Issue 11, Autumn 2009 http://www.drb.ie/essays/a-house-built-on-sand

A House Built on Sand Philip O’Connor and Pat Muldowney

A response to ‘Getting Them Out: Southern Loyalists in the War of Independence’,

drb, Issue 9, Spring 2009. http://www.drb.ie/more_details/09-03-

27/Getting_Them_Out.aspx

In “Getting them Out”, Tom Wall reviews two recent Aubane Historical Society

publications: Coolacrease: the true story of the Pearson executions –an incident in the Irish

War of Independence and Troubled History: Ten years of Controversy in Irish History -a

10th anniversary critique of Peter Hart’s The IRA and its Enemies.1 The review is flawed

and indeed misleading for readers depending on it for an understanding of the

issues covered. In this response, we point out the deficiencies of fact and

interpretation in Wall’s article.

The book Coolacrease describes what was essentially a relatively uncomplicated

episode in the War of Independence, involving the execution of suspected informers

who had launched an armed attack on a republican army roadblock. The events

were well known locally but little known nationally until 2007 when RTÉ, the

national broadcasting organisation, screened a sensational and inaccurate

documentary version of the events of June 1921 at Coolacrease, in Co Offaly.

The first published account of the Pearson brothers’ execution was included by

Paddy Heaney in his comprehensive book on the history and folklore of the area

published in 2000. In 2005 another book appeared, by Alan Stanley, the son of a close

companion of the Pearson brothers who had played a central part in the events.

Stanley’s book portrayed the executions as a sectarian murder committed in

pursuance of a land grab and his book immediately became a cause célèbre of Eoghan

Harris, a member of the Senate and Sunday Independent commentator. Although

some voices were raised in the public domain challenging the Stanley account, the

RTÉ documentary screened in its RTÉ Factual – Hidden History series was largely

built on Stanley’s version of the events and included Senator Harris as its star

witness. The programme portrayed the execution as a murder committed by local

Republicans in a deliberately barbaric manner in pursuance of a sectarian land grab.

The makers of the documentary claimed the alleged land grab occurred with the

complicity of Land Commission officials and portrayed the events at Coolacrease as

occurring in the context of a War of Independence characterised by acts of ethnic

cleansing.2

The book Coolacrease reviewed by Tom Wall contains a detailed reconstruction by

Paddy Heaney and Pat Muldowney of the events that took place in June 1921 and a

comprehensive refutation of the case presented by RTÉ. It includes several

additional articles by other authors on related subjects as well as a large volume of

documentary record, much of which only recently became available and which

confirms and substantiates Paddy Heaney’s original account.

The book was launched on November 6th, 2008 by the Cathaoirleach (chairman) of

Seanad Éireann, Senator Pat Moylan, to a large gathering of people – including many

relatives and descendants of those involved – at the premises of the Offaly Historical

and Archaeological Society in Tullamore. It was received warmly at the launch and

in reports and reviews in the midlands press. But, apart from a hostile treatment by

Steven King, former adviser to Unionist Party leader David Trimble, in the Sunday

Business Post – which consisted of a polemic against the publishers, Aubane

Historical Society, rather than any examination of the book itself, a more factual

review in The Daily Star, and a report on the launch in The Irish Times, the appearance

of the book was met with total silence by the writers who had provided voluminous

articles in extravagant praise of the now discredited documentary, notably in

theSunday Independent and The Irish Times.

Publication of Coolacrease was, however, seriously considered in the specialist

press. It was featured as The Big Book in History Ireland where Joost Augusteijn, an

academic historian who specialises in this period, reviewed it at length and criticised

various aspects of it. Nevertheless on the central issue – what actually occurred at

Coolacrease in 1921-23 – he accepts the case made:

this book shows conclusively that the [RTÉ] documentary gave a false

portrayal of events, and that its makers were not as well informed as they

should have been. The documentary evidence, much of it reproduced here,

shows clearly that the Pearson family were actively opposed to the IRA and

that they did attack one of their roadblocking parties.

He also observed that the evidence in the book: “indicates that this was not a

sectarian murder or land grab”. Writing in Books Ireland, John Kirkaldy came to

pretty similar conclusions. The only error of fact he identifies is the incorrect

description of Surrey as one of the Home Counties!3

Senator Harris has acclaimed Tom Wall’s review in Dublin Review of Books, writing

that Wall “takes a rounded view of the Coolacrease affair … far from favourable to

Aubane”.4 This is despite the fact that buried away amongst the many sweeping

generalisations in his article, Wall also concedes the essential contentions

of Coolacrease with regard to the executions and the land grab theory.

Tom Wall acknowledges that the book presents comprehensive contemporary

documentation to “add to the total sum of knowledge about the tragic event” and

goes on to make further observations which are entirely inconsistent with the

Senator's story of a terrible sectarian murder committed in pursuance of a land grab:

“The case against land being a direct cause of the incident is persuasive. It seems that

the Pearsons were executed for reasons that had no direct bearing on land

ownership.” While quibbling with the evidence that the Pearson brothers attacked

an IRA roadblock party, injuring several of them, one of them seriously, Wall does

finally concede that this was most likely “the immediate cause of the execution”.

How Senator Harris can find comfort in these conclusions is something of a mystery.

The RTÉ film The Killings at Coolacrease, screened in October 2007 and again in

May 2008 as part of the Hidden History series, was made on behalf of RTÉ by Reel

Story Productions, and produced by Niamh Sammon. RTÉ’s original working title

for the documentary in promotional material presented in May 2008 by Kevin

Dawson, RTÉ Head of Factual Programmes, in May 2008 was Atonement: Ethnic

Cleansing in the Midlands. In correspondence at the time and later before the

Broadcasting Complaints Tribunal, RTÉ defended the programme as its own.5

The RTÉ programme ignored most of the relevant documentary sources. It later

claimed that its argument – that the Coolacrease incident was sectarian murder in

pursuance of a land grab in a context of widespread sectarian ethnic cleansing by the

Irish independence movement – was proven by Land Commission documents which

it had in its possession. The authors of Coolacrease examined the Land Commission

records and there are no such documents in existence. The programme’s thesis is

wholly unsupported by the available evidence.

It is worth noting that the authors of Coolacrease originally had no intention of

publishing the book, and that Pat Muldowney had engaged with the filmmakers,

making copious documentary evidence available to them from both British and Irish

sources to assist them in reaching truthful conclusions about the events. They chose

to ignore all evidence that clashed with their pre-conceived views on what had

happened.6

Tom Wall’s failure to comment at all on the RTÉ documentary’s account of the

events or the media coverage accompanying and supportive of it is extraordinary.

He also avoids dealing with the revelations in Coolacrease concerning the distortion

of evidence by RTÉ or the fabrications which Senator Eoghan Harris introduced into

the programme. Surely the presentation of events in the programme, which is the

main reason Aubane Historical Society felt compelled to publish the book, deserve

some comment in any review of it? Indeed, how many drb readers would ever have

heard of Coolacrease had it not been for the Senator’s wildly sensational accusations

screened by RTÉ? Wall’s failure to consider the RTÉ documentary renders his review

lop-sided, not to say bizarre.

The Coolacrease book exposed RTÉ’s thesis as false and, regarding the land grab

theory, proved that RTÉ had never actually seen the relevant Land Commission

documents. It published these documents in full (along with much other relevant

documentation) and demonstrated that they prove the opposite case, that there was

no sectarian land grab.

While acknowledging the historical documentation provided in Coolacrease, Wall

criticises it for including oral sources. In the RTÉ programme, in reaction to Paddy

Heaney’s account of wounds received by Mick Heaney during the roadblock attack,

Eoghan Harris declared: “When Paddy Heaney tells me things like that I want

documentary corroboration in evidence!” Tom Wall repeats the same accusation in

less aggressive language: “Perhaps it is believed these claims are adequately

supported by the statement of Paddy Heaney that ‘my information on the fight of

the Cadamstown IRA was gleaned from the men and women who took part in it’. If

there is any documentary evidence in the form of interview notes it is not recorded.”

But, by testing and cross-referencing its oral sources against each other and

against the surviving documentation, the authors of Coolacrease demonstrated which

of the oral sources were reliable and which were not. Paddy Heaney’s history,

reconstructed from local knowledge, is fully vindicated by the documentary record.

The same cannot be said for RTÉ which extensively used unreliable oral sources, as

did the book on which RTÉ based its documentary – Alan Stanley’s I Met Murder on

the Way. Interestingly, the latest edition of Stanley’s book omits one of his earlier

bogus atrocity allegations, the use of dum-dum bullets by the IRA in the Pearson

executions. Indeed, Stanley’s book is strewn with colourful and ludicrous

allegations, such as that the IRA had a “quota” of Protestants to shoot in every

district in Ireland! The RTÉ programme was based on this type of unsupported

slapdash speculation.

It is a pity that Wall’s review did not examine the way in which RTÉ and Stanley

treated sources, oral and otherwise. Indeed he not only refrains from commenting on

the merits of the exposé in Coolacrease of the RTÉ programme, but applies

questionable standards to the use of such oral evidence himself. While he accepts as

evidence of a deliberate atrocity a snippet from an interview in the documentary in

which JJ Dillon, the son of a local 1921 IRA leader, expresses revulsion at the

execution, he doesn’t mention the British army medical reports reproduced

in Coolacrease which shed new light on what actually happened.

Later in his article he dismisses some points in Meda Ryan's work on

Dunmanway, Co. Cork, for being based in part on interviews with Dan Cahalane.

So, while the quote from JJ Dillon is to be taken as proof of an atrocity and the

documentary evidence (medical reports) to the contrary ignored, Dan Cahalane’s

word is dismissed as proving nothing although in that case the oral evidence is

complementary to the essential case made on the basis of the documentary

evidence!7

Tom Wall levels various accusations at the publishers, some very serious:

Somewhat disturbing … is the character assault on the long-deceased Pearson

family – the innocent or otherwise victims – who are portrayed as

aggressively anti-Catholic bigots, treacherous spies, liars and fraudsters.

Whatever about the core issue – the justification or otherwise for the

executions – the casting of such a cold and malicious eye on the victims

would appear to be designed to deny them even a modicum of human

sympathy.

In fact the book nowhere uses the terms “anti-Catholic bigots”, “treacherous

spies”, “liars and fraudsters”. It does raise the Pearsons’ later and demonstrably

fraudulent claim to a British government compensation body regarding the value of

their farm. This was included because the price achieved on its sale was presented in

the programme as key evidence of a forced sale and subsequent land

grab. Coolacrease presents evidence which conclusively demonstrates the fraudulent

character of the compensation claim made by the Pearson family. It was

unfortunately necessary to do this in Coolacrease because in the RTE programme two

influential academics, Dr. Terence Dooley and Prof Richard English, specifically

quote in sombre tones from the fraudulent “evidence” produced in support of these

claims. This nonsense was broadcast without critical challenge, despite being made

aware, by the authors of the book, that they were building their case on a bed of

sand. Surely it is odd to characterise the presentation of the truth in the face of

radical misrepresentation as a denial of human sympathy.8

Before publishing Coolacrease the authors contacted Dr Dooley but he would not

confirm that he had Land Commission evidence to back up what he said on the

programme, as Niamh Sammon, producer of the RTÉ film had claimed. Neither

Dooley nor English have since either clarified their positions or come to the defence

of the documentary, despite the coverage the controversy has received in journals

such as History Ireland.

On the question of human sympathy, there is a striking imbalance in Tom Wall’s

application of the concept. While he expresses great concern for the unmaligned

Pearsons, nowhere does he express any feeling for those who were the victims of

their actions. Quite apart from the displays of sectarian sentiment exhibited by the

Pearsons towards local people, four men were wounded at the roadblock attack, one

very seriously in the stomach who died a few years later of his wounds. The

roundups of local Republicans following the mass path incident (a confrontation

between local people and the Pearsons in June 1921 a fortnight before the attack on

the roadblock) and following the roadblock attack were accompanied by brutality

and by the terrorising of the people of the area by the British army and

RIC/Auxiliaries. As Coolacrease also documents, some of the prisoners were

subsequently subjected to severe beatings by British military personnel and starved

for three days in Tullamore Jail. The Cadamstown IRA unit was smashed and its

leading members suffered long periods of imprisonment and internment. This

resulted in much added misery as farms became run down and semi-derelict due to

the absence of the men who had been interned. Surely these matters should

stimulate some human sympathy in the reviewer?

We took no pleasure in recounting less creditable characteristics and activities of

the Pearsons. Indeed Coolacrease discloses only some of the deplorable conduct into

which they lapsed under pressure of the war once they had opted to become active

in it. However, the book does recount that the Pearson brothers met their fate

bravely and also brings to light some positive features of the Pearsons’ pre-war life

in Offaly, missed by their would-be defenders, such as the election of William

Pearson to a representative position by the largely Republican electorate of the area

in 1919. This can only be because, loyalist or not, he was well thought of, and must

have earned such respect by his actual conduct in the community up to that time,

and before the passions of war took hold of him and his family.

Before they sided – unlike any of their Protestant neighbours – in a paramilitary

capacity with the Imperial forces, the Pearsons were integrated and well thought of

members of the community. But according to the fairy tale account advanced by

Eoghan Harris and RTÉ, the Pearsons were not like normal people, they:

were very quiet, very, very gentle, decent people. They were pretty much

withdrawn from the world. I would say they found the whole world outside

confusing. They were really a husbandry people - the land - quiet evenings

spent in meditation and reflection.

There is plenty more in similar vein in the documentary. Since this myth is an

important part of RTÉ’s version, it was unfortunately necessary to tell a few home

truths which showed that the Pearsons were human beings not angels; that they

were no better or worse than anybody else; that they were capable of violence,

prejudice and fraud just like other people.

Tom Wall states that in Coolacrease “much is made of the extremism of

Cooneyism”, the faith to which the Pearsons belonged. It was necessary to describe

the religious character of Cooneyism because Harris, in both the documentary film

and in his article in the Sunday Independent in 2005, made the Cooneyism of the

Pearsons a central issue and completely misdescribed it. The book dispenses in a

short chapter with this. It points out that local people were unaware of the specific

type of religious community to which the Pearsons belonged, regarding them simply

as “Protestant” (they had been members of the Church of Ireland before becoming

Cooneyites around 1912)9. It notes that the Pearsons were well integrated locally,

were modern, ambitious and industrious farmers, and took part in local sports and

dances, activities frowned upon by strict Cooneyites. Harris raised their faith to a

central issue, and RTÉ, in its promotion of the programme, followed suit, referring to

the Pearsons as “members of a small Amish-type sect”. Coolacrease reveals the

differences between the Amish and the Cooneyites, showing that the Cooneyites

were a religiously militant grouping – far more akin to Anabaptists than to the

genuinely pacifist Amish – who condemned members of the mainstream Protestant

and Catholic churches alike as doomed to eternal damnation. Cooney himself called

Anglicanism “that dirty poison” and denounced the Bible, which plays such a

central role in mainstream Protestantism, as “the paper pope”. Harris’s description

of Cooneyism is meant to portray a pacifist other-worldly culture that would make

any activity such as the Pearsons engaged in impossible and their execution all the

more horrendous. In fact, the authors of Coolacrease regard the Cooneyism of the

Pearsons as having played little role in events, except perhaps to go some way to

explaining the depth of their alienation from their Protestant neighbours.

The people of Offaly, on the other hand, were portrayed on RTÉ as deeply

sectarian, prepared to murder complete innocents out of hatred and greed, and still

prepared to condone such killing. Film producer Niamh Sammon declared

dramatically on RTÉ radio: “More than one person said that they wouldn’t be able to

live in the area if it was known that they had co-operated with the documentary.”

There were weeks and months of this kind of allegation in the press – much of it

documented in the book – both before and after the screening of the documentary on

RTÉ. If Tom Wall wishes to seek out vilification of people living or dead, perhaps he

could look into this scandalous public vilification of the people of Co Offaly.

When we pointed out repeatedly that the actual documentary record indicated

that the Pearsons were not pacifist, that they had initiated armed action themselves,

and that there was no evidence of a land grab, we were denounced by Harris on RTÉ

radio as “liars, like Holocaust deniers”. Since Wall himself says he now accepts the

validity of much of the documentary evidence provided in the book regarding the

Coolacrease case, he must also be, in Harris’s terms, “a liar, like a Holocaust

denier”.10

In his drb review of Coolacrease, Wall proposes some theories of his own in relation

to the execution. He introduces a variant of Stanley’s and RTÉ’s allegations of

deliberate genital mutilation: “The [IRA] firing squad directed its fire to the midriff

area.” Harris and RTÉ seem to have got the “deliberate genital mutilation” idea from

Stanley’s book. It is not clear where Stanley got it from as his father was not a

witness to the executions and had no contact with the Pearson family thereafter.

There is no reliable evidence – documentary, oral or physical – for either Stanley’s or

Wall’s variant. What we do have, however, is the detailed expert testimony of a

senior British military doctor to the official British Military Court of Inquiry into the

events. This shows that the Pearson brothers had received bullet wounds throughout

their bodies, none of them to the genitals. Harris ignored this evidence and persisted

with his perverse theory, declaring on RTÉ that the Pearson brothers had been shot

“very deliberately in the genitals, in their sexual parts, in their sexual organs; what it

really says is you are The Other, you are an outsider, we hate you, go away and die.”

The medical reports – reproduced in full in the Coolacrease book – show that the

Pearsons received mostly light injuries from leg to head and, out of ten or so rounds

that hit them, one each in the torso area. But in coming up with this latest and

entirely original “midriff area” allegation, Wall appears to be making himself an

apologist or saviour for the lurid, discredited RTÉ account, although the RTÉ version

of events is curiously downplayed in his article.

The most that can be said is that the firing squad “directed its fire” in the general

direction of the Pearsons, possibly missing their targets for the most part. Wall says:

“The firing squad … left the two boys to die a prolonged and agonising death [for

which] no explanation is offered” by the Coolacrease book. This is again the

Stanley/Harris version.

The IRA party had been ordered to execute the three older Pearson brothers,

having read to them the order of the IRA command giving the reasons, and then to

burn their house. One brother was absent from Coolacrease on the day the IRA party

arrived, meaning that just two were taken prisoner. Wall is wrong when he states

that Coolacrease offers no explanation for the firing party leaving the two Pearson

brothers wounded, but not killed outright as they were ordered. The circumstances

of the executions are reconstructed in detail in the book as far as is possible from the

surviving evidence, and illustrated with detailed maps. This was necessary because

of claims by Stanley and Harris that the family had been forced to witness the

shooting, claims which Coolacrease exposes as bogus. Anyone who has been inside

the yard adjoining the dwelling house where the executions took place will

understand that this is and was a small, constricted, closed-in area, which would

have been further cluttered at the time with machinery and other farm materials.

When the burning dwelling house exploded after being set on fire, the possibility of

further munitions explosions capable of burying everyone in rubble, along with the

noise and flames observable for miles around, were a powerful incentive for the ten

men of the IRA party to get out of there fast (they were on foot), which is what the

evidence indicates is precisely what they did.

Firing squads were notoriously inaccurate, and firing squad duty distasteful and

repulsive to soldiers who would mostly have preferred to be anywhere else. This is

why we reproduce an extract from The Gadfly, a nineteenth century novel by EL

Voynich, in which a condemned man displays an admirable and defiant courage in

the face of his executioners, a terrified and reluctant firing squad. The result was

often “botched” executions in which a coup de grace had to be delivered by the

officer in charge. The failure of the officer in charge at Coolacrease to do this is

essentially the complaint which is often made against the Coolacrease executions.

Offaly historian Philip McConway was pilloried for saying in the RTÉ documentary

that “the IRA botched the execution in that they didn’t finish them off with head

shots”. But critics such as Wall make exactly the same point in different words. What

a pity Philip McConway didn’t say coup de grace. Such a genteel and delicate way

of describing something so ugly!

Tom Wall also criticises the Coolacrease book for describing JJ Dillon’s comments

as pacifist (“It was crazy, it was brutal, it was wrong”). Apparently Wall regards the

term pacifist as derogatory when applied to JJ Dillon, but positive when applied to

the Cooneyite Pearsons – who were, in reality, no more pacifist than the Quaker

Richard Nixon.

Local people, including JJ Dillon himself, were present in great numbers to

welcome Coolacrease when it was launched in Tullamore, almost exactly a year after

RTÉ first broadcast its misrepresentation of them. It is notable that none of those

who were deceived by the RTÉ production team during the making of the

propaganda film subsequently made themselves available to those seeking to defend

the RTÉ case once its true purpose was exposed.

We wonder whether those who now complain, like Tom Wall, that the IRA did

not finish off the Pearson brothers properly ever consider what the two brothers

themselves might have thought of such a suggestion? As the Coolacrease book

explains, the two never lost their nerve and were defiant – or, as Paddy Heaney puts

it, courageous – throughout. But they must have been relieved at their success in

deceiving the execution party and coming out alive.

As the medical reports confirm, they did not, after all, receive fatal wounds. They

were attended to over the following hours by at least three doctors. While dressing

their wounds, none of the doctors saw fit to take any more urgent medical action.

Although no major blood vessels were damaged, the Pearsons died of blood loss,

over a longish period, from a number of wounds not in themselves fatal. It is not

likely that the IRA execution party deliberately sought to cause “a prolonged and

agonising death” and there is no indication that they did so.

The behaviour of the brothers in facing their execution is just one of many points

where Tom Wall misreads the Pearsons. The previous week, following the arrest of

most of the Cadamstown IRA the morning after the Pearsons had shot several of

them at the roadblock, they had as a gesture of triumph erected white flags in

Cadamstown village. “A curious choice of flag” is Wall’s comment on this.

The white flags were symbols of a surrender which the Pearsons were declaring

on behalf of the people of the area, following the shooting and arrest of most of the

Cadamstown IRA, and of all its senior members, subsequent to the Pearson attack on

the roadblock, and subsequent to the mass path arrests a week or so earlier; all of

which amounted to what seemed to be an overwhelming victory attributable solely

to the formidable Pearson brothers. It was not at all unreasonable to believe in June

1921 that the might of the British state – which had one of the largest military forces

in the world, fresh from victory in its “Great War” which had seen the deaths of

millions of people and a massive expansion of its Empire – would triumph in Ireland

over the largely poorly trained and poorly armed resistance forces organised by an

underground and beleaguered Dáil.

In his review Wall also casts doubt on Pearson involvement in loyalist

paramilitarism, saying that “if the Ulster Volunteer Force was active in South Offaly

at the time some trace of it would surely have emerged by now”. But, while positing

some alternative explanations of the armed attack on the IRA roadblock, Wall

acknowledges on balance that the Pearsons were probably responsible for that

attack. As to broader loyalist paramilitary networks, evidence for this is provided by

Alan Stanley’s book, which describes loyalist paramilitary activity and collusion

with Auxiliaries by Pearson relatives and friends in nearby Luggacurran, Co Laois,

including their associate and companion William Stanley, who came to live with

them in Coolacrease as a fugitive under the alias “Jimmy Bradley”. Further

confirmation is provided by evidence in the Bureau of Military History. In fact, the

information on William Stanley’s paramilitary collaboration with the Auxiliaries first

came to light with the publication by Stanley’s son, Alan Stanley, of his book, I met

murder on the Way, in 2005. It is interesting that Alan Stanley recounts that his father

had kept this aspect of his past – among others – secret from him and that he had

only learned the details from a close relative after his father’s death. While there can

be no realistic doubt about the charge of loyalist paramilitarism, perhaps there is

some quibble about its formal designation? Should it be described as “UVF”? There

were direct Pearson family connections with loyalist Ulster, including the Orange

Order; and William Stanley took refuge with relatives there after the Coolacrease

executions. The official report of the incident on the Irish side states that the

Pearsons “had been active in promoting the Ulster Volunteers movement in their

district”. If Wall has some evidence to justify second guessing the official Irish report

of that time, he should present it.11

In his recent book The Politics of Enmity, Paul Bew describes the British Cabinet

meeting of July 21st, 1920 at which Lloyd George and Churchill debated using the

UVF throughout Ireland as a counter-insurgency militia to suppress the elected

government. In the end they opted instead for setting up paramilitary Freikorps-

type militias, the Auxiliaries and Black and Tans. But having learned from the failure

of the Black and Tans in Ireland, Churchill’s last colonial act, in 1950s Kenya, was to

use indigenous Kenyan tribal mercenary forces, instead of British mercenary colonial

forces, to successfully and brutally smash the Mau Mau anti-colonial movement

there.12

In another valiant piece of reinterpretation, Wall dates the mass path

confrontation between the Pearsons and the IRA men John Dillon and JJ Horan as

occurring up to a year before the two of them were arrested, and says it is more

likely that their arrest in June 1921 was a consequence of the IRA ambush of RIC and

Auxiliaries at Kinnitty on Tuesday May 17th. In fact the Pearsons’ armed

confrontation with mass-goers took place in early June 1921, and Dillon and Horan

were arrested the following morning after they had intervened to keep the peace on

the mass path. The misreading of the date of this event by a year obviously

undermines Tom Wall’s questioning the cause of these arrests advanced

in Coolacrease.

As Paddy Heaney relates in his book, At the Foot of Slieve Bloom, the armed

confrontation at the mass path was the culmination of a sustained campaign of

sectarian harassment by the Pearsons, who seemed to consider all those who

acknowledged and accepted the elected government to be “IRA people”, in the

words of JJ Dillon quoted by Wall.

Matters came to a head at Coolacrease in June 1921 when the Pearsons confronted

local people using a traditional Mass Path which ran along their farm boundary.

They had previously taunted users of the path by dumping human excrement on it.

Wall incredibly questions that this might have had any sectarian significance. JJ

Horan and John Dillon intervened one Sunday in early June when the Pearsons

blocked the path with a large tree trunk and, armed and mounted on horseback,

intimidated the mass goers. The two men confronted the Pearsons and defused the

situation. When the Pearsons left the scene, Dillon and Horan organised the

clearance of the path. Both men were leaders of the local IRA company which had

emerged in response to the call by Dáil Éireann (the autonomous Irish Parliament

established by those who won overwhelming support in the 1918 general election) in

January 1919 for the people to rally to its defence. Horan was also an elected Sinn

Féin District Councillor and both Horan and Dillon worked relatively large farms as

neighbours of the Pearsons. The morning following the confrontation with the

Pearsons both men were arrested and interned, from which they were not released

until November 1921.

There are many other misinterpretations of facts in the review. Tom Wall

ultimately admits that the key event that triggered the execution order was the

attack by the Pearsons on the IRA roadblock, which occurred a fortnight after the

Mass Path incident. The facts of that attack are simple. The official history of the

Royal Scots Fusiliers – the main British military force brought into the area in

January 1921 – relates that the Offaly IRA was effective in greatly restricting British

military mobility in the county: “The initiative was always with the rebels and the

defence inevitably a step behind in its measures.” It also states that as a consequence

of IRA effectiveness the military were reduced to moving about in heavily armed

convoys.13As part of its activities, in the third week of June 1921 the IRA mounted a

county-wide operation in preparation for an attack on British forces in Birr. This

operation included the erection of a roadblock on the Birr-Tullamore road at

Coolacrease at night time, cutting down a large tree at the boundary ditch between

the Pearson and Horan farms to do so.

The Pearson brothers attacked the IRA squad of about nine men carrying this out,

and in the shoot out that followed wounded four men, including three Volunteers

(one – Mick Heaney - very seriously) as well as a retired RIC man and friend of the

Pearsons, Bert Hogg, who had been detained by the roadblock party while on his

way to visit the Pearson house. In Tom Wall’s speculation on this event – which,

mirroring the terminology of Stanley and Harris, he calls the “tree-felling incident” –

he states that “the incident wasn’t mentioned in either of the sisters’ statements to

the RIC or, some years afterwards … in claims made to the Irish Grants Committee,

where specific evidence of assistance to the crown forces would have added

substance to their claims for compensation as victimised loyalists.” He also says that

“Mr Pearson snr and one of the sons were absent from home during this time”. In

fact Sydney Pearson – the son in question - was at Coolacrease that night, although

he and his father were away the following week when the IRA responded to the

attack with the execution of the two brothers they did capture.

Wall is also wrong on the sisters’ evidence, which was given not to the RIC but to

the British Army Court of Enquiry. In fact, contrary to Wall’s (and indeed

Sammon’s) view, there is a very senior RIC source corroborating the roadblock

attack. Besides the evidence from contemporary IRA records, later witness

statements and the concession by Alan Stanley in his book regarding the attack on

the roadblock, Coolacrease reproduces a report on the incident by the senior British

Army commander for South Offaly, Col. Skinner, commander of 14thBrigade. This

evidence had been brought to the attention of the documentary makers by Pat

Muldowney but was ignored.

The night following the executions, William and Sydney Pearson, who were

absent at a religious meeting in Laois (Queen’s County), were held and questioned

by the RIC at Mountmellick, Co Laois. Skinner reported to British Army HQ in

Dublin (which was then passed on by them to the British Under-Secretary at Dublin

Castle) that RIC County Inspector for Queen’s County had stated to him that:

..the two [executed] Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men

felling a tree on their land adjoining the road. Had told the men concerned to

go away, and when they refused had fetched two guns and fired and

wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died.

Both in their interrogation by the Mountmellick RIC and later before the Irish

Grants Committee the Pearsons were well advised not to boast of unilateral

paramilitary action on their part and for the RIC to construe instead a case of

trespassing by “Sinn Feiners”. Such unilateral paramilitary action was outside the

formal framework of the British war in Ireland and hence technically illegal. Indeed

if Mick Heaney – as the Pearsons believed – had in fact died of the wounds they

inflicted on him (for “felling a tree”!), they could theoretically have been charged

with his murder. Paying out compensation for paramilitary activity was not the

business of the Irish Grants Committee, which was meant to compensate innocent

people who had been victimised for their loyalty to the Crown. And there was the

embarrassing fact that in shooting up the IRA roadblock they had also inadvertently

shot and wounded Bert Hogg, a retired RIC man on his way to visit their house.

As Alan Stanley himself acknowledges, the British war in Ireland was conducted

on the legal fiction of a “police war”. Indeed the restraint this imposed on its forces

was often a cause of complaint for the military. The official history of the Royal Scots

Fusiliers – the major British unit in South Offaly – recounts the British campaign of

retaliations, house burnings and destruction of property carried out under the

pretence of fighting criminality: “Fortunately the Scots Fusiliers were not involved in

this repugnant role.” Nevertheless it recounts its role in armoured convoys, “police”

actions such as raids and arrests, and undercover counter-intelligence in Offaly in

close collaboration with informers and with the RIC, whose barracks at Tullamore

Jail it shared. But, it laments, “No attempt could be made to clear an area, since that

would have been impossible without evacuating the civilian population and so

admitting a state of war.” Contemporary accounts by British officers are even more

revealing in expressing their frustrations. Thus the late Field Marshall Lord

Montgomery, at that time a Major on active service with 17th Infantry Brigade in

Cork, wrote to Major Percival of the Essex Regiment in 1923:

Personally, my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels but it never

bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt. I think I regarded all

civilians as “Shinners” and I never had any dealings with any of them. My

own view is that to win a war of this sort, you must be ruthless … Oliver

Cromwell, or the Germans, would have settled it in a very short time.

Nowadays public opinion precludes such methods, the nation would never

allow it, and the politicians would lose their jobs if they sanctioned it.14

Whatever about their known connections with the Auxiliaries and the British

military, the Pearsons were well advised in remaining circumspect about their

unilateral paramilitary action in shooting on an IRA unit.

The day following the Pearson roadblock attack, the British Army and RIC carried

out a large scale military swoop on Cadamstown, arresting and interning most of the

local IRA, including all its leaders. About two days later, on June 26th, these events

were reported to Offaly IRA Brigade command. The IRA Officers Council convened

a Court of Enquiry and following its deliberations the officer commanding Offaly

No. 2 Brigade ordered the execution of the three Pearson brothers and the burning of

their house in retaliation for the attack on the road block and for suspicion of passing

information to the British military. Such a response was necessarily severe and

occurred only in extreme situations. It took place on foot of general orders from IRA

HQ (General Mulcahy) issued on June 22nd, 1921 in response to the stepped up

retaliations policy of the British forces. In the event, on June 30th, two brothers were

apprehended and executed, and the house burnt. The third brother – Sydney – was

absent with the father. William Stanley (aka “Jimmy Bradley”), though not sought

by the IRA, made good his escape.

Wall acknowledges that, in the case of the Pearsons, there is little if any actual

evidence of a Republican land grab, a central claim in the RTÉ film: “The case

against land being a direct cause of the incident is persuasive. It seems that the

Pearsons were executed for reasons that had no direct bearing on land ownership.”

But he immediately goes on to qualify his own conclusion from the evidence

presented, by saying: but “to deny that land played any part in events there, or more

widely, runs counter to much historical evidence.” Roaming far and wide to locate

incidents of land disturbance around Ireland he concludes: “It may be that South

Offaly was immune from all of this, but it seems unlikely.” In other words “the

evidence shows that there was no sectarian land grab at Coolacrease, but from my

reading of general disturbances elsewhere, such motivations must have played a role

there too!” The matter at issue and the subject of Wall’s review is the issue of

Coolcrease. It is bizarre that Tom Wall cannot accept the implications of his own

observations. It is as if he is saying: “There wasn’t a land grab but there ought to

have been one.” Such it seems is the power of his pre-existing views to overcome the

hard evidence.

Indeed Wall is most at home when discussing the period in general terms. He

quotes various authors on land conflicts of the period. One of his more questionable

quotations (from a 2005 book) is that: “During the civil war, the anti-treaty side

[sought] to drive the landowning class (principally Protestant) from the country”.

Since Wall presents this without comment, we must assume he endorses it as

supporting his argument. And since the landowning class had been predominantly

Catholic for at least a generation, it’s hard to give much credence to anything else he

has to say on this subject.

Wall offers highly selective quotes from Frank Gallagher’s book The Four Glorious

Years. Gallagher, the publicity officer of the First Dáil, explains the social breakdown

which resulted from the British assault on the nascent organs of democracy, how the

Republican state system restored social order, and how even the supporters of

British power came to acknowledge and benefit from the Republican systems of

justice, law and order.

Gallagher commented on land disturbances in this phase:

Farm after farm, ranch after ranch, was taken over. Soon it was not only the

huge farms or the vast grazing grounds that were occupied. The uneconomic

holders helped themselves to the nearest land whose-ever it was. (p. 71).

… almost a class war was sweeping through half of Ireland in the first six

months of 1920 … (p. 72).

This is a description of social conflict, not sectarian land grabbing, and Gallagher’s

account carries no connotation of the latter.

Wall also seriously misquotes Frank Gallagher, referring to “farm hungry

men” (Gallagher actually says “land hungry men”) who did not believe in “gentle

methods”, and who, when “taking over of estates did not hesitate to shoot owners who

stood in their way.” But the two statements are separated in Gallagher’s book by 130

pages and do not relate to each other at all! Wall’s defence here may be that he is

quoting Gallagher from a secondary source responsible for the false quote, but this

does not change the fact that the author does not say what Wall says he said. He

goes on to further paraphrase Gallagher: “More often than not, as Gallagher admitted,

Protestant owned land was the target.” But this is a paraphrase too far, as Gallagher

says no such thing. What Gallagher actually says is “most of the land owners were pro-

British.” Wall may well argue that Gallagher’s phrase “Pro-British” can reasonably

be interpreted as loyalist/Protestant. In fact it is unreasonable and wrong. Gallagher

throughout is invariably discussing land disturbances as such without reference to

the religion or otherwise of the owners. As Coolacrease shows, there were Protestant

farmers and land owners who were Unionist, Redmondite, pro-Republican or

neutral throughout the conflict just as there were many Catholic land owners who

were pro-British. Gallagher is describing social conflict over land, in a situation

where most land owners were Catholic. He is not describing sectarian conflict.15

On an RTÉ radio show after the screening of the film, Elizabeth Pearson, whose

father was a cousin of the Coolacrease Pearsons, said that large property owners felt

under threat because of their land holding, but that this applied equally to Catholic

as well as Protestant land holders: “Everybody was afraid. It wasn’t just Protestants.

Roman Catholics were killed over land.” Her knowledge of the Coolacrease incident

came primarily from Alan Stanley’s book which she largely accepted, but

nevertheless she was adamant that their religion had nothing to do with the killing

of the Pearsons: “My feeling is [that they were killed] not because they were

Protestants.” Indeed Stanley himself quotes one of the Pearson sisters from her

account to the Kings County Chronicle days after the execution that a member of the

IRA party told her: “Don’t think we are doing this because you are Protestants. It is

not being done on that account”.16

Wall also tells us about the “Ranch War” that occurred a decade earlier, between

1904 and 1911, with Kings County (Offaly) and Meath the counties in Leinster most

affected. It therefore must have affected Coolacrease, he concludes. And of course it

did. The transfer of land from landlord to tenant had been underway for over twenty

years on foot of the Land Acts which followed the land war. The disaffection which

caused the disturbances after 1904 was brought to an end with the passing of the

1909 Land Act which introduced the principle of compulsory sale where tenants so

demanded. People like the Pearsons benefited from this process, and moved from

being tenants to being freehold farmers in this period. The book recounts the land

unrest in the district at this time which came to an end with the 1909 Act and which,

while working itself out over the subsequent decade, was history by the 1920s.

Wall shows no awareness of the Pearson’s social status or economic history. They

were not, as a reader of his review might assume, large land owners let alone

landlords. The Pearsons were actually closer to their Catholic neighbours than to the

landed gentry and at one with them in benefiting from the sale of land through the

state. They bought the farm in 1911 through the Land Commission under the Land

Acts, after the previous holders, the Benwell family, sold it on becoming freeholders

under the 1909 Act. The Pearsons, like most of their neighbours, were freeholders,

most of whom had been raised from the status of tenant by the Land Acts. That the

Pearsons were regarded as sharing the economic interests of the farmers of the area

is reflected in William Pearson’s election by his mostly Catholic neighbours to

represent them on the Kings County Committee of the Farmers Association in 1919.

Wall’s attempt to imply a sectarian element to the Ranch War in South Offaly in

relation to Coolacrease falls apart with this most basic misreading of it.

Wall moves on to the Civil War and again attempts to advance his pre-existing

thesis on the flimsiest of bases, quoting a generalised and unsubstantiated statement

from Diarmuid Ferriter that many “locals” used the occasion of the vacuum in state

authority during the Civil War “to evict Protestant neighbours without recourse to

arbitration.” . Describing a “state of near anarchy” during the truce and early Civil

War period, Wall later speculates: “it would be surprising in that context if, as

O’Connor claims, no squatting on the Pearson farm occurred.” He also refers to

"threats and outrages against Protestants in the area between Birr to Roscrea”

reported in the Freeman’s Journal. “This is the area of the 2nd Offaly IRA Brigade,” he

continues ominously, “which includes Coolacrease.”

In fact Coolacrease deals with this precise issue also. It records the spread of

“agrarian disturbances” at this time, affecting particularly untenanted land, most

notably in the so-called congested districts of the West, but also, to a far lesser extent,

in Offaly. It states that such incidents were recorded meticulously in the RIC County

Inspectors’ Monthly Reports up to December 1921 and throughout the period in the

county press - both the nationalist Midland Tribune and the unionist Kings County

Chronicle. As Philip McConway established from a study of these sources, none of

them mentions a single case of squatting in the Coolacrease area. All of this is set out

in the book, as is the fact that not one of the several other large Protestant farms near

the Pearsons (or indeed large Catholic ones) was targeted in any way during this

period. But this is not good enough for Tom Wall, such is his disregard for evidence

in favour of wild speculation.

The claims of land squatting on the Pearson farm were rejected both by the

District Court in Tullamore (then operating under the British system) and later by

the British Government compensation body, the Irish Grants Committee. Indeed, the

initial highly colourful Pearson claim of boycott and land squatting to that otherwise

sympathetic body was rejected with incredulity as “not unamusing”. When a final

compensation sum was agreed on a subsequent claim, the itemised listing of the

settlement includes a rejection of the claim that the land had been squatted

(compensation was granted for unspecified “severe hardship suffered” following an

oral hearing of which no record was kept). The further assertion of having been

forced to sell the farm to the Land Commission at considerably below its true value

(repeated ad nauseum in the RTÉ documentary) is also proven to be incorrect and

glaringly fraudulent. As regards the stock and machinery the Pearsons claimed they

had been forced to sell for a fraction of their value, the British compensation

committee found that they had been put up for auction locally and “fair prices

achieved”. As regards the value of the farm itself, Coolacrease shows that in fact the

Irish Land Commission paid considerably above the market price for it in 1923 and

over twice what the Pearsons had paid for it a decade before.

Besides the generalised unsupported statements and questionable quotations

which undermine the credibility of his review, there is also the question of Tom

Wall’s uncritical and enthusiastic use of sources which appear to support his

argument. Peter Hart’s The IRA and its Enemies is presented as a leading authority for

his information and also for his firm belief that land hunger, land grabbing and

ethnic cleansing were important motivations of the Republican movement’s actions

at local level during the War of Independence.

Despite the fact that even Hart has since distanced himself from claims that ethnic

cleansing occurred in Ireland, Wall remains ambivalent on this point. While

conceding that the various cases he lists are “not evidence either for a policy of

ethnic cleansing or sectarian killing”, he describes the number of Protestants who

died in the South during the War of Independence as “modest … measured against

the scale of other ethnic conflicts then and since”. So for Wall it remains an ethnic

conflict after all!

In addition, for all his nit-picking over the essays on Hart’s book by Murphy and

Meehan inTroubled History, he never once comments on the devastating exposure by

those writers – and earlier by Meda Ryan - of Hart’s interviews with people who – as

it turns out - were long dead or, in the case of one survivor, mentally incapacitated at

the time of the supposed interviews. Hart went on to use the non-interviews as

central building blocks in his “interpretation” of the sectarian/ethnic nature of the

War of Independence in Cork. This would not generally be considered a minor

demeanour by a historian.

Augusteijn, in his History Ireland review, is upfront about this: “The serious

questions over Hart’s use of source material, which he has unfortunately too lightly

dismissed, are raised again here. It would indeed be helpful if Hart gave a

systematic answer to these questions, most recently posed in the pamphlet ‘Troubled

History’.” Indeed, in a previous issue of the drb itself, Brendan O’Leary wrote on the

same subject: “Ryan and Meehan have established that Hart needs to explain these

anomalies or correct the record”. While extensively quoting Hart as an authority,

Wall at no point refers to these serious matters of falsification of evidence.17

On Protestantism and loyalism Wall makes the extraordinary statement: “Some

would say that the distinction is so fine as to be invisible to many”. Wall’s statement

comes in an attack on Dr. Brian Murphy (one of the authors

of Coolacrease and Troubled History) who, he says, “quotes approvingly an eccentric

British civil servant who, commenting on attacks on Protestants, said: ‘If Protestant

farmers are murdered, it is not by reason of their religion, but rather because they

are under suspicion as loyalists. The distinction is a fine, but a real one.’”

The man Wall refers to in this breathtaking aside as an “eccentric British civil

servant” is in fact Lionel Curtis, a leading and highly influential British imperialist of

the time who favoured a negotiated settlement with the Irish leadership, aimed at

maintaining Ireland within an empire re-ordered as a Commonwealth. He was the

key figure in founding the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a British

negotiator at the Versailles Conference and the constitutional advisor to the British

Imperial side at the Irish Treaty negotiations. The quotation above is from the

conclusions to his thoughtful analysis of conditions in Ireland (where he travelled

widely in 1921). By “loyalists” – as is clear from the report – Curtis meant not

political conviction but political-military activity. Interestingly, the sentences in his

report preceding the ones Wall gives us are: “To conceive the struggle as religious in

character is in any case misleading. Protestants in the south do not complain of

persecution on sectarian grounds. If Protestant farmers … etc.”. Brian Murphy’s case

is simply and clearly that the evidence “confirms… that the IRA killings in the

Bandon area were motivated by military rather than sectarian considerations.”18

Neither Protestantism nor loyalist political “convictions” were ever put forward

by the IRA at the time as a justification for shooting anybody. Coolacrease reprints an

order from Richard Mulcahy (IRA GHQ) of 22nd June 1921 –i.e. before the events

at Coolacrease and most of the other incidents Wall refers to. This order set out IRA

policy on reprisals in response to the massive British campaign of reprisals which

had been underway unofficially since late 1920 and officially from the start of 1921. It

states inter alia: “For the purposes of such reprisals no persons shall be regarded as

enemies of Ireland, whether they may be described locally as Unionists,

Orangemen, etc. unless they are actively anti-Irish in their actions.” People’s political

convictions or religion were of no account. The only basis for action against

individuals was where such individuals, regardless of religion or party, had become

active,that is had joined the actual war effort of the British forces.19

As the IRA order for the execution of the Pearsons makes clear, it was because of

their armed actions on behalf of the British military campaign and for passing

information to the enemy which could – and did - have lethal consequences for the

IRA, that they were condemned to death. Secondly, it was a time of war, a war

launched in Ireland by the British state. The results of passing information to the

armed forces of the enemy could and did result in death, capture and the destruction

of one’s own forces. These were the same principles on which the French Resistance

later operated, though arguably lacking the democratic mandate enjoyed by the

resistance movement of Dáil Éireann. Does Wall disagree with the actions taken by

the French Resistance against Frenchmen it learned were passing lethal information

to, or operating as paramilitary Miliciens on behalf of the Gestapo?

After finally and partly conceding that there is “some substance” to the

“argument” that “Dáil Éireann and, though it, the IRA” had legitimate political

authority arising from the mandate of the 1918 elections, Wall goes on to raise the

usual revisionist chestnut that the election did not include “a mandate to wage

war.” Sinn Féin stood for election on a Manifesto stating clearly that if it secured a

mandate it would establish a Republic on the basis of the 1916 Proclamation by

whatever means necessary. Following its landslide victory, it set about immediately

doing so peacefully. The British response was an immediate military and terrorist

one – elected representatives were arrested or driven underground and a counter-

insurgency force of regular soldiers and terrorist militias flooded into the country to

crush the Dáil government in a manner the commander of the paramilitary Auxiliary

Division later described as “fascist”. Wall’s thesis seems to be that the Dáil

government should have simply surrendered in the face of this as it had no mandate

to defend itself. But the elected government decided to defend itself precisely on the

basis of its mandate.20

Wall also raises the old bogey of the alleged targeting of “ex-soldiers and retired

RIC men”(he means ex-British Army soldiers presumably) who, he says, “formed a

large proportion of those accused of ‘informing’.” Why is informing put in quotation

marks, as if it were a ridiculous term? The British fought the IRA in the way they

fight their counter-insurgency wars – by a very dirty rule book indeed. With

hundreds of years of experience at it – and still at it –they had a far more refined

approach than, for example, the Germans. Central to British counter insurgency

strategy at the time was the creation of networks of spies and informers, of using

selective terror and torture, of attempting to split the ranks of the “insurgency”

through agent provocateurs and compromised spies. I presume Tom Wall is aware

of this. How does a democratic resistance movement –the IRA war had an electoral

mandate behind it, something which even the French Resistance could not call

upon– respond to this? The answer is pretty obvious, and Wall’s obfuscation around

terms such as “protestant” and “loyalist” is deeply disingenuous. The IRA

“targeted” people who were doing it potential or real lethal damage by operating as

agents of the armed forces of its imperial enemy, or, as it described it, people who

were “actively anti-Irish in their actions”, where the term “actions” is clearly meant

in military terms. In fact the majority of those shot for informing or as spies or as

otherwise engaged as “active loyalists” were not Protestants but Catholics.21

On the issue of “ex-soldiers and RIC men” itself, as the conflict and the “counter-

insurgency” reached a peak, the RIC was transformed into an armed gendarmerie at

the centre of the counter-insurgency force -much like the Miliciens of the Vichy

Regime- and the Republican leadership called on RIC members not to become

involved as active agents of the British war effort. Recruitment to the force almost

dried up entirely, necessitating the establishment of Freikorops-style militias of British

ex-servicemen -the Auxiliaries and Black and Tans -to stiffen what remained, in a

relationship much like that of the German counter insurgency (the SS/SD) to the

French Milice. Many also left the RIC, or became “quietist”, insisting on continuing

on as village bobbies, though the force in which they were involved had morphed

into anything but that. And so, distasteful as it may be to modern sensitivities, RIC

men, regarded as active collaborators, became targets for the Irish resistance much as

French policemen regarded as actively collaborating with the Germans in the Second

World War became targets of the French Resistance.

The picture with former British soldiers was entirely different. Something like

150,000 Irishmen were demobilised from the British army back to Ireland in 1921-22.

Those that chose to remain with the British Army (about 15,000) were sent off to

other British wars –and for the next twenty years were involved in the bloody

suppression of “nationalist insurgencies” in India, Egypt, Turkey, Palestine and

elsewhere. Of those that were demobilised and returned home, not an inconsiderable

number joined the IRA, and in nearly every district in Ireland it was returned British

Army men who often provided the military expertise of the “rebel” forces. Several

such individuals in the case of the Offaly IRA are described in Coolacrease. Most

returning British soldiers –like the majority of the population in general– avoided

becoming involved in the lethal end of the conflict. And there is no reason to believe

that their political sympathies diverged from those of the population generally–

divided between republican, unionist, neutral, etc. As John Borgonovo has recorded,

in July 1920 there were two days of bloody riots in Cork between ex-servicemen and

British troops which ended when the British troops fired into the crowd, killing two

and injuring many more. The Cork ex-servicemen were considered so thoroughly

unreliable that their association headquarters were raided and looted by Crown

Forces. The riots had been precipitated by the killing by the troops of the ex-

serviceman James Burke. Over 5,000 ex-servicemen marched in formation at Burke’s

funeral, and again in the republican funeral corteges of Cork Sinn Féin Lord Mayors

and IRA leaders, Thomas McCurtain and Terence MacSwiney, in March and August

1920. A small number of returned soldiers did become active on the British side in

the war. And some of their number were executed by the IRA after being found

guilty of active military engagement against the resistance.22

In the same vein, as he begins to wind up his essay, Wall states “The vast majority

of Protestants considered themselves Irish but loyal to Crown and Empire. Could the

Southern Protestant minority be expected to readily adjourn their traditional

loyalties in the aftermath of the 1918 elections?” The answer to the question is “Yes”

if what is being said is that they should have abjured their right to wage armed

warfare against the democratic electoral decision of the majority. And this in fact is

what the majority did. But Wall’s statement makes no differentiation between

maintaining a political identity in a political manner where one has become a

political minority on the one hand, and seeking by force to destroy the state

established by a legitimate democratic majority on the other. If he is arguing that

members of a political minority who do not accept the outcome of an election are

entitled to join actively in a military sense in an imperial counter-insurgency waged

against the outcome of that election, then he must also accept that those becoming

active in this way had left the ground of democracy and must be prepared to take

the military consequences of their undemocratic military action.

Wall follows up with this question: “In remaining ‘loyal’ could they be deemed to

forfeit their civil rights under the new order?” He quotes Ernie O’Malley as implying

that this is what they had to do. In fact the quote says nothing of the kind: “the

people of this country would have to give allegiance to it [the Republic] or if they

wanted to support the Empire they would have to support the Empire elsewhere.”

What state in the world, democratically constituted, accepts a “right” of its citizens

not to give allegiance to it and to give active allegiance to another, hostile, state

instead? This issue is not one of “civil rights”. Civil rights are rights within the

framework of a state. Perhaps there should be no states, but here we are entering a

world of fantasy. To date humanity has not found its way to evolve socially beyond

the framework of states – it is the only structure which binds or organises people in

workable societies and stands between the individual and global chaos or colonial

domination. Experimental quasi-supra-state structures like the EU and UN have yet

to seek to claim real sovereignty superior to states or to claim for themselves the

loyalty of the citizens of the states of which they are composed.

This position of Wall’s also contains what could be construed as a deeply

sectarian assumption, that Southern Protestants formed a political-religious block

opposed to Irish independence. In reality some continued to maintain a Unionist

position, some sided with Sinn Féin and many others adopted a neutral party

political stance, as they had during the years of Irish Parliamentary Party

dominance. The situation was similar, though in different proportions, within the

Catholic population. Following the 1918 election –whose mandate was repeated in

national and local elections in 1920, 1921 and 1922- the majority of southern

Protestants accepted the outcome. In the War of Independence they remained largely

neutral.

Prior to 1918, the Unionist Party did not contest elections in the south apart from

enclaves around Dublin. Unionists in the south either supported the Irish

Parliamentary Party or remained aloof from electoral affairs (except for local politics,

where purely economic interest continued to play an important role), and this

situation changed little with the rise of Sinn Féin from 1916. Indeed it was the least

clerical or Hibernian-Catholic elements of the IPP –notably the All-for-Ireland

League, which had won 9 out of 10 seats in Cork in the general election of 1910– as

well as non-religious groupings, trade union forces and other political strands that

flowed into the making of Sinn Féin and that made for the electoral landslide of

1918.23

In the party structure that gradually emerged after the Civil War, Protestants,

Jews and others were to be found in all parties across the spectrum and in none.

Unionists, whether Protestant, Catholic or other, maintained a unionist pressure

within different parties, and within some parties more than others. There are today

in the Irish Republic people with a unionist or commonwealth allegiance, mostly un-

associated with religious identity, and this too makes itself felt in the politics and

media of the Republic. And all of this is democratic and legitimate, and nowhere

disputed by the authors of Coolacrease. Even William Stanley, the “UVF” hero of

Luggacurran, eventually made his peace with the state, and joined Fine Gael and

remained in it when, ironically, it was led by former General Mulcahy under whose

authority the executions at Coolacrease had occurred. Stanley later resigned from

Fine Gael in protest at Costello’s declaration of a Republic in 1949. R.B. McDowell is

frequently quoted by Wall. He is also quoted in Coolacrease, in the article on the Irish

Grants Committee. McDowell, now well into his nineties, to this day continues to

refer to himself as a “unionist”. He sees this as an entirely legitimate political

position to maintain in the Irish Republic and the authors of Coolacrease agree with

him.

McDowell was a signatory recently to a letter in The Irish Times (signed also by

Eoghan Harris and others) calling for Ireland to rejoin the Commonwealth. This is

legitimate politics but firmly on the other side of the rubicon to a right to wage

warfare against a legitimate elected government. For in his book McDowell –

without any of Wall’s quibbling - accepts the outcome of the 1918 election. He relates

with some disgust the shenanigans that were allowed to go on at the Irish Grants

Committee in London and gives us some insight into the workings of the Southern

Irish Loyalist Relief Association. He also relates how the Unionist Alliance in Dublin,

following the Treaty and the establishment of the Free State under it, dissolved itself

and southern unionists reflected on a proper role for themselves in the political

structures of the new state. McDowell’s position is that of a democrat.24

Wall on several occasions has a go at the publishers of Coolacrease, the Aubane

Historical Society. He criticises the alleged “vitriolic” style of the book, without

giving any actual examples of it, while having nothing to say of the inflammatory

language which characterised the original RTÉ film and the many press articles that

appeared in support of it. He says that “the raison d’etre of the Aubane Historical

Society is to defend the received history of the national struggle against revisionism

… [the two publications] endeavour to establish that the conduct of the IRA during

the War of Independence was legitimate, just and untainted by sectarianism.” Well,

if you set up a straw man it is not too hard to knock it down. It would be very

difficult to prove that the conduct of the IRA was untainted by prejudice, greed,

fornication, homophobia, drunkenness or any other human failing. In another

generalisation typical of the review, Wall tells us that the book “contains background

narrative on the War of Independence written from a staunchly nationalist

perspective.” The perspective of the book, beyond establishing the facts surrounding

the particular incident at Coolacrease, is that Sinn Féin in implementing its

overwhelming electoral mandate proceeded to establish a state, that this was

immediately subjected to an unlawful armed onslaught by the Imperial power, and

that the Parliament established in Dublin called on Volunteers to defend its

institutions, which they did in great numbers in the War of Independence. A better

description of the perspective of the book would be “a staunchly democratic one”.25

For revisionists who have attempted to portray the War of Independence as a

sectarian ethnic conflict driven by greed for land, the cases constructed by Hart in

relation to Cork and Harris and RTÉ in relation to Coolacrease, were paraded as the

ultimate proof, the crowning examples, of their theories.26 And they were lionised

precisely as such by commentators in the Dublin media. But the two AHS

publications discussed by Wall succeed in their task –demonstrating that, in these

two particular instances (Offaly and Cork), revisionists concocted evidence to

support their theories of massacre, ethnic cleansing and sectarian land grabbing by

the independence movement. Those two cases now lie in tatters.

It is ironic that Tom Wall’s drb essay has been lauded as the effective riposte to

the book Coolacrease, with Senator Harris stating: “Tom Wall, a self-trained historian

whose scholarship would put most academic historians to shame, takes a rounded view of the

Coolacrease affair. To me it seems far from favourable to Aubane.” And this despite the fact

that Wall, despite his ill-based judgements and generalisations, accepts the essential

evidence presented in Coolacrease that what happened there did not involve sectarian

murder or a land grab, but retaliation for a paramilitary armed attack.27

Thus do houses built on sand begin to crumble!

As to the legitimacy of the 1918 Dáil and the Irish war of resistance, it is not hard

to establish that the independence movement had a democratic mandate. And,

notwithstanding Wall’s quibbles on this subject, that is the essence of the matter.

1. Paddy Heaney, Pat Muldowney, Philip O’Connor (ed.), Coolacrease: the True Story of the

Pearson Executions, an Incident in the Irish War of Independence, Aubane Historical Society,

Millstreet, 2008; Niall Meehan and Dr Brian P. Murphy osb, Troubled History: Ten years of

Controversy in Irish History - a 10th anniversary critique of Peter Hart’s The IRA and its

Enemies, with an introduction by Dr Ruan O’Donnell, AHS, Millstreet, 2007.

2. Paddy Heaney, At the foot of Slieve Bloom. History and Folklore of Cadamstown, Kilcormac

Historical Society 2000; Paddy Heaney, ‘Coolacrease: A Place with a Tragic History’,

Offaly Heritage Journal, Vol. 4 (2006), pp. 220-225; Alan Stanley, I met Murder on the way.

The story of the Pearsons of Coolacrease, Quinagh, 2005; Eoghan Harris, ‘The tree has rotten

roots and bitter fruit’, Sunday Independent, 9th October 2005; The RTÉ film was entitled The

Killings at Coolacrease – A Reel Story Production for RTÉ Hidden History Series. Produced and

directed by Niamh Sammon. Script consultant Pat Sammon. Screened 23rd October 2007

and 13th May 2008. A full annotated transcript of the film is provided in Coolacrease pp.

407 ff. Publications challenging the RTÉ version which appeared at the time of the film’s

screening include Pat Muldowney, The Pearson Executions in Co. Offaly: a debate on alleged

sectarianism during the War of Independence, Aubane Historical Society, 2007, and Philip

McConway, ‘The Pearsons of Coolacrease’, Tullamore Tribune, 7th and 14th November 2007.

3. On reception of the book at the launch and by the midlands press see e.g. ‘New Book On

Coolacrease Incident’, Tullamore Tribune, 5th November 2008; ‘Coolacrease executions

were a war time tragedy’, Offaly Express, 12th November 2008; ‘RTE Coolacrease

documentary claims dismissed in new publication’, Tullamore Tribune, 12th November

2008. It was also the subject of radio interviews (e.g. Midlands Radio 3, 7th November

2008) and blogsites, notably Indymedia. The national press reports referred to are: ‘New

book slams RTÉ “cover-up” of killings’, The Star, 5th November 2008; Ronan McCreevy,

‘Pearson killings not sectarian, book claims’, The Irish Times, 7th November 2008; Steven

King, ‘Coolacrease book has numerous axes to grind’, Sunday Business

Post, 30th November 2008. For the Augusteijn and Kirkaldy reviews see: Joost Augusteijn,

‘The Big Book’, History Ireland, vol. 17, no. 2, March-April 2009; John Kirkaldy, ‘Not

Proven’, Books Ireland, May 2009. The barrage of articles that appeared in support of the

documentary at the time of its screening are listed (and some reprinted) in Coolacrease pp.

388 ff. These included articles by David Adams, Anne Marie Hourihane and Niamh

Sammon in The Irish Time and by Eoghan Harris, Sarah Cadden and Alan Stanley in The

Sunday Independent. Letters - and very occasionally articles - in response were published

from Paddy Heaney, Pat Muldowney, Philip McConway, Brian P. Murphy, John Martin,

Jack Lane, Nick Folley and others. History Ireland to its credit was critical of the

“documentary” from an early stage, with a review by Dr Brian Hanley, as was – uniquely

in the Dublin press - Emmanuel Kehoe in Sunday Business Post.

4. Eoghan Harris, Sunday Independent, 16th August 2009.

5. The RTÉ film was made by an independent company, Reel Story Productions. But RTÉ is

responsible for it in that it commissioned it for its ‘Hidden History’ series (under the

original ‘working title’ “Atonement: Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands”) and senior RTÉ

personnel (including the Director General, Head of Factual Programmes and the “PRO”

of RTÉ) went on to defend it both in correspondence and before the Broadcasting

Complaints Commission as objective, fair and balanced. RTÉ's pre-broadcast publicity for

the documentary broadly repeated the Harris interpretation of the events. In deciding to

go ahead and broadcast, despite being informed in advance of the plethora of

documentary evidence which contradicted the programme, RTÉ assumed full

responsibility for the programme and its message.

6. Pat Muldowney's interview by Niamh Sammon for the film (not broadcast),

correspondence with her, and documentation from the Broadcasting Complaints

Commission have been published on Indymedia. A synopsis of these is provided

inCoolacrease.

7. The work by Meda Ryan referred to is: Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter, Mercier (Cork),

2005, especially the chapter ‘The Dunmanway Find of Informers Dossier’, pp. 209 ff.

8. This “evidence” for the alleged forced sale in the RTÉ programme consisted of a letter

from Telfords Auctioneers of Birr valuing the farm at £17,000 and an undated note from

William Percy of Frankford (i.e. Kilcormac) stating that he had offered £10,000 for the

farm and “would have gone higher” only that “the people would not let any outsiders

purchase the land”. The book proves these documents – which feature prominently in the

film – to be unsound. The Pearsons bought the farm in 1912 for £2,000 and the Land

Commission purchased it from them in 1923 for £4,817 after protracted negotiations on

the price. As the book shows, even this was a very high price for the farm at that

time. Coolacrease provides the original documentation, much contemporary evidence

regarding local land prices and details of the sale and purchase process between the

Pearsons and the Land Commission. The sources for the programme’s land grab

allegations were primarily the later Pearson compensation applications (1926-7) to the

British Government's "Irish Grants Committee”. But in pre-broadcast correspondence and

in the recorded but unbroadcast interview with Pat Muldowney, producer Niamh

Sammon claimed to have Land Commission documents which had been examined by Dr.

Terrence Dooley proving their assertions of a land grab. The book, which secured access

to the relevant Land Commission records, shows these claims to be bogus. The available

land documentation is analysed in depth by Philip O’Connor in Coolacrease, chapter 4:

‘Land Grab? What the documents say’, pp. 97-143.

9. Thus the family census return of 1911. The book lists various academic sources on the

history of Cooneyism.

10. Niamh Sammon, ‘A true history of violence’, The Irish Times, 20th October 2007; Harris on

RTÉ Radio One, Liveline programme, 5th November 2007.

11. Thomas Burke, o/c Offaly No. 2 Brigade IRA, report on the Officers’ Battalion Council to

General Headquarters, Dublin, Déaslaí Papers, NLI, reprinted in Coolacrease, pp. 298 ff.

The Burke report also cites the reasons ordered for the execution.

12. Paul Bew, The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 201. On the

British “counter-insurgency” in Kenya, see Caroline Elkins, Britain’s GULAG. The Brutal

End of Empire in Kenya, London, 2005.

13. Colonel J.C. Kemp, The History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers 1919-1959, University Press

Glasgow, 1963, Ch. 1.

14. Montgomery’s statement is published in: William Sheehan (ed.), British voices: from the

Irish War of Independence 1918-1921, HarperCollins, London, 2007.

15. David Hogan [i.e. Frank Gallagher], The Four Glorious Years 1918-21, Dublin (Irish Press),

1953. A full analysis of what Gallagher actually said about land disturbances is the

subject of another article in this issue of drb by Niall Meehan.

16. Elizabeth Pearson on Liveline (RTÉ Radio One, 6 November 2007). Stanley is quoting

Mathilda Pearson, who was interviewed by a journalist of the Kings County

Chronicle present at the invitation of the British Army at Crinkle Barracks when the

British Court of Enquiry was held. See Kings County Chronicle, 7th July 1921.

17. Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and its enemies: violence and community in Cork, 1916-1923, Oxford

University Press, 1999. Despite earlier statements that “similar campaigns of what might

be termed ‘ethnic cleansing’ were waged in [various counties]”, in a letter to The Irish

Times(28th June 2006) following critiques of his book, Hart pulled back from this position:

“I have never argued that ‘ethnic cleansing’ took place in Cork or elsewhere in the 1920s –

in fact, quite the opposite” (see Niall Meehan, Troubled History).

18. See Brian P. Murphy osb, ‘Poisoning the Well or Publishing the Truth?’, Coolacrease, p.

173; ibid., ‘Peter Hart: the issue of Sources’ in Troubled History.

19. The full text of the Mulcahy order (reprinted in Coolacrease) is from Dorothy

McArdle, The Irish Republic, Dublin,1951, pp. 935-6.

20. Augusteijn states (‘The Big Book’, History Ireland, March/April 2009): ‘The [1918 election]

victory was not a mandate for the use of force, nor can it retrospectively justify the 1916

Rising’. But the Sinn Féin Manifesto stated: “Sinn Féin … stands by the Proclamation of

the Provisional Government” of 1916; “Sinn Féin aims at securing the establishment of

that Republic… by withdrawing the Irish Representation from the British Parliament and

… by making use of any and every means available to render impotent the power of

England to hold Ireland in subjugation by military force or otherwise” - ‘Manifesto of

Sinn Féin as prepared for circulation for the General Election of 1918’ (full text in

McCardle, Irish Republic, pp. 919-920). The version published in the press was cut by the

British censor by 25% and this censored version is often falsely quoted (the censored text

is given in McCardle, pp. 921-2). Following the British response to the creation of the Dáil

of armed suppression, the Irish Government issued its famous ‘Declaration of

Independence’ and ‘Message to the Free Nations of the World’ on 21st January 1919, in

which it reiterated its basis in the 1916 Proclamation and its mandate in the 1918

elections, and stated that “the existing state of war, between Ireland and England, can

never be ended until Ireland is evacuated by the armed forces of England.” (Full texts

in Documents on Irish Foreign Policy,vol. 1, Dublin, RIA, 1998, pp. 1-2). On Crozier’s

judgement of British strategy towards the young Irish democracy as ‘fascist’, see The Men

I Killed. A Selection of the Writings of General F.P. Crozier, ed. Brendan Clifford, Athol

Books, 2002.

21. See John Borgonovo, Spies, informers and the "Anti-Sinn Féin Society": the intelligence war in

Cork city, 1920-1921, Irish Academic Press, 2007.

22. Ibid., pp. 79 ff. On these issues, much useful information is provided by Niall Meehan in

his excellent essay ‘Troubles in Irish History’, Troubled History.

23. This aspect of the evolution of Sinn Féin before 1918 is discussed by Brendan Clifford

inCoolacrease. On the development of the All-for-Ireland League towards Sinn Féin see,

Brendan Clifford, Jack Lane, The Cork Free Press – The Restructuring of Ireland 1890-

1910, AHS, Millstreet, 1997 and, recently, Manus O’Riordan, ‘Did Redmond conquer

West Cork in 1916?’, Irish Political Review, July 2009.

24. R.B. McDowell, Crisis and Decline: The Fate of Southern Unionists, Dublin, 1997; ‘Time to

rejoin the Commonwealth?’, Letters, The Irish Times, 23rd March 2009.

25. Wall, in a further aside directed against the publishers, reveals in a footnote for the

“uninitiated” that some people connected with Aubane Historical Society were formerly

communists (members of the British and Irish Communist Organisation, or BICO) who

“developed what is known as the two nations theory: the proposition being that Ulster

Protestants constituted a separate nation.” While this has little to do with the book being

reviewed (most of the authors of which were never communists), Wall contends that

defending the validity of the democratic electoral mandate of the 1918 Dáil somehow

contradicts the “two nations theory”. But where are the contradictions between it and

holding that the Sinn Féin election victory of 1918 was a legitimate democratic one? The

two nations theory applies to the democratic national rights not only of northern

Protestants but also of the nation of the south, which was far from ever solely Catholic.

The theory has become common political currency North and South, and a type of

understanding of it formed the basis for the Good Friday Agreement and for the policy of

the Republic over the last two decades in relation to Northern Ireland and Britain.

Nowhere in the bookCoolacrease is a case made for negating the democratic rights of any

people – including the Northern unionist community - indeed quite the contrary.

26. For the chorus of approval in the Dublin press for the RTÉ film on Coolacrease, see for

example Niamh Sammon, ‘A true history of violence’, The Irish Times, 20th October 2007;

Sarah Caden, ‘Speak it in a whisper: Irish ethnic cleansing’, Sunday

Independent, 21st October 2007; Ann Marie Hourihane, ‘We are still hiding from our

history’, The Irish Times, 25thOctober 2007 and ‘Sensitive strands of our history’, ibid.,

8th November 2007; David Adams, ‘Diehards reveal true colours’, The Irish Times,

9th November 2007; Eoghan Harris, ‘Why bodies buried deep in the green bog must be

raised’, Sunday Independent, 11th November 2007 and ‘Denials do more damage than the

original crime’, ibid., 18th November 2007.

27. Eoghan Harris, Sunday Independent, 16th August 2009.

Philip O’Connor and Pat Muldowney are co-authors of Coolacrease: the true story of

the Pearson executions – an incident in the Irish War of Independence. [Aubane Historical

Society, 2008].