Night the IRA tried to blow up Cork garda HQ

IN January, 1941, with the continent on a war footing for 16 months, Ireland began to feel the pinch as vital supplies such as fuel began to dry up. Drastic measures were called for.

Seán Lemass, Minister for Supplies, announced that petrol consumption was to be drastically reduced.

A certain leeway would be granted to public service and emergency vehicles, commercial vehicles supplying outlying areas, and doctors and clergy attending people who were gravely ill.

Otherwise, the monthly petrol ration was to be one gallon. That might have got you about 12 miles, roughly a return trip from Cork city to Ballincollig.

In one fell swoop, the country was plunged back 40 years to the era of travel by railway - where it was still running - horse and cart, bicycle, or simply shanks’ mare.

Bicycles became essential, but a chronic shortage of rubber tyres made them a tricky option too. Those lucky enough to possess one jealously guarded it as a prized possession and tried to keep its use to a minimum to conserve the tyres.

The cost of a new bicycle soared to £25, forcing the Government to fix prices at £10 (new) and £8 (second hand). In urban areas, bicycle theft was the crime most frequently reported.

To discourage would-be thieves, the practise had begun among patrons of dances at the City Hall of chaining their bicycles to the railings of the nearby Cork Garda Divisional Headquarters on Union Quay. A few, cheekily, even left their bikes inside the railings in the station’s forecourt, a custom the Chief Superintendent seems to have tolerated.

The night of Sunday, March 23, 1941, was no different. The Bridewell Group of the Local Defence Force - forerunner of the Reserve Defence Force - was holding its eagerly-anticipated spring dance at City Hall.

With music by the popular Pat Crowley and his Band - whose usual ‘home’ was the Arcadia on Lower Road - and at a price of just a shilling a head, this was the place to see and be seen.

Dancing began at 8.30pm and would continue until midnight. Patrons flocked to the venue, and soon the yard at Union Quay was full of bicycles.

As the night wore on, the quay was all but deserted, the only sound wafting over the still waters of the River Lee the melodious cacophony of the ‘Big Band’ sound of Crowley and his fellow musicians.

There was nobody around to hear the deadly noise of a sputtering fuze as it made its way ever closer to the 30 sticks of gelignite hidden in the saddlebag of a bicycle under the window of the Sergeant’s Office.

Seconds later, a puff of smoke from a second bicycle nearby indicated that another Improvised Explosive Device (IED) had activated. At that precise moment, Detective Sergeant John Collins exited the front door of the station. For he, and the unsuspecting station workers inside, the clock was ticking on their very lives.

******

Union Quay Garda Station was based in a multi-storey edifice built in traditional red brick and erected in the mid-1800s as the Cork (East Riding) Headquarters of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).

On April 13, 1922, Lord Mayor Donal O’Callaghan had taken possession of the building from the RIC on behalf of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. Four months later, however, during the Civil War, it lay in ruins, one of a number of buildings destroyed by anti-Treaty forces on August 10 as they evacuated the city in anticipation of its occupation by the National Army.

On that Sunday night in 1941, with relations between gardaí and the local faction of the IRA - a proscribed organisation - volatile and bitter, the building was in imminent danger of, once again, facing demolition.

Among the guards based there was John Collins. Born at Purt, Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick, in 1905, he was barely 17 when he left farming work and joined An Garda Síochána in November, 1922.

In January, 1940, he had been involved in a serious altercation on Patrick Street, Cork, for which he was awarded the gold Scott Medal. Detectives were attempting to arrest a man when, in the ensuing struggle, he drew a revolver and mortally wounded Detective Garda John Roche. Collins and a colleague, Denis Teahan, played major roles in effecting his arrest.

By 1941, Collins was a Detective Sergeant and, as he left the Union Quay station that March night, he got the distinctive aroma of burning and noticed smoke coming from the saddlebag of a bicycle. His sixth sense registered only one word: ‘bomb’.

To his relief, he discovered the bike had not been chained and locked, and, opening the bag, he tried to remove the fuze, only to discover it was already too short and had begun to smoulder.

Quickly grabbing the mechanism with the bag still attached, he rushed it out the front gate and flung it into the roadway.

His next thought was to warn his colleagues in the station of an imminent explosion.

At that moment, Sergeant John Driscoll had emerged from the doorway of the Uniformed Branch offices and spotted the bicycle, with smoke arising, in the middle of the quay.

Thinking it might be disposed of in relative safety by throwing it in the river, he lifted it up and ran to the quayside, only to find, to his dismay, a vessel moored directly underneath.

With that, he pushed the bicycle further up the quay away from the garda station, stopping only to try to separate the still-burning fuze from the sticks of gelignite to which it was attached.

As he did so, the detonator exploded: luckily, the connection between the priming stick and the detonator had been severed. Driscoll’s quick-thinking had averted an explosion that could have blown up the barracks and even taken down the Model School behind it.

Taking no chances, he threw the bike, with its deadly cargo still attached, into the river.

******

Sgt Driscoll was born at Whiddy, Bantry, Co. Cork, on June 12, 1894, and worked in farming before joining An Garda Síochána on February 22, 1923.

Later that year, he became the first member to take over Knock Station, in Co. Mayo. He moved to Union Quay in 1934 from Galway Division. But the drama that night in Cork was not yet over.

Back at the station, Collins and his colleagues were frantically searching for a potential second IED which, within minutes, they had found, revealing the presence of the second saddlebag bomb. In this instance, the fuze had, after its initial ignition, failed.

Examined by experts later, the gelignite was found to be ‘sweating’, a process that, when the nitro-glycerine begins to leach out, makes it extremely unstable.

Nevertheless, quantities of gelignite in those proportions, if detonated, were deemed highly lethal and capable of devastating a large area.

****** The following September, nine young Corkmen appeared before the Special Criminal Court in Dublin charged with ‘membership of an illegal organisation’ and seven were charged with placing “gelignite against Union Quay Garda Station with intent to damage the building”.

All pleaded guilty. Their sentences ranged from three to five years’ penal servitude, but the President of the Court announced that “in view of their attitude and their repudiation of the illegal organisation, the Court had decided to deal leniently with them”. They would recommend to the Government that sentences would range from 9-18 months.unnoi

******

On November 2, 1942, Det Sgt Collins and Sgt Driscoll received bronze Scott Medals for their bravery, from Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland TD, at the Garda Depot in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Collins became the first garda to be awarded a Scott Medal for a second time.

John Driscoll served out his days at Union Quay, retiring in 1954, while Collins retired in 1968. The Union Quay HQ was eventually replaced by a block of apartments in the 1990s.

As a young fellow in the 1950s, frequent visits to the Eglinton Street Swimming Pool necessitated a cycle past the then Garda HQ on Union Quay. I often wondered what prompted the notice posted on the wooden board attached to the front railings which declared: ‘NO BICYCLES - BY ORDER’.

Now I know.