Examining PeterHart

Field Day Review 10 2014

Examining
PeterHart
Niall Meehan
The late Peter Hart, who died at a tragically
young age in July 2010, asserted in his 1993
Trinity College Dublin (TCD) PhD thesis,
and in the 1998 Oxford University Press book
based on the thesis, that republican forces
fought a sectarian war against Protestants
during the 191921 Irish War of Independence
and afterwards.1 It culminated in a massacre
of Protestants in late April 1922 (thesis, 161;
book, 132), that is after Anglo-Irish hostilities
ceased in July 1921 but prior to the start of
the Irish Civil War in June 1922. Equally
controversially, Hart asserted that Irish
Republican Army (IRA) Flying Column leader
Tom Barry covered up an earlier massacre,
of British Auxiliary prisoners after the 28
November 1920 Kilmichael Ambush (thesis,
53; book, 37). In his thesis and book Hart
portrayed these linked events as emblematic
of ethnically charged sectarian hatreds that
drove the nationalist revolution (thesis, 392;
book, 292). He went on to write:
The April massacre is as unknown as
the Kilmichael ambush is celebrated; yet
one is as important as the other to an
understanding of the Cork I.R.A. Nor can
the murders be relegated to the fringes of
the revolution or described as an isolated
event. They were as much a part of the
reality of revolutionary violence as the
killings at Kilmichael.

British Army barracks at Bandon, Co. Cork, during the

War of independence. Photo: Imperial War Museum,
London. IWM

103

Field Day Review 10 2014 Examining Peter Hart by Nall Meehan

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Field Day Review

One of the destroyed British Army

Crossley tenders photographed
in the days after the Kilmichael
Ambush. Photo: Daily Sketch.

The patterns of perception and

victimisation revealed by these events
are also of a piece with the whole
revolution. These deaths can be seen
as the culmination of a long process of
social definition which produced both
the heroes of Kilmichael and the victims
of the April massacre. The identity of the
former cannot be fully understood without
the latter.
In addition, Hart alleged that at least one
unnamed ambush participant may have
been involved in the April 1922 massacre
(thesis,161; book, 132).2
Of course, Peter Hart, in his professional
role as historian was perfectly entitled to
explore and to present evidence leading
to such conclusions. However, there are
concerns that his evidence presentation
breached ethical standards. Evidence
contradicting his favoured conclusions
was obscured, misrepresented or excluded.
Harts subsequent 1998 book introduced
some changes, but these point up in sharp
relief errors and anomalies in the thesis.
Occasionally changes corrected errors, but

104

not the argument the errors sustained. It

appeared that for Hart conclusions came first.
In order to explore and to explain why
I have formed this opinion, I will deal first
with the November 1920 Kilmichael Ambush
and then with the 1922 April killings. I
will at that stage discuss the intellectual
climate within which Harts research was
accepted uncritically.

Section 1 KilmichaelAmbush
The ambush on 28 November 1920 occurred
two years after Sinn Fins victory in the
November 1918 General Election, taking 73
of 105 Irish seats.3 And it was over a year
since Britain had outlawed the separatist
Dil (parliament) set up by Sinn Fin in
January 1919. In the meantime, the IRA had
emerged as a military force that defended
the legitimacy of Dil institutions and
defied British jurisdiction. The hotbed of
this defiance and resistance outside Dublin
was in Irelands largest and southernmost
county, Cork.

The Irish Republican Army

and its Enemies, Violence and
Community in Cork 19161923
(TCD PhD thesis 1993), The
IRA and its Enemies, Violence
and Community in Cork
19161923 (Oxford, 1998).
Hereafter, page numbers intext are from 1992 thesis
and/or 1998 book. Footnotes
refer to otherpublications.
A note accompanying the text
at this point referred readers
to Harts April killings chapter,
that failed to elaborate on this
claim. The allegation was irst
made by Kevin Myers in the
Irish Times (hereafter IT) 25
May1989.
Due to negligible support
for other parties, no votes
were cast in 25 seats that
Sinn Fin won uncontested.
This has led to confusion in
reporting the considerable
Sinn Fin mandate estimated
conservatively at between 60
and 70 per cent. Counting only
votes cast, some ideologues
minimize Sinn Fin support
at 47 per cent. For example,
Kevin Myers, IT, 14 October
2000 and Eoghan Harris,
Sunday Independent, 15
December2013.
J. B. E. Hittle, Michael Collins
and the Anglo Irish War
(Lincoln, NE, 2011), 16777.
Brian P Murphy, The Origins
and Organisation of British
Propaganda in Ireland 1920
(Cork, 2008), 5262.
Richard Bennett, The Black
and Tans (New York, 1995),
122. Two intelligence oicers
stationed at Macroom were
arrested on 6 November
while in civilan attire and
executed as spies. See
David Grants excellent
website, www.theauxiliaries.
com/INCIDENTS/agnewmitchel/agnew-mitchell.html
(accessed, 31 May 2014),
also CharlesBrowne, Bureau
of Military History Witness
Statement (hereafter BMH
WS) No. 873.

Examining PeterHart

Times (London), 2 November 1922,

recruitment advertisement. See
www.theauxiliaries.com

Their newspaper promotion

was recalled somewhat
cynically by IRA oicer Charlie
Browne in The Story of the 7th
(Cork, 2007), 39. The original
Black & Tans were a pack of
hounds fromLimerick.
Bennett, 3738. Report of the
Labour Commission to Ireland
(London), 1921, 56; Lord
Longford (Frank Pakenham),
Peace by Ordeal (London,
1972 (irst publ. 1935)),
4858; F. P. Crozier, Ireland
Forever (Bath [1932], 1971),
133; Charles Loch Mowat,
Britain Between the Wars
19181940 (London, 1965),
65; Hittle, 115, 116.
Tom Jones and Keith
Middlemas, Whitehall Diary,
Vol. III, Ireland 191825
(Oxford, 1971), 41.

The Kilmichael Ambush in west Cork

occurred exactly one week after Bloody
Sunday in the capital, Dublin. On the
morning of 21 November the IRA executed
12 British officers, two Auxiliaries and a
civilian; the majority of those killed were
senior intelligence operatives. Later that day,
in apparent reprisal, Crown forces fired into
a crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke
Park, killing ten spectators and a footballer.
Finally, three IRA volunteers, Dick McKee,
Peadar Clancy and Conor Clune, were tortured
before being unofficially executed in Dublin
Castle, allegedly during an attempt to escape.4
The two Auxiliary casualties on Bloody
Sunday were the first killed in action since
that forces deployment in Ireland.5
During 1920 the British press had
promoted the new Auxiliary division of the
Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), recruited from
ex-officers, as an elite counter-insurgency
body. The Auxiliaries inherited the name
Black & Tans, which had been applied earlier
in 1920 to RIC recruits from lower ranks of
the British Army, who were issued with mixand-match green (police) and khaki (army)
uniforms.6 The Auxiliary Divisions first
commander, Brigadier General F. P. Crozier,
who resigned in February 1921, later described
the force as, soldiers in disguise under no
army and no R. I. C. code. A fact-finding
British Labour Party Commission reported
in January 1921, things are being done in the
name of Britain which must make her name
stink in the nostrils of the whole world.
In the mid 1930s Pakenham listed reprisal
killings, torture, and systematic destruction

of homes and businesses, combined with

generalized criminality, attributed to these
forces. Mowats verdict is that the Auxiliaries
and Black & Tans were the greatest blot
perhaps on Britains name in the twentieth
century. Hittle later summed up their role as,
a sort of English Freikorps that engaged in
clearing out towns, and burning and looting
of houses, farms, factories, and dairies, while
shooting or arresting unnamed citizens and
sending them to internment camps.7
While elements of the regular British
Army came in for similar criticism, the
combined Black & Tan / Auxiliary forces
deservedly received most. At Kilmichael, a
force of 17 Auxiliaries (plus one Black & Tan)
was wiped out by the Flying Column of the
IRAs Third West Cork brigade. Sixteen lay
dead on the battlefield, one survivor was left
for dead, and another who escaped was later
captured and killed. Privately, British Prime
Minister Lloyd George noted,
The Chief Secretary went to Ireland last
night. The last attack of the rebels [at
Kilmichael] seemed to him, Bonar Law and
myself to partake of a different character
from the preceding operations. The
others were assassinations. This last was a
military operation.8
Publicly, however, the Kilmichael affair was
portrayed quite differently. To counter the
effect of this major setback, Irish Secretary,
Sir Hamar Greenwood gave the British House
of Commons a lurid tale of how a hundred
IRA fighters had surrounded and killed the
Auxiliaries, and then savagely mutilated
their bodies with axes. British propagandists
further amplified this account in the press.9
In his memoir, Guerrilla Days in Ireland (1949),
ambush Commander Tom Barry rejected the
British account as atrocity propaganda. He
countered that the Auxiliaries called a false
surrender during the fight, causing two (of
three) fatalities from his force of thirty-six.
That event justified for Barry a fight-to-thefinish without prisoners. It also created the
basis for Harts revision.10

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Field Day Review

Re-creation of British map of IRA

deployment and distribution of
auxiliary bodies at the Kilmichael
Ambush, 20 November 1920. Bob
McDonough, Fenian Design.

The Kilmichael Ambush position was

planned carefully. Barrys force was deployed
between bends on the Macroom-Dunmanway
Road. He expected two open-deck Crossly
Tender lorries with nine Auxiliary troops
in each. At the end of the ambush positon,
Section-One of Barrys force with ten fighters
and three in a Command Post were to attack
the first lorry. Section-Two, with ten more
fighters some 150 yards off on the same side

106

of the road would tackle the second. A sixman group spread out higher up across the
road, half of Section-Three, would prevent
Auxiliaries in both lorries taking up positions
on that side. The other half of Section Three,
positioned before the bend of the road that
formed the ambush position, were deployed
to tackle the possibility of a third lorry.
In addition to these thirty-seven fighters
(including Barry), three unarmed scouts

[P]ress representatives were

held up at various points and
it was almost an impossibility
to secure a[n independent]
narrative, according to the
Irish Times (1 December).
However, despite reliance
on the oicial version, its
correspondent also reported
on a number of burnings
in the neighbouring locality,
including two farmhouses
adjacent to the ambush
location. The Illustrated
London News published a
photograph of one such
farmhouse on 11 December
1920. Reprisal burnings
were a typical feature of
Crown forces response to
military setbacks. A letter
appeared on 2 December in

Examining PeterHart

Site of the Kilmichael ambush.

Photo: 1931

the Irish Times, denying that

journalists were stopped
several times. The author,
C. H., probably London
Morning Post (formerly Irish
Times) correspondent C. H.
Bretherton, was nevertherless
frightened by the attitude
of surrounding oicers
and it was not impossible
for us to to have been shot
in error. However, having
established their identity C. H.
reported, the journalists were
unmolested and that we took
refreshment with one of the
oicers at Macroom. See
also, n. 135.

were positioned, the nearest reportedly 150

yards away.11
After 5pm and a wet, near freezing,
daylong wait, scouts signalled two Auxiliary
lorries approaching. The IRA force remained
concealed, apart from Barry. Wearing an Irish
Volunteer officers uniform,12 Barry stood
in the road with his hand in a halt position
as the first lorry approached. As intended,
Barrys presence and appearance appeared
to confuse the driver, who slowed down. At
a prearranged point, Barry commenced the
action by blowing his whistle and throwing
a Mills Bomb that exploded in the drivers
cab. Both the driver and Colonel Craik,
the Auxiliary Commander, were killed
immediately; the other surprised occupants
died in a sharp and very bloody close quarter
encounter that followed. There were no
Command Post or Section-One IRA fatalities.
The second lorry was simultaneously
attacked by Section Two, but its occupants
were better positioned. Suffering causalities,
they deployed to the road and fired back.
The driver began reversing but broke the

lorrys suspension in the roadside ditch. The

first IRA casualty, Section Two commander
Michael McCarthy, reportedly was killed at
this stage.13 With the first lorry force out of
action, Barry and his three Command Post
fighters moved silently to attack remaining
Auxiliaries from the rear. On approach, Barry
reported that he heard them shouting, We
surrender, we surrender, and observed rifles
being discarded. The Auxiliaries reportedly
then fired their revolvers at three IRA fighters
who exposed their positions to accept
the surrender, killing Jim OSullivan and
mortally wounding Pat Deasy. Consequently,
according to Barrys account, he ordered,
rapid fire and do not stop until I tell you.
He refused further surrenders and ordered a
fight to the finish without taking prisoners,
resulting in the execution of at least one
unarmed Auxiliary. Barry later contended that
soldiers who had cheated in war deserved
to die.14 Afterwards, all of the Auxiliaries
were assumed dead. However, one survived
though severely wounded, and another
escaped but was captured later and executed.

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Barry drilled his traumatized volunteers after

what he called the bloodiest fight in Ireland
during the Independence War. Then the IRA
set the lorries on fire and, before departing,
collected arms and intelligence material plus
the bodies of their two dead and one mortally
wounded comrades.
In his historical reconstruction of the
ambush sixty-eight years later, Peter Hart
did not endorse British allegations that
Barrys men had engaged in mutilation. The
medical examination did not substantiate
it. Alternatively, however, Hart charged that
Barrys history of Kilmichael is riddled
with lies and evasions. There was no false
surrender as he described it. The surviving
Auxiliaries were simply exterminated (thesis,
51; book, 36).
Thus, Hart pitched his academic history of
a massacre, that resembled the official British
position, against Barrys recollection of a
military engagement, that was in line with the
British cabinets original private assessment.
Hart claimed that IRA veteran testimony
he accessed supported his conclusions.
However, his unusual decision to anonymize
testimony from elderly republican
informants (twelve in the thesis, thirteen in
the book) complicated the task of unravelling
his narrative. Hart reported that, because
an unquantified large number of his
interviewees required anonymity, he, for an
unknown reason, had anonymized all their
identifies (thesis, 478; book, 330).15 Why did
Hart anonymize even those interviewees
content to associate their names with
their testimonies? What justification was
offered to, and accepted by, examiners
about a decision that apparently lacked an
historiographical precedent? What protocols
(if any), ensuring academic rigor, were put
in place? Hart did not discuss them. When I
asked, Harts internal examiner declined to
explain.16 At this point Harts methodology,
as distinct from his interpretation,
requires examination.
Harts methodology implied that
anonymity was required to obtain
information that otherwise might have
remained hidden. Alternatively, however,

108

Harts provision of blanket anonymity to all

his interviewees obscured information that
was otherwise available, and it also hampered
any researchers investigation of Harts
claims. Moreover, such an investigation was
made more difficult because Harts elderly
informants had died when his research was
eventually published.
Of the initial twelve elderly anonymous
republican informants, Hart claimed that
two, interviewed by him in 198889, were
Kilmichael Ambush veterans. Hart reported
access, also under condition of anyonymity,
to three more ambush accounts that had been
recorded on audiotapes in the late 1960s and
were in the possession of a Fr. John Chisholm
(thesis, 478; book, 330). Chisholm had made
the tapes while assisting IRA veteran Liam
Deasy to write his own War of Independence
memoir, Towards Ireland Free (Cork, 1973). Here
is how Hart introduced these interviewees
(thesis, 46, n. 50; book, 33, n. 56):
The following reconstruction [of the
Kilmichael Ambush] is primarily based
on five detailed interviews carried out
with Kilmichael veterans, three of them
conducted by Dr. John Chisholm and two
by myself (interviews with E. Y., 3 April,
25 June 1988; H. J., 19 Nov., 1989). I was also
fortunate enough to be given a tour of the
ambush site by the latter.17
This explanation is clear if it refers to
five ambush participants (Harts two and
Chisholms three), but is misleading if it
does not. There are problems associated with
both groups of interviewees. Harts thesis
convention of identifying his own informants
by their initials (sometimes reversed) led me
in 2008 to suggest that Harts interviewee, E.
Y., above, was Edward Ned Young.18
Young died aged ninety-seven on 13
November 1989. On 18 November the weekly
Southern Star printed a report and photograph
headlined, Ned Young last of the Boys of
Kilmichael.19 Throughout the 1980s, this
widely read newspaper referred progressively
to Ned Young as, respectively, one of the last
three, then one of the last two, and, from 1987,

10 Times (London), 30 November

1920. Brian P. Murphy, The
Origin and Organisation of
British Propaganda in Ireland
in 1920 (Aubane/Spinwatch,
2006), 64. Tom Barry, Guerilla
Days in Ireland ([1949]
Cork, 1989), 44, 45, 51. The
perfected British view for public
consumption was in the Times
(London), 2 December 1920.
Though presented as from
a senior Cork police oicer
Murphy (67) demonstrated
that British Director of Publicity
Basil Clarke constructedit.
11 Barrys account summarized
from his Guerilla Days in
Ireland, 1989, 4046.
12 Origin of the uniform in Paddy
OBrien, BMH WS 812.
13 Eyewitness (pseud., Tom
Barry), Kilmichael Part
II, An Cosantir, vol. 20, no.
21, 16 May 1941, republished
in Terence OReilly, ed., Our
Struggle for Independence,
Eye-witness accounts from
the pages of An Cosantir
(Cork, 2009), 11, 103; BMH
WS 1,234, JackHennessy.
14 Meda Ryan, Tom Barry:
IRA Freedom Fighter (Cork,
2003),56.
15 Hart observed in his second
article based on his research,
As several of the veterans I
interviewed asked not to be
quoted by name I will refer to
all of them by their initials.
Why all? How many are
several? Class, Community
and the Irish Republican
Army in Cork, 19171923, in
Patrick OFlanagan, Cornelius
Buttimer, eds, Cork History
and Society (Dublin, 1993),
983, n. 34.
16 Professor David Fitzpatrick
stated that to do so, would
involve a gross breach of
conidentiality, letter 17
November2008.
17 In the thesis (46, n. 50), Hart
refers to Chisholm tapes in
the possession of Fr. John
Chisholm, whereas the book
mentions research (33, n.
56). However, the bibliography
in both publications refers to
tapes (thesis, 478; book, 330).

Examining PeterHart

Southern Star, 18 November 1989, p.

20. Harts ambush scout interview
was dated 19 November.

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Field Day Review

as the very last and only Kilmichael survivor.

The publicly acknowledged second-to-last
surviving veteran, Jack OSullivan, died in
December 1986.20 Ned Young appeared in
a large front-page photograph in the daily
Cork Examiner on 30 November 1997 under
the headline, The Last Boy of Kilmichael.
No one ever contradicted these seemingly
uncontroversial desgnations.
Harts second ambush interviewee, H. J.
(renamed AF in Harts book), was reportedly
interviewed six days after Young died, one day
after his death was reported, on 19 November
1989.21 The implications of those dates alone
constitute a major problem. Harts other
three taped accounts, made in the late 1960s
by Fr. Chisholm, were not individually
differentiated in his text and citations,
either because Hart could not or simply did
not do so: Hart did not inform readers as to
the reasons.
Unusual problems have arisen concerning
the informants. Let us discuss them in detail.

19 November 1989 Interviewthe H. J. /

scout problem
The informant whom Hart reportedly
interviewed on 19 November 1989 was
presented differently in his thesis and book.
In the thesis he appeared as H. J., a
regular ambush participant. However, in
Harts 1998 book, renamed AF, he was recharacterized as an unarmed scout situated
some distance from the fighting (compare
book 35, n. 61, with thesis 49, n. 55). And
yet, in both the thesis and the book, this
person was reportedly engaged in shooting
British Auxiliaries (book, 35; thesis, 50, n.
56). Additionally, the thesis reported that
this interviewee had toured Hart around
the ambush site, an attribution the book
withdrew (compare book 33, n. 56 with thesis
46, n. 50).22 Likewise, a thesis reference to
the IRAs time of arrival at the ambush site
is ascribed to the same interviewee but,
again for no apparent reason, this is altered
in the book by citing someone who was not
there (compare thesis 33, n. 11 with book 24,

110

n. 11).23 Finally, Harts thesis narrative and

a sketch of the ambush position (thesis,
47; not reproduced in book), indicating
the deployment of IRA personnel, ignores
scouts entirely, an odd omission if Hart
had interviewed a scout. There are further
significant differences.
But first, why was this claimed interviewee
reported differently in the two publications?
Between the completion of Harts thesis
in 1992 and the publication of his book in
1998, it became clear to Hart that he dated
his H. J. / AF interview after Ned Young
died in November 1989. Why did Hart make
this mistake?
Hart may not have been aware of
publicity surrounding Ned Youngs death
when he dated his interviews.24 He may,
however, have accepted and also misread a
significant published mistake. On page 46 of
the December 1989 Southern Star Centenary
Supplement, a Ned Young photograph
was mistakenly captioned, one of the few
surviving veterans.25 Hart most likely saw
this, as his thesis cited the facing page,
47 (thesis, 415, n. 111; book 286, n. 47). The
mistaken caption may have given Hart the
false impression that a) Young was still
alive and also, b) that he was one of the
few surviving veterans of the Kilmichael
Ambush, rather than of the entire War
of Independence. Harts thesis interview
dating may, therefore, have appeared nonproblematic to him.26
Hart probably became aware there was a
problem, however, after submission of his
thesis (1992) and before book publication
(1998). In 1995, a substantial commemorative
booklet on Kilmichael Ambush participants
was published, titled The Wild Heather Glen,
the Kilmichael Story, in Grief and in Glory.27 Hart
acknowledged that the publication contained
a profile of every man at the ambush, with
many valuable biographical details (book
131, n. 17). Since those details included
the year participants were born and died,
that observation alone undermined Harts
claim to have interviewed H. J. / AF on 19
November 1989.

18 He became AA in Harts book.

I pointed out in Troubled
History (21) that thesis
interviewees were identiied
by their initials, sometimes
reversed, whereas in the book
they appeared sequentially
and less identiiably as AA,
AB,AC,etc.
19 Reproduced on the cover of
Meehan, Troubled History.
20 Southern Star reports of
deaths of three remaining
1980s Kilmichael veterans,
3 & 24 December 1983, 7
December 1985, 20 December
1986, 26 November 1988,
18 November 1989. See my,
Reply to Jef Dudgeon on
Peter Hart, Irish Political
Review (IPR), Nov. 2011, vol.
26, no. 11, at www.academia.
edu/1080790/.
21 Southern Star, 18 November
1989. Meda Ryan, Tom Barry,
69, irst noted a problem
with Harts claim that he
interviewed two ambush
veterans in 198889 when
only Young wasalive.
22 See Niall Meehan, Troubles in
Irish History, in Brian Murphy,
Nall Meehan, Troubled
History (2008), 23, at www.
academia.edu/166387/.
23 The 1998 book (24, n. 11),
cites interviews with AA 3
Apr. 1988, and AE, 19 Nov.
1989. The 1992 thesis (33, n.
11), cites interviews with E. Y.
3 April 1988, and H. J. 19 Nov.
1989. In all other citations
1992s H.J.=AF, whereas
C.D.=AE. C.D. is Dan Cahalane
who, though a member of
Barrys lying column, did not
participate in the Kilmichael
ambush (and Hart did not
assert that hedid).
24 Harts dating of his interview
with C. D. (Dan Cahalane,
AE in the book) is similarly
problematic. Harts Youth
Culture and the Cork IRA
(in David Fitzpatrick, ed.,
Revolution?, TCD History
Workshop, 1990), referred
to interviewing eleven IRA
veterans and to interviewing
the same C. D.Cahalane
once. But Hart gives diferent
dates, on 17 and 19 November
1989 (11, 21). In his 1992
thesis, Hart referred to
interviewing him (43, n. 39)
on 19 November, whereas on

Examining PeterHart

another page (176, n. 79) it is

18 November (no date here in
book, 142, n. 65). Hart seemed
uncertain about his interview
date. Was it 17, 18 or 19
November 1989? Whichever
date, it is surprising that
Hart did not become aware
that Ned Young, originally
from Dunmanway, died on 13
November. Since Cahalane
lived in Dunmanway, he
might have told Hart this.
This point is reinforced since
Hart reported interviewing
an I.R.A. veteran in his
Dunmanway home, that
once belonged to an April
Killings victim, solicitor
Francis Fitzmaurice, killed
on 27 April 1922. That was
Dan Cahalane in Carbery
House, Dunmanway. This
made an impression on Hart,
who embellished the fact.
In his April killings chapter
conclusion, Hart professed
himself struck by the
symbolic reversal involved
in the former guerrilla living
in the grand ancien regime
home, and by his denial of
what this suggested: that
the nationalist revolution
had also been a sectarian
one (thesis, 39192; book,
29192). To establish this
observation, Hart asserted
that the veteran bought the
house a few years later, after
it had fallen into disrepair.
That is not accurate. Initially,
the house functioned as a
Free State military post. A Dr
Francis E. Fitzmaurice sold the
contents by public auction in
1925. Dunmanway auctioneer
Henry Smith bought and
occupied the house in 1933.
Cahalane purchased Carbery
House from Smith in 1955,
thirty-four years after the
April killings (F. Fitzmaurice
solicitors had carriage of sale).
Cahalane died in 1996. Had
he been alive when Harts
book was published two years
later, the easily identiiable
Cahalane might have sought a
correction. See Southern Star,
12 March 1923, 8 September
1923, 25 April 1925, 6 May
1933, 22 January 1955, 27
April1996.

In the absence of other explanations,

that is possibly why the ambush participant
named H. J. in the thesis was newly described
in the book as an unarmed scout (named
AF). If so, however, that change did not
resolve Harts problem. The Wild Heather
Glen booklet included Kilmichael scouts in
its list of forty-six IRA ambush participants
(thirty-seven armed fighters, including Tom
Barry, three scouts, two dispatch scouts,
four post-ambush helpers). All five scouts
were later identified individually by Tom
Barrys biographer Meda Ryan. The last two
reportedly died in 1967 and 1971.28
If media and other reports are accurate,
Hart made claims with regard to evidence
allegedly provided by anonymous witnesses
that he could not have made had he
named them. It was incumbent on Hart to
establish the authenticity of his sources in
ordinary circumstances. Using anonymous
information heightened, not diminished, this
responsibility. It is not known how or whether
the examination process ensured authenticity.
It would be surprising if the provenance of
anonymous interviewees was not considered
during it.

NewAnomalies
That last point brings us to a collection of
essays titled Terror in Ireland 19161923, edited
by David Fitzpatrick and published in Harts
memory in 2012, which contains an important
chapter on the Kilmichael Ambush by Dr.
Eve Morrison.29 Morrison, who generally
supported Harts approach, obtained
privileged access to the Chisholm audiotapes
and to an unpublished paper by Hart,
responding to his critics.
Morrisons essay gave rise to new
anomalies she debated with me but largely
failed to acknowledge. Whereas I viewed
Harts mistakes as systemic, Morrison
suggested that they arose from muddled
notation. Professor Fitzpatrick conceded
in the same publication that Hart was
occasionally careless in presenting primary

source material.30 Harts muddle may be his

message if it follows from attempts to obscure
or hide evidence. Let us take the discussion on
to explore this point. New anomalies are:
1. Morrison reported that the Chisholm
audiotapes of the late 1960s recorded two
Kilmichael veterans speaking about the
ambush, not three, as Hart stated.31
2. A 2004 unpublished riposte to critics
by Hart, to which Morrison was
given privileged access, named all his
sources (as of 2004) apart from one,
the scout. If he remained anonymous
even to the anonymizer, his existence is
questionable.32
3. An utterance from one audiotaped veteran,
Jack OSullivan, was wrongly attributed
in Harts book to the scout (35, n. 61). In
other words, Hart confused an utterance
from someone to whom he said he spoke in
1989 with testimony on what was, at that
time, a twenty-year-old audio recording.
4. However, unknown to Morrison, this
attribution mistake was new to the book.
It was unclear in the thesis. The change
introduced to the book was obviously
mistaken, since the second of the
three quotations ascribed to the scout
contained, after the first, Barry made us,
said another.33
The above points indicate Harts difficulty
reporting evidence accurately and also
continuing problems reporting the scout.
These problems were again initially obscured
and also possibly produced by anonymous
evidence presentation. However, there are
further anomalies associated with Harts
reporting of Ned Youngs testimony.

111

Field Day Review

Edward Ned Young

The anomalies associated with reporting
what Ned Young said interacts with
previous findings,
1. Eve Morrison revealed that the second
interviewee in the late 1960s Chisholm
tapes, alongside Jack OSullivan, was
Ned Young. This is surprising because
Young was also (as noted) reportedly the
sole Kilmichael participant still alive
in 198789 and therefore theoretically
(albeit, as we shall see, problematically)
available then for Hart to interview.34
Hart consequently presented Ned Young
as two different people in his Kilmichael
discussion: he was Chisholms late 1960s
audiotaped interviewee as well as Harts
1988 interviewee.35 Anonymity made this
double counting of Ned Young possible.
2. Harts previously noted failure to
distinguish individually audiotaped
interviewees may therefore make a kind
of (albeit unethical) sense. Distinguishing
them, even anonymously, as with his
own claimed interviewees, would have
necessitated reporting E. Y. (Edward
Ned Young) as one person who had been
interviewed by both Chisholm and Hart,
rather than, by implication, two separate
people, one of whom Chisholm had
interviewed on tape, the other with whom
Hart had spoken personally.
3. Morrison paraphrased Young on the
audiotape speaking of a false surrender.
Young mentioned it at least twice (as
revealed at a talk where Morrison played
part of Chisholms Young interview
tape). Nevertheless, Harts report of the
tapes contents ignored both of Youngs
utterances, although the question
of whether there was indeed a false
surrender is absolutely central to Harts
characterization of Barry as a liar.
Before proceeding with discussion of Youngs
testimony, a general point must be made.

112

Hart reported that he interviewed two

ambush participants (Young and H. J. / AF
i.e., the scout) in 198889, when only one
ambush participant (Young) was still alive,
and that he had listened to three additional
participants on the late 1960s audiotape,
when, according to Eve Morrison, it appears
that merely two (OSullivan and Young) were
recorded. Harts total of five anonymous
accounts is therefore cut initially to four, if
we accept Morrisons report of merely two
persons on the audiotapes; to three once we
cease double-counting Ned Young; and to
only two if we advisedly discount the scout,
since all such former scouts, according to
The Wild Heather Glen and Meda Ryan, were
dead in 198889 (and since Harts scout
has additional problematic baggage). Thus,
we are left with two audiotaped Chisholm
interviews, with Ned Young and with Jack
OSullivan, together with Harts claimed
Young interview, for a total of three spoken
accounts from two people.
There is more to be said about Harts
claimed encounter with Ned Young, however.
His son, John Young, stated in a sworn
affidavit in 2007 that Hart would have found
it impossible to interview the sole surviving
ambush veteran during 1988, using the
normal meaning of the word interview.
According to his son, Ned Young suffered a
debilitating stoke in late 1986 and virtually
lost the power of speech. He was in the care
of John Young, who controlled access to his
father.36 John Young stated and continued
to state that Peter Hart did not interview his
then ninety-six-year-old father.37
Adding to the Ned Young puzzle is that
Hart, later in the doctoral thesis and book,
stated he had access to Edward Young[s]
statement, that is, Youngs then unreleased
Bureau of Military History Witness Statement
(BMH WS), No. 1,402 (thesis, 306; book,
232), though without noting that Young
was a Kilmichael Ambush veteran.38 The
statement explains, among other Irish War
of Independence activities, Youngs role in
the Kilmichael Ambush. In his chapter on the
Kilmichael Ambush Hart neither revealed nor
cited Youngs statement.39

25 Probably, the extensive over

100-page supplement was
written and laid out prior to
Youngsdeath.
26 Hart was unclear as to who
participated in the ambush.
He cited in the thesis (54,
n. 66) a Michael OSullivan
in the Southern Star, 16
January 1971, as a veteran
of Kilmichael. Hart changed
this designation to an I.R.A.
survivor in his book (38, n.
74), presumably because
a deinitive list of ambush
participants published in
1995 (discussed below)
contained no one of that
name. Inaccurate newspaper
information became Harts
inaccuratecitation.
27 Ballineen Enniskean Heritage
Group, 1995.
28 Meda Ryan, Tom Barry, 69.
29 Kilmichael Revisited: Tom
Barry and the false Surrender,
in David Fitzpatrick, ed.,
Terror in Ireland, 19161923
(Dublin, 2012). Hereafter
Kilmichael Revisited and
Terror, respectively.
30 Kilmichael Revisited,
173; David Fitzpatrick,
Introduction, Terror, 3. Niall
Meehan, review including
David Fitzpatrick, Eve
Morrison, responses, at www.
academia.edu/1871818/, and
my reply, www.academia.
edu/1994527/
31 Morrison indicated also that
two of Harts quotations
remain unattributable but
not which ones, Kilmichael
Revisited, 161.
32 In her reply to my review of
her Kilmichael Revisited
essay, Morrison reported
being on the trail of the scout.
If he existed his name should
have the initials, HJ or JH.
Harts unpublished reply
was possibly in response to
Meda Ryans Tom Barry that
appeared in 2003. In a 2005
interview in History Ireland
and in a subsequent article,
Hart avoided giving a detailed
response to criticism. He
asserted instead that Meda
Ryans analysis contained no
new research and that her
analysis was not rational.
He claimed also that Brian
Murphys criticism was not
published. A previously

Examining PeterHart

uninvolved observer, Andreas

Boldt, subsequently criticized
Hart for avoiding detail and
for adopting an emotional and
ad hominem approach. See
History Ireland, ive issues,
vol. 13, nos. 26, MarApr to
NovDec, 2005.
33 See Meehan, Troubled History,
23, after Fifth. Compare
Harts book (35, n. 62), which
introduces the new scout
reference, with his thesis (50,
n. 56), which is ambiguous
as to attribution. Hart may
have confused himself. His
preceding note referred
to ive following Chisholm
interviews quotations,
intermingled with other source
material (thesis, 48, n. 53;
book, 34, n. 59). This included
an Auxiliary reportedly
pleading, Im a Catholic, dont
shoot me (thesis, 48; book,
35). As noted by Morrison
(170), no veteran reported
that plea on tape. It was in
a recorded question from
Fr. Chisholm to Ned Young.
Chisholm told Young that the
sad anecdote was relayed to
Chisholm by ambush veteran
Paddy OBrien (who was not
recorded speaking about the
ambush). Had Hart stated this
in the thesis, instead of leaving
the anecdote unattributed,
he might not in the book have
seemingly included it as one
of ive Chisholm interview
quotations. Once he did, the
book contained an orphaned
sixth quotation, OSullivans,
that Hart then attributed to
the scout.
34 Morrisons reply to my Terror
in Ireland review conirmed my
deduction in Troubled History
(22) that in the thesis E.Y.
was Ned or Edward Young
(identiied by Hart as AA in
hisbook).
35 Father John Chisholm,
a custodian of the tapes
to which he gave Hart
preferential access, has
been inconsistent. In 2010,
after 40 years, eight in all
were made available to a
second researcher, television
producer Jerry OCallaghan.
He reviewed them for a
January 2011 TG4 television
documentary, Scal Tom
Barry (trans., Tom Barrys

In effect then, Hart presented Ned Young

as three separate people in his research but
without informing readers: (a) under his own
name in the 1956 Witness Statement, when
Young was 64; (b) on a late-1960s recording,
when Young was in his late seventies; and
(c) as Harts 1988 interviewee, when he
was ninety-six. Presumably, informing
readers would have defeated the purpose of
anonymity (and might have diminished the
reputed scope of Harts research). But the
availability to Hart of the first two Young
testimonies raises the question of what
might usefully have been added by again
interviewing Young in 1988, four years short
of his 100th birthday.40
By far the most significant anomaly is
Harts reporting of Ned Youngs testimony
about his role in, and memories of, the
Kilmichael Ambush. Young was in ambush
Section Three, which Barry had deployed
high up and spread out across the road from
Sections One and Two. In his 1956 Witness
Statement, Young reported that he was
pursuing an escaping Auxiliary soldier at
Kilmichael at a time when the false surrender
event was said to have happened.41 In other
words he did not witness personally that
aspect of the action, a fact Hart did not
report. Nevertheless, Young stated on the
Chisholm audiotape that after the fighting
stopped,[t]hey [other IRA volunteers] told
me afterwards that the Tans said, we
surrender, and then started to fire again.
While Hart (and Morrisons essay) did not
cite Youngs interview statement on this
vital point, Morrison did paraphrase Ned
Young reporting separately: [H]e had seen
[John] Lordan bayonet an Auxiliary and that
after the ambush members of the column
had informed him that this Auxiliary had
surrendered falsely.42
Remarkably, then, Harts thesis and
published narratives ignored some of Youngs
most significant testimonies on the Chisholm
tapethat referred twice to a false surrender
event at Kilmichael. This is a stunning
example of an extraordinary flaw in Harts
methodology: he simply ignored information
that contradicted his point of view. It is

difficult to discern a logical basis for ignoring

Youngs testimony on this point.
Hart concluded instead that ambush
commander Tom Barry was one of a number
of political serial killers (thesis, 118; book,
100) on the Republican side in the War of
Independence, and that Barry later concocted
his untrue false surrender narrative in
1949 by using lies and evasions (thesis, 51;
book, 36), which, among other crimes, were
employed to justify the murder at Kilmichael
of unarmed British Auxiliary prisoners. While
omitting information demonstrating this
was not the case, Hart also obscured related
important information in footnotes.
In his thesis (37, n. 19) (book, 27, n. 21),
nine pages prior to his almost blow-by-blow
report of the actual fight at Kilmichael,
Hart noted without further elaboration that
as interviews confirm, the false surrender
story was circulating within the I.R.A. as
early as 1921. As interviews confirm?How
so?Whose interviews?Conducted by
whom? Harts main text not only ignores this
important point, it also censors the fact that
a false surrender narrative was reportedly
enunciated to Ned Young, by fellow ambush
participants, after the fighting stopped on
28 November 1920. Moreover, an account of
the false surrender at Kilmichael did indeed
appear in 1921, from British Prime Minister
Lloyd Georges imperial adviser, Lionel Curtis:
It is reported by Sinn Fin that a white flag
was put up by the police, and that when the
attacking party approached to accept the
surrender fire was opened upon them. In
addition, in 1926 Piaras Beaslai published
an account in his biography of Michael
Collins. However, Hart appeared unaware
of these. He claimed that former Auxiliary
Commander F. P. Croziers Ireland Forever
(1932) contained the first published account of
a false surrender. That claim in turn enabled
Hart to suggest, in the same note, that Barrys
own 1949 false surrender narrative, as well as
that by Kilmichael veteran Stephen ONeill
in 1937, may in part have been prompted by
Crozier, whose account Hart discounted.
Hart presented no evidence, however, to
accompany these speculations.43

113

Field Day Review

Footnotedparaphrasing
In another footnote, within his ambush
narrative proper, Hart paraphrased testimony
by the mysterious H. J. who reported, in
Harts paraphrase, a sort of false surrender
(thesis, 49, n. 55), that caused no IRA
fatalities. Harts main text ignored this
interesting claim. And readers will recall
that the book version of this same note
reintroduced H. J. as AF, an unarmed scout
further away from the ambush site (book, 35,
n. 61).44
In this context it may be possible to
identify the mysterious scout.
That is because Hart cited by name in his
book (132, n. 20), but not the thesis, the BMH
WS (No. 1,234) of another Kilmichael veteran,
Jack Hennessy. As with Ned Youngs Witness
Statement, Hennessys was not divulged or
cited in Harts Kilmichael Ambush chapter.
Hennessy, who died in 1970,45 was involved
in the thick of the fighting in Section Two
at Kilmichael. Nevertheless, he appears to
be the best fit for Harts unarmed scout,
AFnot least because Jack Hennessys initials
reversed are H. J., the seemingly armed 19
November 1989 thesis interviewee who in
the book became AF the unarmed scout.46
Hennessys uncited (by Hart) Kilmichael
Witness Statement narrative noted the death
in action of Michael McCarthy, the Section
Two leader. After suffering a head wound,
Hennessy took up McCarthys rifle because his
own was jammed with blood. Significantly,
Hennessy reported shouting hands up to an
Auxiliary who had thrown down his rifle,
followed by the same Auxiliary drawing his
revolver. Hennessy reported that he then shot
him dead. Harts notation of the previously
mentioned sort of false surrender in which
no I.R.A. men died, was attributed to H. J
(thesis, 45, n. 55). Is this the sort of false
surrender referred to above? In his thesis Hart
did not cite Hennessys Witness Statement. It
may be, however, given the above, that Hart
also had access to the statement when writing
his PhD thesis. In any case, Harts citing of
Hennessys Witness Statement at length in a
later chapter entitled The Boys of Kilmichael,

114

on his family home being torched and being

tortured by the Essex Regiment in July 1920
(132), while ignoring its Kilmichael Ambush
evidence, makes no sense.47 Hennesseys
BMH testimony, like Youngs on the Chisholm
audiotape, may have been inconvenient to
Hart and hence either obscured or ignored.
The absence of verbatim citation is evident
in another quotationless footnote. In both his
thesis and his book, Hart paraphrased all of
his interviewees as follows:
All of the men interviewed agree on this
point: [Michael] McCarthy and [Jim]
OSullivan did not stand up and did not die
because of a fake surrender. Two of these
veterans considered Barrys account to
be an insult to the memory of these men.
(thesis, 48, n. 52; book, 34, n. 58)
Let us leave aside the implicit assumption
that the third IRA fatality at Kilmichael, Pat
Deasy, did succumb to a fake surrender. The
problem with Harts statement is that all of
the men are (it appears) in fact also merely
those to whom he referred, in the same note,
as [t]wo of these veterans. They are the
only two veterans verifiably interviewed
although not by Hart himself: that is, they
are Ned Young and Jack OSullivan on the
Chisholm audiotapes. Thus, any testimony
confirming that Barry insulted the memory of
McCarthy and Jim Sullivan and in relation to
the false surrender should be recorded in their
taped Chisholm testimonies. Unfortunately,
Hart (and Morrison) did not publish those
testimonies. However, I obtained a transcript
of the Jack OSullivan/Chisholm interview.48
With respect to what he told Chisholm
about the Kilmichael Ambush, remember
that Jack OSullivan, like Ned Young, was in
Section Three, stationed higher up across
the road. Here is the excerpt in which Jack
OSullivan discusses, with Chisholm, Michael
McCarthys death:
John Chisholm Yes but still [Tom Barry]
put [Michael] McCarthy in charge [of
No 2 section].

Story). The eight tapes

contained one interview with
an ambush veteran, Jack
OSullivan. Then, in 2011,
nine tapes were reported,
which Eve Morrison reviewed
for her Kilmichael essay.
OCallaghan queried the ninth
tape discrepancy at a talk at
TCD 26 October 2011 given by
Morrison. Chisholm, who was
present, admitted mislaying
the ninth tape that he gave to
Morrison. Ned Young turned
up on the ninth tape, though
Chisholm had informed Ned
Youngs son, John Young
(letter 12 April 2008, copy in
authors possession), that his
father was not interviewed.
According to John Borgonovo,
for this and other reasons,
Chisholms partisanship
and inconsistencies have
polluted this evidential well
(Revolutionary Violence,
Irish Historical Studies,
vol. 38, no. 150, November
2012, 330). I requested that
Morrison publish the complete
Young transcript. I publish
a substantial portion of the
Jack OSullivan / Fr. Chisholm
audiotape interchange here
and I can provide an entire
transcript. Jerry OCallaghan
kindly gave it tome.
36 John Young aidavit appended
to Brian Murphy, Nall
Meehan, Troubled History, at
www.academia.edu/166387/.
37 Why Spinwatch is publishing
Ned Youngs statement,
at www.spinwatch.org/
index.php/issues/northernireland/item/301whyspinwatch-is-publishingjohn-young%E2%80%99sstatement. See also Young
debating with Morrison at
www.historyireland.com/
letters-extra/peter-hart-etc/
(accessed 21 May2014).
38 Witness statements from
former participants were
completed in the 1950s
(mainly) and released in
2003 by the Irish Armys
Bureau of Military History
(BMH). They are, since
2012, available online: www.
bureauofmilitaryhistory.
ie/bmhsearch/browse.jsp.
Edward Young statement,
copy in authors possession, is
identical to BMHversion.

Examining PeterHart

39 Harts book (33, 56n) also

noted a detailed statement
by one of the ambush
party and an additional taped
interview, both held by the
Ballineen Enniskeane Area
Heritage Group. Hart ignored
the statement thereafter
and the heritage group denied
that the new anonymously
presented tape belonged to
them, Meda Ryan, History
Ireland, JulAg 2005. I discuss
itlater.
40 It should be noted also that
Hart misreported Ned Youngs
age at interview as eightyseven, not ninety-six (thesis,
100, 178n; book, 80, 46n).
This error, like others, was
obscured byanonymity.
41 Young also spoke about this
in a 1970 radio interview
on the 50th anniversary of
the ambush, rebroadcast
RT Radio One, 28
November 2008 (copy in
authorspossession).
42 Young testimony from
Chisholm tape played
by Morrison at a TCD
Contemporary History
seminar I attended, entitled
Kilmichael, the Veterans
speak, 26 October 2011.
Morrisons Young/Lordan
revelation, Terror in Ireland,
168, discussed in my
review, www.academia.
edu/1871818/,12.
43 Lionel Curtis, Ireland, Round
Table, June 1921, XI, no. 43,
500; Piaras Beaslai, Michael
Collins and the Making of a
New Ireland (Dublin, 1926),
vol. II, 97; F. P. Crozier, Ireland
Forever, 128; Stephen ONeill,
The Kerryman, Christmas
1937, published as, Auxiliaries
Annihilated at Kilmichael,
Rebel Corks Fighting Story,
Tralee, 1947 (republished
Cork, 2009, with Peter Hart
introduction). Hart also
considered it signiicant that a
26 November 1932 Irish Press
article on Kilmichael by Barry
omitted the false surrender
(thesis, 36, n. 18; book, 26,n.
19). Meda Ryan reported that
Barrys reference was edited
out, to which cut he objected,
Tom Barry, 8788. Hart also
wrote that the authenticity
of a captured typewritten,
rebel commandants report

Jack OSullivan Thatd tell you. Thats

what Im coming at, that McCarthy
never got credit for his bravery as a
soldier and then
Chisholm Yes.
OSullivan Another thing I think is
very wrong.
Chisholm Yes.
OSullivan And it wasnt up to me
because his own pals from Dunmanway
should have taken care of it. It was
a wrong thing to say that Michael
McCarthy got up out of his position
Chisholm Yes.
OSullivan and got shot. Now there
could be two meanings to it.
Chisholm Yes, yes, yes, well you see
the way Tom Barry put it was that the
Auxiliaries cried, we surrender, we
surrender
OSullivan Yes.
Chisholm and then, only then
Michael McCarthy stood up and he said
that once the Auxiliaries saw him they
just shot.
OSullivan Yes.
Chisholm And shot, it was a
bogus surrender.
OSullivan I know, I know, that covers
my story, but ah then I, I always say
that Michael McCarthy was even dead
before
Chisholm was dead before the
Auxiliaries surrendered.
OSullivan Before they surrendered.
Chisholm Yes.
OSullivan Yes.
Chisholm And Id say the same of Jim
Hurley Jim OSullivan.
OSullivan Yes, Jim OSullivan, yes, Jim
OSullivan hadnt a hope.
Chisholm No.
OSullivan He was up high.
Chisholm Yes. And Id say the very same
thing happened about
OSullivan Tis very likely.
Chisholm Pat Deasy too.
OSullivan Yes.
Chisholm The whole three of them,
so you wouldnt be satisfied with Tom

Barrys story as history but you think it

good, a good dramatic account.
OSullivan Well now Ill tell ya I read it
and I tell you it couldnt remind me of
anything only a Wild West story. I mean
a man can get away with escapes once,
twice or three times but there was too
many of them in Tom Barrys story.
Chisholm Yes.
OSullivan I mean, it wasnt Tom Barrys
twas somebody else that wrote this
story. I suppose he just told them what
to say.
In 1941, when writing for the Irish Defence
Forces journal An Cosantir, Tom Barry also
reported that McCarthy had died before
the false surrender. Barry did not assert
that McCarthy rose from his position. Also,
Barry habitually stated publicly (contrary to
Chisholms allegation and Harts footnote)
that only Jim OSullivan and Pat Deasy (and
not McCarthy) were shot during the false
surrender episode. On tape, Jack OSullivan
was responding to Chisholms mistaken
assertion with regard to McCarthy in Barrys
narrative. Significantly, OSullivan then said,
in relation to the bogus surrender, that
covers my story. In other words, for Sullivan
there was a false surrender and McCarthy died
before itprecisely the same account made
by Barry in 1941.49
Nevertheless, Chisholm as interviewer
interrupted Jack OSullivan to press his own
opinion. He confusingly interjected that
Jim OSullivan and Pat Deasy were not false
surrender victims when Jack OSullivan
was observing that Jim OSullivan was up
high and hadnt a hope. Jack OSullivan
responded Tis very likely and yes, perhaps
not wishing to contradict Chisholms
perceptions. OSullivan expressed no personal
view other than that the bogus surrender
covers my story. Chisholm failed to query
Jack OSullivan on Jim OSullivan being up
high and that he hadnt a hope.50 Chisholms
eagerness to interject also prevented
OSullivan from elaborating on,there could
be two meanings to McCarthys death.
In prioritising his own meaning and in

115

Field Day Review

attempting to lead his interviewee, Chisholm

failed to elicit a denial of the false surrender
story from a veteran who had no difficulty
disparaging the style of Barrys memoir. The
accuracy of Harts inadequately paraphrased
and footnoted report of this interview cannot
be sustained: OSullivan did not challenge the
false surrender account; nor did his testimony
substantiate Harts charge that Barry insulted
the memory of his dead comrades. In fact,
Jack OSullivan said, in another part of the
transcript, I liked Barry as a soldier, and he
praised Barrys bravery.
That covers OSullivan. Morrison had
access to Ned Youngs testimony and should
have been in a position to clarify what it said
on Barrys alleged insult. Unfortunately, she
did not do so in relation to either Young or
Jack OSullivan, although she did report one
of Youngs two affirmations, on the Chishom
tape, that a false surrender had occurred.
Be that as it may, it is demonstrated again
that Jack OSullivans and Ned Youngs taped
evidence about the ambush, which Chisholm
made available to Hart but to no one else for
over twenty years, in fact undermined Harts
own interpretation of what had happened at
Kilmichael. Because of that, we may surmise,
Hart misreported that evidence. Moreover, his
mis-identification of false surrender fatalities
was in any case based on a significant
misreading of Barrys account, which we will
now discuss.

Misreading TomBarry
Hart demonstrably ignored Ned Youngs
audiotaped observations (and earlier Witness
Statement). He misinterpreted what Jack
OSullivan told Fr. Chisholm. Hart also
misreported the independent (i.e., of Tom
Barry) origin of the false surrender narrative.
Finally, he also misreported Tom Barrys
own published account of how the event
itself unfolded. Barry consistently reported
that there were two false surrender IRA
fatalities (of three in total), Jim OSullivan
and Pat Deasy. Hart (and Morrison following
Hart) misreported Barry as having stated

116

that three of his men had died because of

the false surrender. The misreading is easily
demonstrated. A long citation by Hart in his
regular text included Barry stating that the
false surrender killed two of the IRA fighters.
Hart then mistakenly reported that Barry
claimed that it caused the death of three
IRA men (thesis, 3132; book, 2223). Harts
assault on Barrys account is partly based on
this misreading.51
For instance, Harts introduction in the
book of a new anonymous taped source is
affected by his misunderstanding McCarthys
death. Hart cited his new source (book, 36) in
a discussion of how volunteers may have been
enraged by the deaths of their comrades:
They died to my mind a cruel death,
because the men that were in with Mick
McCarthy, where he was shot, they knew
their two men were shot and they came out
and they shot them and I think a bayonet
was used on one or maybe two of them.
The use of they and them is potentially
confusing, a confusion encouraged by Harts
ambiguous presentation. Are those indicated
by the first they IRA Volunteers, or are they
Auxiliaries? It is possible that they are the
IRA and them near the end are Auxiliaries.
If so, two IRA Volunteers adjudged by Barry
to have been victims of the false surrender,
Jim OSullivan and Pat Deasy, are explicitly
separated out from Michael (Mick) McCarthy.
It may plausibly be implied that they, unlike
him, suffered a cruel death, if they were
killed during a false surrender. Since Hart,
did not understand the distinction between
McCarthy and his comrades in the context
of the false surrender, he was not in a
position, therefore, to accurately frame this
oral evidence for the reader. It is possible
also that they are Auxiliaries without
violating the sense of this interpretation,
in which the alleged cruelty of their death
is due to the animation of IRA Section Two
survivors targeting Auxiliaries they believed
responsible for the false surrender. It was
Harts job to clarify ambiguity, in particular

of the ambush in General

Stricklands papers, Imperial
War Museum, seems
unquestionable. It did not
mention a false surrender. But
Harts almost full citation of
the document (thesis, 3536,
n. 16; book, 2526, n. 18)
omitted the following, Our
casualties were, one killed and
two who have subsequently
died of wounds . P. Deasy
was killed by a revolver
bullet from one of the enemy
whom he thought dead. It is
generally agreed it was the
other way around, that two
IRA ambush participants were
killed and one subsequently
died of wounds. Pat Deasy
was wounded and died later,
yet in the report he is the
one killed. In any case, Barry
noted that during the Truce
he was approached to provide
a report of the ambush
to the British for family
compensation purposes, but
refused, Guerilla Days, 51.
If the British had captured
a report already they would
hardly have asked Barry and,
requiring it but being refused,
they had reason instead to
concoct their own. Meda
Ryan, 2005, 83, cited A.J.
S. (Steven) Brady (son of
the Church of Ireland rector
of Macroom) on Auxiliaries
working with solicitor T.
P. Grainger to provide
documentation required to
process compensation claims,
including for the Kilmichael
Ambush. According to Brady,
I wont say how it [Kilmichael
documentation] came about,
but it helped the families
to get good compensation.
Ryan, 7384, and Brian
Murphy, IT letters 10 August,
1 September 1998 have placed
further question marks over
the documents authenticity
(plus see Peter Hart replies, 1
& 7 September 1998). Charles
Townshend, The Republic, the
Fight for Irish Independence
(Oxford, 2013), 215, ignores
Barry, Ryan and Murphys
evidence, and wonders at
the purpose of a forgery.
However, he questioned the
documents assertion that

Examining PeterHart

44

45
46

47

48

the ammunition-strapped
volunteers possessed 100
rounds each, which sounds[s]
more like a regular military
than volunteerlevel.
Barry stated, Guerilla Days in
Ireland, (1989), 42, that the
nearest scout was positioned
150 yards away, in which
case a capacity to either see
or hear detailed evidence
in the November twilight
isquestionable.
Irish Press, 12 February1970.
Harts reporting the
utterances of one of his
other interviewees, C.D.,
Dan Cahalane, reversed his
initialsalso.
Particularly also as Hart
followed this citation
with a British intelligence
assessment, should
have a trace of a bullet
wound somewhere about
his head, received at
Kilmichael. Hennessys
index entry tantalizingly
states, Hennessy, Jack,
KilmichaelAmbush.
From Jerry OCallaghan,
Blackrock Pictures, who
made it while producing the
television programmme Scal
Tom Barry (Tom Barrys
Story), aired in Ireland on TG4
19 January 2011. OCallaghans
transcription exactly matches
short segments Morrison
published in her Kilmichael
Revisitedessay.

in the use of anonymous sourcing. In this he

also failed.
Hart appears to have misquoted and/
or ignored a combination of evidence and
individuals to create jumbled up utterances
moulded together to suggest that the IRA at
Kilmichael could not claim a justifiable basis
for killing all of their Auxiliary adversaries.
These mistakes and the misreported taped
interviews were used, it appears, to create an
aura of suspicion surrounding the veracity of
Barrys account, that also allowed Hart to later
ignore Barrys significant views on the subject
of spies and informers.

Auxiliaries
On the other hand, Hart consistently
understated the reputation of the
Auxiliaries for brutality. For example,
he cited reminiscences by IRA veterans
Charlie Brown and Michel Suilleabhin,
which, Hart claimed, demonstrated the
Auxiliaries decency and restraint (thesis,
40, n. 30; book, 29, n. 33). In fact, however,
on the pages that Hart cited, Suilleabhin
had written of John Bulls terrorists and
that riff-raff . Likewise, Browns memoir,
which devoted four pages to the Auxiliaries
Arrival, mentioned their almost total lack of
discipline and asserted that each Auxiliary
seemed a law unto himself . The only possible
justification for Harts characterization is
Browns report of what happened when three
Auxiliaries expelled his parents from their
home and set it on fire after the Kilmichael
Ambush: Major Mitchell and [Auxiliary] O/C
Col. [Buxton] Smith sent a party of men to
extinguish the blaze.52 Hart also cited Liam
Deasy on the soldierly humanity of Colonel
Craik, the British commander at Kilmichael.
However, Deasys remark was made in
odd appreciation of Craiks ineptitude. He
arrested and freed Deasy twice within fourdays soon before the Kilmichael Ambush,
despite Deasy providing different false names
each time. Deasys next sentence noted the
mercenary depravity of the majority of the
Auxiliaries, a statement Hart ignored.53 In

general, Hart seemed to go out of his way to

subdue popular perceptions of the unpopular
force. Thus, Lionel Fleming, son of the
Church of Ireland Rector of Timoleague in
West Cork, observed in his memoir that, I
have never met anyone with experience of the
Black and Tans who has defended them, or
who has been able to justify the extraordinary
policy of using a Crown force for the sole
purpose of indiscriminate terrorism.54
Strikingly, although Hart cited Flemings
memoir for other purposes, he never quoted
or referred to this passage.
The issue here is not the existence or
precise delineation of a false surrender at
Kilmichael, although no verifiable evidence
has emerged that contradicts it. Nor is the
discussion predominantly about the wisdom
of attempting to recreate in minute detail
what exactly happened in the twilight of
28 November 1920. Rather, what is most
important, at least from an academic and
historiographical perspective, is Harts
apparent attempt to obscure, misrepresent,
or simply ignore participant testimony that
qualified or contradicted his interpretations
of events and his seeming determination
to demonize republicans during the War
of Independence.
It is difficult to construe Harts
misreporting and mistakes as merely the
random effect of incompetently reported or
muddled citations. Rather, they seemed to
have a purpose: to undermine Tom Barrys
historical reputation and thus, by extension
and more broadly, to portray the IRA in as
negative a manner as possible early on in his
narrative, so as to condition readers for what
came later.

117

Field Day Review

Section 2
IRA SectarianismThesis
Table One: West Cork 2629 April 1922 KillingsWho, When, Where
(Including, Richard Harbord and Ralph of Rosscarbery from Hart thesis in italics)
Who

When (date)

Ballygroman House Killings 26 April 1922

ONeill, Michael
Wed 26 April
Woods, Herbert
Hornibrook, Thomas
Hornibrook, Samuel
Macroom Killings 26 April 1922
Lt R. A. Hendy
Wed 26 April
Lt. G. R. Dove
Lt. K. L. Henderson
Pr. R. A. Brooks
Bandon Valley Killings 2729 April 1922
Fitzmaurice, Francis Thurs 27 April
Gray, David
Buttimer, James
Howe, Robert

Thurs 27 April

Nagle, Robert
Harbord, Ralph
(survived)
Chinnery, John
McKinley, Alexander
Buttimer, John
Greenfield, James
Bradfield, John

When
(time)

Where

HartMap
Number

Hart
narrative
Sequence +
Page No
(thesis)

Sources:
(newspaper
news + inquest
reports)

3am
(Morning)

Ballygroman
(near Ovens)

1
1
1
1

13, p.373
14, p.374
15, p.374
16, p.374

SS 29Apr
SS 29Apr
SS 29Apr
SS 29Apr

3pm

Dick Williams
Hotel Macroom

Not discussed by Hart

12.15am
1am (after)
1.20am
(about)
10.30pm

Dunmanway
Dunmanway
Dunmanway

2
2
2

3 p.366
2 p.365
1 p.365

SS,IT 29Apr
SS,IT 29Apr
SS,IT 29Apr

Ballaghanure
(near Ballineen)55
Clonakilty McCurtain Hill
Murragh (near
Enniskean)
Castletown
(near Ballineen)57
Ballineen
Caher (near Ballineen)58
Caher (near Ballineen)
Killowen (b/w
Enniskean-Bandon)

4 p.366

IT 2May

11 p.368

IT 29Apr, 1May

n/a

n/a

IT,CC,BN 29Apr

5 p.367

IT 29Apr

5
7
7
10

6 p.367
8 p.368
9 p.368
12 p.369

IT 1May
IT 2May
IT 2May
IT 12May

6
9

7 p.367
10 p.369

11pm (after)
Thurs 27 or
28 April56
Fri 28 April

Sat 29 April

Not known
Early
morning
1.30am
2am
2am
11pm

Fictitious (Hart thesis) events

Richard Harbord
Thurs 27-28 April
Ralph of Rosscarbery Fri 28 April
same night

Enniskean Murragh
Rosscarbery

[SS = Southern Star, IT = Irish Times, CC = Cork Constitution, BN = Belfast News Letter.
Material within inverted commas by Peter Hart]

118

Examining PeterHart

From Peter Hart thesis 1992, p.380

49 McCarthy named by
Eyewitness (pseud., Tom
Barry), Kilmichael Part
II, An Cosantir, vol. 20, no.
21, 16 May 1941, republished
in Terence OReilly, ed., Our
Struggle for Independence,
Eye-witness accounts from
the pages of An Cosantir
(Dublin, 2009), 11, 103. Barry
named Pat Deasy and Jim
OSullivan as false surrender
casualties in ibid and Guerilla
Days in Ireland, 1949 (44).
See also my review of Terror
in Ireland, 19161923, 910, at
www.academia.edu/1871818/.
For the record, Morrison also
reported in her Kilmichael
essay in Terror in Ireland, Jack
OSullivan categorically denied
to Chisholm that there had
been a false surrender (167).
The assertion is followed by
note 45 (178), containing,
This denial is more emphatic
in the untaped version of the
interview with OSullivan:
telephone interview with
Chisholm, 27 July 2011 (my
emphasis). In other words,
Chisholm claimed OSullivan
unequivocally rejected the
false surrender, but not in
the evidence he supplied
toMorrison.
50 Meda Ryan, Tom Barry IRA
Freedom Fighter (Cork, 2005),
6667, spoke to veterans in
the 1970s and 1980s. She
cited ambush veteran Dan
Hourihan, who was beside Jim
OSullivan, observing, After
they shouted that surrender, it
was silence! Jim lifted himself.
Thought it was all over. God
rest hissoul!

If Peter Hart was to sustain or strengthen

his thesis, that the Cork IRA (and Irish
Republicanism, generally) were characterized
by ethno-religious fanaticism, then it
was strategically necessary to link his
interpretation of the British Auxiliary deaths
at the Kilmichael Ambush of November
1921 to what he would allege to be the IRAs
senseless sectarian massacre of innocent

Protestants in April 1922. Thus, in both his

PhD thesis and his book, Hart linked the
ambush and the IRA who carried it out,
under their officers orders, to later killings of
Protestant civilians.
No evidence was adduced that the killings
were ordered or authorized by IRA command
and Harts book removed thesis speculation
as to individual culpability. The absence

119

Field Day Review

Carbery House, Dunmanway,

Co. Cork. Photo: (c. 18651914), by
Robert French. National Library
of Ireland.

of evidence was a means by which Hart

grounded his sectarianism thesis. Harts
characterization of the April 1922 killings as
sectarian is therefore quite problematic. That
characterization (like his reconstruction of
events at Kilmichael) depended in turn on
serious misuse, distortion, or non-use of
much of the available evidence.
The central focus of Harts sectarian
massacre thesis is the killing of ten
Protestant men, who lived in Corks Bandon
Valley, that took place between 27 and 29 April
1922. First, soon after midnight on Thursday,
27 April, three menFrancis Fitzmaurice,
David Gray, and James Buttimerwere shot
dead in Dunmanway. Later, between 10.30
p.m. and 2 a.m. over 2728 April, further along
the Dunmanway to Bandon road, five more
Protestant men were shot dead in or near the
adjacent towns of Ballineen and Enniskean:
John Chinnery, Robert Howe, Alexander
Gerald McKinley, John Buttimer and James
Greenfield. The Reverend Ralph Harbord was
wounded at Murragh Rectory, to the west of
Enniskean. One additional outlying victim
was shot dead after 11 p.m., Robert Nagle of

120

Clonakilty, some 15 km south. Finally, on 29

April the final eleventh victim, John Bradfield,
was shot dead in Kilowen, again near
Enniskean. These intertwined details of time
and geography are more easily understood by
consulting Table One (p. 118) and a map of the
territory on which I have superimposed each
cluster of killings (p. 119). Those ten deaths
(plus the wounding of Rev. Ralph Harbord)
constitute what we shall call, for convenience,
the Bandon Valley Killings.
However, there were two other sets of
killings that also occurred in West Cork
on Wednesday, April 26, the day before
the Bandon Valley Killings began. The first
set began about 3:00 a.m., when one of
the Protestant occupants of Ballygroman
House, near Ovens (off the main BallincolligMacroom road, about 31 km from BallineenEnniskeane), shot and killed an IRA officer,
Michael ONeill. The inhabitants failed to
admit ONeill who reportedly identified
himself. He was shot dead after entering the
house unarmed through a window. Later that
same morning, three Protestant loyalists
from Ballygroman HouseHerbert Woods,

51 Also in Barrys pamphlet,

The Reality of the Anglo Irish
War 192021 in West Cork
(Tralee, 1974), 16. He wrote,
the Auxiliaries were iring
again and two volunteers
fell. See also 1314, where
we ind, two IRA men were
killed by the false surrender.
In her response to my review,
Morrison pointed to an
ambiguous footnote (Reality,
16, n. 11), referring to two, at
least false surrender victims.
Barry did not write it. A
prominent Publishers Notice
asserted, [f]ootnotes have
been drafted and inserted by
us as publishers, see reply
to Morrison, www.academia.
edu/1994527/
52 Michel O Suilleabhin,
Where Mountainy Men Have
Sown (Tralee, 1965), 91, 92;
Charlie Browne, The Story
of the Seventh (Schull, 2007
[1972]), 3941. Colonel
Buxton Smith resigned from
the Auxiliaries on 25 February
1921, committed suicide on
Londons Clapham Common,
5 February 1922, IT, 8 Feb
1922. Richard Abbott, Police
Casualties in Ireland 191921
(Cork, 2000), 163, mistakenly
calls him Barton Smith
and gives 4 Feb. using the
samesource.
53 Liam Deasy, Towards Ireland
Free (Cork, 1973), 164-67.
54 Lionel Fleming, Head or Harp
(London, 1965), 70, Flemings
emphasis. Harts use of this
text, mostly about Flemings
life as an Irish Times journalist,
attempted to demonstrate a
deep sectarian divide, though
without page numbers (thesis,
389, n. 86; book, 290, n. 121).
One latter day champion of
the force, and of Peter Hart,
is the journalist Kevin Myers,
Laziness and Propaganda
have unfairly tarnished the
Black and Tans reputation,
Irish Independent, 29
Aug.2006.

Examining PeterHart

Enniskeane, Co. Cork. Photo:

(18801900), by Robert French.
National Library of Ireland.

55 See, www.census.
nationalarchives.ie/
pages/1911/Cork/Castletown/
Ballaghanure/408903/
56 Ralph Harbord said 27 April,
whereas Richard reported
28 April, in separate Grants
Committee claims. Possibly
around 12midnight.
57 See, www.census.
nationalarchives.ie/
pages/1911/Cork/Castletown/
Castle_Town/408933/
58 See, www.census.
nationalarchives.ie/
pages/1911/Cork/Kinneigh/
Caher/409050/
59 Southern Star 29 April 2014.
Dorothy Macardle, The Irish
Republic (New York [1937],
1965), 70405.
60 Another term used to describe
the War of Independence of
191921, in addition to the
Anglo-IrishWar.
61 Mowat, 7475. Michael
Farrell, Northern Ireland,
the Orange State (London,
1980), 2760. See also John
Brewer, Gareth Higgins,
Anti-Catholicism in Northern
Ireland 16001998, the Mote
and the Beam (London, 1998),
946; G. B. Kenna (pseud.,
Fr. John Hassan), Facts
and Figures of the Belfast
Pogroms 19201922 (Dublin,
1922), at, www.academia.
edu/6318325/
62 John Borgonovo, The Battle
for Cork (Dublin, 2011), 34
38; Robert Kee, The Green
Flag, Volume III, Ourselves
Alone (London 1972), 16364.
63 In John Regan, Myth and the
Irish State (Sallins, 2013), 116.

Thomas Hornibrook, and his son Samuel

who were believed responsible for ONeills
death, disappeared and were presumed
killed.59 For convenience, we shall refer to the
deaths of Woods and the two Hornibrooks as
the Ballygroman House Killings.
The second set of killings took place later
but also on the same day, Wednesday, April
26, when three British Intelligence officers,
Lieutenants R. A. Hendy, G. R. Dove, and K.
L. Henderson, plus their driver, R. A. Brooks
(and Hendys dog), disappeared from the
Dick Williams Hotel in Macroom, and, like
the occupants of Ballygroman House, were
presumed killed by the IRA. These we shall
call the Macroom Killings.
Logically, either set of disappearances
and presumed killingsor, indeed, both
setsthat took place on Wednesday, 26 April,
might have been crucially linked to, and even
causal in triggering and hence explaining, the
10 Bandon Valley Killings that began early on
the morning of Thursday, 27 April. As we shall
see, however, Peter, Hart emphasized only one
set of killings, those at Ballygroman House,
and linked them to the Bandon Valley Killings,

while practically ignoring the second set that

occurred at Macroom. Hart could argue that
the Ballygroman House Killings of Protestant
civilians sparked a sectarian chain of events.
The Macroom Killings, of British intelligence
officers, suggested the possibility of a
different, non-sectarian interpretation of the
ten deaths that occurred shortly afterwards in
the Bandon Valley.
Before we evaluate Harts sweeping
claims, and before we examine closely what
happened in West Cork in late April 1922,
we need to establish the overall political
and social contexts in which those tragic
events occurred.
The Bandon Valley Killings took place
after the Truce of June 1921 had concluded the
Black and Tan War60 and after the AngloIrish Treaty of December 1921 had imposed
on the future Irish Free State significant
limitations on Irish sovereignty, including
an oath of loyalty to the British Crown and,
arguably most importantly, Partition. Of
course, Partition was first imposed in June
1920 by the Government of Ireland Act, and
since then the Nationalists in what was now,

121

Field Day Review

officially, Northern Ireland, had endured what

amounted to a sectarian reign of terror under
unionist rule.61 In January 1922, both Sinn
Fin and Republican forces in the IRA split
over the Treaty and over the legitimacy of
the new Free State regime, which anti-Treaty
Republicans viewed as having been imposed
by British duplicity and coercion. During this
period also the RIC was being disbanded and
British troops began a process of withdrawal.
Thus, in JanuaryJune 1922, Irish society
experienced months of acute political
and military instability: intra-Republican
hostilities; vicious sectarian strife, primarily
in the North; class conflicts between
urban and rural employers and workers;

122

plus extensive opportunist criminality.62

Overlaying this turmoil was the prospect of a
renewed state of war with the British Empire
if Treaty terms were not fulfilled, as Winston
Churchill threatened Michael Collins.63
The events in West Cork of April 1922 took
place, therefore, in a tense, uncertain period
when the pro- and anti-Treaty Republicans
were drifting into the Irish Civil War, which
began in late June 1922, two months after the
April Killings.
The Bandon Valley Killings of 2729 April
1922 were seen in an all-Ireland context.
According to Dorothy Macardle writing in
1937, they were violently in conflict with the
traditions and principles of the Republican

British soldiers search civilians

at Fermoy Station during the War
of Independence. Private Papers
of General Sir Peter Strickland
KCB KBE CMG DSO. Imperial War
Museum London.

Examining PeterHart

64 Collins reply, IT 29 April 1922.

See, G. B. Kenna, Facts
and Figures of the Belfast
Pogroms 19201922, 18694.
Kenna noted the diiculty of
using a sectarian headcount
to assess deaths, given that
some Protestants were killed
by Crown forces while in the
act of shooting Catholics,
and some were killed by coreligionists for associating with
Catholics, or being mistaken
for them, 67, 133, 142,173.
65 Macardle, op. cit.. Keran
Glennon, From Pogrom to
Civil War, Tom Glennon and
the Belfast IRA (Dublin, 2013),
69. Glennon (264) also makes
the point that Catholics
sufered more casualties in
areas where the IRA was not
present to protect them.
See also, Niall Cunningham,
The Social Geography of
Violence During the Belfast
Troubles, 19201922, CRESC
Working Papers, University of
Manchester, No.122, March
2013, 7, at www.academia.
edu/5363137/; Farrell,
5556. Hart did not consult
Macardles history, irst
published in1937.
66 Irish Times, 29 April1922.
67 Kenna, 148. Southern
Protestant attitudes
are further discussed in
SectionThree.
68 For example, David
Fitzpatrick, ed., Terror in
Ireland 19161923, published
in memory of Peter Hart,
that failed to analyze unionist
terror in Northern Ireland,
though contributor Brian
Hanley commented on
historians failure to do so in
relation to 191923 and post
1968, 1819, 2022. See my
review and reply to responses,
www.academia.edu/1871818/,
and www.academia.
edu/1994527/
69 See Willie Kingston, From
Victorian Boyhood to the
Troubles: a Skibbereen
Memoir, Skibbereen Historical
Journal, vol. 1, 2005, 3535.
As Barry Keane in Massacre
in West Cork, the Dunmanway
and Ballygroman Killings
(Dublin, 2014), 189, remarked,
a lot in one weekend but
certainly nopogrom.

Army [and] created shame and anger

throughout Ireland. The attacks were initially
thought to have been sectarian retaliation
for persecution of Catholics in the new
Northern Ireland, where more people229
in alldied in February, March, April and
May 1922 than in any previous month. A
month-old pact between Michael Collins
and James Craig, representing the north
and south administrations, that purported
to resolve the crisis, collapsed on 28 April.
Collins responded to a 25 April letter from
Craig accusing the latter of bad faith.64
Revealingly, according to Macardle, the
deaths in the Six Counties became so familiar
that they occupied little space in the press
in comparison with the murders which
took place during the last week of April in
County Cork.65 Soon afterwards on 5 June,
the London Guardian noted, the very tolerable
[situation of southern Protestants] compared
with that of Catholics in Belfast [where],
in three days of last week some 1,500
Catholics, men women and children, had the
roofs pulled or burned over their heads.
Southern Protestants condemned unionist
attacks on Catholics in the North before
and after the southern April killings, and
rejected outright Ulster Unionist assertions
that they received in the south treatment
comparable to what Catholics endured in
Northern Ireland. However, on 29 April 1922,
the day it began reporting the April killings
and Collinss response to Craig, the Irish Times
(and Independent) also reported a denial by
four heads of the Protestant Churches in the
Northern Ireland area that Catholics there
were subject to persecution. The Church of
Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist leaders
defended, for example, the expulsion of
over 6,000 workers from their jobs in Belfast
shipyard and engineering works in June
1920, mainly Catholics, that included former
British forces personnel, and socialists
(including Protestants) opposed to the
practice. They asserted:
It is not true that Roman Catholics have
been denied their natural right to earn
their daily bread. The shipyard workers

did not exclude any man because of

his religion. They refused to work with
men who would not pledge their word
of honour that they disapproved of
the terrible murders which were then
taking place.66
However, expelled Protestant worker James
Baird testified in the Dublin Evening Telegraph
on 11 November 1920,
On the 21st of July [1921], and on succeeding
dates, every Roman Catholicwhether
ex-service man who had proved his loyalty
to England during the Great War, or Sinn
Finer who claims to be loyal to Ireland
and Ireland alonewas expelled from
the shipyards and other works Almost
10,000 workers are at present affected, and
on several occasions men have attempted
to resume work only to find the loyal men
still determined to keep them out.
Given the resumption of attacks in 1922,
which by June had seen over 20,000 Catholics
expelled from their their homes, it is likely
that north-south Protestant tensions would
have deepened, had the April Killings not
intervened to create a fleeting impression of
north-south sectarian similarity, that was
followed by the southern civil war. 67
A regional and denominational imbalance
in discussion of Irish deaths in 191922 is
replicated in the work of historians such
as Hart.68
To be sure, the sudden eruption of killings
in West Cork caused panic among local
Protestants. The 1 May 1921 issue of The Irish
Times reported over 100 men leaving the area
by train en route to Britain.69 Contemporaries
who viewed the killings as sectarian also
thought them exceptional; however, Peter
Hart employed the Bandon Valley Killings
to validate his insistence that the IRA
had pursued a sectarian agenda during
the 191922 period and to corroborate his
assertion that Protestants were fair game
[for] the I.R.A. [and] for a large segment of
the Catholic population (thesis, 390; book,
290). In his book (291) Hart reinforced the

123

Field Day Review

point by arguing further that the minority

[i.e., Protestant] population of West Cork
were seen not only as past enemies and
current undesirables, but also as a future
fifth column. Revealingly, in his thesis (390)
Hart referred to West Corks loyalist
not minoritypopulation, but for his
published book Hart transformed what was
a non-sectarian, political description into a
religious one, thereby seeming to strengthen
his allegations of IRA (and general CatholicNationalist) sectarianism. Yet in both his
publications, Hart contended that,
In the end, however, the fact of the victims
religion is inescapable. These men were
shot because they were Protestant. No
Catholic loyalists, landlords or spies
were shot or even shot at.[70] The
sectarian antagonism which drove this
massacre was interwoven with political
hysteria and local vendettas, but it was
sectarian none the less: our fellas took it
out on the Protestants.[71] The gunmen,
it may be inferred, did not seek merely
to punish Protestants but to drive them
out altogether.
Within this rhetoric of ethnic intolerance
can be detected the quasi-millenarian idea
of a final reckoning of the ancient conflict
between settlers and natives. (thesis, 386;
book, 288)
Thus, Hart claimed later that the Bandon
Valley Killings were the culmination of a
sectarian IRA campaign that had commenced
in the summer of 1920.72 He concluded that
[t]he nationalist revolution had also been a
sectarian one (thesis, 392; book, 292).73
Peter Harts interpretation of IRA activities
as sectarian in Cork (and in the South of
Ireland, generally) depended partly on an
official British document, The Record of the
Rebellion in the Sixth Divisional Area, which
Hart characterized as probably the most
trustworthy [account] that we have. Setting
aside the question of why Hart might so
describe an official British military history,
which in fact contained anti-Irish prejudice,74

124

what is of far greater importance is that

Hart had to censor the document to make it
support his charge of IRA sectarianism. In
order to make his case that the victims of
the Bandon Valley Killings were murdered
because they were Protestants, Hart had to
discount the possibility that, during the
Irish War of Independence, they had been
British informers, whose information had
cost IRA volunteers their lives or liberty,
and thus were killed primarily or only for
that reason. To support his hypothesis, Hart
cited the following section of The Record: the
truth was that, as British intelligence officers
recognised in the south the Protestants and
those who supported the Government rarely
gave much information because, except by
chance, they had not got it to give. (thesis,
413; book, 30506)75
Hart ignored, however, and failed to alert
his readers to, the existence of the Records
immediately following passage, which
indicated that, exceptionally, the Bandon
Valley region, in which the April 1922 killings
took place, had witnessed widespread
loyalist informing:
[A]n exception to this rule was 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 loss.76
There seems to be no justifiable basis for
Harts failure to cite the latter passage,
irrespective of whether it referred directly
to the April killings.77 That passage clearly
identified the Bandon area as having
generated extensive loyalist collaboration
with Crown forces. It therefore signified a
plausible basis for suggesting that the April
1922 victims were targeted for suspected
loyalist activity, not simply because of their
Protestant identity. Ironically, Harts thesis
supervisor/internal examiner, in his own

70 Harts claim is not accurate.

The premises of Roman
Catholic loyalist James
McCarthy were shot at over
2728 April, as were those
of Protestants cited by Hart
as victims: William Jagoe,
premises shot at; Revd
Ralph Harbord, wounded,
when Murragh Rectory was
ired upon. Also, Catholic
and former RIC member
Thomas Sullivan claimed the
attackers raided his house.
See British National Archives,
Kew, Irish Grants Committee
claims of Ralph C. V. Harbord
(CO/762/58), William Jagoe
(CO/762/4), James McCarthy
(CO/762/13), Thomas Sullivan
(CO/762/175).
71 The phrase was taken from
an account resembling a
description of the Ballygroman
House killings in Leon
OBroins research on
Protestant Irish Republican
Dr Dorothy Stopford
(Protestant Nationalists in
Revolutionary Ireland, the
Stopford Connection (Dublin,
1985), 177), though the event
described there is identiied
as having occurred during the
later Irish Civil War and does
not mention fatalities. Despite
this uncertainty, Hart cited
this phrase at this point in his
regular text and entitled his
April Killings chapter, Taking it
out on theProtestants.
72 Peter Hart, Deinition,
Deining the Irish Revolution,
in Joost Augusteijn, ed., The
Irish Revolution, 191923
(Basingstoke, 2002), 25.
73 See note 24 for the dubious
evidential premise on which
this conclusion wasbased.
74 Peter Hart, ed., British
Intelligence, the Final Reports
(Cork, 2002), 6. Harts
omission of a chapter on
The People from this 2002
edition of the Record, without
informing readers, hid this
fact. The missing chapter
notedthat,

Examining PeterHart

practically all
commanders and
intelligence oicers
considered that 90% of
the people were Sinn
Finers or sympathisers
with Sinn Fin, and that
all Sinn Finers were
murderers or sympathized
with murder. Judged by
English standards the
Irish are a diicult and
unsatisfactory people.
Their civilization is
diferent and in many ways
lower than that of the
English. They are entirely
lacking in the Englishmans
distinctive respect for
thetruth.
Intriguingly, despite supposed
deiciencies the Irish were
not accused of sectarianism,
in Brian Murphy, Peter Hart,
the Issue of Sources, IPR, vol.
20, no. 7, July 2005, appended
to Meehan, Murphy, Troubled
History, at www.academia.
edu/166387/
75 This is self-serving. Many
Protestants refused to inform.
See, for example, Olga Pyne
Clarke, She Came of Decent
People (London, 1985), 5253
(citedlater).
76 Cited in Brian Murphy, Peter
Hart, the Issue of Sources.
Also appended to Meehan,
Murphy, Troubled History, at
www.academia.edu/166387/.
Murphy irst cited this
document in his September
1998 review of The IRA and its
Enemies, in The Month, SepOct.1998. See also n. 74.

research, had cited the paragraph from

the Record that Hart omitted.78 Professor
Fitzpatrick did not, it appears, notice Harts
censorship and require restoration of the
full text. Harts external examiner had also
previously researched and cited this source.
The supervision and examination process did
not resolve this anomaly.
Hart also published in his thesis a mistake
resulting in an extra fictional victim of the
April 1922 killings. Both the mistake and
Harts later correction are instructive as a
further example of how Hart promoted his
view of republican sectarianism despite
the evidence.
In his thesis (136) Hart claimed that fifteen
Protestant civilians were shot; his book (115)
mentions (correctly) fourteenthirteen killed
and one wounded (see Table One, p. 118).79
The thesis stated (367) that at Murragh
rectory, near Enniskean, the son of the Rector,
Richard Harbord, was killed.80 He reported
also that, The Reverend Ralph Harbord was
shot in Rosscarbery, but escaped with only
a wound (369).81 This outlying Rosscarbery
victim (the furthest from the main site
of killings, see map) was used by Hart to
establish a random widespread sectarian
pattern to the Bandon Valley Killings, based
on simultaneity and territorial spread.
However, the seeming fact that two Harbord
family members were reportedly attacked
should have tempered this conclusion.
Attacks on members of the same family in
different places in sequence could, albeit with
difficulty, be explained as random. But Hart
offered none.
In fact, however, no Richard Harbord
was shot dead and no attack took place in far
away Rosscarbery. Revd Ralph Harbord was
wounded all right, but at Murragh rectory
by rifle fire from the adjoining road.82 He
was the son of the unharmed Revd Richard
C. M. Harbord who resided at Murragh. Hart
silently rectified the mistake in his book.
That should have constrained claims of
spontaneous sectarian activity over a wide
geographic area, that was now considerably
constricted (see Harts and also my, more
detailed, map).

Compare contrasting sentences, first the

thesis (378),
The other two victims, Robert Nagle in
Clonakilty and the Reverend Ralph of
Rosscarbery,[83] lived south of the Bandon
River and were clearly attacked by a
different partyor partiesaltogether.
In the book, the clear exposition above
became this vague assertion (282),
The other victims, in and around
Clonakilty, lived south of the Bandon
Valley and were clearly attacked by a
different partyor partiesaltogether.84
In other words, loss of the oddly named
Ralph of Rosscarbery had no affect on
Harts conclusions about the geography of
the killings. The error itself in the thesis
should in any case have constrained Harts
conclusions with regard to the randomness
of target selection and sectarian spontaneity
(given Harts original false belief that two
members of same family were targeted
simultaneously). In Harts book, Richard
Helen from Clonakilty, who claimed to have
been an April killings survivor, substituted
for the fictitious Rosscarbery wounding of
Revd Ralph Harbord. Helen stated he was
apprehended in Clonakilty, but escaped, the
same day Robert Nagle was shot dead in the
late morning of Thursday, 27 April. Clonakilty
could therefore have been visited by some
of the killers operating over the evening of
2728 April in and around Ballineen and
Enniskean. This example again indicates that
for Hart, evidence, even when withdrawn,
served pre-determined conclusions. His
sectarianism thesis came first.
This point is not concluded.
Harts promotion of the fate of Richard
Helen in Clonakilty provides another
example of evidence misuse. Hart asserted
that post-war southern loyalist claims from
the Bandon Valley region for compensation
did not reveal evidence of informing. The
British governments Irish Grants Committee
compensated loyalists who claimed to have

125

Field Day Review

suffered materially due to activity in support

of British rule. Harts argument, if true,
would reinforce a view of the killings as
sectarian. However, Harts claim is inaccurate
in the case of the very same Richard Helen.
Helens significance is, first, in his claim
that he, unlike Robert Nagle (also from
Clonakilty), survived (thesis, 369, n. 15;
book, 276, n. 19),85 and, second, it contained
corroborating testimony. This was provided
by an ex-policeman, who supported Helens
claim to have informed on IRA operations.
Helen initially received 225 from British
funds to relocate to England. The Grants
Committee later awarded him an additional
200 ex gratia.86 Helen then appealed his
beggarly treatment. He claimed that my
loyalty cost me thousands of pounds, and
enlisted support from former RAF Flight
Lieutenant and Clonakilty RIC District
Inspector (DI), B. D. Higmaw.
Higmaw described in detail the
information he claimed Helen had supplied
concerning a planned IRA ambush in
February 1922, shortly after the IRA had
killed another RIC DI, Richard Kenny.87
Higmaw lauded Helen as a resolute fearless
supporter of the British flag and stated, it
was entirely due to the action of Helen that I
was not murdered.
Hart ignored Higmaw and his evidence
in its entirety and instead wrote that Helen,
had been active in the volunteer recruitment
movement, had been on good terms with
the police, and helped them in February
1922 when their barracks was under threat of
attack (thesis. 384, n. 66; book, 286, n. 96).
That is misleading. Helen actually wrote
that on an unspecified date, I organised the
party who held the Constabulary Barrack in
Clonakilty against the I.R.A. and joined that
party remaining with them for about a week.
Higmaw, not Helen, mentioned February
1922, that was after the War of Independence,
but did not mention any attack on the
RIC barracks.88 Higmaw dated an entirely
different verified event in February 1922.
Helen, it was asserted by Higmaw, informed
on a further planned IRA ambush on the
already wounded son of DI Kenny, that

126

preserved the lives of Higmaw and others.

Hart ignored this episode and Higmaws
testimony that Helen had informed on the
IRA. Hart lifted his dating of Helens activities
in support of the authorities from Higmaws
testimony. Hart also marginalized Helens
claim of assistance to the authorities, noting
that he had merely helped in relation to
a threat of attack on the RIC barracks in
February 1922 (a date Helen did not mention).
Is this merely another example of Hart
muddling his sources? Or was this a
calculated failure to detail Helens alleged
anti-IRA activities? It was open to Hart to
question the veracity of Helen and Higmaws
claims in pursuit of a substantial monetary
reward (instead of cherry-picking the parts
that suited his argument), but he would then
have been obliged to state why he accepted
some compensation claims but rejected
others.89 Had Hart reported Helens claim
adequately he would have been unable to
observe that
[i]f the victims had been active in
opposing the I.R.A. they or their relatives
would almost certainly have mentioned
it in their applications to the Irish Grants
Committee, which was charged with
compensating those who suffered for their
loyalty to the Crown. (thesis, 382, n. 57;
book, 285, n. 79)
Clearly, the victim Richard Helen mentioned
it. This evidence was surely significant, but
evidently not to Hart, because it suggests that
the victims of the Bandon Valley Killings were
targeted by their attackers for their specific
political and military activities, not chosen
randomly or for sectarian reasons.90

FrankBusteed
But, who did Hart think was responsible
for at least some of the April 1922 killings in
West Cork? In 2008, I pointed out that Hart
named in his thesis one individual as partly
responsible for the killings.91 According to
Hart, IRA officer Frank Busteed claimed that

77 It has been suggested that

Hart thought the Record was
written after the April killings.
Information, conirming that
it was written in early April
1922 was released in 2001.
The critical issue is that
Crown forces successfully
and exceptionally recruited
Protestant loyalists as
collaborators in the area.
Either way, Harts censorship
had no justiiable basis.
On this, see Barry Keane,
Chasing ShadowsPeter
Hart, John Regan, Eve
Morrison, Gerard Murphy,
the Record of the Rebellion
and the Dunmanway
Killings, at www.academia.
edu/4960537/. See also
Keanes, Massacre in West
Cork: The Dunmanway and
Ballygroman Killings (Cork,
2014).
78 David Fitzpatrick, Politics
and Irish Life 191321:
Provincial Experience of War
and Revolution (Cork [1977],
1998), 27, n.47.
79 These formulations exclude
the Macroom killings of four
British Armypersonnel.
80 Is this a reference to the
Rector himself or to a son
also named Richard? This
unnecessarily unclear
writing is problematic in the
context of the problems
discussedhere.
81 Citing, n. 17, Rev. Ralph
Harbord statement
(C0/762/58).
82 Revd Richard Harbord,
CO/762/155. His sons
compensation claim was
possibly a basis for the
Rosscarbery mistake, as
he ministered there in the
later 1920s. No source
accompanied the Richard
Harbord claim (thesis, 367).
83 The absence of a surname
creates an impression
that Ralph was
Harbordssurname. See
alson.80.

Examining PeterHart

84 This point is explained in

more detail in my Distorting
Irish History Two, the road
from Dunmanway: Peter
Harts treatment of the 1922
April killings in West Cork,
39, 14, at www.academia.
edu/612672/. Harts assertion
that the victims were not
chosen entirely at random
meant merely that Protestant
men were targeted, With the
exception of James McCarthy,
who was Catholic (and whose
life was not threatened)
(thesis, 383).
85 Richard Helen, Irish Grants
Committee compensation
claim, CO/762/33.
86 Worth stg10,827 and
10,640, respectively, in 2012,
according to Bank of England
Inlation Calculator at,
www.bankofengland.co.uk/
education/Pages/inlation/
calculator/lash/default.aspx
(accessed 10 March 2014).
87 Distorting Irish History Two,
19. IT, 13 Feb 1922. Richard
Aboott, Police Casualties in
Ireland 19191922 (Dublin,
2000), 277, refers mistakenly
to Keany.
88 Helens reference to an
undated attack on the
barracks possibly referred
to an earlier event prior
to the end of the War of
Independence in June1921.
89 Barry Keane makes this point.
As Helen was reported at a
race meeting in May 1922
and was elected to Chair
Clonakilty Urban District
Council in 1926, Keane
questioned Helens assertion
that he was banished from
Ireland, Massacre in West
Cork, the Dunmanway
and Ballygroman killings
(Dublin, 2014). He then
observed(168):
How are historians expected
to approach the rest of the
claims made to the British
compensation committees
if it can be shown that the
irst citizen of Clonakilty
might not be telling the
truth? [I]t is probably best
to be highly sceptical about
uncorroborated testimony
from witnesses in this story,
especially when the evidence
is in their owninterest.

he had killed five to six loyalists, Protestant

farmers, at the time of the April killings (thesis
377, n. 47). Hart wrote in this footnote that,
Frank Busteed, the Blarney I.R.A. leader
was quoted by Ernie OMalley as saying
We shot four or five locals, then we could
move anywhere in the Civil War. He also
said that We shot five to six loyalists,
Protestant farmers, as reprisals in the
same period (OMalley Papers, P17b/l12). As
these killings certainly did not take place
after July 1922, the only events which fit
this description are those of April.92
Oddly, however, Hart withdrew that note from
his published book (282). But in his thesis,
Hart had also stated emphatically (11718) that
Busteed, was involved in [killing] three
British officers in Macroom and a massacre
of Protestants in the early months of 1922.
[my emphasis]
Yet again, those last eleven words
were omitted from the same sentence in
Harts book (100). So too was the following
observation (thesis, 379): Frank Busteed of
Blarney, the hardest of diehards, also seems to
have claimed a share of responsibility.
The unexplained excisions from the
book, of such seemingly crucial phrases and
evidence, are of interest. Hart three times
named Busteed in his thesis, twice in his
April killings chapter, as having had a major
responsibility for the April 1922 killings in
West Cork. Why did Hart eliminate those
references from his book? Might it have been
because Busteeds father was a Protestant and
Busteed, himself, although raised as a Roman
Catholic, later became an outspoken atheist
(thesis, 330, n. 145; book, 248, n. 149)?93
Arguably, such a person would be unlikely
to shoot Protestants randomly on a sectarian
basis and was also therefore unhelpful to
Harts overall thesis.94 If, on the other hand,
Hart had evidence that ruled out Busteed,
an apparently self-confessed killer, that too
would have been of significant interest. It
may be, also, that Busteed inserted himself
retrospectively into these events. If so, that
too required discussion.

Harts failure, in his book, to discuss

Busteeds possible involvement in the April
1922 killings may also be linked to his seeming
lack of interest in the Macroom Killings of
26 April and in their possible causal link to
the Bandon Valley Killings that began early
on the following morning. Readers will
recall that the Macroom Killings involved
the disappearance from Dick Williams Hotel
of three British intelligence officers (Hendy,
Dove, and Henderson) and their driver
(Brooks).95 Harts apparent disinterest in
the Macroom Killings is notable for several
reasons. First, the Macroom Killings of 26
April were more proximate in both time
and geography to the killing of the three
Protestant civilians (Fitzmaurice, Gray, and
James Buttimer) in Dunmanway, which
initiated the Bandon Valley Killings early
on the following morning of 27 April. By
contrast, the Ballygroman House Killings,
which Hart did link causally to the Bandon
Valley Killings, had occurred earlier on 26
April, before the abduction of the British
intelligence officers in Macroom. Second,
Busteed himself claimed involvement in both
the Macroom Killings and the Bandon Valley
Killings (although not the ones at Ballygroman
House). Logically, therefore, Busteed would
seem to be a self-declared link between
the Macroom and Bandon Valley Killings,
suggesting a possible causal (or at least a
coincidental) relationship between both sets
of killings. Hart noted, but did not discuss,
Busteeds claim in relation to the Macroom
Killings in his thesis and book (thesis, 11718;
book, 100); however, he did so far removed
from his chapters on the April 1922 killings.96
Hart never identified any other participant
in either set of killings. His decision, in his
book, to drop Busteed from his April killings
chapter and to treat the British intelligence
officers disappearance from Macroom in a
cursory manner makes no evidential sense.
The plain-clothes British officers
abducted in Macroom were, contrary to
Truce arrangements, under orders to reestablish intelligence links that had lain
fallow since the ending of official hostilities
in June 1921. On 26 April 1922, the southern

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Field Day Review

Men of the Royal Irish

Constabulary lie along the edge
of a road beside a field during an
ambush in County Clare during
the War of Independence. Private
Papers of General Sir Peter
Strickland KCB KBE CMG DSO.
Imperial War Museum, London.

based Sixth Division Brigade Intelligence

Officer Lieutenant R. A. Hendy, acting on
orders, wished to see the state of affairs at
Macroom, making the excuse of lunching
with a mutual friend along the way. Two
battalion officers, Lieutenants G. R. Dove and
K. L. Henderson, plus Private R. A. Brooks,
their driver, accompanied Hendy. All were in
civilian attire.97 Hendys father later reported
that the officers were acting under imperative
orders, but refused to reveal the source of this
information.98 The officers travelled from
Ballincollig to Macroom, stopping in Farran
to interview an ex-British army officer before
leaving at noon. The IRA in Macroom became
suspicious, in part because they recognized
two of the officers, Hendy and Dove, as
having previously tortured and shot unarmed
[IRA] prisoners.99 A. J. S. (Stephen) Brady, son
of the Anglican rector of Macroom, laterin
his account of Protestant family life in early
20th century Corkrecalled their wartime
mistreatment of IRA prisoners: he observed

128

that either Hendy or Dove had trussed an IRA

[prisoner] like a fowl, had a rope tied to his
ankles, was thrown on the road and dragged
behind an army vehicle at high speed to his
death.100
Likewise, Busteed, himself, accused two of
the three officers of having thrown his mother
downstairs on a raid, after which she died. 101
Hendy, Dove, and Henderson explained
to the IRA, as their orders advised, that they
were on a fishing trip, although they had no
rods or other fishing equipment.102 As their
orders also advised, the officers had lunched
en route with their mutual friend in Farran,
which was near Ballygroman.103 That was not,
for Hendy and his companions, a favourable
accidental or intended coincidence, because
earlier that same morning, at Ballygroman
House, IRA officer Michael ONeill was shot
dead, followed by the disappearance of those
held responsible, Protestant loyalist Thomas
Hornibrook, his son, Samuel, and a former
British officer, Captain Herbert Woods. Peter

90 See, Niall Meehan, Distorting

Irish History Two, the road
from Dunmanway: Peter
Harts treatment of the 1922
April killings in West Cork, at,
www.academia.edu/612672/,
814. An aside: why would
relatives of necessity be
informed of clandestine
activities? And, of course, the
dead victims were hardly in a
position to mentionanything.
91 Meehan, in Troubled History,
24. After the War of
Independence, some further
questions about West Cork,
April 2729 1922, Irish
Political Review, vol. 23, no. 3,
March2008.
92 Hart misinterpreted
OMalleys notation. According
to Pdraig Ruairc, the
correct manner is as follows,
[OMalley:] (In the (C/W)
we shot 4 or 5 locals then
we could move anywhere.)
[Busteed:] We shot 5 to
6 Loyalists, Protestant
farmers as reprisals. .... In
other words, while Busteed
did claim responsibility for
shooting loyalist Protestant
farmers, the irst sentence
within parentheses is
OMalleys. I am indebted
to Pdraig Ruairc on this
point, by email 5 Dec 2013.
OMalleys notebooks are
being transcribed from his
near illegible handwriting
by Ruairc and others.
See, Cormac OMalley, Tim
Horgan, ed., The Men will
Talk to Me, Kerry Interviews
by Ernie OMalley (Dublin,
2012); Cormac OMalley,
Cormac Comhra, ed., The
Men will Talk to Me, Galway
Interviews by Ernie OMalley
(Dublin,2013).
93 Harts note on Busteed,
after the withdrawn thesis
comment, is placed at an
earlier point in thebook.

Examining PeterHart

Irish Times, 1 May 1921.

Hart misreported the
newspaper account.

94 Busteeds grandson,
Brian ODonoghue, noted
that he possessed both
understanding and empathy
regarding [the Protestant]
part of his heritage. He
further observed, Franks
having Protestant relations
was not unusual in the IRA
owing to mixed marriages
going back generations in a
relatively stable community.
History Ireland, vol. 20, no. 3,
May-June2012.
95 Their execution was conirmed
by Dan Corkery OC, Macroom
Battalion, Cork No.1 Brigade,
BMH WS 1719. The four
bodies were exhumed and
repatriated to England in 1923,
Southern Star, 15 December
1923, Irish Independent, 13, 14
December1923.
96 Busteeds claims are detailed
in Sean OCallaghan,
Execution (London, 1974).
Hart reported OCallaghans
account substantially
accurate, though subject to
Busteeds excessive egotism
and at times fallible memory
(book, 15, n.55; thesis, 21,
n.52 and 377, n. 47). On
oicers arrest, A. J. S.
(Steven) Brady, The Briar of
Life (Dublin, 2010), 19496.
97 Paul McMahon, Irish
Spies and British Rebels
(Woodbridge, 2009), 67.
98 Regan (2013), 190.
99 Dan Corkery, BMH WS
1719, also Sean Healy 1479,
Michael Walsh 1521, Toms
Maoileoin (Malone), 845;
Borgonovo (2011), 38.
100 Brady, The Briar of Life, 196.
See also, Patrick J. Twohig,
Green Tears for Hecuba,
Irelands ight for Freedom
(Ballincollig, 1994), 22728;
Browne, 82; Borgonovo
(2011),38.

Hart suggested that it was the Ballygroman

House Killings that initiated the Bandon
Valley Killings in the days following. That
is certainly plausible. However, there is at
least as much basis for suggesting that the
immediately following appearance and then
disappearance of the three British intelligence
officers was also related. As noted, in his
thesis Hart raised the latter possibility, but
in his book he ignored or suppressed his
earlier interpretation.
Busteed had named three intelligence
officers responsible for his mothers death
as Viney, Dove and Macallister. He stated
also that these were the officers he shot on
26 April. The first and last names are clearly
mistaken. Busteed was also mistaken in
describing where the officers were abducted.
Viney was named during the process of
execution and he is mentioned as a one-armed
intelligence officer directly responsible for
his mothers death.104 Viney may in fact be
Hendy, who was [s]everely wounded in the
right arm as a result of a [b]omb wound in
March 1917 in France.105
The Macroom Killingsthe IRAs
arrest and execution of the three British
intelligence officers and their driver were
highly significant in their own right and
almost sparked a return of full-scale AngloIrish hostilities. They halted temporarily
British troop withdrawal from southern
Ireland. Crown forces fruitlessly scoured
the countryside for the missing officers and
engaged in large formation military standoffs with the IRA locally. The Macroom
Killings comprised an event of historical
significanceand not merely because the
commander of the British forces, evidently
in a savage mood, was then Sixth Division
Brigade Major Bernard Law Montgomery,
of Donegal Anglican ancestry and later
World War Two fame in North Africa at
El Alamein.106
Yet, despite the significance of the
Macroom Killings, Hart failed, even in his
thesis, to consider the event or the possibility
that the deaths of the British intelligence
officers were connected with either the
Ballygroman or the Bandon Valley Killings,

even though timing, territorial proximity,

and Frank Busteed linked them closely.
Indeed, in Harts perspective, neither the
Macroom Killings nor, by extension, any
of the April killings, could be associated
with intelligence or any other rational
military or political considerations. Rather,
Hart asserted, they were best explained by
irrational Irish ethno-religious or sectarian
hatreds of Protestants. Thus, Hart argued
that the Macroom Killings (and, by extension,
those that followed) were associated with IRA
conspiracy theories:
Such conspiracy theories were flourishing
in southern Ireland at this time, fed by
political uncertainty, paranoia and the
continuing fear of renewed war with
Britain. On the same day that ONeill was
shot [at Ballygroman House], for example,
another republican was killed in a raid in
Wexford after receiving information that
certain Orangemen possessed firearms
and four British soldiers were kidnapped
- and later shot as spies - in Macroom.
(thesis, 375; book, 280)
Hart further marginalized the Macroom
killings by noting, Three [additional] British
officers travelling from Cork to Bantry were

129

Field Day Review

also [captured by the IRA and] released on

30 April (book, 280, n. 49; thesis, 375, n. 40).
However, those three did not exist, and the
1 May 1922 issue of The Irish Times, cited by
Hart, contains no such report.107
While, in his thesis, Hart suggested that
the British officers killed at Macroom were offduty (135), he corrected this early in his book
(before his chapter on the April 1922 killings)
to admit they were still plying their dangerous
[intelligence] trade though the government
denied it (114). It is notable therefore that, in
his conspiracy theories statement, quoted
above, Hart still placed the Macroom victims
status as spies in inverted commas, and
identified them simply as British soldiers
rather than as intelligence officers, which Hart
now realized three of them were.108
Harts overall disinterest in making a
connection, in his books April killings
chapter, between the Macroom and Bandon
Valley killings (and his continued usage of
inverted commas around the word spies)
therefore made no senseparticularly so
since Hart asserted that Busteed was involved,
or claimed to have been involved, in both sets
of killings. Arguably, however, an adequate
consideration of a possible connection would
have upset the primacy of Harts seemingly
unshakable conviction that all the April
1922 killings were motivated by religious
animosities.109 Put simply, the officers did
not conform to his preferred IRA enemies
typology. These were depicted typically as
helpless, innocent, Protestant, civilians.
Republican assertions of loyalist informing
Hart encountered were chacterized as
fantasies acting as a spur to rage and hysteria
(thesis, 383; book 285).
This is not to say the events at
Macroom and in the Bandon Valley were
definitively intertwined. All connections
are circumstantial. Rather, it is to state that
evidence of a connection, however tentative,
between the Macroom, Ballygroman and
Bandon Valley killings was demonstrably
stronger than Harts speculations about
religious antagonism based on sectarian
jealousies and long-nurtured grudges

130

(thesis, 388, 38991; book, 289, 29091).

However, that very absence of clear evidence
of sectarianism liberated Harts interpretive
imagination. It promoted speculation at
will in language presenting the appearance
of sociological depth, but which was in fact
devoid of content and thus merely a species of
academic rhetoric.110
Arguably, however, if the events at
Macroom were linked to those in the Bandon
Valley and at Ballygroman, it may ironically
have been in the interests of both the
British and the IRA to deny any connections
between them. The British wished to deny
their dead officers intelligence functions,
and also to avoid admitting that they
possessed any civilian intelligence assets
in the Bandon Valley area. On their part, the
Irish Republicans denied vehemently, to
the British, having had anything to do with
the officers disappearance.111 For the IRA,
revealing an intelligence-related reason for
the civilian shootings would inevitably have
drawn attention to the near-simultaneous
disappearance of the senior British Army
intelligence personnel. Militarily and
politically, therefore, and in their mutual
interest in avoiding a renewal of Anglo-Irish
hostilities, it made sense for the British to
promote a sectarian narrative of all the April
1922 killings and for the Irish Republicans to
acquiesce in it. Admittedly, my explanation
here is speculative but, in the absence of other
information, surely plausible.
Indeed, the author Patrick J. Twohig
revealed in Green Tears for Hecuba (1994) a
successful attempt to persuade him not to tell
the story of the intelligence officers in 1959.
One persuader was former IRA officer Charlie
Brown, who, Twohig suggested, indentified
one of the Macroom British officers as having
tortured prisoners. Brown, like Busteed
of mixed Protestant-Catholic parentage,
is named also in A. J. S. (Stephen) Bradys
memoir as placing an IRA guard on the home
of Bradys father, the Anglican Rector of
Macroom, during the immediately following
Bandon Valley killings.112 Twohig, who did
not write on the latter event, wondered at,the
Macroom affair [being] the most hushed up

101 OCallaghan, Execution,

18182, 18992. The British
raid on Busteeds family
home was in response to
the disappearance of elderly
loyalist informer, Mary
Lindsay. She informed on
the 28 January 1921 Dripsey
ambush at which Busteed was
second in command, leading
to the capture of eight and
subsequent execution of ive
IRA volunteers. The British
spurned an ofer to spare
Lindsays life in return for
those of the IRA volunteers.
When they were executed,
so was she and her house
was burned, Tim Sheehan,
Lady Hostage (Mrs Lindsay)
(Cork, 2nd ed., 2008), 81103,
116, 154, 166, 17677. Also in
OCallaghan, 1069, 1545,
1759, who details Busteeds
role in exposing her role,
arresting and then executing
MaryLindsay.
102 A detail conirmed in Twohig,
338, the third account of the
event to be published after
Eoin Neeson, The Civil War
192223 (Cork, 1966) and
Nigel Hamilton, Monty, the
Making of a General 1887
1942 (London, 1981). There
is no doubt that the oicers
were on duty. British 6th
Division Commander, Major
General Strickland, noted in
his private diary on 26 April,
Hendy, Dove, another out on
I[ntelligence] work not back,
in Regan (2013), 191.
103 McMahon, 67. Twohig,
338. John M. Regan, The
Bandon Valley Massacre as
a Historical Problem, History,
vol. 97, no. 325, JanFeb
2012, 79.
104 OCallaghan, 190, 191, 18182,
18992.

Examining PeterHart

105 See, www.cairogang.com/

other-people/british/castleintelligence/incidents/
kilgobnet%201922/hendy/
hendy.html (accessed 19
February 2014). This physical
condition is corroborated by
IRA volunteer James Murphy
who reported being tortured
by three oicers, including
Hendy and Henderson. He
noted, one of the oicers
(a one-armed man) then
attacked me, by attempting
to force a small grenade into
Murphys mouth, while the
other two held him, BMH WS
1521. Viney may also be a
corruption of Vining: A Lt.
Vining was named by Hart as
one of ive British oicers who
dragged the body of IRA Cork
No.1 Brigade 3rd Battalion OC,
Walter Leo Murphy behind
a car on 27 June 1921, after
Vining shot Murphy. Hart also
reported Protestant folklore
as stating that the same thing
was done to Herbert Woods,
who killed IRA oicer Michael
ONeill at Ballygroman on
the morning of 26 April. This
was supposedly in revenge
for Murphys treatment by
Vining in June 1921 (book, 96,
297). See also Tim Herlihy
and others, BMH WS 810,
on Vining shooting Murphy
and unarmed IRA volunteer
Charlie Daly, who was tortured
before he was killed. This is
another reason to question
Harts exclusion of a Busteed
connection between the
Macroom and some of the
civilian killings in April1922.
106 Nigel Hamilton, Monty, the
Making of a General 1887
1942 (London, 1981), 163.
Hart cited Hamilton but his
incorrect pagination (15354)
should be 16263. Hamiltons
later The Full Monty, Volume
I: Montgomery of Alamein
(London, 2001), omits this
incident in its entirety.
Borgonovo, The Battle for
Cork, 3940.

of any other incident in the Troubled Times

[O]ne tends to look for cause [for the secrecy].
On the surface, there seems to be none.113
The complication of the simultaneous
civilian killings might have been the catalyst
for an IRA cover-up of what had happened
at Macroom, and why it had happened, or
it may be that there was simply reticence in
discussing a truce violation (though it was
on both sides). It is possible also that those
who carried out the civilian killings were
not authorized to do so but independently
connected the killing, at Ballygroman House,
of IRA officer Michael ONeill by former
British officer Herbert Woods, with the
almost immediately subsequent appearance
of three of Woodss fellow officers at
Macroom, especially since two of the latter
had tortured and killed IRA prisoners (and,
reportedly, Frank Busteeds mother) during
the previous Anglo-Irish War.
But, even if these speculations as to
an intelligence connection between the
Macroom killings and the Bandon Valley
killings are plausible, one question remains:
how and why did (or could) the IRA select
their ten Bandon Valley targets?
In 2003, Meda Ryan drew attention, in
her expanded biography of Tom Barry, to a
British intelligence dossier, which contained
a list of helpful citizens [i.e., local informers]
in West Cork, and which she reported she
had studied prior to the 1998 publication of
Harts book. According to Ryan, departing
British Auxiliaries had reportedly left this
dossier behind when they evacuated their
Dunmanway headquarters. Ryan reported
that the dossier listed, as helpful citizens,
all the persons who were killed in the
Bandon Valley on 2729 April 1922, except
for the brother and son of two individuals
whose surnames only were included.114
Unfortunately, this document is not in the
public domain, and its present location is
unknown. However, Ryans research claim has
been strengthened because a subsequently
discovered Bureau of Military History Witness
Statement (No. 1,741), given by former IRA
soldier Michael ODonoghue, asserted that:

Poor Mick ONeill ... a grand chivalrous

warrior of the I.R.A. called at the house
of a British loyalist, named Hornibrook, to
get help for a broken-down motor. As he
knocked on the door, he was treacherously
shot dead without the slightest warning by
a hidden hand from inside the house. The
I.R.A in Bandon were alerted. The house
was surrounded. Under threat of bombing
and burning, the inmates surrendered.
Three men, Hornibrook, his son and
son-in-law, a Captain Woods. The latter, a
British Secret Service agent,115 confessed
to firing the fatal shot. Why? God alone
knows. None of the three knew ONeill or
he them. Probably Woods got scared at
seeing the strange young man in I.R.A.
attire knocking, thought he was cornered
and fired at him in a panic. The sequel was
tragic. Several prominent loyalistsall active
members of the anti-Sinn Fin Society[116] in
West Cork, and blacklisted as such in I.R.A.
Intelligence Recordsin Bandon, Clonakilty,
Ballineen and Dunmanway, were seized at
night by armed men, taken out and killed.
[My emphasis]
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 savage, wholesale, murderous reprisal
for the murder of Mick ONeill. 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 ONeill that day near Crookstown
in May 1922. Fifteen or sixteen loyalists in
all went to gory graves in brutal reprisal
for ONeills murder.
To be sure, ODonoghues statement was
not an eyewitness account; it is secondhand evidence. Also, ODonoghue explicitly
linked the Ballygroman House killings to the
Bandon Valley killings, as did Hart (but for
very different, irrational causes), whereas

131

Far left: Irish Times, 7 April 1922.

Southern Protestant Appeal
letters led to the formation of the
Protestant Convention. This was
ignored by Hart, who cited a false
story that day.
Left: Irish Times, 4 May 1922. Hart
ignored this event, though he saw
this issue of the newspaper.

I have postulated that the Macroom killings

may have been important also in connecting
the killings before and/or afterwards,
either directly or indirectly. Nevertheless,
ODonoghues statement is significant, for
several reasons. First, it was composed many
years before Peter Hart researched and wrote
his thesis and book. Second, it stresses a
British intelligence connection between
the deaths at Ballygroman House and the
Bandon Valley killingsand, the reader will
recall, that those killed at Macroom also
shared that intelligence connection. Third,
ODonoghue testified that the Bandon Valley
victims were selected by reference to IRA
intelligence records. Indeed, ODonoghue
himself apparently thought it important
to report that Woods (ONeills killer) was a
British Secret Service agent (like the British
officers killed at Macroom), and he implied
that that fact was crucial in generating the
sequelthe reprisal killings, based on
IRA intelligence records, of the ten Bandon
Valley Protestants.
How did the IRA obtain or compile the
intelligence records, which, according to
ODonoghue, apparently sealed the fate of

132

107 These British oicers are as

ictitious as Harts additional
April killings victim, Richard
Harbord. Harts mistaken
observation is curious. The
Cork Examiner reported on
1 May that rumours of the
oicers release were oicially
discounted. It is therefore
unclear where Hart obtained
his mistaken view, unless he
misread the Examiner and
transposed his misreading to
the Times. Another muddle.
108 Meehan, Troubled History,
24; After the War of
Independence, some further
questions about West Cork,
April 2729 1922, Irish
Political Review (IPR), vol.
23, no. 3, March 2008, at
www.academia.edu/170416/;
The Further One Gets From
Belfast, a second reply to
Jef Dudgeon, IPR, vol. 27,
no. 2, February 2012, at
www.academia.edu/1328920/.
Charles Townshend repeated
Harts assertion in stating
that seven British soldiers
were held at that time, The
Republic, 372.
109 The killing of the oicers
was treated in depth in
works cited by Hart: Neeson
(1966); Hamilton (1981), and
Twohig(1994).

Examining PeterHart

110 John Regan researched

further signiicant evidence
surrounding the points I raised
in 2008. He debated them
with Professor Fitzpatrick
in the journal, History, in
History Ireland magazine and
at a History Ireland Hedge
School with John Borgonovo
and Eve Morrison. See
Regan, The Bandon Valley
Massacre as a Historical
Problem, History, 97 (2012);
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the
Two Histories, History Ireland,
vol. 20, no. 1, JanFeb 2012;
The War of Independence:
four glorious years or
squalid sectarian conlict?
History Ireland Hedge
School, National Library of
Ireland, 11 January 2012, at,
www.vimeo.com/35893747/
(accessed 10 March2014).
111 Eoin Neeson, The Civil War
192223 (Dublin [1966],
1989), 10002, the irst
to write on the episode,
foolishly suggested that Black
& Tans or Auxiliaries were
responsible. Possibly, he was
fed disinformation. Hamilton,
Monty, The Making of a
General, 18871942, revealed
strenuous IRA denials and
Montgomerys fruitless eforts
at discovery. John Borgonovo,
The Battle for Cork, 3840,
detailed the threats and
manoeuvres of both sides
leading to a standof on 30
April, and on 2 May when
Montgomery might have been
killed had he notretreated.
112 Brady, The Briar of Life, 194.
Curiously, Brady reversed the
historical sequence by writing
on the Bandon Valley Killings
immediately before those of
Macroom, about which [A]n
armed I.R.A. man, who was
a friend of mine approached
me in Main Street. I just
want to give you a tip, he
said. Be discreet; whatever
you know keep your mouth
shut. If youre wise, you
knownothing.
113 Twohig, Green Tears for
Hecuba, 341, 343.
114 Meda Ryan, Tom Barry,
20914.
115 This designation of Woods,
while important as a matter
of perception, is not
independentlyveriied.

the Bandon Valley victims? Was it partially or

wholly assembled in the course of hostilities?
Or was the dossier, reportedly abandoned by
the Auxiliaries when they left Dunmanway,
which Meda Ryan examined a half-century
later, alone responsible? Or perhaps the IRA
obtained the information on April 26 under
duress, from Woods of Ballygroman House or
from Hendy, Dove, or Henderson at Macroom,
before they were executed? After all, they
were tasked with renewing intelligence
contacts. We do not know for sure.

ProtestantConvention
Much of this information was not available
to Hart, though a substantial amount was.
However, as noted, Hart censored important
evidence, which he was able to consider, that
pointed to a non-sectarian explanation for the
April 1922 killings. He also ignored further
important information, about which he did
know, pertaining to the April killings and to
southern Protestant attitudes.
For example, the broadly supported and
representative Protestant Convention, which
met publicly in Dublin on 11 May 1922 (during
Church of Ireland Synod week), place[d] on
record the following statement, referring
to the then seemingly inexplicable Bandon
Valley killings that had occurred two weeks
before the Convention: We place on record
that, until the recent tragedies in the County
Cork, hostility to Protestants by reason of
their religion has been almost, if not wholly,
unknown in the twenty six counties in which
Protestants are in a minority.
The Convention was reported prominently
in the 12 May 1922 Irish Times and Irish
Independent. The amended resolution was
published in the Irish Times on 3 May. It
appeared in its initial form, in reference to an
absence of sectarian attacks on Protestants,
in the 7 April Irish Times. In that issue, an E. A.
Aston, whose name is significant (see below),
was listed as one of the Hon. Secretaries of
the Provisional Organising Committee of the
The Southern Protestant Appeal. The Appeal
linked in with and became the Protestant

Convention, that also was launched in the

Irish Times on 7 April.
Though he cited the 7 April 1922 Irish
Times Hart ignored this information. He cited
instead a separate report of six [RIC veterans]
shot in one day in Clare and Kerry by
the IRA. This citation formed part of Harts
argument, in both his thesis and book, that
the IRA targeted its enemies at random.
Hart mentioned also in this context the West
Cork killings and the disappearance the three
British officers in Macroom (thesis, 1378, n.
264; book 11415). Although the 7 April Irish
Times indeed headlined five RIC veterans
killed in Clare and Kerry, with another badly
wounded, the paper published no follow-up
details. Instead, the next days issue admitted
(in a shorter, less prominent, report) that the
news of the six shootings was unconfirmed,
and that the papers Clare correspondent
knew nothing about them. That days
Irish Independent stated prominently that
the reports are denied and discredited in
the localities concerned. The Independent
criticized the Irish Times (as well as the Daily
Mail and the Belfast Newsletter) for poor, false
and biased reportingwhich the Independent
associated with propaganda designed to
halt RIC disbandment and to promote
political destabilization.117
Whether the latter charge was or was not
true, for our purposes it is important to note
the following: Firstly, Hart researched the 7
April 1922 issue of the Irish Times, and so it
is difficult to believe that he did not read its
account of southern Protestant opinion on
responsibility for sectarianism. Secondly,
Hart employed the initial Irish Times report
of the IRA shooting six RIC veterans, but
failed to report either the Irish Timess own
corrections of that story or the seemingly
authoritative refutations made by the Irish
Independent. Finally, one can only wonder
why Hart apparently based his research
on such incidents primarily on the proUnionist Irish Times, while (at least in this
instance) seemingly ignoring reports in the
Irish Independent, which was Irelands bestselling (although conservatively Nationalist)
daily newspaper.

133

Field Day Review

Thus, rather than reporting accurately the

southern Protestant rejection of sectarian
victimhood in the 7 April Irish Times, Hart
preferred to reference inaccurate propaganda
about the IRA shooting old enemies (thesis,
137; book, 114), in the process ignoring even
the Irish Timess own report questioning the
story published the following day.
Harts seemingly strategic newspaper
citations can be illustrated further. The
origin of the 7 April Protestant Appeal (later
Convention) was a 21 March letter to the Irish
Times from E. A. Aston calling on southern
Protestants to oppose sectarian violence in
Northern Ireland and stating, We owe it as
a matter of decency to our Catholic fellow
citizens who have so steadfastly refused to
visit the sins of Ulster upon us.
Hart did note the existence of this letter,
although not in the Irish Times. He cited
instead the West Cork Southern Star of 25
March. The Star mentioned Aston by name
and cited his letter to the press, but Hart, in
his footnote, did not name him or mention
that he was a Protestant. Harts text asserted,
it was widelyand wronglybelieved
(and not just by republicans) that the local
Protestant community had remained silent
on [killings of Catholics] and thus tacitly
supported the [Belfast] pogroms (thesis, 372,
n. 29; book, 278, n. 32).
Harts accompanying note stated, See
Star, 25 March, 29 Apr. 1922. In fact, there were
frequent Protestant meetings and letters to
the editor condemning the northern pogroms
and testifying to southern tolerance in the
months before the [Bandon Valley] massacre.
Hart could have added, accurately and
relevantly, that it was the case after it as well.
Though, if also the case beforehand, Harts
overall thesis collapsed at that juncture. The
cited 29 April Southern Star is perhaps more
significant. It contained a Schull (West Cork)
Protestant resolution headlined Pogrom
denounced. The resolution condemned
the atrocious crimes recently committed
in the North of Ireland and disassociated
Protestants of various denominations in the
parish of Schull from,

134

Irish Times, 3 May 1922. Protestant

Convention motion mentions the
West Cork killings.

116 See John Borgonovo, Spies,

Informers and the Anti-Sinn
Fin Society: The Intelligence
War in Cork City, 19191921
(Sallins 2006), whose
research suggests that civilian
loyalists were mobilized as
an organized body in Cork.
Barry, in Guerilla Days (1949),
110, 111, also addressed this
issue and referred to a former
British oicer, an important
organizer of espionage
who was executed, and
to a Protestant Minister,
head of an intelligence
group, who escaped. The
clergyman was exposed by
a member of the group, Tom
Bradield. He divulged to IRA
soldiers he thought were
British, the Rev Mr. [John
Charles] Lord is my man
and I give him information.
After Bradield implicated
himself the IRA executed
him. Broin suggested the
existence of a sectarian
based anti-independence
movement in the area.
Broin, 177. This evidence
puts lesh on the admission in
the Record of the Rebellion
which Hart censored. Hart
paid no attention to this
information (not least as he
had characterized Barry as
a liar), though he cited the
page on which it appeared
in Broins book by using a
phrase found there for his
chapter title, Taking it out
on the Protestants(see n.
71). See also on Bradield,
BMH WS, 470, 540, 1648, by,
respectively, Denis Lordan,
Ann Hurley-OMahony, James
Spud Murphy.

Examining PeterHart

Southern Star, 29 April 1922. Joint

Protestant resolution, Schull,
Co. Cork.

117 Harts referencing facilitated

this false report entering the
record. Richard Abbott, Police
Casualties in Ireland (Cork,
2000), 294, noted for 7 April
(one day later), ive recently
retired members of the RIC
were shot and killed with
another six being seriously
wounded, but without naming
them or providing a source.
Seamus Foxs independently
constructed database of
casualties states ive dead
and ive wounded on 6 April,
again unnamed, at www.dcu.
ie/foxs/irhist/april_1922.
htm (accessed 18 November
2013). Fox cited Abbott and
Hart. Harts formulation
that six victims were merely
shot implying that all were
wounded, as distinct from ive
shot dead and one wounded
(Times report), is muted.
Harts misreport of a false
report may thus have helped
further inlate an already
dubious account of six RIC
casualties to ten or eleven.
Commentary on the IRA
shooting unknown victims
or shooting speculative
enemies at random is another
aspect of Harts research.
See the Peter Hart inspired,
The Year of Disaearances,
Political Killings in Cork
192022 (Dublin, 2010),
by Gerard Murphy. TCDs
Professor Eunan OHalpin
made a supportive television
programme for TV3 (Ireland),
that interviewed Murphy and
cited Hart, In the Name of
the Republic, 18 & 25 March
2013. My review, Gravely
Mistaken History, critiques
the programme, at www.
academia.edu/3218006/.

the acts of violence committed against

our Roman Catholic fellow countrymen.
Living as a small minority we wish to
place on record the fact that we have lived
in harmony with the Roman Catholic
majority and that we have never been
subjected to any oppression or injustice as
a result of different religious beliefs.
The paper also began reporting the April
killings that day.
Hart, in his thesis and book, remained
silent on this West Cork Protestant
opinion and on the highly significant 12
May Protestant Convention resolution
that opposed unionist violence against
Catholics in Northern Ireland. Although
that resolutions final version noted the
April 1922 killings in West Cork, it also
asserted quite emphatically that southern
Protestants had not previously been subject to
sectarian hostility.
Harts failure to report the Protestant
Convention, the largest, most expressive and
definitive meeting is anomalous. Its motion in
its final form was advertised in the Irish Times

around the time Hart cited the newspaper

on the April killings (thesis, 366, n. 9; 367, n.
11; 370, n. 18; 371, n. 23, 25; 375, n. 39, 40; 379,
n. 53; 389, n. 87, for 28, 29 April, 1, 2 May).
The resolution, amended to take account
of the West Cork killings, was published in
the 3 May Irish Times under the headline,
Sectarian Outrages, Protestant Convention
in Dublin. The Convention was advertised
prominently on 4 May with, Public Notice,
Irish Protestant Convention to condemn
sectarian outrages and intolerance. Hart
stated that he did a complete survey of the
Irish Times from May 1916 to May 1923 (thesis,
459, 489; book, 316), yet he failed to report this
event. His complete survey of the Southern
Star (book, 316; thesis, 449) failed to note a
report of the Convention on 25 May 1922. This
demonstrates a faulty empirical method.
We know that Hart read the 4 May
1922 issue of the Irish Times prior to the
publication of his book in 1998, because he
cited that issue in an essay he published in
1996. Harts essay cited the newspaper to
support his own suggestion that the IRAs
attacks on Protestants might be termed
ethnic cleansing, although the Protestant
Convention in Dublin, advertised that same
day, emphatically denied the validity of
Harts argument.118
Of course, one can argue that members
of the Souths Protestant minority, now
isolated from their northern brethren by
a Partition that the former never wanted,
had reasons to conciliate the majority in
the Irish Free State by denying they had
been victimized by Catholic-Nationalist
sectarianism. What is implausible, however,
is the argument that Hart was therefore
somehow justified in ignoring entirely an
explicit denial of his own hypothesis made
in 1922, after the April killings, by the largest
and most representative body of southern
Irish Protestants. Yet, Harts non-treatment of
the Protestant Convention seems entirely in
character with his overall approaches to, and
his misuses of evidence concerning, both the
Kilmichael Ambush and the tragic events of
April 1922.

135

Field Day Review

Section Three
Southern Protestant
andAcademicViews
Harts allegations that IRA actions in 191922
were driven primarily by bitter sectarian
hatred of Protestants surely required more
robust evidence and analysis. This would
be true for PhD research produced in any
academic institution, but perhaps especially
in one whose leading academic voices, in the
past, had expressed opinions directly contrary
to Harts.
For example, in 1924 the Revd John Henry
Bernard, TCD Provost from 1919 to 1927,
declared that,
[d]uring the melancholy years 19201923,
there have, indeed, been outbursts of
violence directed at loyalist minorities, but
for the most part it has been qua loyalist
and not qua Protestant that the members
of the Church of Ireland have suffered.119
Bernard, it should be noted, was (as TCD
described him) a convinced unionist (his
family was from Co. Kerry) and a former
Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin.120
One might expect that a unionist
reminiscing soon afterwards would have
lamented IRA sectarianism, had he believed it
to be one of the organisations motives during
191922. Bernards opinions in fact mirrored
others often expressed within the southern
Protestant community, and so, arguably, Hart
should at least have considered them to be
important if not authoritative.
Similar Protestant opinions were so
commonplace in 191922 that they were
easily available to later historians, not least
the previously noted Protestant Convention.
In 1921, for instance, a US fact-finding
delegation reported a Methodist minister in
Limerick who said that Wesleyan ministers
entirely ridiculed the idea that southern
unionists were in danger. A Protestant
businessman from the same city commented
that Protestants were more fearful of Crown
forces than of Sinn Feiners.121 Their fears
were illustrated by the experience of Bantrys

136

leading trader, G. W. Biggs, a southern

unionist. Biggs wrote opposing Ulster
Unionist claims in the Irish Times on 24 July
1920, that,
I feel it my duty to protest very strongly
against this unfounded slander [of
intolerance on the part] of our Catholic
neighbours ... I have been resident in
Bantry for 43 years, during 33 of which I
have been engaged in business, and I have
received the greatest kindness, courtesy,
and support from all classes and creeds in
the country.
Immediately after the publication of his
letter, the Black & Tans burned down Biggss
substantial business premises and the
British military commandeered his home,
forcing Biggs to send his family to Dublin
while he, himself, went to live in a hotel.122
Sixth Division Brigade Major Bernard Law
Montgomery afterwards remarked, it
never bothered me a bit how many houses
we burned and I regarded all civilians
as shinners , including, it seems, G. W.
Biggs. A letter in the Times of London on 30
September 1920 from John Annan Bryce, a
younger brother of a former Chief Secretary
for Ireland, explained what had happened.
Annan Bryce complained of a British threat to
burn republican-owned properties, if those of
loyalists were targeted. He explained, citing G.
W. Biggss experience, there is no justification
for the issue of such a notice in this district,
where the only damage to loyalists premises
has been done by the police. Significantly,
in his later correspondence Annan Bryce
reported the arrest and deportation back to
Ireland of his wife Violet for attempting to
speak in Wales about British reprisal burnings
and other atrocities.123
Southern Protestant alienation from
British forces may be gleaned also from
Olga Pyne Clarkes observation concerning
her fathers and grandfathers clash with
the British Army in Cork during DecemberJanuary 1920-21.

118 The Protestant Experience

of Revolution in Southern
Ireland, in Richard English,
Graham Walker, eds.,
Unionism in Modern Ireland,
1996, 92, 97, n. 68. See
later discussion on Harts
ethnic cleansing claim.
There was time to revise
the 1998 book narrative. For
instance identifying initials of
interviewees in the essay were
changed for the subsequent
book, 96, n. 3039 (excl. n.
34), n. 43. Also, a reference to
a massacre of 14 [Protestant]
men in West Cork (92)
implies that the additional
Harbord victim in the thesis
had not yet beenexcluded.
119 The Church of Ireland since
Disestablishment, The Review
of the Churches, vol. 1, no. 1,
1924, in IT, 14 January1924.
120 John Henry Bernard,
19191927 (c. 18601927),
www.tcd.ie/provost/
history/former-provosts/
jh_bernard.php (accessed 18
September2013).
121 In a comment to a fact-inding
US American Commission on
Conditions in Ireland, Interim
Report, Supplemental Report,
the Religious issue, 1921, 115.
122 Biggss fate was noted in
David Hogan (pseud., Frank
Gallagher), The Four Glorious
Years (Dublin 1953), 115, a
book otherwise cited by Hart
(book, 205; thesis, 261).
123 Montgomery in Hamilton,
Monty, the Making of a
General, 158, 160. For
Annan Bryce letters, House
of Commons questions,
editorials, see Times (Lon.),
30 Sep, 8 Oct, 1, 2, 4, 9, 12,
16 Nov 1920, summarized in
Eamon Dyas, The Crowns
Campaign Against Protestant
Neutrality in Cork During the
Irish War of Independence,
Church & State 86, Autumn
2006, at, www.atholbooks.
org/archives/cands/cs_
articles/bryce.php [accessed
5 March2014].
124 Olga Pyne Clarke, She Came
of Decent People (London,
1985), 5152.
125 Macardle, 42344.

Examining PeterHart

J. Annan Bryce on Crown Forces

attacks on Protestants, Times, 30
September 1920.

126 Bradields fate was

commented upon in note
116. As discussed also later,
he featured in song at the
Magdalen College Cambridge
2013 ParnellLecture.
127 In 1915 (IT, 16 November),
Hammond denied he was the
leader of the [Dublin Diocesan
Synods] Orange section, but
explained, I would be proud
of the privilege if I were. The
Orange Order met openly in
Dublin in 1920 and espoused
its Protestant unionist
message. See IT, 10July.

One day [Cork Divisional Commander

General Strickland] stamped into my
fathers office and in his extremely rude,
brusque manner said, Look here Clarke,
you are trusted by both sides: its your
duty to give me information. Father,
looking him in the eye, calmly said, I will
not inform against my own countrymen.
It is your duty to control the rabble your
government has let loose on Ireland. Good
morning. Going purple in the face, the
General stormed out, crossed the Mall to
Grandfathers office, and received virtually
the same reply.124
Stricklands efforts arose in the context
of publicity surrounding the burning and
looting of Cork City Centre by Crown forces
on 11 December 1920, and a consequent
switch from unofficial to officially
sanctioned reprisal burnings in Janaury
1921.125 Borgonovos analysis (2006) suggests
that Stricklands attempts to recruit local
informers, such as Olga Pyne Clarkes
kinsmen, were countered by the IRA shooting
informers during the early months of 1921.
Though some were Protestant, it appears
that Stricklands attempts to polarize local
communities only increased at least some
Protestants alienation from British policies
and actions. For example, on 27 January
1921 the Times (London) Cork correspondent
reported many loyalist protests against
Strickland. They complained, it is now an
offence to remain neutral. The reporter
described the fate of the recently executed
west Cork loyalist John (a.k.a. Tom) Bradfield,
found guilty of having attempted to inform
the enemy of the presence and movement of
republican troops.126
It is clear that there were distinctions among
southern loyalists and unionists (both
Protestant and Roman Catholic) and within
the Protestant community itself. Southern
Protestant opinion was split, and there
appears to have been an active minority who
identified both with British military policies
and with contemporary actions in the North
by the Ulster Volunteer Force, the B-Specials,

137

Field Day Review

and other unionist forces. Clearly, for security

reasons, such southern loyalists did not
advertise their activities, but it appears that
their stance was more or less understood.
Their minority status within southern
Protestantism may be gleaned from the
failure of a motion at the Dublin diocesan
Church of Ireland Synod in October 1920.
It alleged that Protestants, in particular
churchmen, were subjected to injury and
intimidation for their political and religious
opinions due to a campaign of murder and
terrorism in the South and West (a synonym
for the territory not under Ulster Unionist
control). On encountering opposition at the
synod the proposer, Revd T. C. Hammond,
retreated, first by stating that the loyal
citizens referred to as under threat could
include Roman Catholics (a significant
admission on Hammonds part), and second
by admitting, [i]t was a matter of very deep
regret to many of them that associated with
the campaign of terror there were some,
happily only a few, who regarded themselves
as members of the Church of Ireland.
A Protestant republican was clearly, to
Hammond, a contradiction in terms.
The Irish Times reported on 19 October 1920
the synods dissection of Hammonds motion.
An editorial noted that the synod, deleted

138

the passage which referred to persecution on

religious grounds, and it refused to regard
the campaign of violence as being limited to
the South and West of Ireland. The editorial
continued, [i]n both respects [the synod]
showed a wise recognition of facts. It
affirmed, [t]here is no evidence that
Southern churchmen have been persecuted
merely on account of their religious
opinions. It was further noted that the then
Archbishop, Dr. Gregg, agreed generally with
these sentiments.
The avowedly unionist and determinedly
Protestant Irish Times, plus the assembled
representatives of Irelands largest Protestant
denomination, would surely have expressed
themselves differently had they experienced
Irish life differently. Revd T. C. Hammond,
who moved the motion, was a leading
member of the Orange Order127 and also
General Superintendent of the proselytising
Irish Church Missions (to the Roman
Catholics). Despite his criticisms of Irish
republicans and vehement denunciations
of Roman Catholicism, Hammonds
organization made no claims regarding
sectarian persecution by the IRA, apart
from the one rejected by Hammonds coreligionists. The Connellan Mission, for
which Hammond acted as Secretary, openly
sold and distributed a Protestant Truth
Society pamphlet, Rome Behind Sinn Fin (a
sequel to Rome behind the Great War) during
192122. In truth, Hammonds Irish Church
Missions was opposed to Roman Catholics
irrespective of what they did. In 1917 the
organizations AGM was informed that there
were too many Roman Catholic chaplains
serving at the front with the British Army,
who were not wanted. Association with such
people might permanently tinge returning
Protestant young men, it was suggested.128
In 1997, Trinity College historian Professor
R. B. McDowell, published his history of
southern unionists. McDowell, a Protestant
unionist, lived through the period concerned.
He stated, in relation to the April 1922
killings, armed bands shot down a dozen
Protestants, several of them well known

Times (London), 27 January 1921.

Loyalists mobilized as informers
by General Strickland suffered
from counter action by the IRA

128 IT, 17 April 1917. Unfortunately,

the National Library microilm
and Irish Times archive copy
of this article is damaged. I
am grateful to Eamon Dyas
for recovering a full copy in
London. See Warren Nelsons
highly sympathetic in-house
biography, T. C. Hammond,
his Life and Legacy in Ireland
and Australia (Carlisle, PA,
1994). In it, apart from a
fear of not being wanted in
the New Free State, there
is no discussion of any IRA
campaign against Protestants,
Nelson suggested (6669)
that potential danger [to
Hammond] lay in the fact
that he was used by both
sides as an intermediary, and
that, due to a consequent
misunderstanding, Hammond
was for a time on a hit list.
Reportedly, a republican who
later became an evangelist
said Hammond was saved
due to his reputation for
helping people regardless
of their religion. Hammond
reported that a bullet once
went through his sleeve, but
he was unsure if this was
a warning or a poor shot.
Hammond was certainly
politically prominent. The IT
(22 March 1922), reported
him as a distributor of Rome
Behind Sinn Fin (1921, 2nd
ed., republished in 2000 with
an appreciative preface by
Hammond admirer, Revd
Ian Paisley), in a court case
alleging breach of copyright,
see also IT, 30 July 1921.
Hammond unquestionably
raised the ire of devout Roman
Catholics. As the main leader
of an aggressive mission
to the Roman Catholics
within the Church of Ireland,
Hammond spared no efort in
insulting the Romish church,

Examining PeterHart

Troops of the Essex Regiment and

a Royal Irish Constabulary officer
outside the barracks at Clonakilty
(191921). IWM.

in converting waverers and

publicly parading successes.
He was ever vigilant also in
detecting papist inluences
within the Church of Ireland.
In May 1922, Hammond was
a founder member of the
Bethany Home, that took in
unwed Protestant mothers,
primarily, and sat on its
managing Committee until
his departure for Australia
in 1935. There, in the mid
1940s, Hammond, author of
In Understanding Be Men,
accused an Anglican Bishop of
importing Romanist ritualism
into a prayer book. During a
consequent legal challenge
to the publication, Hammond
was accused of inheriting from
his homeland an obviously
anti-Roman Catholic complex
and tends to ind something
Romish in everything he can,
Ruth Teale, The Red Book
Case, Journal of Religious
History, vol. 12, no. 1, June
1982, 79. See Niall Meehan,
Protestants were left as
Orphans, Church & State
102, 4th Quarter, 2010, at
www.academia.edu/350972/
Harvesting Souls for the
Lord, Dublin Review of Books,
18 June 2011, www.drb.ie/
essays/harvesting-souls-forthe-lord.
129 Crisis and Decline, the Fate
of the Southern Unionists
(Dublin, 1997), 127. Hart did
not engage with thisresearch.
130 Ralph C. V. Harbord
(CO/762/58), Richard
James Helen (CO/762/33),
William Jagoe (CO/762/4),
James McCarthy
(CO/762/13), William Perrot
(CO/762/121), Thomas
Sullivan(CO/762/175).

loyalists.129 As implied, the terms Protestant

and loyalist were distinguishable.
Hart did see six compensation claims
from reported April killings survivors. Four
claims referred only to loyalists under attack.
Revd Ralph Harbord referred to Protestant
loyalists, while the self-admitted informer
Richard Helen spoke of the massacre of
Protestants, before detailing attacks on
loyalists. William Jagoe, who claimed
his premises in Dunmanway were shot at,
was typical in his report that in the early
morning of 27 April 1922, an armed gang
visited the town and murdered three wellknown loyalists. Several other loyalists
escaped On the next night 5 other loyalists
were murdered.130
Lionel Curtis, British Prime Minister
Lloyd Georges imperial adviser and British
delegation secretary during Anglo-Irish
Treaty negotiations, summed up the
commonly held southern Protestant view.
This is significant, because Curtis fully
supported military suppression of the Irish
rebellion. He had been editor of Round
Table, the journal of a powerful group, to
which he belonged, that supported imperial
interests.131 In a lengthy June 1921 Round Table
article, based on his extensive interviews and

fact-gathering during a recent tour of Ireland,

Curtis declared that,
[t]o conceive the struggle as religious
in character is in any case misleading.
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
loyalists. The distinction is a fine but a
real one.132
It is unfortunate that Hart apparently did
not encounter Curtiss considered views,
because they might have helped answer
his curiously echoing questions fifty years
later: If a Protestant farmer was attacked,
was it because of his religion, his politics
or his land, or all three? Was personal spite
involved? (thesis, 62; book, 320)
Perhaps even more significantly, Curtis
was also the first to publish (in the same
article) an account of an Auxiliary false
surrender at Kilmichael,133 only eight months
after the ambush, which contradicted Harts
later interpretation of that incident.
And finally, a later Round Table article
commented, with reference to the April

139

Field Day Review

1922 killings in West Cork, that, Southern

Ireland boasts with justice that it has been
remarkably free from the purely sectarian
hatreds that have come to characterise
Belfast.134 This was treated as so self-evident
that that Daily News correspondent, Hugh
Martin, felt confident in observing in 1921,
The bogey of Catholic intolerance
in Ireland is no more to-day than a
chimera kept alive to frighten political
children with on this [English] side of
the channel.135
Thus, much evidence suggests that
Republican violence, even in its apparently
unauthorized forms in April 1922, tended
to have a rational military rather than an
irrational sectarian character. Many Southern
Protestants effectively denied that from the
summer of 1920 they were potential or actual
victims of murderous sectarian hostility.
However, in The Republic, the Fight for Irish
Independence (2013), Charles Townshend,
the external examiner of Harts PhD thesis,
suggested, there is a problem taking [the
Protestant Convention resolution] as unforced
testimony. He asserted, [i]f Protestants had
been subject to hostility, or even to what F. S.
L. Lyons in a famous phrase called repressive
tolerance, they would be more likely to play it
down than to emphasise it.136
Perhaps, but arguably it would be
eccentric for the representatives of victims
experiencing murderous treatment to deny
their communitys experience. Shooting
people for sectarian reasons is clearly
the opposite of repressive tolerance.
It is repressive intolerance. Logically,
Townshends view implies that, the worse the
treatment, the more likely that its victims
would deny or disavow it. In theory, then,
Lionel Curtiss statement that southern
Protestants did not complain of sectarian
persecution was evidence that in fact it had
occurred. In which case, surely the Protestant
Convention would have ignored the April
killings. There is no compelling reason
to believe that southern Irish Protestants
evinced signs of such counter-intuitive

140

behaviour in Ireland in May 1922, when

the Convention took place. Rather, their
representatives published view appears to
accurately reflect a settled understanding of
their position in a highly unsettled situation.
Questioning that understandingor, in
Harts case, ignoring entirely its expression
by the Conventionmay signify an adherence
to a preferred reading of Irish history, despite
the evidence. Such would be a product of
ideology, not historical research.
While claiming to question nationalist
mythology, Hart appears instead, and
ironically, to have systematically dismissed
and undermined the views of many, perhaps
most, southern Protestant unionists. His
analysis is essentially a rationalization of
sectarian ethnic separation of Protestants
and Roman Catholics in Ireland. It is in effect
a justification of Partition that was influenced
by the political nomenclature associated with
the post-1968 violence in Northern Ireland.
Hart referred later to republican and loyalist
paramilitaries during the 191222 period, as
a symptom of democratic and state failure
Full democracy was restored once ethnic
sovereignty or security was secured.137 In
other words, Partition was a good or bestcase-possible solution to intractable ethnoreligious differences and hatred. However,
the overwhelming majority of republicans in
northern and southern Ireland did not aspire
to create a sectarian ethnic state. Likewise,
Northern Ireland was hardly a democracy in
the [f ]ull sense, and, by contrast with the
Nationalists goal, it was based on a sectarian
identity claimed by unionists who comprised
a majority in only four of Northern Irelands
Six Counties.
Irish but more particularly Ulster
unionists recognized that a system of
sectarian privilege was threatened by majority
rule even under British jurisdiction.138 That
is why Ulster unionists successfully rebelled
against Home Rule during 191214, even
threatening a bloody Irish and British civil
war to thwart the will of Parliament and of
the great majority of Irelands inhabitants.139
Ironically, Hart was, in effect, imposing
sectarian categories, far more appropriate

131 Mowat, 90. Carroll Quigley,

The Anglo-American
Establishment, From Rhodes
to Cliveden (New York,
1981), 179. Quigley details
Curtis and co-thinkers
attempts to maintain the
inluence of the British
Empire and Commonwealth
during the course of the
twentiethcentury.
132 Curtis, Ireland, Round
Table, XI, no. 43, June 1921,
49697; Mowat, 72, refers to
Curtiss article as the most
fair minded of his sources,
though it is in fact sufused
with imperial condescension
toward theIrish.
133 See n. 43. Curtis,500.
134 The Brink of Civil War, Round
Table, XII, no. 47, June1922.

Examining PeterHart

135 Ireland in Insurrection, an

Englishmans record of Fact
by Hugh Martin (London
1921), 205, at www.academia.
edu/6292615/. An alternative
to Martins eyewitness
accounts of British atrocities
was, in addition to (the
later discussed) Tales of
the RIC, former Irish Times
and Morning Post (Lon.)
correspondent, C. H.
Brethertons The Real Ireland
(London 1925). He noted (24
25) the following Protestant
women, Mrs Erskine Childers
asking [English journalists]
to tea, and Madame Maud
Gonne MacBride, and Mrs
Stopford Greene [giving him]
a lively account of brutal
British atrocities that they
claimed to have witnessed.
Bretherton asserted (2627),
however, that the, Black and
Tans never commited one
tenth of the acts of terrorism
attributed to them, or one
hundreth part of the atrocities
perpetrated by the Irish
themselves ... Bretherton
noted (77) The impetus
that set the ball of rebellion
rolling in 1916 was supplied
in Ireland, as in other slaveminded countries, by the
international Jew. This antisemitic theme was presaged
by an observation (73) that De
Valeras father was a Maltese
Jew. As Morning Post
correspondent Bretherton
wrote on the April killings
on 29 April, The southern
Irish native is a barbarous
savage, with a strong inherent
penchant for murder, which
those responsible for him
his priests, his politicians
and his alleged organs of
enlightenmenthave not
only failed to eradicate from
his primitive bosom, but
have actually fostered. Hart
reported the Morning Posts
account the most reliable in
his thisis (374), but partially
reliable, in his book (279).
136 Charles Townshend, The
Republic, 371,

to Ulster Unionism, on Irish nationalist

ideologies, in ways that made political sense
only within an imperial or colonial context.
That is why such categories endured in
Northern Ireland. To be sure, southern Ireland
did become a conservative state dominated by
a Roman Catholic ethos, largely as a result of
Partition and the Irish Civil War, but it did not
become anti-Protestant; rather it incorporated
Protestant institutions into education, health
and social and moral welfare provision.140
As a result, both southern Protestants and
Catholics became subject to denominational
social control, and arguably the main object
of its architecture was the new Dublin
establishments control of the popular
majority. In the popular imagination,
freedom from imperial persecution was also
freedom from imperial religious persecution.
For this reason institutional Roman
Catholicism could claim an association with
the new state in a manner institutionalised
Protestantism found problematic.141
Harts conclusion that the April 1922
killings happened because Protestants were
fair game is not supported by evidence. On
the contrary, Hart supported his published
views only by ignoring or misrepresenting
facts that contradicted it. In effect, Hart
wrote a sectarian history that masqueraded
as brave and objective by denying and
displacing the ultimate Unionist and British
responsibilities for sectarianism in Irish
history. Hart placed responsibility instead
on those who were the historic victims of
imperial and colonial sectarianism, and who
since the 1790s had sought a non-sectarian
form of self-government. Indeed, that is
why non-sectarian Protestants were, to T. C.
Hammonds consternation, in republican
ranks in small but significant numbers.142
Had Irish republicanism in 191622 been
sectarian, as Hart depicted, it is most
unlikely that this Protestant participation
would have occurred. To paraphrase and
reverse Oxford professor Roy Fosters
dismissive phrase, Harts denial of the Irish
historical record was merely revisionism
with footnotes.143

AcademicResistance
Hart was given every opportunity, before
his untimely death in June 2010, to explain
anomalies or acknowledge errors in his
research. This he failed to do after the
publications of Brian Murphys review of
The IRA and its Enemies in 1998, Meda Ryans
Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter in 2003, and
Murphys and my Troubled History in 2008
all of which raised aspects of the critique
further developed here.144 Harts thesis
supervisor and examiner might have posed
some of these questions before a PhD was
awarded to the then graduate student. Since
a viva voce examination did not take place,
a final opportunity to do so was forgone.145
Harts work was subject instead, in its
published book form, to the verdict of his
academic peers and of the wider public.
Initially, Harts analysis was afforded high
praise, while his critics received summary
dismissal.146 Harts book was nominated by
Roy Foster as one of his books of the year in
December 1998. In addition, Foster chaired
the Ewart Biggs Prize panel that awarded the
prize in 1998 to Hart.147 Typically, Dr. Senia
Paseta approved highly of Harts innovative
and brilliant workfirst class historical
writingsuperbly researched, constantly
provocative and ultimately persuasive.
Likewise, Professor Paul Bew effused:
This is a great book. The first work on the
Irish revolution which can stand comparison
with the best of the historiography of the
French Revolution: brilliantly documented,
statistically sophisticated, and superbly
written. And, Professor Eunan OHalpin
remarked that,[Hart] has set a standard of
forensic documentary research which those
rushing to the defence of the good name of
Cork republicanism may conceivably emulate
but will surely not surpass.148
Contrary to OHalpins prediction,
however, Peter Harts critics have not
emulated the latters standards. Arguably,
the failure of most reviewers of Harts works
to perceive faults may be grounded in the
same ideologically and politically determined
considerations that have biased their attitudes

141

Field Day Review

An armoured Rolls Royce and

British soldiers at Kenmare, County
Kerry, in 1921. IWM.

towards Harts critics. Those attitudes were

conditioned by two factors.
The first was alarm, within the Irish
Republics political, media, and academic
establishments, with regard to any historical
accounts that might induce: first, any
sympathy in the South for the post-1968
nationalist revolt in Northern Ireland; second,
any objective understanding (in the South,
in Irish-America, etc.)149 of the historical and
contemporary reasons for the IRAs armed
campaign; and, third, any popular support
for Sinn Fins enhanced political role after
either the 1981 Hunger Strikes or, especially,
the 1994 IRA ceasefire.150 Instead, revisionist
accounts that promoted historical navelgazing, although described as courageously
self-questioning and de-mythologizing, were
preferred and promoted. Examining British
motives and actions was deprioritized in
favour of interrogating and misrepresenting
Irish attitudes. The liberal intelligentsia were
encouraged to believeand to promote the
belief thatthere were hidden sectarian
depths that exposed the true nature of Irish
nationalist and especially republican ideology
and practice. This motif was best exemplified
by the Irish-born BBC journalist Fergal Keane,

142

adopting the guise of deceived schoolboy,

who declared that,
[t]he campaign of terror waged against
Protestants in the Bandon valley in County
Cork was never in our textbooks, though
our classrooms were only a matter of miles
away. In fact, I had to wait until a Canadian
academic, Peter Hart, produced his
exceptional The IRA and its Enemies before
I learnt the extent of ethnic cleansing in
my own home country.151
Arguably, then, those who promoted
revisionist history had concluded that
any truly objective understanding of the
distinction in 191922, between the majority
of southern Protestant unionists and an active
minority of southern Protestant loyalists who
informed the British about IRA activities, was
too politically sensitive. Their strategy was to
identify the entire Irish War of Independence
as sectarian, which in turn could locate
both it and the contemporary conflict in
Northern Ireland within an acceptable,
pro-Partition ideological paradigm that
could reel in the unwary with its claims to
academic impartiality.

137 Peter Hart, Parliamentary

Politics and the Irish
Revolution, in Fearghal
McGarry, ed., Republicanism
in Modern Ireland (Dublin,
2004), 39. John Regans
two-word comment in his
IT review, 21 Aug 2004, was
NorthernIreland?.
138 On the signiicant extent of
sectarian, Protestant, control
of southern Irish society
subsisting into the twentieth
century, see Fergus Campbell,
The Irish Establishment
(Oxford, 2009), and my
review, Top People, Dublin
Review of Books, 14, Summer
2010, at www.academia.
edu/242123.
139 See Alice Stopford Greens
acerbic, Ourselves Alone
in Ulster (Dublin, 1918), at
www.academia.edu/6294474/
140 Niall Meehan, Protestants
were left as Orphans, Church
& State, 102, 4th Quarter,
2010, at www.academia.
edu/350972/; Church &
State and the Berthany
Home, History Ireland, vol. 18,
no. 5, Sep.Oct. 2010 at www.
academia.edu/320793/
141 Given its unequivocal
association with unionism.
See, Andrew Scholes,
The Church of Ireland and
the Third Home Rule Bill
(Sallins,2009).

Examining PeterHart

142 This included Sinn Fin

Ministers Robert Barton
and Ernest Blythe, as
well as head of publicity
Erskine Childers. Cork IRA
Protestants included Sam
Maguire from Dunmanway
and transportation oicers,
the brothers Jim and Miah
Grey (I am indebted to John
Borgonovo for this latter
information). See also, BMH
WS 1242 A. K. Wordsworth
on visits of IRA leaders to her
home 19181921; BMH WS
394 Presbyterian Minister
Revd J. A. Irwin on speaking
with Eamon De Valera in the
USA (a remarkable document);
BMH WS 632 Elizabeth
Bloxam, who refuted tales of
attacks onProtestants.
143 Roy Foster, We are all
Revisionists Now, Irish
Review, 1, 1986. Foster, a
supporter of Harts analysis,
concluded optimistically (5),
to say revisionist should
just be another way of saying
historian. See also Fosters
earlier History and the Irish
Question, Transactions
of the Royal Historical
Society, Fifth Series, vol.
33, 1983, where he wrote
(170), post the successful
emergence of Sinn Fin into
electoral politics after the
198081 HungerStrikes, as
revisionists, Irish scholars
have gone so far as to dismiss
most of the canon of Irish
history as conceived by the
generation of I916. However,
mid-twentieth-century
revisionism can itself be seen
as part of the pattern whereby
the study of Irish history
reacts in a Pavlovian way to
the dictates of politics; and
the whole process can only be
elucidated by considering the
roots of the Irish discovery of
their past, and the resulting
interpretations of that past,
on both sides of St Georges
Channel. It must also involve,
at the conclusion, some
consideration of very recent
history, trenching upon
politics. In so doing, this
paper exposes itself to most
of the criticisms it levels at
historys treatment of the Irish
question; and thus becomes
part of theprocess.

The second, closely related factor, was

the emergence of a liberal (tending towards
neoliberal) consensus in southern Ireland
that questioned pervasive Roman Catholic
influenceultimately, it is suggested
here, in order to discredit and dismantle
all ideological and institutional barriers,
traditional Irish nationalism included,
to the Irish Republics full incorporation
into transatlantic capitalism and the
European Union.
For many Irish liberals, historical
interpretations that identified the southern
Irish state, from the very moment of its
creation, as Catholic-nationalist and antiProtestant, appeared at least superficially
attractive, because they misrepresented
both historical and contemporary Irish
republicanism in ways that appeared
decidedly unattractive, backward, and
atavistic. This framework of ideas located
structural and sectarian problems outside
of a modernizing Irish state, which now
was perceived as freeing itself from overtly
Roman Catholic and republican influences,
but which also masked the maintenance of
socio-economic privilege and inequality.
Thus, Irish republicanism and Irish Roman
Catholicism were symbiotically linked
with a demythologized and discredited
southern past and an abhorrent northern
present. Harts history therefore answered an
ideological and political need, the imperatives
and perspectives of which framed the initially
and enthusiastically favourable scholarly
reaction to his books publication, as well
as its systematic celebration by overtly antirepublican journalists.
For example, Kevin Myers of the Irish Times
(later, Irish Independent, currently Sunday
Times), promoted Harts research from a
very early stage. In 1990, Myers approved
of Peters research, which, he argued,
suggested that the 191921 IRA were a form
of morality police, enforcing norms which
the new state in due course would impose
with the rule of law.152 In 1995, Myers called
for Harts brilliant research to be published,
even before the TCD library made his thesis
available. And Myers praised Harts masterly

study on publication in 1998 that explained

how mythology has concealed the truth
in Irish history.153 Indeed, Myers had been
assiduous in promoting the IRA/sectarianism
thesis from at least as early as December 1989,
when he admonished even David Fitzpatrick
for not supporting it in his chapter on Ireland
since 1870, in Roy Fosters authoritative and
classic-revisionist collection of essays on Irish
history. In that chapter, Fitzpatrick observed
that, few attacks on southern Protestants
were reported during the Troubles, though
many vacant houses were burned.154 Myers
argued, to the contrary, that [Tom] Barrys
men organised a pogrom of Protestants in
the Dunmanway area in April 1922. Myers
pursued the issue the following month and
persistently thereafter.155 Hart claimed that,
I did not even know [the April 1922 killings]
had taken place until a year into my research
(thesis, 372).156 It is therefore possible that
Myers (whom Hart acknowledged and
also cited in his thesis (377, 399)) was a
primary inspiration (though Hart merely
footnoted Myers in the book, 282, n. 67),
and that Myerss interpretation helped to
alter Fitzpatricks former view. Myers was
certainly mission driven, and he later made
the extraordinary, sweeping assertion that,
[m]urdering people for their religion was
what republicans had always done, especially
in their most celebrated period 191922. Only
the successful seizure of Irish historiography
by Irish republicans has concealed this
vital truth.157
Both Myerss and the academic
communitys promotion of Harts history
set off a low-level culture war because the
academy refused to acknowledge criticism of
Harts work, apart from issuing occasional,
contemptuous dismissals. However, Myerss
statements often were highly questionable.
For instance, his December 1989 column that
addressed the April killings pogrom also
alleged that a prime notion of Sinn Fin
Cork Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney (who
died later on hunger strike in Brixton prison
in 1920) was to murder the Catholic bishop
of Cork. Myers had also asserted earlier that
in September 1920, Alan Lendrum, Kilkee,

143

Field Day Review

Co. Clares Acting Resident Magistrate,

recently returned from fighting Bolsheviks
in the new Soviet Union, was buried up to
his neck on a beach, to await the incoming
tide and death. In addition, Myers claimed,
Lendrums IRA captors, becoming impatient,
dug up and reburied their victim nearer to
the waters edge, so as to hasten his demise.
Lendrums tragic story so impressed Myers
that he mentioned it four times, over five
weeks, between May and July 1989.158
A year and a half later, in January 1992,
Myers mentioned the story for a fifth and final
timewhen he admitted that, unfortunately,
the grisly story was, he now admitted, not
true, because the event in question had never
happened. Instead, when the IRA attempted
either to seize Lendrums car or to kidnap
him, he apparently produced a gun and was
shot dead. Lendrums body was secretly
buried near a lake edge and, on discovery, was
found to have clear water in his lungs, leading
to the salt-water saga concocted by British
propagandists.159 In that same January 1992
column, after representations from relatives,
Myers apologized as well for his untrue
allegation about Terence MacSwineys designs
on the life of Corks Roman Catholic bishop.
In fact, the story told by Myers,
about Lendrums watery grave, had been
immortalized way back in 1921, in Tales of
the RIC, which had constructed a parallel,
British propaganda, narrative of the War
of Independence. In a chapter entitled,
R.M., the book had renamed Lendrum
as Mayne and had concluded with, The
next flood tide put an end to a torture the
like of which Lenin and Trotsky could
hardly exceed for sheer devilrya clever
phrasing that linked Lendrums death to
British propaganda efforts to associate Irish
Republicanism with Bolshevism.160
Harts history elevated Myerss
observations on republican sectarianism
to the plane of academic research, where
critics of the republican sectarianism
narrative received short shrift. Typically, in
defending Peter Hart and his work, David
Fitzpatrick has referred to sometimes foul
as well as fair criticisms from those whom

144

he branded as unnamed apologists for

contemporary republicanism. They engage
in counter revisionist polemic, often ugly
and personally offensive. Professor Eunan
OHalpin (also of TCDs Modern History
Department) likewise (if more vaguely)
characterized critics of Gerard Murphys
Peter Hartinspired book, The Year of
Disappearances, Political Killings in Cork 192122
(2010), as ultramontane anti-revisionists,
fastidious academics or hybrids with a foot in
both camps.161
Despite these and other efforts to
exonerate Hart, the inexorable logic
of criticism gradually undermined his
historiography.162 Nevertheless, the attraction
of the sectarianism thesis is such that some
historians still support it, despite the lack of
corroborating evidence, albeit often now in
ways that appear more fair and balanced. For
instance, Professor Ronan Fanning observed
in Fatal Path (2013), [a]lthough the scale of
sectarian murders is the source of enduring
historiographical controversy, there can be
no doubt that at local level, most notably
in Cork, the IRA targeted some Protestants
simply because they were Protestants.163 [N]o
doubt?and yet, no source given either.
However, Fanning preceded his comment,
quoted above, with this sentence: Favourite
targets of the IRA, in Tom Bartletts words,
apart from soldiers and policemen, were
informers or touts, a catch-all category that
appears to have included the likes of tinkers,
tramps, ex-servicemen and Protestants.
But what, then, was Bartletts source on
page 403 of his celebrated textbook, Ireland,
a History (Cambridge, 2010)? Surprisingly
(or not?), no note clutters his narrative
on pages 402405. However, Bartletts
introduction to that chapter indicated a
principal source, David Fitzpatricks, The
Two Irelands (Oxford and New York, 1998).
Arguably, Bartletts scholarly debt was
appropriate, given that his own chapter
was titled, The Making of the Two Irelands,
191445. More important is that Bartletts
identification of the IRAs favourite targets
may have originated in Fitzpatricks text.164
Perhaps Bartlett was referencing in particular

Fosters essay opened (169)

with, History is more
backward in Ireland than in
any other country, wrote J.
R. Greens Anglo-Irish widow
iercely in 1912. The unnamed
distinguished historian deined
in relation to her husband
was Alice Stopford Green, a
Protestant who participated
on the Republican side in
the War of Independence,
see BMH WS 1242 A. K.
Wordsworth. Her niece, Dr
Dorothy Stopford did so also
in a medical capacity on behalf
of the IRA in West Cork, Mary
Walsh, BMH WS 556. See,
Leon Broin, Protestant
Nationalists in Revolutionary
Ireland: the Stopford
Connection (Dublin, 1985).
144 Brian Murphy review The
Month, September 1998;
Meda Ryan, Tom Barry;
Niall Meehan, Brian Murphy,
Troubled History, a 10 th
Anniversary Critique of Peter
Harts the IRA and its Enemies
(Aubane, 2008). See ive
issues of History Ireland, vol.
13, no. 26 (see also n.32).
145 Charles Townshend, email to
author, noting, the unusual
fact that there were no
meetings involved, 19 May
2008.
146 It continues. See Margaret
OCallaghan, Propaganda
Wars: contexts for
understanding the debate on
the meanings of the Irish War
of Independence, Journal
of the Old Athlone Society,
vol. 2, no. 9, 2013, 68, 69,
70, in which Conor Cruise
OBrien and Peter Harts
work was, respectively,
viliied and demonised,
instead of being, merely,
criticized. In addition, Charles
Townshends work is brilliant
and David Fitzpatricks
path breaking. In a review
of Charles Townshends,
The Republic, Marianne
Elliot construed criticism
of Hart as viliication,
Times Higher Education, to
which I responded, 3 & 17
October2013.

Examining PeterHart

147 Roy Foster, New Statesman,

4 December 1998. In 2006,
Foster complained that Declan
Kiberd gave an inaccurate
and inadequate impression of
the competition, after Kiberd
observed, for years some
who explored the blind-spots
of Irish nationalism were
awarded the [Ewart Biggs]
prize. Foster then listed some
winners, including Hart, IT, 7
July2006.
148 Senia Paseta, English
Historical Review, vol. 115,
i. 460, February 2000, 246;
Paul Bew, Canadian Journal
of History, Aug 1999, vol.
34, no. 2; Eunan OHalpin,
Times Literary Supplement,
6 November 1998. Other
positive academic responses
are noted in Troubled History,
Meehan, Murphy, eds.
149 See Niall Meehan, Kerby
Miller, For God and the
Empire, an Irish Historians
Rapid Rise, Strange Fall and
Remarkable Resurrection,
Field Day Review 7, 2011,
15169.

Fitzpatricks un-sourced observation (95), that

Adulterers, homosexuals, tinkers, beggars,
ex-servicemen, Protestants: these were the
many dangerous and potentially dangerous
lethal labels for Irelands inhabitants in the
revolutionary period.
If so, then it is peculiar that both Bartlett
and Fanning, for whatever reasons, omitted
Fitzpatricks startling suggestion that the
IRA systematically targeted adulterers
and homosexuals.165 Fitzpatricks notable
claim in turn may have relied (although it
was not referenced) on an observation, also
un-sourced, made by Peter Hart in 1993,
that the IRA had attacked a combination of
unmarried mothers, adulterers and mixed
(Catholic and Protestant) couples.166
Essentially, most Irish historians, building
on and adapting each others words, have
written that the IRA were sectarian, bigoted,
and viciously so, because that assertion has
become a necessary article of a political
faith that subsists without benefit of the
veneer of evidence that Harts 1998 history
once appeared to provide. By contrast,
acknowledging that Roman Catholic was a
more dangerous label in the new Northern
Ireland area than was Protestant in the
South never seems to have occurred to Hart
or Fitzpatrick or to those who referenced
their observations.
For many years, Professor Fitzpatrick
promoted without question Harts 1996 essay
claim that what happened in Cork in 1922
might be termed ethnic cleansing. On two
specific occasions, however, Fitzpatrick failed
to note that, in Harts later essay collection
entitled The IRA at War (2003), he retreated
from his 1996 ethnic cleansing claim, and
instead stated clearly that, What happened
in Southern Ireland did not constitute ethnic
cleansing. Paradoxically, Harts 2003 book
also contained the 1996 essay containing
his original ethnic cleansing observation.
Indeed, the contrasting arguments are made
within merely nine pages of each other. On
the two occasions when Fitzpatrick cited
Harts 1996 claim, repeated in Harts 2003
book, he ignored Harts new view. I pointed
out the error publicly to Professor Fitzpatrick

on each occasionand also privately.167 Not

until 2013 did Fitzpatrick finally acknowledge
Harts change of mind; he did so in a footnote,
in an essay on Protestant population decline,
that analyzed the twentieth-century history
of County Corks Methodist congregations.
Fitzpatrick introduced his acknowledgment,
however, by restating in his text Harts 1996
(and 2003 republished) ethnic cleansing
claim, in the context of disparaging what
he termed the vicious ad hominem attacks
on Hart and his allies. Only then did the
acknowledging footnote follow. And
Fitzpatrick concluded his discussion by
arguing, without irony and with ultimate
chutzpah, that, [t]he spectre of Protestant
extermination has distracted debate about
revolutionary Ireland for too long, and
should be laid to rest. The inexorable decline
of Southern Protestantism was mainly
self inflicted.168
Fitzpatricks 2013 analysis overturned
the assertions that he (and others) had been
making for more than fifteen years, based
largely on the work of his student, Peter Hart.
Now, however, it appears that Harts claim (or,
rather, its refutations) had distracted debate.
Its continued investigation threatened to
de-legitimate revisionist historiography.
Fitzpatricks new analysis of Corks Methodist
community, which partly returned him to
his 1989 position (which Kevin Myers had
assailed), put the subject to rest for himat
least intellectually. Whether it has otherwise
done so, however, is unclear. On 11 January
2013, when Fitzpatrick spoke about his
Methodist research at the annual Parnell
Lecture in Magdalene College Cambridge,
he surprised his audience by prefacing his
remarks by singing a song, a ballad entitled,
A New Revenge for Skibbereen:
Twas in the month of April in the year
of 22
We took it out on the Protestants; we could
only catch a few
In Bandon and Dunmanway, Kinsale
and Skibbereen
Their colour it was Orange and they
trampled on the Green

145

Field Day Review

Old Buttimer came down quaking

What do you want?, says he
Come out or well make ye, we want
your drapery
The missus tried to argue
Go to bed old women, says we
We sprayed his brains with bullets that
Ireland might be free
We visited Tom Bradfield[169], we dressed
up in Khaki
Says he, Youre welcome officers
A fine snug farm had he
We gave him a grand court martial
And sentenced Tom for to die
We tried a note around his neck
It read convicted spy
Farewell to all ye Protestants, so prim and
dry and tight
Ye thought ye owned old Ireland
Yet ye fled without a fight
From Bandon and Dunmanway, Kinsale
and Skibbereen
Ye scuttled out of the County Cork and
never since was seen
Twas revenge for Skibbereen
Based on their remarks after Fitzpatricks
performance, it appears that the members of
his amazed audience believed this sectarian
doggerel to be a genuine republican ballad.
Fitzpatrick responded to the audience as
follows (the square-bracketed words below
were spoken by others):
Well, I think at this stage Chairman I
need to make an admission. One of the
most unfair and unkind claims made
about my lamented former student Peter
Hart was that he had falsified historical
evidence in pursuit of the thesis. In my
opinion he did nothing of the kind. What
he did was to exaggerate evidence of
sectarianism, which was particular in
violent manifestations to a couple of fairly
brief phases, and to over-dramatize what
occurred in a manner which has misled all
but the close readers of what he actually
wrote. But I do not wish to lay myself open
to this accusation so I have to confess
that the genesis of the ballad was that I

146

wrote it yesterday morning. [Laughter,

oh wonderful] I hasten to add I did not
write the tune, which I presume plenty of
people here despite my poor performance
would have been able vaguely to identify
as the Galtee Mountain Boy. No, I see many
perplexed and amazed at the claim. [You
have almost silenced your audience].170
Fitzpatricks revisionist views of Irish
republican intent and of the dynamics of
Protestant-Catholic relations, in song and
in story, differ in form from Peter Harts
prose. Though more orthodox in expression,
Harts content was in tune with his mentors
performance. Both suffer a common
evidential weakness, however, in that it is
against them. Southern Protestants did not in
general experience sectarian attacks because
republicans did not generally engage in them.

150 In the Irish Times, Cassandralike columnist Kevin Myers

anticipated the IRA ceaseire
on 31 August 1994 by writing
(27 August) that the Truce
in 1921 had led to sectarian
bloodletting. Violence in
Belfast against thousands
of Catholics was predicated
by Myers on IRA attacks
on Crown forces, while in
the south in April 1922,
[t]he IRA mounted a pogrom
against [ten] Protestants
in the Dunmanway area.
He observed, Hundreds of
Protestants were put out
of that part of West Cork.
Myers carried on relentlessly
in opposition to the Peace
Process, though he wavered
momentarily, admitting
at one point, Blessed are
the peacemakers and
Wrong: totally and utterly
wrong, wrong, wrong. Its
an unsettling, disorienting
thing inally to realise that
the prediction about which
I have written thousands of
words turns out to have been
complete rubbish. Myers then
efectively admitted, in the
words of former Irish Times
Editor, Conor Brady, that he
had been wrong about being
wrong, by reverting to his
former position, IT, 15 April
1998, also in Conor Brady
letter to IT, 17 January 2007.
Myers was also wrong in his 27
August 1994 article in stating
that anti-Treaty leader Eamon
de Valera stayed silent
about the April killingssee
Macardle, 705.
151 The Independent (London), 5
May2001.
152 IT, 23 May1990.

Examining PeterHart

153 IT, 12 Jan 1995 (Hart thesis

available TCD Library, 29 Jan
1996), 25 May 1998. Myerss
initial promotion of Harts
Kilmichael analysis led to a
six-month controversy on the
letters page. The letters were
later collected in a pamphlet,
Kilmichael, the False Surrender,
a discussion with Pete Hart
Pdraig Cuanachin, D. R.
OConnor Lysaght, Dr. Brian
Murphy and Meda Ryan and,
Jack Lane, Brendan Cliford,
Why the Ballot was followed
by the Bullet (Aubane, 1999).
The pamphlet included an
unpublished (by the IT) letter
from Meda Ryan questioning
for the irst time Harts
interviewdating.
154 David Fitzpatrick, Ireland since
1870, in Roy Foster, ed., The
Oxford Illustrated History of
Ireland (Oxford 1989), 246.
155 IT, 19 Dec 1989, 9 Jan 1990, 7
Jan 1994, 27 Aug 1994, 20 Sep
1994, 12 Jan 1995 (Soon I
trust Peter Harts brilliant
account of the IRA war in West
Cork will be published.), 12
July 1995, 29 May 1998 (it is
obligatory to read Peter Harts
The IRA and its Enemies. It is a
masterpiece.), 2 Jun1999.
156 An admission not included in
the book at thispoint.
157 Kevin Myers, Watching the
Door, a memoir 197178
(Dublin, 2006), 87. Myerss
support for Hart is outlined
in more detail in Meeehan,
Distorting Irish History
[One], at www.academia.
edu/357237/, 68.
158 IT, 30 May, 22 June, 3 & 6
July1989
159 IT, 29 January 1992. See,
Eoin Sheehan, Telling Tales:
the story of the burial alive
and drowning of a Clare RM
in 1920, History Ireland,
vol. 18, no. 1, JanFeb 2010,
3637; also Pdraig Ruairc,
Death of Alan Lendrum,
www.waroindependence.
info/?page_id=139 (accessed
22 Nov2013).

160 Anonymous, Tales of the RIC

(Edinburgh, 1921), 75. Another
class-conscious and typically
anti-Semitic chapter concluded
by identifying a Gaelic
organiser named Padraig
OKelly as in reality a Jewish
Bolshevik agent, recently
suddenly disappeared from
Glasgow when the police began
to get unpleasantly attentive,
A Jew in Gaelic Clothing, 261.
161 David Fitzpatrick, review
of John Borgonovo, The
Dynamics of War and
Revolution, Cork City 1916
1918 (Sallins, 2013), History
Ireland vol. 21, no. 5, SepOct
2013 (and letter responses,
author, Fitzpatrick, vol. 22,
nos 1-3, at www.academia.
edu/5027882/); Introduction,
David Fitzpatrick, ed., Terror
in Ireland, 19161923 (Dublin,
2012), 5. Eunan OHalpin,
Problematic Killing during the
War of Independence and its
Aftermath: Civilian Spies and
Informers, in Mary Ann Lyons,
James Kelly, eds., Death and
Dying in Ireland, Britain and
Europe (Sallins, 2013), 343.
OHalpins accompanying note
lists Caoimhe Nic Dhibhids
Irish Times review, Eugenio
Biagini in Reviews in History,
David Fitzpatrick in Dublin
Review of Books and Pdraig
Ruairc in History Ireland. The
last is a mistake and should
have stated John Borgonovo.
OHalpin possibly missed my
review at www.academia.
edu/372431/.
162 It was, as Fitzpatrick observed,
corroded, Dr.Regan and Mr.
Snide, History Ireland, vol. 20,
no. 3, MayJun2012.
163 Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path:
British Government and Irish
Revolution 19101922 (London,
2013), 194.
164 And, by extension, in Harts
1998 book, which Bartlett also
cited, in note4.

165 The Irish separatist and

former British colonial
oicial, Sir Roger Casement,
was condemned to death
for treason in 1916. British
government oicials showed
clemency campaigners
explicit homosexual material
in Casements diaries and
successfully undermined their
campaign. See Angus Mitchell,
an adherent of the forgeddiary theory, Casements
Black Diaries: closed books
reopened, History Ireland,
vol. 1, no. 3, Autumn 1997.
This is not a point that
exercizedFitzpatrick.
166 Class, Community and the Irish
Republican Army in Cork, 1917
1923, in Patrick OFlanagan,
Cornelius Buttimer, eds., Cork
History and Society (Dublin,
1993), 977. I have been unable
to trace an origin for the
homosexuals reference.
Participation in punitive
mixed marriage expeditions
by IRA oicers Charlie Browne
and Frank Busteed against
their own parents was not
documented byHart.
167 Nall Meehan, Distorting
Irish History Two, the road
from Dunmanway: Peter
Harts treatment of the 1922
April killings in West Cork,
Spinwatch, 24 May 2011,
www.academia.edu/612672/;
Terror in Ireland 191623,
David Fitzpatrick, ed., review
by Niall Meehan (including
David Fitzpatrick, Eve
Morrison, responses), www.
academia.edu/1871818/.
David Fitzpatrick, History In
a hurry, www.drb.ie/more_
details/110317/History_
In_A_Hurry.aspx (accessed
18 June 2012); Introduction,
David Fitzpatrick, ed., Terror
in Ireland, 19161923, 4.
Peter Hart, The Protestant
Experience of Revolution in
Southern Ireland, in Richard
English, Graham Walker, eds.,
Unionism in Modern Ireland
(Dublin, 1996), 92; same
essay in Peter Hart, The IRA
at War (Oxford, 2003), 237;
contrast with Ethnic Conlict
in Ireland, 246. Niall Meehan,
David Fitzpatrick emails, 12, 23
December2012.

168 David Fitzpatrick, Protestant

Depopulation in Revolutionary
Ireland, in Irish Historical
Studies, XXXVIII, November
2013, 643, 659.
169 The old [James] Buttimer
mentioned was an April 1922
killings victim (although
there is no evidence that
his drapery business was a
motive). Tom Bradield was
previously discussed as one
of two cousins (the other was
named T. J.) who were killed
as admitted spies during late
January 1921 by, respectively,
Denis Lordan and Tom Barry.
Both Bradields thought the
armed men to whom they
divulged information were
British, the irst time to Denis
Lordan by accident, the second
to Tom Barry by the latters
design. This is the same Tom
Bradield referred to earlier in
note 116, and in a previously
cited Times (London) report
of 27 January 1921. A third
Bradield cousin, John
Bradield, was the inal victim
of the 1922 April/Bandon
Valley killings. Barry related his
encounter with Tom Bradield
in his memoir. He decided
on foot of his publishers
request, out of deference to
these traitors descendants,
not to name those executed,
although he pointed out that
their names were accessible in
press reports. Tom Barry, 105,
10910. See BMH WS 0470
Denis Lordan, where Bradield
isnamed.
170 David Fitzpatrick, The
Spectre of Ethnic Cleansing
in Revolutionary Ireland,
Parnell Lecture, Magdalene
College Cambridge, 11 January
2013, recording of lecture in
authorspossession.

147