Francis Thomas Aiken (13 February 1898 – 18 May 1983) was an Irish revolutionary and politician. He was chief of staff of the Anti-Treaty IRA at the end of the Irish Civil War. Aiken later served as Tánaiste from 1965 to 1969 and Minister for External Affairs from 1951 to 1954 and 1957 to 1969. He was also Minister for Finance from 1945 to 1948, Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures 1939 to 1945, and Minister for Defence from 1932 to 1939.
He was a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Louth constituency from 1923 to 1973, making him the second longest-serving member of Dáil Éireann and the longest-serving cabinet minister. Originally a member of Sinn Féin, he was later a founding member of Fianna Fáil.
Early life Early years Frank Aiken was born on 13 February 1898 at Carrickbracken, Camlough, County Armagh, Ireland, the seventh and youngest child of James Aiken, a builder from County Tyrone, and Mary McGeeney of Corromannon, Beleek, County Armagh. James Aiken built Catholic churches in South Armagh. Aiken was a nationalist, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and a county councillor, who refused an offer to stand as a member of parliament. James was Chairman of the Local Board of the Poor Guardians. In 1900, on her visit to Ireland, he told Queen Victoria that he would not welcome her "until Ireland has become free".Matthew Lewis, Frank Aiken's War: The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2014), p. 12
Frank Aiken was educated at the Camlough National School and in Newry by Irish Christian Brothers at Abbey Christian Brothers Grammar School, although he had only a 'vague' recollection of school.
Revolutionary period Irish Volunteers and IRA He was elected a lieutenant in 1914 when he joined the Camlough Company of Irish Volunteers and the Gaelic League. But the northern nationalists split so they took no part in the Easter Rising. He became secretary of the local branch in 1917 and joined Sinn Féin. His sister Nano Aiken organised Cumann na mBan in Newry, setting up a local branch at Camlough. While working at the Co-Operative Flax-Scutching Society, Aiken committed to speaking Irish, which he learned at the Donegal Gaeltacht and Omeath Irish College. His sister, Nano, married Phelim Magennis a Newry stockbroker, and was the last female republican prisoner to be released in Northern Ireland at the end of the Civil War. Magennis, himself was active during these years.Magennis, Eoin, "Frank Aiken Early Revolutionary Life, Ch.1 in Evans & Kelly, "Frank Aiken: Nationalist and Internationalist", Irish Academic Press and Skinner,(2014): Liam, "Politicians By Accident", Candle Press (1946).
He first met Éamon de Valera at the East Clare election in June 1917, riding despatches for Austin Stack.M. Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party, 1916-1923 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), p. 94 During a rowdy by-election at Bessbrook in February 1918, Aiken was elected a captain of Volunteers, stewarding electioneering. As secretary and chairman of the South Armagh district executive (comhairle ceanntair) it was his job to be chief fund-raiser for the Dublin Executive, responsible for the Dáil loan masterminded by Michael Collins.
In 1917, making an outward display of defiance, Aiken raised the republican Irish tricolour, opposite Camlough Barracks in Armagh, a move designed as deliberate provocation.University College of Dublin Archive p. 104/1309, cited by Townshend in "The Republic", p. 32
In March 1918 he was arrested by the RIC for illegal drilling — an act of open defiance that provoked a sentence of imprisonment for one month. On release that summer he joined the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood fighting Hibernianism in the area. By 1919 Aiken's clandestine activities mainly consisted of arms raids on dumps of the Ulster Volunteers who had imported weapons to resist Home Rule in 1913–14. As well as UVF dumps, Aiken and the Newry Brigade also raided prominent local unionist barracks at Dromilly, Ballyedmond Castle and Loughall Manor. Although they failed to capture many weapons the raids gave experience to newly recruited Volunteers.Lewis, pp. 64-65 Aiken was also responsible for setting up GAA Club, Gaelic League branch, a Cumann na mBan Camogie League.C. Townshend, "The Republic: The Fight For Irish Independence" (London 2014), p. 23. Within a few years he was Chairman of Sinn Féin in Armagh, and was also elected to Armagh County Council. During the First Dáil Election he headed a team from South Armagh who went to Carlingford to assist the Sinn Fein candidacy of J.J. Kelly in Louth where they were attacked by members of the local Ancient Order of Hibernians.Hall, Donal (2019) "County Louth and the Irish Revolution." Irish Academic Press, Ch3.
War of Independence Operating from the south Armagh/north Louth area, Aiken's unit was one of the most effective IRA in Ulster during the Irish War of Independence. This success is attributed primarily to Aiken's leadership and training methods.M. Lewis, 'The Newry Brigade at Independence War in Armagh and South Down', Irish Sword 27 (2010), 225–232Magennis, p. 5
In May 1920, he led 200 IRA men in an assault on the RIC barracks in Newtownhamilton, attacking the building and then burning it with paraffin sprayed from a potato sprayer; however, the garrison did not surrender.Matthew Lewis, Frank Aiken's War, pp. 67-72 Aiken himself led a squad which blasted a hole in the wall of the barracks with gelignite and entered through it, exchanging shots with the policemen inside.Lewis, pp. 90-91
At a sports event in Cullyhanna in June 1920, Aiken led a group of three men that demanded that three RIC men hand over their weapons. Shooting broke out and one man on each side was killed.
In July, he was almost killed at Banbridge. While riding a motorcycle to Lurgan he was chased by an angry mob.Newry Reporter, 23, 27 July 1920; Eoin Magennis, Frank Aiken: Earl Life, p. 11
In December 1920, he led another assault, this time abortive, on the RIC station in his home village of Camlough. In reprisal, the newly formed Ulster Special Constabulary burned Aiken's home and those of ten of his relatives in the Camlough area. They also arrested and killed two local republicans. From this point onward, the conflict in the area took on an increasingly bitter and sectarian quality. Aiken tried on a number of occasions to ambush USC patrols from the ruins of his family home.Lewis, pp. 71-72
In April 1921, Aiken's men mounted an operation in Creggan, County Armagh to ambush the police and Special Constabulary. One Special constable was killed in the ensuing firefight. Some accounts have reported that Aiken took the Protestant Church congregation in the village hostage to lure the Specials out onto the road.Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, The IRA and South Armagh (1999), pp. 127-128 However, Mathew Lewis states that both Catholic and Protestant churchgoers were held in a pub to prevent their getting caught in the crossfire.Lewis, pp. 78-79 Nevertheless, sectarian bitterness deepened in the area. The following month, the Special Constabulary started shooting Catholic civilians in revenge for IRA attacks.
On 24 June 1921, Aiken organised his most successful attack yet on the British military, when his men derailed a British troop train returning to Dublin from the opening of the Northern Parliament, killing the train guard, three cavalry soldiers and 63 horses. Shortly afterwards, the Specials took four Catholics from their homes in Bessbrook and Altnaveigh, shooting them dead.
After an IRA reorganisation in April 1921, Aiken was put in command of the Fourth Northern Division of the IRA.C. Townshend, The Republic: The Fight For Irish Independence (2014), p. 457 The cycle of violence in south-east Ulster area continued the following year, despite a formal truce with the British from 11 July 1921 (see The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922)). Michael Collins organised a clandestine guerrilla offensive (Northern Offensive) against the newly created Northern Ireland State. In May 1922, for reasons that have never been properly determined, Aiken and his Fourth Northern Division never took part in the operation, although it was planned that they would.
He was quickly promoted through the ranks, rising to commandant of Newry Brigade and eventually commander of 4th Northern Division from spring 1921. The IRA units he would eventually command extended from County Louth, southern and western County Down, and from March 1921 the whole of County Armagh. Aiken was named by (the IRA Chief of Staff) Eoin O'Duffy as head of the newly formed IRA Ulster Council Command which was tasked with coordination of attacks and preventing the new northern government from functioning effectively.
Nonetheless, the local IRA's inaction at this time did not end the bloodshed in South Armagh. Aiken has been accused by unionists of ethnic cleansing of Protestants from parts of South Armagh, Newry and other areas of the north. In particular, Aiken's critics cite the killing of six Protestant civilians, on an incident called the Altnaveigh Massacre, on 17 June 1922. The attack was in reprisal for the Special Constabulary's killing of two nationalists near Camlough on 13 June and a sexual assault on Una McGuill, the wife of one of Aiken's friends, James McGuill.Lewis Frank Aiken's War, p.15-151. Cites killing of Patrick Greggan and Thomas Crawley and rape or 'attempted rape' of Mrs McGuill and her maid.Linda Connolly, Writing women back into the history of the Irish revolution, Irish Times Feb 18, 2021 Cites the rape of two women at Dromintee Co. Armagh As well as the six civilians, two Special Constables were killed in an ambush, and two weeks later a unionist politician, William Frazer, was abducted, killed and his body secretly buried. It was not found until 1924.Pearse Lawlor, The Outrages, pp. 298-300 Aiken himself led an ambush against some of those who partook in the assault on McGuill's public house on the night of the Altnaveigh ambush. However, it appears that the Specials were alerted to their arrival and this attack did not end in success as the patrol escaped unharmed. At the same time the attack on Altnaveigh and Lisdrumniska was carried out. Robert Lynch, in published research, has documented the deaths of several single Catholic youths whose bodies were dumped on roads approaching these areas on the weeks prior to this assault killings that were attributed to B-Specials who operated from the area. Aiken was quoted on his Divisions retaliatory attacks: "They never hit a nationalist but we hit back twice as hard. We had them cowed in our area." Aiken claimed that at least 60 Specials were killed by his 4th Northern Division in the period from Christmas to June 1922.
Civil War