Twentieth-Century Ireland (New Gill History of Ireland 6): Revolution and State-Building – The Partition of Ireland, the Troubles and the Celtic Tiger

By Dermot Keogh

Professor Dermot Keogh's Twentieth-Century Ireland, the sixth and final book in the New Gill History of Ireland series, is a wide-ranging, informative and hugely engaging study of the long twentieth century, surveying politics, administrative history, social and religious history, culture and censorship, politics, literature and art.

It focuses on the consolidation of the new Irish state over the course of the twentieth century. Professor Keogh highlights the long tragedy of emigration, its effect on the Irish psyche and on the under-performance of the Irish economy. He emphasises the lost opportunities for reform of the 1960s and early 70s. Membership of the EU had a diminished impact due to short-term and sectionally motivated political thinking and an antiquated government structure. Professor Keogh looks at how the despair of the 1950s revisited the country in the 1980s as almost an entire generation felt compelled to emigrate, very often as undocumented workers in the United States.

Professor Keogh also argues that the violence in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s was an Anglo-Irish failure which was turned around only when Britain acknowledged the role of the Irish government in its resolution.

He extends his analysis of the twentieth-century to include a wide-ranging survey of the most contentious events—financial corruption, child sexual abuse, scandals in the Catholic Church—between 1994 and 2005.
Twentieth-Century Ireland: Table of Contents

- A War without Victors: Cumann na nGaedheal and the Conservative Revolution
- De Valera and Fianna Fáil in Power, 1932–1939
- In the Time of War: Neutral Ireland, 1939–1945
- Seán MacBride and the Rise of Clann na Poblachta
- The Inter-Party Government, 1948–1951
- The Politics of Drift, 1951&1959
- Seán Lemass and the 'Rising Tide' of the 1960s
- The Shifting Balance of Power: Jack Lynch and Liam Cosgrave, 1966–1977
- Charles Haughey and the Poverty of Populism
- Ireland in the New Century

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Release date: Sep 27, 2005
• ISBN: 9780717159437

Dermot Keogh

Dermot Keogh is Professor of History and Jean Monnet Emeritus Professor, at University College Cork. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, twice a Fulbright Professor, a Research Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC, a Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University, Belfast, and in 2001/2 a Visiting Professor at the European University Institute, Florence. He is the author of Twentieth-Century Ireland in the New Gill History of Ireland series, Jack Lynch, A Biography, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and The Rise of the Irish Working Class: The Dublin Trade Union Movement and Labour Leadership 1890-1914, among other books on Irish history.

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Preface

This book has been researched over six years in Ireland, in a number of European countries and in the United States. I have accumulated many debts of gratitude to people who helped me with their scholarship and friendship during this period of investigation. A number of institutions, at home and abroad, provided financial support which allowed me to research extensively in the United States. The head of the Department of History at University College Cork, Joseph Lee, has proved ever helpful over the past twenty years. His major work, Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society, was a source of great stimulation. The friendship of Joe and Anne Lee has meant much to myself and my family.

I was given study leave by President Michael Mortell and the Governing Body of UCC, while the Arts Faculty fund enabled me to research specific aspects of this volume. The Registrar of UCC, Aidan Moran, was always very supportive. Among my departmental colleagues I thank Elizabeth Steiner Scott and Brian Girvin. I am also grateful to many colleagues in Ireland and abroad who helped me with the writing of this work. In particular, I would like to thank Professors Brian Farrell, Tom Garvin and Ronan Fanning of University College Dublin. My thanks also to Deirdre McMahon and Neil Buttimer. Professor Patrick Lynch and Tom Barrington made an important contribution to my knowledge through their writings and advice. The late Professor T. Desmond Williams was an excellent teacher and a friend whose intellectual generosity was much appreciated.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Dr Mary Harris, Senior Lecturer, Department of Irish Studies, University of North London, particularly for her scholarly advice on the issue of Northern Ireland and for her expertise in the researching and drafting of the section on the Boundary Commission. She also made many valuable suggestions as a reader of the various drafts of this book and helped with sources in Irish.

My close friends, Matthew and Madelaine MacNamara, were supportive, and their home was a welcoming port during the many squalls of university life which are designed to throw the working academic off course. Professor MacNamara translated a number of French sources and introduced me to many new ideas and approaches. Father Kevin Kennedy’s wide knowledge and culture was always a source of great stimulation. Bill and Miriam Hederman O’Brien’s friendship and encouragement over many years should not go unrecorded. Brian and Laura Lennon are close friends who have been very helpful to me on many occasions, as were Angela and Edward Cahill. My former Irish Press colleague, Michael Mills, was very encouraging and often pointed me in the right direction. Liam Moher commented on the first draft of this book and suggested many changes. His late father, John, who was a Fianna Fáil TD for Cork in the 1950s, helped me greatly to understand the political personalities and the events of those earlier years. My thanks also to Seán Dunne, who guided me towards a number of important sources and was ever willing to discuss my developing ideas and theories. John Banville, a friend from our time in the Irish Press in the early 1970s, helped with his advice and by providing me with a plentiful supply of Irish history books to review. The annual Patrick MacGill summer school was a source of great personal stimulation and Dr Malachy McCloskey and the committee were very hospitable to my family on our annual visits to Glenties. My thanks also to Annie and Joe Mulholland. Terence Brown of Trinity College Dublin was also very helpful and supportive.

The staff of the UCC library made the life of the researcher much easier. I am indebted to Tom Crawshaw, Edward Fahey, Helen Davis, Trudy Ahern, Ann Collins, Jill Lucey, Valerie Fletcher and Virginia Teehan. Richard Haslam, head of the Department of Public Administration at UCC, was an excellent guide to the labyrinthine world of local government in Ireland. My thanks also to Ruth McDonnell, UCC Information Officer, who helped me on many occasions. I also thank the staff of the Cork County and City libraries.

Dr Garret FitzGerald was very helpful to me over two decades of research, as was his colleague Peter Barry, who arranged for me to see certain files at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Brian Lenihan gave me a number of interviews. Many members and former members of the staff of the Department of Foreign Affairs were very helpful over the years. I am grateful, in particular, to Noel Dorr, Ted Barrington, Pádraic MacKernan, Thelma Doran, Billy Hawkes, Philip McDonagh, Bernadette Chambers and Declan Kelleher. Máire Mhac an tSaoi and Conor Cruise O’Brien, former Irish diplomats, were generous with their time. Richard Stokes, Department of the Taoiseach, championed the opening of state archives when it was neither fashionable nor profitable. I am grateful to him for his persistence and professionalism. Dr David Craig, Ken Hannigan and Aideen Ireland of the Irish National Archives have all played an important role in facilitating the speedy processing and opening of official archives. I thank them for their assistance during my many long visits. The paper keepers in the National Archives provided a speedy and expert service which made working in Bishop Street a genuine pleasure—fire alarms notwithstanding.

I also wish to thank the staff of the government departments who answered my many queries. Commandant Peter Young, Director, Irish Military Archives, and his staff helped locate relevant material. I am grateful to the staffs of the Archives Department, UCD, the National Library and Trinity College Dublin. Denise Moran and Mary Guckian of the library of the Institute of Public Administration, Dublin, were very helpful. I am also grateful to the staff of the British, French, Swiss, Italian, Dutch and German embassies for their help in the preparation of this manuscript. My particular thanks to the Spanish Ambassador, Fermín Zelada.

The later Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich gave me access to the Armagh archives and arranged for me to work in the archives of the Irish College, Rome. I am also grateful to Bishop Michael Murphy of Cork for access to the Daniel Cohalan papers. I am grateful to David Sheehy, Dublin Archdiocesan Archives. The Dominicans Austin Flannery and Bernard Tracey were generous with their time and help. The Jesuits gave me access to the Edward Cahill papers. The Franciscans made available a section of the Éamon de Valera papers on the framing of the 1937 constitution; I am particularly grateful to the archivist of that important holding, Dr Breandán Mac Giolla Choille. Brother Paul, the former editor of The Word, was very helpful in recalling his many contacts and interviews with leading Irish politicians and ecclesiastical figures. Father Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin CM advised and read parts of this manuscript. Father Thomas Davitt CM very kindly let me read his father’s memoirs. On the question of church-state relations, I am indebted to Peter Hebblethwaite, Louis McRedmond, Seán MacReamoinn and Father Michael O’Carroll. The Conference of Major Religious Superiors helped my research on certain aspects of this book. My thanks also to John Cooney. Tony O’Malley gave me an extended interview; my thanks also to Jane O’Malley, who received Ann and myself very warmly in their home in Callan, Co. Kilkenny. My thanks to Barbara Dawson and Liz Foster of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin. Charles Clarke gave me a number of important references to articles on twentieth-century Irish painting. My thanks also to Tim Pat Coogan and Martin Mansergh.

Part of this book was researched and written while I was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington DC in 1988, and again as a visiting scholar in 1990. My thanks to the many academics with whom I made friends during those stays and to Michael Haltzel, Director, West European Program, and his wife, Helen, for their help and support. I also thank Mike Lacey, Director, North American Program and his wife, Kath, for their friendship, hospitality and use of their library on my frequent visits to Washington. Ann Herpel, David Jonas Frisch and Courtney Slater worked with me as research assistants during my two stays at the Wilson Center. Charlotte Thompson, West European Program, helped me complete a section of the research. Susan Nugent typed part of the manuscript and made many helpful criticisms of the drafts. Marguerite and Tom Kelly were my hosts in Washington on two occasions when I enjoyed a home away from home. I would also like to record my thanks to the staff of the Library of Congress, the National Archives in Washington DC and at Suitland, and the librarian at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Zdenek Davis.

My thanks to the Department of History, Cornell University, where I taught summer school in 1989. Our friends Walter and Sandy LaFeber made my family welcome in Ithaca. The excellent Cornell library and the stimulating company helped advance the research for this book. Professor Jim Walsh, Dean of Social Sciences, San José State University, and his wife, Ann, were very helpful to me when I was doing research in San Francisco. I would also like to thank Barbara Dubins and other members of the staff of the San Jose Department of History for their hospitality.

When my research took me to Brussels, Alan, Ortensia and Maureen Hick were my generous hosts. The Irish Colleges in Rome and Paris kindly put me up while I was in those cities on research trips. I would like to thank the rectors of the Irish College, who helped me during my various stays in Rome.

I used material from personal interviews with the following as background to the writing of this book: Frank Aiken, Peter Barry, Frederick Boland, Gerard Boland, John Bruton, Con Cremin, Alan Dukes, Garret FitzGerald, Justin Keating, Seán Lemass, Brian Lenihan, Jack Lynch, Seán MacEntee, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Seán MacBride, Maurice Moynihan, Tommy Mullins, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ruairí Quinn, Dick Spring and T. Desmond Williams.

My thanks to Frances Kelly, who gave me access to the papers of her husband, Frederick Boland. I would also like to thank Ita Cremin for allowing me to read and prepare for publication the memoirs of her late husband, Con Cremin.

I have been enriched by my contact with UCC postgraduates, many of whom are working on various aspects of the history of twentieth-century Ireland. In particular, I would like to thank Dr David Ryan, De Montfort University, Leicester, Mervyn O’Driscoll, Wolfson College, Cambridge, Dónal Ó Drisceoil, Patricia Dromey, Helen Callanan, Maria McKnight, Robert Patterson and Maurice Fitzgerald. Nigel Moriarty, Aengus Nolan and Finín Ó Drisceoil were a great help during the latter stages of this book’s preparation.

My thanks to Norma Buckley, Deirdre O’Sullivan and Charlotte Holland. Veronica Fraser typed the many drafts of this book and I am very much in her debt. Donal Kingston was always available to help me overcome problems with computers.

Fergal Tobin, of Gill & Macmillan, commissioned this book in 1986. I am grateful to him for his encouragement and his help. My thanks to Finbarr O’Shea. My thanks also to Hildegard Penn. Jonathan Williams copy edited the text of the first edition and corrected the proofs. He has earned my gratitude and deep respect for his professionalism.

My mother, Maureen Keogh, and family, to whom this book is dedicated, deserve great praise. The research for this volume required long trips away from home. Ann was ever supportive, as were Aoife, Clare, Eoin and Niall.

Dermot Keogh

University College Cork

My colleague, Dr Andrew McCarthy, coauthored the new chapter in this revised edition and helped me prepare the text for publication. I am grateful for his help and generous cooperation, as I also am to Margaret Clayton for her support and expertise.

Professor Dermot Keogh

Head of Department of History

University College Cork, June 2005

Introduction to the First Edition

I don’t believe that a period of history—a given space of time, my life, your life—that it contains within it one ‘true’ interpretation just waiting to be mined. But I do believe that it may contain within it several possible narratives: the life of Hugh O’Neill can be told different ways. And those ways are determined by the needs and the demands and the expectations of different people and different eras. What do they want to hear? How do they want it told? So that in a sense I’m not altogether my own man, Hugh. To an extent I simply fulfil the needs, satisfy the expectations—don’t I?¹

Archbishop Lombard, in Brian Friel’s play Making History, has alerted the historian to the danger of trying to quarry the ‘one true’ interpretation of the past. The relatively short history of the Irish state has shown just how limited a doctrinaire approach to interpreting the past can prove to be and how sterile is the conflict between ‘schools’ of history, which are usually short on research based on primary sources and long on ideology. Father Francis Shaw caricatured such a rigid approach to the writing of history in a memorable article, which was deemed by the editor of Studies to be too controversial to publish in 1966:

In the right corner virgin Éire, virtuous and oppressed, in the left the bloody Saxon, the unique source of every Irish ill and malaise; round eight, the duration of each round a hundred years: this might be said to be the accepted mise en scène of the Rising of Easter Week, and it may be added that the seconds in the English corner are usually degenerate Irishmen. It is a straight story of black and white, of good ‘guys’ and bad. The truth of course is different; there are many qualifications and complexities. . . .²

Father Shaw challenged the orthodoxies of nationalist historiography at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising when simplification of the past by the official mind was thought necessary in order to rekindle a sense of lost patriotism. The ‘one’ interpretation was simply that of a virgin Éire versus the bloody Saxon, with a significant but not a total victory going to Éire in 1921/22. There was a confidence at the official political level in the 1960s about interpreting the country’s past. That reflected the self-confidence of the decade. But over thirty years later such self-confidence was nowhere in evidence. There was a certain diffidence about celebrating the 1916 Rising and Ireland’s revolutionary nationalist past.³ There are a number of reasons why that has come about. Firstly, the carnage in Northern Ireland, which has claimed over 3,000 lives, has sensitised the official mind to the dangers of the oversimplification of the past. Secondly, the work of the New Ireland Forum, which reported in 1984, posited the pluralism and the diversity of the Irish tradition. Thirdly, the mystique of violence definitely lost its appeal in the 1970s and 1980s as members of the historical profession looked at the past from the perspective of having to live at a time when paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland heaped atrocity upon atrocity.⁴

Revisionism was employed very often as a term of abuse to describe the writings of a younger generation of Irish historians. In 1986, in his essay ‘We are all Revisionists now’, Roy Foster bravely surveyed the debate at the time and wisely concluded that to say ‘revisionist should just be another way of saying historian.’⁵ Eight years later Tom Dunne made a good contribution to the same debate in his ‘New Histories: Beyond Revisionism.’⁶ The nationalist academic tradition was not slow to take up the challenge.⁷ Many historians felt obliged to take sides and it was lonely for those who chose to occupy the no-man’s land between the two poles. A number of important general histories of Ireland have been published in the context of a debate which proved on more than one occasion to be more polemical than enlightened. These works show a diversity of approach and a richness of interpretation which make a nonsense of putting historians into either a revisionist or a nationalist camp. Roy Foster’s Modern Ireland 1600–1972 has covered some of the territory which is central to this work (see pages 431–596). The relevant pages (213–338) in his edited The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland also make an important contribution to the process of reinterpreting the recent Irish past. Ronan Fanning’s Independent Ireland made excellent use of the limited primary source material available at the time of writing. Part III of K. Theodore Hoppen’s Ireland since 1800: Conflict and Conformity provides an excellent overview. My colleague Joseph Lee’s Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society has surveyed the twentieth century with characteristic scholarship, brio and verve.

John A. Murphy’s Ireland in the Twentieth Century was first published in 1975 as part of the Gill History of Ireland. It has whetted the appetite of many generations of students for the study of Irish history. My book, written nearly 20 years later, has been in a position to take advantage of the cornucopia of new primary source material which has been released over the past six years. In writing this volume, I have drawn heavily on the files of various government departments, personal political papers and archives in London, Paris, Rome and in the United States. It is up to the discerning reader, if she or he is so inclined, to determine whether the work is revisionist, nationalist or otherwise. It is time to attempt to go beyond revisionism in order to write a ‘narrative of inclusion.’

This book does not deal with the politics of Northern Ireland, except in so far as they impinge on life in the Saorstát, later called Ireland or the Irish Republic. Detailed attention is paid to the Boundary Commission in the 1920s, to the IRA’s anti-partitionist activities and to the conflict after 1969.

This volume has nine chapters which take the reader chronologically from 1922 to the early 1990s. It examines the development of Irish party politics from William T. Cosgrave to Albert Reynolds. The book focuses on the growth of Éamon de Valera’s Ireland and demonstrates that Fianna Fáil was a coalition rather than a unitary party. In particular, the divisions between Seán Lemass and Seán MacEntee are highlighted. It explores the reasons for the long-term popular appeal of Éamon de Valera and analyses the ultimate poverty of Fianna Fáil populism and the demise of its most determined exponent, Charles Haughey. The book also shows that the early generation of Irish politicians, in both Cumann na nGaedheal (Fine Gael) and Fianna Fáil alike, possessed a form of idealism and commitment to the development of the country which was not shared uniformly by a number of prominent politicians from the 1960s onwards.

But the country was well served throughout by the permanent civil service. The opening of state archives has enabled the historian to study in greater detail the interaction between ministers and their respective departments. Bureaucratic politics are examined in this book, and the failure of the state to modernise, particularly the Oireachtas and local government, is put forward as an argument for the decline of government, which became most evident in the 1980s. The state failed to develop the structures necessary for its ethical well-being and efficient running. Far too much latitude was left to influential political leaders to privatise government decision-making.

The new primary source material permitted me to examine a range of new topics in detail. There was an opportunity to consider official attitudes to women in Irish society. The writing of inclusive gender balanced history has only just begun. The growth of the literature and the culture of the new state has been traced and interwoven into each chapter. In particular, stress has been laid on the pioneering role of women in the world of painting and the visual arts. The new archives, too, helped provide insights into the writing of ‘history from below’, with special emphasis being laid on the themes of poverty, unemployment and emigration.

My research also examined the interaction between church and state and investigated the relations between leading churchmen and the political elites of the different parties. In particular, the personality of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid has been studied and set in a broader political context. His close and sometimes troubled relationship with Éamon de Valera has been investigated. The impact of Vatican II on Irish society is traced, as is the social role played by church people in housing action campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s. The role of the new right in the 1980s is also analysed. This work has also tried to examine the attitude of the Catholic hierarchy towards the minority churches. Particular attention has been paid to the emergence of anti-semitism in Irish society in the 1930s and the ungenerous attitude of the Irish government towards the admission of Jewish refugees during and after World War II.

The development of Irish foreign policy is also a central theme in this work. Extensive use of the archives of the Department of Foreign Affairs has cast new light on de Valera’s external policies in the 1930s, the origins of neutrality and the conducting of the diplomacy of survival during World War II, and the politics of the cold war. The background to the declaration of the Republic in 1949 and to Frank Aiken’s China policy has been examined with the assistance of the papers of the diplomat Frederick Boland. This research was supplemented by personal papers and archives from Washington and London. Entry into the European Community and growth within the EC are also examined, as is the state’s Northern Ireland and Anglo-Irish policies.

In the chapters written on the period after 1962, the absence of primary source material has been supplemented by extensive interviews with the senior politicians of the time. I was fortunate to have a wide range of contacts who gave generous help to me in the researching and writing of the later period. On occasions, I was able to consult official memoranda and files. This material was given on a confidential basis and has not been acknowledged in any detailed way in the footnotes.

This book was written at a time when the country had more than 300,000 people unemployed and there was growing public cynicism over major financial scandals and over the apparent failure of the political system to reform itself. It was completed before the 1992 general election which returned a Fianna Fáil/Labour partnership government.

Introduction to the Second Edition

I have avoided the temptation to rewrite large sections of the first edition in the light of the changes that have taken place in Irish society since the mid-1990s. Instead, the text remains intact with the addition of minor changes and corrections.

Since this book was published in 1994, there have been two very distinctive developments propelling change that is as profound as it is concentrated in a mere decade. First, Irish society has been transformed politically, socially and economically. In the twenty-first century, Ireland increasingly resembles the secular world of the older member states of the European Union. In another sense, that society has been ‘globalised’ and/or ‘Americanised.’ It is no longer a question of being torn between the Atlantic and European cultures. The Tánaiste, Mary Harney, formulated the Irish position as follows in a speech she made on 21 July 2000:

History and geography have placed Ireland in a very special position between America and Europe. . . . As Irish people our relationships with the United States and the European Union are complex. Geographically we are closer to Berlin than Boston. Spiritually we are probably a lot closer to Boston than Berlin. Ireland is now in a very real sense the gateway to Europe.¹

However, Ireland and Irish people feel quite comfortable in their new position as part of a common Euro-Atlantic culture. There is a new-found self-confidence and self-belief in early twenty-first century Ireland. Fear of outside influences—a defining characteristic of the country in its early decades of existence—is hardly evident any more as literary and film censorship is most relaxed and the state no longer plays an intrusive role in the lives of individual citizens.

Second, there is now a much clearer understanding of what Tom Garvin has described in the title of his book as Preventing the Future—Why Was Ireland So Poor For So Long? He ascribed much blame to an educational system that was other-worldly and that only altered in the 1960s in time to foster radical change. Let me leave to one side my difficulties with this thesis. Ireland’s membership in 1973 of the European Economic Community, now the European Union, also was a transforming agent as was the ‘victory’ of the peace process in Northern Ireland.

However, much has emerged in recent years of the hidden histories in Irish society relating to political and administrative corruption, sharp practice in the banking sector, child sexual abuse in state-owned schools run by religious stretching back for decades. The media—television, investigative journalism, etc.—has delivered an incisive, emotive, and oftentimes sensationally panoramic picture of aspects of Ireland’s hidden past. Those revelations have done much to explain the retardation of modernity in Irish society. They have also helped to cure Irish society of any feelings of nostalgia about ‘a world we have lost.’ The public has witnessed, with varying levels of bewilderment, the harrowing abuse scandals, and the impact that a small minority of clerics has had on victims. And the public has wondered how all this could have happened. To borrow a phrase from the late Irish Times journalist John Healy, nobody shouted stop. Notwithstanding the impact of education, the level of corruption of a petty personal and more organised corporate kind shows why Ireland remained poor for so long.

Never has the case been stronger for a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the issues of Irish society than in the midst of the revelations about that hidden past. Historical judgement requires a thorough understanding of the options open to society and not just the road taken. History is about choices: it is about understanding the past in the light of circumstances of the past, not the values and practices of the present. The tendency towards, and prevalence of ‘presentism’, distorts historical understanding. We are now in a period of mass communications when many broadcasters in their professional work never had or have lost a sense of history. Our multimedia age often demands speedy—almost instantaneous—answers and explanations and neatly packaged information couched in terms and values with which today’s society can relate. This is where the historian must try to counteract the impact of the reduction of complex issues to a few seconds of background in a media report. The historian needs to adopt the role of outsider. Moreover, there is little point in the historian being an âme sensible ready to shift to the study of certain topics because of a developed sense of political correctness.

In the introduction to the first edition of this work, I maintained that ‘the country was well served throughout by the permanent civil service.’ In light of the revelations of the 1990s, many will wonder how incidents—like the Garda ‘Blue-Flu’, Armed Forces deafness compensation claims, etc.—bear down on my positive perception of the public services. I believe that there has been a weakening of the civic culture which produced so many idealistic senior civil servants from the 1920s to the 1970s. I argue that that culture has been weakened. It has not disappeared. I would broadly stand over that hypothesis for a number of reasons. The whole of the public service in Ireland—embracing the civil service too—is approximately 300,000 employees in 2005, engaged in specialist and generalist roles in delivering the broad range of public service functions. The civic culture which helped form the Irish state since 1922 was reflected very strongly in the ranks of the public service. Control, accountability and transparency will always be desired alongside satisfactory service delivery. Any organisation that large will, almost inevitably, develop negative characteristics and a tendency to espouse a model of closed government. The civil service is caught in a struggle between a desire for modernity and the comfort of the old system of closed government and anonymity.

Civil servants also face the challenge of exercising their role in an increasingly complex society where specialist knowledge is required to handle difficult issues. Increasingly, the public services have come under criticism in recent years because of greater scrutiny and rising expectations of ‘improved’ public service. In order to meet the challenge of change, modernising the public services will remain an ongoing goal. But that will require a greater vote of confidence in the role of the civil service to discharge its duties.

Ireland is still ‘well served’ not just by the civil service but also by the other institutions of state. It is important to distinguish between the small number of politicians who have been indicted for corruption and the even smaller number of public officials who succumbed to the temptations of making easy money. This view is based on the findings of a decade and more of tribunals and investigations. Ireland is not a kleptocracy. Nevertheless, the all-too-cosy relationship between private sector money and political institutions was, and is, a real danger to the health of Irish democracy.

But much has come to light about the fabled private sector, and particularly the financial institutions. What has been the resulting cost for the country of a culture of deception? The state has been cheated of revenue that might have made the difference in the conversion, for example, of the Irish general medical service into a system all might view with pride. The care and treatment of those suffering from disabilities and the care of the aged are high priorities for any society. The idea of trusting the care of the aged and the running of nursing homes to the private sector is an abdication of state responsibility in the same way as it was to give over the care of children in institutions to members of religious orders, virtually without effective checks and balances. The thesis presented in the final chapter of this book implicitly warns against the scaling down of the public sector, through acts such as the sale of Aer Lingus, the creation of more public/private partnerships and the road to greater and more extensive privatisation. It strikes at the communitarian value system on which the original state was so imperfectly founded.

The challenges to the history profession have grown since the first edition of this work appeared in 1994. The resources available to the historian have increased dramatically. For example, the internet has provided an abundance of new sources. Without listing all of them, the availability of the historical debates of both Houses of the Oireachtas on the internet has brought a wealth of sources to the desktops of all on-line researchers. Thanks to the efforts of the CELT project in UCC, these historical records extend back to the revolutionary period to include the proceedings of the First Dáil from 21 January 1919. Now the public may consult the primary documents for themselves.

The decision to make the debates of the Oireachtas available was an enlightened one taken by the former Minister for Finance, Charles McCreevy. However, this historian’s gratitude is tempered by the knowledge that Mr McCreevy reined in the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, cutting off a vital artery to areas of official documentation and denying society the right to examine areas relating to cabinet documentation. But such are the processes of Irish democracy with which academics must grapple and circumvent if not overcome and reverse. Nothing should be taken for granted.

Historical perceptions have been transformed in Ireland, too, since 1994. In the first edition I argued in favour of an inclusive history, at a time when debates on revisionism—political and historical—were still occupying the minds of many academics. The focus of debate was on a very narrow subject band. There was a greater need to research the period than to pronounce and declaim on it. However, the ‘success’ of the Northern peace process in the mid-1990s, and its general endorsement by the vast majority in the Republic, may have redirected perspectives on Irish history.

The revelations regarding the ‘hidden histories’ have forced historians to accept the challenge of opening up new areas of research. In Ireland we simply have not reached the end of history.

In conclusion, this edition appears at a time when the thirst for the reading and study of history in Ireland and abroad appears to be growing. Against international trends, there are signs of a revival of history as a leaving certificate subject in Ireland. The Irish government introduced a new history curriculum early in the new century and this may partly explain the increase in the number taking the subject of history. However, the rising quality of the teaching in secondary schools is the basic reason for the revival of the subject. Those who have prophesised the end of history as a school subject are gravely mistaken if Ireland is taken as the example. Additionally, there appears to be a growing market for history books, reflecting the need to understand the history of a relatively young state in its broad chronological and international context. There is also a great intellectual curiosity about the Irish diaspora and the role of the Irish in many receiving countries like the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and other countries of the European Union.

A solid understanding of Irish and international history is not a mere optional embellishment in a liberal arts education; it is a vital component of citizenship which provides the skills to help understand and analyse social, cultural, political and economic trends in an age of unprecedented global change coming to be known as the Information Revolution.

1

A War without Victors: Cumann na nGaedheal and the Conservative Revolution

Civil war overshadowed the birth of Saorstát Éireann (Irish Free State). In Northern Ireland the minority Roman Catholic community had to learn to live with institutionalised sectarianism. Both states came into existence as a result of enforced compromise. The new political elites in Belfast and Dublin did not regard this outcome as ideal, but pragmatism determined that imperfect solutions had to be made to work. There was unfinished business on both sides of a disputed border.

The passage of the Government of Ireland Act on 23 December 1920 provided the legal basis for the setting up of Northern Ireland. Comprising the six north-eastern counties, it was 5,452 square miles in area and constituted 17 per cent of the land area of the whole island.¹ Belfast was its capital and the seat of the new Northern Ireland parliament. Northern Ireland also had thirteen seats at Westminster and twelve after 1948 when the university seat was abolished. (The figure is now 18.) Events between the summer of 1920 and mid-1922 did not augur well for Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority. During this time, over 450 people died in violence, termed ‘pogroms’ by nationalists. About two-thirds of those killed were Catholics. Thousands more were expelled from their jobs and many were driven from their homes. Nationalist fears of sectarianism had been further increased by the plan to establish a local police force. The Bishop of Down and Connor, Joseph MacRory, wrote to the Bishop of Southwark, Peter Amigo, in September 1920: ‘Just now we are threatened in Belfast with Carsonite police, most of whom would be taken from the very men whose awful bigotry has victimised our poor Catholic workers for the past ten weeks.’²

But the establishment of the state proceeded despite widespread nationalist opposition north and south of the border. There was an 89 per cent turnout in the Northern Ireland elections of 24 May 1921, where intimidation and violence were widespread.³ The Unionists got forty seats, with six each going to the abstentionist Sinn Féin and the Nationalists. King George V opened parliament on 22 June 1921 with a plea to all Irishmen ‘to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and to forget, and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment, and goodwill.’⁴ Sir James Craig became prime minister. Cardinal Michael Logue of Armagh predicted: ‘If we are to judge by the public utterances of those into whose hands power is fallen in this quarter of Ireland, we have times of persecution before us.’⁵

Violence also marked the birth of Saorstát Éireann. For the President of Dáil Éireann, Éamon de Valera, the Treaty signed on 6 December 1921 fell far short of what the country could have got. He told a private session of Dáil Éireann on 14 December: ‘I was captaining a team and I felt that the team should have played with me to the last and that I should have got the last chance which I felt would have put us over and we might have crossed the bar in my opinion at high tide.’⁶ For de Valera the Treaty meant an acceptance of colonial status with all the trappings of imperialism—an oath of allegiance, a governor general, British bases, and partition. As the debate progressed, he said despairingly on 6 January 1922: ‘There is no use in discussing it. The whole of Ireland will not get me to be a national apostate and I am not going to connive at setting up in Ireland another government for England.’⁷

For Michael Collins, the architect of the Sinn Féin military campaign against the British between 1919 and 1921, the Treaty was ‘a stepping stone’ and ‘freedom to achieve freedom.’ Aware of the terrible alternative of renewed war with Britain, throughout the debates Collins expressed impatience with suggestions to renegotiate: ‘I have done my best to secure absolute separation from England. . . . I am standing not for shadows but for substances and that is why I am not a compromiser.’⁸ Collins justifiably felt that Dublin had got a good deal. But it was a compromise ‘without the supportive symbolic system’⁹ of the Republic, which the purists like de Valera claimed as their own.

On 7 January 1922 the Treaty was carried in the Dáil by 64 votes to 57. De Valera resigned as President and was replaced on 10 January by Arthur Griffith. The former wrote to his close friend, the rector of the Irish College in Rome, Monsignor John Hagan, on 13 January 1922:

A party set out to cross the desert, to reach a certain fertile country beyond—where they intended to settle down. As they were coming to the end of their journey and about to emerge from the desert, they came upon a broad oasis. Those who were weary said: ‘Why go further—let us settle down here and rest, and be content.’ But the hardier spirits would not, and decided to face the further hardships and travel on. Thus they divided—sorrowfully, but without recriminations.¹⁰

With sentiments of that kind in mind, the historian T. Desmond Williams wrote of the civil war many years later:

All wars are the product of indecision, chance, misunderstanding, and personal will. They come from the environment in which people work and the conviction of those in power. . . . Perhaps the extremists on both sides alone knew their own minds and the contingent situation better than those of more moderate opinions.¹¹

Ideology, conviction, accident, personality and geography all helped divide much of the country into Treatyites and anti-Treatyites, and into different camps within the blocs. The Irish political world in 1922 remained a kaleidoscope of shifting emotions and ambivalences. It took the violence of civil war to force many finally to take sides.

The vote in the Dáil on 7 January was not the formal act of ratification required under Article 18 of the Treaty. Nicholas Mansergh writes that members elected to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland, as established by the Government of Ireland Act, were the designated body. The assembly was summoned to ratify the Treaty on 14 January in Dublin’s Mansion House. It did so unanimously and then set about selecting a Provisional Government. This was not to supplant the Dáil ministry, under the presidency of Arthur Griffith. The two existed in parallel, with overlapping membership: Griffith was not in the Provisional Government, but Collins, W.T. Cosgrave and Kevin O’Higgins were in both. The Irish Free State (Agreement) Bill was not enacted until 31 March 1922.¹²

In the months between the establishment of the Provisional Government and the outbreak of civil war, there were three tiers of power in the country. Firstly, there was the cabinet of the Second Dáil, presided over by Arthur Griffith. Secondly, there was the cabinet of the Provisional Government, of which Michael Collins was chairman and Minister for Finance. Thirdly, there was Michael Collins the burgeoning politician, who grew in stature and influence as the months progressed.

The first task confronting the Provisional Government was to secure military control of the country. Michael Collins set about achieving that objective, in which he was helped in particular by two members of his general headquarters staff, Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin and Seán MacMahon. Collins’s charismatic personality helped win converts to the side of the Provisional Government, and his radical attitude towards the Northern Ireland state revealed that he had not abjured the revolutionary goal of unity.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) had split over the Treaty: nine members of general headquarters staff were in favour and four were against. That split was also evident in the rank and file, where the decision of a local leader often determined the direction loyalties took. On 18 January 1922 the Provisional Government agreed—unwisely as it turned out—to allow the holding of a special IRA convention on 26 March, but permission was revoked as the general situation in the country deteriorated. Dissident IRA members regarded Michael Collins and General Richard Mulcahy as traitors. Rory O’Connor and Liam Mellowes emerged among the leading militarists on the anti-Treaty side. Mellowes, for example, had said during the Treaty debate on 17 December 1921: ‘I stand now where I always stood, for the Irish republic. . . . The Treaty is a denial of the Republic. . . . We are defending it.’¹³

In early 1922, as the situation looked like developing into a shooting war, the British evacuation was slowed down. In March Limerick became the centre of conflict, and a brokered peace narrowly averted civil war. An armoured car, sent to help secure the defence of Templemore, Co. Tipperary, was seized on 20 March by anti-Treatyites. Despite the cancellation on 15 March of government permission to hold the army convention, the IRA went ahead, in defiance of that order. Over two hundred delegates were in attendance. Rory O’Connor hinted at a press conference on 30 March that any attempt to hold a general election would be stopped by force. Asked if that meant the establishment of a military dictatorship, he replied: ‘You can take it that way if you like.’¹⁴

The pro-Treaty Freeman’s Journal, a newspaper which had courageously reported the excesses of British rule in Ireland during the War of Independence, published an account of the convention’s proceedings and had its offices and printing presses attacked with sledgehammers. The Clonmel Nationalist earlier had seen the IRA smash the press, melt down the type and threaten the editor. The Cork Examiner was also threatened. These acts of intimidation and vandalism prefigured what was to happen in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. There was more than just a passing resemblance between the IRA and the proto-fascist movements in Europe at that time. The radical authoritarianism of the IRA was evident when a proposal to set up a dictatorship was discussed at the convention. Todd Andrews, a young anti-Treatyite, wrote in his memoirs: ‘I did not see anything wrong with an IRA military dictatorship but I resented the breakdown in discipline.’ Andrews believed that the indecision at the convention meant that ‘from that moment we Republicans were beaten.’¹⁵

The proposal to set up a dictatorship was defeated, but the army convention moved to the right. A new executive with the Limerickman, Liam Lynch, as chief of staff was appointed, and Éamon de Valera and other Sinn Féin political leaders were marginalised. An anti-Treatyite party, Cumann na Poblachta, had been founded, but de Valera proved more incapable than unwilling to exercise control over doctrinaire and intransigent anti-Treatyites. The ‘chief’, as he was still known to his followers, toured Munster in March. He was under great personal strain and may have suffered what would be known today as a nervous breakdown. That may help explain the content of some of his speeches, which one cannot excuse on the grounds of bad reporting. At Thurles he was reported as having said that if the volunteers of the future tried to complete the work the volunteers of the previous four years had been attempting, they ‘would have to wade through Irish blood, through the blood of the soldiers of the Irish Government, and through, perhaps, the blood of some of the members of the Government in order to get Irish freedom.’¹⁶ In Cork, Collins called the various speeches the ‘language of madness’ and may have been unwittingly correct in the literal sense. A subsequent attempt by de Valera to refute the editorial interpretation of his words was not very convincing, and he never denied in a plausible way that he had used those words.¹⁷

Meanwhile there were widespread seizures of arms and explosives throughout the country by the anti-Treatyite IRA. Raids were conducted on public houses and shops to acquire provisions. For example, money was seized from 323 post offices in the three weeks from 29 March to 19 April. Rory O’Connor and his followers captured the Four Courts on 14 April and the anti-Treatyites began to fortify the building. They also took the Masonic Hall in Molesworth Steet, and later published a list of members of the lodge found in the building. To the surprise of many, a number of Catholics were masons and one, a Catholic baker in Rathfarnham, almost went out of business. Kilmainham Jail, the Kildare Street Club and the Ballast Office were also taken over in Dublin. The ‘irregulars’, as government sources termed the opposition, were engaged in armed attacks in the capital and in other parts of the country. On 25 April Brigadier General Adamson was shot dead in Athlone in a skirmish with republicans who had taken over a hotel in the centre of the town. On 27 April there was fighting in Mullingar.¹⁸

The Labour Party and the trade union movement, having decided to contest the forthcoming June general election, held a fifteen-hour general strike ‘against militarism’ on 24 April. Meetings and pro-parliamentary demonstrations were held in eleven large towns and cities.¹⁹ Labour, having rejected social radicalism for social democracy, went ‘the whole hog and accepted all the trappings of An Saorstát.’²⁰ It was fortunate for the new state that Tom Johnson, the Labour leader, remained such a strong parliamentarian.²¹ The growing violence and the stridency of the language on the opposing sides surprisingly did not prevent a political accommodation between Collins and de Valera in the June election. They agreed in May on a pact whereby the two sections of Sinn Féin would be represented on a national panel in proportion to their existing Dáil strength; there was further agreement on the division of ministries afterwards. This was a last desperate effort by Collins to enable de Valera and the moderates to break with Liam Lynch and Rory O’Connor.²² The strategy did not please many of Collins’s followers, including Griffith, and it satisfied militant anti-Treatyites even less. Many would have preferred an election with a straight fight between the two sides.

The success of the pact—already in a state of terminal decay by polling day—was not helped by the publication of the draft constitution on the morning of the election. In another political context, that document might have been praised for its liberal tone,²³ but to the anti-Treatyites, it had the king stamped all over it. The poll, which took place on 16 June, showed that there was a majority in the country in favour of the settlement. Out of a total of 128 seats, 58 pro-Treaty Sinn Féin and 36 anti-Treatyite Sinn Féin candidates were returned. The Labour Party took 17 seats, the Farmers’ Party won 7 and independents got 10. The outcome was a victory for the Provisional Government.

The garrison in the Four Courts was intent upon armed confrontation. On 18 June an IRA convention narrowly rejected a motion to declare war on the remaining section of the British garrison in Dublin. Four days later Sir Henry Wilson, who had become MP for North Down after retiring as Chief of the Imperial General Staff in February 1922, was shot dead outside his home in London. It is now accepted that the assassination had been ordered by Collins some considerable time before and had never been countermanded.²⁴ Two men were hanged for the crime. Wilson’s death was not universally mourned in Ireland, where one semi-literate anti-Treatyite wrote on 24 June: ‘Have you heard of the shooting of that cur, Sir Henry Wilson? He is a good scoundrel out of the way, if they be able to get at Craig, Coote and McGuffin, they will have got the best of the Devil’s pigeons.’²⁵

Prime Minister David Lloyd George held the anti-Treatyites responsible and issued the Provisional Government with little short of an ultimatum to act against the Four Courts garrison. Fearful that his coalition government might disintegrate as a consequence of the assassination, the British prime minister wrote to Collins on 22 June stating that he and his colleagues regarded ‘the continued toleration of this rebellion defiance of the principles of the Treaty [and] incompatible with its faithful execution.’ He continued: ‘the ambiguous position of the Irish Republican Army can no longer be ignored by the British army.’ Lloyd George’s letter was summarised as follows for the Irish cabinet: ‘Letter . . . stating that documents found upon the murderers of Sir Henry Wilson clearly connected them with the Irish Republican Army and revealed the existence of a definite conspiracy against the peace and order of Britain.’ Lloyd George also related that information had reached him that ‘active preparations were on foot to resume attacks upon British subjects.’ The British government felt that it ‘had a right to expect that the necessary action towards the occupants of the Four Courts would be taken by the Provisional Government without delay.’ Pieces of artillery were offered to help in the attack.²⁶ It was further understood that the British were in possession of proof ‘revealing the existence of a conspiracy on the part of certain elements in Ireland to undertake attacks against life and property in England and in this country.’²⁷ Diarmuid O’Hegarty, secretary to the Provisional Government, wrote to Lloyd George requesting that the information at the disposal of the British government should be placed in the hands of the Provisional Government when the newly elected Dáil—due to meet on 1 July—would be called upon to support such measures as might be considered adequate. O’Hegarty explained the strategy of the government for dealing with the anti-Treatyites:

The Government was, however, satisfied that those forces contained within themselves elements of disruption which given time would accomplish their complete disintegration and relieve the Government of the necessity of employing methods of suppression which would have perhaps evoked a certain amount of misplaced sympathy for them.

The British were not willing to share the information. Winston Churchill, Colonial Secretary, sent a telegram to Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins on 23 June stating that the information in possession of the British government was ‘at present of a highly secret character, and cannot be disclosed.’²⁸

The British cabinet discussed a response from Collins on 24 June. It appeared that he was not in a hurry to take action. Matters would receive his ‘personal attention’, but there was no promise that the ‘immediate action demanded by the prime minister would be taken.’²⁹ As the Provisional Government saw their room for manoeuvre disappear, the British prepared to send sufficient ships to Dublin to house 400 prisoners. Churchill was requested to draft a proclamation to be issued after the attack on the Four Courts. The decision was taken by the British government to surround the Four Courts on 25 June. However, the British commander-in-chief, General Sir Nevil Macready, balked at the idea of taking unilateral action without giving the necessary 72-hour notice to signify the breaking of the Truce. There was a danger that a British attack would fail to capture the leaders of the revolt and possibly drive the two wings of the IRA back together again. Macready decided to wait and see.³⁰

On 26 June the irregulars raided a garage in Dublin and commandeered sixteen cars. Their commanding officer was arrested and, in retaliation, the Four Courts garrison kidnapped Collins’s assistant chief of staff, J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell. The Provisional Government discussed an ultimatum from the Four Courts at its meeting on 27 June that O’Connell was being held ‘as a hostage pending the release of Leo Henderson who had been arrested in connection with the raid on Ferguson’s garage, Baggot St.’ While members of the Executive Council regarded the kidnapping as a provocation which could not go unchallenged, Collins remained reluctant to fight.³¹ But what was the alternative?

Diarmuid O’Hegarty, in a handwritten note, recorded that the government’s ultimatum to the occupants of the Four Courts had been ignored, and artillery fire was opened by government troops on the building about 4 o’clock in the morning of 28 June 1922.³² The garrison surrendered on 30 June. Among the prisoners were Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellowes, Dick Barrett and Joe McKelvey. Fighting also took place in the city centre, but O’Connell Street was in the hands of government forces by 5 July. Collins, despite the obvious personal distress caused to him by having to fight against close friends and former comrades, pressed the military initiative and drove the anti-Treatyite forces back into the countryside. On 8 August, troops arrived in Cork by sea and secured the state’s second city. The irregulars were forced to flee all the major cities. It was now a guerrilla war, but one that the government appeared confident it could win. The Irish army stood at 10,000 and it rose dramatically in numbers until it was over 40,000 by the end of the civil war.

Michael Collins had resigned his position as chairman of the Provisional Government on 12 July, the better to devote himself, as commander-in-chief, to the crushing of the military uprising. It has been argued that the emergence of William T. Cosgrave as acting chairman of the Provisional Government signified the ‘sidelining’ of Collins. Nothing could have been further from the truth. If anything, the physical force challenge enhanced his personal power and dominance over his jittery colleagues.³³ Collins made a significant difference to the government’s military effort. The decision to land troops from the sea in the south and south-west wrong-footed the irregulars. Landings in Cork and Kerry provided an element of surprise which helped restore the military initiative to the government forces.³⁴

In contrast, de Valera proved unable to exercise significant influence over the military wing of the anti-Treatyites either before or after the outbreak of hostilities. He was on his way into Dublin by car when he heard news of the Four Court bombardment. His immediate reaction was to blame the British: ‘England’s threat of war—that, and that alone—is responsible for the present situation. In face of England’s threat, some of our countrymen yielded.’³⁵ De Valera rejoined his old battalion. The armed conflict relegated the importance of politics to a low level and de Valera simply lost his role. (The Dáil was not reconvened and TDs were left without a forum.) De Valera went on the run and made his way to the south where he joined his besieged colleagues. While anti-Treatyite forces regrouped in Fermoy barracks in August, de Valera was told of the killing of his close friend Harry Boland. Kathleen O’Connell, who was de Valera’s long-serving secretary, recorded: ‘He felt it terribly—crushed and broken. He lost his most faithful friend.’ As he was preparing the evacuation of the last anti-Treatyite stronghold, de Valera recorded that it was ‘one of the most miserable days I have ever spent.’³⁶ The tragedy was that Michael Collins, too, had lost one of his closest friends. He wrote to his fiancée, Kitty Kiernan, on 2 August: ‘I passed Vincent’s Hospital and saw a small crowd outside. My mind went into him [Harry Boland] lying dead there and I thought of the times together. . . . I’d send a wreath but I suppose they’d return it torn up.’³⁷ That was the tragedy of civil war.³⁸

Arthur Griffith died suddenly on 12 August 1922. The personal strain on him had been very great that summer and he had had a difficult time with a number of his colleagues.³⁹ Ministers lived in a state of panic. The political situation was worsened by the animosity among the most senior members of the Executive Council.⁴⁰ Had Collins not been in the background, it might not have been possible to sustain the unity of cabinet. Ministers faced that terrifying prospect when Collins was shot dead in an ambush at Béal na mBláth, Co. Cork on 22 August. Not yet 32 years of age, Collins had grown in stature and had come to tower over his contemporaries on both sides of the civil war divide. It is idle to speculate about what he might have achieved had he lived, but it is certain that his death temporarily removed the ballast from the Irish ship of state. No leader could have replaced him adequately, but there could not have been a more cruel contrast than that between Collins and William T. Cosgrave, the new chairman of the Provisional Government. Cosgrave, at 42, was a primus inter pares. Collins had been a national leader and the country had not merely lost in him a commander-in-chief; the Provisional Government and, some would have said, the country, had been orphaned.

Failure to keep discipline in an expanding army was almost inevitable without Collins. Mutiny was the ultimate outcome, and there was an earlier breakdown of discipline on the government side. The activities of the ‘Oriel House gang’, as they were known, introduced a sinister element into the prosecution of the civil war. Known as the Protective Corps or CID (Criminal Investigation Department), these loyal followers of Collins operated in plain clothes and were given something of a free hand. They lived in Oriel House near Dublin’s Amiens Street and there were allegations that prisoners and anti-Treatyite suspects had been maltreated there.⁴¹ ‘Chivalry and humanity were early casualties on both sides in the civil war,’ commented the Free State Officer Niall C. Harrington, in his memoirs.⁴² There was cause for concern over the behaviour of government troops, particularly in Kerry. This brought about considerable conflict between the new GOC, Richard Mulcahy, and Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Economic Affairs.⁴³ Were extra-judicial killings condoned or tolerated by the Provisional Government? The answer to that question is emphatically in the negative, but there was a certain indulgence shown by elements in the military. That was particularly so in Kerry where there were extra-judicial killings of prisoners by government forces at Cahirciveen, Ballyseedy, Countess Bridge and Killarney.⁴⁴ In July 1923, the body of Noel Lemass, the brother of a future Taoiseach, was dumped in the Wicklow mountains.⁴⁵ But despite these extra-judicial killings, the Irish military were usually kept strictly under civilian discipline, compared to the experience of civil wars in other countries.

It was the view of an older Seán Lemass, who was to become Taoiseach