Sean Tracy

Seán Treacy's death is remembered each year on the anniversary of his death at a commemoration ceremony in Kilfeacle. At noon on the morning of All-Ireland Senior Hurling Finals in which Tipperary participate, a ceremony of remembrance is held at the spot in Talbot Street, Dublin where he died, attended mainly by people from West Tipperary and Dublin people of Tipperary extraction. The most recent ceremonies were held at midday on Sunday, 4 September 2016 and 18 August 2019 both attracting a large attendance of Tipperary folk en route to Croke Park. The ceremony usually consists of the reading of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a recitation of a decade of the rosary in Irish, singing of 'Tipperary so far away', an oration by one of the organizing party and followed by the playing of the Irish National Anthem. The first event took place in 1922 and has been held on approximately 27 occasions as of 2019.

Four or five members of the Squad assembled at a Dublin safe house, the Republican Outfitters shop at 94 Talbot Street early on 14 October in preparation for this operation. Treacy was to join them for his own protection, but arrived late, to discover that Collins had cancelled the attack. Treacy was extremely distressed — he and his closest friend, Dan Breen each thought that the other had been killed. Breen had managed to get away, his feet cut to ribbons by the glass of Professor Carolan's greenhouse, and was now being hidden by the medical staff in a nearby hospital.

Treacy realised that he was being followed, and ran for his bicycle. But he grabbed the wrong bike — taking a machine far too big for him — and fell. Price drew his pistol and closed in on Treacy. Treacy drew his parabellum automatic pistol and shot Price and another British agent before he was hit in the head, dying instantly. Rushing to the scene, Colonel Winter was horrified to see the bodies of Treacy and his own agents lying dead in Talbot Street.

In Thurles, Co Tipperary Seán Treacy Avenue is named after him. The town of Tipperary is home to the Seán Treacy Memorial Swimming Pool, which contains many historic items related to the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, and a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The Seán Treacy GAA Club takes his name in honour and represents the parish of Hollyford, Kilcommon and Rearcross in the Slieve Felim Hills, which straddle the borderland between the historical North and South Ridings of Tipperary. He is remembered in many songs. The song Seán Treacy, also called Tipperary so Far Away, is about Treacy's death and is still sung with pride in west Tipperary. A line from this song was quoted by former US president Ronald Reagan when he visited Tipperary in 1984: "And I'll never more roam, from my own native home, in Tipperary so far away".

In the summer of 1920 he returned to Tipperary and organised several attacks on RIC barracks, notably at Ballagh, Clerihan and Drangan before again moving his base of operations to Dublin.

By spring 1920 the political police of both the Crimes Special Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and G-Division (Special Branch) of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) had been effectively neutralised by IRA counterintelligence operatives working for Michael Collins. The British thoroughly reorganised their administration at Dublin Castle, including the appointment of Colonel Ormonde de l'Épée Winter as chief of a new Combined Intelligence Service (CIS) for Ireland. Working closely with Sir Basil Thomson, Director of Civil Intelligence in the British Home Office, with Colonel Hill Dillon, Chief of British Military Intelligence in Ireland, and with the local British Secret Service Head of Station, "Count Sevigné" at Dublin Castle, Ormonde Winter began to import dozens of professional secret service agents from all parts of the British Empire into Ireland to track down IRA operatives and Sinn Féin leaders.

On 11 October 1920, Treacy and Breen were holed up in a safe house – Fernside – in Drumcondra on the north side of Dublin city when it was raided by a police unit, led there by a tout, Robert Pike. In the ensuing shootout, two senior British officers were wounded and died the next day, Major Smyth and Captain White, while Breen was seriously wounded. The owner of the house, Professor John Carolan of the nearby St Patrick's Teacher Training College, was put up against a wall and shot in the back of the neck by the British. Treacy and Breen managed to escape through a window and shot their way through the police cordon. The injured Breen was spirited away to Dublin's Mater hospital where he was admitted in alias persona. Treacy had been wounded but not seriously.

On 21 January 1919 Treacy and Dan Breen, together with Seán Hogan, Séumas Robinson and five other volunteers, helped to ignite the conflict that was to become the Irish War of Independence. They ambushed and shot dead two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) — Constables Patrick O'Connell and James McDonnell – during the Soloheadbeg Ambush near Treacy's home. Treacy led the planning for the ambush and briefed the brigade's O/C Robinson on his return from prison in late 1918. Robinson supported the plans and agreed they wouldn't go to GHQ for permission to undertake the attack. The RIC men were guarding a transport of gelignite explosives. Some accounts say the Volunteers shot them dead when they refused to surrender and offered resistance; other accounts suggest that shooting them was the intent from the start.

As a result of the action, South Tipperary was placed under martial law and declared a Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act. After another member of the Soloheadbeg ambush party, Seán Hogan, who was just 17, was arrested on 12 May 1919, the three others (Treacy, Breen and Séumas Robinson) were joined by five men from the IRA's East Limerick Brigade to organise Hogan's rescue.

Hogan was brought to the train which was intended to bring him from Thurles to Cork city on 13 May 1919 — his escort grinning at him as he told the ticketmaster: "Give me three tickets to Cork — and two returns." As the train steamed across the Tipperary border and into Co Limerick the IRA party, led by Treacy, boarded the train in Knocklong. A close-range struggle ensued on the train. Treacy and Breen were seriously wounded in the gunfight. Two RIC men died, but Hogan was rescued. His rescuers rushed him into the village of Knocklong where a butcher's wife slammed down the shutters to hide them and her husband cut off his handcuffs using a cleaver.

A search for Treacy and others was mounted across Ireland. Treacy left Tipperary for Dublin to avoid capture. In Dublin, Michael Collins employed Treacy on assassination operations with "the Squad". He was involved in the attempted killing of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Sir John French in December 1919.

In 1918 he was appointed Vice Officer-Commanding of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Volunteers (which became the Irish Republican Army in 1919).

He was picked up in the mass arrests in the aftermath of the Easter Rising in 1916 and spent much of the following two years in prison, where he went on hunger strike on several occasions. From Dundalk jail in 1918 he wrote to his comrades in Tipperary,

Seán Allis Treacy came from a small-farming background in Soloheadbeg in west Tipperary. He left school aged 14 and worked as a farmer, also developing deep patriotic convictions; locally, he was seen as a promising farmer, calm, direct, ready to experiment with new methods, and intelligent. He was a member of the Gaelic League, and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) from 1911 and the Irish Volunteers from 1913.

Seán Allis Treacy (Irish: Seán Ó Treasaigh; 14 February 1895 – 14 October 1920) was one of the leaders of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. It was his actions that initiated the conflict in 1919. He was killed in October 1920, on Talbot Street in Dublin, in a shootout with British troops and spies during an aborted British Secret Service surveillance operation.