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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
22May 2015
T
HE recent pardon for Harry Glee-
son, hanged in for a murder
he did not commit, brings into
focus the early career of Seán MacBride.
MacBride, then barely four years after
relinquishing the role of chief of staff of
the IRA, was a controversial choice as
Gleeson’s junior counsel, working with
James Nolan-Whelan who was a more
experienced senior.
Gleeson managed his elderly uncle
John Caesar’s farm at New Inn, County
Tipperary and, as his uncle was child-
less, expected to inherit it.
One morning in November , he
was out in the fields looking for wander-
ing sheep when he discovered the body
of Mary McCarthy lying in the corner of
a field. On finding the body, Harry Glee-
son ran back to the farmhouse to talk to
Bridget Caesar, his uncle’s wife, to know
what he should do. She told him to go
over to the Garda station at New Inn and
report his find, but not to “let on” that
he knew who the woman was. Moll was a
scandalous woman, and it was better to
have no knowledge of her. Moll Carthy,
as she was known locally, was approach-
ing years of age, and she lived with
her brood of six children in a cottage
adjoining Caesar farm. Moll was a bit of
a problem for New Inn, having had dif-
ferent fathers for each of her six
children, and local efforts to get her to
move on or have the children taken into
care had failed.
A murder investigation began, and
fairly soon the finger of suspicion
pointed at Gleeson. He had been carry-
ing on with Moll, it was said, and she
was blackmailing him, threatening to
tell John Caesar who would disinherit
his nephew, and Harry was charged
with murder.
This was the case that Gleeson’s solic-
itor brought to MacBride, whose legal
brilliance had become the envy of other
more established practitioners at the
Irish Bar.
The question which my book asks of
Seán MacBride is: why, if he was so tal-
ented, did his client hang? The difficulty
which many writing about MacBride
quickly encounter is which of Mac-
Bride’s many personae is in the frame?
Is it the gilded youth of the Irish inde-
pendence struggle, scion of Major John
and Maud Gonne MacBride? Is it the
hardened gunman of the s and
s? Or the gifted lawyer who would
earn international acclaim? Ahead of
him lay initial domestic political suc-
cess, founding Clann na Poblachta in
, entering government in ,
and later winning Nobel and Lenin
peace prizes, and being the grand old
man of liberation struggles in Africa
and elsewhere.
For Gleeson’s solicitor John Timoney,
MacBride’s reputation as a brilliant and
disruptive lawyer was enough. The two
lawyers, united by their belief in Glee-
son’s innocence, soon became friends
and Timoney won a Dáil seat for Clann
na Poblachta in .
MacBride’s file on the Harry Gleeson
trial still exists and it bears witness to
his meticulous preparation, and much
burning of midnight oil in the weeks
before, during and after the trial lead-
ing up to the hanging. His approach to
finding discrepancies in witness state-
ments is instructive: he drew a big
timeline on which witnesses’ wherea-
bouts were plotted. His old nemesis de
Valera would have approved of the sci-
entific approach.
After conviction it shows MacBride
tirelessly working his contacts, political
and legal, to try to get his client par-
doned. But the file also contains
material relevant to another facet of
MacBride’s complexity – efforts to
mediate between de Valera and the IRA,
then under severe pressure because of
the failed English bombing campaign of
. It also makes reference to the IRA
kidnapping of Michael Devereux, one of
its own members, who was suspected of
informing to police. The hue and cry to
find Devereux – he was dead at this
stage and MacBride would have known
that – was putting pressure on IRA sym-
pathisers in south Tipperary in late
when Moll McCarthy was
murdered.
But the question remains. Why did
MacBride not challenge his former IRA
comrade Thomas Hennessy when Hen-
nessy gave evidence of hearing shots
which the prosecution said were those
with which Gleeson murdered Moll
McCarthy? Why did MacBride ignore
the existence of a group of former IRA
activists in New Inn, people who had an
interest in silencing Moll McCarthy
because they believed she had become
intimate with Garda sergeant Anthony
Delaney, and was committing that most
Irish of reserved sins, informing on
them to the police?
To MacBride’s credit, he did not let
the case rest. Throughout his long life
he continued to insist that Gleeson
should not have been hanged. Harry
Gleeson liked him, and MacBride dealt
gently with the extended Gleeson family
and friends, and with other victims of
miscarriages of justice who approached
him.
But on the occasion of Harry Glee-
son’s trial it is fair to conclude that it
was not the defendant’s past which
caught up with him, but that of his
defence counsel. •
Why did
MacBride
ignore the
existence of a
group of
former IRA
activists in
New Inn, who
had an interest
in silencing
Moll
McCarthy?
“
NEWS Harry Gleeson
Seán MacBride would not take
on IRA involvement in murder
Though otherwise he
pursued Gleeson case
with exemplary zeal.
By Kieran Fagan
‘The Framing of Harry
Gleeson’ by Kieran
Fagan is published by
Collins Press, price
€12.99. It is available
in bookshops and
online from
www.collinspress.ie
May 2015 23
