The Selling of Michael Collins , by Peter Hart

by pat c Thu Oct 27, 2005 13:33

This is your chance to meet Peter Hart face to face and ask all the awkward questions you want.

by Fergus McCann - Bhoys of the Old Brigade Sat Oct 29, 2005 15:08

Anybody read the Collins book yet?

by Buck Sun Oct 30, 2005 03:28

All I know is that his books have been rubbished by many people.

Has he sold many copies of his books on Irish history?

by History Student Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:11

I think that Hart does raise good questions on Irish history from that period. Yes, he is not sympathetic with nationalism. But that's good. He looks at the actual facts and evidence not the myths that nationalists such as pat c think. Pat, when did you do extensive research into the history at the time? I have not read his book on Collins. I have read his book on the Volunteers in Cork and I think it is very well researched and challanges nationalist myths.

by pat c Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:36

Harts misrepresentations of the war in west cork have been dealt with exhaustively elsewhere. his statistics for crown casualties have shown to be fantasy especially regarding Crossbarry, even British records admit that 35 soldiers/RIC/Auxies/tans died in that action.

As for the false surrender at Kilmichael, Harts case has been torn to shreds. He claims to have interviewed 2 Volunteers who participated at Kilmichael. However the last survivor of Kilmichael died 10 days before Hart claims to have carried out his interview.
Did Hart use an ouija board or a Medium to conduct the interview?

by Bat O' Keefe Thu Nov 03, 2005 19:05

Peter Hart is best known for his book “The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923” (1998). This book made a series of claims about the War of Independence in Cork – that it was sectarian, that British soldiers were killed in cold blood after surrendering, and that it was an unjustified war.

All these claims have since been rebutted in great detail by two historians, Meda Ryan in “Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter” (Mercier, 2003) and in recent editions of History Ireland, and also by Dr Brian Murphy in History Ireland and in various articles, letters, talks and reviews.

What makes Peter Hart unique is the methodology he employed to make his case. This consisted, inter alia, of accepting forged documents as fact, British propaganda as fact and blatant distortion of sources. Hart claims to have ‘unearthed’ new evidence. The neutral observer is forced to agree, since the truly unique feature of Peter Hart’s methodology is his anonymous interviews with Kilmichael ambush participants – after records indicated that they were deceased.

Forever Young
Hart’s interviewees allegedly insisted on anonymity nearly 70 years after the event. Hart dates one of his anonymous interviews on November 19 1989. The last survivor of the ambush, Ned Young, died on November 13 1989.

The Irish Times, which originally lavished praise on his book - “a classic” no less - via Kevin Myers, Roy Foster et al, was later to concede that Hart “appears disingenuous” (January 1 2003) in his use of sources. This is an understatement.

Apart from his particular brand of disingenuousness and cheap shot sensationalism, Hart’s history writing is fatuous and banal. His recent book on Collins is a case in point, as reviewed by Theo Dorgan on RTE1 Television (25 Oct 2005):

“Do you want to know what I think of this book? I'll tell you what I think. I'm very disappointed; very disappointed. I think it's an interesting historical moment to have a cool, clear look at Michael Collins. This book is not that. It's very badly written. I think the prose style is awful. There's a constant belittling, sneering tone going through it, which I think cuts against the thrust of what he purports to be saying. I could have done without seven or eleven pages on how indifferently a nineteen year old did in being elected to the committees of various GAA clubs and Irish clubs in London.

‘Career’
I think the fundamental flaw in this is that Hart cannot rise to the notion that somebody might give his life to his country - or for that matter her life to her country - and if you don't get that, I think you don't get Collins, you don't get Markievicz, you don't get Connolly. You don't get any of them. Indeed you don't get Sheehy Skeffington.

The bizarre thing is that he talks about Collins’s "political career". Collins was dead by 32. It was a "career" only in the old fashioned sense, which I don't think he means, that you career downhill at top speed when you're almost out of control. This was a man who gave a life of passion and intelligence to a venture, think of it what you will. But he wasn't making a "career". He surrounded himself always, under pressure, on the run, under threat, with people he knew he could rely on. This becomes "building a cabal" and "building a power base". It's a fundamental misconception. It's a looking backwards from a mentality that we have now.

Media Leader
But the real problem with this book is that biography - "biographos", "to draw a life" - a living person does not in any meaningful sense come out of here. It's flawed by the sheer volume of undoubted hard work that he put into it. He accumulated an enormous amount of information and he's far too credulous. He'll, quote Collins on his diary notes and say: "The truth of what happened is in the `Longford Leader`". Here's an academic historian of repute who says that the truth is to be found in newspapers!

Autopsy
I wonder if we hadn't had other lives of Collins would we have any sense of him. The other thing that I found extraordinary is that to write about a colonial war as if it was an argy bargy outside a golf club or a GAA club on a Saturday night - no sense of the pitiable terror that stalked the country, with killing on all sides going on, no sense of the violence and the drama of the times whatsoever. It's like as if somebody had tried to construct the "Iliad" from a list of ship's stores, rather than give us a sense of the warrior prince bestriding the world. And I mean this not in any sense to aggrandise Collins, because I think we should take our heroes with a glass of cold water and a pinch of salt. We should be very careful with that. But we should also be careful not to err too far in the other direction and present the results of an autopsy and pretend that you were trying to save the patient's life.

A very useful way to read this: If this were a novel and the author's intention was to disclose the character of the narrator to us, what you would get out of this is a Mr. Gradkind who's insisting on collecting minor detail - detail, detail detail - a huge mountain of it - but somehow doesn't care for, doesn't like and doesn't feel any human sympathy for his subject.”

Academics stirring
There is now evidence that some of his fellow academics have begun to say that they have had enough of his nonsense. Ruan O’Donnell, Head of the History Department in the University of Limerick, launched the paperback edition of Meda Ryan’s book in Dublin on 14 Oct, in recognition of the work she has done in refuting Hart’s allegations.

There is a curious lack of reviews by well-known academics of Hart’s latest work in the Irish media. They know that this revisionist historian is ‘damaged goods’ but don’t have the moral courage to say so.

In the current issue of History Ireland, Dr Andreas Boldt, NUI, referring to Hart’s “absent or questionable references” adds “if I had done that as an undergraduate student, I would have failed everything. History is a subject that is based on facts.”

And so say all of us!


For more information see History Ireland September October 2005
(also previous three issues on historyireland.com)

See also indymedia.ie – search for ‘Peter Hart’
(include ‘search comments’)

Read Meda Ryan’s ‘Tom Barry – IRA Freedom Fighter’ (Mercier)

Available soon, Brian Murphy on British Propaganda (Athol Press)

by Paul McStay - anti-revisionist revisionists of Mallow Thu Nov 03, 2005 19:31 0086dial a reformed orangeman

Yes Hart is a bad writer, responsible for terrible pro-British muck like this:
'the two men were stripped, tied up, and savagely beaten and pistol whipped...Harte was knocked senseless when his nose was smashed by a rifle butt. That night Hales was interogated and tortured by the officers who captured him. They beat him again with canes and crushed most of his teeth with pliars but he gave away nothing.'
The IRA and Its Enemies p. 196.

The above is about the arrest of Tom Hales and Pat Harte by the British.


Theo Dorgan in his deeply knowledagable critique questions why Hart did not write about when 'terror stalked the land' maybe because he did do that before and all he got was abuse from people who read the Roy Foster review and decided that the book was not worth reading. Just a thought...

by Barry Thu Nov 03, 2005 22:00

Did Peter Hart claim he interviewed those 2 boys as well ?

by Ned O'Keeffe - Peking Lodge Orange order Fri Nov 04, 2005 10:56

Has my cousin Bat not cut and pasted enough of Theo Dorgan's comments, you've done it twice Bat (man). How about Brenda Power's more positive comments on the same show? Your going to tell me now that Meda Ryan's book is beautifully written, conjuring up delightful images reasonant of 1920s west Cork...not a selective memoir of a complicated man who Meda makes seem very uncomplicated. Did you know Tom Barry left the IRA in 1923 having demanded that they destroy ALL their arms? And that he didn't rejoin until 1932 when he was convinced Dev was about to declare a republic? If you read Ryan's book you wouldn't know.
Some of us like our history to reflect what people are like in real life; complex characters who have multiple reasons for doing what they do not cardboard cut out saints or sinners.
And I hate my cousin.

by pat c Fri Nov 04, 2005 11:52

I have read Ryans book on Tom Barry and she makes it clear that he left the IRA for a long period of time. She also illustrates how he opposed the 1939/40 IRA bombing campaign in Britain and he left the IRA once more because of this. Barry emerges warts and all from Ryans book.

by Niall Meehan Fri Nov 04, 2005 16:45

Hi Ned (and Paul McStay),

I think Pat C has answered you on the Tom Barry ‘warts and all’ question. In fact a one dimensional negative characterisation emerges from the Peter Hart account. Barry is portrayed by Hart as a liar and, in his infamous phrase, a “serial killer”. Ryan (Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter, Mercier, 2005) merely corrects the record by laying out the facts. Hart has had ample opportunity to respond on the corrections. He has chosen not to do so.

It is clear from his approach that Hart has a theory of ethnic cleansing, which the facts are made to serve. Unfortunately for him, Hart’s manipulation of the facts is all too evident (you really need to address these deficiencies if your are going to defend Hart).

Hart claimed to have interviewed Kilmichael ambush participants who were dead at the time of the alleged interviews. Not only was he five days out in relation to the death of the last survivor, Ned Young, but Hart also claims that he interviewed an ambush scout in the late 1980s. The last ambush scout died in 1967. This anomaly (if anomaly it be) would, you would imagine, be the first point Hart would explain. We are still waiting.

In the paperback edition of her book (Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter) Meda Ryan lists the date of death of all ambush participants. She has checked the records and her account tallies with that of others. How can Hart be taken seriously, if he fails to respond on this simple and clear discrepancy?

And, what about this Ned (and Paul McStay), when Hart quoted the British “Record of the Rebellion’ to bolster his argument that there was sectarian shooting of Protestants in the Bandon area, he deliberately left out a sentence immediately following, that directly contradicted the point he was making. Brian Murphy discovered this in 1998 and has been awaiting an answer from Hart ever since.

And what about this: when Hart edited a publication of the Record of the Rebellion, some years after The IRA and its Enemies (1988), he left out an entire section (‘The People’) demonstrating that the British Army had a racist and sectarian view of the Irish (just left it out without informing readers).

Brian Murphy spoke on this in Cork in April (the audio is on indymedia) and a summary was carried in the July August History Ireland (I have the gist of it somewhere and I will post it later).

In addition, in his edit of The Record of the Rebellion Hart failed to account for his indefensible misuse of it as a source in The IRA and its Enemies.

Like Pat C I am all for a warts and all based examination of what happened during the War of Independence. Peter Hart is a mirror image of what he claims to be attacking: he is an agenda driven and evidently pro-British historian. He does not write a cartoon history, merely an extremely biased version that does stand up to close scrutiny.

I ask you, Ned and Paul, to read the interchange in History Ireland between Hart and Meda Ryan, Niall Meehan, Manus O’Riordan, Andreas Boldt and Sean Kellehar. After reading it, tell me if Hart answered a single question of substance (and, if so, please identify it).

Here are the links:

Hart HI Interview (April-May):
http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.2FeatC.html

Critics reply to Hart HI Interview (May-June):
http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.3FeatB.html

Hart reply to critics (July-Aug):
http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.4FeatB.html

Meda Ryan & critics return to the fray (Sept-Oct):
http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.5FeatC.html
http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.5FeatA.html

(The issues are also teased out in previous Indymedia pieces - to set out the arguments again here would be repetition, and we don’t want that - just do a search of Indymedia.)

by out there Fri Nov 04, 2005 17:53

To be fair to Hart, we have to consider the possibility that when he interviewed those people he may have been availing of the services of a psychic.

by pat c Fri Nov 04, 2005 19:29

Peter Hart writes "Nor was Collins merely indifferent to the Church. He was actively anti-clerical for much of his life and blamed the Catholic Church for many of Ireland's problems".

Mick: the real Michael Collins, page 71.

However the correspondence between Collins and Kitty Kiernan paints a different picture. In these letters they both write of attending Mass and lighting candles and praying in Church. They both had a devotion to St Teresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower.

This correspondence is held in Cork City Museum. Peter Hart did not consult this collection.

by R. Isible Fri Nov 04, 2005 19:54

If so a report, no matter how short would be appreciated.

by Walter Mitty Mon Nov 07, 2005 17:56

"Cold turkey is only cure for 1916 addiction" by Eoghan Harris
Sunday Independent Nov 6 2005

Harris says criticism of Hart and Sindo is part of dastardly provo plot.

"Contrary to rumours, Hart's biography is not a hatchet job" - but (typically) Harris fails to tell readers that the phrase "hatchet job" is a direct quote and characterisation of the book from the negative Irish Independent review of 'Mick'.

Harris goes on in typically paranoid vein:

-----------------------------------

"[Hart has been] savaged for his IRA book on the internet and elsewhere. But Hart seems sanguine. He has lived long enough in Ireland to know that (to adapt Clausewitz's adage) republicans regard academic history as an extension of the armed struggle by other means.

Just as journalists see the Lawlor story as simply an extension of their campaign to silence Sinn Fein critics in the Sunday Independent."

------------------------------------

And so on, and so on:

"ANYBODY who has been around finds out that it seldom makes sense to follow advice from an enemy. Accordingly it would not be wise for either Independent News & Media (IN&M) or Michael McDowell to act on the bad advice they have been getting from their commercial and political enemies this past week.

Let's look at our own patch first. Sheltering under the umbrella of criticism raised by commercial competitors like RTE and our main British rivals, a section of the media availed of the opportunity to launch a scurrilous campaign against senior editorial staff at the Sunday Independent.

This was a transparent ploy to kill two birds with one stone. To serve commercial ends, it circulated the old canard that Independent News & Media is a monopoly abusing the Irish market. In fact, we compete in a free market with major British and Irish newspapers. In any normal country, IN&M's success in winning 40 per cent of the market, against bullish British competition, would be hailed as a patriotic success.

But this is not a normal country. And behind the commercial campaign against the Sunday Independent lurked a more sinister political campaign sponsored by Sinn Fein supporters in the media. Last week they laid aside the pretence of concern about "sleaze" and revealed their real agenda.

That agenda is to muzzle the Sunday Independent's critical coverage of the activities of SF/IRA.

* * *

IN saying I believe our critics are concerned with our politics, not our alleged sleaze, I speak with a clear conscience. If I really thought the Sunday Independent was cheap and nasty, I would not write for it. And you would not read it.

This is a small country. You know the score. You know the Sunday Independent makes mistakes. You also know that the Sunday Independent is the chief critic of Sinn Fein/IRA in the Irish media. Like most people I met last week, I suspect that by now you have figured out that the Provos and their pals in the media are making a meal of the Lawlor story to serve a Sinn Fein agenda.

If some of you have not worked that out, let me ask you a simple question. Why do more than a million of you, decent people in middle Ireland, read this newspaper religiously every Sunday? How can you stomach all that alleged sleaze our critics speak of?

Because there is no sleaze. The sleaze is in the mind of the dirty old misogynists who hate women writing about sex but have no problem with Provo pornography. If the Sunday Independent were sleazy it could not hold its huge number of women readers. We hold them because we write about sex, with wit and eroticism - and we are much less graphic than the presentation of gory rape cases in the Irish Times.

It's not about sleaze. It's about Sinn Fein."

by Walter Mitty Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:37

More from the reactionary imagination of Eoghan Harris:

"LET me ask you another question. According to police in both Britain and Ireland, the Provisional IRA are the most sophisticated criminal subversives in Europe. Do you really believe that in the past 30 years they have not planted their agents in politics, law and the media?

Do you believe that they have no sleeper/sympathiser in the senior echelons of RTE? Do you believe that they do not sponsor some of the media organs which specialise in "exposing" decent democratic politicians? Do you believe that some of the scummier 'I am all for a military parade to mark the birth of the real Irish Republic in 1948. But addiction to the mystical 1916 republic of the mind is like addiction to gambling or alcohol. The more you get, the more you want, the less you like yourself. The only cure is cold turkey'

[sic] attacks on Sunday Independent editors are motivated solely by a passion for "higher media standards"?

Do you believe in fairies?"

by Sean McCarthy Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:33

Eoghan Harris says above that there are "rumours" that the Hart biog of Collins is a "hatchet job". It is not a rumour. It is the considered view of the reviewer in none other than the Irish Independent - a little nugget of information that Eoghan was keeping from us.

www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=36&si=1484479&issue_id=13115

The review opens:

This new biography, from Professor Peter Hart, will certainly cause controversy. The book is a thorough demythologising job on the legend of Michael Collins. It characterises him not so much as the young Hercules that Sir John Lavery so eloquently described, but a jumped-up little insurance clerk who wasn't even much good at sums but who, by a shrewd piece of draft-dodging in 1915, managed to insinuate himself into the Irish revolutionary effort and by dint of various opportunistic tricks of fixing and Tammany Hall tactics, emerged as the Irish leader.

There is a shadow that hangs over Mick Collins, and it is the shadow of the gunman. When I asked a prominent member of Fine Gael, which should claim Collins more affirmatively in their pedigree, I was told that there was always this ambivalence about Collins's use of force.

Professor Roy Foster has made similar points in public discussions about Collins - can one adulate a man who might be seen as a Gerry Adams or a Martin McGuinness of his time? But that is not the principal thrust of Hart's de-mythologising - let us be plain , and call it a hatchet job.

Hart does not characterise Collins as a mere assassin: but as a cheap kind of chancer, a braggart and a bully, who swore a lot, drank a lot - the allegations about Mick's drinking are repeated with the shocked indignation of a Protestant Temperance Ladies' tract - and may have visited prostitutes (we don't know, and have no evidence or hearsay on this matter, though that does not inhibit Hart from raising the question several times), since it must have been difficult for a jumped-up clerk like Mick to get any sex otherwise.

by Wha? Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:49

If the bit about "draft-dodging in 1915" is any indication then the accuracy of Hart's analysis then the rest of it must be called into question. There was no draft in 1915, though I think there was a threat of it later (around 1918?)

by Wha, wha? - Oh dear Tue Nov 08, 2005 14:17

I think you'll find Collins lived in England in 1915 which indeed had military conscription from late 1914. The attempt to introduce it in Ireland came in March 1918. So the Irish Indo's reviews are sacrosant now eh? If Hart is lauded by revisionist-unionist reviewers its proof hes a bastard and if he is denounced by the same historians its also proof hes a bastard...

by booms Tue Nov 08, 2005 19:42

conscription wasn't introduced in Britain until Jan 1916, so nobody was 'draft-dodging' (anacronistic anyway) in 1915 because there was no 'draft' to dodge.

by Lewis "Scooter" Libby Sun Nov 13, 2005 23:50

At the lecture in the National Museum Peter Hart described Michael Collins as the Osama Bin Laden of his time.

He addressed around 40 or so people in a large room – the crowd were lost in the room. This included many of those who had attended his Royal Irish Academy lecture - many were Hart's 'followers’. The room chosen was not the usual one, but a larger one normally used for exhibitions, etc, as a large crowd was anticipated.

Hart had no notes. He spoke with his hands in his pockets with a casual air. One person present described it as “a waste of a night”. Hart said nothing that is not already known – there was no great sequence to his ‘lecture’. There were only a few questions afterwards. One woman asked “what was new in his book”? His reply went into a little about Collins’ mediocre performance in sports activities in London, also saying that other writers had not referred to his early days in London.

No one questioned Hart about the Bin Laden analogy.

(It is believed that George Bush has sent crack FBI profilers from Quantico to Howth to question Conor Cruise O’Brien about this Collins guy. The latter's self-proclaimed followers in Fine Gael are said to have fled to 'safe houses' on hearing of Hart’s outburst.)

by hands in me pockets - casually uninterested Mon Nov 14, 2005 19:40

Hart never once condemned the Nazi regime in Germany at the talk on the national museum. He failed to underline opposition to the Armenian genocide and had nothing to say on the indegineous people's struggles in his native Canada. Overall his talk was the celebration of world wide imperialism I have come to expect from him. if it continues I will cease turning up to his lectures and refuse to discuss his reputation on the world wide web.

by Alan Ball Tue Nov 15, 2005 17:38

Why would Hart refer to the Nazis or to Armenians - what was the context?

Apropos Hart's hands in his pockets, did anyone remark that he had some balls to present ‘evidence’ in the way that he did and hope to get away with it?

Where is he now? Probably gone to Cork in mufti to dig up some more anonymous witnesses.

by frannie lee - young guvnors Tue Nov 15, 2005 17:54

The meeting ended in uproar as armed members of a paramiltary group BICO-Less stormed the stage riddling the audience with two nationist missiles and being directed by their guru bin clifford of aubane. hart was unable to confront their logical, coherent critque.

by Arnold Bruce Tue Nov 15, 2005 19:01

'Emeritus' professor John A Murphy turned up in the Sindo last Sunday reviewing Hart's 'Mick':

Murphy wrote on the continuing controversy surrounding Hart:

"....his publications, including The IRA and Its Enemies, have got up the noses of his nationalist critics, especially followers of Tom Barry, whose account of Kilmichael ambush Hart has challenged. This controversy rumbles on in recent issues of History Ireland."

(What about Indymedia John A?)

In a neutral review of 'Mick', Murphy's summation reads:

"Hart gives a somewhat banal response to the final question he poses - was Collins a hero? "He must have been a wonderful person to have a drink with and one of the most exciting friends you could ever imagine having. He loved children and small dogs.""

And big dogs?

by Ian Black Tue Nov 15, 2005 22:58

Peter hart has been given the ‘thumbs up’ by British racist and Daily Express columnist Leao Mckinstry, who ranted recently in the Express

"We are living in the shadow of fear because of our rulers' attachment to the twin dogmas of mass immigration and cultural diversity.

"Without giving us any say, they have imported wholesale the problems of the Third World - from corruption to superstition, from tribalism to misogyny - into advanced, democratic, Christian cultures."

Here is what McKinstry had to say

------------------------------

The Daily Telegraph November 13, 2005

Leo Mckinstry on two new accounts of the most passionate period in Irish history

History is woven deep into the fabric of Irish identity. But, in this parade of glory and grievance, it is often difficult to separate fact from mythology. And no era in Ireland's story has given rise to more sentimental fiction than the years from 1916 to 1923, which saw armed rebellion in Dublin, a long guerrilla campaign against the British, the creation of the Irish Free State, and finally the plunge into bitter civil war.

Now, Peter Hart and Charles Townshend have produced two excellent studies about this period. Both books have the merits of balance, coolness and objectivity, qualities which are so often lacking in the emotional debate about the birth of the Irish nation. Hart focuses on Michael Collins, the dashing soldier and politician who became the head of Ireland's first government in 1922 before being assassinated by the IRA in 1923 at the age of just 31. Brave, charismatic and far-sighted, Collins was widely seen as the romantic hero who defeated the British Empire and then had the courage to negotiate a peace settlement with Lloyd George's government.

But Hart cuts through Collins's aura of secular sainthood, showing him to be a complex figure with several unattractive traits and an often chequered record. Hart does not deny that Collins was a remarkable political leader. Throughout his career in Irish nationalist politics he was as comfortable with a balance sheet as he was with a rifle. It was largely as a result of his influence that the IRA proved such a difficult enemy in the 1919-21 war, for, as well as raising and managing funds for the cause, he also established secret but highly efficient communications systems throughout the country. Yet Hart also shows the more negative side to Collins, including his bullying and impatience. 'He was a clever peasant with a peasant's vices and virtues,' said the sister of the 1916 rebel Joseph Plunkett. Hart further argues that Collins's military prowess has been exaggerated and that he was a poor negotiator, easily outfoxed by Lloyd George when it came to the Treaty talks in late 1921.

Collins's flaws, however, only make him more human and therefore more appealing. The real villain of this book is Eamonn De Valera, the Sinn Fein leader who, shamefully, abdicated all direct responsibility for the London negotiations and then urged the rejection of the Treaty, solely on the obscure grounds of the oath of allegiance to the British crown.

Neither does De Valera emerge well from Charles Townshend's comprehensive history of the Easter Rising in 1916

…..

The guiding force behind the rising was the mystical poet Patrick H. Pearse, who had a near pathological obsession with the belief in a blood sacrifice for Ireland's soul and painted himself as a Christ-like figure. 'One man can free a people, as One Man redeemed the world,' Pearse wrote. And though such language may have seemed absurd, he was proved correct. For the execution by the British forces of the 15 leading figures of the Easter Rising, allied to the imposition of marital law, led to huge awakening of nationalist fervour.

--------------------------------------------

It is instructive to see how Hart’s revisionist historiography fits neatly into the blinkered worldview of a modern British imperialist. This is the kind of claptrap that feeds the British racist view of the emotional and unstable Irish who are too thick and ungrateful to understand British imperial beneficence (Though there are exceptions like Kevin Myers who is intelligent and far sighted enough to reproduce the same racist and pro-Hart stuff in his imperial Diary on the Irish Times letters page).

by Malachy McGurren Wed Nov 16, 2005 14:53

I was reading Harris (above) and Des O'Hagen's speech (on the thread below). Harris is now a raving former WP right-winger and O'Hagen is still a raving member of the WP.

Not that much difference in their outlook though - still the same paranoia about the Provos, still the same messianic outlook on the world. Just a rearrangement of some of the bogeymen who upset the applecart.

The Provos are at the centre of all that is evil in the Harris-O'Hagen world. Great minds think alike and fools seldom differ - take your pick (or your stick).

O’Hagen has North Korea, while Harris has the USA – both like to pay in dollars.

Weird (I wonder is Des a fan of Peter Hart?).

O’Hagen’s rant:
www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72937

by compulsive reader Thu Nov 17, 2005 15:33

Collins lives up to the myth

06 November 2005 Reviewed by Diarmaid Ferriter
Mick: The Real Michael Collins, by Peter Hart, Macmillan, €30.

Like its subject matter, this is a book bristling with energy, determination and, at times, ruthlessness. Hart seeks to subject Collins to a fresh scrutiny, a particularly welcome development given the easy ride Collins has been given to date.

The author sets out his stall with the declaration: “I would like to start from scratch and from a new, forensic perspective.”

For anyone familiar with Hart's previous work, particularly his seminal and brilliant The IRA And Its Enemies In Cork, this approach should not surprise - “forensic'‘ is the word most often used to describe that book.



But the tone of this one is in stark contrast to his previous effort. It is fast-paced and breezy, and - particularly during the early chapters - there is a certain dismissiveness, bordering on sneeriness.

It's almost as if Hart is disappointed that he could not puncture the myths about Collins as much as he would have liked with regard to his successful performance during the War of Independence, and instead seeks to disparage all sorts of aspects of his early life, including his low-level position in the civil service in London, his post-office exam results (“62 per cent. A rather plebeian C'‘), his teenage immaturity and the disastrous results of his hurling team.

The obvious response to all the above is: so bloody what?

It's a curious methodology effectively to read Collins's career backwards by wondering why he was not always a master strategist, champion risk-taker and achieving the best possible results. All of us, surely, need to develop into adults and grow into our careers.

This irritating smart-arsery, however, quickly fades away as the author gets into his stride. By the end of this book, the reader should be more than satisfied.

It is entertaining, brilliantly researched and, in the main, insightful and original.

It deserves a wide audience, and confirms the status and reputation of Hart.

In particular, he has shed new light on neglected aspects of the career of Collins, including his tenure as Secretary of the National Aid and Volunteer Dependants Fund (NAVDF) (established to assist financially those bereft as a result of the Rising) and his involvement with the Irish Volunteers (which evolved into the IRA) after 1916.

Collins had nerves of steel and was extremely brave, but he was primarily an outstanding administrator and a skilled and opportunistic networker rather than a macho, trigger-happy soldier.

Hart quickly establishes his reputation as “the man to get things done'‘, and rightly devotes much attention to the early years, as without that experience, he would not have achieved so much in the years from 1919 to 1922.

While holding down his full-time job with the NAVDF, Collins was also treasurer of the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood), director of the Irish Volunteers and an executive member of Sinn Féin. Soon after, he was also an MP and minister.

When not badgering Volunteer captains and commandants to pull up their socks and stand on their own feet, he was expressing frustration at the ineptitude of his fellow Sinn Féin ministers (with de Valera, with whom he worked well, often mediating), and cultivating his spy network, who were forces in their own right and not just puppets of Collins.

Overall, “he made sure his friends and allies knew he was fighting ‘the forces of moderation', but maintained cabinet solidarity once the decisions were made'‘.

Collins wanted a short war, and could not master everything - no one person, as Hart acknowledges, directed or controlled the war.

Collins was simply capable and determined enough to work harder than everybody else, and de Valera had to remind him at one stage that “the Almighty did not give everybody the ordered mind he gave you'‘.

He was also a difficult and often petulant colleague, and during and after the Treaty negotiations he was very much led by Arthur Griffith.

In the subsequent fallout from the signing of the Treaty, he consistently outclassed and out-performed de Valera.

Of course, the divisions in the republican movement after the Treaty were painful and difficult, but one of Collins's main characteristics was his sheer decisiveness once a decision had been made.

He was also a smoking, drinking, charming, boyish sex symbol who was mobbed in London during the “Collins-mania'‘ surrounding the Treaty period, but Hart can find no credible evidence that he was sexually active; nor does he accept any of the conspiracy theories about the ambush in which he was killed in August 1922.

Hart clearly admires Collins, and though he gives adequate attention to his shortcomings, he maintains that he was “the most successful politician of modern Irish history'‘.

This is a highly questionable conclusion, given that he did not live to contribute to the building of the new state, or have any idea how to solve the partition question.

It is a conclusion that sits uncomfortably with Hart's earlier acknowledgements that Collins was not inclined to ideological thinking, and had admitted to an American journalist in 1920 that “none of us have ever defined a republic'‘.

Diarmaid Ferriter is the author of The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, published by Profile Books.

by Dado Rale Thu Nov 17, 2005 18:12

Diarmaid Ferriter is the guy who quoted Hart liberally on the War of Independence in his 'Transformation of Ireland' - without once referring to the criticism of Hart's methods. Ferriter's reference to Hart as "Brilliant" is therefore underwhelming.

Anyway, positive remarks for Hart from an English racist and from an Irish (post) revisionist. Thumbs down in Irish Times, Irish Independent, The View (RTE). Neutral to negative in the Sunday Independent. Not very impressive so far.

History Ireland next - how will that review will turn out? Havn't seen it in the shops yet.

by Underwhelmed - oh so cynical Fri Nov 18, 2005 11:51

So, lets get this straight: Hart's previous books get rave reviews and this proves that the revisionist/west brit/pro-brit establishment love him and therefore his books must be crap. However the west brit Irish Times, revisionist SIndo and Indo slag his new book off and this also proves that it is crap? if they had praised it you would argue its because their all in on the plot. Surely you should be praising Hart now that establishment are against him? I suggest that 2 out of 3 reviewers on the View were positive about the book; nobody cut and pasted Brenda Power's comments for example. Or is all this too confusing for the Peking Lodge of the Orange Order to understand?

by Pat C Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:18

It all comes down to shoddy scholarship and invented documents in the case of Hart. In Ferriters case it comes to shoddy scholarship as well. He used Hart as a source instead of consulting primary sources.

Ferriter will be speaking on Boddy Sunday, 1920, next Moday:

The GAA museum at Croke Park will host a lecture to commemorate the 85th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when 13 people were shot dead in the stadium.

The event will take place on Monday evening next, November 21, at 7pm and speakers on the night will include GAA historian Marcus de Búrca, Diarmaid Ferriter (St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra), Brian Hanley (NUI Maynooth) and Jimmy Wren.

Admission for adults will be Eur5 and Eur4 for students/Senior citizens/Unwaged.

by revisionist watch Fri Nov 18, 2005 16:01

Wow, ferriter and handley, two hart fans,.iewhat are the GAA thinking? Why wasn,t Meda Ryan asked?

by pat c Fri Nov 18, 2005 16:13

I dont believe that Brian Hanley is a Hart fan. He just interviewed Hart, perhaps he could have been sterner in his interview techniques. Brian Hanley believes in going to original sources to research his work. His book: The IRA, 1926-36 is well worth reading.

"Air-force men wanted by IRA, reveal documents

SCOTT MILLAR

THE IRA hoped to launch its own air force in the 1930s, in a doomed plan that was closer to Biggles than Cathal Brugha.

According to a new history of the republican army, five men were sent to a flight training school in Chicago in the early 1930s because the IRA believed the revolution required an air force.

The air force plan was contained in a communiqué, sent by Sean Russell, then the IRA's quartermaster, to the army council. Russell, who visited the trainee pilots in 1932, justified the high cost of the training by their strategic importance.

The existence of the IRA fliers is revealed in a new book, The IRA 1926-36, by Brian Hanley, a research fellow at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. The work draws on the previously unpublished papers of Moss Twomey, the IRA's longest serving chief of staff. Twomey, from Cork, kept copious notes and detailed records of the IRA's operations.

The papers confirm long-held rumours of unprecedented links between republicans and their unionist enemies in Belfast in the 1930s. The IRA supplied the B-specials - an exclusively Protestant paramilitary wing of the RUC - with bombs to attack railways during a 1933 strike. "

Full article at the link.

by Niall Meehan Thu Nov 24, 2005 11:31

Diarmaid Ferriter and Brian Hanley take Peter Hart's research on the IRA in Cork during the War of Independence at face value. The material about a prurient IRA targeting, prostitutes, Protestants and vagabonds, while shooting the innocent, has a superficial attraction for those of a certain frame of mind. In fact it is mostly 'tabloid' history and balderdash - see final paragraph.

I clarified my differences with Brian Haley’s approach at:

www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70063

You would think though, even if they believed those who crticise Hart’s approach to be nationalist Neanderthals, that Brian and Diarmaid might agree that interviewing the dead is not a generally accepted historical method. They might even go further and agree that deliberate omission of relevant information in historical work is pretty shoddy (at the very least). But no, not a peep. Very poor show (in my opinion).

As to the character of the reviews of ‘Mick’, apparently some newspapers had difficulty in attracting heavyweight academic reviewers. The Irish Independent reproduced a review already published in the Literary Review by Mary Kenny. The Sunday Independent asked their resident Cork historian, John A Murphy, to review. It would have been surprising had they not done so. In Cork, criticism of Hart is at a fairly advanced stage. John A is independent minded, witness his withering rebuke to the southern unionist and sectarian Reform movement last year, for alleging that Protestants had been persecuted in the republic. He asserted in relation to both Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy that they are all ayatollahs under their cassocks. He was aiming his fire at those who seem to believe that one branch of Christianity is more ‘liberal’ or progressive than another.

A debate between John A and Bruce Arnold was supposed to take place on this point, but the latter failed to appear at the appointed time and place (lunchtime news on Newstalk 106), citing “advice” he had received from the Reform Movement not to take part.

Michael Collins biographer Tim Pat Coogan is due to review ‘Mick’ in History Ireland and further reviews will no doubt appear in academic journals.

Despite the sometimes studied indifference of the historical establishment toward Meda Ryan and Brian Murphy, even they may not wish to associate too closely with an academic colleague who cannot defend his work coherently or address criticism in a clear manner. Particularly a colleague who has been exposed on clear matters of fact.

On the Kilmichael dates issue, either Hart did not interview a Kilmichael participant, a ‘scout’, in November 1989, interviewed someone who claimed to be one but was not, found a ‘new’ previously unheard of participant, or else it is a dating error. We can presumably discount the latter point since it would have been easy to address over the past seven years (and in any case there weren’t many ‘scouts’ alive and available for interview for number of years prior to 1989). If there is another possibility, Hart is keeping it to himself – for no apparent good reason. This is part of a curious pattern with Peter Hart.

It is not as though Hart’s errors are haphazard or minor aberrations in an otherwise flawless survey of the period. They go to the heart (Hart?) of the point about Irish republican sectarianism that Peter Hart was attempting to make. As I pointed out in my letter to History Ireland (September-October), all of Hart’s errors and omissions show a bias in one direction.

(http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.5FeatC.html)

Hart had a theory of “ethnic cleansing’ by the IRA between 1919-22 that the facts did not stand up. Hart stood with the theory and obscured the facts. That clearly established position and the character assassination aimed at Kilmichael commander Tom Barry is very curious, and the reason for it may possibly lie in the realms of personal or psychological disposition, or some other (posssibly political) cause outside the bounds of historical enquiry.

I would challenge Mr/Ms ‘underwhelmed’ (above) to read the criticism, Meda Ryan’s defence of her methods, and to then find the unreasoned conspiracy theory he appears to allege is present in the criticism of Peter Hart.

(http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.5FeatA.html)

New historical work will appear in December and in early 2006 that will bring the debate forward and possibly also deem Peter Hart’s approach superseded (though the case against seems pretty conclusive already). Though his critics have been patient in awaiting a coherent answer from Peter Hart to simple and clear questions, at some stage we will all have to move on. No doubt this point, when it arrives, will be a relief to Peter and to his friends.

Account of Brian Murphy's public criticism in Cork of Peter Hart, in July August History Ireland - audio of talk available (click on link)

by pat c Thu Nov 24, 2005 11:50

This is the paper delivered by Brian Hanley on 21 November 2005 at the GAA Museum. It is not on line anywhere else.

Make up your own minds if it is revisionist.

Bloody Sunday: 85th Anniversary

What I want to do is to try and paint a picture of the state of the country in the run up to the massacre here at Croke Park 85 years ago. That Bloody Sunday happened in November 1920 was significant; because there had been a major escalation in the nature of the conflict over the previous six months from the fairly limited and erratic violence of 1919. After a summer and autumn of increasing conflict by October 1920 the British government had moved to fairly open approval of reprisals by the Crown Forces and encouraged the mindset among their forces that made the massacre possible. November was a pivotal month.

It is important to acknowledge the shift in character of the war during 1920. While we tend to fix the date for the beginning of the War of Independence on 21 January 1919 with the Soloheadbeg ambush and the meeting of the First Dail, in reality the mainly isolated and episodic clashes of that year were very different from what was to follow. 15 Policemen were killed during 1919 in comparison to 178 in 1920; 142 of them after May. 8 IRA volunteers died during 1919 in comparison to over 100 in 1920. Regular British troops were not attacked until September 1919 in Fermoy. Large parts of Ireland were undisturbed during 1919 and it would have not been apparent to many people that a war was taking place. The emphasis of the Sinn Fein party and the Dail remained on gaining international recognition and on relatively peaceful tactics; boycotts of the RIC rather than shooting them. A large section of the republican political movement were never entirely convinced of the need for militaryaction and the Dail only endorsed the IRA’s campaign in April 1921. Yet by early 1920 increasing radicalization and repression were laying the basis for the brutal wa r of the autumn and winter. In January and June local elections took place for urban and rural councils, with Sinn Fein and Labour the winners; in most areas outside of the north-east Sinn Fein took control of local councils, usually with Labour support. Another sign of popular support for separatism was the general strike in April 1920 in solidarity with republican hunger strikers, which drew extensive support outside Belfast and the seven month long strike by railway workers against the transport of British arms and equipment that forced an extra burden on the administration and made British military support for the Police a great deal more difficult. In early spring the withdrawal of the RIC from small and isolated barracks marked an admission that IRA attacks and local non-cooperation had made an impact on the administration; at Easter the IRA’s burning and destruction of 300 of these buildings was a morale booster for the Volunteers and their GHQ, adding a degree of authority to their efforts to coordinate an army.

Yet even as conflict escalated the struggle remained a patchwork affair; for a variety of reasons one of the most interesting factors in the military struggle was its regional basis; Cork and west Cork in particular, Limerick, Tipperary, Clare and Kerry in Munster, Longford in the midlands, Dublin city and Belfast all saw the majority of the violence of those years; but never in exactly the same way or at the same time. 1/3 of all the deaths and injuries of the war occurred in Cork; Counties like Tipperary and Clare, very active in the beginning had become less so by 1921 while parts of Mayo and the west were becoming more involved during 1921.
The nature of thewar in Munster and in Longford, with barracks attacks, road trenching, ambushes and flying columns was not that of Dublin or Belfast. Dublin will always be associated with the intelligence war, spies and counter spies, the struggle between Collins, Dick McKee and the Dublin Brigade to neutralize first Dublin Castle’s ‘G’ Division, the assassinationof detectives, beginning in July 1919 and then the struggle with their Britishmilitary replacements, most dramatically on 21 November 1920. Regular British troops for example were not attacked in Dublin until September 1920, although by 1921 this had become more common. In Belfast the nature of the conflict was very different again. There the summer of 1920 saw the first widespread expulsions of workers from the shipyards, Catholics and a substantial number of Protestant dissidents; by August gun battles and assassinations were commonplac. In Belfast relatively few republicans or British troops were killed; the vast majority of those who died between the summers of 1920 and 1922 were civilians, which is sometimes forgotten or glossed over in our southern centered view of the War of Independence.

An indication of the escalation of violence, and the demoralization of the local police was the introduction by the British administration of reinforcements for the RIC in March 1920, the Black and Tans, and in July, the Auxiliaries. Again, of course the memory of Bloody Sunday and indeed of the whole period is very much associated with these forces.

The introduction of the Tans and the Auxies reflected a key factor in British government thinking; a refusal to accept that what was happening in Ireland had any popular basis; that Sinn Fein only gained votes through intimidation; that the IRA was supported only through fear; that the rebels were a ‘murdergang’ and that therefore what was occurring was a Police problem. At a cabinet meeting on 31st May Sir Hamar Greenwood the Chief Secretary assured the cabinet that the majority of the Irish were ‘terrorised’ and the county councils only going Sinn Fein because extremists were ‘terrorizing’ the other candidates. For a variety of reasons, some ideological, some practical there was a reluctance to commit large numbers of regular troops and therefore the introduction of almost 14,000 recruits to the RIC would do two things; convince British opinion that what was happening was indeed Police action against criminals and also put into the field a force of tough, battle hardened men, a counter-insurgency force who would not be intimidated or frightened by the IRA; and importantly could apply pressure to the local population in ways in which many local Policemen would not. Like everything else in our history the story of the Auxies and Tans is not straightforward. New Zealanders, Canadians and Australians served and died here in RIC uniform; by July 1921 almost 2,000 Tans and Auxiliaries were Irish born men, 55% of them Catholics.

The introduction of these forces also coincided with an willingness to either turn a blind eye to reprisals by Crown forces or to positively encourage them; again for a variety of reasons; to allow police or soldiers to avenge their colleagues for reasons of morale; and to punish communities for the activities of the IRA and to try to drive a wedge between the Volunteers and their support base. Pressure for reprisals came from both the ground up and cabinet down; In June 1920 Divisional Commander Smyth of the RIC told Police in Listowel that ‘if the persons approaching you carry their hands in their pockets or in any way look suspiciousshoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may beshot, but that cannot be helped and you are bound to get the right parties sometimes.’ At cabinet in May Winston Churchill demanded the widespread use of the death penalty and Lloyd George concurred; ‘I feel certain you must hang.’ But Lloyd George went further and believed that reprisals had worked in Ireland in the past and that the Irish understood the need for them. Where the cabinet differed was in the application of the reprisal policy and about who or what was to be the targets. A condescending and at times racist view of the Irish also contributed to the reprisal policy; they were a people easily cowered by either subversive or Police action, they understood force, they were shifty and untruthful; a contempt that led to the reprisals. In reality of course reprisals had been happening long before they were officially sanctioned. In September 1919 troops had wrecked shops in Fermoy. In March 1920 disguised Policemen hadmurdered Thomais MacCurtain, a tactic that became more common as the year wore on. In April and June there had been reprisals at Limerick, Nenagh, Bantry and Fermoy. But the autumn and winter saw the most widespread burnings, house wreckings and killings yet. There were reprisals in Thurles, Upperchurch, Limerick, Templemore, Balbriggan, Ennistymon, Lahinch, Milltown Malbay, Trim, Mallow, Tuam, Boyle, Listowel, Tralee, Tubbercurry, Ballymote and Granard. All these incidents differed but there were also similarities; creameries, pubs and shops were particular targets, as were the homes of local Sinn Fein or Volunteer activists and young men were in particular danger. Some reprisals were small scale and did not involve killing. In others such as Balbriggan or Tralee the whole community was terrorized; at Balbriggan in September two men were shot dead, a factory, four pubs and 49 houses burned and people forced into the fields. In Tralee four men were killed and shops, bakeries and creameries forced to close under armed threat; after a week of armed curfew there was a real possibility of the poorer areas of the town facing starvation. Of course the reprisals occurred in the context of an intensified IRA campaign; RIC Commander Smyth quoted above was shot dead shortly after making his speech. But by November 1920 violence and counter violence was daily routine. In early October Lloyd George had publicly defended reprisals; in early November he boasted that the British had ‘murderby the throat’ and that ‘we have struck the terrorists and now they complain of terror.’
But the reality was that even before Bloody Sunday the government’s attempts to play down what was happening were failing. On 25th October Terence MacSwiney died after 74 days on hunger strike gaining huge international attention; on 1st November Kevin Barry was hanged, the first judicial execution of the war. There was also the dramatic defense of Ballinalee in Longford by Sean MacEoin’s column, the only occasion a reprisal was successfully prevented by the IRA. Then in an already dramatic and violent month came Bloody Sunday. Others will no doubt speak about the day itself but a few points present themselves. The first two Auxiliaries to be killed in Dublin died that morning and given the pattern of that force’s behaviour I think that that is relevant to their actions; they often reacted most viciously to attacks on them rather than wider attacks on the administration. While the massacre at Croke Park fits the general pattern of reprisal it was much bigger in scale than anything that had gone before. Even a few weeks later in Cork city, while they carried out large- scale destruction of property they did not kill anyone; it was unique but again it fitted the view of punishing a community for a particular attack.

There are other aspects of the day and the wider conflict that people may wish to discuss. In Todd Andrew’s memoir of that era, Dublin Made Me, he painted an unromantic and unsentimental view of his activities on the day. He even criticized members of the Squad as bullies, who behaved like ‘Black and Tans’ towards a woman in one of the houses raided. His view of them may have been coloured by the Civil War but is relevant in what has become a clichéd view of a hugely successful strike at the heart of British Intelligence in Dublin. Many targets were missed, mistakes were made and the backlash, which not only saw themassacre here but themurder of Dick McKee among others, the arrest of dozens and a major security clamp down severely affected the IRA. Yet just a week later Kilmichael confirmed that British policy in Ireland was in crisis. By any standards November 1920 was a pivotal month.

In his memoir Andrew’s raises another point worth pondering. He, raised not far from here in Summerhill, was an avid supporter of Bohemians, a regular at Dalymount, who actually played soccer for UCD with a comrade from the Dublin Brigade the night before Bloody Sunday. He was not unique; the revolutionary movement contained many who played what were considered ‘foreign’ games and some who had no interest in sport at all. Many years later Gerry Boland reflected that at least half the Dublin Brigade had been ‘soccer men.’ Another complexity which reflects the fact that the revolutionary

by Niall Meehan Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:07

(That was quick!)

No one is arguing that Brian is a revisionist. The point is irrelevant - let us not go off at a tangent. The point is (since his name was mentioned above with that of Diarmaid Ferriter) that Brian should publicly ask Peter Hart to deal specifically with the matters of fact that have been addressed to him, or venture an opinion on the specific criticism of Peter Hart's censorship of relevant evidence.

I have read Brian's book on The IRA - 1926-1936, based on the papers of Moss Tuomey. It is a fine book.

by booms Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:17

I don't think it is fair to place Brian Hanley in with Hart, at any level. Hanley's arguments are based on what happened, with evidence to back it up. Hart's clearly aren't. If Hanley is a revisionist, it is of the research kind - Hart's revisionism is good old fashioned Sindo, with the war of independence merely a metaphor for the troubles since 1968. My own personal opinion is that Hart's in it for the money - he said as much in Maynooth when he talked about how big his advance for the Collins book was. I mean, when you respond to criticism by name-calling and citing your bank balance, it's hardly empirical, is it?

by Peter Garvey Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:47

Brian Hanley interviewed Peter Hart, not very robustly, in History Ireland and gave a talk at the Ireland Institute that was a partial defence of Peter Hart, and a bit of a‘put-down’ of Hart’s critics – without naming them. Therefore, Brian associated his own name with that of Peter Hart.

Brian appeared to support Hart’s conclusions on the shooting of loyalists near Bandon in 1922, but he did not address the fact that Hart’s ‘evidence’ was discredited as early as 1998 by Brian Murphy. Neither did he address the clearly established position that Hart has a pattern of misrepresenting evidence. By not mentioning Brian Murphy and Meda Ryan, but by dismissing their comments on Kilmichael in 1920 and on Bandon in 1922, Brian Hanley criticised them by default.

Perhaps Brian Hanley, a good historian, does not wish to criticise Peter Hart directly for personal reasons. If that is the case, so be it. Only Brian Hanley can answer that question and it seems like idle speculation to pursue it further here. Leave it with Brian Hanley to come back with an answer.

by booms Thu Nov 24, 2005 13:01

Fair enough. Brian Hanley's partial defence - and it is only partial - of Hart would appear to have more to do with personal loyalty than anything else, but you're right, only Hanley can answer that. His book on the IRA in the 1930s, though, is in a different league to the sensationalist and tabloid Hart, and a relevent addition to our understanding of not only the IRA, but Ireland during that time. But yeah, it's irrelevant. My main concern with Hart is that he lends a sort of academic credence to people who don't know what they are talking about when it comes to Ireland from 1916-1923, but who know that, whatever else, they don't like the IRA.

by pat c Thu Nov 24, 2005 13:30

The last sentence of Brian Hanleys paper was partially omitted. Here it is in full:

"Another complexity which reflects the fact that the revolutionary movement was a genuinely popular one. "

by Peter G Thu Nov 24, 2005 13:34

Hey Booms, were you at the mysterious talk at Maynooth where Hart claims to have felled his (absent) critics with ease? You seem to imply that you were (above).

Apart from telling his audience about the big advance he received for his boring book, what else did Hart say? Was he questioned at all?

by booms Thu Nov 24, 2005 14:09

Unfortunately, I wasn't at the talk, but two of my friends were, and I can tell you what they told me. Hart spoke without notes about Kilmichael and the criticism he received over it - at one point he appeared to my friends to be close to tears. All that he mentioned was the personal attacks and how he didn't deserve it. Most of the people who were there, including my two friends, didn't know what he was talking about, as the event itself was the opening of the Maynooth postgrad history seminars. In Maynooth these take place every week but are divided into time periods - medieval, early modern, 19th c, and 20th c. - each group meeting on alternate weeks. Hart's talk, though, being the first one, was addressed to all groups, and there only would have been two or three people who were studying 1916-23. I forget the actual title of Hart's talk, but what I do remember is my friends saying that he didn't talk about what he was supposed to talk about, and instead just 'bitched'. Now, I have an agenda when it comes to Hart, I don't like him as an historian, but I have to say that my friends, who don't know about him at all, had that impression. There were no questions asked of him because nobody knew what he was talking about. Hart then moved from Kilmichael onto Collins, his as then forthcoming book, and how it was going to shatter the myths about the man. My firends said that there was one person there from DCU (maybe Ferritter???) who did ask a question but that was really all. The fact that no questions were really asked of Hart was probably due to the head of the department out there, Comerford, who runs a tight ship in Maynooth, and nobody asks hard questions of anybody out there, not while he is in the audience anyway. Hart's comments about his advance came from the wine reception afterwards, when one of my friends got talking to him, I don't think he talked about it in his main presentation, but he was very proud of the six figure sum he was getting. I'm afraid that's all I can remember at the moment, but next time I see my firends I'll ask them more about it and post it up. What I do remember very clearly is that he came across as rambling and not making any sense. He assumed that everyone had read the book and that it was a hostile crowd. He was wrong on both counts. The land and Ireland up to the 1900s is where Maynooth is strong, not on IRA and not on 1916-1923. And nobody gets a rough ride at the history seminar in Maynooth.

by Kevin Mannerings Thu Nov 24, 2005 15:46

Professor Peter Hart has accused Meda Ryan of getting it completely wrong about Kilmichael, glorifying killing, glorifying the horrible and cowardly murderer Tom Barry. He based his attack on supposed interviews with people who were dead, and he has not had the manners to reply to Meda Ryan properly after she pointed this out.

Until he apologises to Meda Ryan, he will remain a disgrace to the University of Newfoundland and a laughing stock.

Tom Barry is dead, so you can write as much bull about him as you want, but one might expect historians to have some respect for the truth.

This has got nothing to do with revisionism or the rights and wrongs of the War of Independence, it is about historians telling it right.

Those institutions which invite him to talk simply show that they don't care whether historians get it right either. He belongs in the doghouse until he sets the record straight.

by hist 2 Sun Dec 04, 2005 02:01

For Brian Hanley's lecture

by Darren Sun Dec 04, 2005 04:49

Niall,

Is there anywhere I could get a copy of that newsletter on Cork 's political culture?

Beannacht

Darren

by pat c Sun Dec 04, 2005 13:52

i'm hoping to get the other lectures delivered on the night. if so i will post them here.
sláinte.

by pat c Sun Dec 04, 2005 14:09

theres a pdf of brian murphys talk on corks political culture at:
http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/aug2005/murphyhistirljulyaugo5.pdf

you can get more info on publications from:
jacklaneaubane@hotmail.com

by pat c Thu Dec 08, 2005 12:19

This is the script of the lecture delivered by Diarmaid Ferriter at the GAA Museum on 21 November 2005. As far as I am aware it is not online elsewhere.

pat c

LEGACY OF BLOODY SUNDAY, 21 NOVEMBER 1920
By Diarmaid Ferriter

Bloody Sunday was a stark reminder that there were two wars being fought in Ireland in 1920; the military one and the intelligence one. It also occurred during what was a bloody and emotive year, incorporating the death of Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork and Dublin student Kevin Barry, and it was to get evenbloodier; the infamous Kilmichael Ambush in which 13 British Auxillaries werekilled occurred just a week later, the burning of Cork not long after. In many respects, Bloody Sunday and the murd er of 26 people in a single day was a microcosm of the War of Independence, in respect of the role of killing, the role of espionage, heavy civilian casualties, the taking of significant risks, a fiercely fought propaganda battle; its contribution to the building and sustaining of myths about key individuals, its relevance to the debate about whether the war was to be long or short. Arguably, it is also relevant to the issue of passive resistance, which is what standing in Croke Park amounted to; that was what the Bloody Sunday victims became, whether they had planned it or not.

Tipperary newspapers like the Tipperary Star and the Nationalist in Clonmel, used the words,‘Holocaust’,‘slaughter’ and ‘massacre’, to describe what happened; that was precisely how it looked when the day was over, with the Nationalist suggesting “the vicious cycle must be allowed to run its course”, a recognition, it seemed, that this was a defining but not a final tragedy. The death of Mike Hogan, the erection of the new Hogan stand in 1924, and various memorial matches gave a new status to the GAA’s relationship with Irish republicanism, the same organisation that five years previously did not allow the Irish Volunteers to parade on their grounds

The last five months of 1920 witnessed assassination, reprisal and counter-reprisal. Undoubtedly, the impact on the British intelligence network was significant, but identifying exactly how significant created problems for historians; as Tom Bowden, one of the first academics to research the issue pointed out in 1972, “where espionage and intelligence services are concerned, truth and fiction are most closely enmeshed”. But this was also a psychological, political and propaganda battle and the ramifications of Bloody Sunday may ultimately have been more important in that realm than in the military or intelligence realm.

Its effect on public opinion needs to be put in the context of the rhetoric being used by senior British politicians and supposed military masterminds in late 1920. The British Chief Secretary, Hamar Greenwood had insisted, prior to Bloody Sunday, that Britain had Ireland under control and that things were improving. The Prime Minister Lloyd George deliberately referred to the IRA as ‘ a small murdergang’, and on 9 November at a speech in the Guildhall, announced ‘we have murderby the throat’. The truth is that the maintenance of law and order had long crumbled in Ireland and the conduct of the war from the British side was a disaster. Dublin Castle could not put together an effective, unified security command. As previously classified documents have become available, they have revealed a vast accumulation of frustration, error and confusion within the Dublin Castle administration and its police force and also within the British cabinet and army. It is significant in this regard that after the Truce of July 1921, Britain was keen to learn from its mistakes, and initiated a number of analyses of what had gone wrong.

One of their mistakes was to completely misunderstand Ireland and the IRA and their public utterances on this subject reveal the importance of public figures choosing their words carefully. General Neville MacCready, the commander of the British army in Ireland at this time, said many things during the War of Independence, but perhaps the three most important words he uttered were ‘I loathe Ireland’. Hatred and ignorance fuelled many of the mistakes made in Ireland, and in this era of polit ical correctness, it is important to state that emphatically. A failure to grasp the impact of the sho oting of civilians continued to blight the British government’s approach to Ireland for many more decades, right up to the second Bloody Sunday in January 1972, when, according to documents released three years ago, Prime minister Ted Heath was unrepentant: “that was a provocative march today” he told an emotional Jack Lynch. Substitute the word ‘march’ with the words ‘ GAA match’, and you can see the parallels with 1920.

Another of the difficulties for Britain in late 1920 was in losing control over public opinion. The British public did become aware of what was being done in their name and this was not necessarily due just to the success of Sinn Féin propagandists. British correspondents and journalists like Hugh Martin of the Daily News and J.L.Hammond of the Manchester Guardian were sending home objective reports of what was going on in Ireland as eye-witnesses to scenes which suggested the empire was being humbled by guerrilla fighters; in which there patently is a war going on, despite the official denial of that. In the summer of 1920 the Manchester Guardian had specifically referred to the IRA as a ‘dry force’; not drunken, indiscplined murdergangs. The assassinations of Bloody Sunday morning were not the work of hungover thugs, but rather determined professionals.

The Propaganda Department established in Dublin Castle with a branch at the Irish office in London, was an official recognition of the need to try and beat Sinn Féin at their own game, particularly given the relative success of The Irish Bulletin, which had a wide circulation and gave the Sinn Féin version of what was happening in Ireland. According to a contemporary document, the Dublin Castle Propagand Department was set up “to suppress or neutralise the plethora of adverse news reports” circulating about Ireland in the UK, and the development of British public criticism is crucial in this regard. Important sections of the British media, including The Daily Mail, reported what happened in Croke Park as a reprisal and an illustration that the Irish issue was not being ‘contained’. Bloody Sunday was also supposed to have been part of a cross-channel spectacular with the destruction of commercial targets in London, Liverpool and Manchester to specifically demonstrate Irish resolve; they were called off after the capture of IRA Chief-of-Staff Richard Mulcahy’s notebooks, but what the plans amounted to was a very public defiance of the notion that republicans were, or could be, contained.

Quite rightly, historians in recent years have been more sceptical about the scale of the damage inflicted by Michael Collins. Bloody Sunday undoubtedly contributed to the contention, to use the phrase of Arthur Griffith, that he was “the man who won the war”. In truth, as Peter Hart points out in his new biography, no one man planned directed and controlled the war. Collins is often quoted as saying in relation to Bloody Sunday, he ‘had to get them before they got him,’ but the 14murdered on Bloody Sunday morning, the so-called ‘hush-hush men’ represented a British presence that did not begin murdering andtorturing until after Bloody Sunday. As both Hart and indeed Charles Townshend point out, it was not the Napoleonic masterstroke or “ a brilliant demonstration of pinpoint selective assassination”. Most historians now accept that not all that morning’s targets were involved in intelligence work (one was a vet, some were court-martial officers). They were easy targets because they had never contemplated such attacks, as prior to this no spies had been killed in their residences.

It was thus a risky strategy because it suggested war on a new level and that meant a danger of losing public support. In this sense, in propaganda terms, the reprisals in Croke Park worked to the IRA’s advantage, as it neutralised any revulsion that might have festered had their not been a retaliation in the afternoon. Overall, the day suggested something of a draw when it came to the body count. British intelligence had its own revenge by mur dering the IRA’s Dublin Brigade’s Peadar Clancy and Dick McKee, instrumental men in Collin’s efforts. As Liam Tobin pointed out, ‘the en emy had evened up on us.’

In the short-term, the backlash to Bloody Sunday left the IRA reeling; internment without trial, wide scale arrests, and martial law, (though it was telling that the martial law that was introduced was a diluted version of what the military chiefs wanted) and the arrest of Arthur Griffith. The British intelligence effort was back on track. The IRA recovered too; how robust they were is open to debate, but it can be asserted that in the realm of ‘secret service’ the IRA were victorious. The IRA spy network was not penetrated; the British did not succeed in infiltrating the underground. The Official Record of the Rebellion in Ireland records that ‘the murders of 21 November temporarily paralysed the Special Branch. Several of its most efficient members were murd ered and the majority of the others resident in the city were brought into the Castle and the Central Hotel for safety’.

But neither, in terms of general intelligence, was the IRA infallible; the broader British intelligence was actually better than it got credit for. What cannot be contested was the formidable achievement of Collins, a masterful organiser, in cultivating contacts throughout the government, but also turning some of the opposing players against their own side, and in killing detectives and intelligence officers and their agents in order to protect his own intelligence network.

But this was also about politics. It is no coincidence that at the time of Bloody Sunday, the militarists were also thinking in terms of length of conflict and possible channels of communication. The war was on a new level, but ultimately and paradoxically, the increased focus on coercion and targeting was with a view to conciliation and discussions. The short-term backlash to BloodySunday was not as important as the fact that neither side could afford a repeat of events on that scale. The historian Michael Hopkinson uses a modern phrase, ‘peace process’, to describe what was emerging in 1920 and it is no co-incidence that it developed more momentum in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday.

The status of Britain’s Empire, it seemed, would be better served by getting out of southern Ireland through the means of a political compromise, and crucially, the IRA was enough of a broad coalition to contemplate this. Hopkinson suggests, for example, that Collins was prepared to agree a Truce in December 1920, and that this did not happen for another six months because of the stubbornness and lack of political bravery of the man they called the ‘Welsh wizard’, Lloyd-George, who allowed himself to be convinced by the hawks who had his ear. But the important point is that a beginning had been made prior to Bloody Sunday, and that willingness to work towards a Truce was reinforced by the events of Bloody Sunday.

These moves were also a reflection of increased pressure on the IRA. Collins suggested in early December 1920 that ‘It is too much to expect that IRA force could beat English force for any length of time if the directors of the latter could get a free hand for ruthlessness’. Hopkinson goes as far as to suggest that the importance of the 1920 Bloody Sunday was on a par with the 1972 event; a defining moment in changing British attitudes to Irish independence; violence ultimately creating a channel to negotiation. In the summer of 1920, Lloyd-George had informally authorised contact with representatives of the Dáil. In October 1920, the British conservative MP George Cockrell had publicly suggested a Truce; Patrick Moylett, a Mayo IRB man, had extensive contact with the British Foreign Office. Two Days before Bloody Sunday, Arthur Griffith had communicated about possible terms for negotiations and C.J.Philips in the Foreign Office referred to the ‘slender link which has been established’. Clare man Archbishop Clune of Perth was then drafted in in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday to begin his shuttle diplomacy between Lloyd-George and Sinn Féin. It took nearly a year because of concerns by both sides about the extent to which talk of a truce was a sign of weakness. The truth was that this was a political response to a military impasse: military victory, it seemed was impossible for either side. An event like Bloody Sunday was crucial because its scale forced a reassessment of the nature and long-term objectives of this war.


Bloody Sunday was also an indication that most civilian casualties of war are the working classes, as can be gathered from the addresses of those who were killed in Croke Park. That aspect of war, it seems, never changes.

DIARMAID FERRITER

by realist Thu Dec 08, 2005 12:40

History is written by the victors

revision is written when its safe and the hisorical event has little relevance