"A gang of police thugs." Todd Andrews
"Renegades and perverted types." An t-Óglach, 1929
"Fugh-faced bastards intent on nothing less than grievous bodily harm."
Brendan Behan
These were just some of the common and colourful ways in which the men and women of the Garda Special Branch were described by their enemies within the anti-Treaty IRA. What follows in this work is the gripping narrative of the often brutal and violent struggle for supremacy between these two sides.
It explores the foundation and the inner workings of a squad of detectives, initially called the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), based in Oriel House, Dublin, in August 1922 and their transition into what became known as the Special Branch. It further details the history of the turbulent decades which followed, and the regular confrontations with the IRA in which many officers of Ireland would make the ultimate sacrifice.
GERARD LOVETT is a retired member of An Garda Síochána and retired as a Detective Inspector in the Garda Special Branch in 2004. Since then, he was General Secretary of the Garda Síochána Retired Members' Association for seven years and was editor of their quarterly magazine, Síocháin. He has wri numerous articles on police history and has regularly given lectures to histor societies on both garda and RIC history, as well as famous historical murder