I’m sure I’ve mentioned THE IRISH BULLETIN (1919-1921) in at least one of my blogs and suspect that many of my readers had never previously heard of it.
It so frightened the British Army that, that it seized an innoffensive woman who was found to have two copies which she’d taken to read on a train and court-martialled her in Limerick and sentenced her to two weeks imprisonment. Honourable British MPs with distinguished records in the Great War put government Ministers on the spot in Westminster with informed questions about their conduct in Ireland, having read the Bullletin. The Bulletin was the Official publication of Dail Eireann, which England “the Mother of Parliaments” was trying to smother.
The Irish Bulletin did not publish its office’s address, nor did the British “security” forces do so when they found it. One of the British propaganda team in Dublin Castle, Hugh Pollard, thought up a jolly wheeze. His team printed a bogus copy of the Bulletin, calculated to discredit the Republic, and as they had captured its mailing list, they sent out the forgery to the paper’s usual recipients.
But the real Bulletin didn’t miss a beat. They had another printer and another copy of the mailing list. So, in the House of Commons the forgery was laughed to scorn whilst the Government was discomfited.
But Pollard had two lasting triumphs to his career. He arranged for Pathe News to make a fake newsreel purporting to show an encounter between the IRA and the Crown Forces near Tralee. When the newsreel was shown in Dublin the viewers recognised their own Vico Road on Killiney Bay, about 200 miles from Tralee. But stills from the fake newsreel appeared in one of Robert Kee’s books on Ireland, and many other books, and I seem to recall seeing them reproduced in THE IRISH TIMES. Perhaps it’s mere coincidence that Robert Kee was in Britain’s Secret Service, and that THE IRISH TIMES was closely aligned with DublinCastle in 1920, and is today governed by a Trust set up to serve British interests.
Hugh Pollard remained in the British Service and in 1936 piloted a plane to the Canary Islands, where Spain’s Republican Government had posted Francisco Franco, in order to keep the Republic out of harm’s way. Pollard picked up the turbulent soldier and landed him in Spanish Morocco which Franco used as a stepping stone away from the Republic. When Madrid fell to Franco in 1939 Pollard was installed in the British Embassy as their MI6 man on the spot.
Those still running scared of THE IRISH BULLETIN include many members of Dail Eireann and Seanad Eireann, most members of the History Faculties of universities sited in Ireland and those charged with organising the Decade of Commemorations.
Perhaps “those charged with” that duty deserve more than two weeks porridge?
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