In my youth Irish history ended at 1916. I had never been taught anything about the history of the Irish Civil War. Of course, over time I acquired a vague knowledge of it, like Michael Collins’ death and horrors like the killing of Republicans at Ballyseedy in Kerry. Over the past decade, I saw many photographs from the Civil War – some were strong, interesting images. That visual aspect sparked my interest.
I visit Spain quite a lot and have devoured books on that country’s civil war. Then, in the course of preparing a book some years ago on Irish railways, I became aware of the damage inflicted on the railways during the Irish Civil War. Having already produced books with a significant visual content, I decided to proceed with an accessible illustrated book that would tell the story of the events of 1922-23.
So I set about my quest for high quality images: ideally well composed, interesting images of significant events. Luckily, I was able to unearth these by casting my net across a wide range of archives and other sources. There was photographic reportage at the time – press cameras were reasonably portable by 1922; the large contraptions on tripods used at the turn of the 20th century were not much in use.
There were photographs of set-piece occasions like the meetings of the Dáil or the London Treaty negotiations. When the fighting broke out in Dublin there were some shots of the action like shelling. Afterwards (no more than after Easter 1916) there was a proliferation of photos of damage in the central city. During the course of the war, the Provisional Government, which had an efficient publicity department, had photographers embedded with the troops during, for example, the amphibious landings in Cork. By contrast, the Republicans led a peripatetic existence during the war, and did not have photographers. Consequently there are a few posed scenes of fighters in their localities but few photographs showing them in action.
One great source was Italian and French magazines and news supplements. Their artists produced highly coloured and hyper-realistic drawings of important actions, such as the killing of Michael Collins and the destruction of railway viaducts.
There are many primary sources: among contemporary government documents in the National Archives, it was thrilling to be able to examine, for example, actual correspondence between Churchill and Collins in 1922. In the Military Archives (one of our unsung national treasures!) at Cathal Brugha Barracks Dublin, one could see original letters and documents of the Free State Army, as well as captured Republican documents. The Capuchin Archives is a veritable treasury of collections of the Republican “mosquito press” of the time. The National Library images, like the Hogan Collection, were exceptional.
However, this was no mere desk-based endeavour: I travelled around Ireland, and photographed places where key events of the war took place. Many of these were in difficult-to-get-to locations – clumping through swampy fields and fording rivers to find the site of the Knocknagoshel explosion in Kerry (where five pro-Treaty soldiers were killed by a trap-mine). One sunny morning I climbed high on Benbulben, Co Sligo, found the principal monument to the slain Republicans there – and then spent hours traversing the barren and boggy plateau on top, where I never found the second monument. At Clashmealcon, with kind local assistance, I saw the caves and cliffs where the extraordinary last stand of besieged Republican fugitives took place. It was poignant to visit these places. It also was a privilege to meet relatives of those involved in the war, and hear their dignified recollections.
On one of my visits to London, I went to Liverpool Street Station to see the plaque to Sir Henry Wilson, assassinated on June 22nd, 1922, one of the triggers for the war. None of the station staff had any idea of what I was talking about. It took a second circumnavigation of the station to find the plaque.
As well as the big events, I also discovered interesting details, vignettes that weren’t generally known, like the “Republican” postal stamps printed in Cork about July 1922. Another concerned the story of the Russian Crown Jewels. During my research I found the relevant documents in the National Archives, such as the receipt for $20,000 issued by the USSR representative in New York for money received from Harry Boland – and the surprising aftermath up to the time of the return of the jewels in 1949.’
I tried to be fair in terminology. The Provisional Government issued instructions to the press in July 1922 that the anti-Treaty forces must be called “irregulars” – which I didn’t use. For the anti-Treaty side I use such terms as anti-Treaty forces, IRA or Republicans. (In using the latter I do not mean to imply that those on the pro-Treaty side were not republican.) For the pro-Treaty side, I used, variously, terms such as pro-Treaty forces; the National Army; and the army of the Provisional Government, which became the army of the Free State on December 6th, 1922.
Many people nowadays harbour the idea that the designation “Republican” refers to the ending of partition. However, this concept featured little during the Civil War. The northern entity (bearing the inaccurate title of Northern Ireland), with its parliament established in 1921, was a fait accompli by the time of the Treaty negotiations. The sop of the Boundary Commission was included in the Treaty. Pogroms erupted in the newly-hatched northern entity and Collins planned attacks there, to kill it at birth, with a bonus of creating unity between the anti- and pro-Treaty sides. When the Civil War broke out, this plan was abandoned.
Currently the Civil War is remembered in two distinct ways: there is a vast amount of plaques and memorials to the anti-Treaty fallen, commemorated in the main by a particular strand of republicanism. On the pro-Treaty side, there are very few memorials, the principal being the cross to Michael Collins at Beal na Blath. Over the years the commemoration here was mainly organised by Fine Gael, but there has been more diversity recently.
Time has moved on and we are nearing the centenary. I make a modest proposal: to have a national memorial erected which specifically remembers the fallen of the Irish Civil War, from both sides. This is to remember the loss of these Irish people, not celebrate a civil war. Those who died fought for a cause that, in their respective eyes, represented the best solution for Ireland.
The Green Divide, an Illustrated History of the Irish Civil War, by Michael B Barry, is published by Andalus Press (€25, 192pp, over 400 images. ISBN 978-0-9560383-6-4)
