The Anglo-Irish Treaty in the Bureau of Military History witness statements - Part 3


Cover sheet from Una Stack's witness statement

Continued from previous post.

The witness statements are nearly all in the form of typewritten pages and each one has a cover sheet detailing the name and address (at the time the statement was made) of the witness and what his or her role (as understood by the investigator) had been in the events being described. Most of the statements were given orally by the witnesses and then typed up in a more organised form by the investigator (usually an army officer) then shown to the witness again for authorisation.[1] In some cases, “between six and eight drafts” were necessary before the final version was signed off.[2] This means that the statements do not necessarily reflect the actual words of witnesses because some of the statements had undergone a certain amount of editing in order to make them more grammatically correct or more straightforward to read. A few of the witnesses, for example in the case of the Austin Stack memoir included in Una Stack’s statement and also in Joseph Lawless’s case, submitted excerpts that they had prepared for formal publication (although neither of the two aforementioned memoirs were actually published outside of the Bureau collection). The vast majority of the recollections, however, are described in a more informal style than that which one would expect from a more traditional memoir or autobiography. The statements do not contain footnotes or references to enable the reader to verify information against attested sources, but some of them do contain suggestions for cross-checking with other former participants in the events being described. For example, Richard Walsh’s statement includes a letter from Walsh to the Bureau director, asking him to check the evidence with Mr Diarmuid O'Hegarty (a pro-treaty member of the Volunteer Exectutive, who had been part of the delegation to the treaty negotiations in 1921) in order to avoid bias or prejudice.[3] Because of the relatively unstructured nature of the witness statements they contain a lot of information that might possibly have been left out in a more formal analysis of the events of the Irish revolution. Indeed, some of the historians on the Oversight Committee expressed concerns over the wide-ranging nature of the information being collected, arguing that much of it would be trivial and of no real historical consequence.[4] However, much of the ordinary, everyday detail present in the statements, such as details about social activities, food and clothing or the types of accommodation in which people slept while on the run, is the type of material that today might be considered extremely important for its capacity to give a real flavour of the nature of everyday life for people living through the events of the period.

The witness statements themselves are accompanied by various other collections of materials relevant to the period, including “pamphlets, photographs, letters, dispatches, drawings and sketches, posters, legal documents, newspaper clippings, commemorative publications and various ephemera”,[5] much of which has also been digitised. As such, use of the witness statements in a study of the events surrounding the signing and implementation of the Anglo-Irish treaty will inevitably bring the historian into contact with these other potential sources. This function of bringing together various disparate materials, even those that had already been available to the public, was another useful aspect of the Bureau’s work in the 1940s and ‘50s, and the ability to have access to them now under one roof - or in one digitised collection - is the fruit of that work.

It is clear that any historian wishing to study the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, the events surrounding it, and its effect on those that lived through those events, will learn much from the witness statements in the Bureau of Military History archive. Having access to the memories of those who were involved, and their observations about the everyday activities and attitudes of the time, and their recollections of the conversations and activities in which they were involved is extremely helpful for building up a more detailed picture of what actually took place. But beyond this, the witness statements are an invaluable resource for gaining an understanding of how those who had been active during the revolutionary period in Ireland looked back on, interpreted and felt about what they had lived through, at a distance of some three decades. This is especially relevant in the case of memories around the issue of the Anglo-Irish treaty, owing to the extremely divisive repercussions that the signing of that document had for Ireland in the years that followed.

Andrew Suzmeyan (April 2018)

[1] McGarry, ‘’Too Many Histories’?’, p. 26.
[2] Kostick and Laing, ‘Mentioning the War’, p. 43.
[3] R. Walsh TD to Director, Bureau of Military History, 28 June 1950 in Walsh, WS 400.
[4] E. Gkotzaridis, ‘Revisionist Historians and the Modern Irish State: The Conflict between the Advisory Committee and the Bureau of Military History, 1947-66’, Irish Historical Studies, 35 (2006), pp. 99-116, p. 105.
[5] Bureau of Military History (1913-1921), Óglaigh na hÉireann (Defence Forces Ireland), Military Archives, http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/bureau-of-military-history-1913-1921 (Accessed: 15 April 2018).


Bibliography
Barry, T., Guerilla Days in Ireland (Dublin, 1949).
Breen, D., My Fight for Irish Freedom (Dublin, 1924).
Bureau of Military History (1913-1921), Óglaigh na hÉireann (Defence Forces Ireland), Military Archives, http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/bureau-of-military-history-1913-1921 (Accessed: 15 April 2018).
Bureau of Military History, Guide to the Collection, http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/about.html (Accessed: 15 April 2018).
Coleman, M., The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (Oxford, 2013).
Deasy, L., Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence, 1917-1921 (Cork, 1973).
Deasy, L., Brother against Brother (Cork, 1982).
Doyle, J., F. Clarke, E. Connaughton and O. Somerville, An Introduction to the Bureau of Military History 1913-1921 (Dublin, 2002).
Ferriter, D., ‘In Such Deadly Earnest’, Dublin Review, 12 (2003), pp. 36-64.
Gkotzaridis, E., ‘Revisionist Historians and the Modern Irish State: The Conflict between the Advisory Committee and the Bureau of Military History, 1947-66’, Irish Historical Studies, 35 (2006), pp. 99-116.
Hart, P., The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (New York, 1998).
Hart, P., Mick: The Real Michael Collins (London, 2005).

Hittle, J.B.E., Michael Collins and the Anglo-Irish War: Britain’s Counterinsurgency Failure (Washington, D.C., 2011).
Hopkinson, M.A.,‘Collins, Michael’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography, Volume 2 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 678–682.
Kostick, C. and V. Laing, ‘Mentioning the War: The Bureau of Military History’, History Ireland, 11.2 (2003), pp. 43-47.
Laffan, M., The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge, 1999).

Matthews, A., Renegades: Irish Nationalist Women 1900-1922 (Cork, 2010).

McGarry, F., ‘’Too Many Histories’? The Bureau of Military History and Easter 1916’, History Ireland, 19.6 (2011), pp. 26-29.

O’Malley, E., On Another Man’s Wound (London, 1936).
Townshend, C., Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London, 2006).

Townshend, C., The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923 (London, 2014).


Bureau of Military History Witness Statements

Aughney, E., Member Cumann na mBan, Dublin, 1921 (WS 1054).

Barry Moloney, K., Sister of Kevin Barry, executed 1920; member Cumann na mBan, 1920 -1921 (WS 731).

Daly, M., Sister of Edward Daly, executed 1916; Officer Cumann na mBan, Limerick, 1921 (WS 855).

Lawless, J., Member IV, Fingal, 1916; Officer IRA, Dublin, 1921 (WS 1043).

McGleenan, C., Commandant IRA, Armagh, 1921 (WS 829).

O’Brien, A., Officer Cumann na mBan, 1916 – 1921 (WS 805).

O’Donoghue, M., Engineer Cork 1 Brigade IRA, 1921; President GAA, 1952 – 1955 (WS 1741).

O’Mullane, B., Officer Cumann na mBan, Dublin, 1917 – 1921 (WS 485).

Stack, U., Widow of Austin Stack; member Cumann na mBan, 1918 – 1921 (WS 418).

Walsh, R., Member, IRB, 1908-21; Representative on IV Executive, 1917-21; Senior Officer, IRA Mayo, 1919-21 (WS 400).

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