Playing Handball Against a Haystack: A Response to Brian Hanley's Defence of Peter Hart

Tuesday May 31, 2005 22:29

by Niall Meehan

A history of the discussion on this matter can be found on the following web pages:
What Is The Dispute about Kilmichael and Dunmanway really about?
Response to History Ireland Interview: Peter Hart replies on Tom Barry and Kilmichael (but not Dunmanway)
Audio Report: 'Political Culture in Cork' - a talk by Brian Murphy
Peter Hart interview with Brian Hanley from History Ireland

“Asking the Taoiseach a question is like trying to play handball against a haystack. You hear a dull thud and the ball does not come back to you. It goes all over the world, but it certainly does not come back to the person asking the question.” Joe Higgins Socialist Party TD, Leinster House 29 January 2003

The Ireland Institute is to be congratulated for hosting a talk by Dr Brian Hanley of Maynooth on “Historians and the Irish Revolution” on May 12.

Brian Hanley interviewed Peter Hart recently in History Ireland. He clarified his differences with critics of Peter Hart’s work on the War of Independence in Cork (The IRA and its Enemies 1998). In the absence of a detailed reply from Peter Hart (which we still await), a response to Hanley’s talk may serve to clarify the discussion and to eliminate some of the confusions.

Preposterous

Brian Hanley criticized those who apparently believe that the War of Independence consisted of “four glorious years” and who allegedly have difficulty with the fact that the IRA assassinated or ambushed the enemy at close range. Adherents of this view were not identified. Ironically, these could be the type of republicans Peter Hart admires, who for “moral” reasons “refused to become ambushers and assassins” (see History Ireland interview).

Focusing on Peter Hart’s Critics, Hanley said: “some … argue that it is utterly preposterous to suggest that any action of the IRA could have been motivated by sectarianism”. The holder of this preposterous view was again not named. (Brian Hanley’s at times inability to identify who he was talking about and what precisely they said or wrote creates a difficulty – of which more below.)

Impossible

Hanley said: “It is impossible to believe that no IRA member acted out of personal malice or out of the belief that Protestants were not really Irish”. It would indeed be foolish (though not impossible) to take issue with this view. Derivation of motivation in every individual case is not the historian’s task. The issue is the significance or effect of such views, if indeed they had any significant effect over the course of the War of Independence. Where such views existed they would have to be put into context. For instance, it is not sufficient to portray as sectarian the infusion of religious belief into a political outlook. Otherwise, we would have to portray Gandhi and Martin Luther King as sectarian. By and large sectarianism as a motivating factor was explicit in the ideology of unionism and in the policy and practice of the British government and its forces. Sectarian violence or its justification was not a feature of republican politics or action. Peter Hart almost concedes as much in his recent History Ireland interview, in a way that implicitly contradicts his West Cork research.

The problem with Peter Hart’s work on Cork is that he concludes that sectarianism as such motivated the IRA campaign and the republican struggle generally in West Cork. Hart concluded that this was essentially a war of “neighbour against neighbour”.

Kilmichael = Dunmanway

Two events are pivotal to Hart’s thesis. Indeed, he links them.

They are:

a) The Kilmichael ambush and Hart’s refutation of the claim that Auxiliaries engaged in a false surrender;
b) Hart’s allegation that the post-Truce Bandon/Dunmanway killings of loyalists [Hanley said 13, others say 14] in 1922 were motivated by sectarianism.

Kilmichael

If Peter Hart had concluded from his examination of the Kilmichael ambush that he was unsure of the accuracy of the false surrender claim in the midst of the fog of war, we could agree to differ and to forget the matter. It would be too trivial to pursue. However, for Hart the false surrender claim is in fact a lie concocted by IRA commander Tom Barry. Hart’s newspaper allegation that Barry was a “serial killer” was part of the argument that the battle was occasioned by savagery that was part of a vicious sectarian conflict. It “culminated” in the Bandon/Dunmanway killings, said Peter Hart.

Taken with Hart’s deliberate omission of key aspects of a contentious document (the omitted sections reinforce the case for its being a British forgery) and the demolition of other aspects of Hart’s case against Barry (see Meda Ryan), we are left with little more than a case made on the basis of assumptions. While it is possible to believe such a case it is not necessarily historical belief, more an act of revisionist faith.

The interest in the false surrender at Kilmichael stems from the fact that establishing it as a lie enables Peter Hart to place the IRA on the same level of moral and political opprobrium as the British forces: the Black & Tans, Auxiliaries and RIC. If Hart’s evidence stood up we could argue over interpretation of the evidentiary and documentary basis of the argument. But the evidence falls apart on examination and Peter Hart has been criticised as a researcher who is, at best, less than careful in its presentation.

Dunmanway

Take the Bandon/Dunmanway killings. Peter Hart misreported and in this case misrepresented another document (again from British sources, though genuine in this case). Hart asserted that Protestants shot as informers by the IRA could not have supplied information because, according to the British Record of the Rebellion, Protestants “had not got it to give”. Hart left out the next sentence which stated: “the exception to this rule was in the Bandon area”, where there was active informing and where the IRA shot the culprits. In other words a source said by Hart to be “the most important and trustworthy we have” contradicted his central point, and he omitted it.

When he came to publish an edited version of the Record of the Rebellion a few years later, Peter Hart glided over his omission in a manner said by an Irish Times reviewer to be “disingenuous”. He also left out of his published version a section in which it was admitted that the British Army had a sectarian view of the Irish. (I am indebted to Brian Murphy for this latter point. It was Murphy who in 1999 pointed to the original omission by Hart.)

Brian Hanley did not deal with these specific and quite serious criticisms, even when raised from the floor by Manus O’Riordan and by me. Perhaps he did not wish to appear critical.

Outsider

There are aspects of Hart’s work that Brian Hanley said he does not “go along with” but these were not explained. He observed that merely because Kevin Myers of the Irish Times agreed with a proponent of a historical work, in this case Peter Hart's, it did not of itself render the work wrong. Indeed.

For instance, Hart’s “evidence for the Dunmanway killings is compelling”, said Brian Hanley, without referring to the issue of Hart’s use of the Record or other recent evidence (see below). He gave a short account of the original impetus for the killings. Hanley said they resulted from a desire for “revenge after the deaths of IRA volunteers” [in fact one IRA volunteer]. However, Hanley reported it to be improbable that “suddenly 13 informers were found”: those done to death were killed because they were a part of an “outsider” group. Hanley, following Hart, suggests the victims were picked at random from the Protestant community.

It is surprising that Hanley did not refer to the evidence in Meda Ryan’s Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter (2003). The names of all those shot were on the list of “helpful citizens” left by the Auxiliaries when they vacated Dunmanway workhouse. Three were directly implicated in the killing of the IRA volunteer and two relatives of others on the list were shot (surnames were listed in that case – this in itself reveals the relationship of the killings to the Auxiliary list). Ryan documented the exceptional organization of paramilitary loyalism on an explicitly sectarian basis in the Bandon area within sections of the Protestant community (a level of organization that Peter Hart denies). During the War, the IRA shot informers or expelled them from the area, irrespective of their religion. The allegation that Protestants were targeted as such, or, even more seriously, that innocent Protestants were targeted, has little evidentiary or documentary basis. The best case that can be made for such an approach arises from the Bandon/Dunmanway killings. Under examination, as with Kilmichael, the case is weakened considerably. (See details in references below)

(There are elements of repetition and of omission in this account. More detail can be found in my response to Peter Hart’s History Ireland interview and the discussion summary. If they could be answered, the repetition might cease.)

Exceptional

In fact, the Bandon/Dunmanway killings were exceptional, but they were also not sectarian. They took place during a ceasefire period, in defiance of an IRA amnesty for spies and informers. They were roundly condemned by every section of republican opinion, pro and anti-Treaty. Even the Select Vestry of the Church of Ireland said they were exceptional. These comments were issued in the absence of knowledge of the Auxiliary list. Tom Barry played an honourable role in stopping the killings and preventing further targeting of former British intelligence agents and operatives on the Dunmanway list – these individuals were potentially still under threat. Manus O'Riordan and Meda Ryan have detailed this episode and their evidence appears compelling.

Brian Hanley, in partial retreat, suggested that what is important is how the killings are “seen” by "one million Irish people" in the North of Ireland. Certainly British propaganda did everything it could to portray the War of Independence as a war against Protestants. Deviators were terrorised back into line. In his recent talk in Cork Brian Murphy recounted the experience of an unfortunate Protestant trader from Cork named Biggs, who asserted in a letter to the Irish Times that relations between Protestants and Catholics were fine. Within three days his shop was razed to the ground by the RIC. The audio recording of Murphy's talk on Indymedia.ie reveals this and other similar and telling details.

Orange Order

Every effort was made to help unionists "see" the conflict as sectarian and to persuade them to fight on that basis. Peter Hart helps them ‘see’ this anew, which is why his work is promoted extensively on Orange Order inspired web sites.

Many Protestants, including in Cork, supported or were sympathetic to the Republican struggle. Sam Maguire, a Protestant from Dunmanway, was Michael Collins’ right hand man who took a pro-Treaty position. He took part in the 1924 Army Mutiny in protest against Free State policy since Collin's death (on his death in 1927 Maguire’s former IRA comrades defied priestly prohibition to provide an IRA honour guard at his Protestant funeral service, a point made by Manus O'Riordan at the talk).

This phenomenon, ignored by Hart, would have been highly improbable had the IRA conducted themselves as depicted by him. The main point here is that there were Protestant republicans in Dunmanway, Bandon, Ballineen and other areas, just as there were Roman Catholic loyalists. The element of support for and opposition to the British Empire as a powerful worldwide entity is missing from Hart’s account. Instead we are given a simplistic inward looking tribal or ethnic view of the community and of the fight. It is inadequate.

However, Hanley’s observation on what northern unionists “see” leads to the question: is the perception of an event more important to a historian than an investigation of what actually happened? Historical perceptions have consequences, even contemporary ones. But presumably historians like to help in the formation of perceptions based on understanding of what actually happened, rather than on inaccurate propaganda.

Otherwise, are we not dealing simply with a history of perceptions or of sentiment and prejudice? Isn’t this approach merely a reverse of the alleged nationalist bogeyman history of the ‘glory days’ of the IRA?

Chutzpah

Although Brian Hanley said he had not read Brian Murphy’s recently published ‘The Catholic Bulletin and Republican Ireland’, he made a point of referring to anti-Semitic views in a series of Bulletin articles (by a Fr Thomas Burbage) and as expressed later by the Editor, JJ O'Kelly. A pity he had not read the work, as Murphy addresses the issue. It was difficult to discern the relevance of the comment (given that Brian Hanley admitted that such views were not predominant) except as an illustration of his view that critics of Peter Hart exist in a sort of pure republican cocoon.

It may have been slightly disconcerting for Brian Hanley to suggest, even implicitly, that Peter Hart’s Critics have little to say about the anti-Semitism of JJ O'Kelly, 'Sceilg', when the originator of the research on that subject, and Peter Hart critic, Manus O’Riordan, was sitting directly in front of him. O’Riordan asserted that Peter Hart had a pro-British bias and spoke in detail on the anti-sectarian nature of the IRA campaign during the War of Independence.

Class Act

It is also odd that O'Riordan, Head of Research in SIPTU, Ireland’s largest trade union, and populariser and defender of the legacy of James Connolly and Frank Ryan, was also in effect accused of not being interested in the class struggle elements of the Irish revolution, another Hanley claim. Manus O’Riordan was accompanied by his father, Michael, former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland, Spanish Civil War Veteran and native of West Cork, who attended both of Brian Murphy’s recent talks.

It may also be unnerving to note that DR O’Connor Lysaght, historian of the Limerick Soviet and over 40-year proponent of the views of Leon Trotsky, rose and spoke in tones similar to those of Manus O’Riordan. He pointed out that a feature of the revisionist method was to “generalise from the exceptions” and that Hart’s depiction of the Bandon/Dunmanway killings was a classic example.

Donegal, Monaghan not in North

There was little if any hagiography in the remarks of O’Riordan (who was very critical of aspects of Tom Barry’s politics after the War of Independence), or from others who spoke in opposition to Hart. Brian Hanley countered my comment on the exceptional, to the south, organization of paramilitary loyalism in Bandon. He responded that the UVF were active in Ulster counties, Monaghan and Donegal. Brian had referred earlier to the killing of Protestants in those counties, but on that initial occasion had not mentioned the presence of the UVF.

It is a curious feature of this debate that Brian Hanley did not cite a specific word, sentence or passage from Peter Hart’s critics. Similarly, not once did Peter Hart do so in his intervention on the Internet, on the BBC or in his History Ireland interview. Brian Murphy’s recent talk is on Indymedia.ie (his previous talk on British propaganda is extensively reported and his original criticism is from 1999). Meda Ryan’s book is out over a year and a half. Manus O’Riordan’s work is published and also on the Internet and I have also summarized the Peter Hart criticism on Indymedia. It is not as though the argument has been hard to come by. Brian Hanley reiterated his curious assertion that Peter Hart’s (unnamed) critics concentrate on Kilmichael to the extent that they ignore Dunmanway. There is no evidence for this assertion and I wonder why it is repeated. What function does it serve? Perhaps Brian Hanley has not actually read the criticism. Otherwise, he might quote something he takes issue with. Strangely however, Brian Hanley ignored Dunmanway in the interview.

Kitchen Sink

Instead of argument that can be evaluated, Peter Hart has informed us that Meda Ryan’s criticism is not “rational” [a scarcely credible comment], and that Brian Murphy’s is not published [demonstrably incorrect]. From Hanley we learn that this is the “Limerick’s fighting story” version of the revolution and that those who criticize Peter Hart are not interested in “class divisions” (though the fact that Peter Hart appears uninterested in pursuing this approach was not mentioned as a deficiency).

In his wide ranging account, Brian Hanley told us about the shooting of Protestants in Monaghan and Donegal, about the IRA response to loyalist pogroms in Belfast, tensions between North and South, about land agitation in Galway, about Protestants in Dublin, lack of IRA action in Meath, the Labour Party performance in 1922, and the anti-Semitism of JJ O'Kelly and Tomas Ashe. From which tour of the revolution and some of its personages, we are given to understand that Brian Hanley knows a lot.

From such generalizations onlookers are possibly supposed to conclude that this is a debate of huge and impenetrable complexity. Arguably the criticism of the criticism is in fact a smokescreen for inability to defend a largely indefensible approach.

It has long been a conceit of revisionist historiography to insinuate that nationalist history does not take into account the social and class tensions endemic to the War of Independence period. As with the accusations of republican sectarianism, this is often an attempt to project backwards into the War of Independence period a crystallized ruling elite already subordinating the working class to the interests of capital. Instead of promoting an account of the struggle that incorporates a socialist analysis of imperialism, this approach usually attempts to separate socialism from the politics of the national question. 'Socialist' variants of this approach pay homage of the role of Connolly while in effect rejecting in practice the actual course he adopted in 1916.

Brain Hanley is in danger of promoting this approach by insinuating that a defence of the anti sectarian trajectory of the fight in West Cork is somehow a failure to confront sectarianism. One reason why this generalized approach has been adopted is, it would seem, because a detailed refutation of the Ryan and Murphy case is not possible.

Frankly, it would help if Brian (or, more importantly, Peter Hart) read the criticism and responded directly, rather than with speculative generalizations, many of peripheral relevance. Otherwise, the debate is a bit like playing handball against a haystack.

Finally

(I may be guilty of unintentional caricature in what follows, but it encapsulates a feeling I have about an aspect to Brian Hanley's argument.)

One thing that is missing from Brian Hanley’s account is the role of Britain. British policy and strategy in itself fomenting sectarianism while attempting to portray its opponents as sectarian fanatics is not examined. It makes Hanley’s account rather one sided and gives the appearance of navel gazing – a bit like the sound of one hand clapping. Brian Hanley says he is arguing from a broadly republican perspective, that he is himself a republican. But why, if typical republicans in Cork were narrow-minded sectarian bigots, so consumed with feelings of propriety and catholic notions of piety, that they conducted the War of Independence by shooting innocent Protestants, and by ignoring informers within the IRA, the clergy, and in the ‘respectable’ ranks of Roman Catholic society.

Why a socialist republican would wish to have anything to do with the cause of such people is beyond me, and how they won by shooting those innocent of informing, while tolerating the real informers, is utterly perplexing.

Perhaps we could all agree to dispense with caricature and unfocussed generalisation, and to move on.

Brian Hanley is in the unfortunate position of answering inadvertently for the sins of Peter Hart. Hanley expressed the view that Peter Hart "should answer for himself". That is something on which we can all agree. We await the day and the hour.

Furthering the Debate

Something else that might be agreed in the meantime would be an Invitation to Brian Murphy to deliver a talk to the Ireland Institute on British propaganda during the War of Independence period. It would allow Institute members to gauge the accuracy or fairness of the criticism of Peter Hart’s approach, and whether the critics are as Brian Hanley depicted.

Note: Mercier will publish the paperback edition of Meda Ryan’s Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter in the autumn. A few remaining hardback copies are available from Athol Books.