While Graham 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, developed into a gun battle in Cawnpore Street. 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 hang. 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.