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The secret service vote and Ireland, 1868–1922

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Eunan O’Halpin
Eunan O’Halpin*
Affiliation:
National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin
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Extract

This paper is concerned with the secret service vote provided by parliament expressly for the purchase of secret information at home and abroad ‘with a view to defeating the machinations of the enemies of the crown and country’, and with the proportion of that money spent by the Irish authorities up to 1922. Figures are available which disclose the actual expenditure by Dublin Castle of money from this source for the last fifty-four years of British rule in Ireland, from 1868–9 to 1921–2. It must be stressed that these amounts represent only a part of the spending in any one year on intelligence concerning Ireland: other departments were also involved in Irish affairs from time to time, and there is little doubt that on occasion funds from other votes were used for secret service purposes —which was certainly the case in wartime. It should be noted too that distinctions between criminal, agrarian and subversive activity in Ireland were frequently difficult to make, and that money from the secret service vote was probably used to obtain information on matters not political or seditious in themselves. Thus the figures when considered in isolation are not an accurate index of official activity against potentially subversive organisations. Nevertheless as concrete data on an aspect of government for which documentary evidence is hard to come by, they are of some interest.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 92 , November 1983 , pp. 348 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1983

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References

1 Note on the history of the secret service vote (P.R.O., T 165/48). I am grateful to Robert Brown of British Petroleum for help with this article.

2 For example, in 1916–17, at a time when the admiralty was principally responsible for British signals intelligence and also had networks of agents in Europe and the Americas, its total share of the secret service vote came to £702 12s. l1d. (P.R.O., T 165/48).

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid. Certification by ministers, and the appointment of the permanent secretary to the treasury as accounting officer of the vote, was effective in preventing embezzlement of funds or their use for party political purposes. It did not put an end to misappropriation, in that the vote was sometimes used as a secret contingency fund by governments. For an apparent example, see Roskill, S. W., Hankey, man of secrets (3 vols, London, 1970-74), iii, 162nGoogle Scholar. The first Irish Free State government also misused its secret vote. In 1923 the cabinet authorised the payment of £250 to Lieutenant Frank Teeling to enable him to emigrate, as his erratic behaviour was becoming a severe embarrassment to the army. Unfortunately Teeling then shot dead a man in Dublin’s Theatre Royal, and consequently did not travel. (S.P.O., S.2166.)

5 P.R.O., T 165/48.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid. Le Caron, who spied on the Fenians in America, reported to the Home Office and not to Dublin Castle. See Caron, Henri Le, Twenty five years in the secret service (London, 1892)Google Scholar, for his account of his activities.

8 This was run by W. V. Harrell, who had been dismissed as assistant commissioner of the Dublin police in consequence of the Bachelor’s Walk shootings in 1914.

9 Townshend, Charles, The British campaign in Ireland, 1919-1921 (London, 1975), p. 91.Google Scholar

10 Record of the rebellion in Ireland in 1920–21 and the part played by the army in dealing with it, volume ii: intelligence’, p. 29 (Intelligence Corps Museum, Templer Barracks, Ashford, Kent).

11 Their probable accuracy is enhanced by the fact that Dublin Castle consistently underspent its yearly allocation by a wide margin. It seems unlikely therefore that there would have been any necessity to divert money from other votes to secret service purposes.

12 Between 1914 and 1918 the retail price index increased by 105 per cent which makes the amounts spent in those years appear all the more paltry.

13 Memorandum for the chief secretary by H. F. Considine, deputy inspector general, Royal Irish Constabulary, 30 Nov. 1905 (Wiltshire Record Office, Long papers, 947/105).

14 MacDonnell to Chamberlain, inspector general, Royal Irish Constabulary, 24 Nov. 1903 (ibid.).

15 As in n. 13, above.

16 Unsigned note, 14 Apr. 1916 (P.R.O., CO. 904/23/3, pt 2).

17 Report by Basil Thomson on the organisation of intelligence in Ireland, Sept. 1916, pp 3, 5, enclosed with Thomson to Lord French, 8 May 1918 (Imperial War Museum, French papers, 75/46/12).

18 Royal commission on the rebellion in Ireland: minutes of evidence, p. 15 [Cd. 8311], H.C. 1916, xi, 199.

19 Report by Basil Thomson, p. 5.

20 Record of the rebellion in Ireland in 1920–21’, vol. i, p. 26 (Intelligence Corps Museum, Templer Barracks, Ashford, Kent).

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid, p. 18.

23 P.R.O., T 165/1, 7, 46 and 48, and T 1 11689/25138. This assumption is strengthened by a comparison with secret service spending by the Irish Free State: in its first full financial year the new government spent £ 118,762 8s. 3d. from its secret service vote, a total almost twice the size of the largest amount spent by the British authorities in any one year (Appropriation accounts. 1922–23, F.4/1, 1924, p. 140).