page_title: Michael O'Flanagan
section_title: Raid on O'Flanagan's rooms
hierarchical_section_title: Michael O'Flanagan / General Election 1918 / Raid on O'Flanagan's rooms
caption_attribution_description: Sinn Féin Bank at No. 6 Harcourt Street, Dublin following shelling. Cardinal John Henry Newman lived at this address, and 6 Harcourt Street was one of three buildings housing the Irish Catholic University (founded by Newman on 3 November 1854) that went on to be University College Dublin. As Free State Aire Airgid (Minister for Finance), Michael Collins was based in this building and there is still a surviving escape tunnel under no. 6. Questions were asked of the Minister for Finance in the Dáil in May &amp; December 1931 as to when depositors of the Sinn Féin People's Bank, then in liquidation, would be paid. The Australian newspaper, The Marlborough Express, reported the following on 1 December 1920: "The authorities raided the Sinn Fein bank at Dublin. They tore up the floors and discovered a secret underground safe, which was not revealed on the occasion of the previous search. They blew open the safe, which contained £500 and important documents associated with the name of Michael Collins, chief of staff of the Irish Republic." No. 6 Harcourt Street is now the head office of Conradh na Gaeilge. NLI Ref.: Ke 208
context_page_description: Michael O'Flanagan was a Roman Catholic priest, Irish language scholar, inventor and historian. He was a popular, socialist Irish republican; "a vice-president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, he was a proponent of land redistribution." He was Gaelic League envoy to the United States from 1910 to 1912, and he supported the striking dockers in Sligo in 1913.
  O'Flanagan was friends with many of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising and was vocal in his admiration for the sacrifice made by the men of Easter Week. He was active in reorganising the Sinn Féin party after the Rising. He was the main driving force behind the Election of the Snows in North Roscommon in February 1917, when Count Plunkett won a by-election as an independent candidate.
  At the Sinn Féin Convention in October 1917, Éamon de Valera was elected President. Along with Arthur Griffith, O'Flanagan was elected joint Vice-President, a position he held from 1917 to 1923 and again from 1930 to 1931. He campaigned for the imprisoned Griffith in the East Cavan by-election in 1918, and was instrumental in securing the seat.
context_section_description: Violence and reprisals continued to escalate throughout the country in late 1920. On 11 October Fr. O'Flanagan was arrested by Crown forces on his way to a meeting of the Ballinasloe Asylum Committee, but was released within a few hours.
  
  On Friday 22 October, O'Flanagan's rooms in Roscommon were raided by two members of the Auxiliaries, accompanied by two RIC officers. They took books, papers, confiscated his typewriter, chopped up a suitcase of vestments, and stole a £5 note. The incident is recounted in the witness statement of John Duffy, one of the R. I. C. constables present. O'Flanagan's secretary and typist Vera McDonnell also left a record of the raid: 
  The door of the Curates' house was opened by Fr. Carney, the other curate, and the Auxiliaries proceeded to search Fr. O'Flanagan's rooms. They pulled the place asunder and read all his letters. O'Flanagan was interested in the derivation of Irish place names and, for that reason, he used to buy old Ordnance survey maps at auctions. He had shortly before bought some belonging to the County Surveyor who had died and pieces of these had been cut out apparently by the Surveyor for his own purpose.
  The Auxiliaries came to the conclusion that Fr. O'Flanagan had cut them out for the I.R.A. for the purpose of attacks on the Crown forces. They told me if they got Fr. O'Flanagan they would give him the same fate as they had given to Fr. Griffin. They also told me to leave the town at once, and that my being a woman would not save me from being put up against a wall and shot. During all this time Fr. Carney remained in his own rooms and was not molested.
  Three nights later on 25 October the Moneygold ambush took place three miles south of Cliffoney. The local Volunteers, many of whom were friends of O'Flanagan, attacked a nine-man RIC patrol from Cliffoney barracks and shot four dead including the sergeant, close to Ahamlish graveyard.
  
  Cliffoney and the surrounding area was raided on several subsequent nights at the end October as a company of Auxiliaries based at Coolavin came to north Sligo for reprisals. 
  "For miles around the scene the male population fled in terror and have not since returned," the County Inspector wrote on 31 October. "Splendid discipline was maintained by the forces but notwithstanding this some reprisals followed," the Inspector reported. "The houses of some leading suspects were burned as well as the Father O'Flanagan Sinn Féin Hall at Cliffoney". 
  Several houses in Cliffoney were burned along with Grange Temperance Hall and Ballintrillick Creamery. Also burned in reprisal was the Sinn Féin hall at Cliffoney, named after Father Michael O'Flanagan. Painted on the ruined walls of the latter was a message for local republicans: 'Vacated home of murder gang.'" On 1 November, the day of Kevin Barry's execution and Terence MacSwiney's funeral, O'Flanagan took his personal papers and hid them in the laundry room at the convent in Loughglynn, with a hand-written cover note:
  These papers were placed here Nov 1st 1920 by Rev. M. O'Flanagan & Sister Gerard (Carty) and Michael McDermot who was in charge of the electric engine of the Laundry, in order to save them from the raids of Lloyd George's Auxiliaries & so-called police.M. O'Flannagáin. 
  Bloody Sunday took place on 21 November when thirteen members of the Crown forces, sixteen civilians and three republican prisoners, including Dick McKee and Conor Clune, were killed. "On November 28, Commander Tom Barry's Flying Column lured two trucks carrying nineteen officers from C Company of the Auxiliaries into an isolated killing zone at Kilmichael, County Cork, and wiped them out, killing seventeen and seriously wounding two."
caption: Sinn Féin Bank,  6 Harcourt Street, Dublin after a raid by Crown forces, 1 December 1920.
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