The Men Will Talk to Me: Clare Interviews: Clare Interviews by Ernie O'Malley

By Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc

This book contains interviews with members of the IRA's Mid Clare and East Clare Brigades. It includes details of the Rineen Ambush, which was, at that time, the largest and most successful operation that the IRA had conducted against the RIC. It also includes an eyewitness account of the reprisals in Miltown Malbay carried out in revenge for the ambush and a fascinating account of IRA operations in Ennis during the War of Independence, including details of Republican sympathisers within the RIC garrison who provided the IRA with information, and the activities of local loyalists who assisted the British forces. There is also an account of the 'Scariff Martyrs', who were killed by members of the RIC Auxiliary Division on Killaloe Bridge. The Civil War also features prominently, with Paddy MacMahon discussing his capture during the 'Battle of the Four Courts' in Dublin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781781174197

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MERCIER PRESS

Cork

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© Liz Gillis, 2016

ISBN: 978 1 78117 418 0

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 419 7

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 420 3

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

For my parents, Pat and Monica

Map showing the brigade and battalion divisions and the main towns of Co. Clare.

Acknowledgements

The weekends of my boyhood were spent in west Clare and it was probably from my late grand-uncle, Miko Hayes, that I first heard stories of the Rineen Ambush, the Black and Tans and the Republican struggle in Clare. Visits to his home in Shanaway East, Miltown Malbay, inspired my love of history, archaeology and folklore, and for that I will always be grateful. Likewise I also owe a great debt to his sister, Mary ‘Nana’ Murrihy (née Hayes) of Knockbrack, Miltown Malbay, who had a wealth of stories and was always eager to share them with me.

I also wish to thank Cormac K. H. O’Malley, custodian of the O’Malley notebooks, who realised the value and importance of his father’s research and was eager to share his archive with the public, and Dr Tim Horgan, who started the ball rolling on the transcription of the O’Malley notebooks – without his knowledgeable assistance and advice the transcription of O’Malley’s Clare interviews would not have been possible.

Thanks also to Colin Hennessy, grandson of O’Malley interviewee Séamus Hennessy, who has always been generous with his time and information; Fintan MacMahon, son of O’Malley interviewee Michael MacMahon, who didn’t hesitate to help when I approached him as a complete stranger seeking his assistance; the McDonnell family from Burgess, Tipperary, who shared with me the stories of ‘Black Paddy’ McDonnell, ‘the Brigadier’, and their family’s role in the Republican struggle; Dr John O’Callaghan, one of the first pioneers to successfully decipher and publish O’Malley’s handwriting; Tom Toomey, a brilliant historian and loyal friend to whom I frequently turn for advice; Johnny White, a great neighbour and one of nature’s gentlemen; the O’Gorman family of Moy, Lahinch, especially the late Michael O’Connell, who shared with me a wealth of stories and information about the history of west Clare; P. J. Donnellan of Toureen, Miltown Malbay, who gave me some valuable insights into the War of Independence and Civil War in Clare; and Eoin Shanahan, who assisted me with queries relating to the IRA’s West Clare Brigade.

The staff of the Irish Military Archives provide a top-class service, as do the staff of the British National Archives at Kew in London – their efficient service makes research there a pleasure. Mike Maguire of the local studies section in Limerick City Library, his counterpart Peter Byrne in the Local Studies Centre in Ennis and Maureen Comber of the Clare County Library were all extremely helpful.

Tony MacLoughlin, the most affable bookstore owner in Dublin, makes every visit to his shop on Parnell Street memorable. Sean O’Mahony and the 1916–21 Club have always given valuable assistance and support to my endeavours. The members of the Meelick-Parteen and Cratloe War of Independence Commemoration Committee (Councillor Cathal Crowe, Tom Gleeson, Eamon O’Halloran, Jody O’Connor, Ger Hickey and Pat McDonough) have done invaluable work in preserving and promoting the history of the IRA’s East Clare Brigade.

Thanks to Dr John Borgonovo and Dr Andy Bielenberg of University College Cork, two of Ireland’s hardest-working historians; Dr Tomás Mac Conmara, who is probably the best historian working in Clare today and certainly one of the finest in the country; Dr Billy Mag Fhloinn, with whom it is always a pleasure to discuss Irish history and heritage; Cormac Ó Comhraí, an exceptionally talented historian and a great friend; and Liam Hogan, a restless new historian hungry for the truth.

Joe Laffan, Seamus Cantillon, Aidan Larkin, Karl Walsh, Kieran O’Keefe and all the Caherdavin gang; John White, Gavin O’Connell, Cathal McMahon and all the lads from Meelick; and of course the ‘usual suspects’ – Chris Coe, Sean Patrick Donald, Dara Macken, William Butler and Patrick Fleckenstein – I couldn’t ask for better friends.

Thanks to my publishers Mercier Press, especially Wendy Logue and Mary Feehan, who have the unenviable job of trying to turn my disjointed, grammatically flawed and misspelled manuscripts into books. And a special thank you to the Sheehy family of Clonmeen House, Banteer, Co. Cork.

Finally thanks to my parents, Pat and Monica, for their financial assistance during my time at university, and to my sister Deirdre and my brother Kevin for their friendship and support. Lastly, and most importantly, thanks to my wife Anne Maria for all the happy years she has given me, and to my son, Tomás, who helps remind me that there are far more important things in life than writing history books.

Abbreviations

Auxie/Auxies Auxiliary Division of the RIC

BMH Bureau of Military History

D/M Director of Munitions

EOM Ernie O’Malley

IPP Irish Parliamentary Party

IRA Irish Republican Army

IRB Irish Republican Brotherhood

The Joy Mountjoy Prison, Dublin

NAUK National Archives, Kew, UK

O/C Officer Commanding

PMCILI Provisional Military Court of Inquiry in Lieu of Coroner’s Inquest

RAF Royal Air Force

RIC Royal Irish Constabulary

TD Teachta Dála

UCDA University College Dublin Archives

V/C Vice-Commandant

WS Witness Statement

Preface

Introducing the Ernie O’Malley Military Interviews

Cormac K. H. O’Malley

Though born in Castlebar, County Mayo, in 1897, Ernie O’Malley moved to Dublin with his family in 1906 and attended CBS secondary school and university there. After the 1916 Easter Rising he joined the Irish Volunteers while pursuing his medical studies, but in early 1918 he left home and went on the run. He rose through the ranks of the Volunteers and later the Irish Republican Army, and by the time of the Truce in July 1921 at the end of the War of Independence, or Tan War as it was known to him, he was commandant-general of the 2nd Southern Division, which covered parts of Limerick, Tipperary and Kilkenny, with over 7,000 men under his command.

O’Malley was suspicious of a compromise being made during the peace negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, and reacted strongly against the Treaty when it was announced. As the split developed in the senior ranks of the IRA in early 1922, he was appointed director of organisation for the anti-Treaty Republicans, who then took over the Four Courts in April. When the Four Courts garrison surrendered in June, he managed to escape immediately and was promoted to acting assistant chief of staff and officer commanding the Northern and Eastern Divisions, or half of Ireland. In early November he was captured in a dramatic shoot-out and was severely wounded. Ironically, his wounds probably saved his life, as otherwise he would have been court-martialled and executed. While in Mountjoy Gaol in 1923, O’Malley was elected as TD for North Dublin, and later, despite his poor health, he joined the forty-one-day hunger strike. Nevertheless, he survived – a matter of mind over body!

Having been released from prison in July 1924 and still in poor health, O’Malley went to sunny southern Europe to help him recover his health. He returned to his medical studies in 1926, but in 1928 headed for the United States. While there he wrote his much-acclaimed autobiographical memoir, On Another Man’s Wound. It was published in 1936, after he had returned to Dublin in 1935. He had spent seven years writing that book, which he meant to be more of a generic story of the Irish struggle woven around his own activities. The book was a literary success and added to his reputation among his former comrades.

O’Malley’s memoir on the Civil War was not ready for publication, as it required more research, and over the next twenty years he sought to become more familiar with the Civil War period as a whole. What started out in the late 1930s as an effort to supplement his own lack of knowledge, had developed by 1948 into a full-blown enterprise to record the voices, mostly anti-Treaty Republican, of his comrades of the 1916–23 struggle for independence. He interviewed more than 450 survivors, across a broad spectrum of people, covering the Tan War and the Civil War – all this at a time when the government was establishing the Bureau of Military History to record statements made by participants in the fight for freedom.

In the course of his interviews O’Malley collected a vast amount of local lore around Ireland. In 1952 he wrote a series of articles for The Kerryman, but then withdrew them before publication. Instead he used the articles for a series of talks on Radio Éireann in 1953. Subsequently those lectures were published in a series called IRA Raids in The Sunday Press in 1955–56. In the meantime he used the interviews to edit his own Civil War memoir, The Singing Flame, published posthumously in 1978, and to write a biographical memoir of a local Longford Republican organiser, Seán Connolly, entitled Rising Out: Seán Connolly of Longford, 1890–1921, also published posthumously, in 2007.

O’Malley was familiar with interviewing people about folklore and was well read in Irish and international folklore traditions. In the early 1940s he took down over 400 folktales from around his home area in Clew Bay, County Mayo. He also collected ballads and stories about the 1916–23 period. His method for his military interviews was to write rapidly in a first series of notebooks as his informant was speaking and then to rewrite his notes more coherently into a second series of notebooks. Occasionally he would include diagrams of the site of an ambush or an attack on a barracks. Given his overall knowledge of the period, based on his own Tan War activities and his Civil War responsibilities, he usually commanded a high regard from his informants. He felt that his former comrades would talk to him and tell him the truth.

From my examination of his interviews, O’Malley does not appear to have used a consistent technique, but rather he allowed his informant to ramble and cover many topics. In his rewrite of an interview he often labelled paragraphs such as Tan War, Truce, Civil War, Mountjoy Gaol, RIC, IRB, Spies, Split, Dug-outs, Round-ups and the like. The tone is conversational, allowing the narrative to unfold. He wrote down the names of people and places phonetically rather than correctly. The interviews are fresh and frank and many of these men’s stories may never have been told even to their children, as they did not speak openly about those times. Family members have said they could hear the voices of their relatives speaking through the O’Malley interviews, because O’Malley had been able to capture their intonations and phrasing so clearly about matters never discussed in the family before.

This present volume includes five O’Malley interviews, covering the activities of the Mid and East Clare Brigades during the War of Independence, the Truce and the Civil War. All of these Clare men rejected the Treaty and so their interviews reflect strong anti-Treaty opinions. None of these men made statements to the Bureau of Military History.

In transcribing O’Malley’s series of interviews we strove for a balance of authenticity of voice, accuracy of transcription and readability. Some modest changes have been made to help the reader better understand the interview. To enable reference to O’Malley’s original pagination, his pages are referred to in bold brackets, such as [64L], the L or R representing the left or right side of his original page. O’Malley often wrote on the right-hand page of a notebook first and then moved on to the left. Extensive footnotes provide a better understanding of the people, places and incidents involved, and some are repeated in more than one interview to allow each interview to be read separately as a complete story. The original text has been largely revised to include correct spellings of names and places, although some errors in general grammar and punctuation have been reproduced where the sense is clear. O’Malley regularly inserted his own comments in parentheses, and these are reflected for the sake of clarity in this volume in italics following the abbreviation EOM. Some editorial comments or clarifications have been added in square brackets.

Each interview has been reproduced here in full. In some places O’Malley left blank spaces where he was missing information, and these are represented by ellipses. Ellipses have also been used to indicate where the original text is indecipherable. The style of local phrasing used in the interviews has been retained, but some of this is no longer in common usage and may read strangely to the modern reader. In some instances O’Malley included names and facts that do not seem fully relevant, but these have been retained in order to maintain the integrity of the original interview.

We have relied on the integrity of O’Malley’s general knowledge of facts and his ability to question and ascertain the ‘truth’, but clearly the details related here to O’Malley reflect only the perceptions of the individual informant rather than the absolute historical truth, and the reader must appreciate this important subtlety. Also these interviews do not give a complete account of the role played by each individual during this period.

In the case of Clare, O’Malley interviewed his informants only once and so there is little duplication within each interview, but several of the men do speak about the same incidents and naturally there are some differences between their versions. This illustrates clearly how one incident can be viewed differently by different people. O’Malley worked as an organiser in Clare in mid-1919 and again in May 1920 for a short period but was not actually involved in any of the critical Clare actions recorded in these interviews; however, references are made to him by some of the men interviewed.

For those not familiar with the structure of military organisations such as the IRA during this period, it might be helpful to know that the largest unit was a division, which consisted of several brigades, each of which had several battalions, which in turn were composed of several companies at the local level. There were usually staff functions, such as intelligence and quartermaster roles, at division, brigade and battalion levels, and usually only officers at the company level.

Introduction

County Clare played host to some of the most momentous and important political and military events during the Irish revolution of 1913–23. The military campaign waged by the IRA against the British forces in Clare during the War of Independence was one of the most successful conducted nationally, and Republicans from Clare also made major contributions to the Republican struggle in other counties. As well as a strong Republican heritage, stretching back to the United Irishmen in the 1790s and the Fenian Rising of 1867, there was also a very strong radical agrarian movement in Clare that sought to break the power of wealthy landowners and redistribute the land they held to an impoverished local peasantry. Agrarian violence and unrest in Clare were so widespread in the early years of the twentieth century that the British government declared County Clare an ‘Area of Disturbance’ in 1907.¹

By that time the secret revolutionary movement called the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) had collapsed or been reduced to ‘a drinking club’ in many parts of Ireland. However, Clare was an exception, and an active and well-organised IRB network existed in various parts of the county long before Seán MacDiarmada and Thomas Clarke began reorganising and reforming the movement throughout Ireland in 1910. In north Clare Thomas O’Loghlen had recruited a group of young IRB members who actively opposed local recruitment by the British Army, engaged in arms training and founded and controlled local branches of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers. In Meelick, in south-east Clare, Michael Brennan and his brothers were amongst the most active and militant members of the ‘Wolfe Tone Club’, an IRB front organisation based in Limerick city.

During the 1916 Rising it was planned that part of the German arms shipment headed for Kerry would be shipped to Clare to arm these IRB groups. When this plan failed, Republicans in Clare attempted to take independent action to assist their comrades who were fighting the British forces in Dublin and Galway. The IRB in north Clare sabotaged the local communications network, while Michael Brennan made determined but ultimately futile efforts to convince the leadership of the IRB in Limerick city to join the rebellion.

After the collapse of the Rising, Sinn Féin’s victory in the East Clare by-election of July 1917 was of huge importance to the efforts of the Republicans to rally and reorganise their forces. The Sinn Féin candidate, Éamon de Valera, was best known to the local electorate as ‘the fella with the funny name’, and the massive vote that elected him was based not on his personal popularity but on his status as a veteran of the Rising who espoused Republicanism and the use of physical force to achieve Irish independence. The fact that the previous member of parliament for East Clare had been Major William Redmond made the Republican victory all the more poignant. William was a brother of John Redmond, the leader of the ‘constitutional’ nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and had been killed fighting for the British Army during the First World War, his death triggering the by-election.² De Valera’s election in East Clare happened shortly after similar electoral victories in North Roscommon and South Longford, and it inspired the slogan ‘The Irish Party – wounded in Roscommon, killed in Longford and buried in Clare’. In the general election held just over a year later, the Republicans won a landslide majority, securing seventy-three of the 105 Irish seats in the British parliament – effectively destroying the IPP in the process.

At the same time, the IRA in Clare began meeting, marching and drilling publicly in open defiance of British law, and this led to the widespread arrests of local Republican leaders across the county. Four leading IRA officers – Patrick, Michael and Austin Brennan from Meelick and Peadar O’Loughlin from Liscannor – refused to recognise the right of a British court to try Irishmen in Ireland and went on hunger strike. The tactics developed by these Claremen were soon adopted nationally and led to a mass hunger strike amongst IRA prisoners in Mountjoy Prison in September 1917. Thirty-eight Republican prisoners took part in the hunger strike, seventeen of whom were Claremen. The hunger strike ended and all of the prisoners were released after their comrade Thomas Ashe died following a botched attempt by the prison doctor to force-feed him. Ashe’s death produced a huge surge in support for the Republicans and over 20,000 people followed his funeral cortège in Dublin. The tactics developed by O’Loughlin and the three Brennan brothers were so effective that they have been utilised ever since, and twenty-two Irish Republicans have died while on hunger strike during the twentieth century.

The very first member of the IRA killed by the British forces during the War of Independence – Robert Byrne, adjutant of the 2nd