Assassinated strongman was not the Free State’s chief executioner

WITH negotiations going on to form a new government in Northern Ireland, this week’s RTÉ documentary on the life of Kevin O’Higgins seemed particularly timely.

The programme concluded with a poignant piece of advice from his daughter, Una O’Higgins-O’Malley, calling on people in the North and South to “gaze into the faces of their children, and not their ancestors, when planning for the future”.

For almost 90 years we have glorified the violence of 1916. Others around the world have glorified the violence of the First World War, and they continue to commemorate it each November 11.

Yet one senses that people now realise the futility of that war and the numerous conflicts that it spawned during the remainder of the century.

“The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields,” Patrick Pearse wrote in December 1915. “Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives gladly given for love of country.”

Now I won’t suggest that the man who wrote that blasphemous twaddle about the First World War was “a blithering idiot”, but James Connolly did. And I wouldn’t disagree.

Kevin O’Higgins has been generally regarded as the Free State strongman during the Civil War. He was depicted as being behind the 77 official executions during that conflict. In fact, it was his rival, Richard Mulcahy, who was largely responsible for the executions.

He was authorised by the Dáil to execute those captured in possession of illegal weapons. Otherwise, he warned, members of the Free State army would take it upon themselves “to execute people in an unauthorised way”.

Five people were executed in November 1922. The IRA announced that all Dáil members who supported capital punishment were legitimate targets. Two TDs were shot near Leinster House on December 7, 1922. The Government responded next day by executing four prominent IRA prisoners as a reprisal. Henceforth, they made it clear they would execute two for one.

O’Higgins, as Minister for Justice, was blamed for the executions, but he was the last Cabinet member to agree. He only did so when he realised they were going to be carried out anyway. In the circumstances he felt it was important that the decision should be seen as unanimous. Critics attacked the Government in the Dáil. But one went too far when he accused O’Higgins of acting out of spite.

“Personal spite, great heavens!” O’Higgins exclaimed. “One of these men was a friend of mine.” At that point he broke down and wept. Rory O’Connor, one of those just executed, had been best man at O’Higgins’ wedding little over a year earlier.

Henceforth, O’Higgins would be depicted as someone who would sacrifice even his best friend for political advantage.

He supported the executions as a necessary evil, but did not condone the murderous behaviour of the Free State army at Ballyseedy, where nine republican prisoners were tied around a mine which blew eight of them to pieces in March 1923. There were similar incidents near Killarney and Caherciveen within a week. Some of the things the Free State troops did in Kerry were worse than anything done by the Black and Tans.

Niall Harrington, who wrote a book about his involvement in the Free State army in Kerry during the Civil War, went to O’Higgins at one point to complain about the army’s excesses. O’Higgins demanded an inquiry into the killings, much to the annoyance of defence minister Richard Mulcahy, who thought that his ministerial colleague did not understand the army.

THIS week’s programme seemed to hint that what happened was really the result of army frustration because nobody had been executed in the area. While this would not have justified such behaviour, the programme had its facts wrong because four IRA prisoners had already been officially executed in Tralee on January 20, 1923.

Mulcahy appointed General Paddy Daly to investigate the Ballyseedy massacre. Daly was the general in charge of the area and was believed by many to have ordered the killings. Surprise, surprise, his report was a whitewash - and we complain about the Widgery report into Bloody Sunday!

Daly and two other senior officers accused of involvement in the Ballyseedy infamy were later accused of assaulting two daughters of a Kenmare doctor just after the Civil War. Even though the doctor was a Free State supporter and the assault was of a sexual nature that nobody dared mention publicly, Mulcahy decided against prosecuting any of the officers, thereby infuriating the politicians.

Some senior officers had been behaving as a law unto themselves, but the generals went too far when they tried to block the Government’s efforts to reduce the size of the army. Some of those who had been close to Michael Collins balked.

“Every political party in the country is rotten,” General Liam Tobin wrote.

The generals decided that the Government had abandoned the ideals of Collins and they basically issued an ultimatum that led to what became known as the Army Mutiny. WT Cosgrave became conveniently ill, but this time the generals met their match in O’Higgins. Determined to enforce civilian control of the military, he called their bluff. The generals were ousted, along with Mulcahy and Joe McGrath. When O’Higgins was assassinated two years later, many suspected that disgruntled soldiers were responsible. But the culprits were three IRA members who just happened to see him walking without a bodyguard. Although never convicted, their identities have been known for some years.

Eoin MacNeill - a former Cabinet colleague of O’Higgins and grandfather of the current Justice Minister Michael McDowell - actually witnessed the assassination and assisted his fatally wounded colleague.

“I knelt down beside him,” MacNeill explained afterwards. “He was still quite alive but blind, one of the shots having gone through the front of his head.” “I want you to say that I forgive my murderers,” O’Higgins told MacNeill on recognising his voice.

Some people were shocked at the intensity of Ernest Blythe’s remarks on the programme during an interview many years later. Like many of his Northern compatriots today, he seemed incapable of forgiving, much less forgetting. Blythe came across as an early-day Conor Cruise O’Brien who condoned the heavy gang tactics of some gardaí in the 1970s.

When they arrested a suspect in the kidnapping of Tiede Herrema, “they beat the s**t out of him”, the Cruiser noted in his memoirs. “Then he told them where Herrema was.”

The Cruiser approved of such behaviour, but he realised that colleagues like Garret FitzGerald and Justin Keating might not.

“I refrained from telling this story to Garret or Justin, because I thought it would worry them,” the Cruiser added. “It didn’t worry me.”

Maybe that explains why Una O’Higgins O’Malley opposed Liam Cosgrave in the 1977 general election - violence almost inevitably leads to further violence, and she had learned the lessons of history.