Dunmanway killings

Dunmanway Massacre
Location	Dunmanway, County Cork, Ireland
Date	26–28 April 1922
Target	civilian informers
Attack type	Shooting
Deaths	10 dead, 3 missing
Perpetrator	Republicans

The Dunmanway Massacre refers to the killing of ten Protestant males in and around Dunmanway, County Cork, between April 26-28 1922, in a period of truce after the end of the Irish War of Independence and before the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June. Eight of those killed were informers to British forces, while two more were relatives of informers. Three more men disappeared and were presumed to have been killed. It is not clear who ordered the attacks or carried them out, but they took place in an area controlled by the Anti-Treaty IRA . Both Sinn Féin and IRA representatives (pro-treaty and anti-Treaty) immediately condemned the killings. The motivation behind the killings 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 on April 26 whose house was being raided. . There is no consensus, however, on why the ten killed and three disappeared were targeted. Some historians have claimed that there were sectarian motives , but this is contradicted by others as unsupported by the evidence. They have suggested instead that those killed were targeted for their role as informers in the War of Independence. They argue that the dead were associated with the Murragh 'Loyalist Action Group' and that their names all appeared in captured British intelligence files which listed them as "helpful citizens" in the 1919-1921 conflict..

Background

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

West Cork, where these killings took place, had been during the Irish War of Independence, one of the most violent parts of Ireland. 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 Third Cork Brigade) and also a sizable Protestant population – roughly 16%, some of whom were loyalists and affiliated to a loyalist vigilante group. The local IRA killed fifteen informers in 1919-1921, including nine Catholics and six Protestants In addition, 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 underground espionage group in the area, which resulted in many informers getting protection and safe passage to England.

The truce between British Forces and the IRA came into effect on 11 July 1921, after talks between the British and Irish political leaders. The terms were, 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 1922, after negotiations between British and Irish leaders. On 7 January the Dáil (Irish Parliament established in January 1919) narrowly accepted the Treaty. The Dail 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. However, the retained the threat to intervene in Irish affairs should the Treaty be rejected. .

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. In Dunmanway itself, a company of the Auxiliary Division evacuated their barracks in the workhouse.

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 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 Cork, the local IRA was almost unanimously Anti-Treaty and therefore not under the control of the Provisional Government in Dublin in April 1922. Moreover, at the time of the Dunmanway killings none of the leaders of the 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 April 28, partly with a view to stopping any more killings

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, in the Bandon area, seeking to seize his car.

Thomas Hornibrook was in the house at the time along with his son, Samuel Hornibrook and his son-in-law Herbert Woods (a former Captain in the British Army and MC). All three 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. Thomas Hornibrook was a former magistrate, and his daughter Matilda was married to Herbert Woods. Matilda herself would later describe 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 the night of the killing both attended the inquest. Hornibrook's house was burned some time after the incident.

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. However this report in the Morning Post has been described as "exaggerated". Before this incident, on 13th April, Michael Collins had voiced concern about newspaper reports alleging attacks on Protestants in Ireland (particularly those of the Morning Post) to Desmond Fitzgerald. He said that while some of its coverage was "fair newspaper comment," the "strain of certain parts is very objectionable".

Alice Hodder, a local Protestant of Crosshaven, 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 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. However, historian Meda Ryan notes that Matilda Woods was not in Ireland when her husband disappeared and, as there is no record of their bodies being located, says that her statements on the manner of their death "has to be disregarded".

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. During the War of Independence, Fitzmaurice had an "inside track" on both the IRA and their activities. Also that night, David Gray (a chemist) and James Buttimer (a retired draper) were shot in the doorways of their homes in Dunmanway. It was "firmly established" later that they 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 were warned against chatting with Gray despite his kindness.

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 suspected informers and who had gone into hiding along with the uncle of McKinley. Likewise John Bradfield, it was understood, was shot in place of his brother Henry. Henry had been wanted by the IRA and was responsible for the arrests, torture and deaths of IRA volunteers. Fitzmaurice, Gray, Buttimer, and Harbord were all members of the "Loyalist Action Group" known locally as the "Protestant Action Group," and all were involved in espionage. All those shot in this period were all listed as "helpful citizens" in Auxiliaries documents found in Dunmanway. However in two cases of those listed only last names were given.

Dunmanway "find"

When the Auxiliaries ‘K Company’ evacuated the Dunmanway workhouses 1922 where they were based, the IRA found confidential documents and a diary they left behind: these included a list of informers names. The information – according to historian 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." The Dunmanway discovery confirmed the existence of an espionage organisation.

The IRA's Third Cork Brigade had killed 15 informers during the 1919-1921 conflict according to Tom Barry, "for those who are bigots" he said, nine were Catholics and six Protestants.

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 Tan military intelligence Diary'. This diary was reproduced with informers' 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.

Historian Paul McMahon has notes that the British Government authorised £2,000 to re-establish intelligence in southern Ireland, especially in Cork, in early April 1922. On April 26, the same day as the raid on Hornibrook's house, three British intelligence officers (Lts Hendy, Drove and Henderson) along with 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 dumped in a 'lonely bog.' The raid on the Hornibrook's house took place on the night of the 26th, several hours after the abduction of the British officers. The subsequent killings of alleged informers occurred while the officers were being held and interrogated. The British evacuated the remaining two battalions of troops they had kept in Cork city on May 25. Neville Chamberlain commented on 19 July that the four men were intelligence officers but had not specifically been ordered to go to Macroom. They were not at the time deputed for any "special duty," he said, but intelligence officers are technically always "on duty," and they were, therefore, on duty at the time that they were kidnapped. West Cork was he says "a district which was notoriously out of control," with the Provisional Government unable to exert any authority. Chamberlain asked the military was it right that these officers should have been allowed to go unprotected into the district. They replied that it was impossible to keep officers or men confined for long periods to barracks. Not satisfied with this explanation, and within a day or two a decision was made to remove the troops from Cork.

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 attacks, 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 anti-Treaty IRA re-instated 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." According to Tim Pat Coogan, 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."

However, the incident provoked long-held fears on the part of Loyalists in southern Ireland. A deputation of Irish Loyalists that 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, ordered that armed guards be put on the homes of other known Loyalists 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 Loyalists were firmly discouraged.

Conflicting conclusions

It is not clear who ordered the attacks or carried them out. Historian Peter Hart has written that the killers were identified by eyewitnesses as local IRA men. It is his opinion that from two to five separate groups must have done the killing, due to the geographic dispersal of the attacks. He says that they were "acting on their own initiative", but that the IRA garrison in Dunmanway failed to stop them.

However Hart's sources have been challenged and found to contradict his own assertions. Niall Meehan in Troubles in Irish History: A 10th anniversary critique of The IRA and its Enemies notes that Hart reports Clarina Buttimer as saying that she ‘seems to have recognised’ one of the attackers of her husband, yet in her inquest statement she states that she did ‘not’ recognise anyone. Hart cites newspaper reports of the killing on a number of dates, at least three of which carried her inquest statement. Hart also cites a 1927 Grants Committee which included the statement from Buttimer which again reported her as saying that she did ‘not’ recognise anyone.

Suggested motivation

At the time the press, including Belfast Newsletter, (1 May 1922) Irish Times (29 April 1922) and The New York Times, speculated that the killings at Dunmanway were in reprisal for the ongoing killings of Catholics in Belfast. (see McMahon Murders and Arnon Street Massacre).

However Peter Hart has written that the killing of O'Neill, in his opinion, "undoubtedly sparked" the subsequent killings. Tim Pat Coogan also suggests that 'it started when an anti-Treaty IRA commandant, O'Neill was shot dead and over the next week the latent sectarianism of centuries of ballads and landlordism claimed ten Protestant lives'.

According to Meda Ryan, because the men were all Protestants, and the majority of the IRA were Catholic, an insinuation has been made that the motive was sectarian. Peter Hart, while accepting that those killed "had been marked out as enemies," goes on to claim that the motive was sectarian rather than "disloyalty to the Republican cause by informing on their fight for freedom activities."

Peter Hart claims that the Protestant community had been "notably reticent" during the War of Independence and says of the Loyalist Action Group that, "there is absolutely no evidence that such a conspiracy existed". He concludes that "these men were shot because they were Protestants. No Catholic Free Staters, landlords or spies were shot or even shot at". Moreover, he suggests, any useful information given by the dead men to the British forces would have been given before the Truce signed in July 1921, seven months earlier.

However Fr. Brian Murphy OSB, in a review of Hart's book in The Month, a Review of Christian Thought and World Affairs, notes that Hart "by maintaining that Protestants did not have sufficient knowledge to act as informers, heightens the suspicion that they were killed for religious motives." In Peter Hart: the Issue of Sources, Murphy notes that Hart cites A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1921 (Jeudwine Papers, 72/8212, Imperial War Museum). He says that Hart wrote

"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."

However Hart does not give the next two sentences which, according to Murphy, read

"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."

Murphy concludes that "this British source confirms 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." While Hart has described A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1921 as the "the most trustworthy" that we have, nowhere according to Murphy does he give an explanation why the two sentences had been omitted in The IRA and Its Enemies.

According to Niall Meehan, Peter Hart ignores aspects of British Army documents which suggest an active loyalism working with the British army in the area were the killings took place. Meehan suggests that if the killings were carried out for political, military purposes or revenge, it undermines Hart's suggestion of sectarianism.

Niall Meehan further suggests Peter Hart ignored "significant publicly available" Protestant statements which "emphatically denied" there was an anti-Protestant campaign of violence. They stated that the events in West Cork were "exceptional" and these statements were carried in The Irish Times which was a unionist paper at the time. Meehan also cites a Church of Ireland cleric who writing in The Irish Times in 1994 reported Protestant support for a member Fianna Fail in 1930 because he was a member of the IRA leadership who protected potential loyalist victims in 1922 and took "decisive action to end the killings."

TV programme on RTÉ

Cork’s Bloody Secret shown on RTE on 5 October 2009 dealt with the Dunmanway killings. The programme was produced by Sean O Mealoid, and included interviews with two descendants of some of the Protestant victims. Eoghan Harris a leading revisionist, in his Irish Independent article suggests that "The Tribal Patrol...has already corrupted the existing Wikipedia entry on the Dunmanway Massacre," stating that he has italicised their weasel words, saying that from the opening paragraph, the Tribal Patrol try to "sow sectarian seeds and thwart the noble vision of Wolfe Tone." The programme also included a dialogue between two local historians, Donald Woods and Colum Cronin.

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 0947962700
• Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins, Arrow Books (1991), ISBN 9780099685807
• 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 0198208065
• 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, 1920-1921' Irish Academic Press (2007), ISBN 0 7165 2833 9
• Brian P Murphy osb and Niall Meehan, Troubles in Irish 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