the counter and emptied the tills. The hoods sped off in a stolen getaway car less than four minutes later. They had taken £3,265 in cash – worth over €50,000 in today’s values. The gang had just pulled the first armed robbery in Ireland since the Second World War. It was a professional, well-planned heist and it sent shockwaves through the Establishment.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
2. Saor Eire
The armed robbery in Drumcondra, Dublin, on 27 February 1967 was an inaugural event – and was greeted with public shock throughout Ireland. This was the first time that guns had been used on Irish streets for many decades. For their part the Gardaí had no experience in investigating such well-planned crimes. The country’s first professional armed gang had also set an example for scores of other would-be blaggers. They’d shown them how easy it was to rob banks and not get caught. No one realized it at the time, but the mob involved in the robbery had heralded the arrival of organized crime in Ireland.
But the robbery crew was no ordinary criminal gang. It was a well-organized, heavily armed, highly motivated and dangerously volatile group. Their ‘jobs’ were meticulously planned and executed with a ruthless efficiency and military precision. Over time the heists grew more audacious – and reckless. This mob saw themselves more as rebels with a cause than mere thieves. They were a motley collection of dissident republicans, socialists, anarchists and criminals who gathered together under a flag of convenience to justify their actions. The gang were the self-appointed vanguard of working-class resistance, and the Drumcondra job was the first military action in a new ‘socialist revolution’. But the quasi-political misfits were too busy robbing the capitalist system to find time to choose a name for their small army of idealists, desperados and chancers. They styled themselves on the iconic South American rebel leader Che Guevara. It took two years (and several robberies) before they came up with a name they could agree on – Saor Eire.
Although largely forgotten now, Saor Eire, or ‘Free Ireland’, played a pivotal role in the evolution of organized crime and terrorism in modern Ireland, even though they preferred to describe their motives as purely political. Saor Eire claimed the proceeds of the robberies would be used to finance a movement that would encourage workers and small farmers to rise up against the State. Together they would overthrow the capitalist system and replace it with a workers’ republic. The maverick group claimed it was fighting a war in the name of the working classes and downtrodden in society. But the group never stood on the steps of the GPO and declared their objectives to the people they planned to save. Instead, in February 1967, they armed themselves and got on with the job of emptying bank tills, supposedly on the people’s behalf.
Three years after that first job, however, Saor Eire had become ‘Public Enemy Number One’ in the eyes of all classes of Irish society. In the end the only group they encouraged to rise up was a generation of dangerous young villains.
The names of the men who formed the nucleus of Saor Eire have also been largely forgotten through the gun-smoked mists of gangland history. The emerging crime families and the IRA, who came after them, took all the prominent spots in the Badfellas’ hall of infamy. Several of Saor Eire’s leaders, young men such as Joe Dillon, Frank Keane, Martin Casey and Liam Walsh, had deserted the ranks of the IRA during the early 1960s. They left in protest over its political direction and a lack of military action. The four young leaders had been influenced by the left-wing ferment which swept across the Western world during the 1960s – the decade of free love and radical thinking.
The seeds of Saor Eire can be traced to a disaffected former young IRA member called Joe Dillon from Portmarnock, County Dublin. In December 1965, the 19-year-old was charged with an attempted armed robbery. Described as a casual waiter, Dillon was also charged with stealing a car and possession of a handgun when he’d tried to hold up the Dublin Corporation rent office in Coolock, North Dublin. The young republican’s associates and supporters began a campaign to stop his prosecution, claiming that he was being framed by the police because of his politics. Many of the people involved in the protest would form the nucleus of the new revolutionary army.
In May 1967, three months after the Drumcondra robbery, Dillon was convicted on all charges for the 1965 robbery attempt and sentenced to five years in prison. At the time such a sentence was considered unusually harsh – armed crime was practically non-existent so the sanctions were light in comparison to more recent history. The sentence was reduced to three years by the Court of Criminal Appeal that July. Joe Dillon then went back to the High Court in August 1967 to challenge an order transferring him from Mountjoy Prison to Portlaoise Prison. During a break in the proceedings, and a mix-up between prison officers over who should be watching him, Dillon strolled out of the Four Courts and went on the run. He had been in custody for less than three months.
In the meantime the ex-IRA men had
joined forces with Trotskyites Peter Graham and Maureen Keegan of the Labour Party’s Young Socialists. Graham and Keegan were also members of the Trotskyite United Secretariat of the Fourth International. The new Saor Eire ‘army’ also recruited members of the Irish Workers Group, a small Marxist group made up of Irish expats living in London. It was headed by Gerry Lawless, who later worked as a journalist with the Sunday World. In addition, Saor Eire enlisted several young Dublin criminals, who were attracted by the anarchic rhetoric and the chance of making some easy money. The group provided funds to Peter Graham, who was chairman of the Young Socialists, with the intention of pushing more radical policies in that organization. At its full strength Saor Eire was said to have had a total of about sixty members scattered between Dublin, Cork and Derry. Its hardcore membership consisted of no more than twenty dissidents.
At 34, Frank Keane was the oldest member of the group. Born in Mayo, his family had moved to live in Finglas in Dublin when he was in his late teens. The TV serviceman joined the IRA in the 1950s and had been the OC (Officer Commanding) of the organization’s Dublin Brigade. Keane was jailed for 18 months for his first overt action on behalf of Saor Eire, a few months after the Drumcondra robbery, when he tried to burn down the Fianna Fáil party HQ in August 1967. He was released after four months. Martin Casey and Liam Walsh, both of whom were from Dublin, had also been members of the IRA who left because of a lack of military action. Together the four young men would be a dangerous mix.
On 19 April 1968, Joe Dillon turned up again. This time he was with three other members of Saor Eire on a return visit to the Royal Bank of Ireland in Drumcondra – the scene of their first job. The robbery was carried out using the same modus operandi that would define all their jobs: staff and customers were threatened at gunpoint, shots were fired in the air to prevent heroics and the robbery was over in less than four minutes. In the second raid they got away with a similar amount of cash – £3,186.
Most of Saor Eire’s robberies were ‘half and half operations’ – half the proceeds went to fund the war and the other half went into the pockets of the patriots. No one asked any questions about this dual motivation.
On 20 June, the gang hit the Hibernian Bank in Newbridge, County Kildare and left with £3,474. Frank Keane and 23-year-old Simon O’Donnell from Dublin were arrested by Gardaí two days after the Newbridge raid, when they were stopped in a van containing combat jackets and cash. Although there wasn’t a compelling case against them they were both charged with the robbery. They got bail and went back to work.
Four months later, the organization was again in need of funds for the cause and themselves. On 3 October 1968, four members of the gang, Thomas O’Neill, Padraig Dwyer, Sean Doyle and Simon O’Donnell, targeted the Munster and Leinster Bank in Ballyfermot, West Dublin. The members of Saor Eire were about to show their propensity for reckless violence. This time their stolen car had been spotted near the bank before the raid and the Gardaí were alerted. A young cop called Martin Donnellan was in the first patrol car that responded to the call. He had only been in the force for four months and he was about to receive a baptism of fire. As the Garda car approached, the revolutionaries abandoned their plans to rob the bank and drove off at speed.
Donnellan, who retired at the rank of Assistant Commissioner in 2007, recalls what happened next: ‘As we arrived outside the bank we spotted the four men and it was obvious they were about to rob it. There was a high speed chase and, as we followed them up Kylemore Road, Padraig Dwyer put his head and shoulders out the back window of the car and fired several shots directly at us. We dived down in the car, as the driver swerved left and right to avoid the gunfire. We continued after them until the getaway car crashed on Cooley Road in Drimnagh and the raiders ran through gardens. They were still armed and shouting at us: “This is political.” We shouted that we were also armed, which we weren’t, and they ran out onto another road, where they encountered two more uniformed guards who managed to disarm and arrest them. One of my colleagues, Kevin Duffin, grabbed Simon O’Donnell around the neck as he raised a rifle to take aim. The weapon was ready to fire. It was pure luck that no one was killed or injured and it was obvious that they had no compunction about shooting a policeman. This was the first time that I ever witnessed such violence. For me that was the end of an age of innocence. There were no armed robberies until the day when Saor Eire appeared and claimed it was political. My career started at the same time as organized crime took off – it became an integral part of my life for over forty years.’
When the crashed getaway car was searched, Gardaí uncovered a cache of four rifles, six automatic pistols, two revolvers and 500 rounds of ammunition. Saor Eire believed in making sure they were well armed. O’Neill, O’Donnell, Doyle and Dwyer were arrested and charged. All four got bail, including O’Donnell, even though he was already out on bail for the Newbridge bank job back in June. O’Donnell and Dwyer promptly went on the run.
‘The four men we arrested that day were seasoned members of what became known as Saor Eire. They figured that robbing banks was political; at least that’s what they were trying to say. They went to trial and they were eventually convicted of attempted murder and attempted bank robbery but most of them got very short sentences which reflected the attitude of the judiciary at the time. They were supposed to be political. Now I’d put that in inverted commas, like lots of robberies that were carried out after that, a member of the gang would speak with a Northern accent and claim it was for the cause.’
In March 1969, after a lull in their activities, Saor Eire went back to work and pulled off their most audacious heist to date. Eight gang members, dressed in combat fatigues and armed with machine-guns, invaded the Northern Irish town of Newry, County Down, situated a few miles across the Border. They took over the centre of the town and fired shots into the air. Three raiders first hit the Bank of Ireland, and then the Northern Bank minutes later. They were chased back to the Border by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), with both sides exchanging gunfire. Once they reached the South, they vanished into a maze of back roads. The so-called Republican Trotskyites had got away with Stg£22,000 – the biggest cash robbery in Irish history, on either side of the Border.
The bandits were so elated by their stunning success that this is when they met to decide on a name for their organization – they wanted the world to know who they were. The members of Saor Eire were beginning to believe in their own invincibility. At that meeting they also decided that the Dublin Government and its agencies would be regarded as legitimate targets. They vowed not to surrender their weapons if challenged and began releasing statements to the media, proclaiming their objectives.
On 14 August 1969, four members of the gang robbed the National Bank in Baltinglass, County Wicklow. During the robbery, shots were fired and the staff were threatened. Two of the raiders forced the manager to open the safe while sticking a gun in his eye; another gun was pressed against his head.
A month later, on 25 September, the gang struck again. This time they took over the town of Kells, County Meath, by cutting the phone lines and blocking approach roads. Then they robbed the National Bank at their leisure, before leaving town £3,000 richer. The revolutionaries also hit the Northern Bank on the South Circular Road, Dublin, in the same month.
In a statement issued to the Irish Times shortly afterwards, the gang claimed responsibility for the Kells job. Describing themselves as the Saor Eire Action Group, they claimed that the proceeds of the robbery would be ‘used to finance a movement which will strive for a workers’ Republic’.
On 3 October, the Garda Commissioner, Michael Wymes, sent a confidential directive to all Garda stations in the country. It left no doubt that putting Saor Eire out of business was now the number one priority of the force. After listing the string of armed robberies attributed to the gang, the document stated: ‘Information to hand is that these raids are the work of a group styling itself “Saor Eire” who cannot be regarded as having any
political motives and are nothing more than a gang of armed bandits whose unlawful activities must be opposed by all the resources available to the Force.’ The document included photographs and descriptions of 13 of the most prominent figures within the organization. Officers were instructed to familiarize themselves with the faces of the country’s most dangerous criminals.
In the meantime the gang began recruiting new members. They rented a cottage and lands on a quiet country lane near Lacken in the Wicklow Mountains, and used it as a training camp and hideout. Saor Eire bought military equipment, including combat uniforms, boots, flak jackets, two-way radios, detonators and explosives. They also had a firing range and acquired a large stockpile of arms and ammunition.
In late 1969, Saor Eire took delivery of a number of small consignments of 9mm and .22 Star pistols which had been stolen from Parker-Hale Ltd, a munitions factory in Birmingham. A Dublin criminal, Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne, who was closely associated with Saor Eire’s Liam Walsh and Martin Casey, had developed a lucrative little business selling firearms stolen from the plant. The colourful crook had extensive underworld contacts in England. Using a factory employee, he organized the theft of at least 35 weapons and acted as a go-between in arranging their sale to Saor Eire. The weapons were separately packaged and shipped to Dublin over a number of weeks, with their arrival specifically timed to coincide with the duty rosters of certain Customs officers. They ensured that the parcels got through unchecked.
The arms theft was uncovered soon afterwards by UK police. When intelligence about the gun-smuggling operation eventually filtered back to the Gardaí it confirmed their suspicions that Saor Eire was being assisted by people with a lot more power than Christy Dunne – people at the heart of the Republic’s government.
Badfellas Page 3
