The story is of a voyage to Odessa on the Black Sea in the late 19th century.By Nicky Rossiter.

The Alert commanded by Captain Patrick Cogley sailed from Wexford port on June 12th 1866 and arrived at Soulinah on the Black Sea on 14th Day of November 1866. This tale is adapted from the ships log kept by Laurence Murphy, Mate.

On June 18th 1866 the crew were preparing from 5 a.m. with the intention of sailing at 7.00. At that hour the Steamboat came alongside and towed the ship to the ballast ground. Crew members Brady, Greene and Clancy were reported as off duty but onshore without liberty. The crew were employed at learning new gear such as braces, halyards etc.

Later the ship was towed out of dock in weather that was “squally with rain, thunder and lightning.” The crew got the gib boom out and the studding sail booms on the yards.

At 9 a.m. they weighed anchor and made sail and by 6 p.m. they were abreast of The Nash. They stowed the fore topsail and the flying gib. The weather had grown “thick and hazy” and they were tacking when required.

On Thursday July 12th they sailed west from Cardiff towards Malta with crew employed scrubbing the paint work. On Monday the 16th they were sailing South West by South. They noted two sails in sight steering to the south. People were “employed in sundry jobs”.

On the following day the log reports people employed “picking the bread, the small from the large.” and “overhauling the spare canvas or sails that were below”.

Some days later they were “scraping the mast”.

On Thursday July 26th at 10.30 they observed to the north of Cape Saint Vincent’s ten sails in company. At noon the Cape was a point on the port bow. (This is in Portugal’s Algarve region).

A week later on August 2nd they “passed The Thomas English with her fore topmast gone”.
On Monday the 6th. there was lightning reported out of the NW Quarter and the crew were employed making mats.

Next day they observed the Seven Capes under their lee. The crew members were enlarging the lower studding and making a flying gib out of an old gib.

On Thursday August 9th Galetta (possibly Valetta) Island bore south at a distance of 15 miles and by Saturday the 11th at noon Gazar bore SE by E at a distance of 20 miles.

At 6 p.m. they were in Malta Harbour and the pilot came alongside and ordered them into the Quarantine Harbour where they put up the quarantine flag at 8 p.m. as they finished mooring and stowed the sails.

They remained there until Monday the 13th on which day they unmoored ship and moved around the grain harbour and moored in the Ropewalk Street at 95 Store. At 9 a.m. they got orders to haul to 33 Store. They did so and moored her there.

On Thursday August 16th 1866 in a moderate breeze from the westward and sultry weather they commenced to discharge 80 tons of coal weighed out.

They had employed two hands in place of Clancy and Duggan. Clancy went to the hospital to be treated for “a cut he got in the side ashore the evening before” and Duggan was off duty with “a cut in the arm received ashore at the same time from the same foreigners”. The coals were weighed by a “distillars” against the captains wishes as there were no English weights to be had.
On Sunday the 19th at 8 p.m. Brady and Green “came aft drunk and gave abusive language after being ashore without liberty.” Laurence Duggan was at work next day but  Michael Brady was off duty “from the effects of some beaten received on shore from some American Sailors.”

By Wednesday 22nd they had finished discharging coal with a total of 360 tons.
Next day they got the “long boat in spars lashed” the water was filled and the ballast trimmed. They finished the ballast 10 feet aft and 9 feet  fore. Brady returned to his duty to-day.

On Friday 24th in calm weather calm they unmoored ship and got her down to take on a few tons of ballast. The pilot left the ship at noon about 6 miles of harbour.

On Wednesday 29th at 8 p.m. they observed a light on the north end of the island of Cerigo (in the Ionian Islands) and at 4 a.m. they passed the south end of the island as they “could not get through the Sound”.

On Monday September 2nd. people were up “working ship through the Sound”. At noon they were “dodging in the Gulf if Latalia close to the Dora Passage heading towards Constantinople. September 8th at 9 a.m. the steamboat came alongside to tow them round Point Niagra. At 2 p.m. it let them go to make sail and at 7 p.m. they “came abreast of Fisherman’s Point on the Europe Side.”

Next day at noon they were “close up with Galopoli and at 8 p.m. were about 12 miles to the westward of Marmoria Island.

On Thursday the 13th they came to at the back of Suragly (Seraglia) Point and they stowed the sails. Early next morning they hove up and the steam boat towed them out into the Black Sea with a moderate breeze. It let them go on the Bospherous at noon. The day ended with a fresh breeze and clear weather and crew employed matting the holds between decks.

A week later at 8.30 p.m. they observed Soulinah Light bearing North West. Next morning at 8 they tacked in for the pier and received the pilot on board. The Alert moored in Soulinah at 11 a.m.

On Friday 21st. at 4.30 in the afternoon they finished the ballast and commenced to get the hold ready for cargo. By midnight the mats were all laid and ready to take in the cargo. The loading lasted until 8 P.M. on Monday and then they began trimming the load. Some hands were busy bringing water to the boat “as it is salty where we are lying”. Others secured the fore hold. They were ready to sail but it was “blowing strong from the NE and a heavy Sea on the Bar with no chance of attempting out over it.” Even on Friday the 28th there was still a “heavy sea on the bar and pilot would not take us out.”

Next day the steamboat towed them out into the Black Sea. They made all sail and set the Port Topmast and Studding sail.

On Monday October 1st., 1866 a dark and hazy day with light showers they observed the lights of the Bospherous bearing SSW.

By Thursday the 4th they were sailing “from Soulinah towards Wexford Bay.” People were employed scraping the mast and tarring the rigging as well as painting the long boat and repairing the mainsail.

On Friday November 2nd at 4.45 p.m. the log reported that they “passed a Brig dismasted and waterlogged called “The Fred. H. Parker” of Hartlepool.

On Monday 12th at 2 p.m. they observed the Mettle (Metal?) Man bearing N/NE at a distance of 12 miles and at 6 p.m. saw the Conning-beg ship. Next day they  “squared away from the Tuskar” and at 7.30 “in the South Sheer the wind fell calm went around to the north.” as they were “in the south bay squally with rane”.

On Tuesday 13th at 5 a.m. they finished the loading of ‘The Topaz’ about 165 tons which lightened the ship to a 11 ft. 1 inch aft and 10 ft. 7 inch fore. At 9 a.m. ‘Taylor Nailor’ came alongside and commenced immediately to work and at 3 p.m. they finished loading her.

Next morning at 8 the steamboat towed ‘The Alert’ in. At 9 they were on the bar where they “just stopped for a few minutes” and  at 10 were up at the quay “and left her by to a single anchor until night to moor her”. At 6 p.m. they finished the mooring of the ship “abreast of the office and pumped ship when finished the Log.

Among the supplies and charges recorded at home and abroad were corn costing 5/ = and eggs 8/= as well as a carving knife and fork, sail needles and fish hooks. They paid out for trimming coal and an allowance to the “Weigher and Tipper”. A “man washing down deck” got 2/ =. Ships Chandlers bill including sundry expenses, expenses on shore for two dinners and a “Present to Tallyman of Coals”.

Towage through the Bospherous cost £7-0-0

Posting two letters, one registered cost  1/4 and  “Rushon (Russian?) Bill of Health 5/= at Constantinople.

They also record purchasing one case of gin, onions, soft bread and cabbages as well as fish and “small paints”. Sending a Telegram cost £1-0-7

This account is based on the actual written log of the voyage. The original spellings are used throughout and may give rise to confusion on locations. It is interesting to note the lives of these sailors in 1866 on a relatively small vessel visiting ports and meeting peoples that many later Wexford natives into the 1960s would only know fleetingly from school geography lessons. We also find that there was little time for idleness on board with many tasks undertaken during the voyage not that the crew missed out on some fun while on shore leave.

Nicky Rossiter has written 10 books on Wexford history published – most by History Press Ireland and I have broadcast on Sunday Miscellany as well a number of history series on South East Radio.

By John Dorney.

October 2016 saw the launch of a new Netflix film about the ‘Siege of Jadotville’ in 1961, where 150 or so Irish Army UN troops were besieged and ultimately captured (after putting up a good fight) by Katangese and European mercenary troops.

The film itself is good entertainment,the action is well shot, the performances are solid and it does a reasonable job of explaining some of the complexities involved  to an Irish and international audience.

The wider political context might need some greater examination however, before the siege of Jadotville and the Irish Army’s role in the Congo are promoted to unsullied sources of national pride.

The Congo crisis

The Congo became independent of Belgium in 1960, led initially by a firebrand nationalist, Patrice Lumumba. Almost immediately, the new Republic of the Congo, a vast state covering much of central Africa, lapsed into civil war as two Congolese provinces, Katanga and South Kassai, backed by Belgium and to a lesser extent by France, declared themselves to be independent states.

Lumumba, backed by the Soviet Union, dispatched his armed forces to put down the rebellions, leading to widespread disorder and loss of life.

The UN mission, of which Irish troops became a part, was to stop the secession of the Katanga province from the Congo. Katanga contained important mines and a Belgian sponsored local leader named Tshombe attempted to secede, basically to control the mineral resources, . Katanga also claimed to be a safe haven for Europeans, who were being attacked in other parts of the Congo.

Enter Conor Cruise O’Brien and Frank Aiken. O’Brien was acting as representative of the UN’s Secretary General, Dag Hanmarskold with regard to Katanga. O’Brien insisted that UN peacekeeping troops should be deployed to block the illegal secession of Katanga from the Congo. Aiken, a one time IRA guerrilla commander but by then a veteran of multiple ministerial jobs and Minister for External Affairs, agreed to provide Irish troops, who served alongside Swedish and Indian contingents.

It appears as if both O’Brien and Aiken interpreted the Katanga situation as vindicating the right of newly independent countries to be free of outside interference. But from the start it quickly became clear that it had really involved the UN in a complex local African conflict as well as in the meddling of outside powers.

The Niemba ambush and UN authorisation of force

In November 1960, nine Irish soldiers were killed by Baluba tribesmen at Niemba in what appears to have been a case of mistaken identity. The Balubas had not supported the Katanga secession and several of their villages were burned as a result by European mercenaries in Katangese service.

The attack on the Irish troops, in which 25 Balubas were also killed, seems to have been the result of the tribesmen mistaking the white Irish troops for European pro-Katanga mercenaries.

The heavy casualties, as well as the manner of the deaths – the Irishmen were hacked and clubbed to death – caused great shock in Ireland, but also a certain amount of odd pride. The deaths in UN service appeared to show that Ireland was playing an honourable part on the world stage, carrying out a UN mandate.

However, the Congo crisis was only deepening. In December 1960 Patrice Lumumba, the Soviet client, was arrested by one of his generals – American backed Joseph Mobotu, handed over to the Katanga secessionist forces and killed. Now, as well as being a war over mineral resources, the Congo crisis became a front of the Cold War; the Soviets being outraged that their client had been ousted.

Jadotville in context

In February of 1961, the UN Security Council authorised its contingent in the Congo to ‘use force’ to end the Katanga secession, which ultimately triggered open hostilities between them and Katangese troops.

This was essentially the UN , in a manner that would be impossible today, trying to impose a solution that was not endorsed by either of superpowers – effectively for a short window playing an independent role.

In September 1961, Conor Cruise O’Brien ordered UN troops to seize control of Katangese mercenary positions in Elizabethville, the Katanga capital, dramatically upping the stakes in the UN-Katanga confrontation and causing fighting to break out between the two sides.

It was at this point that the Irish troops at Jadotville, part of the second Irish contingent to deploy to the Congo, came under attack at the isolated post at the mining town of Jadotville. The Irish company, 157 men under Commandant Quinlan, were surrounded by Katangese troops and mercenaries and were left utterly exposed by the outbreak of fighting between the UN and Katanga.

After a stiff fight in which the Irish took no fatal casualties but may have killed about 300 Katangese troops, the Irish under commandant Quinlan surrendered. An Irish and Swedish UN force tried but failed to relieve them. Irish veterans spoke of the local women baying baying for their blood in revenge for the local men killed in the battle. The Irish troops were however protected by European mercenaries and later exchanged in a ceasefire.

The Battle of the Tunnel

Dag Hanmarskold, the UN Secretary General died in a plane crash in the Congo during the ceasefire negotiations. Meanwhile though, the game had changed.

Now that the United States had removed the Soviet clients in the central Congolese government, they now supported the UN military mission in Katanga and Dag Hanmarskold’s successor, U Thant of Burma ordered the UN troops to retake the secessionist province.

In December 1961, a further Irish Army contingent was involved in heavy fighting in the ‘battle of the tunnel‘ which was fought to re-open UN communications into Elizabethville. Three more Irish soldiers died in the fighting there.While Irish troops again acquitted themselves well, this was a United Nations force openly fighting on one side in a local civil war; not something a modern Irish peacekeeping force would allow themselves to be part of.

While all this was going on, as well as the war between the Katangese on one side and the UN and central government on the other, tribal warfare and other factional strife was raging within the region due to the breakdown of law and order.

In December 1962, Tshombe, the leader of Katanga, signed an agreement giving up the aspiration to independence and shortly thereafter, he was exiled and UN forces successfully occupied the main Katangan towns, including Jadotville. The UN force remained deployed in the Congo until 1964.

A total of about 6,000 Irish soldiers served in the Congo between 1960 and 1964, of whom 26 lost their lives. Despite Irish losses, Taoiseach Sean Lemass and Frank Aiken remained insistent that Irish troops would fulfill the UN mandate. They, by all accounts, did the best they could, though often under-resourced, left without a clear mission and, at Jadotville as least, left unsupported in an impossible military position.

The Irish Army tends to view the Congo mission as a watershed, its coming of age as a modern force and establishing itself as a credible component for future UN peacekeeping missions, It is still deployed in UN service today, notably in the Golan heights between Syria and Israel and in Lebanon.

But regarding the Congo mission itself, the wider question remains, was it worth it?

The Katangese secession was ultimately quashed, but only to reincorporate Katanga first under the authoritarian Mobutu regime in the renamed Zaire and eventually the failed dysfunctional state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

An even more ruinous internal war from the late 1990s until the early 2000s led to the deaths of perhaps up to 5 million people.

Today despite being fabulously wealthy in resources, Congo remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Foreign powers now, just as in the 1960s still hover, making sure they can extract the riches from the Congolese soil, but unlike the earlier period, the main players today are the Chinese. The idealistic premise of the likes of Conor Cruise O’Brien in the 1960s, that Africa would flourish if only it would be freed from predatory European powers, seems somewhat naive today.

All of which begs the question; would an independent Katanga from the Congo have been any worse than the states of which it was in fact part? And was the Irish military involvement there, without deprecating the bravery and commitment of the troops involved, really worthwhile?

If there is a lesson for today in the UN mission of 1960-1964 in the Congo, it is that force should only be applied for well thought out political objectives.

By John Dorney. See our other overviews here.

The Great Famine was a disaster that hit Ireland between 1845 and about 1851, causing the deaths of about 1 million people and the flight or emigration of up to 2.5 million more over the course of about six years.

The short term cause of the Great Famine was the failure of the potato crop, especially in 1845 and 1846, as a result of the attack of the fungus known as the potato blight. The potato was the staple food of the Irish rural poor in the mid nineteenth century and its failure left millions exposed to starvation and death from sickness and malnutrition.

However, the crisis was greatly compounded by the social and political structure in Ireland in the 1840s. Most poor farmers and agricultural labourers or ‘cottiers’ lived at a subsistence level and had little to no money to buy food, which was widely available for purchase in Ireland throughout the famine years.

They did however have to continue to pay rents either in cash or in kind, to landlords. Failure to do this during the famine saw many thousands being evicted, greatly worsening the death toll.

The response of the British Government, directly responsible for governing Ireland since 1801, was also unsatisfactory. Their decision to drastically cut relief measures in mid-1847, half way through the famine, so that Irish tax payers, as opposed to the Imperial Treasury, would foot the bill for famine relief, certainly contributed greatly to the mass death that followed.

Background

The mostly rural Irish population had been growing rapidly at a rate of about 2% per year since the mid-18^th century, so that it grew from about 2 million in 1741 to up to 8.75 million by 1847.[1]

The rural population was driven by high birth rates, increasing smallpox inoculation and a relatively healthy diet, that centred around the potato and buttermilk. The rural poor were however dangerously dependent on the potato as their staple food.

Outside of north east Ulster, which had a growing linen industry, there had been no industrial revolution to absorb the excess population, which, especially in the west and north west, was concentrated in increasingly smaller plots of rented land.

The ownership of this land was largely in the hands of a largely Anglo-Irish and Protestant landlord class that was often alien to its tenant population in terms of nationality, religion and in many areas of the west, language also. About a third were absentee landlords who did not live in Ireland, leaving the management of their estates to their agents. [2]

Conflict between landlords and tenants simmered throughout the early 19^th century, often escalating to the level of a rural insurgency during the for instance the ‘Rockite’ rebellion of the 1820s; a protest movement against raised rents and evictions and the ‘Tithe War’ of the 1830s, in which the mostly Catholic peasantry violently resisted the collection of tithes or taxes to the Protestant Church of Ireland.

Ireland had been governed, since the Union of 1801, directly from London, via the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the Lord Lieutenant. The Union, which abolished the Irish Parliament, was enacted to pacify the country after the Rebellion of 1798, under the premise that it would reform the country, including giving equal rights to Catholics.

To an extent this had happened, Catholic Emancipation – giving Catholics equal civil rights – was passed in 1829. Reform of the Corporations in 1840 had given Catholics the vote in municipal elections, meant that for example Catholic nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell became Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1841. However O’Connell’s peaceful campaign for Repeal of the Union or Irish self-government was suppressed by use of the military in 1843.

In short, the years before the famine saw a dramatic rise in the Irish rural population without an equivalent rise in economic opportunity and saw the rural poor increasingly reliant on the potato. It also saw persistent conflict between landlords and tenants and between the British government and the nationalist or ‘Repeal’ movement. All of these elements helped to exacerbate the famine.

The potato blight hits

The potato blight or Phytophthora infestans is a fungus that attacks the potato plant leaving the potatoes themselves inedible. It spread from North America to Europe in the 1840s, causing severe hardship among the poor. However, Ireland was much harder hit than other countries; with over a million deaths as a result, compared to about 100,000 deaths in all of the rest of Europe.[3]

The blight hit Ireland in 1845 and in the late summer and autumn of that year, it was found that the potato crop was spoiled by a dark fungus and the potatoes themselves rendered inedible. About half of the crop failed.

This immediately plunged the rural poor into a crisis as they depended almost solely on the potato as their source of food. What little money or saleable goods they had generally went on paying rent.

The failure of the potato in 1845 caused great hardship but not yet mass death, as some stores and seed potatoes from the previous year still existed and farmers and fishermen could sell animals, boats or nets or withhold the rent to pay for food, for at least one season.

In addition, the British Prime Minister Robert Peel imported what was known as ‘Indian meal’ from North America, which was sold at discount prices to the poor. He also repealed the ‘Corn Laws’, which placed tariffs on bread imported into Britain, in order to try to make bread cheaper.

All this might have staved off the catastrophe had the blight not hit again the following year. But in 1846, the potato crop not only failed again, but failed much more severely, with very few healthy potatoes being harvested that autumn.

This time the food crisis was much more severe as most poor tenant farmer families now had nothing to fall back on and 1846 marked the start of mass starvation and death, made even worse by an unusually cold winter. Most deaths were not from out and out starvation but as a result of diseases such as typhus and dysentery (referred to at the time as ‘famine fever’) which took hold among malnourished and weakened people. Eyewitnesses began to report whole villages lying in their cabins, dying of the fever.

The following year, 1847, known as ‘Black ‘47’ in folk memory, marked the worst point of the Famine. The potato crop did not fail that year, but most potato farmers had either not sown seeds in expectation that the potato crop would fail again, did not have any more seeds or had been evicted for failure to pay rent. The result was that hardly any potatoes were harvested for the second year in a row.

Large bands of hungry people began to be noticed wandering countryside and towns, begging for food. Many flocked to the workhouses – where the destitute were granted food and shelter in exchange for work – but due to insanitary conditions, many died there. [4]

The figures for deaths in workhouses spiraled uncontrollably in the famine years, rising from 6,000 in 1845 to over 66,000 in 1847 and remaining in the tens of thousands until early 1850s.[5]

There was a poor potato crop again in 1848, but it picked up in the years afterwards, leading to a gradual fall off in famine deaths by about 1851. The peak of the death toll occurred in the winter of 1847-48, where in some districts up to a quarter or the population perished due to hunger, cold and disease.

This period was also when most of the mass evictions took place, in which many landlords took the opportunity to ‘clear’ their estates of unprofitable tenants, who could not pay the rent and to replace them in many cases with livestock. One of the most high profile cases was that of Major Dennis Mahon, of the Strokestown estate in county Roscommon, who cleared 1,500 families off his land during the famine. Mahon was later murdered by his vengeful tenants. In all over 70,000 evictions took place during the famine, displacing up to 500,000 people. [6]

Being evicted often meant that Bailiffs and the Sheriff, usually with a police or military escort, not only ejected tenants from their homes but also commonly burned the cabins to prevent their reoccupation. Losing a house and shelter in midst of the famine greatly increased the chances of dying. Though some landlords went to great lengths to set up charities and soup kitchens, the popular memory of the famine years was of the tyranny of cruel landlords backed by the British state.

British government responses

The British administration in Dublin was overwhelmed by the famine crisis, seeing 5 Chief Secretaries and 4 Lord Lieutenants in just six years from 1845-1851.

The central government in London’s response was very inadequate. This was especially true after the Conservative Prime Minister Robert Peel was replaced by the Liberal Sir John Russell after an election in 1847.

The Liberals or ‘Whigs’ believed in ‘laissez faire’ or non-interference in the market and cut many of the initiatives that might have averted mass death. Russell and the Treasury official in charge of famine relief, Charles Trevelyan are therefore often seen as being culpable for the worst of the famine.

They were reluctant to either stop the export of food from Ireland or to control prices and did neither, in fact deploying troops to guard food that was being exported from Ireland They put more faith in the public works scheme, first initiated by the Peel government, by which the destitute poor worked for wages. But many were by this stage too weak and malnourished to work.

In January 1847, the Government set up free soup kitchens; which were inexpensive and relatively successful at feeding the poor. But, worried that the poor, 3 million of whom were attending the soup kitchens by mid 1847, would become dependent on the Government, they discontinued the soup kitchens at the height of the famine in August 1847.[7]

In June of that year, the Government decided not use any more Imperial (i.e. central) funds to alleviate famine in Ireland, but put burden back on Irish tax payers, predominantly landlords. Many landlords however avoided paying for ‘poor relief’ by use of the ‘Gregory Clause’, by which any tenant with a plot of over a quarter acre was not considered ‘destitute’ and not eligible for ‘relief’. It is calculated that only one third of landlords actually contributed at all towards famine relief.[8]

Taken together, these decisions had a calamitous impact, not only failing to solve the crisis but undoubtedly making it far worse than it need have been.

Relieving the famine ranked low on British Government spending priorities. Spending on famine relief in Ireland over six years was about £9.5 million (almost all of which was spent before mid 1847), out of a tax income in those years of over £300 million [9], whereas £4 million was spent on the Irish Constabulary police and £10 million on an increased military presence (up from 15,000 men in 1843 to 30,000 by 1849) to keep order in Ireland during the same years.[10]

And dwarfing all of these figures is the £69 million the British Government spent on fighting the Crimean War of 1853-1856.[11]

Impact of the famine

It has been calculated that at least 1 million people, or about 12-15% of the population died, mostly from disease, during the famine, the dead being overwhelmingly from the rural poor. Connaught and Munster were the worst affected provinces followed by Ulster and then Leinster, but the latter still saw well over 100,000 deaths.[12]

Cities such as Dublin, Belfast and Cork saw a rise in population as the destitute flocked there in the hope of aid.

Skibbereen in West Cork, one of the worst affected areas, became the site of mass graves, holding up to 10,000 bodies.

The Famine is sometimes remembered through a sectarian frame; “Taking the soup”, or converting to Protestantism in return for food became a Catholic synonym for ‘treachery’ due to the activities of some Protestant missionaries. But the famine mortality was as high in predominantly Presbyterian areas of Ulster as many other majority Catholic areas. [13]

The famine caused mass migration, as about 1.5 million people fled the country, mostly to north America. This mass migration, which continued throughout the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, triggered a permanent demographic decline in the Irish population, which fell from about 8 million in 1840 to about 4 million in 1900. It also constituted the fatal blow to the Irish language, spoken by up to half the population before the famine but only 15% by 1900.[14]

For Irish nationalists the ‘Great Hunger’ represented the great blot on the Union and British government in Ireland in the 19^th century. Young Ireland writers such as John Mitchel charged the British government with a deliberate plot for ‘extermination’; an interpretation still championed by some today.

However most historians stress that there was no intention for mass killing on the part of the British government and that the Great Famine was rather a case of catastrophic neglect and ideological blindness than deliberate malice.

References

[1] Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, Ed.s John Crowley, William Smith, Mike Murphy Cork University Press, 2012, p13-17

[2] Cormac O Grada, Ireland, a New Economic History, 1789-1939, p124-125

[3] Eric Vanhaute, ., The European subsistence crisis of 1845–1850: a comparative perspective

[4] For an overview see O Grada, Ireland a New Economic History, p177-178

[5] Ibid. p 177

[6] Cormac O Grada, Black 47 and Beyond, the Great Irish Famine, Pricteon,2000, p44-45, see also History Ireland, The murder of Major Mahon.

[7] Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, p48-49

[8] Ibid. p10-11

[9] O Grada, Black 47 and Beyond p77, James H Murphy, Ireland A Social Cultural and Literary History 1791-1891, p100

[10] Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, p53

[11] Murphy, Ireland 1791-1891 p100

[12] O Grada, Ireland a New Economic History, p185

[13] Atlas of the Great Irish Famine p426

[14] About 620,000 Irish speakers were recorded in the 1901 census out of a population of about 4.3 million https://www.uni-due.de/DI/Who_Speaks_Irish.h

Patricia Curtin Kelly looks again at three famous paintings depicting the Irish Revolution.

Irish artist Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957) is perhaps best known for his impressionistic paintings of early twentieth century Irish life.

However, he also produced three searing visual portrayals of the Irish Revolution; Bachelor’s Walk in Memory, The Funeral of Harry Boland and Communicating with Prisoners. The first represents a British Army shooting in Dublin in 1914, the latter two incidents of the Civil War.

In 1966, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, the Capuchin Annual published personal recollections, eye-witness accounts and photographic records of the events that took place at that time.   The 1966 edition of the Capuchin Annual also included an article by Thomas MacGreevy (1893-1967) which was republished from its 1942 edition, presumably to complement its commemorative nature.  In this article, MacGreevy who was director of the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) discussed three historical paintings by Jack B. Yeats.

The Capuchin Annual was a well-read Irish institution which was published for forty-seven years, between 1930 and 1977, by the Capuchin Order in Dublin.  It championed Irish writers and Irish artists and overall played a role in defining Irish culture in the early turbulent decades of the newly independent Ireland.    Its distinctive brown cover, depicting St. Francis & the Wolf by the Irish artist Sean O’Sullivan (1906-64), was well-known throughout Ireland and abroad.  In its heyday, it had a readership of 25,000 and Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67), the well-known Irish poet, described it as “a phenomenon of modern political Catholic Ireland.”

Jack B Yeats

Yeats was from a very well-known artistic family.   His father was the portrait painter John Butler Yeats (1839-1922) and his brother was the Nobel Prize winning poet, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).   Two of his sisters, Susan  Yeats (1866-1944) and Elizabeth Yeats (1868-1940) were involved with the Arts & Crafts movement in Ireland and set up Dun Emer Industries and Cuala Press which played an important role in the Celtic Revival of the early twentieth century.

Although he was born in London, Yeats spent most of his childhood in County Sligo, a place which influenced him greatly.   In 1897 he married a fellow art student, Mary Cottenham White, and they lived in England.   He held his first solo show in London in 1897.

He returned to live in Ireland in 1910 and depicted mainly Irish subjects, ranging from street scenes, to boxing matches, to circuses, the races etc.    He was a member of the Hibernian Academy and a Governor of the NGI.   In 1913, Yeats learned Irish which was not an easy task for a man in his forties.   He attended political meetings and heard Padraig Pearse (1879-1916) and other Irish patriots speak.[1]   Therefore, he was not just interested in ordinary life but also politically aware.

In terms of painting, Yeats was probably the first and greatest interpreter of modern Irish life and landscapes.   The three Yeats’ paintings discussed by MacGreevy are: –  Bachelor’s Walk – In Memory, The Funeral of Harry Boland and Communicating With Prisoners and each has an interesting provenance.

Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap. (1900-70), who was editor of the Capuchin Annual, was a great promoter of Irish artists.   He bought these three paintings in 1941 from the Victor Waddington Gallery, at a cost of £30 each.[2]   They became part of a collection of Yeats and other artists which were once held by the Capuchin Order.

Fr. Senan, played a significant role in the education of the Irish public in art through the Capuchin Annual and as a member of the Board of the NGI.   His traditional Capuchin robe was a familiar sight at social and artistic gatherings.   He purchased the three paintings, with the help of Lady Yarrow, so that he could reproduce them in the 1942 edition of the Capuchin Annual and with the express purpose of raising awareness of the work of Yeats the artist.   Subsequently, the paintings hung in the Capuchin Annual office until the 1950s. [3]

Due to the increasingly precarious financial situation, at the Capuchin Annual, some remedial action was required.   On 24 January 1954, Fr. Senan wrote to Fr. Colman Griffin OFM Cap., Provincial Minister of the Capuchin Order, recommending that the paintings held by the Order be sold.

He pointed out that he had “done something big for the artist concerned, Mr. Jack B. Yeats, and l am proud to be able to help to such an extent a great Irish artist, even though he is a Protestant, whose work was unappreciated.”   Mr. Leo Smith, of the Dawson Gallery, Dublin was entrusted with the sale of the paintings and he offered them to the Irish Government for a sum of £2,700.

The Government was to contribute £2,000, provided they had the backing and additional £700 from the Board of the NGI.[4]   Fr. Senan, who was a member of the Board, absented himself from these discussions for corporate governance reasons.

Following an emergency meeting of the Board, the proposal was rejected, on a vote of four to three, based on the NGI’s policy of not purchasing works by artists who were still alive.   This was surely an extraordinary missed opportunity.   It was extraordinary as well that MacGreevy, who was Director of the NGI and had a clear interest in Yeats the artist, did not seem to press the case with the Board.[5]

Bachelor’s Walk in Memory

Bachelor’s Walk – In Memory was painted in 1915.[6]   MacGreevy described this painting as “one of the most beautiful and moving pictures the artist ever painted.”[7]   In 1957, he tried to get Eamon de Valera (1882-1975) to persuade Lady Dunsany, who had subsequently purchased the painting, to donate it to the Government, but to no avail[8][9]

In 1990, the painting was stolen and only recovered in 2007 after it was spotted in a Sotheby’s publication in London.   Subsequently, in 2009, Lady Dunsany placed the painting on long-term loan to the NGI.   Before that, in 1971, it was exhibited at the NGI’s centenary exhibition on the work of Yeats and was also used as the cover image for that brochure.

The painting depicts the aftermath of an incident, in 1914, when a detachment of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers intercepted a large party of Irish Volunteers, returning from Howth, where they had collected a supply of arms.

A hostile crowd pursued the soldiers as they were returning to barracks.    Major Alfred Haig asked the crowd to disperse.   When they did not, the soldiers opened fire, killing four people and injuring thirty-two others, all mostly innocent bystanders who were watching the military parade pass by.[10]    While Yeats did not witness this incident, he visited the scene the following day and made a sketch on the spot.

It has been argued that this is an “iconic” and “symbolic” painting.   The historian Turtle Bunbury said that Padraig Pearse considered the “Bachelor’s Walk massacre” to be an iconic moment in the struggle for independence and “Remember Bachelor’s Walk” became a rallying cry.[11]   The incident highlighted double standards whereby Unionists could arm while Home Rulers were shot at for the same reason.

The painting itself is one of Yeats’ earliest and most significant oils.   It depicts a flower girl in the act of placing one of her flowers on the spot, on Bachelor’s Walk, where one of the casualties was shot.   In the background, one can clearly see St. Augustine & John’s church and Christ Church cathedral which firmly sets the location.  While the girl is engrossed in the act of placing her flower, life in the city is clearly going on behind her.   One can see men lounging on the quays of the river Liffey, people passing over the Ha’penny Bridge and a horse and cart passing by.

There is nothing grandiose about the picture although MacGreevy said that the flower girl could be an “Hellenic model at an altar.”[12]   Ernie O’Malley (1897-1957), the IRA and anti-Treaty activist, described the picture as “a national icon and symbol.”[13]

In addition, the art critic T.G. Rosenthal, says that it is “an archetype representing all Irish womanhood mourning the loss of their men.”[14]   The journalist and art critic Bruce Arnold maintained that Yeats had no interest in politics or nationalism.   He said that Yeats was “expressing the instant of human emotion and not the moment of national feeling.”[15]   Christopher Baran argued that MacGreevy presented a biased account of the events of 1914 as he gave his readers an image of the Irish as innocent victims and the British as transgressors.[16]

It is more likely that the deaths and injuries were due to an over-hasty response, to a largely hostile crowd, rather than any pre-meditated action   Yeats probably painted this picture as a tribute to the humanity of the act by the flower girl rather than as any political statement.   The picture focuses the viewer on the consequences of conflict on ordinary people rather than on the heroic or idealistic nature of the struggle for national freedom.

The Funeral of Harry Boland

Painted in 1922, The Funeral of Harry Boland is part of the Niland Collection.[17]   This was founded by Nora Niland, the county librarian in Sligo, who started collecting art in the 1950s.   Mrs. V. Franklin bought it from the Capuchin Order in 1959, and gifted it to the Niland Collection.[18]   This picture was exhibited in the RHA in 1923, under the title A Funeral, and was brought to public attention through the MacGreevy article in 1942.

The painting depicts the funeral of Harry Boland (1884-1922), a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and subsequently a member of the Dail.   He was killed, in controversial circumstances, in Skerries, County Dublin.   It is said that this painting is the only public record of Boland’s funeral as cameras were confiscated at the gates of the cemetery.[19]   Boland was a close friend of both Michael Collins (1890-1922) and of Eamon de Valera, respective leaders of the pro and anti-Treaty sides of the Treaty split in 1922.

While he opposed the Treaty, he endeavoured to be a peace-maker between the two factions but took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and was shot and mortally wounded during his arrest by pro-Treaty troops.   MacGreevy said that Boland was unarmed at the time of his arrest and implied that he was mortally wounded by over-zealous Free State personnel.[20]

Both sides in the Civil War lost notable members, with brother fighting brother and father fighting son.   By the time MacGreevy wrote his article, in 1942, de Valera and Fianna Fail were in power which is an example of democratic politics at work in a newly emerged state.

The painting depicts the scene at the the Republican plot at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin where Boland was buried.   The round tower, which commemorates Daniel O’Connell – The Liberator (1775-1847), dominates the background.   Interestingly, Yeats focuses on the crowd rather than on Boland’s coffin.

The viewer is looking towards a freshly dug grave which is bedecked with flowers.   On the right-hand side, members of Cumann na mBan, the women’s Republican organisation, are looking on and some of them are carrying wreaths of flowers.

Republican men, some of whom are holding rifles, are also looking on with bowed heads. Despite the risks to themselves, they are reported to have fired a salute of three volleys in memory of their dead comrade.[21]

A group of priests, dressed in black, are on the left-hand side of the picture.  The leader of the IRA, on the lower right-hand side, is staring directly at the coffin.   Heads of other onlookers can be seen in the foreground, including two young men who seem to be chatting which is out of kilter with the general air of sombreness.   MacGreevy maintained that this picture marks the complete and masterly statement in terms of modern Irish life of the great European tradition of historical painting.[22]

It appears the artist is sympathetic to what is going on rather than merely a recorder of the event.   The picture also evokes a spirit of the nobility of sacrifice and the sense of reverence for a lost patriot.   For this reason, it is a significant memorial to all those who fell during the troubled times of the Civil War.

Communicating with Prisoners

Communicating With Prisoners,[23] painted in 1924, is also part of the Niland Collection and was bought from the Capuchin Order in 1959.   In 2012, it was selected by a national panel as one of ten Irish paintings, on which the public was invited to vote in order of preference, for the nation’s Favourite Irish Painting.

While this painting was not the top favourite, nevertheless, the competition drew attention to a relatively unknown work by Yeats.   It recalls the role of women in the struggle for Irish independence.   This was no less than that of their male counterparts, yet it is largely unsung and unrecorded.   It is surprising, therefore, that Yeats choose this as a subject and that MacGreevy choose to include it for discussion in his article.

The painting depicts a group of seven women and one boy, listening and calling up to a group of republican women prisoners, who are high up in a tower at Kilmainham Jail.  They were jailed, by the Free State government, for their involvement in the Civil War.   One of the jailed women seems to be leaning out of a window to either shout more loudly, or to hear more clearly, the news of the day from friends below.

The group on the outside are standing, in the foreground, with their backs to the viewer.   They are well dressed in stylish coats and are wearing a variety of colourful and fashionable hats.   The imposing bulk of the dark and forbidding tower of Kilmainham Jail, on the right-hand side, is balanced by a bill-board with colourful posters, on the left-hand side.

One shows a Santa Claus which would seem to indicate that it was around Christmas time when the event took place.   In the distance, one can see a row of grey eighteenth century Dublin houses under a cloudy sky.   Overall, the painting shows the solidarity between the women.   It also points to the contrast between the “free” women on the outside and the “jailed” women on the inside.

MacGreevy said that female Volunteers showed “a magnificent lack of respect for the silliness of many man-made rules.” [24]  The female prisoners in the painting have broken the windows of their jail, so that they could communicate with their sisters below on the outside.   MacGreevy also seemed to give a romantic nobleness to female depictions, such as “female grace,” which was perhaps not intended by the artist.

While many women were taken prisoner, by both the British and to a far greater extent by the Free-State authorities, there were no “republican heroines” as none of them were executed.  Arnold maintained that a “significance has been attached where none was necessarily intended.”[25]

Christopher Baron outlined that women prisoners also went on hunger strike.   For example, in 1923, six republican women held in Kilmainham Jail, including the Irish revolutionary and suffragette Maud Gonne McBride (1866-1953), went on hunger strike.[26]  For many years, McBride was the romantic obsession of William Butler Yeats and a great influence on his poetry.  Perhaps this is the connection that prompted his brother to paint this subject matter?  It is also a rare and unusual depiction of life in the early days of the Free State.   Overall, the painting is a reminder of the important role women played, both during 1916 and after the Treaty

Conclusions

The style of these three paintings is very contrasting.   For example, Batchelor’s Walk – In Memory could be described as traditional and rather nostalgic and is finely painted with muted colours.  The Funeral of Harry Boland and Communicating with Prisoners are both painted in a rather naïve, linear style with a clear horizon on the background and are reminiscent of Yeats’ work for the Cuala Press broadsheets.   None of these paintings, however, give any hint of the vibrant and colourful impressionistic style that would become synonymous with Yeats in later life.

Fr. Senan and MacGreevy brought together three paintings, by a contemporary Irish artist, which depict incidents from a new and changing Ireland.   While the specific incidents may seem to be insignificant, in the context of the more heroic deeds of the time, nevertheless they highlight the humane and tragic elements that occurred as part of our history.   Innocent people got caught up in events and a gesture of respect was warranted.   Personal friendships suffered because of civil war but people were properly commemorated when they died.   Friendship and support were important, even where there was a separation

MacGreevy said that “Jack Yeats lifted the art of painting in Ireland on to a plane of heroic tragedy it had never before attained .” [27] Arnold said that although they have “an aura of nationalism” the “so-called political paintings have been misrepresented.”   Arnold went on to say that Yeats was “not necessarily dealing with the political event nor taking a side in it.   In any assessment of his work it is the human side that comes first.”[28]   The art historian John Turpin said that Yeats “often depicted the larger historical tragedies through a small poetic detail.”[29]  The art critic and biographer Hilary Pyle maintained that “Yeats’ patriotism was mature and of a deeply idealistic nature.”[30]

In these three paintings, Yeats is a recorder of the events for posterity rather than bestowing any great comment on them.  He is showing the impact of national events on ordinary people, without a sense of the heroic.   As Turpin said “paintings of historical subjects can have a political consequence even if intended as pure reportage.![31]

Historical paintings are regarded as the highest form of art in classic academic theory.   They usually tell a story with a moral or idealistic purpose.   Yeats has understood this purpose in these three paintings.   As an Irish artist, he shows a sympathy and sense of identity with the ordinary people of Ireland and has left a legacy that maintains a rare record of the three events.

Apart from photographs, there are very few paintings of the 1916 Easter Rising period.   While these three paintings are not depicting events that happened during the Rising, nevertheless they show an incident before, which was influential, and two incidents afterwards, which occurred because of the Easter Rising.   By painting ordinary people, in ordinary surroundings and carrying out ordinary activities, Yeats has also added to the self-worth of the country.

It is to their credit that both Fr. Senan and MacGreevy recognised the talent and humanity in Yeats’ paintings, at a very early stage, and ensured his work was brought to the attention of the general public.   In this year of commemoration, 2016, the three paintings are an important reminder of these events and their place in our history.   All three paintings are currently on view at the Creating History:  Stories of Ireland in Art exhibition on view at the National Gallery of Ireland until the 15 January, 2017.

Patricia Curtin-Kelly is a Cork born art historian and lives in Dublin.   She holds an M.A. (hons.) in Art History from University College, Dublin as well as an M.Sc. in Human Resources Management from Sheffield Hallam University.   Her book An Ornament to the City – Holy Trinity Church and the Capuchin Order was published by the History Press Ireland in 2015.

References

[1] T.G. Rosenthal, “The Art of Jack B. Yeat,s” Andre Deutsch, London 1993l – p.26

[2] Peter Sommerville-Large, “The Story of the National Gallery of Ireland (1856-2006),” National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. 2006 – p.359

[3] Bruce Arnold, “Jack Yeats” Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1998 – p.320

[4] Peter Somerville-Large, – p.54

[5] Peter Sommerville-Large – p. 359

[6] National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square Dublin

[7] Thomas MacGreevy, “Capuchin Annual 1966” Dublin – p.396

[9] Peter Sommerville-Large – p.359

[10] Turtle Bunbury, “Death on Bachelor’s Walk – 27-07-1914” http;//www.turtlebunbury.com/history/press_irishhistory_irish_bachelors_walk.htm 20/10/2015

[11] Turtle Bunbury

[12] Thomas MacGreevy – p.396

[13] Bruce Arnold, p.193

[14] T.G. Rosenthal, – p.26

[15] Bruce Arnold, p.193

[16] Christopher Baron, “Bachelor’s Walk; In Memory” for the Thomas MacGreevy Archive, 2003

[17] The Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo

[18] Donal Tinney Ed., “Jack B. Yeats at the Niland Gallery, Sligo” Niland Gallery, Sligo County Library, 1998

[19] Bruce Arnold, p. 194

[20] Thomas MacGreevy – p.397

[21] Thomas MacGreevy – p. 397

[22] Thomas MacGreevy – p.397

[23][23] Model Arts & Niland Gallery, Sligo

[24] Thomas MacGreevy – p.398

[25] Bruce Arnold, – p. 195

[26] Christopher Baron, “Communicating with Prisoners,” for the Thomas MacGreevy Archive, 2003

[27] Thomas MacGreevy – p.396

[28] Bruce Arnold – p. 55

[29] John Turpin, “Irish History Painting” Irish Arts Review, Dublin 1989-90 – p.242

[30] Hilary Pyle, “Jack B. Yeats – A Biography” Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. 1970 – p.119

[31] John Turpin – p.233

In this interview, John Dorney speaks to historian, security analyst and former Irish Army officer Declan Power on the Irish Army’s role in the Congo in the early 1960s and in particular about the siege of Jadotville in 1961.

The Siege of Jadotville is now a popular film, based on Declan’s book of the same name.

For further context, see this Irish Story article on the subject.

We speak about:

• The political situation in the Congo after independence and the reasons behind the UN invention there.

• The secession of the mineral-rich Katanga province and the UN’s role in trying to bring it back under Congolese sovereignty.

• The Irish Army’s deployment as part of the UN force and the rol of Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish UN representative in the Congo.

• The siege of the Irish company at Jadotville by a mercenary-led Katangan force.

• The course of the battle itself.

The first part of the this interview of Declan Power by John Dorney deals with the Congo crisis of 1960-61, the UN-Katanga war and the battle of the outnumbered Irish contingent at Jadotville. Listen to it here.

Part 2 takes up the story after the ceasefire between the Irish troops and Katangan forces, going on to discuss commandant Quinlan’s subsequent surrender.

We discuss the subsequent treatment of the Jadotville company and their semi-disgrace within the Irish Army as a result of the surrender.

We finish with an appraisal of what the United Nations mission in the Congo achieved.

Published by New Island Books, Dublin, 2016

ISBN: 978-1848404885

Reviewer: Gordon O’Sullivan

“If you have been killed you have a victory, but if you save your men and have a good defence, it is a defeat.”

It is perhaps not surprising that the events recounted in the Heroes of Jadotville eventually ended up in a film, it has all the elements demanded of a classic war movie. There’s the courageous and charismatic commander backed by resourceful troops who somehow maintain a cheery disposition despite dwindling supplies while dug in against overwhelming odds deep in enemy territory and cut off from the main army. The only thing missing from this war movie was a final scene of victory.

What transpired instead was a painful surrender compounded by political and institutional contempt that completely obscured the sterling efforts and heroic courage shown by those 156 Irish soldiers during the 1961 six-day battle at Jadotville in the Congo.

Rose Doyle’s revised and updated book, it was first published ten years ago, recounts the Siege of Jadotville, a bloody battle fought in a predominantly Belgian mining town in the breakaway Congolese province of Katanga in September 1961. 156 lightly armed soldiers of A Company in the Irish 35th Battalion under the command of Commandant Pat Quinlan, a Kerry man who “grew to giant size in every man’s eyes,” fought off approximately 4,000 heavily armed Katangan Gendarmerie and mercenary troops for six days until their eventual and inevitable surrender.

The battle takes up just one half of the Heroes of Jadotville, however, focusing as well on the shameful treatment of the Irish soldiers by their Katangan captors and their Irish commanders both in the Congo and back home in Ireland.

Doyle is crystal clear on why the Irish soldiers were in Jadotville in the first place. The UN had been invited into Congo to prevent the resource-rich province of Katanga from seceding. She contends that A Company were purposely sent 80 miles away from their base camp at the connivance of the Belgian government, they were supporting the secession, to be taken hostage by the Katangan government for use as a bargaining chip with the UN. The Irish troops were ostensibly sent to Jadotville to protect Belgian colonists there but on arrival it was clear that their protection was completely unwelcome.

At the same time, again Commandant Quinlan and his troops were in the dark, the UN was about to launch a punitive expedition, Operation Morthor, against the Katangan government thus placing the Irish soldiers deep in what would be enemy territory. A Company arrived in Jadotville ten days before the battle, armed with just mortars, machine guns and shoulder-launched anti-tank guns. They would face considerably heavier ordnance from the Katangans during the battle ahead.

Doyle recounts the ensuing battle in an exhilarating and almost minute-by-minute account. From the very start Quinlan ordered “every man in this company will dig trenches”, a wise move considering what was to come. The soldier’s water and electricity were cut off and shopkeepers and hoteliers refused to serve them. Soon the roads out of Jadotville were blocked and there was intelligence of Katangan reinforcements arriving in the town.

A clash between the Irish and the Katangans wasn’t long in coming, beginning appropriately for this God-fearing bunch of men during morning mass on 13 September. The Irish troops were in for six days of consistent heavy machine gun and mortar fire as well as a Katangan airplane which machine-gunned and bombed their positions. Despite this sustained bombardment, the Irish troops fought back with a ferocity that took the Katangan Gendarmerie and their mercenary advisers completely by surprise, prolonging the siege and killing hundreds of Katangans.

Their tremendous courage and the professionalism shown by A Company was despite the “antiquated equipment, armoured cars that you could probably shoot arrows through” and “uniforms made of bull’s wool and hobnailed boots” that they were supplied with. In addition, Quinlan and his men had to deal with woefully inaccurate intelligence provided by Irish headquarters on the rare occasions they could get it due to poorly performing radios.

Even when the radio operators got through, their messages were intercepted by the Katangans and the content, in Irish, was translated for their enemy by two Connemara man working in the local mine. The Katangans also tried all sorts of dirty tricks like bringing up ambulances containing machine guns and calling Quinlan to the telephone for negotiations and then shelling the house where the telephone was located.

A Company held on but food was running down, the men were reduced to eating Jadotville Stew made up of anything and everything edible, water was running out, ammunition was low and UN reinforcements were stuck 18 miles away on the wrong side of a heavily defended bridge. Amazingly there were no fatalities on the Irish side during the entire siege.

Despite invaluable assistance from the few friendly colonists in Jadotville including the wonderfully doughty Madame Lamonfagne, an elderly Belgian lady who refused to leave even when her house was under attack, Quinlan began to think the unthinkable. He realised that without a realistic chance of reinforcements or resupply a permanent ceasefire was his only option despite the Irish remaining firmly undefeated on the field of battle. “There was a choice of saving my brave men by that; there was only certain death in any future action…it could not be justified by any standards: moral, military or political”.

He radioed the Irish HQ to let them know his decision and agreed joint patrols with Katangan forces and to store their weapons away. The Katangans quickly took advantage of the ceasefire and took the Irish soldiers into captivity. A Company’s conditions deteriorated quite badly during their five weeks in captivity but Quinlan kept the men’s morale up. Self-defence classes were organised, Molotov cocktails were made to defend themselves, some of the men listened to the All-Ireland final on the radio. Their hopes of being released were raised and dashed on several occasions but finally in late October, Quinlan led his men out of captivity when they were turned over to UN forces.

On returning to the bosom of their comrades, in some ways their battle had only begun. It was soon clear that the reasons for their surrender had not been appreciated or approved of by some in the Irish battalion, there was considerable tension between the companies.

A Company were recompensed for their bravery by being billeted in a large cow-byre with a leaky roof. Incredibly the uninjured soldiers were put almost immediately back in service and were soon involved in the biggest Congo battle of the UN campaign at the Tunnel, a strategic railway underpass in Elisabethville. Finally, on 19 December 1961, all the remaining members of A Company flew home but they didn’t fly home to a heroes’ welcome.

Commandant Quinlan was convinced that some of his superiors thought he and his men should have died with their boots on at Jadotville rather than surrender, “there is a deliberate policy now to decry the action at Jado.” When Quinlan handed the radio log of the battle to a RTE reporter to bring back to his wife, it disappeared en transit.

All of the men that Quinlan proposed for medals were turned down by the Irish Army medals board. Quinlan and his men always felt they were never properly recognised for their brave service in the Congo but were in fact stigmatised by what had happened and their military careers consequently curtailed.

The pace of the first section of Heroes of Jadotville which focuses on the action of the Siege is frenetic and wholly absorbing. Doyle’s use of personal testimony and the radio signals in particular put the reader right in the middle of the battle. The author, who is Commandant Pat Quinlan’s niece, uses her insider knowledge and personal connection to the story to great effect. By the time, Quinlan is asked by Irish HQ on the radio, “are you deserting the men?” you are so attuned to the men’s viewpoints that you’re likely to feel personally affronted by the question.

The author manages to balance that relentless pace with lovely personal snippets about the individual officers and men and the reader gets a good sense of the Irish soldiers; God-fearing men from poor West coast backgrounds who maintained a devotion to both their heavenly Lord and their temporal master, Commandant Quinlan.

There are some lovely incidences of the soldier’s humour in extremis too, for example when the Swedish interpreter expressed doubts about understanding Quinlan’s robust Kerry accent, Lieutenant Joe Leech told him, “We don’t understand him either.” The photographs contained in Heroes of Jadotville are also a real strength. After such an exhilarating opening section, the second half of the book is inevitably less involving. The aftermath of the battle at Jadotville and the long battle for recognition is less a terrifying battle and more a steady slog for acceptance.

Rose Doyle’s book is a passionate affair, the author clearly feels the men of Jadotville should be praised for their service in the Congo and not forgotten. She also feels that there has never been an official reckoning for the army brass who stymied the recognition of the men of Jadotville.

That passion is one of the key strengths of this book but at times it’s also a weakness. There is little attempt to provide alternative political or military views and little use of more objective sources. The personal letters and testimonies are on occasion overused or the extracts used are overly long and Quinlan’s thoughts and feelings are reproduced without much analysis or context by the author.

Those are minor cavils however as this book is a worthy memorial to the heroism of these Irish soldiers who were brutally airbrushed from the Defence Forces’ role of honour when their bravery demanded full recognition. Thankfully that has changed somewhat in the last few years.

A portrait now hangs in the UN Training School at the Curragh Camp of Commandant Quinlan, there’s a commemorative plaque to A Company in Custume Barracks in Athlone and recently a wreath-laying ceremony took place at the National Museum Collins Barracks in memory of the men who fought at Jadotville and have subsequently died including Pat Quinlan. The ceremony was part of what will now be an annual Jadotville Day for Defence Forces veterans, a small token of remembrance for what they went through in 1961.

Published by Merrion Press, Newbridge, 2016

ISBN: 978-1785370618

Reviewer: Gordon O’Sullivan

 The Curragh, that flat exposed plain of 4,870 acres in County Kildare, is well-known for two things, horse racing and the army camp. Those two have sat astride local history from the earliest of ancient annals. Large-scale military encampments on the Curragh can be traced back to the end of the 1500s but there was no permanent camp there until the middle of the 19^th century.

By the 1850s, as Dan Harvey points out in his new history of the Curragh Camp, Soldiers of the Short Grass, the attractions of the Curragh for military planners were plain: its geographical centrality made it an ideal location for despatching troops to any part of the island; its proximity to the capital city combined with the Curragh railway siding allowed a speedy transfer of troops from training centre to embarkation port for overseas service and the Curragh’s almost unlimited room for expansion made the establishment of a permanent military facility a straight forward decision for the British military authorities.

In attempting to provide a complete history of the Curragh Camp, the author lays out a chronological path for the reader to follow from the first permanent British Army establishment to its current use by the Irish Army. Soldiers of the Short Grass is split into roughly equal parts, with six chapters each for the British and the Irish commands.

The first section concerns itself with the British Army on the Curragh from 1855 with the construction and consolidation of the camp precinct to the handover of the barracks to the newly constituted Irish state in 1922 with stops in between for colonial wars, the inferno of the First World War, the Easter Rising, and the War of Independence.

The second section begins as British troops march out of the Curragh Camp for the final time on 16 May 1922 and Irish forces march in. It continues through the Civil War, the Emergency of the Second World War, the first UN deployment and ends with its current usage as an officer training centre for the Irish Army. While this chronological approach has its merits, it may also be useful to look at the two major themes that Harvey draws in Soldiers of the Short Grass: the training of soldiers and the imprisoning of rebels.

While the British Army had used the Curragh plains for large-scale manoeuvres prior to 1855, it was the Crimean War that finally brought about a more permanent encampment. Barracks and associated training buildings for 10,000 troops were laid out in what was meant to be a temporary move.

The soldiers’ huts may have been made of wood but very quickly these wooden barracks put down their own roots. Just two years later, the commander in chief of the British Army, the Duke of Cambridge, ordered that the Curragh was henceforth to be the principal summer training grounds for the regular and reserve armies in Ireland.

Harvey compares this Irish camp of instruction for all-arms training, cavalry, infantry and artillery to Aldershot, Shorncliffe and Colchester all rolled into one. The end of the Crimean War didn’t diminish the Curragh Camp’s importance as a training centre, helped perhaps by the seemingly unceasing colonial wars that the British Army fought in the 19^th century.

The First World War broadened the training provided at the Curragh even more. As well as training many of the new Kitchener regiments, the camp also hosted a training squadron of the Royal Flying School including 25 aircraft as well as training mules for the rigours of the Western Front in its Remount Depot.

The First World War even left physical marks on the Curragh plain still evident today with Harvey calling the training trenches left behind some of the finest examples of their type anywhere in Ireland or Britain. The Curragh also served as a base for the notorious Auxiliaries during the War of Independence as well as providing the brutal Black and Tans with their cursory six weeks of training.

The handover of the camp to Irish Free State forces didn’t change this aspect of the Curragh’s military purpose, the training of soldiers continued apace during and after the Civil War. When Taoiseach Seán Lemass agreed to the deployment of Irish troops for UN peacekeeping operations overseas, an event Harvey argues that was hugely significant for the Irish Army, the Curragh was chosen as the training centre. Later still the Curragh Camp became the training base for the famous and famously secretive Army Ranger Wing.

However, in his thoughts, as a former army officer, on the current and future usages of the Curragh, Harvey is quite downbeat. He asserts that there is disappointingly no comprehensive strategic plan for the Curragh but he still hopes that “because the Curragh Camp is unique, because it has a long-established identity”, it will have a “future role and relevance…that will be driven by a strong ambition to see the Curragh Camp thrive.”

Prisoners

The Curragh was also consistently utilised as a location to lock up political and military troublemakers. Some of the best photos in the book, many of which were sourced from the National Library of Ireland, testify to its constant use of soldiers as jailers. Its first major prison role was in the suppression of the Easter Rising when republican prisoners were held at both Hare Park Camp and Rath Camp. At the same time began what seems to have been another Curragh tradition, escaping prisoners; two prisoners escaped from Rath Camp within the first two months and they were far from the last.

When the British Army pulled out of the Curragh, the camp’s role as prison continued without a break. During the Civil War Hare Park Camp was a prison for the anti-Treaty side and hundreds of prisoners were held in the harsh conditions of the infamous Tin Town. Here too, some prisoners tunnelled out. Later the de Valera governments used the Curragh to imprison restless and seditious IRA activists.

The Emergency was a very busy time for the Curragh as a prison camp with 1,500 prisoners passing through during the war years. The camp at that time was a peculiar mixture of IRA members, Allied soldiers and airmen and German military personnel, all segregated in different prison sections.

The British never stayed long, quickly slipping over the border to Northern Ireland but the Germans remained in the camp for the duration of the war. Not many of them complained about life as guests of the Irish nation; they could leave the Curragh Camp during the day but had to return in the evening on their honour, they had soccer and swimming teams and nine of them had the opportunity to woo and eventually marry local girls. Imprisonment on the Curragh continued up to the modern day with the military prison hospital on the Curragh precinct and at the height of the Troubles, Provisional IRA prisoners were held there too.

Harvey fills in these twin themes with some fascinating asides and anecdotes, from the frivolity of the future Edward VII and his summer of love with Irish actress Nellie Clifden, to the tragic destitution of abandoned camp wives or the terrible fate of the prostitutes known as the Wrens. He also includes intriguing facts such as that Newbridge had a masonic lodge and that Keane Barracks was secretly occupied in 1922 by soldiers training for an invasion of Northern Ireland.

During the Herrema kidnapping in 1974, the Irish Army trained for a possible incursion using Curragh Camp houses as they were identical to the hostage house in Monasterevin. He also pays fulsome and deserved praise to the sterling efforts of the Curragh Local History Group led by the indefatigable Reggie Darling.

The author also manages to chart the development of the economic and social relationship between the camp dwellers and their civilian neighbours, the local farmers, the horse racing gentlemen of the Turf Club and the inhabitants of the towns nearby. The Curragh Camp’s transformation from wooden huts to red-brick buildings in the last decades of the 19^th century and the bonanza this rebuilding brought to local tradesmen and craftsmen is particularly well covered in the Soldiers of the Short Grass.

There are some occasions however where the focus on the history of the Curragh Camp falters and pages are spent on British Army rifle training or the development of military tactics. While they are interesting topics in their own right they are not sufficiently integrated into the broader narrative or the main themes.

The time spent on Mother Mary Francis Bridgeman, an alternative Florence Nightingale, in the Crimea for example doesn’t seem to have any particular relation to the history of the Curragh encampment. This languid exploration of semi-related issues has the unintended effect of condensing more directly-related incidents; the infamous Curragh Mutiny for example receives scant attention in Soldiers of the Short Grass. These digressions can also leave too little room for interrogation or analysis of the events that happened at the Curragh Camp itself.

This is the first book to attempt a history of both the British and Irish eras together and indeed the book blurb calls Soldiers of the Short Grass “the first complete history of the Curragh Camp”. While this is certainly a useful addition to the military history of Ireland, it’s not perhaps the final word on the history of the Curragh Camp.

By Thomas Earls Fitzgerald

Curiously, for all its republican heritage a conception has existed for some time of Kerry being inactive in the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence. Tom Barry would say that all Kerry did was to shoot a decent police inspector and his colleague at the Listowel races.[1]

Perhaps this conception comes from the cautious nature of some I.R.A. leaders in the county, together with an evident lack of unity among other Kerry I.R.A. leaders. Outside of Tralee few in Kerry No.1 Brigade got on with Brigade Commander Paddy Cahill. I.R.A. intelligence officer Tadhg Kennedy recalled that ‘Paddy was very difficult to get on with’ unless you became close to him.[2]

But having a prickly or difficult disposition was not the sole reserve of Paddy Cahill.  In the Civil war the Kerry No.1 Commander Humphrey Murphy did not get on with the Kerry No.2 Brigade Commander John Joe Rice,[3] John Joe Rice, O/C Kerry No.2, also recalled that disputes and disagreements were not the sole reserve of the leadership but occurred at lower levels within the I.R.A.’s structure in the County. He remembered that he had to spend ‘all my time tramping from one company to another fixing disputes and squabbles’.[4]

Andy Cooney, a representative from IRA G.H.Q assigned to Kerry wrote a report from 23^rd June 1921 on the state of the Kerry No.1 Brigade, he commented that ‘no systematic training’ took place, less than 10% of Volunteers knew how to use a rifle, no efforts were made to developing engineering or first aid, the intelligence service was  poor and communications between battalions was poor.[5]

Policing Kerry

In 1920 the I.R.A.’s main concern was in relation to policing. In 1919-20 as the R.I.C.’s power diminished and they abandoned more isolated barracks much of the country was left without a regular police force – in reaction to this much of Kerry experienced an increase in crime. In response the I.R.A. main activities related to policing – agrarian crime, the returning stolen goods and patrolling towns at night were the primary concerns of the Kerry I.R.A. in the spring and summer of 1920 together with implanting the decrees from the Dáil courts.

However, there were other less laudable dimensions to republican policing at this time in Kerry such as forcibly preventing emigration and restricting the movements of the Irish Travelling Community.

In the first half of 1920 the conflict was of a relatively low key nature in the county – military operations displayed a lack of bitterness.  In one memorable incident on 19^th August, a military party traveling between Tralee and Dingle, was ambushed just outside of Annascaul. Four troops received light wounds but the military party surrendered shortly after the shooting began. The nine other troops who had surrendered were given their tea in a nearby farmer’s house. They were then taken to Dingle where they were let go.[6]

In 1920 Kerry saw the development of guerrilla tactics, but also the consistent suppression of perceived civilian opponents. In fact, in 1920 the I.R.A., in Kerry, were more likely to attack  perceived civilian opponents than their armed opponents – usually business people or farmers who continued to trade with the Crown forces who would receive threatening letters or be named in public notices and occasionally beaten. In Kerry a number of young women had their hair cut off for being ‘friendly’ with members of the Crown forces. This occurred more frequently in Kerry than any other county.

Any men suspected of wanting to join the R.I.C. or British army were targeted together with the relative of members of the Crown forces and former members of the Crown forces. For instance, on 13^th July Andrew Quirke, an ex-soldier, was lured to Moyderwell Cross  in Tralee, where he was dragged by a number of men to Barrack Lane and told ‘You want to join the Police, but you won’t join them now’. Quirke was badly beaten and left unconscious.[7]

The arrival of the Black and Tans and reprisal warfare

The dynamics of the conflict were to change with the arrival of the Black and Tans in the county in July 1920. On arrival they began to engage in wholesale intimidation and violence against civilians without any provocation.

For instance, on 22^nd September, the Cork Examiner was reporting that the people of Tralee, ‘are being nightly subjected to ill-treatment at the hands of the English police stationed here. Their victims included those coming out of late Mass, and workers doing overtime.

The next night the same process was repeated. ‘A volley of shots rang out from some motor lorries passing through the crowded streets at nine o’clock. The people fled in terror shortly after a batch of these English police came out of the barracks’.. There was no apparent provocation for any of these incidents. The Cork Examiner noted that ‘Tralee has been singularly immune from any trouble recently and there is not the slightest pretext or justification for the provocative tactics of these police’. Dingle, Listowel, Cahirciveen and Kilorglin also fell victim to these unprovoked attacks.

In early November after the I.R.A.  co-ordinated series of attacks on the R.I.C.,   in response a series of reprisals began across Kerry, but perhaps most notably in Tralee in what was dubbed ‘the siege of Tralee’.

These first large scale reprisals, were in response to concerted I.R.A. actions. However, the reprisals were more aggressive, long drawn out and indiscriminate than the actions to which they were responding. Certainly the November reprisals can be regarded as a type of over-reaction. David Fitzpatrick has correctly written that ‘the reprisal(s) (were) always more vicious than the incident provoking it’. [8]

The Cork Examiner described the scene ‘hellish cries (by the Crown forces), ( who) kept up a fusillade of fire throughout the night’.[9] That evening John Conway, was shot on Upper Rock.  Conway was a 57 year old painter, with six children, was shot while returning from mass.[10] The County hall was burned together with the shop of Mr Thomas Clifford. Business was suspended in the town for a week.

On 3^rd November there were a number of burnings. The Cork Examiner reported ‘passing through the lane ways this morning, people – men, women and children- were fleeing taking with them mattresses, bed steads and everything they could conveniently remove to make shelter for themselves for the night’. [11] Many of the people whose property was burned were described as having connections to Sinn Féin, but it does not appear that any victims were senior members of the local I.R.A.

The Cork Examiner reported that on the Saturday Black and Tans were posted outside of bakeries ‘and at bayonet point sent famishing women and children from their doors’. One Black and Tan was heard to remark “You wanted us to starve, but we will starve you.’ Merchants in the town made two deputations to the Military who maintained that they were powerless to intervene with the civil authorities.[12]

This would suggest the British military in the town were not particularly exercised about the reprisal. They were involved in putting out fires on 3^rd November, but curiously the worst reprisals only occurred after the military patrols had withdrawn and they made no attempts to stop the Police leaving their barracks. If not actively involved the military were certainly willing to turn a blind eye.

There were also smaller and less long drawn out reprisals reported in Abbeydorney, Ballyduff, Kilorglin  and Dingle.

The next large scale reprisal was in February.  On Tuesday 22^nd after the shootings in Ballybunion and Ballylongford, major reprisals took place in both towns. On 5^th March The Manchester Guardian reported that exactly seventeen properties had burned in Ballylongford.

The paper named the following properties; John Collins’ licensed grocery stores and creamery, M Collins’ public house, E. Sullivan’s hardware store, M. Bambury’s drapery store, S. Barrett’s grocery store, J. Mccabe’s bakery, and the private houses of Edward Brandon, (ex-policeman) John Farrell and a Mr Heaphy, John Moran, Mrs Kennelly’s house together with ‘several labourer’s houses’ that were also burned.[13]

Curiously, none of the victims, of the north Kerry reprisals of early 1921, are described, in the available documentation, as having any connection with Sinn Féin or the I.R.A. , it seems to have affected all strands of people. Essentially anyone could be caught up in Crown forces’ reprisals.

Flying columns

If it was calculated to terrorise the population away from supporting the republicans and to cow the guerrillas, in many respects the reprisal policy had the opposite of the desired effect. I.R.A. men  fearing for their lives and property left their homes and went into the hills to become full time guerrillas.

Indeed, it was only after the large scale reprisals in November that professional I.R.A. flying Columns formed. It can be argued that the reprisals acted as a major incentive and made the Kerry I.R.A. being more willing to kill.

On 21^st March Headford junction in south Kerry, came the largest military confrontation of the entire conflict, not only in County Kerry but quite possibly in the entire country. At 3.50 in the afternoon thirty 1^st Royal Fusiliers coming from Kenmare, were about to disembark at Headford, to continue their journey on to Killarney in a train expected from Mallow.

The Kerry No.2 Column under Dan Allman and Thomas McEllistrum had taken up ambush positions in the station and opened fire. Eight regular British troops were killed, and eleven wounded. Two I.R.A. men Allman and Jim Bailey and two civilians were killed in the crossfire. John Breen, a cattle dealer from Killarney, was found dead in the station’s waiting room, Patrick O’Donoghue, also a cattle dealer from Killarney, was shot in the train and died of his wounds. Another man Timothy McCarthy, a merchant from Loo Bridge, was shot in the foot.

His three year old daughter was also wounded.[14] The early arrival of a second train from Mallow, with another party of military, caused the I.R.A. flying column to withdraw in good order. Andy Cooney that ‘ I had considerable difficulty in convincing the Chief of Staff ( Richard Mulcahy) that it was this (South Kerry) flying column and not a Cork one’ which had carried out the ambush.[15]

In early June the Kerry No.1 Column had its most noticeable success, just outside of Castlemaine. On 1^st June 1921 an R.I.C. cycle patrol from Kilorglin was ambushed at Glanmere, near Castlemaine. District Inspector McGaughey, Sergeant Collery and Constables Quirke and Cooney were shot dead. Three other constables were wounded. [16] The fighting lasted about half an hour. Four other R.I.C. constables managed ‘by running’ to get back to Kilorglin. The I.R.A party succeeded in capturing all their opponents’ bicycles as well as the arms and ammunition from the dead and wounded.[17]

The Kerry No.2’s next major operation was in Rathmore in east Kerry. The planning and execution of this ambush remain disputed as both Cooney and the captain of the Rathmore Volunteers Manus Moynihan claimed credit for it.

The results are not disputed though. On 4^th May nine R.I.C. men were effectively lured to the Bog Road, just outside of Rathmore, where an I.R.A. party led by Humphry Murphy, Andy Cooney, Manus Moynihan and Séan Moylan and the north Cork Flying Column ambushed them. Five were killed and three others died of their wounds. The I.R.A. party succeeded in taking all their arms and ammunition. [18]

The R.I.C. described the ambush as ‘a particularly brutal crime’ as the body of a murdered ‘informer’ had been used as ‘bait ‘to get the R.I.C. to visit the scene. Only one constable managed to escape.[19] The Bog Road ambush was  the most successful ambush in the 1919-21 conflict in Kerry.

The use of the informer (which will be discussed below), however, seems to have muddied the waters as the ambush is not included in the, otherwise comprehensive, Kerry’s fighting story 1916-1921. The exclusion frustrated Cooney who, rightfully, described it as ‘in many ways quite the most successful (ambush) in the County during this particular period’.[20]

In contrast the British Army 6^th Divisional records report felt the ambush was ‘the lowest point of treacherous savagery to which the rebels ever descended’.[21]

The police noted ‘a particular brutal crime was committed near Rathmore on the 3rd/4^th May a harmless ballad singer over 70 years of age was murdered to bait a trap for the police’.[22] On the 6^th May the Cork Examiner reported that the man was named Michael O’Sullivan who was a street singer and an ex-soldier.[23]

Informers

The actual intimidation of civilians by the I.R.A. that was very commonplace in 1920 was not as common in 1921, but by 1921 the I.R.A. were more willing to use lethal action against civilians they believed were opposing them or speaking to Crown forces.

Nine civilians were killed by the I.R.A. in Kerry.  In Tralee the I.R.A had a tight intelligence system and of the three informers killed in the town, most I.R.A. men remembered the circumstances and reasoning behind each killing in a similar fashion. For the more rural units there was a less developed an intelligence system and a whole series of conflicting narratives emerge in regard to the circumstances around these killings.

Manus Moynihan, who was captain of the Rathmore Company of the I.R.A., told the Bureau of Military History that a Fred Crowley, whose brother Eddie was in the I.R.A., had recently been arrested by the Black and Tans in Killarney. ‘On being released he told us that he saw an old man coming in and out to the Tans. He had recognised him as Thomas O’Sullivan, a travelling man. Thomas O’Sullivan was known as ‘old Tom’. I don’t know where old Tom came from.’

According to Moynihan O’Sullivan was picked up by the I.R.A. just across from Rathmore, in north Cork, and at the same time two British army deserters were picked up near Rathmore. ‘They ( the deserters)  were brought to the place where old Tom was being held. Old Tom was questioned but he would give no information. But the two deserters when brought face to face with old Tom identified him as a man who was brought in and out to the Tans’.

Moynihan then arranged for a trial of Old Tom, two weeks later, that was presided over by Humphry Murphy O/C Kerry No.2, Dennis Reen O/C Rathmore Battalion and Jerome O’Riordan O/C Kerry No.3

After hearing evidence of Eddie Crowley and the two deserters the court found Old Tom guilty and he was sentenced to be shot. The prisoner was left in my custody and I was given discretion as to where and when he was to be shot. After thinking things over I decided that when I executed Old Tom I would use his body as bait in an attempt to draw some of the police out of Rathmore barracks… On the night of 3^rd May 1921 I sent one of my men…to the presbytery in Rathmore for a priest to give Old Tom spiritual consolation.

The next day Old Tom’s body was laid out on display, labelled a spy, on the Bog Road outside Rathmore. According to Moynihan the two deserters were eventually sent on to the Barraduff Company, where they were executed. Moynihan did not know why they were executed.[24] Denis Prendville, who was in Thomas McEllistirm’s Column that was then operating in the Kerry No.2 area also said that the idea to use O’Sullivan’s body as bait was Moynihan’s idea.[25]

Curiously I.R.A. organiser in the County Andy Cooney recalled a different series of events leading to O’Sullivan’s execution. Cooney, told Ernie O’Malley, that when he and Humphry Murphy were passing though the Rathmore area, after a meeting of the 1^st Southern Division, the local I.R.A informed them that they had three prisoners; two British Army deserters and a tramp.

The deserters said

They could give information about a spy in Killarney who used to come to bottom of the garden in the International Hotel.

‘How could we believe that’ we asked ‘or how could they prove it’?

We’ll recognise this man anywhere by his voice’ they said ‘and he’s a tramp’.

Cooney then related how the two British deserters were brought into a room and kept under a blanket. Then he and Murphy questioned three men not including O’Sullvian. The deserters said none of the three was the man in question. Then when Cooney and Murphy interviewed O’Sullivan they said he was the man they were looking for.

Cooney said O’Sullivan was ‘a local tramp…he was tried and sentenced to death’. Cooney then said he came up with the idea to use O’Sullivan’s body as bait. Cooney apparently shared the idea with Murphy and the two, together with Denis Reen, planned the Rathmore ambush.[26]

Curiously Cooney is not mentioned in Moynihan’s account, and Moynihan is not mentioned in Cooney’s account.  John Jones, from the north Cork Flying Column, in a different story again, said the Rathmore ambush was planned by the O/C of the Rathmore Battalion – not the company captian –  and nine men from the north Cork Flying Column.[27]

Regardless of who was responsible for the idea, O’Sullivan also becomes a bystander and of whether he was an informer or not the use of his body as ‘bait’ reveals that the I.R.A. were capable of a startling ruthlessness.

For instance, on 14^th June 1921 the R.I.C. reported that the dead body of James Keane, a fishery inspector, was found near Listowel, with a label attached to him declaring he was a ‘convicted spy’.[28]

North Kerry I.R.A. officer and Flying Column member Denis Quille would later tell Ernie O’Malley that when General Cummins was killed in the Clonbanin ambush in March 1921, a document was found on him signed by Keane giving the names of those involved in the shooting of D.I Tobias O’Sullivan, in Listowel, in January.[29] Thomas Pelican, of Listowel, also maintained the story about a document being captured at Clonbanin.[30]

The Clonbanin ambush 5^th March, on the Killarney – Mallow road, was a joint venture of Sean Moylan’s Flying Column and the Kerry No.2 Column. The I.R.A attacked two Lorries containing regular British Army troops, the fight lasted well over an hour and resulted in the death of General Cummins.

However, the I.R.A. unable to deal with the fire power of a machine gun in one of the Lorries had to withdraw. In all the testimony by those involved in the ambush, no one recalled taking a document from Cummins.[31] Indeed, how could a document have been taken when the British retained the field and got nowhere near his body?

By the time of the Truce, on July 11, 1921, according to Eunan O’Halpin’s figures in Terror in Ireland (2012), 136 people had lost their lives in County Kerry to political violence. Initially, the Kerry I.R.A. was defined by poor organisation, too cautious a leadership and divided loyalties. However, all of this was to change as Kerry I.R.A. units became the most aggressive, in the whole country, during the Civil war.

By 1923 the 1^st Southern Division considered Kerry No.2 to be ‘the best brigade in the division’.[32] Liam Lynch, civil war chief of staff, reflected that ‘Kerry has given a lead to the division, and indeed the whole of Ireland’.[33]

Thomas Earls Fitzgerald is PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin and is a recipient of a grant from the Irish Research Grant Council.

References

[1] Michael Hopkinson, ‘Barry, Thomas Bernadine’, Dictionary of Irish biography, James Maguire and James Quinn (eds), (Cambridge, 2009).

[2] Tadhg Kennedy, B.M.H., W.S., 1413.

[3] Kerry Command, General Weekly report, 1^st May 1923, MA/CW/OPS/08/08.

[4] Charles Townshend, The Republic. The fight for Irish independence 1918-1923 (London, 2013), p. 295.

[5] Developing officers’ report on Kerry No.1 Brigade, 23^rd June 1921, P7/A/20.

[6] Cork Examiner, 20^th August 1920.

[7] The Kerryman, 2^nd October 1920.

[8] David Fitzpatrick, ‘Ireland since 1870’ in R.F. Foster (ed) The Oxford illustrated history of Ireland (Oxford, 1989), p.250.

[9] Cork Examiner, 2^nd November 1920.

[10] Ibid, 3^rd November 1920.

[11] Cork Examiner, 5^th November 1920.

[12] Ibid, 8^th November 1920.

[13] The Manchester Guardian, 5^th March 1921 and Ibid, 14^th April 1921.

[14] The Kerryman, 26^th March 1921. See also Tim Horgan, Dying for the cause, Kerry’s republican dead (Cork, 2015) , pp. 237-239, 281-283

[15] Michael MacEvilly, A splendid resistance. The life of IRA Chief of Staff Dr. Andy Cooney (Dublin, 2011), p.42.

[16] Weekly Summary, Week ended 29^th May – 5^th June 1921, CO 904/150

[17] Cork Examiner, 3^rd June 1921.

[18]  Ibid, p.44.

[19] I.G., M.R., May 1921, CO 904/115.

[20] MacEvilly, A splendid resistance, p.45.

[21]The Irish rebellion in the 6^th Divisional area after the 1916 Rebellion to December 1921 compiled by the General Staff of the Division, p. 104,  Strickland papers, Box P.363, Imperial War Museum.

[22]I.G., M.R., May 1921, CO 904/115.

[23] Cork Examiner, 6^th May 1921.

[24] Manus Moynihan, B.M.H., W.S., 1066.

[25] Denis Prendville, B.M.H., W.S., 1106.

[26] O’Malley, The men will talk to me. The Kerry interviews, pp. 173-174

[27] John Jones, B.M.H., W.S., 759.

[28] I.G., M.R., June 1921, CO 904/115.

[29] Ernie O’Malley, The men will talk to me. The Kerry interviews, Cormac O’Malley and Tim Horgan (eds), (Cork, 2012), p.44.

[30] Thomas Pelican, B.M.H., W.S., 1109.

[31] Thomas McEllistrim, B.M.H., W.S, 828, Sean Moylan, B.M.H., W.S., 838, Denis Prendville, B.M.H., W.S., 1066, Thomas Culhane, B.M.H. W.S., 838, Daniel Coakley, B.M.H., W.S.,1406, Cornelius Meany, B.M.H., W.S., 787.

[32] O/C 1^st Southern Division to C/S, N/D 1923, P69/25.

[33] C.S. to O/C 1^st Southern Division, 17^th September 1922, P69/25.

Patricia Byrne on Lady Jane Franklin’s visit to Achill and the controversial Protestant mission there. See also her article on Edward Nangle’s Protestant mission and the role of women missionaries on Achill.

 Passion for Travel

Travel was Jane Franklin’s abiding passion. Her biographer, Alison Alexander, has described her as probably ‘the most travelled woman of her time’ who made long, adventurous trips to every continent except Antarctica, managing in the process to negotiate the restrictions placed on women of the period.[1]

Following her marriage to the explorer, Sir John Franklin, and his subsequent disappearance on an Arctic expedition, she became one of the most famous Victorian women of her generation.

Alongside her fierce appetite for travel, Jane had a compelling need to write things down and record every experience with acute powers of observation. She did not publish any books but left behind voluminous notebooks, journals and diaries[2].

She had a reticence about her writings being made public and wrote in an early journal: ‘This book is meant for my own reading only, though I would not absolutely deny my sisters from looking into it should it fall into their hands when they can no longer ask my permission. I may say the same of all my private journal books.’[3]

Jane was born in London in 1875, the second of there daughters of silk-weaver John Griffin and his wife who died in childbirth when Jane was just four years old. Her only brother died at fourteen of lung disease. From a young age she was taking long summer trips through Britain, whetting her appetite for exploration and adventure, and by 1815 they were on an extensive two-year tour of Europe.

The turning point of Jane’s life was her 1828 marriage to John Franklin, just months before his knighthood in recognition of his Artic explorations. From this time onwards, Lady Franklin combined her thirst for travel and adventure with another consuming goal: to advance the career and reputation of her explorer husband.

When Jane arrived in Ireland in 1835, she was seven years into the marriage and restless. In contrast to her middle-aged, stout, balding husband, she was slim, graceful and elegant, her warm face framed by soft curly hair, and full of vibrant energy even if in her early forties. In the previous three years she and John had spent much time apart while he served in the Mediterranean and she travelled extensively in the region.

Controversially, the previous year she had spent several months travelling alone on the Nile with a Prussian missionary, Johann Lieder, leading to innuendos of a romantic affair. When she returned to England in October 1834, she had not seen John for over a year, and was ill on and off for months, perhaps pining for her exotic Nile companion. A trip to Ireland may have been a welcome diversion.

‘Like another Luther is Mr Nangle in Achill’

It was an extraordinary sight that Jane Franklin encountered on the slopes of Slievemore on the northern coast of Achill Island: five two-storey slated houses – something never seen on the island before; ten acres of reclaimed land producing potatoes and vegetables; eight cabins under construction to house converts in what was the infant Achill Mission settlement.

Jane got to see the Mission development up close in its earliest days, just a year after Edward Nangle – together with his wife Eliza, sister-in-law Grace Warner, and three small daughters – settled at Dugort to spearhead the proselytising mission.[4] The Achill Mission grow into a notorious and controversial project.

Before reaching Achill, the Franklins had received a favourable report about the work of Edward Nangle’s mission from an unlikely source: Father Lyons, Roman Catholic Dean of Killala, County Mayo, told them: ’He is an excellent man and he is doing a great deal of good to the poor people of Achill.’[5] The difficult journey to the island would likely have excited the adventurous Jane: ‘At Ballycroy we were detained four days by a hurricane, living all this time in the coastguard watch-house and the cottage of the chief boatman.

At the end of this time, Mr Nugent took us over in his galley to the Bull’s Mouth Station…’ . [6] Despite her reticence about allowing her writings to be made public, she reluctantly agreed to allow her friend, John Barrow – clerk at the Admiralty – to include her account as an Appendix to his book, A tour round Ireland through the sea-coast counties in the autumn of 1835. Barrow had toured Ireland extensively that autumn but did not visit Achill.  Jane had a strict stipulation, however: ‘I cannot comply with your wish to mention my name.’

A low-church, ‘no-frills Protestant’, Jane was instinctively supportive of Edward Nangle’s daring Achill Mission project and what she perceived as ‘the resistance it opposes to a spiritual tyranny’ of the Catholic Church.

In her view, Catholicism and its priests were a powerful barrier to the improvement of the conditions of the Irish. Edward Nangle appeared to her an awesome figure: ‘very tall and thin, pale and dark with finely-formed features’, mild and pensive but with an extraordinary fire in his eyes. ‘I have seen many missionaries in many countries, but never any one so devoted, so pure and high-minded as Mr Nangle.’ [7]

The visitors dined on potatoes and several vegetables from the kitchen garden at the Nangle table, observing that the single decanter of wine disappeared quickly with the table cloth at the end of the meal. Jane could see what a harsh year it had been for Eliza Nangle. Her first son – the child she had carried through a difficult Achill winter – had died two days after birth in April and Edward had buried the infant with his own hands in the small enclosed cemetery behind their home on the mountain slopes.

Jane Franklin must have felt the fierce tension in the island air for the visitors arrived just days after the Dr John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam and a fierce adversary of Edward Nangle, paid a provocative three-day visit to the island. Robed in splendid episcopal robes, he officiated at a high mass in nearby Dookinella, trenchantly denounced the Achill Mission and forbade the people to have any interaction with the missionaries. Soon after, the Connaught Telegraph excitedly predicted that ‘in six months more, within the tenantless walls of the colony, will be heard only the shrill whistle of the whirl-wind, or the night-screech of the owl’. [8]

How could Achill have exploded with such sectarian rage so soon after the establishment of the Achill Mission colony? Within months of Edward Nangle arriving on the island, four Mission schools had been established at Slievemore, Dugort, Cashel and Keel. Education, to Edward Nangle was the key to conversion. It would open the scriptures to an illiterate peasantry steeped in Catholic superstition. It was the schools which gave rise to the fierce reaction from Dr MacHale and his clergy. The schools became the battle ground.

An education scheme that has failed in its object

Jane Franklin believed in personal improvement and in the power of education. Four years earlier, the Stanley Letter had authorised the establishment in Ireland of a non-denominational system of national education, with official financial support, that would be open and acceptable to the main religious denominations in Ireland.[9]

Both Edward Nangle and John MacHale initially vociferously opposed the national system, arguing that secular and religious education were inseparable. However, once several Achill Mission schools were established, the pragmatic MacHale saw an opportunity to secure national education funding to establish opposing island schools under the influence of the local clergy.

Jane was unimpressed. It appeared, she wrote, perverse and illiberal that a scheme from which so much had been expected, ‘had failed in its object’, and appeared to have ‘widened the separation between the Catholic and Protestant population’.  Was it for such entities as the MacHale schools in Achill that the scheme was established?

There was a danger, she warned, that the national scheme was being subverted to grow the ascendancy of the Catholic Church in Ireland. She drew on Edward Nangle’s statement to the House of Lord’s Select Committee for an account of the backlash against the Achill Mission schools over the previous winter and spring.[10]

When Edward Nangle published the proceedings of the Select Committee in relation to Achill, he penned an Introduction which made clear his view as to the central importance of a particular type of education to the Achill Mission’s work: ‘We say, let education – Scriptural Education – go forward. Let a determined and sustained protest be kept up against the National System which … permits the priest to deprive the youth of Ireland of the only means of their enlightenment.’

Writing over three decades later he was still adamant in his negative assessment of the National Board and its role as one of the agencies ‘whose influence was employed to crush the Achill Mission in its infancy’.[11]

The Select Committee heard other evidence which indicated the depth of sectarian bitterness raging in Achill. The island parish priest, Father Connolly, complained that the Achill Mission preachers had gone about the island bribing the people with clothes and money and exhibiting pictures ‘representing a mouse gnawing the sacrament of the Eucharist’. Edward Nangle’s own controversial statements concerning the Catholic worship of the Eucharist caused Jane Franklin to express her reservations about an overzealousness in the Mission’s approach.  

She observed Edward Nangle preaching twice a day, railing against Popery and its priests, and holding up to ridicule the doctrine of the wafer: ‘the converting of a bit of paste, boiled in their own saucepan, and clipped with a pair of scissors’ into their Creator. She reasoned with Edward Nangle about the propriety of the approach of ridiculing objects and doctrines sacred to the people: ‘The mysteries of religion are not fit or fair subjects for derision.’

Jane Franklin was between two minds. On the one hand, she saw the potential of the Achill Mission to improve the lot of the island people and break what she saw as the tyranny of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, she feared that Nangle’s fearlessness and singlemindedness of character were, perhaps, proving injurious to his cause. She regretted that ‘any weapon sharper than the voice of persuasive reasoning, and any language less tender than the daily prayer’ should be used by the missionaries. Her reservations would be echoed by other Achill visitors and commentators in subsequent years, particularly in the following decade when famine descended on the country.

One of the best known Victorian Women of her day

Jane was determined to explore the island before she departed Achill for she was used to exploring, hiking, observing and, always, note taking. She took to the mountains on horseback, crossing the width of Slievemore behind the Achill Mission settlement, and also traversing the magnificent Minaun on the island’s south coast. While disappointed not to find an Achill amethyst stone worth taking away, she appreciated the superior quality of Achill mutton grazed on Atlantic-splashed heather.

While playing down her knowledge of the island plants, she nonetheless noted ’the miniature fern, the abundant thrift and London-pride, and the pretty little tormentilla, of which the peasants made a yellow dye for their shoe-skins’. She spied an eagle, watched foxes, saw rabbits swarm on Dugort sand dunes and fowl in abundance on Slievemore’s slopes. She observed seals basking on exposed rocks at Achill Sound, then sliding into the water ‘like the crocodile of the Nile’.

Within a year of their Irish visit, the Franklins boarded the ship Fairlie with a party of 23 en route to Tasmania, Van Dieman’s Land, where Sir John took up the post of lieutenant-general and where Jane Franklin swept energitically through the colony. She toured the island and took a proactive interest in promoting the social and cultural life of the young settlement. Six years later, at the end of the posting, Sir John obtained command of a naval expedition to find the Northwest Passage. When he failed to return, Jane embarked on a single-minded endeavour to locate him and to defend his reputation, becoming one of the best known Victorian women of her day.

Once she succeeded in her ambition to make her husband a hero, Jane Franklin returned to travel and adventure, accompanied by her niece and secretary-companion, Sophia Cracroft. They travelled extensively in North America, in Japan and – when Jane was almost eighty – in India and Alaska, driven by Jane’s desire to see all parts of the habitable globe. A fortnight after her death in 1875, a monument to her husband was unveiled in Westminster Abbey with the added inscription, ‘erected by Jane, his widow, who, after long waiting, and sending many in search of him, herself departed, to seek and to find him in the realms of light’.[12]

Jane Franklin, hugely energetic traveller,  explorer, writer, and visitor to Achill Island, was born 225 years ago on 4 December, 1791 and died 18 July 1875.

Bio

Patricia Byrne is a Limerick writer. Her narrative nonfiction book The Veiled Woman of Achill – Island Outrage & A Playboy Drama is published by The Collins Press and deals with the 1894 Valley House atrocity on Achill Island. She is currently working on a book about the Achill Mission.

References

[1] Alison Alexander, The Ambitions of Jane Franklin. pviii.

[2] Most of Jane Franklin’s surviving papers are held at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.

[3] W F Rawnsley (ed.), The Life, Diaries and Correspondence of Jane Lady Franklin 1792-1875. p48.

[4] For an overview of the Achill Mission, see Mealla Nī Ghiobūin, Dugort, Achill Island 1831-1861: The Rise and fall of a Missionary Community (Dublin, 2001).

[5] Henry Seddall, Edward Nangle, The Apostle of Achill – A Memoir and a History 1884. p76.

[6] John Barrow, A tour round Ireland through the sea-coast counties in the autumn of 1835. p 209.

[7] Ibid. p212.

[8] The Telegraph, 16 September 1835.

[9] For an overview of the Stanley scheme, see Garret Fitzgerald, Irish Primary Education in early nineteenth century (Dublin, 2013).

[10] Edward Nangle, The Origin, Progress and Difficulties of the Achill Mission: As Detailed in the minutes of evidence taken before the select committee of the House of Lords appointed to enquire into the progress and operation of the new plan of education in Ireland, and to report thereupon to the House.

[11] Achill Missionary Herald, January 1865.

[12] Alison Alexander, The Ambitions of Jane Franklin. p252.

By Seán Hartnett

Published by Merrion Press, 2016

Reviewer: Daniel Murray

Special ops memoirs can be a crapshoot in terms of which ones to take seriously. For every genuine case like Andy McNab on the shelves, there are fakers and fantasists like Philip Anthony Sessarego, taking up space. That the UK Ministry of Defence asked the publishers Merrion Press to halt the distribution of this book over the sensitive material inside would suggest its author, Seán Hartnett, is the real deal.

Certainly there is enough here to argue that the term ‘Peace Process’, while not a misnomer, does not entirely cover the whole picture. With the danger of terrorism in Northern Ireland subdued but ever present, the British Government invested, and clearly continues to do so, a considerable amount of resources, both technological and human, such as the covert Joint Communications Unit Northern Ireland (JCU-NI), also known as ‘the Det.’

The unit’s emblem is Argus, the hundred-eyed monster of classical myth, and in case we ever doubt the appropriateness of that choice of symbol, Hartnett gives us a sample of his working day that would not be out of place in a Jason Bourne movie:

Sitting in front of a vast wall of TV monitors in the operations room, fed by signals from this powerful network, the operations officer (Opso) could track a vehicle or individual in real time from any point in the city to any other point, or manoeuvre his operators like chess pieces around the city, and indeed all the way down to the so-called ‘bandit country’ of South Armagh and Tyrone. As they dropped out on one camera they would be picked up by another, or by an operator, all the whole oblivious to the level of surveillance they were under.

After a stint in the regular British Army, Hartnett was retrained as an electronics expert and assigned to ‘North Det’, responsible for covering the Republican hotbed of Derry. Given responsibility for the myriad of hidden cameras keeping watch over suspects and designated areas, his was unusual work compared to what he had done before as a common squaddie.

But then, Hartnett was an unusual agent for Queen and Country in the first place, being a Cork native with republican connections of his own. An uncomfortable moment for him was seeing on the HQ walls framed photographs and newspaper clippings of the SAS ambush on a PIRA squad at Loughgall in 1987 in which a cousin of an aunt of his had been killed.

Hartnett later learned some of the inside details of Loughgall from an older colleague over the course of a few drinks. Ruminations on past events are interspersed with counter-terrorism work in the present day, suggesting that while much has changed over the years, many of the underlying causes have not.

For all the technological sophistication JCU-NI had at its disposal, Hartnett makes it clear that Murphy’s Law of ‘what can go wrong will go wrong’ was never far away. That North Det did not officially exist on paper could be a problem as well as a necessity, such as when JCU-NI assisted in the PSNI arrest of four men on their way to attack a police patrol with a rocket launcher. The detainees were to be acquitted of the charges of Real IRA membership and conspiracy to murder partly due to the unexplained references, in the course of the trial, to military personnel that had not been included in the PSNI arrest notes.

JCU-NI could at least claim a win in that instance in the saving of lives. But, in August 2002, the team operatives were faced with the dilemma of whether to continue pursuing their latest ‘Charlie One’ (the codename for whoever was their current quarry, with ‘Charlie Two’ and onwards added as appropriate) or the second car that some of the other ‘dissident’ Republicans he had been travelling with had switched to and were driving in a different direction.

The officer-in-charge went with his gut feeling and made the call to continue focusing on their ‘Charlie One.’ After a seemingly uneventful day of yet more surveillance, the team learnt that a civilian construction worker, David Caldwell, had been killed by a booby-trapped lunchbox. The explosives had originated from the second car that JCU-NI had opted not to follow.

“Until now, no one had any knowledge of North Det’s involvement in the incident,” Hartnett concludes sombrely. “David Caldwell’s daughter, Gillian McFaul, has been looking for answers ever since that day. I hope this provides some.”

However, the book offers more questions than answers. In keeping with the clandestine nature of espionage, where little can be said, only exposed (the efforts of the Ministry of Defence towards this book being a case in point), the work of North Det often appears more defined by its failures rather than successes.

Or maybe Hartnett is simply jaded. Upon discharge from the British Army, Hartnett was diagnosed with PTSD, and wrote this book as a form of therapy. It is an easy read, although, given the subject matter, not always easy to read. It is also, unfortunately, a very relevant read.

Shortly before James Brophy was killed in Dublin during Ireland’s War of Independence, an Irish immigrant of the same name disappeared from his family in New York City. The coincidence offers a glimpse of early 20th century Irish lives on both sides of the Atlantic, when handwritten letters crossed at sea, and personal identification was more vague than today.

By MARK HOLAN

 About half seven in the evening of 12 February 1921, a British Army lorry packed with soldiers and accompanied by two armoured cars and a tender rumbled north from the Dun Laoghaire waterfront. The vehicles motored swiftly through Monkstown, Blackrock and Booterstown. Suddenly, near the Merrion Gates, 10 IRA men ambushed the convoy.^[1]

There were “three terrific explosions resembling bomb detonations,” the Irish Independent reported, followed by “heavy firing” from both sides. The skirmish ended in less than five minutes without any combatant casualties. There were two civilian fatalities: John J. Healy of Blackrock, and James Brophy of Merrion.^[2]

Healy was a dairy proprietor, insurance agent and former member of the Blackrock Council. He got caught in the crossfire near the Elm Park and fell dead on the footpath. Brophy worked as a fitter or watchman for the Dublin United Tramway Company. A stray bullet penetrated his home at 244 Langford Terrace, Merrion Road, while he was lying in bed.

Though both men lived in south Dublin, it is impossible to know whether they ever met. Two months after being shot, however, Healy and Brophy were entered on consecutive lines of the civil death register.^[3] The cause of death for each was given as “shock and haemorrhage following gunshot wounds,” and the euphemism “misadventure,” which hardly connected their sudden passing to the war.

War-related civilian deaths in Ireland during the 1919-1921 fight for independence are tricky to catalogue. According to the figures of the Dead of the Irish Revolution project, published in Terror in Ireland, at least 898 civilians lost their lives, the majority in the first six months of 1921. Those figures probably miss fright-induced heart attacks and other indirect deaths in the war zones.

About 240 civilians, like Healy and Brophy were killed in the crossfire of armed engagements, with the responsibility difficult to attribute definitely to either side.[4]

Healy is among some 200 civilian casualties detailed by the website www.irishmedals.org, including 25 victims in February 1921. Brophy is not on the list. Their deaths, like the skirmish itself, did not influence the arc of Ireland’s struggle for independence. As it turned out, however, Brophy’s death created a ripple across the Atlantic, one that shows how the waves of war wash over ordinary lives.

James Brophy, New York

In February 1921, wire service accounts of the IRA ambush at Merrion Gates appeared in numerous American newspapers, with Healy and Brophy identified as victims.^[5] The story would have been widely read by Irish immigrants following the war back home. It particularly caught the attention of one living in a New York City tenement: Anna Brophy.

Anna married James Brophy around 1886, when each was about 25, six years after they emigrated from Ireland.^[6] They were among more than 80,000 Irish who sailed to America in 1880, up from 30,000 in 1879 as the Land War began.^[7] Other records date their crossing between 1879 and 1883, still within that period of agrarian unrest known as the ‘Land War’. The couple settled in Newport City, Rhode Island, and produced 10 children, nine who survived to later years. James Brophy worked as a blacksmith.^[8]

By 1910, the family relocated to Governor’s Island, New York, a small military base at the confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers at the tip of Manhattan.^[9] James continued working as a blacksmith, now employed by the U.S. government. His sons Patrick, 21, and John, 20, also were employed at the military base, as a gardener and plumber, respectively.

It was noisy and dusty as U.S. government engineers supervised the deposit of more than 4.7 million cubic yards of rock and dirt from the Lexington Avenue subway excavation and New York Harbor dredge to expand Governor’s Island.

The work had begun eight years earlier, and by 1912 the size of island more than doubled to 172 acres. When America entered the Great War in 1917, the new acreage quickly filled with hastily erected warehouses as the base became a major troop embarkation and shipping point for the war.^[10]

James Brophy disappeared from his family about this time. Perhaps he went back to Rhode Island. Maybe he stowed away aboard a war-bound ship. In June 1917, his sons John and Joseph each registered for the U.S. military with a home address of 352 W. 52^nd St. in New York’s notorious Hell’s Kitchen.^[11]

Next to the registration question of whether a parent, spouse, sibling or child was “solely dependent on you for support,” Joseph wrote, “Mother.” He repeated the reference to Anna on another line to ask for a draft exemption. His brother answered “No” to both questions.

Over the next few years Anna Brophy headed the household at 352 W. 52nd St., joined by several of her children, but not her husband. She still considered herself a married woman, not a widow.^{[12] [13]}

More than 30 other people occupied the eight-story brick and stone loft building, including other Irish immigrants and people from Scotland, England and Germany, as well as American-born residents from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maine and Rhode Island.^[14]

James Brophy, Dublin

On 6 June 1921, Anna Brophy sent a handwritten letter from this address to the Dublin office of the U.S. Consulate in Ireland.^[15] She asked for “any information” about the death of James Brophy “who was supposed to be killed while in bed in Dublin.”

Anna wrote that she learned of it from a Newport, Rhode Island, newspaper story. Today, a black and white photo of a middle-aged man with a thick moustache, presumably James Brophy, is attached to her letter, which is held with all the consulates’ correspondence and other paperwork at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, on the eastern edge of Washington, D.C.

From the late 18th century, the U.S. government maintained consulates in Belfast, Cork, Dublin and Derry, and periodically operated smaller offices in Athlone, Ballymena, Galway, Limerick, Newry, Waterford and Wexford. Much of the work was commercially focused, but the diplomats also were involved in the major political and social issues of the day, including the Irish Famine, the American Civil War and ongoing waves of immigration.^[16]

Consulate officials also handled more routine matters, including notes and letters from America asking about missing people and the dead; for emergency passport applications; and inquiries about estates and pensions.

F.T.F. Dumont, the American consul, promptly sent a typed reply to Anna that he referred her request to the Dublin Metropolitan Police. The same day, he wrote to Lt. Col. W. Edgeworth Johnstone, the DMP’s chief commissioner, asking for details about Brophy’s death. Dumont sent a second letter a month later when Johnstone’s office apparently failed to answer the initial outreach.

On 25 July 1921, the DMP replied to Dumont that about 7:40 p.m. on 12 February “as a party of military were motoring along Merrion Road in the vicinity of the residence of James Brophy, they were ambushed by Sinn Feiners, who threw bombs and fired a number of shots at them, at which they replied with their rifles. While this was going on a bullet passed through Mr. Brophy’s bedroom window wounding him in the breast as he lay in bed.”

Dumont mailed a copy of the DMP report to Anna in New York. She focused on the report’s mention of Brophy’s widow and her Dublin address. Within days, Anna wrote to the woman in Ireland, according to her 5 October 1921 letter to the consulate.

“As yet have not received an answer from her,” the New York Mrs. Brophy wrote of the Dublin Mrs. Brophy. Anna added she was “quite sure” that the Merrion victim “is my husband and that he had been living with her as man and wife.” She also acknowledged that she deceived the other woman by writing “under one of my daughter’s name saying I was his sister, thinking if I done that she would write quicker than if I said I was his wife.”

An insurance policy on James Brophy’s life motivated Anna. “I can’t afford to keep paying for it,” she explained to the consulate, if her husband died in the Irish war. Her letter said she included a photo of James Brophy and suggested “maybe it would help you if you were to take it to his supposed widow” or to the hospital where he died. “Perhaps they found citizen papers and also government papers as he was a post blacksmith and horseshoer.”

James Brophy’s one-time employment with the U.S. government may have helped Anna obtain the policy. Life insurance sales began to soar in this period, fueled by the booming economy and rise of personal income. The sales also reflected the changing demographics of America’s growing urbanization, increased life expectancy and decreased reliance on extended family as a source of income and support.^[17]

Anna’s concern about the policy was sufficient for the consulate’s office to send a second letter to the DMP, which asked for more information about the man killed in bed. On 8 November 1921, the DMP replied that the victim was a native of Killadooley, Ballybrophy, Queen’s County (Laois), “the son of a small farmer there.” (The county had the heaviest concentration of the Brophy surname in mid-19th century Ireland.^[18])

James Brophy moved to Dublin about 1896 and was employed by Messrs. Adam Miller & Co. Wine Merchants, Thomas Street, the DMP wrote. He later worked at the Blind Asylum, Merrion, and for the Dublin United Tramway Company. “He was never a horse-shoer or blacksmith,” Dublin police said.

At least 20 men named James Brophy lived in County Dublin in the early 20th century.^[19] Six of them were near an age to make them possibilities for the man killed in the 1921 ambush. The DMP letter enclosed a marriage record showing that on 29 May 1918, James Brophy, “labourer,” and the former Sarah Moloney, “spinster,” married at the Catholic church in Booterstown. The couple soon had a son.

On the evening of 12 February 1921, James Brophy retired to bed 30 minutes before the explosions, cradling the toddler in his arms to comfort the boy to sleep.^[20] Sarah Brophy later said she thought the burst was the backfire of a car. As she was about to look outside, her husband exclaimed, “I am shot.” A bullet hit him in the torso, but the boy escaped injury.

Sarah discovered the child “crying bitterly” with his arms around his wounded father’s neck.^[21] A Booterstown priest administered the last rites in the home. Then, an ambulance rushed Brophy to the Royal Dublin Hospital, about two miles away, where he soon died.

Two days later, the Independent published a photo feature headlined “Military Activity in Dublin.” One of the page 3 images shows a man holding a small boy in his arms. The caption reads: “Denis Brophy, the 4-year-old son of Mr. James Brophy, who was mortally wounded during the ambush at Merrion road. The child was in bed with his father when the unfortunate man was shot.”

Nine months later, the DMP’s November 1921 report concluded, “There is no record of any other man named Brophy being shot at Dublin and as far as can be ascertained he was not a bigamist.” A photo of the victim also was included, the reply said, though today only the marriage record remains in this part of the consulate’s archived file.

Soon after her husband’s death, Sarah Brophy filed a compensation claim on his weekly salary of £3, 4s, which appears to have been granted.^[22]

Even so, it must have been difficult to raise her son as the new Irish Free State lurched from war against Britain to a bitter civil war and its uncertain economic aftermath. In the 1920s, widows and children remained in the care of an outdated and stigmatising home assistance program with low payments, even though such families were considered the most deserving of the poor.^[23]

Still fighting

The U.S. consulate sent a copy of the DMP’s November 1921 report to Anna Brophy. “With this information it would appear that this is not the person whom you suppose to be your husband,” the letter said. If Anna wished to pursue the matter further, she should provided details about whether her husband was a naturalized American citizen, the dates he immigrated to America and returned to Ireland, “and the names of his nearest relatives with their addresses.”

A simpler detail might have resolved the confusion, one never raised by the consulate, the DMP, or Anna: James Brophy’s age. American records indicate the man who disappeared in New York was born about 1863, or 58 at the time of the Merrion ambush. The man killed in bed was 37, according to the civil death register, up to 45 in some news accounts.

Anna refused to accept the consulate’s conclusion. The life insurance policy was still unresolved, and she remained convinced the victim was her husband. This wasn’t the first time he had disappeared. “He has often done this before,” Anna wrote in a 17 July 1923 letter, which also referenced 1922 correspondence.

She apparently mailed a second letter to Sarah Brophy in Dublin, who “never answered and I think she is guilty,” Anna wrote. She demanded the consulate return her photo of James Brophy, and accused the diplomatic office of intentionally placing the article about the Merrion attack in the Newport newspaper. “Please look into this matter again as I think this is my husband [who has] been missing for many years,” she concluded.

Shortly after he received Anna’s July 1923 letter, U.S. Vice Consul Loy Henderson replied that the 1921 shooting victim “could not be the same James Brophy whom you married,” as proved to the satisfaction of police. For the record, he added: “This office is not accustomed to furnish news items to any paper and certainly did not communicate with any newspaper concerning the death of James Brophy.”

Anna persisted. “You never seem to tell me the right answer,” she complained in a 5 March 1924 letter. She asked once again for the consulate to return of her photo of James Brophy. “If you do not give me some information, my son will go to Washington, D.C. and see if the authorities can look it up for me,” she threatened.

The final letter in the archive file is dated 19 March 1924, nearly three years after Anna’s initial outreach. Consul Charles M. Hathaway Jr. replied to Anna that he was returning her photograph. “There seems to be no reason to identify the James Brophy who died in Dublin on February 12, 1921, with your missing husband,” he concluded, referencing earlier correspondence.

It is impossible to know if Anna Brophy was a calculating insurance fraudster or simply maddened by the long and frequent disappearances of her husband. Whether she ever collected any insurance money, or how much, remains a mystery. The fate of James Brophy the blacksmith is just as uncertain. A positive match among death and burial records of many men of the same name was not immediately located.

By 1925, however, it appears Anna finally found and accepted proof of his death. That year, the New York City city directory added two abbreviations between Anna’s name and her 352 W. 52nd St. address, a designation that had not appeared in earlier editions: “wid Jas,” widow of James Brophy.^[24]

Mark Holan can be reached at markaholan@gmail.com. He blogs at www.markholan.org. © 2016 by Mark Holan

References

^[1] Bureau of Military History, Statement of Patrick J. Brennan, page 16.

^[2] The Irish Independent, 14 February 1921, page 5.

^[3] Civil death record via IrishGenealogy.ie. Group Registration ID 3391765, Dublin South. LINK

[4] Eunan O’Halpin, Counting Terror, in Terror in Ireland edited by David Fitzpatrick, Lilliput 2012, p. 153-154.

^[5] The New York Herald, 14 February 1921, page 3, and other newspapers via Library of Congress/Chronicling America.

^[6] 1900 U.S. Census, Newport Ward 2, Newport, Rhode Island; Roll: 1505; Page: 11A; Enumeration District: 0215; FHL microfilm: 1241505

^[7] Whelan, Bernadette, “American Government in Ireland, 1790-1913, A History of the U.S. Consular Service.” Manchester University Press, 2010, pages 220-221.

^[8] 1900 Census, and Newport City, R.I., city directories, 1887 to 1892.

^[9] 1910 U.S. Census, Manhattan Ward 1, New York, New York; Roll: T624_1004; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 0002; FHL microfilm: 1375017

^[10] New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (See PDF), and Govisland.com.

^[11] U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, John and Joseph Brophy, via FamilySearch.

^[12] 1918 New York City City Directory, page 404, via Heritage Quest.

^[13] 1920 U.S. Census, New York Co., Manhattan Borough (ED’s 429-461) [NARA T625 roll 1194]

^[14] 1920 U.S. Census, and Office for Metropolitan History, “Manhattan NB Database 1900-1986.

^[15] National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland, USA. U.S. Consulate in Ireland records, 1921-1924. Files reviewed by author on 1 November 2016.

^[16] Whelan, “American Government in Ireland,” page xiv.

^[17] The Center for Insurance Policy & Research, “State of the Life Insurance Industry,” 2013 report, pages 2 and 10 (See PDF).

^[18] SWilson.info Surname Distribution.

^[19] 1901 and 1911 Irish census, via The National Archives of Ireland.

^[20] Freeman’s Journal, 14 February 1921, pages 5 & 6.

^[21] The Irish Independent, 14 February 1921, page 5.

^[22] The Irish Times, 21 April 1921, page 5.

^[23] Lucey, Donnacha Seán, “The End of the Irish Poor Law? Welfare and healthcare reform in revolutionary and independent Ireland.” Manchester University Press, 2015, page 120.

^[24] 1925 New York City City Directory, page 484, accessed through Heritage Quest.

Edited by Eugenio Biagini and Daniel Mulhall

Published by Irish Academic Press, 2016

Reviewer: Rhona McCord

The Shaping of Modern Ireland is a collection of seventeen essays, mostly biographical in nature, dealing with the political, cultural and economic influences that played a significant part in shaping Ireland after independence.

This book is a reboot of one with the same title published in 1960 and edited by Conor Cruise O’Brien. The original was a collection of fifteen essays, written by the leading academics of the day, surveying the prominent figures deemed to have influenced or played a role in the development of the new state.

This version of The Shaping of Modern Ireland, structured in much the same way as its 1960 counter part, is a useful exercise in historiography if nothing else.  Reevaluating the same figures over and over may seem to have little merit but it depends entirely on how critical the writer and indeed the reader is prepared to be. Another evaluation of the role of Eamonn de Valera and Michael Collins for example in terms of more recent historiographical trends and the portrayal of both men in film media warrants fresh investigation.

There are very good biographies here too on some of the less popular subjects, particularly, Eugenio Biagini’s chapter on Edward Carson, Elizabeth Kehoe’s piece on the Daughters of Ireland and Margaret Ward’s on Frank and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington.

Paul Bew takes on the first chapter by reviewing Conor Cruise O’Brien’s original essay, a survey of the period between 1891 and 1916.  This is followed by R.V. Comerford’s revaluation of Desmod Ryan’s original piece discussing the role of the Fenian leaders, James Stevenson, John Devoy and Tom Clarke.  Frank Callanan discusses three different figures central to the politics of Parnell and the Irish Party after his demise: John Redmond, James Dillon and Tim Healy.  Callanan points out that Dillon had not been included in the original book and outlines why he warrants inclusion now as someone who was a dominant personality in Irish politics of the time.

The Patrick Maume penned essay on Ireland’s first president, Douglas Hyde, shows great understanding of the nuances of Irish historiography as well as the duality of Irish political culture and of the Gaelic and Anglo Irish influences that dominated.  Interestingly linked to the 1960 version of Shaping Ireland the original author of this chapter was Myles Dillon the son of James Dillon featured in the previous chapter.  Michael Laffan discusses the divisive figure of Arthur Griffith.  While Irish Times journalist Stephen Collins gives an account of the role of the GAA and its founder Michael Cusack.

Martin Manseragh tackles the legacy of the aforementioned Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera.  Manseragh’s observations regarding the historical treatment of both figures, having been particularly coloured in the minds of the public by the popularity of Michael Jordan’s movie, are very interesting.

The chapter gives a good account of the historiographical difficulties when dealing with these two figures and rightly points out that, perspectives will continue to shift over time. Currently it has to be agreed that Collins is somewhat mythologised while de Valera has been undermined; firstly by his association with the Catholic hierarchy and Archbishop McQuaid in particular, a subject which has not always been dealt with accurately, and secondly by the unsympathetic and often inaccurate portrayal of him in Neil Jordan’s movie.

Mansergh’s analysis on the success of Irish Independence is a bit aloof as he opines that partition is the only long lasting failure of Independence.  Many would disagree, particularly those survivors of the laundries and industrial schools.  The unhealthy obsession with female sexuality that led to incarceration, forced adoption and a plethora of state facilitated crimes against women and their children remains to this day an enduring failure and shame of Irish Independence.

The Dublin barrister Edward Carson, unlike Collins and de Valera is largely an unknown entity in popular history particularly south of the border.

Obviously he was the face of Ulster Unionism and the main opponent of Home Rule, apart from his role in the demise of Oscar Wilde, he remains relatively unknown.

Here Eugenio Biagini, one of the books co editors follows in the footsteps of R.B. McDowelll in attempting to enlighten us. He discusses the role of religion in Carson’s motivation and corrects some of McDowell’s assumptions pointing out that independence was in fact not on the table when ulster unionism mobilised against home rule.

Daithí Ó Corráin’s subject is Archbishop William Joseph Walsh who perhaps personified the close ties between nationalism, agrarian struggle and Catholicism at the time of the rising.   Walsh aware of the dangers for the church if they condemned the political activity of their congregation tried to lend a degree of support to all popular struggle but falling short of support for radical or violent tactics.

Although he claimed to sympathise with the workers in the 1913 lockout, his actions spoke louder than his words.  It was Walsh’s intervention, which prevented the great act of solidarity from British trade union members who agreed to take in the children of their striking comrades.  Walsh, who was vociferous in his stance against partition and conscription, overtime moved away from politics toward education and religious concerns before his death 1921.

The figures of George Russell, D P Moran and Tom Kettle dealt with here by co editor Daniel Mulhall, are united according to Mulhall in ‘their concern for Ireland’s economic development’.  Kettle a nationalist and supporter of Ireland’s involvement in WWI saw himself as a European and justified his involvement in the war on those terms.

Moran’s influence was summed up by his characterisation of the new state as both Catholic and Gaelic.  Russell perhaps the more progressive of the three men was critical of what he perceived as the ‘introverted nationalism that had narrowed its focus with the advent of independence’.   These three men, all concerned with Irish independence, to a degree personify some of the divergent influences on the new state.

In chapter 11 we meet some women, The Daughters of Ireland to be precise, that is Maud Gonne MacBride, Dr Kathleen Lynn and Dorothy Macardle.  The author of this chapter, Elizabeth Kehoe, points out that there were no women featured in the original Shaping of Modern Ireland although MacArdle herself was the only female contributor.

It was, as Kehoe articulates ‘as though the women of the revolution had been erased…possibly an accurate reflection of their perceived impact in the shaping of the Ireland of the late 1950s.’   Changes in historical approach have led to a revaluation of the role that women played in the revolutionary period and in a wider sense in society but that was not the approach in the mid 20^th century and there is little to be gained by transplanting todays standards or attitudes to those of 60 years ago.

The role of another woman in Irish affairs is often greatly neglected and that is the role of Queen Victoria.  The policies of her reign had a huge impact on Irish politics and in mobilising both nationalist and agrarian activists.  Kehoe describes the Daughters of Ireland as ‘the antithesis of Victorian ideals of feminine behaviour.’ These women ‘fought with the same weapons-rhetoric, protest and violence-as their male counterparts.’

Yet they were considered as outside of the mainstream often isolated and condemned for their political activity.  It was this treatment by the establishment that encouraged Maud Gonne to set up Inghinidhe na hÉireann, the Daughters of Ireland in 1900.   A hybrid of nationalism and early feminism it was later subsumed by larger organisation’s like Cumann na mBán, the Irish Citizen’s Army and the Irish Women Workers Union.

Kehoe demonstrates here the huge impact these women had on politics, culture, medicine and feminism in Ireland.  All three came from somewhat privileged backgrounds with a strong sense of justice and self-sacrifice.

Gonne stands out here as being a bit dramatic, Lynn perhaps somewhat naïve in her surprise at the extend of sectarianism in the new state and MacArdle perhaps the most disappointed of the three women given her loyalty to republicanism and de Valera in particular.  Many republican women felt betrayed by the actions of the first independent governments but Fianna Fáil in the 1930s completed a programme that subordinated the role of women with the introduction of the 1937 constitution; the last straw for women like MacArdle.

There are many other ‘shapers’ to read about in this collection and not all are given blind praise.  Theo Dorgan’s description and analysis of WB Yeats as a ‘profound reactionary’, is both apt and refreshing.   Mary E Daly examines and contrasts the impact of Horace Plunkett and William Pirrie.   These two figures personify the duality of the Irish economy, one an agricultural reformer the other the man behind the success of the Harland and Wolfe shipyard.  In many ways this essay shows the economic challenges faced by the nascent state, a subject often neglected in popular historical commentary.

J.J. Lee continues this theme with a chapter on the Guinness family.  The Guinness family’s contribution to the brewing industry, as well as their philanthropic endeavours mark them out, but they were not the only success story as exemplified here by the inclusion of a short piece about the Jacob’s Biscuit company.

A book of this nature, written in the midst of the decade of commemoration would not be complete without three of the most revolutionary figures of Irish history; Padraig Pearse, James Connolly, and Constance Markievicz.   Interest in these three figures has grown and grown over the century.

Diarmaid Ferriter reassess Dorothy MacArdles 1960 essay on the role of both Pearse and Connolly. Connolly’s reputation as an international socialist, writer and thinker has significantly developed not just among historians and academics but also in the minds of the general public.  Treatment of Pearse is often complicated by an ideologically driven motivation to either dismiss him as a two-dimensional character with a blood lust or to foist current political prejudice onto his shoulders.  Uneasiness about Pearse’s legacy still exists and stems from the fact that the establishment just cannot seem to wrest his memory from the hands of the ‘provos’.

Sonja Tiernan, in discussing the Gore Booth sisters, comments on the undervalued and overlooked role of women in Irish history and their glaring absence from the original Shaping of Modern Ireland, she suggests it was a ‘product of its time and reflects the position of women in Irish society in 1960’.

Without disagreeing with that, the charge of sexism is still warranted.  Given that Ireland had in Markievicz one of the first female government ministers in the world, it just doesn’t wash that Cruise O’Brien et al forgot that fact or didn’t see its relevance.  By 1960 Women had the vote in all western democracies and the international labour movement was calling for equality in the workplace.

The 1916 proclamation, aspirational as it may have been, also reflected a political desire for equality.  Even if hope evaporated in the face of the reactionary policies of Kevin O’Higgns and later de Valera and Lemass, their actions in marginalising women were not unknown in 1960.  Cruise O’Brien and his contemporaries just did not have the will, the courage or imagination to challenge the narrative.

The final chapter, on the Sheehy Skeffingtons, demonstrates that Ireland was not simply a backwater immersed in religion, sexism, fear and superstition.  There was and is a radical legacy that is often overlooked and should be utilised to challenge the conservative perceptions of Ireland.  Frank and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington were what Margaret Ward describes here as ‘militant feminists’.   And before we jump to a conclusion that they were not of their time a quick glance at Ward’s essay will assure you that they were not unique and in fact very much of their time and a part of a wider movement of what Ward describes as a ‘pre-revolutionary bohemian Dublin’.

The persistence of the biography in Irish history writing is somewhat disappointing and can narrow our interpretation of events.  In the Shaping of Modern Ireland an examination of wider based organisations would be welcome.  Apart from Stephen Collins examination of the GAA, there is no attempt to look at the role of wider society.

A mass organisation like the ITGWU for example with its base at Liberty Hall pivotal to many of the physical struggles taking place on the street, the role of its membership and structure are completely overlooked.  There has always been a tendency in Irish history to look at change from the top down, which is frustrating given the massive movements throughout Irish history that came from the grassroots and also played a role in shaping modern Ireland.

By Seán Enright

Published by: Irish Academic Press (2016)

Reviewer: Daniel Murray

Thomas Traynor was charged with murder on the 6^th April 1921 in Dublin City Hall by a military court. A small, wiry man of about forty with a long, black moustache that gave him a mournful appearance, Traynor had been apprehended at 144 Brunswick Street, the scene of an ambush on an Auxiliary patrol that resulted in the death of two cadets.

The fleeing Traynor had been rugby-tackled to the ground by a lieutenant who reported that Traynor had shouted: “God’s sake, shoot me now.” Later he had told another of his captors: “I am only a soldier like yourself.”

Under the rules of the court, Traynor was not entitled to give any evidence or be cross-examined. Not that he had much to say, only that he had been caught up in the fighting while carrying a gun – the same automatic found on him at the scene – to give to someone else. He made no attempt to explain the incriminating remarks attributed to him. All this, and his prior involvement in the Easter Rising of five years ago, ensured his conviction for murder and hanging.

If there was little doubt that Traynor had indeed been involved in the ambush on Brunswick Street, then the case of Patrick Maher could only be described as tragic. He was among those arrested and brought to trial for the rescue of Seán Hogan at Knocklong Station that saw two policemen killed in the resulting shootout.

Due to an unfortunate resemblance to Dan Breen, one of the participants in the rescue, Maher was picked out of a police line-up. His name had earlier been passed to the authorities by ‘private information’ – in other words, an informant, unusual in itself when such sources of information were fast drying up.

Maher had worked at Cleeves Creamery throughout a strike, the only employee who had done so, and it is probable that his name had been supplied to the police out of spite (he had already been boycotted and threatened). Along with another man convicted of the shootout (probably accurately), Maher was the last man executed during the War of Independence, on the 7^th June 1921, four days before the Truce which would have saved him.

These are but two of the cases that illuminate Seán Enright’s study of the revolutionary period in Ireland, with a focus on the War of Independence. Enright flips the usual Hibernian-centric narrative on its head by focusing on the British perspective, making it one of the few works to do so.

Earlier studies such as William Sheehan’s Hearts & Mines: The British 5th Division, Ireland, 1920-1922 and W.H. Kautt’s Ambushes and Armour: The Irish Rebellion, 1919-1921 had also followed such a line, though these focused on the military side of things, the obvious area of study for this turbulent period with its ambushes and assassinations.

Enright eschews this approach by focusing on the use of the legal system by Dublin Castle to try and contain the growing rebellion on its watch. This leads to a quieter, more analytical read than most works, though – as the author demonstrates throughout – not one that is any less dramatic. Enright understands that stories are the building blocks of history, and here we get plenty of them.

This may not appear obvious at first, given a subject material that seems on the surface to be a dry one. Whatever its interest, Enright leaves us in no doubt as to its importance in understanding the conflict. “A unique feature of this revolution,” he writes, “was the extent to which the conflict centred on law and legal institutions which kept the status quo in place.”

The Crown Courts were intended to be instruments of keeping rebellion in check, yet their juries could not be guaranteed to deliver the verdicts that the British Government needed. Partly this was due to Irish Republican Army (IRA) intimidation, and the few witnesses who did come forward risked boycotts and social alienation.

A more direct approach by the IRA was the burning of court houses, with a total of forty-seven destroyed by the spring of 1920. The presiding judge of one ruined court at Borrisokane in County Tipperary, however, proved to be not so easily moved in more ways than one, as Enright describes with a fine eye for tragicomedy:

Major Dease, a hefty, old R.M. convened court in the blackened ruins. Major Dease continued to sit session, his white hair plastered to his face by falling rain. The court staff exchanged glances occasionally but no one was brave enough to say anything to the old Major.

In other cases, no coercion was needed, as local authorities switched allegiances to the Dáil Éireann and quickly made their newfound loyalties known. The Roscommon County Council served notice to landlords of court buildings that no rent would be paid for them as their services were no longer required. In Newbridge, County Kildare, the end of the old system came even more abruptly when the resident magistrate arrived one morning to find the front door to his courthouse locked.

Even the few Crown courts that continued to function did so only barely. The last politically-motivated murder trial heard by a jury was in the spring of 1920. What looked like an iron-clad case against the accused for the shooting of a policeman in Tipperary was thrown on its head when it was revealed mid-trial that the main witness for the prosecution had made an original statement that differed considerably from what he had just given.

It was in the wake of such administrative impotence that Winston Churchill urged the rest of the Cabinet to adopt harsher measures. When it emerged during the Cabinet discussion that the Irish Judiciary, still loyal to the principles of open justice, had refused to take on non-jury trials, Churchill quipped: “Get three generals if you cannot get three judges.”

That set the tone for the British response in the latter half of the War, namely the establishment of the military courts and the assigning of the British Army to do what the civilian administration could not.

The first person to be tried for murder under the new system was an 18-year old student, Kevin Barry, for an ambush in Dublin that resulted in three dead soldiers. Despite appeals for clemency, Barry was hanged.

This marked a turning point. Before, IRA defendants could have safely declined to recognise the legitimacy of the toothless courts before them. The possibility of lengthy sentences or even execution made subsequent trials a literal matter of life and death.

Even the Truce of 1921 and the cessation of hostilities did not stop the legal battles, particularly with forty-two men still on death row and over a hundred awaiting trial. Sir Nevil Macready, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) in Ireland, intended to proceed with the executions of the former and the start processing the latter, but the case of J.J. Egan, convicted by a military court for the possession of ammunition, threatened to throw a spanner in the whole works.

As briskly summarised by Enright:

The primary argument advanced for the prisoner, Egan, can be distilled in a few lines: the Crown had released the prerogative power to wage war in Ireland to Parliament by passing the ROIA [Restoration of Order in Ireland Act] to deal with the Rebellion and therefore only Parliament could embark on new measures. It followed that the whole edifice of martial law was unlawful.

Matters went badly for Macready when the Master of the Rolls ruled that the military courts were indeed unlawful, with a writ for habeas corpus issued for Egan and the prisoner to be produced in court. Macready held his ground and informed his subordinates to ignore the writ, prompting the issuing of a further writ by the Master of the Rolls for the arrests of Macready and two other generals.

Both sides backed down with their writs the following day, with Egan released and Macready out of danger – but with the military courts, the headstone of British strategy, severely compromised in the event of further warfare in Ireland.

As the above story shows, Enright is adept at bringing out some of the more obscure details of the period into the light, leading to a fuller understanding. But research is not the writer’s only talent, displaying at times the ability to capture taut, at times gripping depictions of otherwise quiet scenes inside a courtroom.

This books appeals to a number of interests: the challenges a liberal democracy faces in confronting a war, one of the least liberal occurrences, in its midst. The weapons that a military regime, as the British state in Ireland essentially was by its end, can use – and have used against it.

Brief but evocative pen portraits of the various senior figures in authority. A study of how things fall apart with the centre slowly but surely failing to hold, no matter how much legal chicanery or brute force is applied. It is for this ability to show many things at once that After the Rising deserves to be on the shelf of any serious student of the period.

By John Dorney

The year 2016 marked the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. At the start of the year I wrote an article outlining what I though the commemorations would signify – a complex and conflicted celebration of Ireland’s nationalist identity.

Now, looking back, what of significance happened in the 2016 commemorations? And what does it mean for the Ireland of 2017 and beyond?

A changing context

Twenty Sixteen was a year marked by a resurgence of nationalism across the West, mostly in response to the perceived negative effects of globalisation and immigration in the developed world. Ireland’s near neighbour the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and to ‘take back control’ of its national territory.

Politicians advancing similar formulas are on the rise in the Netherlands, France and even the European centre, Germany. The election of Donald Trump as American president is broadly part of the same phenomenon.

Ireland has yet to develop any movement of this type. By and large, Ireland has benefited hugely from being an EU member and as a low tax outpost of globalisation. Economic nationalism was tried in Ireland from the 1930s until the late 1950s and is now seen to have been a resounding failure. The Republic of Ireland joined the developed world precisely by inviting multinational companies to locate there, in the context of the European free trade area and taxing them as little as possible.

At the same time as economic nationalism was rejected, the Irish state quietly jettisoned much of its programme of political and cultural nationalism. During the Northern Ireland conflict of 1969-1998, celebration of revolutionary violence of 1916 to 1923 was largely left to fringe Republican groups. Politicians in the Republic now shiver with horror at the memory of recent Republican paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland, aimed ostensibly at the great nationalist goal of a united Ireland, which threatened to destabilise the southern as well as the Northern Irish state.

Increasingly also, traditional pillars of Irish nationalist identity, Catholicism and the Irish language have been quietly side-lined as of no more practical use.

So in a sense, the Irish political elite no longer really reveres the actions of the ‘men of 1916’. Their heroes are elsewhere. On a visit to a prominent national institution recently, this writer noticed a tiny portrait of Eamon de Valera (who, as well as serving at Taoiseach for much of the 20^th century was the only rebel commandant to survive 1916), but a huge and prominently placed portrait of the economist T.K. Whitaker, who along with Taoiseach Sean Lemass, pioneered Ireland’s turn towards free trade in the 1950s and 60s.

In 2011, both the Government and the state media made enormous play out of the visit of British Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland, the first monarch since independence to visit the southern Irish state. The visit showed the ‘maturity’ of Irish society and the ‘reconciliation’ of old enmities.

How then, to commemorate an armed uprising of 100 years ago in a way that neither encouraged anti-British sentiment nor the revival of Republican militarism, nor popularised isolationist nationalism that most of the leaders of the independence movement espoused?

The Rising remained too powerful a symbol of national identity for the state to ignore it or leave to fringe groups, but too potentially problematic to endorse fully and unequivocally.

An equivocal commemoration

So 1916 had to be commemorated in a way that was respectful but not triumphal, that hit the right emotional notes of celebration of the 1916 leaders and their martyrdom at the hands of British firing squads, but did not explicitly endorse any of their political goals.

As a result, the official commemorations sometimes walked a fine and awkward line. Suggestions by some to bring members of the British Royal family to the commemorations came to nothing and northern unionist leaders refused invitations to attend. Nevertheless there were many attempts to promote a more ‘reconciliation friendly’ commemoration of the Rising.

Dublin City Council for instance draped the Bank of Ireland building in Dublin, once the site of the Irish Parliament, in a massive banner commemorating great Irish leaders. It was soon pointed out, however, that those leaders included none of the Rising’s heads and in fact featured four men, Henry Grattan, Charles Stuart Parnell Daniel O’Connell and John Redmond, who explicitly eschewed political violence in pursuit of Irish independence.

Redmond, indeed was an arch rival of those who declared an Irish Republic in 1916, was reviled in separatist circles for encouraging his supporters to join the British Army in 1914 and himself condemned the Rising vociferously. The Department of the Taoiseach, whose idea it apparently was, seems to have felt more comfortable with John Redmond that with the insurrectionists Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke or James Connolly.

On Easter Sunday itself, there was much that those who commemorated the Rising’s 50 year anniversary in 1966 would have recognised; the military parade down Dublin’s O’Connell Street, laying of wreaths at the GPO, the service at Kilmainham Gaol’s stonebreakers yard, where the 1916 leaders were executed. Still, the message was quite carefully controlled. The band at the General Post Office played non-confrontational songs such as ‘Danny Boy’ and the rugby anthem ‘Ireland’s Call’ as well as the old rebel tunes. The piper playing a ‘lament’ in fact played ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’.

The wreaths at the Post office were laid by children rather than soldiers or politicians and instead of a volley of gunshots as there had been in 1966 there was a drum roll. The Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s said they were there to honour the memory of the Rising’s leaders but also to commemorate ‘all those who died in 1916’.

At Glasnevin cemetery where many of the 1916 dead were buried, the Irish Army soldiers were accompanied by uniformed British Army officers in laying wreaths at gravesides. The Cemetery itself erected as a memorial, a wall listing all 500 or so fatal casualties in the Rising, British Army insurgent and civilian, mixed together and without further comment.

Back in 1966, Sinn Fein and the Republican movement wanted nothing to do with the ‘Free State’ commemorations of the Rising. But in 2016, in an era when Sinn Fein aspires to enter the government both north and south of the border, it was different. Sinn Fein figures officially attended the state events, in the person of former Provisional IRA commander Martin McGuinness, among others.

What gave Sinn Fein a slight ‘get out’ was that there were two Rising commemorations, one set around Easter Sunday, which fell on March 27 in 2016, and another set on the actual anniversary of the insurrection, from April 25-29. Sinn Fein mostly staged its own, slightly more militaristic, commemorative events on the latter anniversary to avoid a clash with the state commemorations.

Popular response

What of the public response? By and large the Irish public responded warmly to the Rising commemorations, showing that its status a national myth is alive and well. Hundreds of thousands attended events in Dublin and large numbers elsewhere also.

Much of this was probably a desire to participate in a national holiday, some others’ interest was simply curiosity about how life was lived 100 years ago, a prominent feature of many local events.

But behind it all was still pride and admiration for what is still seen as the idealism and bravery of the 1916 insurgents. While there were critical voices, criticising the rebels for endangering the lives of civilians, turning Dublin city into a warzone and hardening divisions within Ireland, the popular tone of the commemorations was celebratory though largely apolitical. It was pride in the past rather than a programme for the future that was the order of the day.

The commemorations were marked by the mushrooming of local groups formed to investigate and promote the local histories of the period. Groups of activists and relatives of 1916 veterans launched the ‘Save Moore Street’ campaign to preserve the site of the rebels’ surrender and prevent much of it from being turned into a shopping centre. On occasion, local groups were capable of uncovering a much darker face of the Rising that the official events, with their focus on ‘reconciliation’ would not touch.

The Smithfield and Stoneybatter People’s History Society for instance was to the forefront in unveiling a plaque to commemorate the North King Street massacre, in which the British Army killed 14 civilian men and boys in north inner city Dublin during the Rising. There was no state involvement either in the commemoration of this incident or in the physical memorial. It would, one assumes have given out the wrong messages.

Based on this and other incidents, one trope to come out of the 2016 commemorations is that of a ‘hidden history’ which had been covered up or erased from the history books. Sometimes this can go too far. Visitors to the recently opened Easter Rising museum at Dublin’s General Post Office, for instance are told that while women’s role in 1916 was deleted from history, women actually formed an elite of snipers within the Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army.

In fact, only two women, Margaret Skinnider and Constance Markievizc, can definitely be said to have used arms during the Rising. Nearly 3,000 men were arrested after the Rising but only 77 women. While women such as Kathleen Lynn, the Gifford sisters and others should certainly be rescued from historical obscurity, exaggeration does no one any good.

Similarly, while some would like to link the poverty in Dublin and in Ireland in general to the Rising of 1916, the connection is indirect at most. Yes some socialists of the Citizen Army came from the slums and were radicalised during the great strike and Lockout of 1913, but so too were thousands of ‘separation women’ with husbands in the British Army, many of whom tried lynch the rebels after the Rising, such was their sense of outrage and betrayal at the insurrection.

While some might still wish to enlist the 1916 in other causes, the fact remains it was primarily about securing Irish independence and no other cause.

The future of the Rising commemoration?

To sum up then, the Republic of Ireland in the twenty first century is a highly globalised country and enthusiastic member of the European Union that celebrates its identity as a fiercely independent nation state. It is a country built upon the identity of fighting Britain for independence that wants as close and friendly a relationship with Britain as possible. The 2016 Easter Rising commemorations merely showcased some of these contradictions.

As yet there has been no contradiction between a popular nationalist political identity and society that is increasingly multinational and globalised. The many thousands of immigrants who have been attracted by Ireland’s successful courting of multi-national companies over the past twenty years have so far proved fairly assimilable and have provoked no organised hostile reaction. Though there was some disquiet at the European Central Banks treatment of Ireland since the 2008 financial crisis, ‘Europe’ is not seen as a threat to national identity as it is elsewhere.

And yet, 2017, with its prospects of Britain leaving the EU, potentially raising again a ‘hard’ border across Ireland, of the EU itself seeing the rise of isolationist nationalist movements and of Donald Trump punishing multi-national companies for locating in low tax bases such as Ireland many threaten all this. Future interpretation of 1916 may be very different from those in 2016.

The year 2016, the year of the Easter Rising centenary was a record year for the Irish Story with over 685,000 views from 430,000 different visitors.

A huge thanks to all our readers and contributors. There were out top posts of the year.

The most popular article was a resume of the Irish Army’s experience in the Congo in the 1960s, tying in with a new film, the Siege of Jadotville. Inevitably though, many of the others concerned the 1916 Rising, but one interesting outlier is Liam Hogan’s article on the Limerick riot of 1830.

We were also pleased to be associated with the People College 1916 lecture series which you can watch here.

Top Ten Articles

1. The Irish Army, The UN, Jadotville and the Congo, by John Dorney
2. The Assassination of Sergeant James King by Padraig Og O Ruairc
3. Airbrushed out of History? Elizabeth O’Farrell and Patrick Pearse’s surrender, 1916. By Michael Barry.
4. The Battle at South Dublin Union, 1916, By John Dorney
5. The Easter Rising in Galway, 1916, by John Dorney
6. Twenty Sixteen, Commemorating the Rising, What does it all mean?, by John Dorney
7. The 1830 Limerick Food Riots, by Liam Hogan
8. The Death of Muriel MacDonagh 1917, by Gerard Shannon.
9. The First Dail Meets and the Soloheadbeg Ambush, 1919, by John Dorney
10. Margaret Keogh, the women who died for Ireland, by Padraig Og O Ruairc.

Some more interesting articles

The Easter Rising of course was the topic of many articles last year. John Dorney had two articles on how the Rising has been commemorated, the first on the post revolutionary years and the second up to the present day. He also had an article on how British Intelligence mistakes allowed the Rising to happen.

Michael Barry wrote about the Helga that shelled Liberty Hall during the Rising and Gerard Shannon explored Rory O’Connor’s role in the Rising. Ailbhe Rogers told the little known story of the Rising in County Louth.

John Dorney also had a series of articles on the rest of the revolutionary period, including an article on the IRA Dublin Brigade, Policing Revolutionary Dublin and Thinking About Violence in the Civil War. 

Padraig O Ruairc had a popular article on the Ellis Quarry Killings, Thomas Fitzgerald wrote on the War of Independence in Kerry and Michael Rast had a valuable and rare study on Loyalist paramilitaries in Belfast.

Also well worth a look are Barry Sheppard’s articles on The 1932 Eucharistic Congress, Papal Encyclicals, Patricia Byrne’s evocative look at a Mission on Achill and Mark Holan’s Mrs Brophy’s Husband.

Top Ten Book Reviews

1. One Bold Deed of Treason, Roger Casement’s Berlin Diary, by Angus Mitchell, reviewed by Daniel Murray.
2. Truce, Murder, Myth and the last Days of the Irish War of Independence, by Padraig Og O Ruairc, reviewed by John Dorney
3. Kingdom Overthrown, Ireland and the Battle for Europe 1688-91, by Gerard Fitzgibbon, reviewed by Eoin O’Driscoll.
4. The Lives of Daniel Binchy, Irish diplomat, scholar and public intellectual, by Tom Garvin, reviewed by Ruairi O hAodha.
5. How the Irish Won the West, by Myles Dungan, reviewed by Gordon O’Sullivan.
6. Ireland’s Call, Irish Sporting Heroes who fell in the Great War, by Stephen Clarke, reviewed by Gordon O’Sullivan.
7. Harry Clarke’s War, by Margueritte Helmers, reviewed by Patricia Curtin Kelly
8. Arthur Griffith by Owen McGee, Reviewed by Gerard Shannon.
9. The GAA and Revolution in Ireland, edited by Gearoid O Tuathaigh, reviewed by Barry Sheppard.
10. Unhappy the Land, the Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? by Liam Kennedy, reviewed by Rhona McCord.

By John Dorney

On Christmas Eve 1601 by English reckoning and January 3 1602 by Irish and Spanish calculation[1], Irish, English and Spanish soldiers met in battle outside the town of Kinsale on Ireland’s southern coast.

Musket shots rang out, tearing into tightly packed ranks of pikemen, horsemen slashed at foot soldiers with their swords, the infantry levelled their pikes en masse to ward off the cavalry.

The  engagement marks one of the great turning points in Irish history. By the end of the day the Irish forces of Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell were streaming back northwards in defeat, the Spaniards at Kinsale were preparing to surrender to the victorious English forces of Lord Mountjoy.

The Annals of the Four Masters later lamented;

‘Immense and countless was the loss in that place, although the number slain was trifling; for the prowess and valour, prosperity and affluence, nobleness and chivalry, dignity and renown, hospitality and generosity, bravery and protection, devotion and pure religion, of the Island, were lost in this engagement”.[2]

To Kinsale, the Annals and most subsequent accounts attributed the final success of the English conquest of Ireland and the demise of the Gaelic order and eclipse of the Catholic religion. Kinsale was a battle, the Annals wrote, fought for ‘their patrimony and religion’ and the Irish had lost. The future belonged to the English, Protestant Kingdom of Ireland.

But was the background to and the outcome of the battle of Kinsale so straightforward? Hugh O’Neill who led the Ulster Irish forces had once been a staunch ally of the English Crown. Among Mounjoy’s English forces was Barnaby O’Brien the Gaelic Irish (and Catholic) Earl of Thomond.

What was really fought for at Kinsale and who really won?

The Nine Years War

The English Tudor monarchy needed to secure Ireland to prevent it from falling into hostile foreign hands. This question was especially pressing following Henry VIII’s break with the papacy, leaving England exposed to a possible Catholic counter attack.

To this end, Ireland was formally made a Kingdom in 1542 and the English spent a century by turns conquering, colonising, but also trying to assimilate the native Irish lords into obedience. Ireland was a patchwork of militarised lordships, both Gaelic Irish and ‘Old English’ (or Hiberno-Norman) in origin as well as the odd pocket of fortified English settlement such as the towns of Dublin, Wexford or Cork.

Irish lords had to choose between resistance to the advancing state based in Dublin, assimilation to its demands and in return being granted English titles, or as many chose instead, a combination of the two.

What followed was a near century on of on-off warfare. In Munster, two Desmond Rebellions saw the bloody smashing of the Fitzgerald dynasty in the 1570s and 80s. By the 1590s, the English project was beginning to penetrate Ulster, which was controlled by the usual complex collection of clans and lordships, but predominantly by two dynasties, the O’Neills of Tyrone and O’Donnell’s of Tirconnell.

Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone had been brought up by a foster family in the English Pale around Dublin, was fluent in the English language and even conformed to the Protestant Church for a time. During the Desmond Rebellions he had fought on the English side. But he had also waged a bloody decades long internal struggle within Tyrone to make himself lord of the O’Neills and was not about to hand over power in the north to an English sheriff and to reduce himself to the status of simple landlord.

His close ally, Hugh O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell began what the English called Tyrone’s Rebellion and the Irish the Nine Years War in 1592 by driving out the English garrisons in what is now Donegal. The following year he and Hugh Maguire of Fermanagh began attacking English outposts all across south Ulster.

At first, O’Neill stood aloof from the rebellion, although he was directing proceedings, hoping as a compromise to be named as Lord President (governor) of Ulster himself. Elizabeth I, though, had correctly perceived that O’Neill had no intention of being an English-style landlord.

Rather, his ambition was to usurp her sovereign power and be she thought, “a Prince of Ulster”. She refused to grant O’Neill provincial presidency or any other delegation of power which would have given him authority to govern Ulster on the crown’s behalf. She also had scathing words for his ingratitude, he, as far as she was concerned, having been raised into his position by English benevolence. [3]

In 1595 Hugh O’Neill joined his confederates in open rebellion by attacking the English fort on the Blackwater River. It was also in this year that Hugh was inaugurated The O’Neill at the traditional O’Neill inauguration site at Tullaghoe. It was a formal rejection of English authority. As one contemporary put it, “Tyrone [Hugh’s English title] was a traitor, but O’Neill none”.[4]

With Spanish arms, money and training, O’Neill and O’Donnell created a formidable military force. In 1598, their forces crushed an English army at the Battle of the Yellow Ford in County Armagh. For a time it seemed as if Ireland was in their grasp.

By now, they were publicly calling their war, not a private affair for local power, but a holy war to free Ireland of Protestant English rule. To the mostly English-speaking but Catholic townsmen of Dublin he wrote that he was fighting for,

“the delivery of our country [from]  infinite murders, wicked and detestable policies by which the kingdom was hitherto governed, nourished in obscurity and ignorance, maintained in barbarity and incivility and consequently of infinite evils which are too lamentable to be rehearsed”.[5]

And to the southern Irish lords he wrote,

“I would come to learn the intentions of all the gentlemen of Munster regarding the great questions of the nation’s liberty and of religion”.[6]  By 1601, O’Neill wrote to Florence McCarthy, his ally in south Munster, hoping “that you will do a stout and hopeful service against the pagan beast… our army is to come into Munster and do the will of God”.[7]

Pressure on Ulster

Many Irish lords though, simply did not trust O’Neill, whom they had always known as a wily and self-interested player of power politics. Others simply calculated that the English would ultimately win their best interests lay in siding with them. So many lords and most of the walled towns did not join O’Neill and O’Donnell’s crusade.

By 1601, the attempts to spread the war all over Ireland were faltering and the rebellion’s stronghold in Ulster was under pressure.

The English managed to quash the rebellion in the southern province of Munster by mid-1601 by a mixture of conciliation and military force. The two principle rebel leaders there, James Fitzthomas and Florence MacCarthy were arrested and sent to the Tower of London, where both of them eventually died in captivity. Most of the rest of the local lords submitted once O’Neills forces had been expelled from the province.

The main war however, was in the north.  Lord Mountjoy the English commander managed to penetrate the interior of Ulster by sea-borne landings at Derry and Carrigfergus, while trying himself to break through overland through south-east Ulster. His commanders, helped by Niall Garbh O’Donnell, a rival of Red Hugh, devastated the countryside, killing the civilian population and their livestock and destroying crops.  Although O’Neill managed to repulse another land offensive by Mountjoy at Moyry Pass near Newry in 1600, his position was becoming desperate by late 1601.

Spanish landing

It was at this point, in September 1601 that the long-promised Spanish expedition finally arrived in the form of 3,500 soldiers under Don Juan del Aquila, landed at Kinsale, County Cork, virtually the southern tip of Ireland. Ireland had featured in Spanish plans to invade England in 1588, but in the event its involvement with the ‘Invincible Armada’ was mostly limited to Irish lords (including Hugh O’Neill himself) opportunistically attacking Spanish shipwreck victims in its aftermath.

Now though, the rebel alliance, supported by Irish Catholic Bishops successfully lobbied Phillip II of Spain for an invasion of Ireland to aid their fellow Catholics and to strike at Elizabeth I, who was aiding Phillips rebellious Protestant subjects in the Netherlands. An armada was assembled in Lisbon in 1596, but never set sail. In 1601, under the new King Phillip III a more modest force was finally dispatched to Ireland.

O’Neill had broached a landing in Munster with the Spaniards, but only if the force was over 6,000 men. If less, he had wanted them to come directly to the north, but bad weather forced the Spaniards to land on the Cork coast, much to O’Neill and his allies’ dismay.

At Kinsale, the English commander Mountjoy immediately besieged them with 7,000 men, while a naval fleet blockaded the harbour to block any reinforcements from Spain. O’Neill, O’Donnell and their allies marched their armies south in freezing December weather to sandwich Mountjoy, whose men were starving and wracked by disease, between them and the Spaniards.

Kinsale has become an iconic battle in Irish history, and rightly so. It did not end the war and it did not by itself destroy Gaelic culture or the Gaelic aristocracy, but it decide the future outcome of the war and therefore of the English presence in Ireland.

After Kinsale, the chance of an Irish victory had passed, and the question was not whether Ireland would be English, Spanish, or independent, but what terms the rebels could hold out for.

Battle

For such a historical turning point it was a rather confused and inconclusive battle. The Irish advanced in a driving thunderstorm, but their attack stumbled on the advancing English cavalry, and part of the Irish infantry panicked and fled. They were then pursued for miles by the English horse who killed several hundred of them. Though most of the Irish forces of some 8,000 men was unaffected, they retreated in disarray and the planned join attack with the Spaniards never came off.

Generally Irish tactics up to Kinsale had relied on guerrilla warfare or defence of carefully prepared defensive positions. At Kinsale they had tried to march into battle in tercios, large square of pikemen and musketeers and had come to grief.

The Spaniards reported that the Irish weakness was lack of regular discipline, one writing, ‘if the Irish had resisted just half an hour instead of withdrawing… we would have won a renowned victory and… expelled once and for all the English from Ireland…But there is no discipline among the Irish. They have made war so far by ambushes in tough territories… and do now know how to make the squadron’.

The Annals thought the problem was rivalry between O’Neill and O’Donnell, which threw the Irish forces, advancing towards Kinsale into confusion,

Manifest was the displeasure of God, and misfortune to the Irish of fine Fodhla [Ireland], on this occasion; for, previous to this day, a small number of them had more frequently routed many hundreds of the English, than they had fled from them, in the field of battle, in the gap of danger, up to this day.

The English claimed that they had killed up to 1,200 ‘rebels’ but one Irish source, Philliip O’Sullivan Beare, put the Ulstermen’s casualties as low as 200. Nevertheless they retreated back north in defeat and disarray. English losses in battle are hard to determine, as many more of their men died of disease during the siege of Kinsale than on the field itself. In the battle on January 3, they claimed to have lost only three men killed. But Carew, the English Lord President of Munster reported to his superiors that about 6,000 of his English troops had died during the siege.[8]

The remainder of the Irish withdrew as did the Spaniards, who surrendered in an orderly fashion days later and were allowed to return to Spain.[9]

The Irish, amid bitter recriminations among their leaders for the defeat, headed home to Ulster to defend their own lands.

Eoghan O’Sullivan Beare, their only important ally in the south by this point, held out in his territory in Kerry for several more months before fleeing for Ulster himself with his kinsmen and followers. Hugh O’Donnell left for Spain, where he died in 1602, pleading in vain for another Spanish landing. He left his brother Rory to defend Tir Connell.

Both he and Hugh O’Neill were reduced to guerrilla tactics, fighting in small bands, as English commanders Mountjoy, Dowcra, Chichester and Niall Garbh O’Donnell swept the country, burning and killing as they went. Mountjoy smashed the O’Neills’ inauguration stone at Tullaghogue.

With a secure base in the large and dense forests of Tyrone, O’Neill held out until 30 March 1603, when he surrendered on good terms to Mountjoy. Had he known that Elizabeth I had died a week before, he would probably have struck an even harder bargain. As it was, he wept with frustration on hearing the news.[10]

He left Ireland in the ‘Flight of the Earls’ in 1607, never to return. His defeat at Kinsale in January 1602 meant that we will never know if he was really an Irish patriot, Catholic crusader or self-interested warlord. It is possible to say that at different times in his career he was all three.

The battle of Kinsale did not mark the end of Gaelic Ireland on its own. But it did mean that the future of Ireland would be in English hands.

References

[1] The English were still using the Julian calendar and the Spanish the newer Gregorian one.

[2] Annals of the Four Masters, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100005F/

[3] Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion, the Outbreak of the Nine Years War, 1993. p177-178

[4] Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion p189,

[5]Hiram Morgan, Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland, The Cambridge Historical Journal, 1993, 21-27

[6] McCarthy Daniel The Letter Book of Florence MacCarthy Reagh, Tanist of Carberry, p227

[7] O’Neill to Florence MacCarthy, 27 January 1601, (Cal. S.P Ire 1601-1603, p.392)

[8]  For the Spaniard’s opinion on the battle see Oscar Recio Morales, Spanish Army attitudes to the Irish at Kinsale, in The Battle of Kinsale, 2001, p96-97. For the battle itself see Hiram Morgan, Disaster at Kinsale in Ibid. p.128-130. See also John McGurk, The Battle of Kinsale, History Ireland, 2001, http://www.historyireland.com/early-modern-history-1500-1700/the-battle-of-kinsale-1601/

[9] Sean Connolly Contested island: Ireland 1460–1630, Oxford University Press, 2007 p 252, Colm Lennon Sixteenth Century Ireland – The Incomplete Conquest,               Gill & Macmillan,                Dublin 1994 p300-301

[10] Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland,  p301

The Irish Story is proud to participate, with the People’s College, in a series of talks, aimed at putting Ireland’s revolutionary experience of 1916-1923 in a world context. See also last year’s series on the Easter Rising and the 2014 series on the Irish Revolution.

Talks will be held on Wednesday’s at the Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Square Dublin 1, 18.30-20.00. Talks will be one hour followed by questions. Admission is €5 per lecture or €20 for all six.

 

January 25. John Dorney, Ireland in a World of Revolution 1917-1923

Ireland experienced nationalist revolution, war and partition in these years, but so did much of the world. This talk explores Ireland’s experience in context. John Dorney is a historian and editor of The Irish Story website.

February 1. Donal Fallon, Ireland and the Russian Revolution.

In February 1917, the Tsar of Russian was overthrown and in October of that year, Lenin and the Bolsheviks made the world’s first socialist state. What was Ireland’s reaction? Donal Fallon is a historian and editor Come Here to Me! website.

February 8. Fionnuala Walsh, Women in a World at War.

The Great War revolutionised the role of women at the fronts and at home, this talk looks at the changing fortunes of women. Fionnuala Walsh is a post-doctoral scholar at Trinity College Dublin on Irish women and the First World War.

February 15 Darragh Gannon, The Irish in Britain and America and the Ideal of Self-Determination.

US President Woodrow Wilson declared that ‘national self determination’ should define the post war settlement. This talk looks at the campaign of the Irish in Britain and the US for this to be applied to Ireland. Darragh Gannon teaches history at UCD.

 

February 22, Brian Hanley, Irish Labour after 1916

 

In the aftermath of Russian Revolution and the Easter Rising, the Irish labour movement found itself in a new state of ferment. How did Irish labour fare after James Connolly’s death in 1916? How did the trade union movement rebuild itself? What was its role in the independence movement? This explores these questions. Brian Hanley is a historian and author of many books on Irish Republican history.

March 1, William Mulligan, New Borders in Ireland and Europe 1918-1923

In 1921, Ireland was partitioned between north and south, but it was far from the only new state or new border in Europe this talk puts Irish partition in context. William Mulligan teaches history at University College Dublin.

In this interview, John Dorney speaks to Martin O’Donoghue about the fate of the once-dominant Irish Parliamentary Party after its defeat in the election of 1918 and its sidelining in the struggle for Irish independence. How did it go about finding a place for itself in the new independent but partitioned Ireland?

Having lost out to Sinn Fein as the voice of nationalist Ireland in 1918, ‘The Party’ still retained a loyal following in parts of the country and in the North, where it was propped up by its close relationship with the ancient order of Hibernians, the the Catholic-only fraternal society.

However it took next to no part in the struggle for independence or the civil war in the period 1919 to 1923. It was only afterwards that some former IPP politicians reemerged as independent TDs and it was not until 1926, under the son of their late leader John Redmond that a new party, calling itself the National League was formed.

The party briefly flirted with going into a coalition government with Labour and Fianna Fail, but the bid foundered in humiliating circumstances as Cathal Brennan described in this article.

The National League was dissolved in 1931, but many former members continued their involvement in politics, mostly in the Fine Gael party.

Martin O’Donoghue is a historian working NUI Galway. His PHD was on the Irish Parliamentary Party after 1918.

Thomas Earls Fitzgerald, who has been researching the Irish Revolution in County Kerry, talks to John Dorney of the Irish Story about the impact of guerrilla warfare on the civilian population.

Fitzgerald, who also contributed this article on the subject, starts off by talking about how initially much Volunteer or IRA activity was directed at policing the civilian population and coercing those who, in the wake of he Republican victory in the 1918 election, still associated with Crown forces or British institutions.

Some effort also, he notes, went into suppressing crime, calming land agitation of landless farmers and at times keeping ‘undesirables’ such as Irish travellers out of the County. Ritual hair cutting and sometimes physical punishment was also meted out to women and girls who associated with Crown forces.

But he argues that lethal violence against civilians in Kerry only began with the introduction of the paramilitary police, the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries into the County in the summer of 1920. Their indiscriminate violence against civilians, is, Fitzgerald argues, wrongly referred as a ‘reprisal campaign’ as much of it occurred at times and in places where there had been no prior IRA attack. We detail the ‘reprisals carried out in places such as Tralee in 1920 and Ballylongford in February 1921.

This led to a much more lethal phase of the conflict as the IRA columns, particularly in north Kerry, hit back at Crown forces, often with startling ruthlessness. It was also the phase in which the IRA began to shoot civilians as informers in Kerry in significant numbers.

The violence of the Civil War too Fitzgerald argues can also be interpreted to some extent as two rival armed forces attempting to coerce the civilian population and bend it to their will. The Ballyseedy massacre of 1923 was a long term outgrowth of a local grudge between the IRA and a north Kerry farmer.

Free State forces, who saw Kerry, mostly correctly, as hostile territory were also notoriously ill disciplined and brutal in the County, notably in the ‘Kenmare case’, the brutal assault of the daughters of a local doctor.

In essence then, the period he argues is typified by a conflict to successfully control the civilian population, many of whom simply wanted to be left alone, whatever their political sympathies.