Military types who enter politics usually shoot themselves in the foot

THERE was some disquiet during the week over the disclosure that G2 (military intelligence) were keeping files on civilians like Anthony Coughlan, as well as the usual suspects who had previously had connections with subversive organisations.

There are also files on a number of other people such as Desmond Greaves, Roy Johnston, Matt Merrigan, Desmond Fennell, Eoghan Harris, Ian Paisley, Michael Farrell, John Hume, Eamonn McCann, and even Conor Cruise O’Brien, just to name some of those on the G2 list in 1974.

No doubt many people would consider it frightening that the military had files on such individuals. People who look at such files are usually surprised at the content. This is not due to anything sinister, but because of the stunning lack of proper intelligence that the files betray. They confirm the classic oxymoron - military intelligence.

This year’s files are of the usual standard. The one on Eoghan Harris contained just six newspaper clippings, a page with three brief references to other newspaper pieces that were not in the file, and a notation that one page had been removed from the file because it contained a personal comment. That was probably the only thing that would have been of any interest to anyone.

The file on Ian Paisley consisted of eight clippings - four from the Irish Times, two from An Phoblacht, one from the Belfast Telegraph and another from the Sunday World.

In a file on Saor Éire, G2 dismissed the whole gamut of republican organisations. “The likelihood of the IRA or kindred subversive groups starting a shooting war against the security forces of the State, either individually or collectively, does not merit any serious consideration,” G2 concluded in 1974. “If attempted, it would be short-lived, ending in complete annihilation of the aggressors.” But there was nothing in the files to inspire that kind of confidence.

In our early years of independence we tended to romanticise and glorify military figures. Eamon de Valera was the last surviving commandant of the Easter Rebellion, and Fianna Fáil hung on to him for more than 30 years and then he was planted in the Áras.

Fine Gael tried to compete by selecting Gen Eoin O’Duffy as leader, but he was cursed with a political brain which was not the world’s sharpest. Later they turned to Gen Richard Mulcahy, a particularly unselfish individual with a strong sense of patriotism. He did the country an enormous service when he allowed himself to be pushed aside during the Army Mutiny.

Moreover, when he realised that Fine Gael would have trouble forming a coalition government with him as Taoiseach in 1948, he stepped aside and allowed John A Costello to take the reins. He always seemed ready to stand aside. Indeed, he was leader when his party handed the country over to Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in the 1950s. The Americans started out with a general as their first president, and there have been about a half-dozen generals in the White House since.

But they have gone down in history as some of the worst and most ineffective presidents. We have had efforts here to glorify or romanticise figures like Dan Breen and Tom Barry, and there have been efforts to revive their tarnished images in correspondence columns lately.

Make no mistake about it, they were courageous men. They were the kind of people that you would love to have on your side in a fight, but they were bloody nuisances in peacetime. They had balls for brains. As late as April 1945, after the death camps in Poland had already been liberated, Dan Breen was asking the German minister in Dublin to pass on his birthday wishes to Hitler. He had wanted to align us with the Nazis. History is not an exact science, so the current controversy over the Kilmichael ambush is unlikely to be resolved. Barry may well have believed there was a false surrender and he may have been right.

We will probably never know for sure. But no Irishman can be proud of what happened to Cecil Guthrie, one of the Auxiliaries at Kilmichael. “Of the 18 Auxiliaries,” Barry wrote, “16 were dead, one reported missing (after he had been shot, he crawled to the bog hole near the side of the road, where he died and his body sank out of sight), and one died of wounds.”

The story of the man crawling into the bog hole and dying was a patent lie.

CECIL Guthrie actually managed to escape at Kilmichael and made it to within two miles of Macroom, where he was taken prisoner by two IRA people. He was held for two days before he was shot and buried in Annahala Bog.

On the night of the ambush Barry had trouble sleeping. “Lying on my back, staring up at the ceiling,” he wrote, “thoughts crowded in on me. The Auxiliaries had had it. They were looking for it for a long time. But they were now smashed, and their reign of terror against West Cork men and women was ended. The IRA had outfought them.”

Barry didn’t win the war, and it didn’t end at Kilmichael. He was so obsessed with himself that he repulsed many people in quieter times. Just how many became apparent in 1946 when he ran for the Dáil in a Cork by-election. He lost his deposit, finishing last behind even the communist Michael O’Riordan. Would people please stop trying to portray Barry as if he were universally loved and admired throughout this country. Those who knew him best - the people of Cork - flatly rejected him in his own day.

One letter writer to the Irish Examiner in the past week suggested that Dan Breen and company should be heroes because they took up “arms against the invader” at Soloheadbeg. We have heard about blow-ins, but it is absurd for someone in Tipperary to call people from Cork and Mayo invaders. The two policemen killed at Soloheadbeg were James McDonald, a native of Belmullet, Co Mayo, and Patrick O’Connell from Clonmoyle, Co Cork.

If killing them was patriotic, it would have been just as patriotic to have killed Tom Barry’s father because he was an RIC man, too. Michael Collins realised that most of those working for the crown in this country were Irish first. A great many in the police, prison and postal services sided with their fellow Irish people, but McDonald and O’Connell never got a chance.

One of the more intriguing documents released last week was a letter from President Erskine Childers to Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave.

“When I opened the swimming pool in Tipperary recently,” the president wrote on May 13, 1974, “I found a museum commemorating the life of Sean Treacy. The museum contained nothing but guns; children were given no concept whatever of the people in Co Tipperary who, in various political parties, aroused the spirit of Tipperary men and women.

“We do not do half enough to commemorate the lives of those who worked for Ireland in the social, political and cultural fields in the19th or 20th centuries to arouse the self-confidence of Irish people,” he wrote.

I agree.