Dunmanway killings

Dunmanway killings
Location	Dunmanway, County Cork, Ireland
Date	26–28 April 1922
Target	Protestants accused of informing
Attack type	Shooting
Deaths	10 dead, 3 missing
Perpetrator	Republicans

The Dunmanway killings were the killings of ten Protestant men in and around Dunmanway, County Cork, between 26–28 April 1922. This happened in a period of truce after the end of the Irish War of Independence (in July 1921) and before the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June 1922. Eight of those killed were suspected informers to British forces, while two more were relatives of suspected informers. Three more men were kidnapped and were presumed to have been killed. All the dead and missing were Protestant, which has led to the killings being described as sectarian and a massacre.

It is not clear who ordered the attacks or carried them out. Sinn Féin and IRA representatives, from both the pro-Treaty side, which controlled the Provisional Government in Dublin and the anti-Treaty side, which controlled the area the killings took place, immediately condemned the killings.

The motivation of the killers has generated differences of opinion among historians. It is generally agreed that they were "sparked" by the fatal shooting of IRA commandant Michael O'Neill by a local loyalist whose house was being raided on 26 April. There is no consensus on why the ten killed and three disappeared were targeted. Some historians have claimed that there were sectarian motives; others claim that those killed were targeted only because they were suspected to have informed on the Irish Republican Army during the recent War of Independence. They argue that the dead were associated with the Murragh 'Loyalist Action Group' and that their names appeared in captured British military intelligence files which listed them as "helpful citizens" in the 1919–1921 conflict. However no list with the Protestants' names is available for verification only one largely consisting of names and descriptions of IRA suspects in the Bureau of Military History.

Background

Main articles: Irish Civil War § Split in the Nationalist movement, and IRA and the Anglo-Irish Treaty

Political context

The Irish War of Independence was brought to an uneasy end by negotiation in mid-1921. The truce between British Forces and the IRA came into effect on 11 July 1921, after talks between the British and Irish political leaders. Under the terms, British units were withdrawn to barracks and their commanders committed to 'no movements for military purposes' and 'no [use of] secret agents noting descriptions of movements'. For its part, the IRA agreed that, 'attacks on Crown forces and civilians [were] to cease', and to 'no interference with British Government or private property'.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, after negotiations between British and Irish leaders. On 7 January the Dáil (Irish Parliament established in January 1919) narrowly accepted the Treaty. The Dáil was split into two factions, those who accepted and those who rejected the Treaty. Under the terms of the treaty, a Provisional Government was set up to transfer power from the British regime to the Irish Free State. British troops began to be withdrawn from the Free State in January 1922, though they retained the option to intervene in Irish affairs should the Treaty be rejected and the Irish Republic re-established.

On 26 March 1922, most of the IRA repudiated the authority of the Provisional Government on the basis that it had accepted the Treaty and disestablished the Irish Republic declared in 1919. April saw the first armed clashes between pro and anti-Treaty IRA units.

According to historian Michael Hopkinson, "the transitional [Free State] government lacked the resources and the necessary acceptance to supply effective government". In this situation, some IRA anti-Treaty units continued attacks on the remaining British forces. Between December 1921 and February 1922, there were 80 recorded attacks by IRA elements on the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), leaving 12 dead. Between January and June 1922, twenty-three RIC men, eight British soldiers and eighteen civilians would be killed in the territory of the Irish Free State.

In County Cork

West Cork, where these killings took place, had been one of the most violent parts of Ireland during the Irish War of Independence. It was the scene of many of the conflict's major actions, such as the Kilmichael Ambush and Crossbarry Ambush. It contained a strong Irish Republican Army (IRA) Brigade (the 3rd Cork Brigade) and also a sizeable Protestant population – roughly 16%, some of whom were loyalists and affiliated to a loyalist vigilante group. The local IRA killed fifteen suspected informers in 1919–1921, including nine Catholics and six Protestants They responded to the British burning of republican homes by burning those of local loyalists. British intelligence wrote that "many" of their informers in West Cork "were murdered and almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss".

Republicans suspected the involvement of a local "Loyalists civil wing" in the killing of two republicans, the Coffey brothers, in Enniskeane during the first weekend in January 1921. The discovery of documents in Dunmanway by Republicans later confirmed the existence of this espionage group in the area, which resulted in many informers getting protection and safe passage to England.

British forces were withdrawn from the West Cork area in February 1922. The only British forces left in county Cork was two battalions of the British Army in Cork city. The local IRA was almost unanimously Anti-Treaty and therefore not under the control of the Provisional Government in Dublin in April 1922. At the time of the Dunmanway killings, none of the leaders of the Anti-Treaty Cork IRA were in the county. Tom Hales and Sean Moylan were in Limerick, along with much of the Third and Fourth Cork IRA Brigades, trying to prevent the occupation of that city's military barracks by Pro-Treaty troops. Tom Barry and Liam Deasy were in Dublin attending an Anti-Treaty IRA meeting. They returned to Cork on 28 April, partly with a view to stopping any more killings.

Historian Paul McMahon has noted that the British Government authorised £2,000 to re-establish intelligence in southern Ireland, especially in Cork, in early April 1922. On 26 April, the same day as the raid on Hornibrook's house, three British intelligence officers (Lts Hendy, Drove and Henderson and a driver) drove to Macroom with the intention of gathering intelligence in west Cork, where they entered an inn. There they were drugged and taken prisoner by IRA men, then taken to Macroom Castle where they were held for four days and then shot and their bodies dumped. The subsequent killings of alleged informers occurred while the officers were being held and interrogated.

In Dunmanway

In Dunmanway itself, a company of the Auxiliary Division evacuated their barracks in the workhouse. The IRA found confidential documents and a diary they left behind: these included a list of names. The information – according to historian Meda Ryan – was so precise "only a very well informed spy system could account for some of the entries in the book." Flor Crowley who analysed the diary concluded that "it was the work of a man who had many useful 'contacts' not merely in one part of the area but all over it."

Ryan writes that the Auxiliaries' files showed that some Protestants in Dunmanway had formed a group known as the "Loyalist Action Group" or "Protestant Action Group", affiliated to the Anti-Sinn Féin League and the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. The IRA suspected this group of passing information to the British forces during the War of Independence. These included a Black and Tans military intelligence diary. This diary was reproduced with names excised in The Southern Star newspaper, from 23 October to 27 November 1971, in consecutive editions. Photographs of the diary were also published in The Southern Star, which published them again with another article on the intelligence haul in its Centenary Supplement in 1989.

Killings in Ballygroman

On 26 April 1922, a group of IRA men, led by Michael O'Neill, arrived at the house of Thomas Hornibrook at Ballygroman, near Ballincollig, on the outskirts of Cork city, seeking to seize his car.

Thomas Hornibrook was in the house at the time along with his son, Samuel Hornibrook, and Herbert Woods (a former Captain in the British Army and MC). Thomas Hornibrook was a former magistrate. His daughter Matilda later described herself and her husband as "staunch Loyalists".

Michael O'Neill demanded a part of the engine mechanism (the magneto) that had been removed by Thomas Hornibrook to prevent such theft. Hornibrook refused to give them the part, and after further efforts, some of the IRA party entered through a window. Herbert Woods then shot O'Neill, wounding him fatally. O'Neill's companion Charlie O'Donoghue took him to a local priest who pronounced him dead. The next morning O'Donoghue left for Bandon to report the incident to his superiors, returning with "four military men," meeting with the Hornibrooks and Woods, who admitted to shooting O'Neill.

A local jury found Woods responsible and said that O'Neill had been "brutally murdered in the execution of his duty". Charlie O'Donoghue and Stephen O'Neill, who were present on the night of the killing, both attended the inquest. Some days later, Herbert Woods, Thomas Hornibrook and his son Samuel went missing, and in time were presumed killed. The Morning Post newspaper reported that "about 100" IRA men returned from Bandon with O'Neill's comrades and surrounded the house. It reported that a shootout then ensued until the Hornibrooks and Woods ran out of ammunition and surrendered. This report in the Morning Post is described by Meda Ryan as "exaggerated". Peter Hart writes that the Hornibrooks and Woods surrendered on condition their lives would be spared. When Woods admitted it was he who fired the shot that killed O'Neil, he was beaten unconscious and all three were "driven south into hill country" where they were shot and killed. Some time later Hornibrook's house was burned, the plantation cut down and the land was seized.

Alice Hodder, a local Protestant of Crosshaven some 23 miles to the south east, wrote to her mother shortly afterwards of Herbert Woods that,

His aunt and uncle had been subject to a lot of persecution and feared an attack, so young Woods went to stay with them. At 2:30am armed men ... broke in ... Woods fired on the leader and shot him ... They caught Woods, tried him by mock court martial and sentenced him to be hanged ... The brothers of the murdered man then gouged out his eyes while he was alive and then hanged him ... When will the British Government realise that they are really dealing with savages and not ordinary normal human beings?

The letter was forwarded to Lionel Curtis, Secretary of the Cabinet's Irish Committee, on which he appended the comment "this is rather obsolete". Matilda Woods later testified before the Grants Committee, while applying for £5,000 compensation in 1927, that her husband was drawn and quartered before being killed and that the Hornibrooks were taken to a remote location, forced to dig their own graves and shot dead. Both Ryan and Hart note that Matilda Woods was not in Ireland when Herbert Woods disappeared and there is no record of their bodies being located.

Killings in Dunmanway, Ballineen Enniskeane and Clonakilty

Over the next two days, ten Protestant men were shot dead in the Dunmanway, Ballineen and Murragh area. In Dunmanway on 27 April, Francis Fitzmaurice (a solicitor and land agent) was shot dead. Also that night, David Gray (a chemist) and James Buttimer (a retired draper) were shot in the doorways of their homes in Dunmanway.

Next evening, 28 April, in the parish of Kinneigh, Robert Howe and John Chinnery were both shot dead. In the nearby village of Ballineen, sixteen-year-old Alexander McKinley was shot dead in his home. In Murragh, Reverend Ralph Harbord was shot dead; he was the son of Reverend Richard C M Harbord, also from the Murragh area. Later, west of Ballineen, John Buttimer and his farm servant Jim Greenfield were both shot dead.

The same night, sixteen-year-old Robert Nagle was shot dead in his home on MacCurtain Hill in Clonakilty, ten miles south. Nagle had been shot in place of his father Tom, whose name was on a list of informers and who had gone into hiding along with the uncle of Alexander McKinley. John Bradfield was shot in place of his brother Henry. Henry had been 'wanted' by the IRA for providing information resulting in IRA "arrests, torture and deaths".

Aftermath

According to Niall Harrington – a Pro-Treaty IRA officer at the time – over 100 Protestant families fled West Cork in the aftermath of the killings, in fear of further attacks. Alice Hodder in the same letter cited above wrote

For two weeks there wasn't standing room on any of the boats or mail trains leaving Cork for England. All loyalist refugees who were either fleeing in terror or had been ordered out of the country...none of the people who did these things, though they were reported as the rebel IRA faction, were ever brought to book by the Provisional Government.

One Cork correspondent of The Irish Times who saw the refugees go through the city noted that, "so hurried was their flight that many had neither a handbag nor an overcoat." Hodder also alleged that Protestants in the area were being forcibly evicted from their farms by republicans on behalf of the Irish Transport Union, on the basis that they were bringing down wages, although she conceded that the local Pro-Treaty IRA reinstated them when it was informed Tom Hales, Commandant of O'Neill's Brigade (3rd Cork), ordered all arms be brought under control while issuing a statement promising that "all citizens in this area, irrespective of creed or class, every protection within my power." Arthur Griffith echoed Hales' sentiments though Hales was actively engaged in armed defiance of Griffith's government at this time. Speaking on 28 April in the Dáil Griffith, President of the Pro-Treaty Irish Provisional Government, stated:

Events, such as the terrible murders at Dunmanway ..., require the exercise of the utmost strength and authority of Dáil Éireann. Dáil Éireann, so far as its powers extend, will uphold, to the fullest extent, the protection of life and property of all classes and sections of the community. It does not know and cannot know, as a National Government, any distinction of class or creed. In its name, I express the horror of the Irish nation at the Dunmanway murders.

Speaking immediately afterward, Seán T. O'Kelly said he wished to associate the "anti-treaty side" in the Dáil with Griffith's sentiments. Speaking in Mullingar on 30 April, the Anti-Treaty leader Éamon de Valera also condemned the killings. A general convention of Irish Protestant churches in Dublin released a statement saying that:

Apart from this incident, hostility to Protestants by reason of their religion, has been almost, if not wholly unknown, in the 26 counties in which they are a minority.

The incident provoked long-held fears on the part of Loyalists in southern Ireland and in the north. The Belfast News-Letter on 28 April under the headline "Protestants Slain" spoke of "ghastly crimes of the night" and the existence of an appalling state of affairs in the south and west Cork area "where a general massacre of Protestants appears to be in progress". The Northern Whig on 1 May said "it is a matter of notoriety that the murders, far from being unprecedented, are only the last in a long series which began as far back as 1641."

A deputation of Irish Loyalists which met Winston Churchill in May 1922 told him that there was, "nothing to prevent the peasants expropriating [the lands of] every last Protestant loyalist" and that they feared a repeat of the massacres that Protestants had suffered in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the 1798 Rebellion. Churchill himself remarked that the events were "little short of a massacre."

Local IRA commanders Tom Barry, Liam Deasy and Seán Moylan, returned to the county and ordered that armed guards be put on the homes of Protestants to prevent further violence. Tom Barry, who had returned immediately from Dublin on hearing of the killings, ensured that some who attempted to take advantage of the situation by stealing livestock owned by Protestants were firmly discouraged.

Conflicting conclusions

It is not clear who ordered the attacks or carried them out and no faction or member of the IRA ever claimed responsibility. Historian Peter Hart has written that the killers were identified by several eyewitness sources as local IRA men. He concludes that from two to five separate groups must have done the killing, and writes that they were likely "acting on their own initiative – but with the connivance or acquiescence of local units." Hart's analysis of the identity of the killers has been challenged by other historians, including Brian Murphy, Niall Meehan and John Borgonovo. Jack Lane suggests the possibility that British agents provocateur were responsible, in an attempt to provoke Britain to re-occupy the 26 counties.

At the time the press, including the Belfast Newsletter (1 May 1922), the Irish Times (29 April 1922), and The New York Times, stated that the killings at Dunmanway were in reprisal for the ongoing killings of Catholics in Belfast, such as the McMahon Murders and the Arnon Street Massacre. Tim Pat Coogan suggests that O'Neill's death precipitated the murders. Hart has also written that the killing of O'Neill "provided the spark" which was inflamed by the "Belfast pogroms" Meda Ryan also writes, "The outrages were 'sparked' when Capt. Woods shot IRA man Michael O'Neill in the hallway of Thomas Hornibrooke's house".

The motive for the victims being targeted remains a point of contention between historians. Brian Murphy and Niall Meehan each write that victims were killed because they were informers on behalf of Crown forces, citing the intelligence diary left by Auxiliaries as they evacuated Dunmanway. That list was in 2013 located in the Florence Begley collection in the Bureau of Military History.

Peter Hart writes that they were primarily revenge killings, perpetrated without a clear rationale by "angry and frightened young men acting on impulse." He suggests the targets were local Protestant men whose status as enemies in the eyes of the killers was codified in "political language of the day... landlord, landgrabber, loyalist, imperialist, Orangeman, Freemason, Free Stater, spy, and informer." He continues, "these blanket categories made the victims' individual identities... irrelevant." Tim Pat Coogan concurs, writing, "the latent sectarianism of centuries of ballads and landlordism claimed ten Protestant lives" that week.

According to Meda Ryan, All of those killed were described as "committed loyalists" and "extremely anti-Republican". The three had been in contact with the Essex Regiment based in Bandon during the conflict, supplying information on the local IRA. She writes it was "firmly established" later that Fitzmaurice and Gray had been informers, and that their information had done a great deal of damage to the IRA. In Gray's case (as a ten-year-old girl averred to Meda Ryan) he sought out "information from children in their innocence" and hence children were warned against chatting with Gray despite his kindness. Ryan writes that Fitzmaurice, Gray, Buttimer, and Harbord were associated with the Murragh "Loyalist Action Group" known locally as the "Protestant Action Group," and all were involved in espionage. All the surnames of those shot in this period were listed as "helpful citizens" in Auxiliaries' documents found in Dunmanway; in two cases, only last names were given. Peter Hart disputes that the men had informed on the IRA. He writes that the term informer was used a form of "generic abuse" and he finds "no evidence whatsoever" that they had been active in opposing the IRA.

Meehan writes that the killings were not "motivated by either land agitation or by sectarian considerations." Brian Murphy agrees, citing a British document A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920–1921:

the truth was that, as British intelligence officers recognised in the south, the Protestants and those who that supported the [UK] Government rarely gave much information because, except by chance, they had not got it to give. An exception to this was in the Bandon area where there were many Protestant farmers who gave information. Although the Intelligence Officer of the area was exceptionally experienced and although the troops were most active it proved almost impossible to protect those brave men, many of whom were murdered while almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss.

He concludes that "the IRA killings in the Bandon area were motivated by political and not sectarian considerations. Possibly, military considerations, rather than political, would have been a more fitting way to describe the reason for the IRA response to those who informed."

Most recently, historian John Regan, in his paper, The Bandon Valley Massacre Revisited, has argued the incident is most likely best understood in the light of IRA fears that the British were planning a reoccupation of the south of Ireland and was a preemptive move against people believed to have been informers. He has argued that the selective use of evidence by Peter Hart to emphasise the sectarian dimension to the killings highlights a wider problem in the politicisation of Irish history.

TV programme on RTÉ

Cork’s Bloody Secret shown on RTÉ on 5 October 2009 dealt with the Dunmanway killings. The programme was produced by Sean O Mealoid, and included interviews with two descendants of two of the Protestant victims. It included a dialogue between two local historians, Donald Woods and Colum Cronin and featured Professor John A. Murphy and Eoghan Harris (who later debated the issue in the Irish Times, alongside UCC historian Andy Bielenberg..

References

• Tom Barry, Guerrilla Days in Ireland, Mercer Press, Cork, 1997
• Niall C Harrington, Kerry Landing, August 1922: An Episode of the Civil War, Anvil Books, 1992:8. ISBN 0-947962-70-0
• Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins, Arrow Books (1991), ISBN 978-0-09-968580-7
• Meda Ryan, Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter, Mercier, 2005 (paper back edition), ISBN 1-85635-480-6
• Dorothy Macardle, The Irish Republic, 1999
• Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–1923, Oxford University Press (1999), ISBN 0-19-820806-5
• Dennis Kennedy, The Widening Gulf: Northern Attitudes to the independent Irish state 1919–49, Blackstaff Press, 1988
• Paul McMahon, British Spies and Irish Rebels – British Intelligence and Ireland 1916–1945, (Boydell 2008), ISBN

978-1-84383-376-5

• John Borgonovo, Spies, Informers and the 'Anti-Sinn Féin Society', The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1920–21 Irish Academic Press (2007), ISBN 0-7165-2833-9
• Brian P Murphy osb and Niall Meehan, Troubled History: A 10th anniversary critique of The IRA and its Enemies, Aubane Historical Society (2008), ISBN 978-1-903497-46-3
• Brian Murphy osb, The Month, a Review of Christian Though and World Affairs, September–October 1998
• Brian Murphy osb, Irish Political Review Vol 20 No. 7 July 2005 (ISSN 0790-7672 pages 10–11
• Eoin Neeson, The Civil War 1922–23, Poolbeg Dublin 1989, ISBN 85371 013