Period photo of members of the West Cork Brigade.
Exclusive
THE controversial killing of 13 protestants in and around Dunmanway in 1922 were not, as has been portrayed, an act of sectarian violence.
That’s according to Cork history teacher Barry Keane and he says he has the evidence to prove it.
Thirteen Protestants were killed, was it retaliation for the killing of Commandant Michael O’Neill and the pogroms in Belfast?
Did British agents attempt to provoke a re-occupation of West Cork by the Essex regiment?
Was it an attempt ‘to exterminate and drive out all Protestants from the area’ as historian Peter Hart claimed?
“The online publication of the Bureau of Military History’s files provide startling new evidence about the murders,” said Mr Keane.
“The Bureau took War of Independence statements in the 1950s.
“Do two statements by Michael O’Donoghue from Lismore and Dunmanway IRA Captain Patrick O’Brien solve the great mysteries about the murders? I think they do.”
Later President of the GAA, Michael O’Donoghue was studying Engineering at UCC and was an engineering officer during the war.
He spent from December 1921 to the end of March 1922 stationed in Bandon working closely with Commandant Michael O’Neill of the IRA who was the first person shot on April 26th 1922.
His is the first comment from inside the IRA about these events. He had no involvement in the murders, but he saw nothing to apologise for despite the fact that they were a clear violation of the Truce.
O’Donoghue states,
‘Poor Mick O’Neill. A grand chivalrous warrior of the I.R.A. Less than two months later, he 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 bidden 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, confessed to firing the fatal shot, Why? God alone knows…probably Woods got scared at seeing the strange young man in I.R.A. attire knocking,…and fired at him in a panic. The sequel was tragic. Several prominent loyalists- all active members of the anti-Sinn Féin Society in West Cork, and blacklisted as such in I.R.A. Intelligence Records -in Bandon, Clonakilty, Ballineen and Dunmanway, were seized at night by armed men, taken out and killed. 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 O’Neill.
“O’Donoghue- writing in 1951 long before it became the source of any controversy- provides a simple, compelling motive for the murders,” said Mr Keane.
O’Brien’s statements shows that the IRA had direct evidence from the ‘Black and Tans’ as early as 1921.
‘The Auxiliaries’ C.0. was de Havilland and Brownie was the I.0. He instituted a very perfect intelligence system and…drew up lists of all the houses in the Dunmanway Battalion area, both friendly and hostile to the British régime. …However, any of his investigations…were with us just as soon, thanks, to Florence J. Crowley, the Clerk of the Union.’
“Michael O’Donoghue and Pat O’Brien present the simplest explanation for the killings.
“O’Donoghue flatly rejected sectarianism, and he is a verifiable, written, named source who has no reason to lie.
“The Irish state rightly apologised at the time for these events, and the minute Tom Hales returned to West Cork he ended the murders by threatening capital punishment for anyone found guilty.”
References:
Pat O’Brien BMH.WS0812.pdf, on page 20 Michael O’Donoghue BMH.WS1741 PART 2.pdf, on page 43
See also Protestant Cork 1911-1926 by Barry Keane © https://sites.google.com/site/protestantcork191136/
This article was edited on Nov 20th 2012
THE controversial killing of 13 protestants in and around Dunmanway in 1922 were as has been portrayed, an act of sectarian violence and Ethnic cleansing. FACT.
Events, such as the terrible murders at Dunmanway …, require the exercise of the utmost strength and authority of Dáil Éireann. Dáil Éireann, so far as its powers extend, will uphold, to the fullest extent, the protection of life and property of all classes and sections of the community. It does not know and cannot know, as a National Government, any distinction of class or creed. In its name, I express the horror of the Irish nation at the Dunmanway murders.[51]
Speaking immediately afterward, Seán T. O’Kelly said he wished to associate the “anti-treaty side” in the Dáil with Griffith’s sentiments.[50] Speaking in Mullingar on 30 April, the Anti-Treaty leader Éamon de Valera also condemned the killings.
I don’t see anything in this article to justify the opening paragraph which says Keane says the killings were self-defence. “Savage, wholesale, murderous reprisal” is very different from self-defence.
We are all at the mercy of sub-editors. Norma is correct. There is nothing in my statement that suggests that the murders were self defence and I never mentioned self defence. What it does show is that the IRA targeted the men they killed in West Cork and that these were not random sectarian attacks by ‘frightened boys’.
I simply presented the evidence of Michael O’Donoghue and if anyone reads his entire statement from January 1922 to his capture by Free State forces in December the likely sequence of events will become much clearer.
Aftermath.
According to Niall Harrington – a Pro-Treaty IRA officer at the time – over 100 Protestant families fled West Cork in the aftermath of the killings, in fear of further attacks.[47] Alice Hodder in the same letter cited above wrote
For two weeks there wasn’t standing room on any of the boats or mail trains leaving Cork for England. All loyalist refugees who were either fleeing in terror or had been ordered out of the country…none of the people who did these things, though they were reported as the rebel IRA faction, were ever brought to book by the Provisional Government.[48]
One Cork correspondent of The Irish Times who saw the refugees go through the city noted that, “so hurried was their flight that many had neither a handbag nor an overcoat.” [49] Hodder also alleged that Protestants in the area were being forcibly evicted from their farms by republicans on behalf of the Irish Transport Union, on the basis that they were bringing down wages, although she conceded that the local Pro-Treaty IRA reinstated them when it was informed [48] Tom Hales, Commandant of O’Neill’s Brigade (3rd Cork), ordered all arms be brought under control while issuing a statement promising that “all citizens in this area, irrespective of creed or class, every protection within my power.”[1][50] Arthur Griffith echoed Hales’ sentiments though Hales was actively engaged in armed defiance of Griffith’s government at this time.[48] Speaking on 28 April in the Dáil Griffith, President of the Pro-Treaty Irish Provisional Government, stated:
Events, such as the terrible murders at Dunmanway …, require the exercise of the utmost strength and authority of Dáil Éireann. Dáil Éireann, so far as its powers extend, will uphold, to the fullest extent, the protection of life and property of all classes and sections of the community. It does not know and cannot know, as a National Government, any distinction of class or creed. In its name, I express the horror of the Irish nation at the Dunmanway murders.[51]
Speaking immediately afterward, Seán T. O’Kelly said he wished to associate the “anti-treaty side” in the Dáil with Griffith’s sentiments.[50] Speaking in Mullingar on 30 April, the Anti-Treaty leader Éamon de Valera also condemned the killings.[52] A general convention of Irish Protestant churches in Dublin released a statement saying that:
Apart from this incident, hostility to Protestants by reason of their religion, has been almost, if not wholly unknown, in the 26 counties in which they are a minority.[50]
The incident provoked long-held fears on the part of Loyalists in southern Ireland.[citation needed] A deputation of Irish Loyalists which met Winston Churchill in May 1922 told him that there was, “nothing to prevent the peasants expropriating [the lands of] every last Protestant loyalist” and that they feared a repeat of the massacres that Protestants had suffered in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the 1798 Rebellion.[53] Churchill himself remarked that the events were “little short of a massacre.” [54]
Local IRA commanders Tom Barry, Liam Deasy and Seán Moylan, returned to the county and ordered that armed guards be put on the homes of Protestants to prevent further violence.[50] Tom Barry, who had returned immediately from Dublin on hearing of the killings, ensured that some who attempted to take advantage of the situation by stealing livestock owned by Protestants were firmly discouraged.[55