Hugh Pollard (intelligence officer)

During the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), Pollard was Press Officer of the Information Section of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Together with the Section secretary, Captain William Darling, he produced the Weekly Summary, a weekly newspaper distributed to the police forces in Ireland. The crudeness of this paper and its ambivalent attitude toward reprisals 'resulted in much negative publicity for the Crown forces and the Irish Administration'.

He was also directly involved in two particularly bungled attempts at 'black propaganda'. One was the attempt to produce and distribute a fake version of the Irish Bulletin, the gazette of the Irish Republicans. The fraud was quickly exposed and the reliability of information emanating from Crown sources in Ireland severely damaged. A second incident involved the bizarre attempt to fake a military engagement in County Kerry (reported as the 'Battle of Tralee').[3] The press-release included photographs of the purported scene of the battle. These were republished in a number of Irish and English papers before the actual location was identified as Vico Road in Dalkey, a quiet seaside Dublin suburb.[4] The entire event had been staged by Pollard and Captain Garro-Jones, a colleague of Major Cecil Street, and was without foundation.[5] In December 1920 in the House of Commons, the British government denied any knowledge of these pictures or the circumstances in which they were produced.[6]

Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Pollard recorded his interpretation of the history of Irish nationalist organisations in Secret Societies of Ireland, Their Rise and Progress. He alleged that the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás Mac Curtain, had been assassinated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), rather than by forces acting for the British Crown.[7]

a de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft

Pollard was a devout Roman Catholic and a supporter of the conservative side in Spain in the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War.[8] He and a former MI6 colleague Cecil Bebb played an important role in the events leading up to the outbreak of hostilities.

During lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, Douglas Francis Jerrold, the conservative Roman Catholic editor of the English Review (and also a British intelligence officer), met with the journalist Luis Bolín, London correspondent of the monarchist and right wing newspaper ABC and later Franco's senior press advisor. They conceived a plan to move General Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco, where the Army of Africa was stationed. The Madrid government recognized that Franco was a danger to the Spanish Republic, and had sent him to the Canaries to keep him away from political intrigue. If a Spanish plane flew to the islands, the authorities would most likely be alerted, but a British aircraft would attract little or no attention. Jerrold and Bolin then persuaded Pollard (plus his daughter Diana and her friend Dorothy Watson) to join the enterprise as "cover".[9][10]

They charted a de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft, which flew out of Croydon airport, London, at 07.15 on the morning of July 11, 1936, piloted by Bebb, and also carrying Pollard, Diana, and Dorothy. The aircraft was bound for the Canaries. Pollard and Bebb delivered Franco to Tetuan on July 19, and the General quickly set about organising Spanish Moroccan troops to participate in the coming coup.

It is possible that British intelligence services may have been complicit in the flight. However it is not clear yet how much the British government knew or was involved in these activities, or if the Britons involved were in fact acting on their own. Britain remained officially neutral during the Spanish Civil War.[11]