In Belfast, much to the alarm of the Northern Ireland authorities, the city's brigade had developed a "Protestant squad", an intelligence unit, largely recruited by John Graham, a Church of Ireland devout, from Denis Ireland's Ulster Union Club. But while Graham, who opposed cooperation with the Germans, and others in the Belfast command continued to debate the merits of a new northern campaign, in April 1942 a diversionary action, intended to draw the RUC from an illegal 1916 commemoration, developed into a street gun battle. A police constable, father of four Thomas James Forbes, was killed, in consequence of which six of the eight members of the active unit were sentenced to death. In the event all but one were reprieved. On 2 September 1942 Tom Williams, nineteen, was hanged the first, and only, Irish Republican to be judicially executed in the North.