The Anglo-Irish Treaty in the Bureau of Military History witness statements - Part 1
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| The National Archives of Ireland, which houses the Bureau of Military History Collection |
In 1947, the Irish government commissioned
the collation of what would eventually amount to 1,773 witness statements from
former participants in the revolutionary events that had taken place in Ireland
during the first quarter of the twentieth century.[1]
The remit of the Bureau was to gather primary source material related to “the
movement for independence from the formation of the Irish
Volunteers on 25th November 1913, to the 11th July 1921”,[2]
the latter date marking the beginning of the truce which ended hostilities in
the War of Independence, prior to the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which
was signed on 6 December 1921 by representatives of both Dáil
Éireann and the British Government. The 1921 cut-off point was
chosen in order to encourage the participation of witnesses from both sides in
the civil war of 1922-23, and to avoid any possibility of accusations of bias
against those coming from the anti-Treaty side.[3]
In order to encourage candour, a decision was made that the witness statements
would not be made public until the last of the witnesses had died.[4]
The branch of the Irish armed forces responsible for collating the witness
statements was known as the Bureau of Military History. It continued to collect
statements until 1957 when financial constraints brought most of its activities
to a halt.[5]
The collection of witness statements was finally released to the general public
in March 2003[6] and
has now been ‘digitised’ and, since 2012, made available as a searchable online
archive.[7]
This archive is of immense value to the historian of revolutionary Ireland. It
provides access to the thoughts and memories of hundreds of men and women who
experienced the Irish revolution and its associated events at first hand. As
such, it can help to provide new insights into the history of the period as
well as further illumination on aspects of the history that have already been
extensively explored.
The fact of its having been
compiled some three decades after the events in question, however, means that,
as a historical resource, the archive of witness statements is somewhat
problematic. In the first place, there is the issue of the inevitability of
some of the data being inaccurate due to the effect of the passage of time on
the witnesses’ abilities to remember all the details of what took place. But
there is also the possibility that witnesses may have used the opportunity
provided by their involvement in the exercise to exaggerate their own parts in
events, or to make political points. The danger of such distortions is all the
more real in the light of the lingering bitterness and division that resulted
from the Irish Civil War, the repercussions of which dominated political life
in Ireland throughout most of the rest of the twentieth century. These dangers
were recognised by the Bureau of Military History itself, which employed an
advisory committee, consisting of twelve respected academic historians, part of
whose job was to comment on the “credibility and quality” of the statements as
they were compiled.[8]
Also, the Bureau’s investigating staff were, themselves, all veterans of the
War of Independence.[9]
Although caution should be used when interpreting the data contained in the
witness statements, there are, for historians of the Irish revolution, many
benefits to be gained from access to this rich and informative resource.
Prior to the publication of the
witness statements it was, of course, possible for historians to interview
former participants in, or eye-witnesses of, the events surrounding the Irish
revolution – for example, Peter Hart conducted a number of interviews with
former IRA members and people who had been resident in Cork at the time of the
truce in 1921, for his book ‘The IRA and its Enemies’, published in 1998.[10]
This would, of course, involve a lot of research and preparation in order to
find the appropriate witnesses and to arrange and set up interviews. Aside from
such oral testimonies, published first-hand accounts of the period did
certainly exist, often in the form of memoirs of significant participants such
as Dan Breen,[11]
Tom Barry,[12] Ernie O’Malley[13] and Liam Deasy[14]
(the last two of whom each wrote a memoir specifically dealing with the period
of the treaty and subsequent civil war – O’Malley’s The Singing Flame and Deasy’s Brother
against Brother – both of which were published posthumously). Other types
of primary source materials, such as political pamphlets and posters, military
documents, letters and newspaper reports, were also available. The work of the Bureau of Military History, however,
massively increased the number of written testimonies from eye witnesses and
its decision to collect statements from the rank and file as well as leading
figures means that one benefit to be gained from access to the archive is the
possibility of reconstructing (albeit at a distance of several decades) the experiences
of the less well known, more ‘ordinary’ participants – in other words, of doing
Irish revolutionary history from below.
In spite of the official cut-off
point in July 1921, the witness statements provide valuable insight into the
events surrounding the Anglo-Irish Treaty – its signing, its endorsement by the
Dáil,
its reception by the public and its influence on the build-up of tensions which
culminated in the civil war. The mark left on the national psyche in Ireland as
a result of the trauma and brutality of the civil war, even after more than a
quarter of a century, is attested to in some of the witness statements. Annie
O’Brien, for example, who, as Annie Cooney (her name before her marriage), had
been a Cumann na mBan adjutant, mentions that “there is great reluctance to
speak about the painful differences of the post-Treaty period”. She goes on,
however, to state that she intends to relate everything she can recall about
that time, “else there is danger that justice will not be done to those on the
Republican side who carried on the fight after the Treaty.”[15]
In similar fashion, a significant number of the witnesses decided to go beyond
the official remit and to comment on events that occurred after the truce,
including the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the subsequent debates and disagreements over
the terms of the treaty, and even the civil war itself. Sometimes their
comments and the views they express are quite strident, perhaps reflecting a
desire to make use of the opportunity provided by the Bureau to get certain
opinions and feelings about the split over the treaty ‘off their chests’, or to
vindicate the decisions they made in regard to the treaty split or the civil war.
For example, Richard Walsh, a former IRA officer and a TD (Teachta Dála) in
the Irish Dáil at the time of submitting
his contribution to the Bureau, uses his statement, in part, to justify his
decision to side with the anti-Treaty forces during the civil war and to
retrospectively argue the case for rejection of the treaty – claiming that a
“passive resistance” approach would have made it impossible for Britain to
govern Ireland, while leading to less casualties than the two-thousand deaths
he attributes to the civil war.[16]
Austin Stack (a former TD who had been part of the first Dáil),
in the memoir written while on hunger strike during his imprisonment in 1923-4 and
submitted posthumously to the Bureau by his wife, Una Stack, as part of her own
witness statement, defends his decision to reject the Treaty, describing its
supporters as attempting to “destroy the Irish Republic” and blaming the press
in both Britain and Ireland for its acceptance by the Irish public.[17]
Conversely, Joseph Lawless, a former IRA Engineer Officer who was on the
investigating staff of the Bureau at the time of submitting his witness
statement, uses part of that statement to explain his reasons for joining the
National Army, and to argue that the anti-Treaty side had suffered from a “misleading
conceit” which led them to over-estimate the IRA’s ability to continue the
fight against the British.[18]
Witness statements like these, which contain forthright political arguments
around the question of whether or not Ireland had been right to accept the
terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, show just how strong feelings about the treaty
still were, at least to some former soldiers and activists, even over a quarter
of a century after its signing. It is also notable that both Walsh[19]
and Stack[20]
make uncomplimentary statements about the character of Michael Collins –
portraying him as somewhat devious and self-serving - while Lawless gives a
rather unflattering assessment of the personality of Rory O’Connor, who had
gone on to lead the takeover of the Four Courts in Dublin by anti-Treaty
forces, describing him as “lugubrious” and unwilling to listen.[21]
Clearly, at the time when these witnesses were giving their statements, those
who had chosen different sides in the split over the treaty were still inclined
to view each other, even on a personal level, with a degree of distaste and
perhaps even contempt.
CONTINUED IN NEXT POST
[1] 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).
[2] Report of the Director (Bureau of Military History),
1957, quoted in J. Doyle, F. Clarke, E. Connaughton and O. Somerville, An Introduction to the Bureau of Military
History 1913-1921 (Dublin, 2002), p. 1.
[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. 106.
[5] C. Kostick and V. Laing, ‘Mentioning the War: The Bureau
of Military History’, History Ireland,
11.2 (2003), pp. 43-47, p. 43.
[7] 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).
[8] Kostick and Laing, ‘Mentioning the War’, p. 43.
[9] Ibid.
[10] P. Hart, The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and
Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (New York, 1998).
[14] L. Deasy, Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of
Independence, 1917-1921 (Cork, 1973) and Brother against Brother (Cork, 1982).
[15] A. O’Brien, Bureau of Military History witness
statement, BMH WS 805, p. 33.
[16]
R. Walsh, BMH WS 400, p. 165.
[17] U.
Stack, BMH WS 418, pp. 60-61.
[18] J.
Lawless, BMH WS 1043, pp. 396-397.
[20] Stack,
WS 418, p. 60.
[21]
Lawless, WS 1043, p. 245.
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