Words and actions followed, the culmination of which didn't work out at all well for the British agent ; he was shot twice in the head and died at the scene.
The British PR machine swung into action (as did that agents armed and uniformed colleagues) and the dead agent turned - literally (almost!) - into a Jesus-like figure who sort of walked on water and who had, so they said, met a horrible and macabre death at the hands of those Irish republicans that he had encountered that day.
The man did die - the British had lost an operative in Ireland - but the manner of his death, as promoted by Whitehall, Westminster and their Free State propagandists, was a complete fabrication but, as Winston Churchill (!) said - "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
And that's what happened here - to the extent that well-known Irish broadcast and media figures fell for it hook, line and sinker and, indeed - as stated above - kept the lie alive until at least 1989.
We'll be adding the missing details to this piece in our next blog post...
Thanks for the visit, and for reading ; hope to see you back here on Wednesday, 22nd September 2021.
Sharon.
