Abstract: The existence of an Anti-Sinn Féin League of local residents in Cork city and county during the Irish War of Independence is controversial among historians. The late Peter Hart initially claimed that the name was really a cover for RIC/British Army death squads and dismissed long stated IRA claims that many of those they killed were spies, informers and spotters for the British government. IRA commander Tom Barry’s biographer Meda Ryan provided copious references to the Anti Sinn Féin League in her replies to, and dismissal, of Hart’s assertion.[1] Hart in turn dismissed Ryan’s claim and almost twenty years later the controversy continues. While many of the sources and assumptions upon which Hart based his theory have been shown to be more nuanced and complex than he suggested, other aspects of his analysis have received less attention. One of these neglected topics is this issue of the extent of loyalist co-operation. While much has been written about this, it is often only part of polemics on either side of the debate and often is not considered on its own merits. This paper examines much of the available British and Irish evidence and invites the reader to consider both the quality of that evidence and how significant this co-operation actually was.[2]
History is difficult: it is always subject to revision as new archives are opened which lead to different interpretations of events. This revisionism is both necessary and welcome provided that the historian remains true to the documents. Difficulties arise when documents are misinterpreted, misread or selectively quoted but often it is the ambiguity of the documents that is the greatest difficulty. These problems increase exponentially when dealing with intelligence or covert warfare where the holders of the information have a vested interest in keeping it secret or actively produce inaccurate information to cloud the actual events. Often it is impossible to make a full judgement in this secret world and historians are only able to analyse what they are allowed to see sometimes centuries after the event.[3] The opacity of this secret world places an extra burden on the historian to verify the facts as much as possible and to be cautious in their analysis.
This article re-examines the question of the existence and make up of a local civilian loyalist Anti-Sinn Féin League working secretly with the British forces in opposition to the IRA in Cork during the Irish War of Independence.[4] This issue is very much part of what might be called the ‘Peter Hart War’ which has raged through Irish historical scholarship since the publication of The IRA and its enemies in 1998. His dismissal of significant loyalist cooperation, combined with his identification of events approaching ‘ethnic cleansing in Southern Ireland and his obvious contempt for West Cork IRA commander General Tom Barry brought his work centre stage in the study of this period.[5] It won him critical acclaim, honours and vilification in almost equal measure. Part 1 of this paper briefly outlines the current position in the discussion about Hart’s theses while Part 2 deals specifically with the evidence of loyalist co-operation with British forces in Cork.
In 1998 Peter Hart sparked off controversy among Irish historians when he published The IRA and its enemies about the conduct the Irish War of Independence and Civil War in Cork.[6] He made three controversial claims. The first was that after the Kilmichael ambush on November 28 1920 IRA commander, Tom Barry, invented a ‘false’ surrender to explain why 16 Auxiliary Police were wiped out and no prisoners taken.[7] The second was that a campaign approaching ‘ethnic cleansing’ took place across southern Ireland between 1921 and 1923 and that this resulted ‘in the single greatest movement of a native population within the British Isles since the seventeenth century’.[8] Finally, he stated that the vast majority of individuals shot as ‘informers’ by the IRA were innocent easy targets on the margins of society [9] and that most of the information supplied to the British actually came from within the IRA or their supporters.[10] Hart was inviting the reader to re-imagine ‘the four glorious years’ of the Irish revolution in Cork as a squalid sectarian conflict where a ‘veil of silence was drawn over the continuing persecution and dispossession of the Protestants of West Cork [11] as ‘Protestants had become “fair game” because they were seen as outsiders and enemies not just by the IRA but by a large segment of the [Roman] Catholic population as well’.[12] Unsurprisingly, as Hart’s theories struck at the non-sectarian vision of the foundation of the Irish state and the folk memory of the Cork IRA brigades they set off a storm of controversy.[13] Much has been written since about this topic and it is reasonable to look at the current position on all these issues before continuing.
While there is ample evidence that the false surrender at Kilmichael was always part of the story this evidence will always be ambiguous at best. Seven months after the ambush, the British magazine Round Table reported that the Auxiliaries were wiped out after ‘a white flag was raised’ and then they ‘recommenced firing’ to explain ‘the unique barbarity of the event’. [14] The Bureau of Military History (BMH) statement of John (Jack) Hennessy, who fought at Kilmichael, states that some Auxiliaries attempted to fire after a ceasefire was called by Barry. The evidence of Hennessy is very clear, but in truth it is impossible to analyse a fire-fight on such limited information.[15] It is also a fact that IRA soldier Pat Deasy was shot in the abdomen and the chest by an Auxiliary after he came down on to the road around the same time that Jack Hennessy took cover and John Lordan, who was next to him was shot in the ear.[16] Two other volunteers lay dead, or dying next to these men before this. It is highly likely that Tom Barry was entirely honest about what he thought he saw (three volunteers stand up and get shot) while at the same time incorrect about what he actually saw.[17] William H. Kautt’s argument that there is no contradiction between Tom Barry’s evidence and the evidence of the other witnesses is convincing.[18]
Secondly, after a bruising, needlessly snide, disparaging and personalised debate it is now accepted by most historians that Hart’s claim that the decline of the native Protestant population in southern Ireland was mostly attributable to IRA violence during the War of Independence and Civil War was incorrect. David Fitzpatrick’s succinct summary of the current position is,
‘The spectacular depopulation of Protestants in southern Ireland (1911–26) has led some historians to claim that sectarian elements in the IRA were responsible for forced emigration amounting to ‘ethnic cleansing’. Such theses are difficult to test in the absence of detailed returns of migration giving religious affiliation. This paper presents new evidence from Methodist records to document the trajectories of families who left West Cork between 1920 and 1923, indicating that excess emigration accounted for only a small part of net depopulation. It also records the reactions of Methodist clergy and leaders to the threats posed by revolutionary conflict, confirming the impressive resilience of the community despite murders and intimidation’.[19]
This broadly agrees with the statistical analysis presented separately by both Andy Bielenberg and myself from the published census material.[20] The excess[21] Protestant decline in West Cork, for example, was in the order of 10% between 1911 and 1926, and as this includes other factors then the correct figure for ‘forced’ migration during the short period between 1919 and 1923 is likely to be less than this.[22] It is also notable that the annualised rate of decline in Cork between 1911 and 1926 was only marginally greater than the previous ten years if the departure of the British military and their families is excluded.[23] No reasonable historian would disagree with Fitzpatrick’s observation that ‘the spectre of Protestant extermination has distracted debate about revolutionary Ireland for too long, and should be laid to rest’.[24]
As the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross directly addressed the issue in 1923 (immediately after the war was over) and said that during the war 'Churchmen [members of the Church of Ireland] had lived in friendliness and good-fellowship with their Roman Catholic neighbours, and Roman Catholics and Churchmen have proved mutually helpful to each other all over the diocese' this should never have been an issue. This is despite the fact that in 1922 he commented that,
‘During the past two and a half years our population has declined by 8%. It is serious, but does not call for despair. Many of our people have gone. Neither we nor their country could afford to lose them. Their homes have been burned. Destruction has marched through the land. The ruins of Ireland may well make all who love her weep. But notwithstanding all our losses we are not going to be chilled in inactivity, or give way to depression'’[25]
While these words have be seen by some as evidence of sectarianism it may also be observed that the Church figures further contradict the claims of Peter Hart that the majority of the 43% Protestant decline in Cork occurred between 1920 and 1922.[26]
However, on the linked topic of deliberately targeting and harassing Protestants as a group, rather than particular individuals over active loyalty to Britain, no such consensus (even on the facts) seems possible. While there is ample evidence of attacks on Protestants from the public record and within the IRA’s own evidence, the difficulty has always been trying to divine a corroborated motive for individual attacks and deaths.[27] The IRA claimed such attacks were political while loyalists suggested they were sectarian.[28] Peter Hart was initially unequivocal in his view that this was a firstly a religious war,
‘Religion may have provided the starting point for the conflict, but class prejudice, patriotism, and personal grudges all fuelled the development and continuation of widespread violence… the book explores the motivation behind such activity. Its conclusions not only reveal a hidden episode of Ireland's troubled past but provide valuable insights into the operation of similar terrorist groups today’.[29]
While Hart retreated from claims of ‘ethnic cleansing’ Professor Fitzpatrick apparently still shares Hart’s belief which he claims was that ‘certain republican activists, at certain times, made a concerted attempt to drive Protestants and “loyalists” out of West Cork’.[30] The problem remains: how can you prove this? Obviously, Fitzpatrick’s interpretation of Hart’s views is much weaker than Hart’s original one of a final reckoning between ‘settler and Gael’,[31] but his comment that ‘Republican terror—venomous, cruel, and brutal though it was—lacked the power to break the spirit of minorities such as the Methodists of West Cork’, is not supported by evidence that this was the intention of the IRA in its campaign against British rule.[32] Equally, his question that ‘even if Southern Protestants were not subjected to “ethnic cleansing”, is it not credible to apply such a term to the Methodist families actually displaced from revolutionary West Cork?’, can only be answered in the negative.[33]
While there is no doubt that at the time of the Dunmanway killings in April 1922 most locals (and leaders of the nationalist community in the south) believed that they were sectarian attacks in response to the Belfast anti-Roman Catholic ‘pogroms’ of that year, the paltry circumstantial evidence does not actually point in that direction (despite the fact that as all the fatalities were Protestant the outcome was in effect sectarian) when the selective nature of the more than thirty other targets is considered.[34] In reality, as the majority of loyalists in Cork were Protestant then if the IRA attacked loyalists they had to attack some Protestants.[35] The evidence from many of the survivors of the 1922 West Cork attacks (Gilbert Johnston in Bandon, the Bennett brothers in Ballineen, William Jagoe, the Wilson brothers, James McCarthy, Thomas Sullivan and W.H. Fitzmaurice in Dunmanway, Thomas Nagle and R.J. Helen in Clonakilty), for example, shows that they were all targeted as Protestant unionists, loyalists or (in the latter two cases) informants, which suggests that the attackers were at least as interested in their politics as their religion.[36] Much of this will never be resolved because: the evidence is apparently not there, has not been made available to historians or remains undiscovered in family documents and archives. This even extends to the most basic issues. Anyone looking for the gravestone of James Beale, shot in 1921, and his wife Sarah (who lost her father, brother, and husband at the hands of the IRA) in St. Luke’s churchyard in Douglas, Cork will not find it because their names are not on the grave.[37]
There may well have been a sectarian element in the actions of some individuals during the 1922 murders, as Professor Fitzpatrick now suggests, but there is little evidence of a systematic sectarian campaign or that the response of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership on all sides was anything other than an attempt to protect against, and apologise for, these attacks.[38] It is a fact that what happened during the 1922 murders was by definition not ‘ethnic cleansing’, or even ‘something approaching ethnic cleansing’. Nevertheless, despite a plethora of new research by Andy Bielenberg, John Borgonovo, David Fitzpatrick, Stephen Howe, Niall Meehan, Eve Morrison, Brian Murphy, John Regan and others some scholars, such as Professor Brian Walker, seem unwilling to adjust their position.[39]
Overall then, it seems clear ‘there was in Hart’s work a compulsion not only to exaggerate, but also to simplify’ and it is this, combined with an unfortunate habit of selectively quoting the sources that underpinned some of his claims, that led to the difficulty many historians have with his work.[40] The recent research on the topic has clarified much of the true history of the war and there is no doubt that the release of new documents in the seventeen years since the publication of The IRA and its enemies would have caused Hart to substantially modify his opinion.[41] It has always appeared to me that too much focus has been placed on one book and historians of the period have a duty to move on from Hart by returning to their key role of interpreting the sources.
The main focus of this paper is on one element of the ‘victimhood by group’ theory: the Anti-Sinn Féin League. This section of the article re-examines the topic and invites the reader to consider how significant loyalist cooperation with the British forces was during the war in Cork. Inevitably, if it can be shown that the individuals shot by the IRA had been providing information to the British then doubt must be cast on the sectarian hypothesis. The reader will have to judge the evidence and decide.
In his autobiographical account of the war, the leader of the 3rd (West Cork) Flying Column, Tom Barry stated that if Protestants and Loyalists remained ‘aloof’ from the struggle they were not harmed by the IRA, but those who actively supported the British could expect no mercy.[42] While the IRA leadership was adamant that there was, historians dispute the existence of local civilian loyalist organisations providing information to the British, and claim that at most only a few loyalist farmers in West Cork or Cork city residents were involved.
The ‘non-civilian’ make-up of an Anti-Sinn Féin League or society was an important building block in Hart’s thesis that the IRA had targeted people who were ‘outsiders, undesirables, people living on the margins of the communities and thus very likely considered to be real or imaginary informers and enemies of the Republic: “Freemasons, tramps and tinkers, corner boys, fast women, ex-servicemen, etc” ‘.[43] According to Hart, if the Anti-Sinn Féin League was actually a cover name for RIC/military death squads then the victims of IRA violence were targeted in error.
Others agree. Gerard Murphy, for example, recently stated that the Anti Sinn Féin League ‘was simply a cover for night-time British death squads’ and that the ‘evidence for this is overwhelming’.[44] Murphy accepts the possibility that some local loyalists assisted the British with intelligence gathering but refuses to include any as part of a league.[45] He may be correct but this does not mean that some local loyalists did not assist these ‘death squads by spotting for them’.[46] The shooters may well have been RIC and military, but to divorce the intelligence gathering operation from the ‘death squad’ seems extremely tenuous if not entirely illogical.[47] There is no doubt, for example, that George Horgan was shot for spying on the IRA and that his disappearance was the subject of a threat by loyalist forces which was copied on the wires and published in The Mail in Adelaide, South Australia. The threat was to the point,
‘‘LONDON, To-day’ If Horgan is not returned by 4 p.m. on Friday, rebels of Cork, beware, as one man and one shop will disappear for every 'hour after the given time’.[48]
The Auxiliaries are the most likely source for the notice, but there is equally no doubt that George was local as he was born in Killarney in 1889 to a Cork mixed marriage. His father had died by 1911.[49] Coincidentally, the night after the notice appeared, Saturday 11 December 1920, the centre of Cork city was burned down by Auxiliaries and other British forces as a reprisal for other incidents that day. It seems likely that a long planned reprisal had degenerated into an all-out orgy of drink and looting sparked off by the bombing of an Auxiliary convoy almost at the gates of the British headquarters at Victoria Barracks in the city.
Others dismiss Hart and Murphy and point to the wealth of evidence in IRA documents about the Anti Sinn Féin League.[50] There is no doubt that this IRA evidence is problematic as there are few corroborating documents, but it seems odd that many IRA veterans would all concoct the same lie in different parts of Cork. Possibly, this could be put down to paranoia (or more benignly a willingness to be suspicious and trigger-happy) or possibly they are telling the truth. While no loyalist claimed membership of the league in their compensation claims at the Irish Grants Committee, as the IRA claimed that they wiped out the members of the league by February 1921 this neither proves nor disproves anything as membership of the league was meant to be secret.[51] Much of this has already been covered by John Borgonovo’s Spies, informers, and the Anti Sinn Féin League, Murphy in his book, Peter Hart’s IRA and its enemies and to a lesser extent in Meda Ryan’s Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter, but as new sources have become available it is reasonable to revisit the evidence.[52] Other recent articles have also gone a long way to explaining what happened during the Dunmanway murders of 1922 and these also need to be considered.[53]
In West Cork Hart claimed that a second RIC/Military murder gang operated in the Bandon area while ‘dressed up as old farmers’ and that this was the ‘real’ Anti Sinn Féin League there. This directly contradicted and dismissed IRA Commander, Liam Deasy’s, comment that the 1921 murder of the Coffey brothers in Enniskeane was carried out by this hit squad guided to the location by local civilians and that the IRA had discovered the existence of an Anti Sinn Féin League in that part of the Bandon valley.[54] Lest there be any doubt, Deasy accepted the existence of a British Army/Police group who did the actual shooting but stated that they were helped by locals. Many of the suspects’ names are included in the Collins Papers in the Military Archives of Ireland.[55] However, on examination the Hart claim is based on a single source and this therefore demands close scrutiny.[56]
The specific claim about the Bandon ‘murder gang’ refers to the statement by ex-RIC Constable McIvor which was recorded in Brewer’s The Royal Irish Constabulary: an oral history.[57] Hart highlights McIvor who was ‘stationed in Bandon (an area which saw a large number of IRA deaths)’. Hart’s editing (in italics below) gives the impression that the ex-RIC Constable was discussing a special squad stationed in Bandon.[58] The full quote says,
‘We had no truck with the Auxiliaries at all. They were a force unto themselves. I think they were the ones who got the most hatred really. They were tough chaps indeed. I think they made the RIC’s job harder. The Black and Tans they weren’t as bad as the picture that is painted of them. Of course if they were ambushed, and had a lot of them shot, well then they retaliated. One man a Head Constable, he took charge of a squad, he was always in plain clothes, never wore uniform, and they had a big price on his head. He was an ordinary police officer, he was ex-army, and they had a thousand pounds on his head, dead or alive. But they never got him and he went to Canada, I believe after disbandment. Well he was on a special squad, he had his men with him, four or five of them, dressed up like old farmers, they gathered the information. Oh, there was quite a lot of undercover work. There was one man along with me in Bandon at that particular time and he was a sergeant, and he said, ‘I have a sort of a presentment that they’re going to get me’. ‘Ach’, I says ‘sure everybody thinks that at some time or other’. And so they did, they got him whenever he come back to Dublin. They shot him coming out of chapel’.
But what exactly does the source say? Has anyone traced this Head Constable, who should be relatively easy to find? Where was this Head Constable operating? [59] Were the men dressed up as old farmers involved in reprisals? Most importantly did this squad operate in Bandon? Was the Bandon Sergeant a member of the ‘bunch of old farmers’? When did this sergeant move to Dublin and when was he shot?[60] In short, is it evidence of a military/police ‘death squad’ in Bandon?[61] Is it proof that there was no local Anti Sinn Féin League in Cork city or county? Is it proof there was a local Anti-Sinn Féin League in Bandon? Is it proof that the Anti Sinn Féin League was only and exclusively an RIC/Army hit-squad? The reader will have to decide for themselves but it is difficult to see how the quote could support any of these interpretations.
Secondly, while Hart eventually conceded that ‘a few, but not many’ loyalists were providing assistance in West Cork, in 1998 he failed to mention British evidence that loyalist cooperation in the Bandon valley was exceptional and that many loyalist farmers in this valley ‘were murdered while almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss’ for providing information to the British.[62] It might also be observed that ‘a few, but not many’ spies of all religions were killed.[63] Unlike Hart, Murphy accepted that the Record of the Rebellion refers to ‘the half a dozen or so loyalist farmers who were shot by members of Tom Barry’s column, and others who were driven out in fear of their lives’ but categorically denies that this cooperation was significant or ‘widespread’.[64]
Murphy presents a second piece of evidence about a British Army/RIC ‘death-squad’ in West Cork. He states that a local man ‘Dan Leary was caught and nearly flogged to death by masked and armed men, almost certainly RIC men in disguise, or British intelligence men in mufti’. In fact, the Cork Constitution report that Murphy refers to states: Lynch was flogged in Caheragh 30 kilometres to the west of Bandon; the flogging occurred the previous November and not after the shooting of Thomas Bradfield in February 1921 and the man was flogged for non-payment of the IRA arms levy. The perpetrators were unidentified but it is extremely unlikely that they were British forces.[65]
As these are the only pieces of evidence presented in The IRA and its enemies or the The Year of Disappearances about the members of a Bandon ‘murder gang’ Murphy’s claim that he ‘proved pretty much beyond doubt that the members of the so-called Anti-Sinn Féin League were British security operatives and not so called loyalist spies’ seems to be stretching the evidence beyond reason.[66]
There is, of course, other evidence that there was a ‘death squad’ operating in West Cork. The BMH witness statement of Richard Russell, for example, identified retired British Army Lieutenant Colonel Warren Peacocke, who lived in Innishannon, as a guide for the ‘death squad’. Russell states that the squad included Essex regiment members and nobody has ever suggested otherwise. The claim has always been that the squad was being guided around West Cork and assisted with information provided by local spies like Peacocke and his neighbour Fred Stenning who was also shot.[67]
Tom Barry’s biographer, Meda Ryan is categorical that an Anti-Sinn Féin League existed in West Cork and has presented a wealth of evidence to support her argument in an article in History.[68] However, when this evidence is examined it does not identify members of the league so it is circumstantial at best, and this is precisely where the difficulty in this debate lies. Equally, as only Ms. Ryan has seen all the documents in question, and some are no longer available to other historians, this has allowed some writers to cast doubt on her research.[69]
The problem with all these versions of the same events told from different perspectives is that the sources are no longer allowed to speak for themselves. In reality the only sources that claim to identify individual members of an Anti-Sinn Féin League in county Cork are Irish (mostly BMH witness statements) but these are often questioned or dismissed by historians who believe that the society was a myth, usually without explaining why they should be. David Fitzpatrick alludes to ‘the ubiquity of serious factual errors and self-justifying distortion in much republican testimony such as that collected by the Bureau of Military History’ without further comment but those historians who have examined the BMH in detail have a somewhat less dismissive view of the archive.[70] I have read more than 900 BMH statements and cross-referenced them where possible with the other sources. Generally, they are broadly accurate, especially when there is more than one statement discussing the same incident. The least we should do is to invite the reader to consider the evidence in detail and to make up their own mind, but it must be stressed that as many pieces of evidence are frustratingly ambiguous the archives must be treated with reasonable scepticism at all times.
Cork City
Patrick Collins lived in later life on College Road in Cork. He was highly respected in the community. College Road had a large Church of Ireland congregation but if there were any residual tensions from his role as an IRA Officer in Cork City they were never evident amongst the close knit community. He often spoke about the ‘troubled time’ and his story was well known in the locality.[71]
In his BMH statement Patrick Collins discusses the Anti-Sinn Féin League and says that it was made up of local Freemasons and YMCA members.[72] He says its secretary was [James] Charles Beale who managed Woodford Bourne, wine merchants in Cork. [73] James Beale came from England a few years before the War of Independence and was the brother-in-law of James and Edward Blemens who worked in Woodford Bourne.[74] Suspicion initially fell on these men when an IRA man (Din Din O’Roirdain) who had been passing information to the British was interrogated and then shot by an IRA group at the Chetwynd Viaduct just outside Cork city.[75] Edward and his father James Snr. were kidnapped and killed by the IRA in late November 1920. Senior Cork commander Michael Murphy [who had also interrogated Din Din] recalls in his BMH statement that their ‘names were given to me by Parsons. We also had information about them from letters captured by our lads in raids on postmen for mails’.[76] Michael Murphy spoke in far greater detail to Ernie O’Malley about his investigation into the group and said that he had listened in the backyard of Blemens house while the Anti Sinn Féin society was meeting. He told O’Malley that he ‘saw them and heard them’ and this is why they were shot.[77] James Beale was shot in February 1921. A probable attempt to kill him in late January had been unsuccessful as he had not been at home when the killers called. Referring to Beale Patrick Collins said that papers found on his body identified the other members of the league and these were shot, or ordered out. These papers were thought to be so valuable that they had to be retrieved from under a flowerpot where they had been stashed when Buckley, the IRA member carrying them, had been captured. Mr. Collins is not alone in his recollection. Jeremiah Keating also relates a version of the same story.[78] Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story is equally direct about what happened in its timeline of events which says that ‘a number of civilians organised into a spy ring by the British military authorities were executed’ in November 1920 which does not leave any room for ambiguity on its part.[79].
Another Cork City IRA man, Willam Barry, explains his role in the shooting of Alfred Reilly the manager of Thompson’s Bakery who was picked up outside the building on what is now McCurtain Street and driven in his own pony and trap to the gates of his house in Douglas where he was shot and his body dumped. Barry says that Reilly was the paymaster of the Anti-Sinn Féin League.[80] Cork IRA spymaster Florence O’Donoghue also stated that such a league existed, it was not very successful, and that any people who started to ‘show signs of becoming dangerous were quickly eliminated’.[81] Michael O’Donoghue (later President of the G.A.A.) also discusses the Anti Sinn Féin League and states,
A secret society known as the "Anti-Sinn Féin Society" was formed. Its principal members were wealthy imperialists in Cork - drawn from industrial, commercial and retired British governmental servants, both civil and military. They were almost exclusively non-Catholic; a fact which later gave a curious religions slant to I.R.A. counter-activities to suppress them. This society collected and sifted information, by discreetly using some of their employees as spotters and touts, which they passed on to the Auxiliaries and military. Warning notices and fearsome threats of murder and reprisals were actually published in Cork City newspapers and in posters in the name of the “Anti Sinn Féin Society”. These notices were invariably handed in by armed Auxiliaries who ordered publication at the point of a gun … I.R.A. Intelligence were not long in unmasking three of the A.S.F. principals, two in Cork and one in Youghal.[82] They were promptly executed and this alarmed the rest.’[83]
O’Donoghue confirms Auxiliary involvement in the league but also confirms that local loyalists were shot for their involvement. As we will see O’Donoghue later states bluntly the men shot during the Dunmanway killings in April 1922 were members of this Anti-Sinn Féin League to explain why they were targeted by their killers.[84] Finally, also in West Cork, William Foley of Timoleague stated that loyalists had organised themselves into an Anti-Sinn Féin League as early as 1919 but does not present any further evidence.[85]
The case of T.J Bradfield is of particular significance and needs to be considered in detail. The Cork 3rd Brigade passed through Carhue, 4 kilometres to the west of Bandon, towards the end of January 1921 on their way to attack British forces in Bandon. They came across a man called Michael or Denis Dwyer from Newcestown who mistook them for Auxiliaries.[86] He gave them information about the local IRA. He was ‘tried, convicted of spying’ and shot. His body was left on the road as a trap for the Essex regiment or ‘K’ Company of the Auxiliaries. While they waited they were billeted with local farmers some of whom were loyalist. When they came to the house of T.J. Bradfield, a member of the Cork, Cloyne and Ross Diocesan Synod, he also mistook them for Auxiliaries and also gave them information about the local IRA. According to Denis Lordan Bradfield said,
‘I’m not like the rest of them round here at all. The Reverend Mr Lord is my man, and I give him the information. You fellows should come round at night I’d show you round.”
Lordan’s statement to the BMH goes much further and states that ‘he also arranged to give further information [to the Auxiliaries] later on through his local clergyman and pressed very hard for the immediate capture and execution of certain local boys who were members of the IRA’. Bradfield’s clergyman was Lord. Like Dwyer, Bradfield was ‘tried, convicted’ and shot. There is no dispute about this among the sources.[87]
Bradfield had implicated the Reverend John Charles Lord of Bandon.[88] According to IRA Intelligence Officer, Flor Begley, the minister in Bandon was ‘next on the list’ but Major Percival sent word that the ‘PP or a neighbour (or a brother) of the Bishop would be shot’.[89] Even so, according to Begley the minister woke up one night to find men with revolvers at the foot of his bed which can only have been a warning to desist.[90] The problem with this is that with the exception of Denis Lordan’s reported comments there is nothing else to link Lord definitively by name with Bradfield.[91]
The recent publication of The men will talk to me: West Cork Interviews which transcribes Ernie O’Malley’s interviews with some of the most senior IRA veterans including the above mentioned 3rd Brigade intelligence officer Flor Begley, the ‘Piper of Crossbarry’ is an important addition to the source material. Begley’s interview amplifies and corroborates Frank Neville’s statement to the BMH that he had been captured by Percival and Lieutenant Hotblack (killed at the Crossbarry ambush in March 1921) at the farm of ‘a Protestant farmer called Jagoe’. Percival listed out all of Neville’s activities over the previous few days and when Neville denied this he simply replied ‘I have my own intelligence service around here and I know everything’. Neville recalled that he was badly beaten and then was to be murdered by the Essex, ‘shot while trying to escape’. Begley confirms that he interviewed J[agoe] and that the man claimed that he had been gossiping at church to account for the information Percival had about Neville.[92] Begley sardonically observed that this ‘did not explain how Percival knew that the rifles had been left in J[agoe]’s shed for a night’. Jagoe left the following day and was not seen again in West Cork according to Begley. Neville pulled no punches and stated, ‘Jagoe was a loyalist and had given information. He left the country shortly after when he found we were on his track’.[93] On the face of it Percival was quite open with Neville about the quality of his information as he knew Neville was going to be murdered. Once Neville survived and told his story, Jagoe would inevitably have been shot by Begley and it seems he departed.
Generally the BHM and MSPC statements tell us who shot whom because in most cases the gunmen say who they shot. Michael O’Donogue, for example, states that he shot a soldier coming out of a shop on St. Patrick’s Street in Cork city during the general attack on British soldiers after the first of the Dripsey Ambush executions on 28th February 1921. From newspaper reports it can be shown that this was Private William Gill of the Hampshire Regiment who was indeed shot coming out of a sweet shop.[94] In my view this points towards the credibility in these statements: others may believe differently.
Further new evidence from Patrick Carroll’s Military Service Pensions claim brings us as close to the detailed IRA evidence against the Anti Sinn Féin League as we are likely to get. Carroll, along with Tim Warren, was a postman in Ballineen and Intelligence Officer for the 4th Battalion of the 3rd West Cork Brigade. While Carroll tries to be discreet in his original statement there is no such discretion in either his oral evidence to the investigating officers or in the supporting interview with Liam Deasy on his behalf. Carroll identified Alfred Cotter and stated that he witnessed Cotter providing information to the Auxiliaries a week before he was shot at his home in Ballineen at 9.15 pm on 26th February 1921.[95] Carroll states that it was as a result of the information he provided that Cotter was shot. But Carroll’s evidence goes much further than this. On page three of his initial hand written statement he states that a spy he identified was,
‘… one of the principal founders of an Anti-Sinn Féin organisation that was started in the area for the sole purpose of terrorising Republicans and Republican supporters and carrying out reprisals for spies executed in the area. Their activities went as far as taking out a volunteer and a volunteer officer and shooting them [the Coffey brothers]. Four members of the gang were executed in the area in Jan. and Feb. 1921 and I had to do intelligence work under the eyes of the remaining members of the gang who were not known until later, when they became known five more were executed about 1 doz. left the country… I ran more risk from those than the uniform forces of the crown’.[96]
There are two points of significance in the statement. First Carroll provides a definitive specific reason for the shooting of Alfred Cotter. Carroll saw Cotter with the Auxiliaries/Tans, reported it to Brigade and Cotter was shot as a result. Secondly, he states that four members of a local Anti-Sinn Féin League were shot in West Cork in January and February 1921 (possibly Bradfield, Dwyer, Bradfield, Good) with a further five later bring the total to 9. A further twelve left the area after discovery. He strongly suggests that he was the source of the information that led to these deaths and departures. There is no ambiguity about the existence of the Anti-Sinn Féin League in his statement and as it had to be officially verified by Paddy O’Brien (Intelligence Officer in Dunmanway) and Liam Deasy (Commandant 3rd Cork Brigade) there can be no doubt that it had the full support of the West Cork Brigade leadership.[97] Carroll’s statement is clearly part of the source material for Deasy’s claim there was an Anti-Sinn Féin League in this area. It cannot simply be dismissed. The second set of five killings is more ambiguous and may refer to the later 1922 killings (McKinley, Bradfield, Buttimer, Chinnery, Howe and Greenfield) but there is no way of knowing.[98]
Thirteen local Protestants were killed in West Cork between April 26th and April 29th 1922.[99] Long after the 1922 killings Michael V. O’Donoghue stated that the victims were shot in reprisal for the death of IRA Vice-Commandant Michael O’Neill and that the targets were chosen because of their loyalty to Britain and their membership of the Anti-Sinn Féin League in West Cork.
‘Several prominent loyalists - all active members of the anti-Sinn Féin Society in West Cork, and blacklisted as such in I.R.A. Intelligence Records - in Bandon, Clonakilty, Ballineen and Dunmanway, were seized at night by armed men, taken out and killed. Some were hung, most were shot. All were Protestants. This gave the slaughter a sectarian appearance. Religious animosity had nothing whatever to do with it. These people were done to death as a savage, wholesale, murderous reprisal for the murder of Mick O'Neill. They were doomed to die because they were listed as aiders and abettors of the British Secret Service, one of whom, Captain Woods, had confessed to shooting dead treacherously and in cold blood Vice-Commandant Michael O'Neill that day near Crookstown in May 1922. Fifteen or sixteen loyalists in all went to gory graves in brutal reprisal for O'Neill's murder’.[100]
O’Donoghue was in no doubt about the existence of the Anti-Sinn Féin league or, in this case, its membership, but as we are not able to interrogate the quality of the information on which he based his claim, given the fact he was in Donegal at the time, then it must be treated with reasonable scepticism.[101]
There is other evidence in various archives which names (or links) the individuals shot in April 1922 as enemy agents, loyalists, and pro-British supporters. W.H. Fitmaurice reported in his compensation claim that both he and his brother Francis, who was shot on April 26th, gave information to the British government forces in Dunmanway during the War of Independence. Thomas Nagle, whose son Robert was shot on April 27th, and R.J. Helen who escaped on the same night were named in a 3rd Cork Brigade list of enemy agents in July 1921.[102] The nephew of another victim, James Buttimer, was named in the same 1921 list and another nephew was named in the ‘Dunmanway Diary’.[103] Mary Kate (Nyhan) Falvey names [John] Bertie Chinnery, [Robert or William] Howe, [John or James] Buttimer and John Moore in her Military Service Pensions Collection as spies at Castletown-Kenneigh. She states ‘‘two or three of these were shot’. Ms. Falvey’s statement also confirms that she identified Michael Dwyer as an enemy agent. As we know Mr. Dwyer was shot in Carhue in 1921 by the 3rd Brigade Column after being interrogated.[104] As Liam Deasy accompanied Ms. Falvey at her interview and Tom Barry wrote she ‘gave information regarding spies’ there can be no doubt that her evidence had the full imprimatur of the leaders of the 3rd Brigade. Barry in another letter to support her appeal stated ‘this is one of our very best women’.[105] In 1949 Risteard Ó Glaisne wrote to Tom Barry stating that John Chinnery had been identified as a British spy when he dropped a letter he was posting to the British.[106] Finally when John Bradfield was shot the killers were actually looking for his brother Henry, who had been passing information to the British. Initial reports stated that John Shorten (see above), who lived next door, was the victim.[107] All this may explain why these men were picked out for reprisal after the death of Michael O’Neill: it does not excuse the killings nor does it confirm (except in a couple of cases) that these victims were giving information to the British. There is less substantive evidence about the targeting of the other victim David Grey [Gray] who was killed in Dunmanway.[108]
Finally, we must examine File A8097 in the Irish Military Archives. This file was missing from the archives for a long period and was only traced in late 2014. As David Fitzpatrick observed the contents are revealing.[109] Some of the names are significant for the Dunmanway murders of 1922. Francis Fitzmaurice, Alexander (Gerald) McKinley (McKennedy), and Thomas Nagle were three of the individuals shot. Surprisingly, despite referencing IRA Southern Division lists of spies held in the Military Archives including this, Peter Hart omits to mention that Francis Fitzmaurice was on the A0897 list as ‘hostile’ or that he was ‘a regular barracks visitor’. Equally, Thomas Nagle’s report in the file stated that ‘Police visited him regularly and he was suspected’ rather than being targeted, as Hart claimed, ‘presumably by virtue of his court work’.[110] Hart also seems to have missed Alexander (Gerald) McKInley’s name but this is perhaps understandable as the second name is misspelled on the file. There is no doubt, however, that this evidence gives the lie to Hart’s crucial definitive statement, in relation to the Dunmanway murders, that ‘there is no evidence [whatsoever] in British Army, RIC or IRA records … that any such [Anti Sinn Féin ] conspiracy existed’.[111] It is therefore imperative that what the file actually states about the situation in West Cork is recorded before it disappears again as it also provides a wealth of information about who the IRA suspected across Cork, Kerry and Limerick.[112] Finally, initial reports in Ballineen mistakenly suggested that John Shorten (whose name also appears in the Dunmanway Auxiliary Intelligence Officer’s Diary) was the victim when John Bradfield was killed at Killowen on April 29th. On the face of it, this file presents direct evidence of the members of the Anti-Sinn Féin Society/League in West Cork.
When placed alongside the other evidence in the Dunmanway Diary, Irish Grants Committee compensation claims after the war, BMH statements and IRA Military Service Pensions claims there is sufficient evidence to show that some loyalists in West Cork were actively assisting the British or strongly suspected of this. Whether, this was the case in each and every one of these cases is a matter for the reader to decide but surely now there can be no argument that the evidence is there.[113] However, for the sake of argument let us disregard this evidence in its entirety.
If the IRA evidence is rejected then we must look elsewhere for the existence of an Anti-Sinn Féin League and for significant loyalist cooperation with the British. The obvious place to look is in British records. First and foremost there is no doubt that only a small percentage of local loyalists assisted the British which is hardly surprising given the risk to life and property if locals were suspected.[114] While the British claimed that only one of the people shot in 1921 was an informant,[115] in West Cork the existence of an organised Anti Sinn Féin League is actually irrelevant as there is direct British evidence that some loyalists were supplying information to Essex Regiment Intelligence Officer Major Arthur Percival who was stationed at Bandon. His post war lectures to Staff College were published by Cork historian William Sheehan in 2005.[116] For some reason while most subsequent scholars refer to Sheehan few seem to have actually read all of what Percival said.[117] And what he said about his methods of obtaining information is very important,
‘The most profitable methods [my emphasis] were as follows:
(i) Most important of all, an I.O. must move about the country and hunt for information. It will not come to him if he sits in his office all day.
(ii) He must keep in close touch with the loyalists- especially those who are not afraid to tell them what they know.
This is not always an easy thing to do, as if the IRA suspected a Loyalist of giving information or being too friendly with the Crown Forces, it meant certain death for him. It was our usual practice therefore to approach their houses after dark and very long night journeys had to be made in order to do this.’[118]
Undoubtedly, Percival confirms that some loyalists in West Cork were actively providing him information and he believed that it was valuable enough to undertake long night journeys to get it. We already know that according to the ‘extremely experienced intelligence officer’ many farmers in the Bandon valley provided information, some were shot, and others suffered grave material loss.[119] Eve Morrison recently questioned whether loyalists were the main source of information for Percival but ‘most profitable’ cannot be ignored.[120] The Record of the Rebellion continues that the intelligence branch had,
‘been considerably developed and better able to deal with any information which came to hand and that ‘at the same time the proclamation of Martial Law had undoubtedly frightened a large number of civilians and made them more willing to give information to the Crown forces. This fact, apparently, was realised by the rebel leaders as, commencing in February, a regular murder campaign was instituted against Protestant Loyalists and anybody who might be suspected of being an ‘informer’, quite irrespective of whether he really was or not. This campaign was intensified as time went on, and it had the result of making information very hard to obtain.’[121]
At least six of the Cork Protestant loyalists who were shot in 1921 had provided information which was damaging to the IRA. These were Mathew Sweetnam, William (Thomas) Connell, Mrs. Mary Lindsay, James Clarke,[122] T.J. Bradfield, and Thomas Bradfield.[123] As has been stated Francis Fitzmaurice, who was the first person murdered during the Dunmanway killings in April 1922, is known to have provided information during the War of Independence because his brother mentions it in his statement of claim to the Irish Grants Committee.[124] In these cases it appears the IRA was correct. In fact, Colonel Ormonde Winter, the head of British Intelligence in Ireland specifically mentioned Mrs. Lindsay in his final report when he said that some loyalists ‘like the notorious case of Mrs. Lindsay, have paid for their loyalty’. Whether all these IRA killings were moral is another matter and depends on the reader’s perspective, but the effect of all these shooting was that the supply of information to the British became ‘very hard to obtain’. In pure military terms it was a successful tactic.[125]
The RIC District Commissioner at Bandon reported on 2 February 1921 that John Dwyer and Thomas (T.J) Bradfield who had been shot a few days before had been ‘suspected of giving the information to the Crown forces’.[126] He further commented while,
‘the murders were most cold-blooded and revolting, there [stems] from them the conclusion that the IRA fear civilian information being given & it is being given freely and it is believed it will be still given [my emphasis]’.
A month later on 3 March 1921 he discusses the February attacks and says that ‘The war against loyalist civilians has also resulted in the death of five, while three others have been shot. The motive in the civilian murders is to intimidate loyalist opinion, which was asserting itself, out of existence’.[127] He then lists the incidents including the murders of Thomas Bradfield (Methodist) and Robert Eady (Roman Catholic) for ‘giving information’ and the shooting of Gilbert Fenton (Methodist) ‘for being a loyalist’.[128] However, it must also be noted that the District Commissioner states throughout his reports that Protestant loyalists were being attacked and intimidated in West Cork and that many were selling up and leaving because they had given up hope of getting any protection from the Government, a point echoed by Percival in his review of the war.
A few months earlier, in December 1920, Major Holmes in Cork City unequivocally told Mark Sturgis about the Anti-Sinn Féin League. He said ‘The Anti-Sinn Féin League does exist and is not a myth to cover the “Armed Forces of the Crown”’. Again Murphy and Hart claim that Holmes ‘was simply defending his men in the wake of the burning of Cork’ so presumably this means that he ‘invented’ the civilian league for consumption by Sturgis. There is no doubt that Holmes was trying to push blame away from any official involvement in planning the burnings when he says the Cork fires were,
‘almost certainly started not by any organised body but by single individuals who got together casually, as it were, for mischief- An odd subaltern perhaps, a policeman, an odd Auxiliary doubtless, some civilians, and after the start many real hooligans out for real loot’,
but as he admits military, police and Auxiliary involvement it is not much of a defence.[129]
Equally important are comments by the British Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, General Sir Nevil Macready. On February 19 1921 General Macready reported to the British Cabinet that,
‘Information continues to come in more freely and the murder lately of several men believed by the IRA to be informants points to the feeling of insecurity existing amongst them’.[130]
The essential point is that Macready states that information is coming in freely and, while the IRA may or may not have been correct in shooting these men, the report clearly refers in part to the Cork shootings.
Again at a very detailed meeting with a delegation of eminent British ‘peaceniks’ in April 1921 the Lord Chancellor, Lord Birkenhead replied,
‘Question 26: Does this mean that you are getting support from the population?
Answer: Generally speaking, it cannot be said that we are getting support from the population. We are undoubtedly getting more information than we were, and the large increase in Sinn Féin murders of those whom they think to be informers and label "Convicted Spy" shows that they are alive to the fact and uneasy about it’.[131]
And there is indeed evidence from within the regimental histories of the troops stationed in Cork city and county that there was widespread co-operation with, and assistance from, local loyalists. The second battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckingham Light Infantry was stationed in Victoria Barracks in Cork city in 1919 before moving to Buttevant in north Cork in December 1919. The first battalion replaced them in Victoria Barracks. The regimental records of their time in Cork and Limerick are fulsome in their praise of the loyalist community but it will also be noted that the soldiers recognised how irrelevant and precarious their position was.
‘For their hospitality and kindness we cannot thank them enough. Consisting as they did of people with everything to gain and nothing to lose by preserving an attitude of neutrality; in constant danger of seeing their houses burned and their motor cars purloined, even if they escaped actual physical violence; they continued to invite us to dances and tennis parties, and do everything possible for our entertainment. Their courage was undoubted, but for any influence they had on the opinions and actions of the population as a whole (even their own employees) they might just as well have been living in another country. Indeed their absence would have made our task more easy. Their number and situation made the provision of any kind of protection extremely difficult. They were hostages in the hands of the enemy, a fact the Sinn Féiners were quick to realise’.[132]
In many ways Colonel Winter deserves the final British word. Looking at all the evidence his summation of what happened is not too far off the mark,
‘… in the rest of Ireland, the Protestant, both laymen and clergy, did little to assist the forces of the Crown. The majority of loyalists remained inarticulate. There have been, however, a few notable exceptions, and to these persons all credit is due … Had it been possible to provide protection for more of the loyalists, it is possible that more assistance might have been obtained.’ [133]
The reader will again have to weigh up and decide if they believe these British officers but whatever about members of the IRA possibly getting things wrong thirty years after the event most of the British evidence is contemporary, or written with a year or two, when events were still fresh in the officers’ minds.[134] There is a clear chain of command in the British evidence stretching from the District Commissioner of the RIC and the Essex Regiment’s Intelligence Officer in Bandon through Strickland the Officer Commanding in Cork to Macready the Officer Commanding in Ireland and on into the British cabinet in the form of the Lord Chancellor. Each in his turn accepted the accuracy of the information presented to them. Why, then, should it be rejected?
It is wise to accept whatever evidence is presented with a large amount of scepticism unless it can be corroborated and it should always be approached with an open mind. Yet there also has to be some evidence to persuade the reader that someone is not telling the truth. What does all this evidence tell us? The Anti-Sinn Féin League of local loyalists in Cork City might well be a myth but for this to be the case we must reject the detailed and specific evidence of Patrick Collins and the others on the Irish side. Should we? Are they liars?
Equally, should we dismiss the statement of Patrick Carroll who saw Alfred Cotter with the Auxiliaries in Ballineen and who gives a detailed analysis of the existence the local Anti-Sinn Féin League? Is he a fantasist? Is he exaggerating to gain a larger pension or maybe he is a lair? Yet, as stated already, his Military Service Pension claim is supported by Paddy O’Brien (a member of the IRA intelligence service among many other claims to fame) and by Liam Deasy O/C of the 3rd Brigade during the latter part of this period. Are they also wrong in verifying Carroll’s pension application? [135]
There is little doubt that T.J. Bradfield, who was shot by the West Cork Flying Column in late January 1921, when he mistook them for Auxiliaries, was passing information via Rev. Charles Lord in Bandon to the Auxiliaries. The evidence for what happened to Bradfield does not come from the IRA alone and T.J. Bradfield’s family complained bitterly about the impossible position in which they had been placed by the British commander in Cork, General Strickland’s, order of early January 1921 to provide evidence or face prosecution. However, there are many other cases. We have, for example, not examined the shooting of his cousin, Thomas Bradfield, a week later who also believed Tom Barry was a British Officer and started to give him information about the Flying Column.[136] Neither have we discussed the IRA shooting of Thomas Bradfield’s brother-in-law John Good on March 10th 1921 who was also shot as a spy.[137] Equally, Innishannon Protestants Warren Peacocke and Fred Stennings, who were shot by the IRA in the first half of 1921, are clearly identified in British archives as ‘loyalists’ as opposed to ‘probable loyalists’.[138] In an era when ‘loyalty’ was the trigger for compensation then the British would not identify these men as their own active supporters without reason as to do so would cost money. It each of these samples it appears that the IRA was correct.
In truth, in West Cork does the existence of a formal Anti Sinn Féin League really matter? While it certainly mattered to Michael O’Donoghue, when he was commenting in 1952 that the men shot in 1922 were members, the fact is that Major Percival (who should know) says that the British were actively seeking and getting information from local loyalists. Should we also ignore or dismiss Major Percival and the other British evidence? Are they also lying? It is after all the Record of the Rebellion in Ireland which both praises Major Percival for his exceptional efforts in the Bandon valley and states of the ‘many Protestant farmers who gave information … it proved almost impossible to protect those brave men, many of whom were murdered’. Patrick Carroll agreed.
Of course, none of this proves beyond doubt that any of the people shot in 1921, or in 1922, were members of anything.[139] Tom Barry and Liam Deasy were happy that the shooting of ‘thirteen spies’ in February and March 1921 ended local loyalist cooperation with the British and this fact was confirmed by the British at the end of March 1921. As a tactic it was successful whatever about its accuracy or morality.
There is no doubt that the British believed that around Bandon loyalist cooperation was exceptional. There are also claims on all sides that a local Anti-Sinn Féin League existed with the express purpose of assisting in reprisals against the IRA. The Anti Sinn Féin League was responsible for the murder of the Coffey brothers at Desertserges in February 1921.[140] What is not absolutely certain is whether the membership was exclusively police and military or whether local civilians were involved. The IRA said they were (Warren Peacock, for example), but the British for the most part denied this.[141]
And so where does this leave Peter Hart’s thesis that there was little Protestant or loyalist co-operation with the British forces during the Irish War of Independence? In many parts of Ireland he may well be correct but the evidence gathered and collated as a result of the ‘Peter Hart war’ suggests that in his study area the Record of the Rebellion was accurate and loyalist cooperation was exceptional. Where does it leave his theory that the men shot in 1921 and 1922 were innocent victims of sectarian profiling? In my opinion, while it might have been possible (but tenuous) to argue this in 1998, the new evidence points towards an IRA intelligence campaign to discover and prove an individual’s activities rather than random targeting during the War of Independence. As to the subsequent ‘Dunmanway killings’ it appears that the killers were working from information that the victims (or their family members) had been active supporters of the British forces during the war and this led to their targeting. It will be up to the reader to form their own judgement on the quality of this new evidence and the accuracy of the witness but it simply cannot be dismissed. Hart now appears to have been over-confident in his analysis even based on the evidence available almost two decades ago. Is it not time to move on?
And so, based on the available evidence, it seems illogical to claim that an Anti-Sinn Féin League of local unionists assisting the British forces did not exist in County Cork but neither can anyone prove beyond all reasonable doubt (which is not the standard required) that it did. The more recent evidence available, particularly in the BMH and the Military Pensions collection, also clears up many of the ambiguities about how the victims of the April 1922 massacre came to be chosen. As has been said most of those killed in 1922 (bar one - Grey) had been identified before their murder as ‘enemy agents’ by the 3rd Cork IRA intelligence service. The other victims were close relatives of suspected agents.[142] This should no longer be in dispute as the information about which IRA members specifically identified these ‘targets’ is now in the public domain.Ultimately, the reader must decide for themselves what happened depending on how much ‘faith’ they place in the evidence.
Barry Keane © 22 August 2016
[1] Royal Irish Constabulary, Irish Republican Army. Peter Hart was a Canadian historian who published a series of papers and books on the Irish War of Independence between 1993 and 2010 when he passed away at the age of 48. Meda Ryan has also published a series of books on the war in Cork particularly on Tom Barry and Michael Collins.
[2] A version of this paper was submitted and rejected by Irish Historical Studies following negative comments from the anonymous reviewers. I have tried to address these points in this revised version but as the process of submission, review and decision can take up to a year even before subsequent review I have decided to publish it on Academia.edu and invite other scholars to comment as they wish.
[3] The Sunday Times, (Irish edition) 2, August 2015, page 4, ‘Historian challenges Britain to open files on paid informants’, http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/ireland/article1588386.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2015_08_01 accessed 30 September 2015
[4] The ‘Peter Hart War’ is bedevilled by pedantry to the point of absurdity. For the avoidance of any doubt ‘the Irish’ is used as short hand for the Irish side in the war while ‘the British’ is short hand for the British government forces in all my work. There were significant numbers of Irish Roman Catholic loyalists living in Cork just as there were many Irish Protestants nationalists and British nationalists (who believed that Ireland was part of the British nation).
[6] Peter Hart, The IRA and its enemies, (Oxford, 1998); There is no settled name among historians for these wars or some of the groups who fought them. I chose these terms as they are familiar to most readers.
[7] Tom Barry was the IRA commander of the IRA West Cork Brigade’s flying column consisting of approximately 100 members. The, 5,000 strong, 3rd West Cork Brigade was under the overall command of Charlie Hurley who was killed at Crossbarry in March 1921. See Ewan Butler, Tom Barry’s flying Column (London, 1971) for a succinct description of Tom Barry’s version. Barry had fought as an artilleryman in the First World War; Of the Auxiliaries, 15 were killed in the ambush, one was killed subsequently and one survived.
[8] Peter Hart, The IRA at War, page 223 (Oxford, 2003); This was incorrect for Cork as more than half the decline is accounted for British Military forces departing in 1922.
[9] ‘They were killed not for what they did but for who they were: Protestants, ex-soldiers, tramps and so on down the communal blacklist’ Peter Hart, The IRA and its enemies P. 311.
[10] Hart wrote ‘It might be suggested that Protestants and ex-soldiers were naturally hostile to the IRA, and more likely to be working with the police and military, and to be shot. This was not so. The authorities obtained little information from either group and in fact by far the greatest damage was done by people within the organisation, or their relatives’. Peter Hart ‘Class, Community and the Irish Republican Army in Cork, 1917-1923‟ in O'Flanagan, P., Buttimer, C. G., & O'Brien, G. (1993), Cork: history & society. Dublin, Geography Publications, pp. 963-981, see especially p. 979; see also Peter Hart, The IRA and its enemies, P. 285; in Fn. 80 on page 285 at the end of the first sentence above Hart refers the reader to the next chapter where he repeats the comment above on P. 305; It is also worth noting that the sources must be treated with care. British Intelligence chief Sir Ormonde Winter, for example, stated that ‘[Tom] Hales, however, a local Commandant in [Bandon] Cork, was induced to impart the names of most of his officers, and in order to indemnify himself from the results of his information, accused the Crown Forces of torture in their endeavour to make him speak’. Tom Hales torture was a cause celebre and there is no doubt it happened so it is most likely that Winter is attempting to excuse his treatment at the hands of British Intelligence and the Essex Regiment in Bandon. National Archives Kew WO 35/214, A report on the intelligence branch of the chief of police from May 1920 to July, 1921.
[11] Hart suggested that the April 1922 massacre was as ‘unknown as the Kilmichael is celebrated’ stated that he had only heard of it two years into his research. Yet many historians had discussed it previous to Hart’s ‘revelation’. See Dorothy Macardle, The Irish Republic, P. 705 which discusses it in detail under a heading ‘Murders in County Cork’ while mentioning KIlmichael (P.384) in one sentence,; See especially Hart’s fellow Trinity history alumnus Denis Kennedy, The Widening Gulf, (Belfast, 1988) which discusses the incident and its implications, Pp. 116 passim; Surprisingly Kennedy’s seminal work is not included in the bibliography of The IRA and its enemies. Kennedy’s statistical analysis Pp. 126-129 which fails to find evidence of Protestant flight is often overlooked in the ‘Peter Hart’ war but is essential reading for any scholar of the topic; equally my own article Barry Keane, ‘The Church of Ireland Population in County Cork, 1911-1926’, Chimera, UCC Geographical Journal, No. 1 pp 51-59, (Cork, 1986) referenced the murders and flagged the importance of the military segment of Protestant decline in Cork noting that it made up 19% of the 1911 population.
[13] Much of this was covered by Stephen Howe in History, but it requires a somewhat more detailed analysis than a general article can offer Stephen Howe, ‘Killing in Cork and the Historians’, History Workshop Journal, (2014), 77, 160-186; Howe’s survey of the controversy surrounding Peter Hart’s work concentrates on the Kilmichael Ambush and the 1922 murders and only mentions the Anti Sinn Féin League (Society) in passing.
[14] Round Table, (June 1921, p. 500),
[15] BMH John Hennessy, WS 1234 p.6 ‘I heard the three blasts and got up from my position, shouting "hands up". At the same time one of the Auxies about five yards from me drew his revolver. He had thrown down his rifle. I pulled on him and shot him dead.’ http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS1234.pdf
[16] Meda Ryan. "The Kilmichael Ambush, 1920: Exploring the ‘provocative Chapters’, "History. 92.306 (2007): 235-249, See in particular P. 241 Fn. 19; Hart always accepted that Deasy was shot at the end of the ambush after he had broken cover; Kilmichael veteran Ned Young was interviewed by Rev. John Chisolm c.1969. He stated that he had seen Lordon bayonet an Auxiliary, and that after the ambush members of the column had informed him that this Auxiliary had surrendered falsely’.
[17] The IRA commandant’s report in which Hart placed so much faith contained as many difficulties for his reconstruction as it did for Barry’s version. While the ‘Commandant’ does not mention a ‘false surrender’ he states that three IRA soldiers stood up and got shot. So did Tom Barry but he did mention the false surrender. As two of the casualties were incapable of standing up (McCarthy was either dying or dead and O’Sullivan was dead) then logically (along with Deasy) two further IRA members stood up at the end of the ambush if we are to believe the Commandant’s version. Barry saw two (or three) men stand up, ‘fall down’, and he found three bodies.
[19] David Fitzpatrick,(2013), ‘The spectre of ‘Ethnic cleansing in revolutionary Ireland’, Abstract, Global Irish Research Network (GIRN) Seminar, UNSW Sydney, https://hal.arts.unsw.edu.au/events/global-irish-research-network-girn-seminar-david-fitzpatrick/ ; This article is particularly significant as Professor Fitzpatrick was Professor Hart’s supervisor at Trinity College Dublin for his PHD entitled The Irish Republican Army and its enemies: violence and community in County Cork, 1917‐1923 No. 2867 upon which The IRA and its enemies is based. Professor Fitzpatrick shows that Hart’s suggestion of ‘ethnic cleansing’ is not supported by the evidence, at least for the Methodist community.
[20] Andy Bielenberg ‘Exodus: The emigration of southern Irish Protestants during the Irish war of independence and the Civil War. Past and Present. 218 (2013) 199-233; Barry Keane, ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING? Protestant decline in West Cork between 1911 and 1926’, History Ireland. 20 no. 3, 2012 pp. 35-38; David Fitzpatrick, 'The Spectre of "Ethnic Cleansing" in Revolutionary Ireland' Bulletin of the Methodist Historical Society of Ireland, Vol 18, no. 34, (2013) pp. 5-70;
[21] In the absence of reliable data sets many historians including myself have attempted to quantify different elements of the decline in comparison to the Roman Catholic decline. I have previously observed the level of unexplained (excess) decline in West Cork among natives Protestants is slightly greater than elsewhere in Cork. At 10% over a fifteen year period it is not particularly significant but still requires investigation. While I have estimated been able to provide a general estimate for many of these items across County Cork excess in the West Cork context includes: Great War deaths, Influenza, Ne Temere, Natural decrease, RIC and local administration departures and a host of other reasons including forced migration and murder. There is anecdotal evidence that there was a movement among better off farmers from west to east Cork as large farms became available for sub-division under the 1923 Land Act
[22] See David Jameson Irish Times 19 December 2013 ‘Mixed marriages and ‘Ne temere’ for an explanation of the implications for the non-Catholic partner of various papal decrees about marriage and the education of children for example. Dr. Andy Bielenberg’s estimate of ‘forced migration’ for the whole of the 26 counties that made up the Irish Free State is between 2,000 (0.6%) and 16,000 (4.9%).
[23] Barry Keane Statistical Analysis of Protestant decline in Cork 1911-1926, Protestant Cork 1911-1926 website, (2012) https://sites.google.com/site/protestantcork191136/home/statistical-analysis-of-protestant-decline-in-cork-1911-1926
[24] David Fitzpatrick Descendancy P.180; Niall Meehan, not unreasonably, notes the ‘chutzpah’ of Professor Fitzpatrick’s declaration, given that Meehan can justifiably argue that the spectre had first been advanced by Hart and defended, on more than one occasion, by Fitzpatrick; Niall Meehan, ‘Examining Peter Hart Deane, Field day review. 10, (Dublin, 2014): Field Day in association with Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, p. 145;
[25] Irish Times 26th October 1922 P. 7; Irish Times 14th June 1923 Pp. 5 & 8; Dowse also commented on the West Cork massacres that ‘...we could not have wondered had panic seized our people, and a wholesale exodus followed as a result of these events. But such was not the case [my emphasis]. With splendid bravery the vast majority held their ground, and went on quietly with their work’, Cork Examiner 26th October 1922
[26] Ignoring the statistic Professor Brian Walker quoted this section of Bishop Dowse’s 1922 address to suggest that these 'reports in The Irish Times reveal a harrowing picture of what many members of the Protestant community experienced at this time' Irish Times, 19 January 2011, Letters to the editor.
[27] Yet, one of the most striking features of the BMH and Military Service Pensions Collection is the willingness of former IRA members to say by name the people they shot.
[28] It is this either/or construct that is the difficulty for Hart and the many other commentators, who have adopted a definitive position in the argument. See Peter Hart, The IRA and its enemies, P. 285-286, Once he chose to state that ‘these men were shot because they were Protestants’ he was making a claim that was never provable; There is also no doubt some individuals took advantage of the political situation. BHM 1542 Richard Collins P. 8 states ‘A number of individuals…operated at night and raided only the homes of Protestant families…Thomas Love mentioned the matter to Con O'Reilly… we had discovered and arrested the culprits. They were tried by court-martial’.
[29] Peter Hart, The IRA and its enemies, Back cover; The use of terrorist rather than freedom fighter is of interest.
[30] Hart subsequently revised this position and by 2006 he claimed that he had never suggested ethnic cleansing; History Ireland (Jan 2014) David Fitzpatrick on ‘Ethnic cleansing’http://www.historyireland.com/volume-22/david-fitzpatrick-ethnic-cleansing/ The debate has been uploaded to Acdemia.edu by Niall Meehan https://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan and by John M. Regan https://dundee.academia.edu/JohnMRegan accessed 30 July 2015. The full quote is ‘I maintain that the sectarian sentiments in my now notorious ballad, though not representative of most republicans, accurately embodied the perceptions of many embattled West Cork Protestants, as expressed by personal testimony and compensation claims. They believed, on the basis of strong prima facie evidence, that certain republican activists, at certain times, made a concerted attempt to drive Protestants and ‘loyalists’ out of West Cork. Like Peter Hart, I share that belief; but no attempt was made in my lecture to establish the particular responsibility for sectarian attacks, or the extent to which other motives contributed to apparently sectarian outcomes’.
[31] Peter Hart, The IRA and Its Enemies, Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923, (Oxford, 1998) p. 288
[32] David Fitzpatrick, Descendancy 2014 P.240;
[33] While ethnic cleansing defies easy definition one of the leading authorities Benjamin Lieberman, Terrible fate: Ethnic cleansing in the making of modern Europe. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) suggests in the The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (eds.) that ‘Ethnic cleansing is related to genocide, but ethnic cleansing is focused more closely than genocide on geography and on forced removal of ethnic or related groups from particular areas’. As this did not happen in West Cork then by definition this term should not be used to describe what happened in any context.
[34] Barry Keane, Massacre in West Cork, (Cork, 2014)
[35] According to newspapers unionists estimated that they had 3,000 members in Cork in 1912-1914 during the Home Rule crisis which represents 46% of Protestant households in the county. If the 3,000 represented single individuals then this would represent 8% of the county’s Protestant population. There appears to have been few if any Roman Catholic unionists attending the meetings. However, the majority of ‘spies and informers’ shot in West Cork during the War of Independence were Roman Catholic.
[36] Barry Keane, Massacre in West Cork p 140 passim; John M. Regan ‘The Bandon Valley as a historical problem’; David Fitzpatrick Descendancy Pp.208-240; Andy Bielenberg et al ,’Something in the nature of a massacre’; Gilbert Johnston (ex-RAF beaten up by five members of the IRA on 27th April), the Bennett brothers (home visited and sister warned they would be shot April 28th), William Jagoe (shots fired through his front door April 27th), the Wilson brothers (ex-soldiers warned to leave April 27th) and W.H. Fitzmaurice (ex-Naval surgeon, brother killed and had to flee April 27th) , James McCarthy (Roman Catholic friendly with RIC shots fired into house), Thomas Sullivan (Roman Catholic, ex-RIC fled home and claimed four IRA broke into his bedroom on April 27th),Thomas Nagle (his son was shot in his place while he hid behind a cupboard) and R.J. Helen in Clonakilty ( who claimed he was meant to be killed on April 27th but escaped); see also Bielenberg et al., Pp. 21-24
[37] Information supplied by Sarah Marry, Curate ‘Mrs. Sarah Lynton Beal died December 20th 1921 aged 34 yrs at 7 Laurel Hurst College Road Cork. The Dean of Cork led the service. She is buried in St. Luke's graveyard in section K, 3rd row from right about 6 in. The other names for that plot are: E. Blemens Oct 20 1918, J.C. Beale Jan [sic.] 17 1921, S.Beale Dec 22 1921, Simon Mark Armson 25.12.57 (this is only name on gravestone)’.
[38] Barry Keane, Massacre in West Cork pp. 186-197 and Barry Keane Protestant Cork decline 1911-1926 ‘Murders, Mistakes, Myths, and Misinformation’ updated 14th April 2013 website https://sites.google.com/site/protestantcork191136/home/protestant-cork-decline-1911-1926-murders-mistakes-myths-and-misinformation-updated-25th-july-2012 accessed 27 June 2014
[39] Brian Walker, ‘Darkest nights: mystery of the Dunmanway massacre’, Review, Irish Independent, 31 May (2014); http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/darkest-nights-mystery-of-the-dunmanway-massacre-30316882.html Professor Walker also claims that nationalist condemnations linking the Belfast pogroms and the West Cork killings are only discussed ‘in passing’ and given ‘no serious consideration’ in Massacre in West Cork, and that the book ignores the ‘widespread contemporary view that these murders and violence were a reaction to and reprisals for murders in the north’. In fact, the linkage with Belfast was dealt with in detail on page 147, 180-181, 202 and p.260 Fn. 8 which lists these condemnations. In the conclusion of the book (p. 202) I state ‘There was a genuine fear among Protestants that the motive was a response to the ‘pogroms’ of Belfast and that no Protestant could be safe as a result. This perception was unwittingly confirmed by nationalist leaders who made a clear linkage between these events. Cork County Council even went as far as denying that Michael O’Neill’s death had anything to do with the Dunmanway killings. If it did not, then the only possible reason was Belfast’. I considered the pogroms and decided that they were not the main cause of the attacks as the evidence points in another direction. I replied to the review but Niall Meehan’s ‘Theories on Sectarian Killings’ was carried instead. Irish Independent 4 June 2014 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/letters-no-more-expert-groups-or-word-games-plain-speech-only-30327227.html; See also Hart The IRA and its enemies p. 291.and Andy Bielenberg et al (op.cit) Pp. 36-40 concludes that ‘no evidence has yet emerged that events in the North provided a primary motive for the West Cork killings’.
[40] John Regan, The ‘Bandon Valley Massacre’ as a Historical Problem. History, 97, 325, 70-98. (2012); Joost Augusteijn The I.R.A. at War, 1916-1923 by Peter Hart, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 35, No. 137 (May, 2006), pp. 132-133;
[41] It is important to note the number of Protestants shot in Cork county during the period 1919-1923 was lower (48 instead of 74) than originally claimed by Hart and the number of these who were labelled ‘spies and informers’ was 23. Barry Keane, ‘Protestant civilians killed in Cork 1920-1923’ in Protestant Cork 1911-1926 website https://sites.google.com/site/protestantcork191136/protestant-civilians-killed-in-cork-1921-1923 accessed 27 June 2014.
[42] Tom Barry, Guerrilla days in Ireland, (Cork, 1949), P.110-113
[43] Liam Ó Ruairc, ‘The IRA at War’ review, History Ireland , 12 http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-ira-at-war-1916-1923/
[44] Gerard Murphy, Murder On the Bandon River, Dublin Review of Books, http://www.drb.ie/essays/murder-on-the-bandon-river accessed 27 June 2014; Barry Keane, Response to review: Dublin Review of Books http://www.drb.ie/essays/response-to-review accessed 27 June 2014; Gerard Murphy, The Year of Disappearances: political killings in Cork 1921–1922 (Dublin, 2010) p.p. 72-80
[45] ‘…the existence of a ‘Freemason Intelligence Organisation’…has some basis in fact’. Gerard Murphy, The Year of disappearances, p. 86
[46] Michael Murphy BMH 1547 p.33; William Edward Parsons, a member of the YMCA, admitted (under torture in 1922) that he had provided the information which allowed a gang led by RIC District Swanzy to shoot IRA commander, and Cork Lord Mayor, Tomás McCurtain.
[47] The reader will have to decide, for example, that if information supplied by Francis Fitzmaurice, who is acknowledged to have passed information to the British, resulted in the capture or killing of IRA members should he be exempt from attack by the IRA simply because he was not actually involved in the arrests or shootings. See Military Archives Ireland A/0897 for IRA evidence identifying him as a suspect and the Irish Grants Commission application of his brother W. H. Fitzmaurice National Archives Kew CO 762/12/4 who confirms (unsurprisingly) that Francis was providing information to the RIC/Auxiliaries in Dunmanway.
[48] IRISH INCIDENTS. (1920, December 11). The Mail (Adelaide, SA, 1912 - 1954), p. 1. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63884167
[49] His father, Denis Horgan, was a Roman Catholic and his mother Anna was Church of Ireland, National Archives Ireland, Census 1901 http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Kerry/Killarney/High_Street__West_Side_/1414551/ ; National Archives Ireland, Census 1911 http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Blackrock/Ballintemple/400890/
[50] Dr Eugenio Biagini, review of The Year of Disappearances. Political Killings in Cork 1921-1922, (review no. 1053) http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1053 accessed: 31 August, 2014 is the most dispassionate review among a host of negative reviews all accessible from the Reviews in History website.
[51] The Irish Grants Committee was set up after the war to compensate the victims on both sides. Over 700 hundred Cork loyalists (and nationalists) of all religions and none submitted claims. See Massacre in West Cork p.186
[52] The Bureau of Military recorded the recollections of IRA veterans in the late 1940’s and 1950’s and is now word searchable online. The Military Service Pensions are also now word searchable online. Both are available from the Irish Military Archives in Dublin and/or the National Archives of Ireland.
[53] Andy Bielenberg A., John Borgonovo and John Donnelly, "Something of the Nature of a Massacre": The Bandon Valley Killings Revisited", Eire-Ireland. 49, no. 3-4: 7-59. (2014); Barry Keane, Massacre in West Cork (Cork,2014); David Fitzpatrick, Descendancy , (Dublin,2014); Niall Meehan, ‘Examining Peter Hart, Field Day 10, 103-147
[54] Liam Deasy, Towards Ireland free: the West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence, 1917-1921, (Dublin, 1973), P. 200; The Coffeys’ neighbour Thomas Bradfield was shot by the IRA flying column. Tim Coffey drove Tom Barry and the other flying column members to the Bradfield home on the night of Bradfield’s killing and would obviously have been recognised by his next door neighbour. At the Military Court of Inquiry into Tom Bradfield’s killing his brother stated that the killers drove off in the direction of Coffeys’ so they were obvious targets for a reprisal. National Archives Kew WO 35/146A/26
[55] Military Archives of Ireland, Cathal Brugha Barracks, Collins papers A/0897, Press 12, Shelf 5 Lot 4 includes a list of suspected and identified spies and informants collated after the War of Independence. The list includes individuals suspected of involvement in the Anti Sinn Féin killing of the Coffey brothers including Mr. French, Bunglow Enniskeane, John Jennings [Ballineen?], George Stanley [Rossmore?], Mr. Roycroft, Farran Mills, John Stanley, Kilmeen, J.H. Morten, Carrigmore, Captain Kirkwood, Captain [Warren] Peacocke, Dorman, Daunt and Wilmor. The file was recently retrieved by the Military Archives after its disappearance was discovered. The names also include Francis Fitzmaurice, Dunmanway who was shot in April 1922 and Thomas Nagle who son Robert was shot in Clonakilty on the day after. The file will be discussed in detail later.
[56] Peter Hart, The IRA and its enemies, p.302 & Fn. 80
[57] John D. Brewer, The Royal Irish Constabulary: an oral history, Belfast, Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, (Belfast, 1990) p. 115 Peter Hart, (1998) p. 303 Fn. 81
[58] Peter Hart, (1998) P.100
[59] This is most likely Head Constable Igoe whose squad operated in Dublin. See ‘Head Constable Eugene Igoe ‘The Royal Irish Constabulary Forum (website) http://irishgenealogyqueries.yuku.com/topic/1175/Head-Constable-Eugene-Igoe?page=1#.U54ha5RdWSo accessed 27 June 2014; National Archives Kew HO 340/9 to HO 340/15
[60] There appears to be no record of any RIC officer, Auxiliary, or Black and Tan shot when coming out of church or chapel in Dublin in 1921 but five were shot in 1920, See Richard Abbot, Police casualties in Ireland, 1919-1922. (Cork, 2000)
[61] It is also important to note that this is the transcript of an interview but as we are not shown the questions we do not know the full context.
[62] ‘… in the Bandon area where there were many Protestant farmers who gave information. Although the Intelligence Officer of the area was exceptionally experienced and although the troops were most active it proved almost impossible to protect those brave men, many of whom were murdered while almost all the remainder suffered grave material’, Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920–1, vol. 2, 1922, Jeudwine papers 72/82/1, Imperial War Museum; See also Hart, (1998), p. 305 whose omission of this section of the quote led to claims that he deliberately left out information that would damage his interpretation; Peter Hart (Ed) British Intelligence in Ireland 1920-21, the Final Reports (Cork University Press 2002) P.49 Fn. 28 "Some condemned West Cork Protestants did give, or try to give, information but there is no evidence that they acted en masse despite this statement." See also Barry Keane, Chasing shadows: Peter Hart, John Regan, Eve Morrison Gerard Murphy, the Record of the Rebellion and the Dunmanway Killings- edited 20 September 2014’, Protestant Cork’, 2014 https://sites.google.com/site/protestantcork191136/chasing-shadows--peter-hart-john-regan-eve-morrison-gerard-murphy-the-record-of-the-rebellion-and-the-dunmanway-killings accessed 20 September 2015, for further discussion of this.
[63] Bielenberg et al. ‘Something in the nature of a massacre’ P.10-11.
[64] Gerard Murphy Year of Disappearances p. 230; See also Gerard Murphy, ‘A few, but not many- Barry Keane’s Massacre in West Cork’ which states ‘Nobody who knows anything about the War of Independence in West Cork will deny that there were Protestants in the area who gave information to British forces during the conflict, the ‘few, but not many’, mostly farmers, and that they paid dearly for it, just as I am sure there were ‘a few, but not many’ Catholics who gave similar information’, weblog year-of-disappearances.blogspot.ie accessed 16 August 2015.
[65] Cork Constitution 2.2.1921, p.5; Murphy, Year of Disappearances p.73
[66] Gerard Murphy, ‘Florence O’Donoghue, the Freemasons and other Disappearances’, weblog year-of-disappearances.blogspot.ie accessed 01 June 2015
[67] BMH 1591 Richard Russell pp. 23-24 & 26-27, BMH 470 Denis Lordan p.29, BMH 1684 James ‘Spud’ Murphy p.22, BMH 443 p. 16; See also Patrick Carroll evidence below
[68] Meda Ryan, ‘The Kilmichael Ambush, 1920: Exploring the Provocative Chapters’ History, (2007) 92, 235-249. Fn. 28; The list of references in Meda Ryan’s article are Report, Strickland Papers, Typescript, IWM; Ormonde Winter, Report on Intelligence Branch of the Chief of Police, Dublin Castle, WO 35/214, The National Archives, Public Records Office [hereafter PRO], London; Record of the Rebellion in Ireland, 1919–1922, Jeudwine Papers, 78/82/21, Imperial War Museum, Irish Times, 22 Jan. 1921. The Evening Standard , 25 Jan. 1921; Kathleen Keyes McDonnell, There is a Bridge at Bandon (Cork and Dublin, 1972), p. 196; The Cork Examiner, 15 Feb. 1921; The Eagle, 16 April 1921; Mark Sturges Diary, 14 Dec. 1920 RIC Div. Commissioner confirmed to Mark Sturgis the existence of the ‘Anti-Sinn Féin League’, 30/59, PRO; Tom Barry Private Papers [hereafter TB Papers]; Dan Cahalane, Private Papers; Flor Crowley Private Papers; Jim Kearney, author interview, 15 Feb. 1976; Sonny Sullivan, author interview,14 Aug. 1974; Jack Fitzgerald, EO’M Papers, P17b/112, UCDA; Liam Deasy, Towards Ireland Free (Cork, 1973), p. 200; Leon O’Broin, Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland (Dublin, 1976),p. 177
[69] Harris E. (2011), ‘Tribal loyalties of grey-beard loons and good ol' boys’ Irish Independent 17/07/2011- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/eoghan-harris/eoghan-harris-tribal-loyalties-of-greybeard-loons-and-good-ol-boys-26752524.html#sthash.cjomEKQv.dpuf accessed 27 June 2014. I found a copy of the Dunmanway Diary in the Contemporary Documents Collection of the Irish Military Archives in 2013 so it is not a ‘disgraceful forgery’ as Mr. Harris claimed in that article; Ryan clarifies exactly how she viewed and what happened to the documents in a letter to History Ireland in July 2014. Meda Ryan Letters to the editor: Dunmanway Massacre History Ireland 22 no. 4 July/August 2014 Letters Extra http://www.historyireland.com/letters-extra/dunmanway-massacre/ accessed 27 June 2014
[70] David Fitzpatrick, ‘History in a hurry’, Dublin Review of Books 17, Spring 2011, http://www.drb.ie/more_details/11-0317/History_In_A_Hurry.aspx (accessed 13 May 2013); ‘Dr Eve Morrisson on the Bureau of Military History: interview with Cathal Brennan’, http://nearfm.ie/podcast/the-history-show-episode-3/ (accessed 21 January 2013); See also Eve Morrison, ‘BMH witness statements as sources for the Irish Revolution’ Military Archives of Ireland website http://bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/files/Bureau_of_Military_witness_statements%20as_sources%20for_the_Irish%20Revolution.pdf pp 9-10 accessed 27 June 2014; John Borgonovo, Spies and informer 2007s; Fearghal McGarry Rebels: Voices from the Easter Rising (Dublin, 2011); See also Barry Keane, Massacre in West Cork 2014 p.14;
[71] My family had a shop on College Road.
[72] BMH 1707.Witness Patrick Collins, "Fatima", College Road, Cork p.7
[73] While Gerard Murphy completely rejects the possibility of an organised connection, he initially wrote ‘Beal continued to correspond with after he moved out of Cork, probably connected to the undercover organisation that called itself the ‘Anti-Sinn Féin League’ The correspondence may have been innocent or otherwise’, which suggests that Beale was, at least, very close to those involved in the Anti Sinn Féin League. It appears that Murphy has recently withdrawn from this position and now believes that ‘that the men staying with Sarah Beal were genuine military police’ and references this to William Murphy’s ‘A hard local war’ without a page number. There is no obvious reference in ‘A Hard Local War’ to Beale or Harris but it appears that Murphy now believes that the person referred to was Harris who was shot in July 1919 rather than Green who was shot in December 1920. Gerard Murphy, (2010) pp. 127-129; Gerard Murphy (2015) The Year of Disappearances Blog, ‘Florence O’Donoghue, the Freemasons and other Disappearances’ http://year-of-disappearances.blogspot.co.uk/
[74] His wife Sarah had also worked in the shop which is presumably where Beale had met her. Boole Library & Archive, University College Cork, Woodford Bourne Archive. James was no longer being paid by 1919 so presumably no longer worked in the shop.
[75] Peter Hart The IRA and its enemies (1998)
[76] BMH 1547 Michael Murphy p.33; As Parsons was not captured until 1922 then Murphy cannot be correct about getting the names from him unless it was after the fact. Either Murphy is mistaken about the name or more implausibly is trying to misdirect. As he also interrogated Din Din it is possible he confused the names of the two informants; See also BMH 1676 Robert Aherne who was the Brigade Intelligence Officer who describes his intelligence gathering operation citing his main sources as surveillance, raids on mails, and Josephine Marchment Browne the IRA spy inside British headquarters at Victoria barracks. He also gives examples of some of those killed and injured.
[77] Gerard Murphy, Year of Disappearances Chapter 17
[78] BMH 1547 Murphy, BMH 1657 Keating
[79] Peter Hart, (ed.) Rebel Cork's fighting story 1916-21: told by the men who made it: with a unique pictorial record of the period. (Cork, 2009) p. 36
[80] BMH 1708 William Barry
[81] Gerard Murphy (2010) p.83
[82] Shortly after the Beale shooting James Cathcart a factory manager living in Youghal was shot and he appears to have been the last member of the city Anti-Sinn Féin League to have been shot.
[83] Michael O’Donoghue BMH WS 1741 (pt 1) p.83
[84] Michael O’Donoghue BMH WS 1741 (pt 2) p.227 O’Donoghue’s statement in relation to Dunmanway is discussed in detail in Massacre in West Cork
[85] William Foley, Shannonvale, Clonakilty, Co. Cork, BMH WS 1560; See also The men will talk to me: West Cork Interviews P.159
[86] National Archives Kew WO 35/146A/26; Dwyer’s first name causes confusion as both are used.
[87] Ó Broin, L., 1985, Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland: the Stopford connection (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan), pp. 176–7. This story also appears in Hart, P., 1998, The I.R.A. and Its enemies p. 305. See BMH WS 470, Denis Lordan, p. 14, where he also discusses this event. See also BMH William Desmond 832 p. 29 who states that Bradfield was only one of three local farmers interrogated on the same occasion. See also BMH 1560 Willie Foley p.7 and especially BMH 540 Mrs. Anna Hurley-O'Mahony p.4
[88] Rev. John Charles Lord, M.A., Kilbrogan Rectory, Bandon. Co. Cork; son of Charles Lord, of Legaland, Co. Cavan; born March 7th , 1868; educated at Wesley College, Dublin, and Trinity College, Dublin; B.A., 1892; M.A., 1899; Ordained Deacon, 1892, and Priest, 1894. by the Bishop of Cork; Rector of Kilbrogan since 1909; Hon. Secretary for the Church Missionary Society, and to the Diocesan Technical and Agricultural Committee ; member of the County Committee of Agriculture ; formerly Curate of Queenstown, 1892- 1902; Rector of Drimoleague, 1902-09; Rector of Brinny , 1909. Married in 1899, Elizabeth Zena, daughter of Horatio Hamilton Townsend, J.P., of Coosheen, Schull , Co. Cork and Elizabeth Stawell Ware of Mallow, and has issue surviving, J John Charles Hamilton, Letitia Elizabeth , Horace James, Katharine Mary, and Martin Townsend. Cork Past and Present, Pike’s Biographies (1911) http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/genealogy/pikescontemporarybiographies/contemporarybiographiesg-n/biographies_hodges_complete_237_241.pdf
[89] UCD Library and Archives, O’Malley Papers, P17b/111; The other option is Rev. V.W. Darling in Ballymodan Parish on the South side of the river.
[90] Tom Barry suggested that when he sent men to kill a Protestant minister who was the ‘organiser and transmitter of all information collected by his section to the British’ the man escaped to Ballincollig barracks before being taken out of the country never to return. As Reverend Lord remained in Bandon long after the war then this is unlikely to be Lord. However, Bishop Dowse noted the departure of two clergy in 1922 both of whom had returned.
[91] Professor David Fitzpatrick’s interesting suggestion that far from being the head-centre of an intelligence network in Bandon Lord ‘had a habit of discussing local affairs with his anxious parishioners’ is ‘more plausible’. He presents no evidence to support this so there is no reason to set aside Denis Lordan’s evidence; David Fitzpatrick, ‘Massacre in West Cork’: Review, Irish Historical Studies, (154,November 2014). This review was the subject of correspondence over a list of supposed ‘errors’ in the text many of which are not errors at all or debatable points based on interpretation. Irish Historical Studies declined either a right of reply or a correction to any of the nine items complained.
[92] While there is an attempt to disguise the names in O’Malley there is no doubt from the details of the story that this is the same incident
[93] BMH 443 Frank Neville P.8; Andy Bielenberg, John Borgonovo and Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc (eds.) The Men Will Talk to Me: West Cork Brigade, Ernie O'Malley Series, (Mercier, Cork 2015) Pp. 170-171
[94] BMH 1741 Miichael V. O’Donoghue, (Pt. 1) P. 147
[95] The exact quote on page 2 of his oral evidence he stated, ‘I caught him red-handed with the Tans. There were 9 of them altogether executed’. Carroll also makes reference to Lieutenant Colonel Warren Peacock. Later on page 3 of his hand written statement he says that he ‘carefully watched a gentleman spy in the village and states he was caught straight with the enemy pointing out the houses to be searched and burned, he was executed later’ which is most likely Cotter but could also be Peacocke who was shot by the IRA in Innishannon on 1st June 1921.
[96] Military Archives Ireland, Military Service Pensions Collection (online), MSP34REF26441 Patrick Carroll
[97] Ibid; The MSPC committee stated, in a note dated 2/11/36, that they did not think Carroll would qualify which meant the claim would have to be ‘examined very carefully’ by interviewing Liam Deasy. Paddy O’ Brien verified the contents as true.
[98] There is anecdotal information that one of the Chinnery family recognised one of the killers as a local Ballineen man ‘who could never look them in the face after’ but as this information is not in the public domain then there is no way of testing its accuracy or authenticity. It may be important that Carroll identifies five victims after February 1921 and six local victims (Robert Howe, John Chinnery, Alexander McKinley, John Buttimer, James Greenfield and John Bradfield) were killed in 1922; Greenfield is accepted by all scholars as ‘collateral damage’.
[99] At the same time (26th April) three British Intelligence officers and their driver were captured at Macroom and shot near Clondrohid either the same night or very shortly thereafter.
[100] BMH 1741 Michael O’Donoghue, Pt. 2 P. 227
[101] It is also a fact that only one BMH statement mentions O’Donoghue but his membership of the UCC company is confirmed by Bielenberg et al in ‘Something in the nature of a massacre’.
[102] Barry Keane, Massacre in West Cork P. 253 Fn. 43
[103] J. Buttimer Sovereign Street, Clonakilty identified in IRA Enemy Agents list July 1921; [James] Buttimer, Sunlodge House, Manch, by Blackwater Bridge who was identified as a source by the Auxiliaries was James Buttimer of Dunmanway’s nephew. He had married Elizabeth (Bessie) Cox, whose father Richard was an RIC pensioner, in Dunmanway in 1915 and moved into Sunlodge where he lived long after the April 1922 killings, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Kinneigh/Dromidiclogh_West/409103/
[104] Bureau Military History 1607 Charlie O’Donoghue page 7
[105] Military Service Pensions Collection MSP34REF52679 p.30, 32, 33, 36, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55; I would like to thank Niall Murray, Graduate Student in the Department of History UCC for bringing Mrs. Falvey’s statement to my attention. It is particularly notable that some parts of the statement were adjusted suggesting that it was an agreed and considered document rather than off-the-cuff.
[106] Meda Ryan, Tom Barry: Freedom Fighter (2005), pp. 226, 450 note 72; Barry Keane Massacre in West Cork p.159
[107] Peter Hart The IRA and its enemies pp. 287-288; It is also of interest that John Shorten of Enniskeane appears in the Dunmanway Diary but there is no evidence that this had a bearing on the John Bradfield shooting.
[108] Military Archives Ireland, Collins papers A/0897 12:5:4 (1-23). Mc Kinley’s name (misspelled as McKenneady) appears on this IRA list of enemy suspects for Munster and it states that he was ‘hostile to IRA, went to Belfast after Al[fred] Cotter was shot [in Ballineen} but returned after the Truce. The evidence is circumstantial in relation to giving information but appears more substantive when the informant states he was ‘hostile to IRA’. This file was famously missing from the archives for a number of years before being retrieved in 2014 without explanation.
[109] David Fitzpatrick, Descendency, P 214, Fn. 114
[110] Military Archives Ireland A/0897; Hart, The IRA and its enemies, P. 286 Fn. 93, 94 & 95; Hart attempted to answer criticism of his failure to flag exceptional Bandon cooperation with British forces in The IRA and its enemies by Brendan Ó Cathaoir, the Irish Times reviewer of Peter Hart, British Intelligence in Ireland, 1920-21: The Final Reports, (Cork 2002). Ó Cathaoir states, ’The editor appears disingenuous on one point, however, about which he has written in an award-winning book on the IRA in Cork. The army report said "many Protestant farmers" in the Bandon area gave information to the British forces during the War of Independence. Hart comments in his notes: ". . . there is no evidence that they acted en masse despite this statement". But is this report not evidence? After all, it is described as "the single most important - and by common consent the most trustworthy - source we have" on the reinforced intelligence regime’, Irish Times, 18 January 2003, Culture, Book Reviews;
[111] Hart, The IRA and its enemies, P285 and Fn. 79 on the same page; Hart attempted to answer criticism of his failure to flag exceptional Bandon cooperation with British forces in The IRA and its enemies by Brendan Ó Cathaoir, the Irish Times reviewer of Peter Hart, British Intelligence in Ireland, 1920-21: The Final Reports, (Cork 2002). Ó Cathaoir states, ’The editor appears disingenuous on one point, however, about which he has written in an award-winning book on the IRA in Cork. The army report said "many Protestant farmers" in the Bandon area gave information to the British forces during the War of Independence. Hart comments in his notes: ". . . there is no evidence that they acted en masse despite this statement". But is this report not evidence? After all, it is described as "the single most important - and by common consent the most trustworthy - source we have" on the reinforced intelligence regime’, Irish Times, 18 January 2003, Culture, Book Reviews;
[112] Pierce Cotter, whose brother Alfred had been shot in 1921 was identified as having been ‘in company of police and soldiers’ which the IRA had identified as punishable by death as early as 1919.[112] John Cahalon from Ballydehob had ‘Escaped from IRA arrest suspected of giving information, June 1921’, Hanora Crowley ‘Sent anon. letter to Auxiliaries, May 1921 giving six names of Behagh men’, Thomas Connell, Skibbereen, who was an ‘Orangeman and Freemason brother executed, suspicion’, John Ellis, Dunmanway, ’Hostile, attended B &T dances’, Mr French, Bungalow Enniskeane, ‘Left for England after murder of Coffeys’, Francis Fitzmaurice, Chapel St. Dunmanway, ‘Hostile gave car to police in1916, constant barrack visitor’, Frederick Foley, Cork Rd. Skibbereen, ‘Son of ex police man companion of B&T’, Joseph Gargan, Bank of Ireland, Skibbereen, ‘Advised clients about not joining Sinn Féin ’, John Hosford, Shanawy Balineen, ‘Friendly with Stanley and Ginnings sold farm going to Canada’, Michael Harrington, Eyeries, ‘Reported men in 1919 four arrested who went to him for money owed’, Miss Annie Hodges, Miss Annie Hodges, ‘Anon letter captured 12-4-1921 to RIC Castletown informing whereabouts of wanted men’, John Hurley, East Green Dunmanway, ‘Entertained British openly hostile to IRA’, Kate Harty, Bank of Ireland, Bandon, ‘Entertained British’, Jeremiah Hurley, Glengarriffe, ‘Seen with Auxiliaries lorry in Glengariff’, John Jennings, ‘Left after Coffeys were murdered, frequently with George Stanley, went to Canada’, Thomas Kingston, Burgatia Rosscarberry, ‘Suspected of giving information ahead of raid there’, Gerald McKenneady [sic], Ballinen, ‘Hostile to IRA, went to Belfast after A[lfred] Cotter was shot but returned after the Truce’, Kirkwood, ‘Friend of Morten, Peackoke, O’Neill, Daunt, Kilcaskin, Capt Wilmor, Mr Dorman’, Willie Kingston, Barrack Street, Bantry, ‘Gave information leading to arrest of E O’Neill got in touch with Auxiliary IO in Clarke’s shop Barrack street in presence of Mrs Clarke’, John Lordan, Lishunbeigh Dunmanway, ‘Suspected of giving information to Auxiliaries’, Robert Linehan, Goleen, After his arrest by British in February 1921 he was taken to Glengariff and went around with the Auxiliaries. He was arrested by IRA on suspicion and envelopes addressed to the auxiliaries were found, he escaped to the Marines at Schull and tried to identify IRA’, J.H. Morten, Carraigmore, Leader of Anti Sinn Féin in company of Captain Peacocke, Dorman, Daunt, Wilmor, Thomas Nagle, Barrack Street Clonakilty, ‘Police visited him regularly and he was suspected’, Madge O’Sullivan, Adrigole, Bantry, ‘Hostile, stayed at Glengariff with Auxiliaries’, Muriel O’Shea, ‘Associated with Boumman enemy I[ntelligence]O[fficer], Eileen O’Sullivan, Munster and Leinster Bank, Skibbereen, ‘Bitter enemy, associated with Auxiliaries friend of Boumman’, Mr Roycroft, Farran Mills, Cork, ‘Left for England after Coffey brothers murders by Anti Sinn Féin Society’, Laurence Sullivan, Ardcahan Dunmanway, Gave names of all he knew about an attack on Mount Pleasant Barracks he was arrested by police and threatened he would be shot by Head constable Reilly and he went to Boston USA’, John Shorten, Ballineen, ‘Suspicion’, John Stanley, Kilmeen, ‘Suspicious activity two days after Coffey brothers killed’, Ms Lizzie Sullivan, Castletownbere, ‘In company with Lt. Hatton Hall IO’, Timothy Scanlan, ‘Two brothers in RIC associated with enemy’, Edwin Sykes, Rector Church of Ireland, Skibbereen, ‘Bitter enemy, direct menas of communication for information from the executed Connell and Sweetman of Lisanning’, Edward Angus Swanton, Main Street Skibbereen, Warned, instigator of anonymous letters companion of Japer Wolfe, carried revolver captured at Tragumna but escaped to England, returned and awarded £1500 compensation, Patrick Sheehy, Solicitor editor of Eagle, ‘Bitter, newspaper very hostile, received £500 compensation’, Miss Whitley, Rosscarbery, ‘Gave all she knew, workman shot for giving information through her’, Joseph (sic.) Travers Wolfe, Skibbereen, ‘Bitter enemy of IRA chief advisor to forces carried loaded gun, guilty first degree, Crown Solicitor, Marjorie Young, Bridgetown Skibbereen, ‘Kept company with B&T gave information that two IRA seen coming out of Mayors wood where B&T McLean was executed and Cooke wounded, battalion officers accused, guilty first degree’.
[113] Presumably, this research also vindicates Meda Ryan.
[114] William Sheehan, British voices from the Irish War of Independence 1918-1921: the words of British servicemen who were there, (Cork, 2005), p.98 (Percival)
[115] Imperial War Museum, Jeudwine Papers, ‘Record of the Rebellion in Ireland’ Volume 2 page 12; Peter Hart The IRA and its enemies, page 300.
[116] William Sheehan, (2005), p.134; Percival’s evidence casts doubt on Peter Hart’s claim that loyalists in West Cork were no more likely to provide information to the British forces than loyalists anywhere else because they would not have the information.
[117] Many scholars quote Percival but most seem to have missed these ‘most profitable’ comments on gathering information. Exceptions include Paul McMahon, British spies and Irish rebels: British intelligence and Ireland, 1916-1945, (Woodbridge, 2008); Joseph McKenna, Guerrilla warfare in the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921, (Jefferson, N.C., 2011) p.94 who quotes it fully.
[118] Sheehan, (2005) p.134
[119] There is no doubt that the extremely experienced intelligence officer was Percival as he was specifically singled out for praise in the Record of the Rebellion in Ireland for his innovative approach to ‘intelligence’ Imperial War Museum Wilson papers, Record of the Rebellion Vol. 1,
[120] Eve Morrison, Massacre in West Cork: Review, History Ireland, (May, 2014)
[121] Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920–1, vol. 1, March 1922; See also Letter to Strickland about his document, March 1 1922 Strickland papers EPS 2/3 Imperial War Museum. A second volume was submitted in April and printed in May 1922 Record of the rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1 (Volume II, 1922), Jeudwine papers 72/82/1, Imperial War Museum
[122] Again Dr. John Regan questions whether James Clarke was anything more than a chauffeur for Mrs. Lindsay. However, according to her sister Mr. Clarke was more of a loyal family retainer (having promised her late husband to protect Mrs. Lindsay) so it is likely she discussed her plan with him on the journey to Ballincollig.
[123] The county inspector at Bandon states Sweetnam and Connell gave information to a court-martial. County Inspector for Bandon: Confidential Monthly report for January to April 1921, The British in Ireland (Microfilm) Boole Library & Archives, University College Cork Reel 74, P. 524
[124] National Archives Kew ‘Irish Distress Committee and Irish Grants Committee: Files and Minutes William Henry Fitzmaurice, County Cork, No.101’ CO 762/12/4; see also MAI Collins Papers A0897
[125] ‘A Report on the Intelligence Branch of the Chief of Police from May, 1920 to July, 1921’ National Archives Kew CO 904/156B His report was published in 2002.
[126] John Dwyer is also called Michael in some sources
[127] County Inspector for Bandon: Confidential Monthly report for January to April 1921, The British in Ireland (Microfilm) Boole Library & Archives, University College Cork Reel 74, P.259 & P.522 for quotes; Also at National Archives Kew C0 904/114; See also William Sheehan, A Hard Local War p.82 (Cork, 2011) who discusses the improvement in the flow of information about the IRA to the RIC and British army in Cork East Riding and the city.
[128] Eady is also spelt Eedy in some reports
[129] National Archives, Kew, PRO 30/59/3, ‘Sir Mark Beresford Russell Grant-Sturgis: diary part 3’, 14 December 1920; Mark Sturgis, and Michael Hopkinson, The Last Days of Dublin Castle: the Mark Sturgis diaries (Dublin, 1999), pp. 90-1; Peter Hart (1998), p. 303, note 81;
[130] National Archives UK Kew CAB/24/120/25 Report by the General Office Commanding-In-Chief on the situation In Ireland for Week Ending 19th February, 1921 p. 152
[131] National Archives UK Kew CAB/24/122/83 ‘Deputation to the Right Hon. the Lord Chancellor, Friday, April 15, 1921’
[132] Stanley Jenkins, ‘The Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in Ireland 1919 -1923’ Bugle and Sabre:3: Military History in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, (Whitney, 2009)
[133] Peter Hart, British intelligence in Ireland, 1920-21: the final reports. (Cork, 2002)
[134] William Sheehan (2008) p.134, The exception was one local IRA battalion commander
[135] It is Liam Deasy’s comment that the Anti-Sinn Féin League existed that Hart initially disputed so Carroll’s emergence as Deasy’s We can conjecture that some – perhaps only a few – of those killed were indeed ‘agents’ for the British forces in the sense of sympathising with them and passing on to them what little information about the IRA they might have. It must seriously be doubted – for reasons Hart has fully if maybe too self-confidently summarised – whether many if any of them actually had valuable information to impart. This source is particularly significant. Incidentally, it is Paddy O’Brien and Liam Deasy’s evidence that Hart uses to dispute Tom Barry’s version of events at KIlmichael.
[136] Barry Keane Massacre in West Cork p.87-88
[137] Barry Keane Massacre in West Cork p.89; Good’s son William a reserve soldier returned from Trinity College Dublin to settle his father’s affairs was also shot as a spy.
[138] Barry Keane Massacre in West Cork p.86 (T. J. Bradfield), p.258 Fn. 89 (Stennings); and pp. 92-94 (Peacocke); See also National Archives Kew (NAK) WO 35/162, WO 35/163; Photographs of the relevant document are in my possession; Gerard Murphy accepts that Peacocke, at least, was a providing intelligence to the Essex regiment while NAK WO 35/157A stated that he was a loyalist; Stenning was described in his Court of Inquiry file NAK WO 35/159A ‘as a Protestant and the staunchest loyalist in his district’ which according to Staff Captain Curtis of Victoria Barracks ‘no doubt, accounted for his murder’. Bielenberg et al list the other individuals from across Cork associated with Peacocke P. 54 Fn. 188 none of whom were shot in the February 1921 West Cork shootings or the April 1922 shootings.
[139] This applies to Roman Catholic and Protestant victims
[140] The name was written on a card left on the body.
[141] See also MAI A/0897 listing above
[142] This sentence was incorrect in the previous version.