The German Plot
Introduction
from Chronology
Sinn Féin leaders arrested (including
de Valera, Plunkett, Griffith and MacNeil) on charges of conspiracy with
Germany – known as the "German Plot". Even though Sinn Féin knew about their
imminent arrests, quite a few decided to let themselves be arrested to gain
political capital.
More Detail
This was the first action of French as
Lord Lieutenant. There was little evidence produced that Sinn Féin leaders were
in communication with the Germans.
Seventy-three of those arrested were deported and imprisoned in
Britain. When French publishes his
‘evidence’ on May 25th, it is not well received even in
Westminster.
McMahon says that it was the Special Branch
of the London Metropolitan Police (under Basil Thomson); the Intelligence
Section of the British Navy (under Admiral Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall) and the
British Security Service or MI5 (in particular one of its senior officers Major
Frank Hall ‘a classic Ulster imperialist’) who produced a “steady stream of
alarmist information on German intrigues in Ireland, which the London
intelligence chiefs replayed to British ministers and the Dublin Castle
executive … and therefore produced warnings that the [British] government felt
obliged to act on”.
McMahon goes on to say that “when the
British government was unable to produce convincing evidence of a ‘German
Plot’, nationalist Ireland concluded that it had been invented as retribution
for the defeat of conscription”. McMahon
concluded “The measure backfired dramatically”.