# Robert Briscoe (politician)

Robert Emmet Briscoe (25 September 1894 – 29 May 1969) was an Orthodox Jewish veteran of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence and a Fianna Fáil politician of Lithuanian descent. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) in the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) from 1927 to 1965. Briscoe also served as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1956 to 1957, and again from 1961 to 1962.

## Early life

Robert Emmet Briscoe was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in the Ranelagh neighborhood of South Dublin. He was named after the Irish Revolutionary, Robert Emmet. His brother Wolfe Tone Briscoe was named after Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of the leaders of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Briscoe's father, Abraham William Briscoe, was the Lithuanian Jewish proprietor of Lawlor Briscoe, a furniture factory on Ormond Quay which made, refurbished, imported, exported and sold furniture all over Ireland and abroad, including to Imperial Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to the United States. Abraham Briscoe – known universally as Pappa – had arrived in Ireland as a 14-year old immigrant from the shtetl of Zagar, Kovno Governorate, and made a living first as a brush salesman and then as a merchant of imported tea. The original family name in Lithuania is believed to have been Cherrick or Chasen.
After meeting her while travelling on business, Abraham Briscoe had married Ida Yoedicke, the fourth daughter of a successful Lithuanian Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main. The Yoeddicke family had similarly emigrated from the Russian Empire to escape from the pogroms, religious persecution, and anti-Semitic religious discrimination drastically limiting Jews from access to education and to life outside the Pale of Settlement, to live in the far more socially accepting climate of Imperial Germany.
In direct contradiction to "standard anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jews as avaricious, cheap, clannish, unethical and unpatriotic", Abraham Briscoe felt a very deep sense of gratitude for the better life and freedom from religious persecution that emigrating from Tsarist Lithuania to Ireland had granted him and his family. His son later wrote, "To Father the soft green hills of Dublin Harbour were the sheltering arms of justice and Ireland seemed the very land of liberty - though he soon learned to think differently."
Abraham Briscoe according raised his children upon stories from Irish mythology, "about the mysterious druids, and the prehistoric Fir Bolgs, and of the great days of the Irish Kings... of St Patrick, and the time that followed when Ireland was the only center of learning and culture in these northern lands and the spear point of the Christian faith." Abraham Briscoe also raised his children to be, like himself, enthusiastic Parnellite Irish nationalists and supporters of the Home Rule agenda of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Abraham also believed that the adultery scandal that destroyed Charles Stewart Parnell's political career, "was a Tory British plot", that Parnell had faked his own death, and that he would one day return to lead the Irish people nonviolently to freedom.
Meanwhile, according to Kevin Kearns' oral history of life in the tenements of Dublin, all money-lenders, regardless of religion or ethnicity, were referred to by Dubliners as "Jewmen". Jewish moneylenders, however, actually had a very good reputation among their customers, in direct contrast to their many Catholic competitors. According to Paddy Mooney, "See, you could come to an agreement with a Jew. Oh yes, our own money-lenders were worse in regards to exploiting the people." Some Jewish moneylenders were very well liked figures in the Dublin slums, known not only for their business integrity, but also for their regular and willing donations to local Catholic parishes and other charitable causes.
Even so, Abraham and Ida Briscoe intensely disliked fellow Irish Jews who lent out money. Pappa Briscoe often encouraged the children of their South Dublin synagogue to play pranks on known moneylenders during services for the Sabbath and the High Holy Days. Furthermore, when his son Robert began courting a, "certain very beautiful Jewish girl", Abraham Briscoe told him, "I hear you are keeping company with Esther. You know her father is a moneylender, and I am sure you know how much I love you. Now I solemnly tell you this, rather than see you married to a moneylender's daughter, I would prefer to see your right arm cut off at your shoulder."

## Personal life

Robert and his wife Lily had seven children; only two of their sons, Ben and Joe, remained in Dublin. One of Robert Briscoe's daughters Miriam converted to the Catholic faith and became a Carmelite nun. Ben followed his father into politics, while Joe joined the Irish Army aged 15 (claiming to be 18) in 1945; he retired in 1993 with the rank of commandant.
Eamon Martin, former Chief of Staff of Fianna Éireann, was best man at Robert Briscoe's Jewish wedding. They had been close friends during the Irish War of Independence.

## War of Independence

During the outbreak of World War I, Robert Briscoe was living in Berlin, but fled, using an American passport issued by U.S. Ambassador James W. Gerard, to join his parents at Karlsbad, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After being briefly interned as an enemy alien at Eger, Briscoe was released due to intervention of the Papal Nuncio in Vienna. He was also allowed to return to Dublin after swearing an oath that he would not take up arms against the Central Powers. Briscoe, who already had meaning towards Irish republicanism, later recalled, "This I gladly did, since I had no desire to take part in England's wars."
In what caused years of sharp political arguments with his father, Robert Briscoe rejected his Home Rule nationalist upbringing and instead embraced Irish republicanism. He was active with the Purchases Department, General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Féin during the Irish War of Independence. He once broke his father heart by leaving the family's dinner when the IRA summoned him to an emergency meeting on the feast of Yom Kippur.
During the winter of 1919-1920, Briscoe was promoted to the personal staff of Michael Collins. Collins affectionately referred to Briscoe as, "my Jewman", and once posed as an Orthodox Jew with Briscoe's help, while in hiding from the police in Dublin's Little Jerusalem.
Briscoe also accompanied Éamon de Valera to the United States of America. He regularly spoke for the Sinn Féin cause at public meetings there and was adamant that being a "Hebrew" did not alter his Irishness or lessen his patriotism. At the same time, Briscoe later recalled in his memoirs that he sometimes felt afraid of having possibly broken the First Commandment by loving Ireland more than the God of Israel.
Due to his fluency in the German language from his family's pre-WWI business connections, Collins ultimately issued orders through Irish Jewish barrister Michael Noyk to send Briscoe to the Weimar Republic to be the chief agent for procuring arms for the IRA. While in Germany Briscoe purchased arms and had them shipped to Ireland in small parcels. Although the British authorities were constantly searching ships, smaller consignments of weapons were rarely discovered.
In December 1920, Charles McGuinness was made captain of a ship by the name the "Anita" and sent to the Weimar Republic, where Briscoe had already purchased a large number of firearms. However, on the day the crew were due to depart for Ireland, McGuinness was observed by the port authorities paying the crew in large notes, which aroused their suspicions. The German police arrested McGuinness and the rest of the crew. McGuinness was brought to trial, but Briscoe paid for a good lawyer on McGuinness' behalf. Before a sympathetic German court, McGuinness' gun-running against the British Empire was deemed to be a minor offence and he was charged a token fine of 2,000 Deutschmarks. After passing sentence, the German judge wished McGuinness, "better luck next time". The incident caused an uproar back in the United Kingdom.
In 1921 Briscoe purchased a small tug boat named Frieda to be used in smuggling guns and ammunition to Ireland. On 28 October 1921 the Frieda slipped out to sea with Charles McGuinness at the helm and a German crew with a cargo of 300 guns, as well as 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Other sources cite this shipment as "the largest military shipment ever to reach the I.R.A." consisting of 1500 Gewehr 98 rifles, 2000 Mauser C96 pistols, and 1.7 million rounds of ammunition. On 2 November 1921 the Frieda successfully landed its cargo near Waterford harbor.
Also, during his assignment in Berlin, Briscoe first came into conflict with and complained to his superior John Smith Chartres about fellow Sinn Fein envoy Charles Bewley. Bewley's tendency towards regularly spouting, "extremely derogatory remarks about Jews in general", even in public places, caused very serious problems for the legation, particularly after one such outburst in a Berlin cafe caused Bewley to be ejected by the outraged German Jewish proprietor. At the insistence of Briscoe and multiple gentile members of the Irish Legation, Chartres wrote to the Irish Foreign Office and requested that Bewley to be recalled to Dublin, which he described as, "in the interest of decorum, national dignity, and commercial prudence". Chartres further explained, "Moreover, an anti-Semitic outburst by an Irish official in a country where Jews are very numerous and very influential was an extraordinary indiscretion from the point of view of the Irish material interest." Bewley, however, had friends in high places and was not recalled until much later.

## Irish Civil War

Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty and during the lead-up to the Irish Civil War, Briscoe found himself being courted by both sides, but felt greater sympathies for the anti-Treaty IRA. He later recalled, however, that his recently widowed mother tried to advise him against getting involved. Frieda Briscoe said that she was trying to give her son the advice his father would have given and pointed out the difference between fighting in a war of independence from colonialism and fighting one's former comrades in a civil war over what kind of a government to build after decolonisation. Despite his mother's advice, when his anti-Treaty IRA friends effectively served him with an ultimatum, Briscoe joined them in armed struggle against the new Irish Free State.
In June 1922, Briscoe was involved in an incident with fellow anti-treaty IRA members who attacked pro-treaty politician Darrell Figgis at his home. They entered the house and assaulted Darrell Figgis, cutting off his well-prized beard in the process. This traumatised Figgis' wife Millie, who had been under the impression Briscoe and his fellow assistants had been coming to kill Darrell. In November 1924 Millie would commit suicide, expressing in a suicide note that she was suffering from depression as a result of the 1922 attack. Darrell Figgis himself committed suicide in 1926.
In his biography, he recalls an incident of being recognised by a pro-Treaty opponent during the Civil War. Briscoe merely turned and walked away, confident that his enemy would not shoot him in the back.
Briscoe addressed political meetings and did fundraising work in the US from December 1922 to 1924. Bricoe later applied to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934 and was awarded 5 and 5/9 years service in 1939 at Grade D for his service with the IRA between 1 April 1920 and 30 September 1923.

## Dáil Éireann

Elected to the Dáil in the newly independent Ireland, Briscoe worked with Patrick Little to bring through a law limiting the interest that could be charged by moneylenders – and also, as he wrote, "made it illegal for a married woman to borrow money without the knowledge and consent of her husband, for these foolish ones are always the easiest prey of the moneylenders".
He served in Dáil Éireann for 38 years and was elected 12 times in the Dublin South and from 1948, Dublin South-West constituencies – from the 6th Dáil to the 17th Dáil.

## Jewish refugees, Irish neutrality, and the foundation of the State of Israel

During the Second World War, Briscoe, at this time a member of Dáil Éireann, was placed under close surveillance by the Irish Directorate of Military Intelligence and the Garda Siochana Special Branch. His covert activities in support for Zionism and his lobbying on behalf of refugees were also considered potentially damaging to the interests of the Irish State by senior civil service officials from the Department of Justice. Briscoe was also an admirer and friend of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and his campaign of resistance to antisemitism and his efforts to create a Jewish State. Between 1939 and 1940, Robert Briscoe worked closely with former British Army Colonel and Tsavo Valley lion hunter John Henry Patterson, the former officer commanding of both the Zion Mule Corps and the Jewish Legion during the First World War. Together, they were involved in covert fund raising for the Irgun in the United States. Jabotinsky, while head of Irgun, visited Dublin for secret instruction from Robert Briscoe in how the tactics of guerrilla warfare that had proven so successful during the Irish War of Independence could also be used against the continued rule of the British Empire over the Mandate of Palestine. During the same period, Briscoe jokingly described himself as the "Chair of Subversive Activity against England". Briscoe also campaigned for political asylum to be granted to Jewish refugees seeking to flee Nazi Germany, both before and during the Holocaust, but he did so discreetly in order not to be accused of compromising the neutrality policy of the Fianna Fáil government. Briscoe notably had ugly spats with Irish trade envoy to Nazi Germany and avowed anti-Semite Charles Bewley, who tried to thwart his effort to help German Jewish refugees gain visas for Ireland during the war.
After the Second World War, Briscoe acted as a special advisor to Menachem Begin in the transformation of Irgun from a paramilitary organisation into the Herut political party (later Likud) in the new State of Israel. Briscoe had already been a key figure in the formation of the Fianna Fáil political party out of the Anti-treaty IRA after Irish independence, but not before a bitter and fratricidal Civil War, which Briscoe had grown over the years and with the benefit of hindsight to deeply regret. Briscoe accordingly persuaded Menachem Begin, immediately after the Altalena Affair, to make the transition without further delay and to seek to enter the Knesset. By doing this, Briscoe may have prevented an Irish-style civil war from taking place in Israel.

## Later life

Briscoe retired from the 17th Dáil before the 1965 election, being succeeded by his son, Ben who served for a further 37 years. In 1956, Briscoe became the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, although he was not the first Jewish Mayor in Ireland. That title belongs to William Annyas, who was elected Mayor of Youghal, County Cork in 1555. Briscoe was Dublin's first Jewish Lord Mayor, although Lewis Wormser Harris was elected Lord Mayor in 1876, but died before assuming office. Briscoe served a one-year term and was re-elected in 1961. In this capacity, he often travelled abroad to negotiate trade deals in behalf of the Irish Republic and was famously photographed lighting a menorah in New York City. After being told that the Lord Mayor of Dublin was Jewish, Yogi Berra allegedly joked, "Only in America!"

## Death and legacy

His memoir, For the Life of Me, was published in 1958. He died 29 May 1969 and, following an Orthodox Jewish funeral, he was buried at Dolphins Barn Jewish Cemetery in Dublin.
In later years, his son Ben Briscoe opposed the messianic cult of personality surrounding now disgraced former Taoiseach Charles Haughey during the 1980s, which Ben Briscoe compared to a "Fascist Dictatorship" forcibly imposed upon Fianna Fáil. Briscoe accordingly helped lead the discontented anti-Haughey faction within Fianna Fáil, which included Charlie McCreevy. Like his father before him, Ben Briscoe, too, served as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1988 to 1989 and described winning the election as one of the proudest moments of his entire life.
The Emerald Isle Immigration Center in New York City has devoted a special prize called the Robert Briscoe Award. The group celebrates the historically very close relationship between Jewish and Irish communities in New York City and honours Jewish New Yorkers who have helped support immigration in the United States. The 2016 Award Winners were Queens Borough President Melinda Katz and Deborah King, director of SEIU 1199's training and employment funds. Previous winners have included former New York Mayor Ed Koch, disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and U.S. Senator Charles Schumer.

## In popular culture

* Robert Briscoe's role in the Irish War of Independence was dramatised in The Fabulous Irishman, an episode of the American anthology drama television series Playhouse 90 broadcast on CBS in 1957. In that episode, Briscoe was played by Art Carney while David Opatoshu played Briscoe's father (and was credited as "Briscoe's Father" instead of "Abraham Briscoe" which was his actual father's name). The Fabulous Irishman, like most programs at the time, was shown live. Art Carney was praised for his performance as Robert Briscoe in a review was published in The New York Times. Another review that similarly praised Carney's acting and favourably compared the film to John Ford's The Informer was published by The Boston Globe.