
Liam Tobin (1895-30 April 1963) was an officer of the Irish National Army and an Irish Republican Army intelligence officer under Michael Collins.
Biography[]
Liam Tobin was born in Cork, County Cork, Ireland in 1895, and he was an apprentice at a hardware shop when the Easter Rising of 1916 broke out. Tobin was a soldier in the battalion defending the Four Courts in Dublin from the British Army, and he was imprisoned by the British until June 1917. In 1919, he became Michael Collins' chief executive in the Intelligence Directorate of the Irish Republican Army, and he was involved with the assassinations of British soldiers, informants, Royal Irish Constabulary policemen, Dublin policemen, and MI5 agents. He served on Collins' staff when he negotiated the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, and he became Deputy Director of Intelligence under the Irish Free State. In 1924, when Richard Mulcahy proposed to reduce the army from 55,000 to 18,000 troops, Tobin led an army mutiny, but the cabinet issued arrest warrants for the generals, who resigned on 18 March; this affirmed the supremacy of a civilian government over the military. Tobin would later join Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fail party, and he died in 1963.