Archie Doyle

Who was Archie Doyle?

Archie Doyle was one of three anti-Treaty members of the IRA who on 10 July 1927 assassinated the Irish Justice Minister Kevin O'Higgins. He had had a long subsequent career in the organisation's ranks.

Doyle fought in the Irish War of Independence and took the anti-treaty side in the Irish Civil War, and was subsequently interned among numerous others. Together with two fellow-detainees – Timothy Coughlin and Bill Gannon – he took part in forming a secret "vengeance grouping". The three vowed that once free of imprisonment they would take revenge on their opponents, whom they considered traitors to the Irish cause.

Most such private revenge pacts were broken up by the IRA leadership when it reorganised following 1924, but Doyle and his two fellow conspirators persisted and carried through their deadly aim. On 10 July 1927, the three surprised O'Higgins on his way to Mass at the Booterstown Avenue side of Cross Avenue in Blackrock, County Dublin and shot him down.

O'Higgins was especially hated by IRA members for having ordered the executions of seventy-seven of their fellows during the Civil War, an act for which he outspokenly took responsibility and refused to express any remorse. Moreover, he was a dominant member of the Free State government and the conspirators had good reasons to believe that his death would weaken it.