Kilmichael

The Life and Afterlife Of An Ambush

Eve Morrison

• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781788551472
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The Kilmichael Ambush of 28 November 1920 was and remains one of the most famous, successful – and uniquely controversial – IRA attacks of the Irish War of Independence. This book is the first comprehensive account of both the ambush and the intense debates that followed. It explores the events, memory and historiography of the ambush, from 1920 to the present day, within a wider framework of interwar European events, global 'memory wars' and current scholarship relating to Irish, British, oral and military history. Kilmichael: The Life and Afterlife of an Ambush features extensive archival research, including the late Peter Hart's papers, as well as many other new sources from British and Irish archives, and previously unavailable oral history interviews with Kilmichael veterans. There has always been more than one version of Kilmichael. Tom Barry's account certainly became the dominant one after the publication of Guerilla Days in Ireland in 1949, but it was always shadowed and contested by others, and in this book, Eve Morrison meticulously reconstructs both 'British' and 'Irish' perspectives on this momentous and much-debated attack.

1

Kilmichael in Context

THE RADICAL NATIONALIST REVOLT AGAINST British rule in Ireland, which commenced during the Great War and burgeoned into a full-blown insurgency after the Armistice, was rooted in a pre-war home rule crisis. The ‘Irish Question’ bedevilled British and Irish politics throughout the nineteenth century, and between 1912 and 1914 brought both islands to the brink of civil war. After the constitutional crisis over the 1909 ‘People’s Budget’ and the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, the House of Lords no longer had the power to veto home rule legislation permanently. This engendered a wider crisis in Ireland. Ulster Unionists and their Conservative allies resorted to brinkmanship and extra-parliamentary agitation to prevent a measure which would make Irish Protestants a minority in an overwhelmingly Catholic polity and, they feared, weaken the very Empire.1 Thousands of anti-home rule monster meetings and rallies, petitions and canvassing across Britain and Ireland culminated in the September 1912 mass signing of the Ulster Covenant and, in January 1913, the creation of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).2 Radical nationalists responded by founding the Irish Volunteers on 25 November 1913, as a pro-home rule militia.

At the forefront of unionist resistance was Edward Carson, MP for Trinity College and leader of the Irish Unionists in parliament, and James Craig, a Unionist MP for East Down.3 Although facing what was effectively a threatened coup d’état, Herbert Asquith, the prime minister, made no move against them. Even more ominously, when British officers stationed at the Curragh Camp in Kildare let it be known in March 1914 that they would resign rather than move against Ulster, the government backed down once more.4 A month later, loyalists landed 25,000 German guns and three million rounds of ammunition at Larne, County Antrim.5

The probable slide into armed confrontation over Ulster was temporarily halted by the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914.6 John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), had secured control of the Irish Volunteers and retained the support of the overwhelming majority of them after his pledge to support the British war effort in exchange for home rule legislation fomented a split in September.7 But the government’s decision to suspend the final passage of home rule into law until the cessation of hostilities weakened the IPP’s position, particularly as the war dragged on. In April 1916, a minority of the Irish Volunteers who had broken from Redmond staged the Easter Rising.8 The executions and mass arrests that followed alienated nationalist Ireland. IPP morale suffered a further devastating blow in July when, despite their party’s efforts in a new round of negotiations, it was announced that six Ulster counties were to be excluded from the home rule settlement.9

Meanwhile, all those interned after the Rising were released in December, and those imprisoned following courts martial were freed in June 1917, allowing Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers to commence reorganising almost immediately.10 Éamon de Valera, the only surviving 1916 leader, was elected president of Sinn Féin in October, having already defeated his IPP opponent in the East Clare by-election in July.11 Within months, events outside Ireland, once again, pushed an already tense political situation to breaking point and strengthened the hand of the radicals.

A massive German offensive in March 1918 broke through Allied lines on the Western Front, prompting the British government to decide to extend conscription to Ireland. All shades of nationalist opinion, the Catholic Church and the labour movement united behind Sinn Féin’s campaign to oppose the move. A nationwide strike on 23 April 1918 was (and remains) one of the most widely supported industrial actions ever organised in Ireland. Trade unions and trades councils across Britain also condemned the government, as did the British Labour Party.12 John French, the new lord lieutenant, used the 1887 Crimes Act to arrest seventy-three separatist leaders in May for supposedly conspiring with Germany, and in July, declared the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan, Sinn Féin and the Gaelic League illegal organisations.

By the Armistice in November 1918, the limited home rule settlement legislated for in 1914 was an anachronism for a sizeable proportion of the Irish population.13 Sinn Féin routed the IPP in the December general election. Their sixty-nine newly elected MPs (holding seventy-three seats between them) were pledged to form an Irish counter-government rather than take their seats in Westminster.14 The generally accepted date for the start of the War of Independence is 21 January 1919. On that day, Dáil Éireann met for the first time and, by chance rather than design, a group of Irish Volunteers (rechristened the IRA that year) killed two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) men guarding a wagon of explosives at Soloheadbeg, Tipperary.

Press censorship imposed by wartime emergency legislation was formally lifted in Britain and Ireland in June and August 1919 respectively, but this was negated in Ireland within weeks. The ‘Sinn Féin press’ was driven underground and several newspapers were suppressed for advertising the National (Dáil) Loan.15 As time went on, Ireland became an increasingly hazardous place for journalists and newspaper proprietors. In Cork, the names of journalists for The Cork Examiner and The Southern Star appeared on police intelligence suspect lists.16 By February 1921, at least forty-six Irish newspapers had been suppressed for varying periods of time.17 Both the IRA and Crown Forces responded to hostile coverage with raids, threats and sometimes the destruction of newspaper presses and premises. Of the two, Crown Forces were by far the most destructive, attacking or wrecking sixteen provincial newspapers between late 1920 and early 1921.18 Chief Secretary Hamar Greenwood either denied such reprisals or characterised them as ‘justifiable self-defence’.19

In response to censorship, the Dáil established its own news sheet, the Irish Bulletin, produced through the joint efforts of Desmond FitzGerald, Erskine Childers, Frank Gallagher and Kathleen McKenna Napoli. The first issue appeared in November 1919. Thereafter, it was published five days a week and forwarded to some 700 recipients.20 As the Dublin Castle Press Bureau’s attempts to garner public support and sympathy for Crown Forces became ever more counter-productive, Dáil Éireann’s Publicity Department blossomed into one of the counter-state’s standout successes.

The Bulletin was neither neutral nor always accurate, but it offered a much-needed counterpoint to blatant and persistent false accounting by Greenwood and Dublin Castle, and was regularly quoted in the international and British press.21 Childers and FitzGerald worked with Art Ó Briain and the Irish Self-Determination League in London to cultivate good working relationships with journalists.22 According to Larry Nugent, who supplied its premises, none of the visiting correspondents ever gave away their whereabouts to the authorities: ‘I say every man of them was a credit to his profession, including the “man from The Daily Mail.”’23

In April 1919, de Valera publicly denounced the RIC as ‘spies in our midst’. He called on local populations to ostracise and boycott officers who refused to resign.24 The RIC, established as an armed gendarmerie in the 1830s, was the most visible and reliable arm of central government at local level. By the turn of the century, almost 80 per cent of the rank and file were Catholic (though the majority of senior officers were Protestant), and relations between the force and the general population were generally good. This changed once the RIC was accorded primary responsibility for countering the radical nationalist threat after the Rising.25 In September 1919, the Irish authorities declared Dáil Éireann illegal. Two months later, other radical nationalist organisations were banned.

The RIC was ordered to consolidate into large units in better-protected stations. Their abandonment of smaller and more isolated rural barracks allowed the insurgents to move freely across large tracts of the country. The Dáil and IRA GHQ both sanctioned attacks on police in January 1920. Police statistics attributed over 2,500 ‘incidents’ against the RIC to ‘Sinn Féin’ between 1919 and 1921, with two-thirds occurring in just eleven counties, mostly in the south and west. The county with the highest number of recorded incidents was Cork.26 Over 1,300 regular RIC men left the force between July and September 1920. They were neither trusted nor allowed to join the IRA, even if inclined to do so, except in exceptional circumstances.27

Due to the RIC’s decline, in early 1920 the Irish Command of the British Army established military posts in the vicinity of police barracks and took over responsibility for what was designated ‘political’ criminality.28 However, police raids, curfews and clampdowns on fairs and markets in ‘Special Military Areas’ (trouble spots) were largely counter-productive. A mass hunger strike by internees in April 1920 garnered so much public sympathy, including another two-day general strike, that the authorities released them. In May, Irish railwaymen and dockers began the munitions embargo, the most significant show of workers’ support for Irish independence of the conflict. For seven months, they refused to carry armaments or armed police or military, forcing Crown Forces onto the roads, where they were more vulnerable to IRA attacks, and creating severe logistical problems for the military.29

The I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Author Bio
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Kilmichael in Context
• 2. Life and Death at a Bend in the Road
• 3. Ruse de Guerre or Atrocity? Early Press Coverage of the Ambush
• 4. Barry versus Deasy: Two Roads Back from the Brink
• 5. Issues and Participants
• 6. Tellings and Retellings 1921–80
• 7. 28 November 1920
• 8. They Were All Revisionists Then
• 9. War by Other Means
• Conclusion: Decommissioning Irish History
• Appendix 1: Dublin Castle’s Version of Events
• Appendix 2: The Captured Report
• Appendix 3: Frederick H. Forde Account
• Appendix 4: ‘Kilmichael: The Fight that Roused a Nation’ by Flor Crowley
• Appendix 5: Paddy O’Brien, Kilmichael Ambush, as told to Liam Deasy
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Picture Section