The S-Plan or Sabotage Campaign or England Campaign was a campaign of bombing and sabotage against the civil, economic and military infrastructure of the United Kingdom from 1939 to 1940, conducted by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was conceived by Seamus O'Donovan in 1938 at the request of then IRA Chief of Staff Seán Russell. Russell and Joseph McGarrity are thought to have formulated the strategy in 1936. During the campaign there were 300 explosions/acts of sabotage, 10 deaths and 96 injuries.
Immediate context
Following a power struggle within the IRA during the mid-1930s, Seán Russell was reinstated to the IRA in April 1938 and elected to the IRA Army Council in absentia. At a subsequent IRA General Army Convention, Russell and his supporters secured enough support to get a controlling majority vote within the Army Council and for Russell himself to be named Chief of Staff, the head of the organisation. It was at this time that Russell began the process of preparing for a campaign of attacks on British soil – a strategy he had decided upon from the mid-1930s onwards. The IRA in Northern Ireland supported Russell and his plans for a campaign that would bring an end to partition. However, the Northern Ireland government introduced internment in December 1938 and several hundred IRA activists were held for the duration of World War II.
Seamus (Jim) O'Donovan had been asked by Seán Russell directly after his election to IRA Chief of Staff in 1938 to formulate his ideas on the possibilities of successful acts of sabotage on British soil. O'Donovan was the former Director of Chemicals of the "old IRA" and an acknowledged expert in the use of explosive material. He had not been active in politics since retiring from public life in 1923. Russell's request followed directly from him taking on the role of IRA Chief of Staff of the "new IRA" army council. The notes which O'Donovan created for Russell became the S-Plan or Sabotage Plan.
On 17 December 1938, the Wolfe Tone Weekly newspaper published a statement issued by a group signing itself the "Executive Council of Dáil Éireann, Government of the Republic". This group perceived itself to be the legitimate government of the 32-County Irish Republic and refused to recognise the legitimacy of partition. In the statement, seven Second Dáil TDs declared that they had delegated what they believed to be their governmental "authority" to the Army Council.
This announcement, coming immediately prior to the S-Plan attacks, sought to present the actions of the IRA as those of a legitimate, de jure government. Within this context, with the Army Council purporting to act as a government with the right to use force and levy war against an occupying power, the IRA declared war on Britain in January 1939.
Details and preparation
The S-Plan contained many precise instructions for acts of destruction which had as their object the paralysis of all official activity in England and the greatest possible destruction of British defence installations.
It divided the IRA campaign into two main lines: propaganda and offensive (military) action. The document listed six different types of offensive action;
- Military action that was classified as not very promising
- The destruction of armament factories
- The disruption of all civil/public utilities such as transport undertakings, waterways, gasworks, power stations, water-supply facilities, etc.
- Attacks that were planned against specific industrial plants
- Attacks that were planned against a large number of commercial premises
- Attacks against large newspaper organisations
Operations were strictly concentrated on the island of Great Britain, in and around centres of population where IRA volunteers could operate freely without drawing attention. No attacks on targets in Northern Ireland or other areas under British control were planned as part of the S-Plan.
Military preparations for the campaign included a series of attacks on British customs houses in Northern Ireland. On 28 and 29 November 1938, British customs posts along the border were demolished using explosives. The only fatalities were three IRA volunteers, Jimmy Joe Reynolds from County Leitrim, John James Kelly from County Donegal, and Charlie McCafferty from County Tyrone, killed by the premature explosion of a mine at a house in Castlefin, County Donegal on 28 November 1938.
Russell is said to have distributed O'Donovan's notes virtually unedited to IRA battlegroups as an operational instruction from the Army Council. O'Donovan appears, at the time of writing the S-Plan, to have been oblivious to the decision to begin a campaign of attacks on British soil in 1939. However, because of his level of expertise, he was later involved in a new round of explosives training for IRA volunteers in Dublin from 1938 to 1939. Patrick McGrath was reputed to be one of the principal instructors in bomb making for this campaign. On 6 September 1940 McGrath was executed by firing squad at Dublin's Mountjoy Prison.
Sources of funding for the campaign are not known, but once the campaign was operational, the weekly expenses for operations in the field amounted to approximately £700. Operational units were expected to raise any money needed themselves, and the men who acted within IRA teams were unpaid and expected to support themselves while on missions.
The make-up of these teams is thought to have been different from the cell structure employed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in their campaign against Britain in the 1970s. It is known from arrests made during the campaign that the IRA utilised material dumps in Britain built up in 1938, as well as devices improvised while on active duty in Britain. IRA volunteers arriving from Ireland were also intercepted by British authorities transporting war material for use in the campaign.
The strength of the IRA and the women's paramilitary organisation Cumann Na mBan at this time was estimated at between 5,000 and 30,000 men and women at varying stages of training and ability. In the autumn of 1938 training of volunteers was held prior to the beginning of the campaign in a camp eight miles north of Sligo town. However, some volunteers were sent to Britain also included new raw recruits such as Brendan Behan. In early 1938 IRA leaders Moss Twomey and Jack McNeela were sent to Britain to assess the movement's strength there in spring 1938 and reported that:
"In general it can be said that the state of the organisation in units which exist is poor and loose, and militarily should be described as almost elementary."
Seán Russell left to pursue the finance aspect with IRA's American financier Joe McGarrity, and the propaganda phase of the S-plan in the United States, in March 1939, after the S-Plan military phase began in January 1939. On leaving, he appointed Stephen Hayes as Acting Chief of Staff of the IRA. Russell never returned to Ireland, dying on board a German submarine from an untreated gastric ulcer in 1940 and being buried at sea.
Declaration of war on Britain
On 12 January 1939, the Army Council sent an ultimatum, signed by Patrick Fleming, to British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. The communiqué duly informed the British government of "The Government of the Irish Republic's" intention to go to "war". Excerpt from the ultimatum:
I have the honour to inform you that the Government of the Irish Republic, having as its first duty towards its people the establishment and maintenance of peace and order here, demand the withdrawal of all British armed forces stationed in Ireland. The occupation of our territory by troops of another nation and the persistent subvention here of activities directly against the expressed national will and in the interests of a foreign power, prevent the expansion and development of our institution in consonance with our social needs and purposes, and must cease.
The Government of the Irish Republic believe that a period of four days is sufficient notice for your Government to signify its intentions in the matter of the military evacuation and for the issue of your Declaration of Abdication in respect of our country. Our Government reserves the right of appropriate action without further notice if upon the expiration of this period of grace, these conditions remain unfulfilled.
Óglaigh na h-Éireann (Irish Republican Army).
General Headquarters, Dublin, January 12th, 1939, to His Excellency the Rt. Hon. Viscount Halifax, C.G.B.
On Sunday, 15 January, with no reply from the British Government, a proclamation was posted in public places throughout Ireland announcing the IRA's declaration of war on Britain. This proclamation was written by Joseph McGarrity, leader of Clan na Gael in the United States, and was signed by six members of the Army Council: Stephen Hayes, Patrick Fleming, Peadar O'Flaherty, George Oliver Plunkett, Larry Grogan and Seán Russell. The seventh Army Council member, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, refused to sign as he believed the IRA was not ready to begin the campaign.
This proclamation also called upon Irishmen both at home and "in Exile" to give their utmost support to compel the withdrawal of the British from the island of Ireland so that a free Irish Republic could be established. As the campaign began in Britain the same proclamation appeared posted around Irish communities in British cities. The proclamation referenced back to the 17 December 1938 statement by the group naming itself the "Executive Council of Dáil Éireann, Government of the Republic" and read:
"On the twenty-third day of April in the year 1916 in the City of Dublin, seven men, who were representative in spirit and outlook and purpose of the Irish Nation that had never yielded to nor accepted the British conquest, set their humble and almost unknown names to the foregoing document that has passed into history, making the names of the seven signatories immortal. These signatures were sealed with the blood of the immortal seven, and of many others who followed them into one of the most gallant fights in the history of the world; and the Irish Nation rose from shame to honour, from humiliation to pride, from slavery to freedom...."
"Unfortunately, because men were foolish enough to treat with an armed enemy within their gates, the English won the peace. Weakness and treachery caused a resumption of the war and the old English tactics of 'divide and conquer' were exploited to the fullest extent. Partition was introduced, the country divided into two parts with two separate Parliaments subject to and controlled by the British Government. The armed forces of England still occupy six of our counties in the North and reserve the right 'in time of war or strained relations' to reoccupy the ports which they have just evacuated in the southern part of Ireland. Ireland is still tied, as she has been for centuries past, to take part in England's wars. In the Six Counties, a large number of Republican soldiers are held prisoners by England. Further weakness on the part of some of our people, broken faith and make-believe, have postponed the enthronement of the living Republic, but the proclamation of Easter Week and the declaration of independence stand and must stand for ever. No man, no matter how far he has fallen away from his national faith, has dared to repudiate them. They constitute the rallying centre for the unbought manhood of Ireland in the fight that must be made to make them effective and to redeem the nation's self-respect that was abandoned by a section of our people in 1923."
"The time has come to make that fight. There is no need to redeclare the Republic of Ireland, now or in the future. There is no need to reaffirm the declaration of Irish independence. But the hour has come for the supreme effort to make both effective. So in the name of the unconquered dead and the faithful living, we pledge ourselves to that task. We call upon England to withdraw her armed forces, her civilian officials and institutions, and representatives of all kinds from every part of Ireland as an essential preliminary to arrangements for peace and friendship between the two countries; and we call upon the people of all Ireland, at home and in exile, to assist us in the effort we, are about to make, in God's name, to compel that evacuation and to enthrone the Republic of Ireland."