‘HE SWOONED FROM LOSS OF BLOOD AND WAS FOUND THE NEXT MORNING’
supported by Captain Owen Wallis.
Despite Holmes insisting that the guns ‘were probably left in the charge of the accused’, Lynch successfully argued that the live-in caretaker could not be held responsible for every item found in the Hall. Ennis was ‘honourably acquitted’. The Lord Lieutenant intervened to allow Ennis to sign ITGWU papers while in Mountjoy.
Sometime later, in what seemingly was a reprisal for his acquittal, late one evening as Peter was shutting the Hall at curfew hour, a lorry of Black and Tans swept around the corner and snatched him. They dragged him across the road and spread-eagled him against the railings at the Custom House where they struck him on the head with revolvers.
Peter’s obituary stated that he ‘gave himself up for dead’. It said: ‘The intended foul act was not carried out and for some reason the Tans slunk away. Suffering terribly, Peter dragged himself back over the cobbled Beresford Place to the Hall and was able to close the door. Then he swooned from loss of blood and lay almost unconscious until discovered the next morning.’
In 1919, there was a curiosity about Christopher Quigley, prisoner number 498 at Mountjoy. Apparently arrested in connection with the raid, he was not known at Liberty Hall. The mystery of Quigley’s involvement was unearthed in 2016 among Captain Wallis’s personal papers held at the University of Cambridge.
Quigley, a news vendor, had been approached by a soldier named Private S Morrison with a view to selling a pair of army boots. Quigley declined, but he ‘induced’ Morrison to procure a rifle for which he might be able to get £5. Quigley introduced the soldier to an unnamed third party outside Liberty Hall and a deal in principle was struck. Morrison went to the Royal Barracks and returned with his own rifle hidden under his long coat. He met Quigley at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, August 20, outside Liberty Hall. After a reduced offer of £2 was accepted, the rifle was then passed through a window. Quigley and Morrison went drinking and then retired to Quigley’s home at Gloucester Street, where they spent the night. On Thursday morning, Morrison attempted to take another rifle but the authorities were lying in-wait. He gave Quigley up and the police knew then of a rifle in Liberty Hall. Captain Wallis prosecuted Quigley and he was sentenced to a year in prison.
As the war intensified so did the attacks on and around Liberty Hall. On January 2, 1920, police entered the Hall and seized all copies of the ITGWU’s newspaper, the Watchword of Labour. William O’Brien was arrested and imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs. He was only released after he went on hunger strike.
On November 24, 1920, three days after Bloody Sunday at Croke Park, the Hall was once again raided by the auxiliary police. ‘An armoured car whizzed round the outskirts of the crowd outside at breakneck speed.’ Every person within the Hall, including Thomas Foran and Thomas Farren (President, Trade Union Congress) were arrested. On this occasion, as William O’Brien and Ennis declined to hand over the house keys, they were forced to accompany the search party who used hammers, crowbars and pickaxes to smash open doors, rip up floors, break out fireplaces and wreck ceilings. The instruments of the ITGWU Band, on whose committee Ennis served, were confiscated.
O’Brien and Ennis were detained in the Liberty Café ‘until late’ before being removed to Dublin Castle and placed in a guard room where three of Michael Collins’s men had been shot earlier in the week. It was a terrifying detention for both men. By then the Restoration of Order Act had replaced DORA and the penalty for possession of firearms was death.
On Bloody Sunday, Peter’s brother William had attended the match in Croke Park and was hurt when making his escape.
Throughout 1921, the ITGWU and the Irish Labour Party made valiant efforts to influence a peaceful solution in Ireland. Meetings with Government Ministers from the first Dáil Éireann were often held at Liberty Hall. When Countess Markievicz, Minister for Labour, was present, she had a special guard. One evening, on learning that a raid was imminent, Frank Robbins and Jimmy O’Shea dressed the countess as an old woman and escorted her from the premises declaring she was their ‘granny’ and ‘they were walking her home’. She let them off at Spencer Dock.
The ITGWU led a nationwide strike where no munitions ships would be unloaded by its members and no military personnel could travel by train.
On February 4, 1921, two bombs were thrown at a car conveying auxiliary police past Liberty Hall. Several civilians were wounded. On Saturday, April 16, shots were fired on a police vehicle outside the Hall and the building was searched when only O’Brien and Ennis were present. Again, on May 25, two Crossley Tenders were fired upon. Machine gun fire followed and the ITGWU staff threw themselves on the floor. A staff officer ordered all occupants to vacate the Hall except Ennis. Late on Sunday, May 29, during curfew, four men in civilian clothes broke through the front door of the Hall and poured petrol over the woodwork. The Yorkshire Post reported that the caretaker confronted them and ‘someone in authority ordered the men away’. British forces had previously set fire to the union’s hall at Camden Quay and offices in Cork.
Then, when life should have been more peaceful for Peter, in April 1923 Jim Larkin returned from America, where he had been since 1914. When Larkin sought to resume his role as General Secretary it split the union, with members taking sides. Larkin was eventually expelled from the union but his supporters continued to forcibly occupy Liberty Hall; on one occasion locking Peter in his apartment under guard. In an ensuing court case when O’Brien and Ennis were the prosecuting witnesses, Ennis refused to condemn or condone former workmates. Judge Cooper described Peter’s evidence as ‘remarkable testimony on behalf of the prosecution’. It led to a falling out between O’Brien and Ennis.
Peter Ennis died on January 2, 1927. He was 51 years old. Rosie Hackett had cared for him ‘in his failing heath’.
More than 3,000 mourners attended his removal, described by the Irish Independent as ‘an exceptionally large cortege’ with the ITGWU Band leading the procession. ITGWU General President Thomas Foran and senior officials accompanied Ennis to his final resting place in Killaveny Graveyard, where he is buried alongside his beloved Mary Kate, his brother John and sister Dorah.
When acknowledging his death, the ITGWU said Peter Ennis was ‘never more himself than in times of trouble, and many tales are told of how he stuck to the Hall to the last minute in the various military raids made upon it from 1916 onwards’.
The plaque honouring Peter Ennis erected in 1927 in Liberty Hall can be seen today in the Irish Labour History Society Museum.
THE INTENDED FOUL ACT WAS NOT CARRIED OUT. THE TANS SLUNK AWAY