Kilmichael Ambush Centenary talk transcript 28 Nov 2020 Niall Meehan

Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies, 2002

IRA in Cork in 1921 were defeated by spies infiltrators and British Intelligence This paper investigates the spies involved and their impact. Severe IRA losses occurred at Rahanisky Clonmult Nadd Mourne Abbey due to the information supplied to the British authorities

History Ireland, 2012

The Kilmichael Ambush, 28 November 1920: 2012 History Ireland discussion with historians, relatives of Kilmichael Ambush participants and of IRA veterans. Maureen Deasy (daughter of IRA veteran Liam Deasy (brother of Kilmichael Ambush casualty Pat Deasy); Sean Kelleher (son of IRA veteran Tom Kelleher); Maura O’Donovan (daughter of Kilmichael Ambush veteran Pat O’Donovan); Marion O’Driscoll (wife of solicitor Jim O’Driscoll; John Young (son of Kilmichael Ambush veteran Ned Young); plus historians Niall Meehan, Eve Morrison, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc. Also two appendices: statement by John Young (son of Ned young) and Sunday Times report of statement

Southern Star, 2017

The outcome of the first West Cork History Festival The advertising blurb for the First West Cork History festival this year told us that it, "… will span a diverse set of places, historical subjects and periods, from the local to the international, ranging from the Knights Templar to the events of the Irish revolutionary period in West Cork. Leading historians will be joined by journalists and senior diplomats, and while much of their focus will be on Irish themes, the perspective will be international. The festival will be informal, participatory and with a menu for the intellectually omnivorous." This was all very welcome but it is a pity that the Festival did not invite any local historians to address it on the history of West Cork and in particular on the controversial issues that have bedevilled that history since publication of the late Professor Peter Hart’s work. He created the current interest in West Cork’s history some twenty years ago. Everybody knows this. This Festival was indebted to him for this interest. However, the serious discussion on his work occurred outside the Festival in the pages of the Southern Star and elsewhere. This is a collection of the correspondence from that paper and other items that deal in detail with the ‘legacy issues’ arising from Professor Hart’s work. The first letter, from Tom Cooper, generated 22 more items of correspondence and a news report, between 27 May and 26 August 2017 on three topics: 1. Three letters, from Cooper and Simon Kingston, on the festival; 2. Four letters, from Cooper and from Gerry Gregg on his and Eoghan Harris’s documentary, An Tost Fada (‘The Long Silence’), plus one newspaper report; 3. Five letters each from Eve Morrison and Niall Meehan, three from Barry Keane, and one each from Donald Woods and John Regan, on Peter Hart, Tom Barry and the 28 November 1922 Kilmichael Ambush. In addition, due to Barry Roche in the Irish Times reporting RTÉ’s re-editing of An Tost Fada, Tom Cooper had a letter published on his role in that decision. It occasioned three replies, to which the Irish Times denied Cooper a response, which we publish here. We also publish an important 2014 letter from Meda Ryan to History Ireland, in response to a commentary on Ryan by Eve Morison (in a review of Pádraig O Ruairc’s book, Truce). This is by far the most useful outcome of the Festival despite not being part of it. Another event that played both on and offstage was the Sunday Times (‘Éire’ edition) dismissal of Peter Hart’s original supporter and a festival contributor, Kevin Myers. In his column on the morning of the last festival day, Myers combined misogyny and anti-Semitism, attacking women generally and Jewish women in particular. He had made his reputation, alongside Hart, criticising IRA commander Tom Barry and other republicans. Myers spent his festival afternoon beside a female Jewish rabbi, under a portrait of Tom Barry. That part, you couldn’t make up. We hope that the organisers of next year’s Festival will arrange for a continuation of such forensic discussion of West Cork’s history. They can do so by ensuring that the local and national participants in the Southern Star discussion are invited to the Festival. It is surely sensible that such contributions are made at the Festival as well as outside it. It would be useful also to ascertain how to apply to join the secretive Festival Committee. Jack Lane, Aubane Historical Society.

In The Irish Political Review (February 2008), Jack Lane commented on an RTE 'Hidden History' documentary on the July 1921 IRA execution of Brothers named Pearson at Coolacrease, Co Offaly. Lane observed, ‘The devil is in the detail’ provided by researchers Pat Muldowney and Philip McConway, but largely ignored by the programme makers. Jack Lane goes on to comment on later killings of loyalists in Dunmanway, West Cork, between April 27-29 1922, while the Truce between Irish and British forces was in force. The killings took place four months after a split over the terms of the Anglo Irish Treaty, two months prior to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War. The killings are important to those who suggest that the Irish War of Independence was a largely sectarian or ‘ethnic’ conflict. Jack Lane correctly points to the pivotal role of Peter Hart’s 'The IRA and its Enemies' (1998) in promoting this view, one shared by the historian Roy Foster and some journalists who assiduously promote it. The April 1922 killings in Cork are used to give the impression that the same thing happened elsewhere, for instance the Coolacrease killings in Offaly in July 1921. However, while correctly pinpointing the April 1922 events as ‘the elephant in the parlour’, Jack Lane engages in speculation in which the ‘detail’ is left behind. In this article I look at some of the detail in Peter Hart's analysis in 1998 and compare it to his PhD version some six years earlier. See also: Troubled History A tenth anniversary critique of Peter Hart's The IRA and its Enemies http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/Books/75341/Troubled-History--a-tenth-anniversary-Critique-of-Peter-Hart-s--The-IRA-and-its-Enemies-

The existence of an Anti-Sinn Féin League of local residents in Cork city and county during the Irish War of Independence is controversial among historians. The late Peter Hart initially claimed that the name was really a cover for RIC/British Army death squads and dismissed long stated IRA claims that many of those they killed were spies, informers and spotters for the British government. IRA commander Tom Barry's biographer Meda Ryan provided copious references to the Anti Sinn Féin League in her replies to, and dismissal, of Hart's assertion. 1 Hart in turn dismissed Ryan's claim and almost twenty years later the controversy continues. While many of the sources and assumptions upon which Hart based his theory have been shown to be more nuanced and complex than he suggested, other aspects of his analysis have received less attention. One of these neglected topics is this issue of the extent of loyalist cooperation. While much has been written about this, it is often only part of polemics on either side of the debate and often is not considered on its own merits. This paper examines much of the available British and Irish evidence and invites the reader to consider both the quality of that evidence and how significant this cooperation actually was.

The UIL was a composite social and political movement associated with, though not fully part of, the Home Rule movement of the early twentieth century. This article explores that relationship through a case study of the movement in Cork, Ireland's largest county. The chosen area was varied enough geographically and socially for cleavages to occur. Narratives of resistance and counter-resistance ran through these cleavages e.g. rural versus urban, landed versus landless, the Catholic Church versus radical secular nationalists. Further modes of resistance also appeared, such as cultural resistance to creeping British influences. These wider modes transcended the schism in the wider Irish Party (the vehicle of the Home Rule movement) after the passage of the Wyndham Land Act in 1903. That this schism was centred on Cork city and county was in part due to the forceful personality of William O'Brien and the activities of a clique of his followers. From 1910 until 1916 a rejuvenated UIL in Cork was engaged in resisting the advances of O'Brien and his new organisation, the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL).

Terror in Ireland, 1916–23 is the fifth Trinity College Dublin History Workshop publication. Edited by Professor David Fitzpatrick, who also contributes a chapter, this well-presented volume publishes research from 14 undergraduate and postgraduate students, doctoral researchers and established historians. The book examines British and Irish violence (mainly the latter) from the 1916 Easter Rising through the Civil War. The terms ‘terror’ and ‘terrorist’ are loosely, often selectively, applied. According to Fitzpatrick, ‘Terrorists are those who perpetuate any form of terror; Terrorism implies a sustained and systematic attempt to generate terror’ (p. 5). This conceptualisation is not so much taut as tautological. It is difficult to envisage military or quasi-military activity that does not induce terror among combatants and an affected civilian population. Brian Hanley’s compelling first chapter exposes the problems in Fitzpatrick’s construct. Hanley notes that even under current US State Department categorisations, IRA attacks on Bloody Sunday (21 November 1920) and at Kilmichael (28 November 1920) cannot be defined as terrorist (p. 11). Nevertheless, two chapters are devoted to Bloody Sunday and one to Kilmichael. Throughout the collection republican forces are often ‘Irish terrorists’ or simply ‘the terrorists’. Their British opponents are not similarly identified, suggesting that the words have a pejorative rather than descriptive function. Drawing upon the work of the late Peter Hart (who died in 2010 at the age of 46), whose analysis ‘called into question the morality and sincerity of the republican movement’, the editor asserts that republicans set out ‘to threaten and marginalize “deviants” within the community that the terrorists claim to represent’ (p. 6). Their suspicions were ‘based on categorical assumptions’ (p. 4). As the volume is dedicated to Hart’s memory, Fitzpatrick is intent on defending his reputation from ‘outraged readers’ for whom ‘the integrity of the revolutionaries from 1916–21 was an article of faith’ (pp. 4, 6). The ‘article of faith’ formulation is carefully chosen. ...... For more.... click on title, go online, or download attached PDF Review includes separate responses from Editor, David Fitzpatrick (p.19), and Eve Morrison (pp.20-26, author of chapter on Peter Hart's treatment of the Kilmichael Ambush of 28 November 1920.) See also: Reply to Professor David Fitzpatrick and to Dr Eve Morrison’s response to criticism of Terror in Ireland 1916-1923 (plus consideration of Dr Brian Hanley on 'The Good Old IRA'), http://www.academia.edu/1994527/