Dalton senior asked if he, as the older man, could give out the prayers and this was agreed. That night he proceeded to give out the rosary, with a homily on each mystery. This was clearly too much for detainees who were delayed in going to bed – they just wanted to get to sleep. The next day some of the hut inmates got together and it was decided that in future the prayers would be given out in Irish. As James F. Dalton did not have the language, he was excluded from leading the prayers, much to the relief of inmates. It was a diplomatic way of dealing with the problem.11
It was unusual for a duo with such a respectable background, a JP and his war hero son who had served as a British Army officer, to be pulled in for questioning. The Irish Independent reported the arrests with the headline ‘Ex-Army Captain and J.P. Arrested’.12 When Charlie Dalton reported on the raid on his family home to Liam Tobin, the Deputy Director of Intelligence, Tobin told him he already knew all about it. Tobin and Michael Collins and one or two staff officers happened to be spending the night in a house overlooking the Dalton residence, and observed the raid and all the commotion. As a result they had a rather sleepless night, with the enemy so close at hand.13
Training the IRA
In late 1920 Emmet Dalton became involved in training the IRA. Oscar Traynor, Commander of the Dublin Brigade, was seeking to improve the level of training in the Volunteers. J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell was Director of Training but he had also been appointed Assistant Chief of Staff, and found it difficult to give enough time to the training role. O’Connell, who had served in the US armed forces, asked Traynor to keep an eye out for somebody who could replace him as Director of Training. Charlie Dalton had been telling Traynor of the outstanding abilities of his brother Emmet who had fought in the British Army all through the Great War and who was sympathetic to the Volunteers. A newspaper profile written in the summer of 1922 suggested that Dalton had to ‘fight his way’ into the movement, owing to the reluctance of senior leaders to accept a former officer in the British Army, though they quickly recognized his resourcefulness.14 The fact that Emmet already had a brother active in the Volunteers may have helped dispel any lingering doubts about his bona fides.
Traynor asked Charlie to bring in Emmet for an interview. It was not unknown for Irishmen who had fought for the British in the Great War to throw in their lot with the Volunteers, the West Cork guerrilla leader Tom Barry being a notable example. When Emmet Dalton came in for interview, Traynor asked him if he would be prepared to give a series of lectures to members of the Dublin Brigade. He replied he would be willing to do so.
He began lecturing members of different battalions, with map-reading one of the areas covered. One of those he encountered during this work was his former school friend, Sean Lemass. O’Connell attended some of the lectures and reported back that he was impressed by Dalton’s abilities.15 Dalton became Assistant Director of Training in the IRA General Headquarters staff, and later assumed the role of Director of Training, around June 1921. Meanwhile, he dropped out of his engineering course, and also left his temporary job in the Office of Public Works. Dalton’s previous military experience had included roles as an instructor, which made him a valuable addition to the GHQ staff. O’Connell introduced him to various senior figures in the Volunteers, including the Chief of Staff, Richard Mulcahy. He got to know Piaras Béaslaí, the editor of the Volunteers’ journal, An t-Óglach, and in February 1921 helped him secure an office on North Great George’s Street. A disadvantage was that the room could only be used during the day – by night it was used for dancing classes.16
A young Volunteer, Gerald Davis, attended lectures by Dalton. In early 1921 IRA Headquarters asked for volunteers to go down the country as organizers. The Headquarters staff particularly desired to use students for this work. Davis was at the National University in Dublin and he and other students in the movement offered their services. They were interviewed by senior IRA figures Dick Mulcahy and Oscar Traynor and instructed to attend a series of lectures in a building somewhere near Amiens Street. Among those who lectured them were Emmet Dalton and his brother Charlie, Ernie O’Malley, ’Ginger’ O’Connell and Rory O’Connor. The lectures covered ‘guerilla warfare, engineering, the construction of land mines and the use of arms and so forth’. The course involved about a week of lectures.17
Apart from his expertise in giving lectures to Dublin Brigade personnel, Emmet Dalton assumed another useful role as impersonator of a British Army officer. Shortly after taking up his lecturing duties, there was a raid on the brigade headquarters. The building, sometimes known as the Plaza Hotel, was located at 6 Gardiner’s Row (now known as Gardiner Row), which also housed the offices of the Irish Engineering, Electrical, Shipbuilding and Foundry Trade Union. Oscar Traynor, Christopher ‘Kit’ O’Malley, Adjutant, and Dalton were all present in the HQ office. It was located in an area of the building which, they hoped, would not be found by the troops, but they had no guarantee that their hideaway would remain undetected. They had hidden away their papers and were waiting for the troops to burst in, when Dalton suggested that the best thing to do was to go down and ‘brazen it out’. With Dalton leading the way, they went down to the hallway where Dalton talked first to a soldier, and then to an officer, and the two got to the stage of laughing.18 Eventually Dalton said to his companions, ‘Come along, men’ and they left the building and proceeded on their way, only to be held up by soldiers at the corner of nearby Findlater’s Church. Again, Dalton talked to a British officer and they were passed safely through the cordon. Traynor later described how Dalton, because of his general appearance, deceived the British officers into believing that he also was a British officer, engaged on work about which the least said the better. Traynor commented: ‘There can be little doubt that, due to Dalton’s presence, we managed to evade arrest on that occasion.’19
As he became more involved with the IRA, Dalton was living away from home, effectively on the run. For a period he lay low in the secluded, scenic environs of Howth, County Dublin, beside the sea, with other IRA members such as Tom Flood and Christopher O’Malley. At some stage in 1921, while the War of Independence was still in progress, Dalton made a return journey to O’Connell School where he met Brother Allen. According to a story told by Brother Allen in later life, Dalton said he had a particular favour to ask of the Brother – he wanted a place to store a ton of coal.20 He said his father and mother, unknown to each other, had each ordered a ton of coal and they had no space to store the extra fuel. Brother Allen agreed to help. Dalton duly delivered the ton of coal, in sacks, and it was stored in the basement furnace area of the school, separate from the Brothers’ coal. Subsequently, Dalton returned to take away the coal. Then an extraordinary thing happened – there was a raid by the British on O’Connell’s, and members of the raiding party went straight to the furnace area to search it. Brother Allen later learned that the sacks contained not just coal, but sticks of gelignite, which Dalton was hiding away for the IRA. Apparently, Brother Allen had a theory that the coal was removed after Dalton got a tip about the upcoming raid from one of Michael Collins’s informants in Dublin Castle.
Dalton Escorts Unionist Leader James Craig to See De Valera
It was a period when Emmet Dalton was called on to carry out special tasks for the movement. In early May 1921 he was deployed for a particularly sensitive operation to escort Unionist leader, Sir James Craig, on a secret visit to see Dáil President Éamon de Valera at a private house in a north Dublin suburb. This was several weeks before the Truce that would bring a formal end to hostilities in the War of Independence. Craig showed particular courage in undertaking the visit. In coming to Dublin he was entering what some Unionists would have seen as the lion’s den. The meeting between the two men was arranged by a senior British official in Dublin Castle, Alfred ‘Andy’ Cope, acting with the blessing of British Prime Minister Lloyd George. He was opening lines of communication with senior Irish republicans to find an end to the conflict. Cope secured a guarantee from Sinn Féin of a ‘safe conduct’ for Craig as he went to see de Valera.
Craig and his wife came to Dublin without any escort and stayed at the Private Secretary’s Lodge in the Phoenix Park. On the morning of 6 May, Cope drove Craig to the home of a leading judge, Sir James O’Connor, on Northumberland Road. Here he was met by the prominent Sinn Féin priest, Father Michael O’Flanagan. According to Craig’s later account, two Sinn Féiners, ‘armed to the teeth’, suggested he accompany