The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (26 page)

Five days after Altnaveigh, on 22 June, two London IRA members, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan, assassinated the Irish-born Sir Henry Wilson, the former Chief of the Imperial General Staff of the British Army, outside his home in London. Their action was a result of Wilson's role as a security adviser to the Northern Government during 1922 when the Specials carried out some of their most notorious attacks. Ironically, Wilson had urged the Northern Government to dispense with the Specials ( Jeffery, 2006b: 281–4).

This was the last straw for the British Government, which had lost patience with the Provisional Government's toleration of the anti-treaty IRA and its efforts to subvert the treaty with a watered-down constitution. Believing Rory O’Connor's unit in the Four Courts to be responsible for Wilson's killing, the British Government demanded that the Provisional Government take action against the IRA, or face a British invasion to remove them. On 27 June, the kidnapping of the Provisional Government Army's Deputy Chief-of-Staff, Colonel J. J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell, by the IRA in the Four Courts, provoked the Provisional Government further, although it is likely that it had already taken the decision to move against the IRA. On the
morning of 28 June 1922 the Provisional Government Army attacked the Four Courts with heavy artillery, finally igniting the long-expected Irish Civil War (Hopkinson, 1988: 112–18.)

THE IRISH CIVIL WAR, 1922–3

The IRA held the advantage over the Provisional Government Army at the outset of the Civil War. The republican side had a significant manpower advantage with approximately 13,000 men, in contrast to the army's 8,000. The IRA also enjoyed the same advantage that it had held against the crown forces during the War of Independence of fighting a guerrilla campaign from its own localities against a regular army that had to force its way into hostile territory. However, these advantages would not last for long as the Provisional Government Army launched a recruitment campaign that would soon lead to it outstripping the IRA's superiority in personnel, and it also had access to ample supplies of arms and ammunition provided by the British Government (Hokpinson, 1988: 127).

The best chance the IRA had of winning the Civil War was in the first couple of months but this opportunity was lost by its adoption of a largely defensive strategy. The initial fighting took place in Dublin, where republicans had occupied a number of prominent buildings, including hotels, appearing not to have learned the lessons of 1916. The bombardment of the Four Courts continued for a week before the republicans evacuated it. In the process a number of leading republicans were captured, including Rory O’Connor, the ring-leader of the occupation, Liam Mellows and Tom Barry, and Cathal Brugha was shot dead, effectively removing an important part of the IRA's leadership cadre for the duration of the conflict. An unintended consequence of the fight for the Four Courts was the destruction of the Irish Public Record Office which was also housed there and which the IRA had used as an ammunition store; the bulk of Irish state papers dating back to the thirteenth century were obliterated. Having cleared the Four Courts, the Provisional Government Army soon regained control of Dublin City and the fighting moved to the countryside (Hopkinson, 1988: 123–5).

Republican resistance was strongest in Munster and Connaught, especially in Kerry, Tipperary, Mayo and Sligo. By August 1922, the army's manpower advantage (recruitment had increased its size to 35,000, and it would eventually reach 50,000) was beginning to tell as it drove southwards into republican territory, re-capturing significant urban centres in Kerry, Cork, Tipperary and Waterford. It also made effective use of coastal landings in Mayo and Kerry. By contrast, the IRA was disjointed and had difficulty maintaining communication channels between its disparate units.

Once more Cumann na mBan members were deployed as despatch carriers but the Provisional Government Army, well aware of how they had acted in a similar capacity in the War of Independence, took a much harder line against them. Over 500 women were imprisoned during the Civil War and many of them undertook hunger strikes at various times in protest against the conditions of their incarceration. One woman, Nan Hogan from Clare, died afterwards as a result of the weakened state of her health (McCoole, 2008: 98, 121). The Irish Government and its army treated republican women much more harshly than the British had during the War of Independence.

The IRA also lacked finance and had to resort to looting, commandeering goods and supplies and bank robberies, all of which made its campaign of resistance increasingly unpopular with the civilian population. The sense of the IRA as outlaws was reinforced by the strong opposition to them from the Roman Catholic Church. In October 1922 the hierarchy stated emphatically its support for the treaty settlement when it issued a pastoral letter recognising the legitimacy of the Provisional Government and declaring that the IRA's campaign lacked ‘moral sanction’ as a result of which the killing of soldiers of the Provisional Government's Army amounted to ‘murder before God’. Republicans were threatened with excommunication and any priests suspected of supporting them would be suspended (Murray, 2000: 75–6).

August 1922 was a pivotal point in the Civil War. The death of Griffith from a brain haemorrhage on 12 August, followed by the killing of Collins in an IRA ambush in west Cork 10 days later, removed the most senior political and military figures on the Provisional Government side. It also ended any slim hope of a negotiated settlement that might still have been a possibility while Collins lived. The new Provisional Government leadership resorted to harsher policies that Collins might not have been prepared to adopt. The IRA's tactics also changed at this time. Recognising the overwhelming advantage held by the army in regard to manpower and munitions, it resorted to outright guerrilla warfare, retreating to rural outposts from which it was more difficult for the army to dislodge it. By September a stalemate had set in. The IRA had lost any chance of winning the war and at best could only hope to hold out long enough to force the Provisional Government to agree to a truce (Hopkinson, 1988: 172–3, 179).

Meanwhile, important political developments had also taken place. On 5 September the Third Dáil convened, but was not attended by the antitreaty Sinn Féin TDs who continued to recognise the authority of the Second Dáil. In October the anti-treaty politicians established their own cabinet. The principal figures in the Provisional Government were now the President, W. T. Cosgrave, and the Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins. On 28 September 1922 the Dáil passed an emergency powers resolution that signalled its intent to take a tougher line with the IRA
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. It empowered
the army to set up military courts ‘with full powers of enquiring into charges and inflicting punishments on persons found guilty of acts calculated to interfere with or delay the effective establishment of the authority of the Government’. This covered offences such as attacks against the army, looting and unauthorised possession of arms and explosives, for which the military courts were given the authority to impose ‘punishment of death or of penal servitude’.

This new policy resulted in the controversial execution of 77 republican prisoners between November 1922 and the end of the war. The first executions took place in Dublin on 17 November when five men who had been caught in possession of arms were shot. One of the highest profile victims was Erskine Childers, who was shot by a firing squad on 24 November after being arrested while in possession of a small automatic pistol that had originally been given to him by Collins. Childers was the publicity minister of the Republican Government and was not active in the IRA. Technically he was in breach of the emergency powers regulations because he was not authorised to carry the gun, though it is difficult to see how he posed any significant military threat to the Provisional Government (Hopkinson, 1988: 189–90). The most controversial executions were those of Rory O’Connor, Dick Barrett, Joe McKelvey and Liam Mellows, carried out in Mountjoy Prison on 8 December, in response to the killing the previous day of a protreaty TD, Seán Hales, by the IRA. Incidentally, Hales's brother, Tom, was a leading IRA figure in Cork, illustrating the extent to which the treaty split and the Civil War divided families.

If the executions policy was intended as a deterrent, then it appears to have been effective as no more TDs were targeted by the IRA. The army's Chief-of-Staff, Richard Mulcahy, argued for the executions on the grounds that if they were not official policy, it would be almost impossible to prevent the army from carrying out its own unofficial ones. The policy was also seen by its proponents as essential in protecting a democratically elected government. While the policy did not determine the outcome of the war, it does appear to have hastened its conclusion (Hopkinson, 1988: 191; Kissane, 2005: 87). Yet, this came at a price for the reputation of the government. The IRA was effectively defeated by December 1922, yet executions peaked early in 1923 and continued long after there was any apparent need for them. The choice of victims was also at times bizarre. John Maguire was executed in Mayo in April 1923, yet his older brother, the IRA leader, Tom Maguire, who had been in prison since October 1922 and was undoubtedly a bigger threat to the government, was never executed, suggesting that the authorities were wary of executing certain prominent republicans.

The government's reputation was damaged further by unauthorised atrocities carried out by its forces. The most infamous of these was the killing
of eight republican prisoners at Ballyseedy in County Kerry in March 1923. Nine IRA men were tied to land mines and blown up, with only one surviving, having been blown clear of the blast. The killings were a reprisal for the deaths of five soldiers following an IRA booby-trap bomb at nearby Knocknagoshel. In another controversial incident four republicans, including Brian MacNeill, whose father Eoin MacNeill was a minister in the Provisional Government, were shot dead by the army on Benbulben Mountain in Sligo in September 1922. Republican allegations that they were shot after they surrendered are difficult to substantiate but appear to be supported by circumstantial evidence (Farry, 2012: 102; Hopkinson, 1988: 240–1;).

Many of the most controversial incidents carried out in the name of the government were undertaken by its
Criminal Investigation Department (CID)
, ‘an armed plain-clothes force’ that ‘initially combined detective, security, and military and political intelligence functions’. CID's principal targets were republican opponents of the state in Dublin City and it was staffed by a number of Collins's old Squad. It soon earned a reputation for mistreating prisoners and killing republican suspects in controversial circumstances. The most notorious incident that the CID is suspected of involvement with was the killing of Noel Lemass in July 1923. The older brother of the future Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, was abducted by plain clothes men in Dublin City in July 1923 and his body was found some months later in the Wicklow Mountains with signs that he had been tortured. His killing was particularly controversial as it took place two months after the end of the Civil War (O’Halpin, 1999: 3–4, 11–14).

Criminal Investigation Department (CID)
: Free State intelligence unit that operated during the Civil War and earned a reputation for ill-treatment and controversial killings of republicans.

Republicans were also responsible for atrocities, including the killing of Dr Thomas O’Higgins, a medical doctor from County Laois, who had no involvement in politics or the Civil War but was targeted because he was the father of Kevin O’Higgins. Sometimes controversial deaths were the result of what was considered to be collateral damage, as in the case of seven-year-old Emmet McGarry, who died when republicans burned down the house of his father, Seán McGarry, who was a member of the Irish Free State Senate (Dolan, 2003: 143; Hopkinson, 1988: 195–6).

Although IRA resistance had effectively ended by early 1923, the war continued, largely because the IRA's Chief-of-Staff, Liam Lynch, refused to surrender. He was shot dead by Free State troops in the Knockmealdown Mountains in County Tipperary on 10 April 1923 and soon afterwards, on 24 May, his successor, Frank Aiken, ordered a ceasefire. The IRA did not surrender or give up its arms, but simply ended its campaign and melted away.

The most enduring legacy of the Irish Civil War is undoubtedly the cleavage in Irish politics. For the remainder of the twentieth century the two largest parties in the state were Fianna Fáil (formed after a split in anti-treaty Sinn Féin in 1926) and Fine Gael, the direct descendant of
Cumann na nGaedheal
and pro-treaty Sinn Féin. This remained the case until the Irish general election of 2011, when Fianna Fáil was overtaken by Labour as the second largest party. The Civil War division continued to overshadow Irish politics until the 1970s, by which time the revolutionary generation had retired or died. The deaths of prominent revolutionaries during the Civil War deprived the fledgling state of the important political talent of people like Collins, Griffith, Childers, Brugha and Harry Boland (who was shot dead in July 1922). The bitterness that resulted from the atrocities carried out on both sides was one of the more tragic legacies of the short fratricidal conflict.

Cumann na nGaedheal
: Political party formed in 1922 from pro-treaty Sinn Féin.

EPILOGUE: THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE TWO IRELANDS, 1923–5

Another legacy of the Civil War was the consolidation of democratic rule in the new state. The first serious threat to its existence had been overcome. This was followed in 1924 by the quashing of an army mutiny, precipitated by a small number of Free State soldiers who were unhappy with army demobilisation and reorganisation after the Civil War and who felt that the Cumann na nGaedheal Government had drifted too far from Collins's agenda for seeking an end to partition. By the end of 1924 the mutineers and their supporters in government had been purged and the principle of civilian control of the army established beyond doubt. While elements of the IRA survived in the south and had brief moments of activity, including the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins in 1927, skirmishes with the Blueshirts in the early 1930s, some dalliances with the Nazis during the 1940s and an ultimately unsuccessful border campaign between 1956 and 1962, the republican army never again posed a serious threat to the southern Irish state until the Northern Irish troubles in the 1970s.