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Old November 28th, 2022 #1
jagd messer
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Default Irish Civil War executions

1922: The lasting legacy of Irish Civil War executions



Kevin O'Higgins (centre), signed the execution order for his best man Rory O'Connor (right); Éamon De Valera (left) was also at O'Higgins' wedding.


In October 1921 a young Irish independence leader posed for photos on his wedding day with his bride and his best man. Just over a year later, in December 1922, Kevin O'Higgins signed the execution order that condemned his best man to death. Rory O'Connor was executed by firing squad.

The execution of anti-Treaty IRA fighters by the new Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War remains one of the most infamous aspects of the 11-month conflict. The executions began a century ago this month and continued until 30 May 1923, by which stage 81 people had been executed.

The execution of O'Connor remains symbolic of a conflict which pitted former comrades in the fight for Irish independence from Britain against each other.

In the summer of 1922 the military forces of the new government in Dublin had made big gains against the IRA fighters who were opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which had brought an end to the conflict with Britain. But in the autumn the war was dragging on, anti-Treaty fighters were using guerrilla tactics and there was no immediate end in sight.

In September the new government had passed legislation commonly known as the Public Safety Act, which imposed martial law and gave military tribunals the ability to impose punishments - including the death penalty - for a range of offences including possessing arms, ammunition or explosives.


Cycle of violence

Eunan O'Halpin, a retired professor of contemporary Irish history at Trinity College Dublin, says there was a feeling of "exasperation" in the new government that the anti-Treaty forces would not surrender. "By late August they don't have a single village and there's a kind of exasperation there on the Free State side because the republicans militarily won't give up and they politically have no leadership with whom effective negotiations can take place," he says. "And so you get the emergence of a pattern of small-scale War of Independence-style engagements, which are much harder for the National Army." "The rebels are no longer taking territory and taking buildings, they're now doing it on a kind of hit-and-run basis and that builds irritation within the cabinet about these kind of killings."


1922: The new Irish state descends into civil war

Prof O'Halpin also points out that since early 1922 civilians were being executed - mainly by anti-Treaty fighters - after being accused of spying, while there were also killings of Protestants, such as in Bandon Valley, which he describes as "plainly sectarian in impact".

The uncle of the new leader of the Free State WT Cosgrave was shot dead in September in the family pub. In October, in response to the Public Safety Act, the leader of the anti-Treaty forces said the army of the Free State was a legitimate target, as were politicians who voted for the act.

"The introduction by the Free State of legal execution is a consequence, rather than the initiation of, a cycle of violence that is still continuing," says Prof O'Halpin.

The fifth man executed - on 24 November - remains one of the most well-known. Erskine Childers was born in England, educated at private school and Cambridge University and served in the British Army in the Boer War before becoming a committed supporter of Irish independence. He was part of the Irish delegation that negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British government but was strongly opposed to the final agreement and supported the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War. He went on the run but was captured, tried by a military court on the charge of possessing a pistol, and executed.

His son went on to serve as president of Ireland in the 1970s.

His great-grandson, also called Erskine, says he believes he was "taken out over what he knew and was privy to, and the worry about how beautifully and sharply he could write it all down"."Writers like Erskine are just impossible to ignore," he says.

He also believes there was an inevitability that once his grandfather was caught that he would be shot, following the first four executions of men aged between 18 and 21. "Their lives were just ended on a technicality during a conflict. They were not military targets like Erskine certainly was," he says. "After shooting teenagers to show that the government meant business, and to instil fear, why show mercy to someone they had spent seven months carefully destroying the character and reputation of?"Executing Erskine was a gift to the WT Cosgrave government. He made it easy for them."

Mr Childers also argues that the full story of the executions can never be truly understood due to the destruction of documents.


Erskine Childers



At 52, Erskine Childers was the oldest man executed by the Irish Free State

Prof O'Halpin argues that as the executions continued the Civil War became "almost a social war" as the Free State leaders sought to "quieten the country down".

"They are very anxious that small fry, that young fellas, that undisciplined guys going around with guns be captured and executed as much as possible to put 'manners' on some people," he says. "That's not a political thing - that's about social unrest. "They use very strong language saying that the social order will collapse if we don't have more executions around the country."

The bitterness and trauma caused by the executions continues to resonate today. Mr Childers says they are "internalized in Irish society, in our collective bloodstreams". "There has been a culture of avoidance around unprocessed grief, which isn't helped further by a culture of selective remembrance," he says.

"In the last few years there's been professional levels of making sure the Irish public has their hands held tightly through contested history. "We don't want anyone going to the library to read further into the history themselves because that's bad for business.

"My great-grandmother Molly wasn't allowed to mourn her dead husband for two years after his death."

Prof O'Halpin argues that on the political side of things the ramifications of the executions were not as long-lasting as might be expected. "There is a lot of talk in Ireland around the commemoration of the bitterness of the Civil War - we have to look at other civil wars," he says. "For example in August 1923 in Ireland the losers are allowed to take part in a general election - where else would something like that happen? "I won't praise the Free State for that but I think it did lead to the rapid stabilisation of Irish politics. "It didn't feel like it at the time but it led quite quickly to the acceptance of democratic norms."

Mr Childers says as the centenaries are marked, much pain remains for descendants of those executed. "Many of the boys and men executed were the sole money earners for their entire families," he says. "Family direct descendants to those executed that I've spoken with have conveyed awful stories. "All I could say to some is: 'I hear and see you and I am angry with you.' "At 100 years these families don't want a pity party - they want to been seen and heard, and, trust me, there is still pain."

1922: The lasting legacy of Irish Civil War executions

28 XI 2022.
 
Old June 9th, 2023 #2
jagd messer
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Default The hurt remains: Ballyseedy and the story of a bomb blast that still roars 100 years later

This weekend marks 100 years from the massacre of eight IRA anti-treaty men at Ballyseedy. Mar 4th 2023


PAUDIE FULLER SITS in the living room of his old farmhouse in rural north Kerry surrounded by pictures of grandchildren and extended family. He is 81-years-old and one of the last direct blood connections to Ireland’s revolutionary birth – his father, Stephen, fought in the War of Independence and took the anti-treaty side in the subsequent Civil War.

Stephen Fuller’s war record is vast with battles and fights against the British with his fellow IRA men in the townland of Killflynn near Tralee in north Kerry. But it is the story of how he became a lone survivor in one of Ireland’s darkest days, in the massacre at Ballyseedy, that has kept his memory alive to historians and locals.

On 7 March 1923 nine men were taken in a truck from their prison in Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee on the orders of the Free State National Army – tied around a landmine and murdered in reprisal for the killing of soldiers the day before. The nine men were Patrick Buckley from Scartaglin, John Daly from Castleisland, Pat Hartnett from Listowel, George O’Shea, Tim Tuomey and Stephen Fuller from Kilflynn, James Walsh of Churchill, Michael O’Connell from Castleisland, and John O’Connor from Innishannon, Co Cork. Eight died that day, only Fuller survived.

Now Paudie Fuller, a former Fianna Fáil councillor, sits in the family’s farmhouse in the isolated townland of Kilflynn and tells a story of the rawness of the trauma suffered in the fields and boreens of that picturesque rural landscape. In a broad bellowing North Kerry accent with his eyes fixed and bright he tells of the impact on the lives of those directly affected and how his father’s stoic acceptance of the horror meant that he rarely spoke of it.

Paudie Fuller doesn’t spare his language when speaking about the events of 100 years ago and declares: “It was an atrocity. It was brutal murder, it was a f##king war crime.”

Three of the men killed at Ballyseedy were from the Kilflynn area and the passage of time has not dulled the understanding and hurt suffered by the surviving family members. They were arrested inside a dugout by National Army troops a week before.

In the local community sprinkled across the rural area of fields and ditches Fuller said that the “hurt remains”. “They talk about it, they enquire about it. There’s a lot of hurt about it, there’s a couple of families who were blown to pieces because of it – that is what happened,” he said.

In the Dáil in 1923 it was claimed that the men were not killed by the National Army but in fact killed as they cleared a mine from the road. Fuller has been hoping for an apology from the State and he will meet Tánaiste Micheál Martin this weekend to discuss the issue about the Dáil record. “The record is wrong and it should’ve been corrected long ago. This was an attack by Ireland on its own people – if my father hadn’t survived no one would know about it,” he said.

The issue of the Dáil record is centred around the comments by then Chief of Staff of the army and Minister for Defence General Richard Mulcahy in which he claimed the men were killed as they attempted to defuse their own device. But Stephen Fuller told a different story and what is now accepted as the reality is a tale of barbaric murder and slaughter by the burgeoning Free State in response to similar atrocities of the anti-treaty IRA.

In a BBC interview from 1980 Stephen Fuller tells the reality of that day. “He gave us a cigarette, he said ‘that’s the last cigarette you’ll ever smoke’. He said ‘we’ve got to blow you up with a mine’.

We were removed out to a lorry and made to lie flat and taken out to Ballyseedy. We arrived out and the language was abusive. One fella called us Irish bastards and he was Irish himself.

“Another fella was asked to say his prayers – he said ‘no prayers, our fellas got no time for prayers – some of ye might go to heaven and might our fellas there’. “They tied us then, our hands behind our back, and left about a foot between the hands from the next fella and tied us in a circle around the mine and tied our legs and knees with a rope. “Then the captain said we could be praying away as long as we like. The next fella to me said his prayers and I said mine too. He said goodbye and I said goodbye and the next fella picked it up and they said goodbye lads and off it went and I went up with it of course,”
he said.

Fuller, in a miracle of the blast radius and violence of the explosion, was severed from the ropes and flung high into the sky, landing into a drainage ditch nearby.

Go back

To understand the events of Ballyseedy there is a need to go back to 1923 and, through the research of historians Owen O’Shea and University College Cork’s John Borgonovo, see what the situation on the ground was at the time. Local historian Owen O’Shea, who has just published a book on the period No Middle Path: The Civil War in Kerry, said that his research has found that such was the slaughter at Ballyseedy, that dismembered body parts lay scattered around – and it was this carnage that allowed Fuller’s body go undiscovered.

He would later make his way, severely burned with stones embedded under his skin, to a house and spend the rest of the Civil War being protected by the people of Kerry loyal to the Anti-Treaty side. O’Shea said that the other men were dead almost instantly, with some of them shot as they lay dying on the roadway. The Kerry historian said that the men’s mutilated bodies were taken in coffins to the local barracks.

Family members came to view the remains and as they arrived at the gate. Paddy O’Daly, the man in charge of the National Army in Kerry, had placed an army band to play lively ragtime music at the gate. Violence broke out as the soldiers intimidated and verbally abused the families – the coffins were cracked open. One of the families, O’Shea said, could only identify the remains of their loved one because of the curls of his hair.

It was not the end of the bloodletting – on 12 March in Cahirsiveen five IRA prisoners were blown up in a mine – again the National Army were blamed.

In Killarney at Countess Bridge on 7 March 1923 four IRA prisoners were also killed in an explosion – this was a new tactic that saw the Civil War violence descend to a level of pure barbaric extra-judicial killings.

But what had caused a supposed disciplined force to become an army that saw extra-judicial killings and summary executions as the way to go?

Bitter

The fighting was particularly bitter in County Kerry from June 1922 to March 1923 since Irish National Army troops took back Tralee in an amphibious landing. Both O’Shea and Borgonovo said that the violence took an even more sinister turn with the arrival of two men in the county – Major General Paddy O’Daly and intelligence officer David Nelligan.

O’Daly was a former member of Michael Collins’ assassination squad based in Dublin who killed spies and British agents in some of the most famous incidents of the War of Independence.

Dave Nelligan was an ex Dublin Metropolitan Police officer who acted as a spy for Collins inside Dublin Castle and passed critical information to the IRA as they prosecuted their fight against the Crown forces.

Both men then took on senior roles in the Civil War after the Treaty and were part of the Dublin Guard – a group of National Army soldiers who were tasked with solving the Kerry insurgency.

Borgonovo said: “The most extreme and contested of National Army violence took place under the direction, or command, or it was closely associated with Major General Paddy O’Daly and Colonel David Neligan. “One of the interesting aspects of the Kerry case study is that both of those characters were very closely associated with Michael Collins, and were kind of protegees of Collins. “Then among the Dublin Guard leadership, who were also implicated in some of this, are some people who are closely associated with Collins and so that raises difficult questions about the period”.

The historians reference an incident in Kenmare, County Kerry when O’Daly led a group of soldiers that saw the brutal beating of two women in their home. They were the daughters of Dr Randall McCarthy. A handgun was left behind – later identified as that owned by O’Daly – on the handle, it was claimed, were notches denoting the amount of kills he had made. On that occasion, like in regard to the other killings, a blind eye was turned by Mulcahy and WT Cosgrave, the then leader of the Irish Government.

Knocknagoshel

O’Shea said that the apparent excuse for Ballyseedy was the killing of five soldiers in a booby trap bombing in the townland of Knocknagoshel in north Kerry the week previous. It happened on 6 March 1923 when a tip was received that there was a dugout and arms dump at a woodland near Castleisland. It was a ruse and a trap by the anti-Treaty IRA to kill intelligence officers. The soldiers went there, including senior Dublin Guard officers, and as they inspected the structure the bomb was detonated killing five instantly with one soldier Private Patrick O’Brien surviving.

Three Kerry men were killed in the blast; Patrick ‘Pats’ O’Connor, Laurence O’Connor for Lissycurry in Causeway and Michael Galvin from Killarney. Two Dublin Guard soldiers Capt Edward Stapleton and Capt Michael Dunne were also killed. The horror of that incident can not be understated – O’Connor’s decapitated head was found by a school girl later in a stream.

O’Shea said this sent O’Daly into a rage and he had to be held back from going and killing the prisoners. He then sent an order that IRA prisoners would be used to defuse landmines and clear booby trapped locations. But the historian believes that the enacting of legislation to permit the execution of anti-treaty IRA fighters gave an approval for O’Daly’s tactics.

O’Shea believes that the Kerry National Army command, under O’Daly, interpreted that to be a carte blanche to commit extra-judicial killing. “That was outside the laws and rules of warfare and outside the norms of what would be expected from an army,” he said. He said there was combined pressure from central Government and National Army command that drove O’Daly to greater amounts of brutality. O’Shea said there is a large volume of evidence that shows both Nelligan and O’Daly engaged in, or at least condoned, “extensive abuse and torture” of anti-treaty prisoners.

He also said there is evidence of the murder of prisoners either in transit or in military custody. This was total war and O’Shea added: “Of course, it must be said that the IRA were attacking and killing Free State Army soldiers in large numbers. And actually, there were more Free State Army soldiers killed during the civil war than the IRA,” he said.

The statistics show 173 people were killed during in the Civil War in Kerry, with 86 of those identified as Pro-Treaty.

Whatever about the broad brutality of the war in the county, it was Knocknagoshel that sent O’Daly, O’Shea said, even further into a spiral of murder and reprisal. “On hearing of Knocknagoshel, he went into a rage – he had to be physically restrained,” he said.

Just 24 hours after the killing of the Free State troops the nine prisoners were beaten and tortured – at one point they were shown nine coffins in a room with one of those, it has been claimed, carrying the name of Stephen Fuller.

O’Shea’s research from witness statements said that a barricade was built by National Army officers and a landmine placed in it – this was to be a staged incident and made to look like the IRA were killed by one of their own mines. In the aftermath of the mine explosion the army issued a statement, and held enquiries, one led by O’Daly himself, that claimed it was an accident.

But a Free State military officer Niall Harrington, acting as a quasi whistleblower, dismissed the reports and revealed that the killings were orchestrated and part of the Dublin Guard’s activities to bring the war to an end. The scene at Ballyseedy is now marked by a spectacular monument. It is on the side of a busy main road and far from the rural isolation of 100 years ago.

Ballyseedy monument, Co Kerry.

Nearby a garden centre welcomes visitors, close by also is Ballyseede Castle Hotel popular with tourists and visitors to the area. While the scene is quiet and the debris and horror of the day has vanished with time – the relatives of the dead men have not rested. John O’Shea, the nephew of George O’Shea, had recently campaigned along with Paudie Fuller to have the Dáil record corrected.

The Irish Independent reported that a recent motion on Kerry County Council to seek a correction of the Dáil record failed. It seems that the council at least is as divided as the events of a century ago.

John O’Shea said that the passage of time “hasn’t dulled it for us, it is emotional”. “I feel it is great that they be commemorated and honoured and remembered – but I would welcome any effort to correct the Dáil record,” he said.

In Kilkenny yesterday, when asked by The Journal, Tánaiste Micheál Martin was non-committal on a state apology. This weekend there are competing commemorations at the site – one from Fianna Fáil and the other from Sinn Féin. Regardless of the political machinations and reticence to address the issue head on – Paudie Fuller and John O’Shea and other relatives will pay tribute to their loved ones.

Ballyseedy will return to a quiet townland of boreens, woodland and roadway – the victims and perpetrators barely explained or understood – the events a century later still too raw to extinguish the generational hurt and grief.

The four killed at Countess Bridge, Killarney were also tied to a mine, Again one survived to say what happened and on March 12 the Free State tied five men to a mine at Bahaghs near Cahersiveen, All were blown to bits and it was Lieut Harrington who resigned from the Free State army and told the tale. Dorothy Macardle’s Tragedies of Kerry tells the story of those awful events.


Making a difference - TheJournal.ie
https://www.thejournal.ie/ballyseedy...tion-civil-war...
09 VI 2023.
 
Old August 15th, 2023 #3
jagd messer
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Default 100 years on from the execution of Robert Erskine Childers

Robert Erskine Childers


Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of the execution of Robert Erskine Childers, the British- born gun runner and father of former president Erskine Childers. Donal Byrne looks back on his life and death.

Public school at Haileybury College, a first in law from Cambridge's most elite college and a career in the British public service are hardly the credentials you would expect of a man who became a gun runner for the Irish Volunteers.

Yet by the time Robert Erskine Childers sailed his yacht, 'Asgard’ into Howth, laden with hundreds of rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition and delivered them into the eager arms of the Irish Volunteers in 1914 - two years before the Easter Rising - this servant of the British empire had become that and more.

Erskine Childers was an enigma. A man who signed up for the Boer War because he believed in the British Empire when it was at its most powerful, but who subsequently became impassioned by the case for Home Rule for Ireland.

He had spent some of his formative years on a 2,000-acre estate owned by his Irish mother’s family. As he grew older, he moved back and forth between his English world and his Irish one seamlessly, it would appear.

Like many Anglo-Irish people at the time, his identity was somewhere "in the middle of the Irish Sea" his great-grandson, also Erskine, told me when I recently interviewed him in New York.

He and his cousin Robert Barton undertook a car tour of Ireland in 1908 and witnessed a level of deprivation, poverty and inequality that convinced them Home Rule was unquestionably the only solution for the country’s future.

Only weeks after the gun running into Howth and Kilcoole in Co Wicklow, Childers enlisted into what became the RAF as an intelligence officer. He was a man who appeared to move from cause to cause with an inflexible determination to do the right thing.

His wife, whom he met on a tour of the United States, was of equally strong will and also a fervent supporter of Irish nationalism. She was descended from the original Puritans who fled England on the Mayflower. Small wonder then that she would share Childers’ political passion.

When Childers met Molly Osgood in Boston it was, according to Childers’ great-grandson "fireworks … He said he would marry her, or no one". Another writer, Basil Williams, said the couple "felt and thought for the rest of their lives as one being".

Molly had been invalided in a skating accident in her youth and could not walk unaided, yet she was the one who helmed the Asgard into Howth. She, Childers and others - ably helped by two hardy sailors from Donegal - had made a perilous journey from Hamburg.

Not alone was the weather atrocious, but at one stage they passed dangerously close to ships of the British fleet. They waved nonchalantly at the ships, passing themselves as a contented cruising party.

During that voyage, Childers took many photographs, knowing their value as propaganda to the Irish Volunteers. He took care, however, to ensure that none of them in any way indicated the extent of his wife’s disability.

The yacht was met at Howth by Éamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith and many others.


Robert Erskine Childers as a volunteer in the Honourable Artillery Company, a regiment of the British Army, circa 1900.

In defence of small nations, Childers went to war again. When he returned from World War I, he immediately offered his services to Sinn Féin. His cousin Robert at that stage had become a militant republican activist.

Initially, he was seen as valuable to Sinn Féin by De Valera and Collins. Arthur Griffith it seems, was less enthusiastic about a man with Erskine Childers’ background. It was an animosity that would grow into intense dislike, hatred even, as events during the Treaty negotiations would later indicate.

Childers beavered away as a propagandist and when the team to negotiate the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was being selected there were two things that ensured his inclusion. One was his closeness to De Valera - an advantage to De Valera, who would remain in Ireland - and his understanding of the workings and machinations of the British establishment.

He was appointed secretary to the delegation - an important distinction that others would highlight during the negotiations. In the words of Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin historian Dr Martin Maguire, he was a man who began to behave more like a negotiator or plenipotentiary rather than an administrator.

In fact, this constant intrusion into the negotiations became a major issue. Childers assiduously questioned the smallest of detail, especially in relation to security matters and the oath of allegiance.

In his arguments, he became more obstinate and implacable. "Arthur Griffith grew to hate the man", notes Maguire.

He was also hated by the British side, notably Churchill, who regarded him as a traitor to his class and former allegiances.

Later, during the Treaty debates in Dublin, there occurred a crushing blow for Childers and his reputation. As Childers incessantly argued that the Treaty left Ireland irretrievably under British control, Arthur Griffith exploded and told him he would not reply to "any damned Englishman" in the chamber.

His great-grandson said it was probably the laughter that followed that was the most wounding aspect of the exchange for him. He also believes it was Griffith’s way of removing Childers from the political and public stage.

The Civil War that followed the acceptance of the Treaty became increasingly ruthless as the nascent State fought for its existence. It was perhaps at its most vicious in the south and it was there that Childers retreated to continue his opposition through his writings.

However, he was also suspected of military activities that threatened the State.


Irish politician and author Robert Erskine Childers, circa 1920.

It was no surprise therefore when he was cornered in the house where he had spent some of his childhood years - Glendalough House in Wicklow. For him, it was home as much as any other place was.

His Irish mother, Anna had sent her children there to spare them from infection after she and her husband had been diagnosed with TB. Following her husband’s death, she was confined to a facility in England and died five years later, having never seen them again. Her correspondence to them makes for pitiful reading.

Emergency legislation at the time of Childers’ arrest provided for the death penalty for possession of a gun, at a time when there were guns everywhere in Ireland.

Ironically, it was the possession of a .32 caliber ‘Destroyer’ pistol that sealed his fate. That gun, he said, had been given to him by Michael Collins in more convivial times.

He was tried and found guilty by a military court under the new legislation and an appeal was duly lodged. However, before that appeal was even heard he was given the news of his impending execution.

On the night before he died, he was visited by his then teenage son, who would become President Erskine Childers in 1973.

During that short meeting he urged his son not to carry with him the bitterness of the Civil War and to forgive all who had signed his death warrant. Throughout his life, his son never did speak of that meeting in any detail.

The next morning, at 7am on 24 November 1922, he walked into a yard at Beggar’s Bush Barracks and shook hands with the members of a firing squad. He urged them to take a step forward towards him as it would be "easier that way".

Later, Molly requested the return of his personal items - his pipe, his cigarette case and cufflinks among them - but they had been stolen, something that caused her great anguish.

There are those who may know little or nothing about Robert Erskine Childers’ political and revolutionary CV, but he is globally famous for another achievement.

He was a very talented writer. His 1903 novel, 'Riddle of the Sands' - regarded by many as the prototype of modern spy novels - has never been out of print in almost 120 years.

Set around the Frisian Islands in the North Sea, it presciently observed how easily the German fleet could spearhead an attack on the English coastline.

British author John le Carre described it as "one of the great foundation stones of the contemporary novel of espionage and adventure with political teeth".

Molly Childers lived on quietly in Dublin, rearing her two sons and honouring the legacy of her husband.

On the day of his inauguration as president, his son was said to have asked his wife Rita, "I wonder what Erskine and Molly would have made of me now?"


100 years on from the execution of Robert Erskine Childers 15 VIII 2023.
 
Old January 1st, 2024 #4
jagd messer
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Default Book reveals the lives of Sligo’s slain Noble Six

Book reveals the lives of Sligo’s slain Noble Six


‘The Six: the Lives and Memorialisation of Sligo’s Noble Six’ was written by Robert Mulraney (Independent archaeologist), Dr Marion Dowd (Atlantic Technological University) and Dr James Bonsall (Fourth Dimension Prospection Ltd).


A revealing book on Sligo’s Noble Six has cast fresh light on the lives of the Noble Six who were executed by Free State forces on Kings Mountain near Ben Bulben on September 20th 1922.

And it was fitting that the book “The Six”-The Lives And Memorialisation Of Sligo’s Noble Six was launched in Liber bookshop 100 years to the day of the killings and just a few hours after a very impressive commemoration for Brigadier Seamus Devins, Adjutant Brian MacNeill, Captain Harry Benson, Lieutenant Paddy Carroll and Volunteers Tommy Langan and Joe Banks.

Carroll, Langan and Banks were from Sligo town, Devins was from Grange, Benson from Ballisodare, and MacNeill from Dublin.

In September 1922, the Free State Army began to close in on the headquarters of the North Sligo IRA at Rahelly House 12km to the north of Sligo town. The IRA were forced to evacuate the house and retreated to Benbulben Mountain and safe houses in the vicinity. The army followed in close pursuit.

On 20 September 1922, Brigadier General Seamus Devins, Divisional Adjutant Brian Mac Néill, Lieutenant Paddy Carroll and Volunteer Joseph Banks were captured on King’s Mountain and executed. A few hours later, Captain Harry Benson and Volunteer Tommy Langan were killed on Benwiskin Mountain. In time, the six men became known as “Sligo’s Noble Six”.

This well-produced book written by James Bonsall, Marion Dowd and Robert Mulraney is packed with valuable new insights on just who they were. The team decided to write the book earlier this year when they realised how little was known about the six men. The book explores the lives of the six men based on contemporary newspapers, intelligence reports, military archives, audio recordings and interviews with relatives.

The book was launched by noted historian Dr Michael Farry in Liber Bookshop in Sligo town, with entertainment supplied by Carmel Gunning who sang a song written decades ago about the Noble Six. The launch was attended by relatives of the men, including Senator Michael McDowell, nephew of Brian Mac Néill; Dr Jimmy Devins, grandson of Seamus Devins; and Aisling Kenehan, grandniece of Joe Banks. In welcoming all, one of the authors James Bonsall said the trio of archaeologists began excavating the Tormore hideout cave and it was there they realised the importance of the Noble Six to the cave.

“It was initially supposed to be a chapter, but I came up with 140,000 words and we also spoke with some of the relatives, got the poetry and various other matters that had been forgotten. “The main thrust was shedding light on their lives. Everyone in Sligo knows about the Noble Six but very few could tell you about the lives that they lived. I am very grateful to the families of the Noble Six for their help in giving us such valuable insights”.

Co-author Robert Mulraney read a witness statement from an IRA Intelligence officer Michael O’Donoghue about the night before the Noble Six were executed. “When he got to Rahelly House which was the IRA headquarters in north Sligo he encountered a night of songs, stories and poetry and fun. “It makes me very happy to know that they all had this night of fun before what happened to them.”

Dr Farry read a poem about what happened on the day they were killed called Benbulben September 1922. It was written from the perspective of a Free State solider caught up in the action on the mountain.

Carmel Gunning sang a song about the Noble Six that she got from Ellen Lynch in the 1970s.

Ellen was a young girl who grew up near Rahelly House in the revolutionary period.

Dr Farry said the book was he perfect mix between the personal with all those great details about the Six, the photographs and especially all the memories from the relatives mixed with the historical matter-the detailed research and the measured and exact writing. “This is a fascinating book, a model of its kind, focused on a single incident, full of previously unrecorded details and illuminating the larger picture. He added: “Due recognition is given to other historians who have worked on this, by relatives, historians and Joe McGowan’s recent great book “Even The Heather Bled’ and the research over many years by Des Gilhawley and also those great recordings made by Danny McHugh.

“I like how it is not shy about correcting previous versions of the story, including some of mine, and that is how it should be in a work like this and there will probably be corrections and amendments to this book as we go forward and that’s the way history works”. He added: “The introductory chapter on the actual event is a model on writing about a controversial event and especially when there are different accounts. “It challenges some accounts. and it accepts possible contradictions and uncertainties and is short and factual and should become the bench mark on these killings. “But the chapters on the Six are very important. “They ranged in age from Joe Banks at 18 to Seamus Devins, who was 34. I love all those details. “Paddy Carroll danced with Mary Freyne in Grange Hall on the Sunday night before the Wednesday he was killed. “Joe Banks, the youngest was a painter in a coach builder’s yard and he was the son of a tailor. Harry Benson was the youngest of eight children and his father was a farmer who died when he was young. “Harry worked as a shop boy in Noone’s of Sligo and he was a great Irish dancer and footballer, and he played on the Sligo county team that beat Mayo in the 1920 Connacht semi-final. “But they lost to Galway in the final and he neither smoked nor drank and there is a great photo of himself, and Bea Kilgannon taken on September 12, eight days before he was killed.

“Paddy Carroll also won medals for Irish dancing and his older brother Michael was in the Merchant Navy and he died in a tragic accident in Bordeaux. His father died in 1918 of the flu and Paddy had to take the leading role in the family. “For a while he continued his mother’s work of selling milk and potatoes and then he worked in Wood’s Hardware in Castle Street.

“Interestingly, Benson, Carroll, Langan and Devins-all their fathers were dead, and they had to take the leading role in their families.

“There is a lot about Devins and MacNeill, so it was a case of what to leave out. “Seamus Devins was the only married man and his wife Mary Clancy was a teacher in Grange. Her father was an RIC man as were her two brothers in Leitrim.


He added: “The term Noble Six was first used about a year after their deaths and was originally only used by republicans in the 1920s until it was first used in The Sligo Champion in 1932. In 1935 it entered the common consciousness of Sligo.”

He added that he loved all the poems about the Noble Six. The earliest poem was ‘Captain Harry Benson IRA’ was published in the Connachtman just days after the deaths of the Six.



Book reveals the lives of Sligo’s slain Noble Six

01 I 2024.
 
Old January 1st, 2024 #5
jagd messer
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Default Pro and anti-Treaty factions

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execut...rish_Civil_War
Executions during the Irish Civil War - Wikipedia
After an emergency cabinet meeting, the Free State government decided on the retaliatory executions of four prominent Republicans. Accordingly, on 8 December 1922, the day …


Pro and anti-Treaty factions

For ten years there was widespread discrimination against everyone who was classed as Anti-Treaty. Many to find work emigrated to the USA.
 
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