John Bruton looks into his own ‘Hart’ - to see what the Irish people should be thinking

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Tuesday October 12, 2004 09:55 by Niall Meehan

An edited version of this piece appeared in 'The Village" magazine on October 9 2004

Before departing for the US as EU Ambassador John Bruton questioned the War of Independence that saw the emergence of his party and that eventually paved the way to his becoming Taoiseach.

He effectively disowned his Fine Gael Party and claimed allegiance to the defunct Irish Parliamentary or Home Rule Party that had failed to secure a subsidiary Irish parliament under the Crown. He said that having southern MPs in Westminster would have tempered British policy, seeming to forget that it had little impact on what Professor Roy Foster once called the famine “holocaust”. Indeed Bruton admitted that it resulted in the slaughter of many of the thousands of Irishmen who followed John Redmond’s lead in the First World War, as Redmond was “obliged to support imperial policy”.

Talk in Teachers Club Dublin 1 October 15 at 8pm

The undermining of Irish independence was not confined to Bruton's address to the ‘Reform Movement’, an idiosyncratic group hankering after the Crown connection. In a review of Diarmuid Ferriter’s new history of Ireland (Irish Independent, September 25) Bruton repeated a claim amplified by the Reform Movement and the Orange Order: that the IRA waged a sectarian campaign during the War of Independence. Bruton wrote quoting Ferriter: “The [IRA’s] Kilmichael ambush involved the "deliberate killing of already surrendered soldiers". In May 1922 "10 Protestants were shot dead in Cork in a single night".”

It is true that Protestants in Cork were shot, though in April 1922 and not in a single night, and they were not shot because they were Protestants. This allegation and the Kilmichael ambush claim repeats something first put forward by Canadian Academic Peter Hart in his ‘The IRA and its Enemies’. Hart, now Chair of Irish Studies in Memorial University Newfoundland, accused Kilmichael ambush leader Tom Barry of "lies and evasions".

Diarmuid Ferriter appears to have based repetition of the allegations on Hart's work and he appears not to have read or cited contrary evidence on the subject.

Irish Times letters

Hart’s findings were challenged in 1998 in the Irish Times letters pages. The allegation that Tom Barry had deliberately shot surrendered soldiers at Kilmichael was the main bone of contention. The ‘false surrender’, in which surrendering British Auxiliaries shot dead three IRA volunteers who stood up to take the surrender, is central to the Kilmichael ambush story. Questioning its veracity formed the starting point of Hart’s contention that the War of Independence was viciously sectarian. The correspondence between Hart and his critics, Padraig O Cuanachain and Meda Ryan, both of whom knew Tom Barry, and the historian Dr Brian Murphy, showed Hart retreating from his allegations. Despite this, Hart’s view prevailed through media repetition and promotion.

Hart Challenged

‘Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter’ (2003), by Meda Ryan, demolished much of Hart's argument. Hart’s reconstruction of the Kilmichael Ambush was faulty, as was his claim that Tom Barry did not make the ‘false surrender’ allegation until the 1940s. Hart’s contention that Barry did not mention it in a major 1932 Irish Press article was answered by Ryan showing that the passage had simply been edited out. Details of the Kilmichael false surrender had In fact been published in the 1920s. It was common knowledge among Barry’s column and the subject of many conversations. Hart’s claim to have spoken to IRA Kilmichael participants was undermined by the fact that, from evidence now available, only one was alive at the time of Hart’s interviews, and too infirm to converse intelligibly. Hart's tendency to refer to his Interviewees anonymously was been criticised.

British sectarianism

Ryan examined the allegation of the wanton killing of Protestants contained in Hart’s misleadingly entitled chapter, “Taking it out on the Protestants”.

In Dunmanway after the 1921 Treaty, K Company of the British Auxiliaries left behind a list of “helpful citizens” or informers. The area surrounding Bandon was politically unique. Loyalists had formed “The Loyalist Action Group”, known locally as “The Protestant Action Group”. They passed on information about the IRA during the War of Independence. They also went out on raids, wearing facemasks, with the RIC and Auxiliaries to identify, shoot and torture suspected republicans and to burn houses. They claimed allegiance to the “County Anti Sinn Fein League” and to the “The Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland”. British intelligence files confirmed the practice as unique to the Bandon area and bemoaned the fact that such sectarian collusion was not widespread. It was essentially a forerunner of unionist paramilitary activity seen years later in the North, and it was isolated.

It was standard British policy to foment sectarian tension. For instance shot spies or informers were referred to as “X, a Protestant” or, if the informer was a Roman Catholic, his/her religion was omitted. Barry said that in his area 15 informers and spies were shot: “Incidentally, for those who are bigots – 9 Catholics and 6 Protestants”.

Dunmanway killings

A post truce amnesty for informers broke down in West Cork during the period of April 26-28 1922, after the shooting dead of IRA officer Michael O’Neill by Captain Herbert Woods, and father and son Thomas and Samuel Hornibrook. All three had regularly supplied information to British forces. They soon after disappeared presumed killed and they were on the Dunmanway K Company list. Except for two individuals, the names of those shot were on the Dunmanway K Company list. The exception was, the brother of one informer and the son of another. It is not known who carried out these killings, which were not sanctioned by the IRA.

There was an immediate protest at these killings. Republicans, Including the Belfast Brigade of the IRA and Sinn Fein dominated Cork County Council, led it. Both pro and anti-treaty sides in Dail echoed the strong protests. Tom Barry, who was in Dublin attempting to stave off incipient civil war, rushed immediately to Cork. He issued orders for the protection of loyalists and posted members of the IRA at their houses to prevent attacks.

As in the case of Kilmichael, analysis of the facts bears little relation to revisionist propaganda. Contemporary statements from Protestants also undermine it. A Dublin convention of Protestant churches wished to place “on record” that apart from the Dunmanway shootings “hostility to Protestants by reason of their religion has been almost, if not wholly, unknown in the 26 Counties in which Protestants are in the minority”.

It is important to note that the fact that those shot were on a British list of informers and spies was not generally known at the time.

Protestant republicans

Dr Brian Murphy has pointed to Protestant supporters of Irish republicanism. He asked if they could “have acted in such a manner if their fellow religionists were the calculated targets of sectarian attacks?” Could the Protestant West Cork republican Sam Maguire, for whom the GAA all Ireland football trophy is named, have remained in the IRA? Could the Protestant Erskine Childers or subsequently his son have been part of such a movement?

Lloyd George’s imperial advisor, Lionel Curtis, admitted in 1921: “Protestants in the south do not complain of persecution on sectarian grounds. If Protestant farmers are murdered, it is not by reason of their religion, but rather because they are under suspicion as Loyalist. The distinction is fine, but a real one.”

Peter Hart is part of a trend of revisionist historiography in which essentially pro-British ‘evidence’ is found to question other versions of history. Its strongest argument has always been that it is based on facts properly and professionally researched. Meda Ryan has demonstrated that such historiography can have methodological feet of clay. Professor Roy Foster, the chief revisionist, sneeringly referred to “post-revisionist’ historiography as “nationalism with footnotes”. This is ironic since Jack Lane, Brendan Clifford and others argued In "Aubane Vs Oxford" that many of the Professor’s own footnotes are of dubious provenance.

Propaganda

Dr Brian Murphy has been researching the work of the British propaganda Department during 1919-21. One of his soon to be published findings will indicate the extent to which Peter Hart's work mirrors this industrious part of Britain's war effort.

Finally to Hart himself: the Canadian academic had a whirlwind introduction to Irish historiography. His book won the 1998 Ewart Biggs prize, named after the British Ambassador assassinated by the IRA. Professor Foster was chairman of the judging panel. The reception of Hart’s findings was helped by his non-Irishness. Here, apparently, was a disinterested foreigner come to discover uncomfortable truths about our past.

Canadian orangeism

However, Professor Hart's home, Newfoundland, is often remarked upon in terms of its connection to Ireland, mainly in terms of emigration, culture and even accent. But generally un-remarked upon is a similarity to northern rather than to southern Ireland. It was also the one part of Canada to which the Penal Laws applied. The Orange Order proudly recalled in 1963 that the roll call of Newfoundland leaders was also a roll call of Orange leaders and that Newfoundland was the first and most loyal outpost of the British Empire. The ‘Professional’ classes in the capital St Johns, where Hart was born and grew up, regarded themselves as ‘English’. The local Memorial University, where Peter Hart started at university and where he now chairs Irish Studies, expected students to ‘anglify’ their accents in special classes up to the mid 1960s.

The Protestant-Catholic breakdown splits two-thirds, one third, the former in the majority. Newfoundland’s 19th century tricolour flag was green, white and pink, symbolizing religious tolerance between the two groups. It was replaced by the Union Jack when Newfoundland achieved independent dominion under the crown. This period ended in economic stagnation and reunification with Canada. The current flag pays homage to the Union Jack.

This is the milieu from which Professor Hart emerged and which he may claim to have transcended. It is possible that his Irish researches may have been coloured by some of these Canadian tensions - unconsciously, of course.

Michael Collins

Hart has been conspicuous by his silence in not responding to the challenge of Meda Ryan’s book. It is possible that this keen player of war games with toy soldiers (literally, see www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/) is concentrating on a forthcoming biography of Michael Collins, in which he hopes to demolish the type of heroic portrayal seen in Neil Jordan’s film.

It will be curious to see whether John Bruton turns on this Fine Gael hero in the same way he has turned on Tom Barry. Hart claimed recently that no serious biography of Collins has appeared for nearly 70 years. This will come as news to Tim Pat Coogan who wrote an acclaimed biography of Collins a few short years ago.

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Meda Ryan’s ‘Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter’ is published by Mercier Press. ‘The IRA and its Enemies’ by Peter Hart is published by Oxford University Press.

Dr Brian Murphy will speak on “Aspects of British Propaganda during the War of Independence” in the Teachers Club Parnell Square Dublin on October 15th at 8pm.