British army fire did not spark Civil War

Ryle Dwyer says BBC4 should ask about the kidnapping and killing of Free State officers in Donegal

On Monday, the BBC 4 Document series highlighted a manuscript that suggests that the British may have been more involved in the outbreak of the Civil War in 1922 than is usually admitted. Lance Bombardier Percy Creek of the Royal Artillery left a short memoir in which he admits to having fired on the Four Courts.

His unit was moved from Fermanagh to Dublin on the eve of the Civil War. “We reached the outskirts of the city,” he wrote. “I don’t think anybody had a very clear idea of what was happening. I heard a little rifle fire.

“It appeared that the Black and Tans had stormed and captured some buildings of the courts and were using rifles to hold their position,” he added. “The officer came and pointed out one of the buildings.”

Creek fired an artillery shell at the building and saw it rip into the wall.

“I think the officers and dignitaries were all very tense,” Creek continued. “We only fired two rounds and quickly lumbered up and went back to the rest of the battery.”

One contributor said: “It is hard to see how British troops could have operated in Dublin in this way and been part of the attack on the Four Courts [without the knowledge of National Army leaders such as Michael Collins or Richard Mulcahy].”

Collins was offered the assistance of British troops, but he insisted the only help he would accept was arms and heavy artillery. The British handed over four 18-pounder field guns on the eve of the attack, along with “a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition”, according to General Sir Nevil Macready, the British Commander in Ireland.

To suggest that two random rounds — fired during a bombardment lasting almost 60 hours — made any significant difference is as absurd as the exaggerated importance of this historically flawed memoir, written over 40 years after the event by a man who did not even know at whom he was shooting. The IRA was occupying the Four Courts, not the Black and Tans, who had already been withdrawn from the country months earlier.

There was indeed considerable British pressure on Collins to fire on the Four Courts, following the murder of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in London on Jun 22, 1922.

When Collins did not act, General Macready was ordered to attack the Four Courts. “Panic and a desire to do something, no matter what, by those whose ignorance of the Irish situation blinded them to possible results, was at the root of this scheme,” Macready noted.

He considered the impetuous order a mistake, so he sent his adjutant to London to argue that the Provisional Government be given more time. Thus the attack ordered for Jun 26 was postponed.

Winston Churchill was one of the volatile politicians behind the order. Earlier in the month, he had ordered an attack on Pettigo, Co Donegal, where a large force of IRA was supposedly preparing an assault on Derry and Strabane. Churchill sent British troops against the advice of prime minister Lloyd George.

“There were no troops massing against either Londonderry [sic] or Strabane and when we got to the Pettigo salient and threatened it by an elaborate manoeuvre with two brigades of infantry and one battery of artillery, we found 23 Free Staters on Free State territory in Pettigo, of whom seven were killed and 15 captured,” Lloyd George wrote to Churchill in indignation. “If war comes out of this, will it not make us look rather ridiculous?”

Churchill told parliament on the eve of the Four Courts attack that the 15 prisoners taken at Pettigo were being held to secure the release of constables kidnapped in the North and being held in Athlone since late March. He later denied that he was holding the 15 Pettigo prisoners as hostages.

It is absurd in the circumstances for the BBC to highlight two shots that may have been fired at the Fours Courts, while ignoring the killing of the seven men and the taking of 15 hostages at Pettigo on Churchill’s behalf. People should also be asking about the constables kidnapped in the North and held in Athlone for over three months.

* Ryle Dwyer is author of Michael Collins and the Civil War, published by Mercier Press.