Between Two Hells: The treaty that led to war

Book Review:  Dr Ferriter’s book shows a distinct difference between the leadership of each side during the Irish Civil War

“It is not the duty of the historian to lecture the people of the past on how they should have done better,” says Ferriter.

• Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War
• Diarmaid Ferriter
• Profile Books, €20

At the outset of Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War, Professor Diarmaid Ferriter explains that it was not his intention to cover the military fighting in detail.

“It is not the duty of the historian to lecture the people of the past on how they should have done better,” he insists. “The quest should be to understand and contextualise their positions, the lights that guided them and to humanise their dilemmas and the deadly consequences of their decisions.”

It is certainly a historically valuable approach, because many of those most involved in the conflict were later reluctant to deal with the issues publicly.

“Terrible things were done by both sides,” the future taoiseach Seán Lemass told journalist Michael Mills in 1969. But that was all he would say.

The war was fought over the Free State’s acceptance of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The majority of the Irish people apparently endorsed that decision.

Rory O’Connor, who was described by the author as “the most high-profile spokesman of the anti-Treaty officers,” told a press conference on March 22, 1922, that the Republican Army could prevent an election. When asked if he was “proposing a military dictatorship”, O’Connor pointedly replied: “You can take it that way if you like.”

Any doubts about the acceptance of the Treaty by a majority of the electorate were clearly removed by the results of the Dáil general election of June 16, 1922. Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin won 58 seats with 38.5% of the vote, while anti-Treaty Sinn Féin won just 36 seats (with 21.2%). The Labour Party, which supported the Treaty, won 17 seats. Thus the Free State element and the Labour Party had 75 seats, or more than double the anti-Treaty’s 36 seats.

The actual catalyst leading to the civil war was the murder, outside his London home, of field marshal Henry Wilson on June 22, 1922. Lloyd George, the British prime minister, told Michael Collins that the British had evidence linking the two killers to the IRA.

The prime minister said his government could no longer ignore “the ambiguous position” of the IRA force occupying the Four Courts in Dublin. They had to be cleared out. If the Free State did not do it, the British would obviously do so themselves. Collins therefore directed his men to seize the Four Courts on June 28, and this essentially ignited the Irish civil war.

Executions

Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War.

By late August, the Free State’s two recognised leaders, Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, were both dead. Griffith died of natural causes, and Collins was killed 11 days later in an ambush at Béal na Bláth. The author suggests that Collins “was the worst for wear with drink” at the time, and it was this which led him “to make the stupid military blunder by stopping to return fire”.

One of the more distinctive aspects of the civil war was the executions of 77 Republican prisoners by the Free State side. The first of those executions took place at Kilmainham Jail under the Public Safety Act, which made the possession of a gun a capital offence. Four men — aged 18 to 22 — were executed by firing squad on the morning of November 17, 1922.

Thomas Johnson the Labour Party leader decried the action, because of the absence of public trials and legal aid for the accused. A week later Erskine Childers was executed for the possession of a small pistol that had ironically been given to him by Michael Collins.

The Republicans retaliated for these executions by killing the pro-Treaty Dáil deputy Seán Hales in Dublin on December 7, 1922. The Free State responded, next day, by summarily executing four prominent Republican prisoners — Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett, and Joe McKelvey.

“They were executed without trial for acts committed by others,” Dr Ferriter concluded. Moreover, all four had been prisoners since before the Public Safety Act had been introduced.

Kevin O’Higgins, the minister for justice, had been a close friend of Rory O’Connor, who was best man at O’Higgins’s wedding little over a year earlier. But Dr Ferriter notes that “O’Higgins stoutly defended the executions” on the grounds that “the safety and preservation of the people is the highest law”.

Many people were surprised that the Catholic Hierarchy seemed to have nothing to say

about desecration of a Church holiday, as the executions of the four men was on December 8, 1922.

Free State propaganda suggested that even those “most sensitive...to the excesses of executive government,” accepted the executions as “inevitable if Ireland was to be saved from a descent into Bolshevism”.

The Free State government obviously had no qualms about the executions, because it increased their pace. They executed 34 men in January 1923, even though there had been no further killing of any government deputy.

Cosgrave stated that his government was persisting with the executions in order to save the country. “If we have to exterminate ten thousand republicans, the three millions of our people is bigger than this ten thousand,” he insisted.

Difference in leadership

Historian Diarmaid Ferriter.

The Free State came under intense emotional pressure from some outspoken women, such as Mary MacSwiney, a sister of the late Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, who had died In October 1920 on a protracted hunger-strike protesting against his imprisonment by the British.

Referring to him as “my sainted brother”, Mary traded heavily on his memory, and took part in a massive hunger strike of republican prisoners that began in October 1923. It initially involved 7,003 of the 8,207 Republican prisoners. By early November, the number on hunger strike was down to 3,067, and it eroded to 315 by mid-November.

Dr Ferriter’s book shows a distinct difference between the leadership of each side during the conflict. The Free State authorities appeared to know what they wanted and were determined to have their way. The republicans, on the other hand, often seemed rudderless and confused.

Éamon de Valera was the recognised leader of the anti-Treaty side, but at times he provided little leadership. In fact, on his opening page Dr Ferriter quotes from a letter that de Valera wrote to Mary MacSwiney in September 1922. It basically suggested that he did not know what to do.

“For the sake of the cause I allowed myself to be put into a position which it is impossible for one of my outlook and personal bias to fill with effect for the party,” he wrote. “Every instinct of mine would indicate that I was meant to be a dyed in-the-wool Tory, or even a Bishop, rather than the leader of a revolution.”

As the conflict continued de Valera was blamed as “solely responsible for the recent destruction of the country.” This, Dr Ferriter convincingly dismisses as “a wild exaggeration”. In contrast with his earlier confusion, de Valera played a significant part in helping to end the conflict.

After the death of IRA chief of staff Liam Lynch in April 1923, the IRA executive agreed among themselves that peace should be negotiated. “Military victory must be allowed to rest for the moment with those who have destroyed the Republic,” de Valera declared. Mercifully, he helped to end the conflict shortly afterwards.