Distorting

 Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   1  

Distorting Irish History Two, the road from Dunmanway:

An analysis of aspects of Peter Hart’s treatment of the 1922 ‘April killings’ in West
Cork, by Niall Meehan

The Year of Disappearances, Political Killing in Cork, 1920-23 by Gerard Murphy,

published in November 2010 by Gill & Macmillan, excited considerable media and
academic interest. It attempted to document in extensive detail a previous historian’s
assertion that the IRA ramped up a campaign of anti-Protestant violence beginning in the
summer of 1920. Despite an impressive initial flurry of favourable commentary from
Eoghan Harris in the Irish Examiner, Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent and from
Oxford University based historian John Paul McCarthy in the Sunday Independent (on
5,7,12 November, respectively), the book fared less well subsequently. A problem for
Murphy was that, aside from documented errors1, most of his disappeared Protestant
victims were unnamed. They had no known prior existence. No archive reveals them, no
relatives searched for them and no one cried wolf. At the time of writing, Professor David
Fitzpatrick’s commentary in the Dublin Review of Books (DRB) is the sixth consecutive
considered response to argue that it cannot be seriously taken as historical research.2 Mine
was the first to make this point.3

However, I expressed a similar conclusion about aspects of pioneering work by the late
Professor Peter Hart, Fitzpatrick’s much-celebrated former student, and also the historian
whose book, The IRA and its Enemies, Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923
(1998), inspired Murphy. Perhaps for this reason, Fitzpatrick’s review went some lengths to
separate what he termed Gerard Murphy’s ‘disorganised dossier’ from the ‘intellectual
power and academic skill’ displayed by Peter Hart. Even some of Peter Hart’s harshest
detractors concede the attributes Fitzpatrick rightly awarded him. Hart was capable of
combining gifted and imaginative scholarship with exceptional powers of exposition. At its
best, his work demonstrated a masterful integration of archival detail that drove forward a
clearly structured and an elegantly composed narrative. However, while Hart’s academic
skill and narrative presentation was superior to Murphy’s, problems associated with
Murphy’s book have also been identified in Hart’s scholarship. This is most evident in the
selection and presentation of sources appearing to imply that ethnic and sectarian hatreds
drove the quest for Irish independence during the period, 1919-23.

In that sense, Murphy’s book represents a kind of continuity with Hart’s work, rather than
the binary Fitzpatrick suggested. For those who question Hart’s historical scholarship,
Murphy’s book represents a logical, and a significant, decline in Irish historical standards.
This is a subject I would like to further develop here.4

Unfortunately, Fitzpatrick’s DRB review furthers an unhappy downward trend. In his

attempt to rescue the residue of Hart’s argument from Murphy’s embrace he drew attention
                                                                                                               
1
See for example, John Downes, ‘Author owns up to errors in IRA Cork deaths book’, Sunday
Tribune, 16 January 2011. These errors were uncovered by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc (2011).
2
‘History in a hurry’, DRB, Issue 17, http://www.drb.ie/more_details/11-03-17/History In_A_
Hurry.aspx. Reviews (to date) of The Year of Disappearances are linked alongside Eugenio
Biagini’s review, at the Institute of Historical Research website (see references section).
3
An ‘amazing coincidence’ that ‘could mean anything’: Gerard Murphy’s The Year of
Disappearances, Spinwatch, 17 November, 2010, at http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/Papers/.
4
See also, ‘Distorting Irish History, the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish
Historiography’, Spinwatch, 17 November 2010, at http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/ Papers/.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   2  

to Hart’s exploration in The IRA and its Enemies of violence directed against:
‘Freemasons, Orangemen, ex-servicemen, military deserters, ex-policemen, those
associated with the Crown Forces in any way’, and went on to say, ‘most contentiously,
[at] Protestants’. Fitzpatrick followed this by arguing: ‘In subsequent essays such as “The
Protestant Experience of Revolution [in Southern Ireland]” published in the The IRA at
War, 1916-23 (2003), Hart went further’, claiming that IRA inspired violence amounted to,
‘“what might be called ethnic cleansing”’. This gives the unmistakable impression that
Hart’s endorsement of the charge of ethnic cleansing in revolutionary Ireland derived from
his major 1998 research book, cited above, based on doctoral research that Fitzpatrick
supervised. But the published record shows that Fitzpatrick’s assertion is wholly mistaken.

Hart’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ claim was in fact first published in a 1996 essay collection,
Unionism in Modern Ireland, edited by Richard English and Graham Walker. It preceded
publication of The IRA and its Enemies (which did not use that phrase) by two years. This
1996 ‘Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland’ essay was then republished
in Hart’s The IRA at War (2003), the version cited by Fitzpatrick. This observation would
be of peripheral interest, except that in a new essay written for the same 2003 volume, Hart
asserted (p. 246):

‘What happened in Southern Ireland did not constitute ethnic cleansing’.

Does it matter that these statements contradict each other? Well, yes, because they show
Hart clearly changed his mind about ethnic cleansing. In his review Fitzpatrick implied that
Hart’s endorsement of ethnic cleansing was an innovation, stemming from enlightened
research based on Hart’s monograph. This chronology and conclusion is one Fitzpatrick
appeared eager to endorse. However, having applied the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ in 1996,
Hart did not employ it explicitly in The IRA and its Enemies (1998). Possibly he no longer
believed it appropriate, or the referees for Oxford University Press may have advised
against. Or perhaps there was another reason.

However, we may say with certainty, Hart applied the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ in 1996,
implied it in 1998 (though he might well have disputed this), and refuted it in 2003. It is
remarkable that Fitzpatrick, of all people, is confused about the order of these
historiographical developments.

But let us be clearer still, because Hart went further in a letter to the Irish Times on 28 June
2006. Memorably, at least for this student of Irish historiography, he made the surprising
assertion:

Niall Meehan, as usual, misrepresents my work (June 23rd). I have never

argued that “ethnic cleansing” took place in Cork or elsewhere in the
1920s - in fact, quite the opposite.5

While Hart’s denial is somewhat mystifying, his settled opinion in this matter is clear.
Suggesting that Hart continued to endorse the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ is a gross distortion
of his position. In fact the opposite is true, and I think transparently so.

Those who participate in the historiographic debate surrounding Hart’s work often
                                                                                                               
5
As a matter of record, I did not attribute that term to Hart in my Irish Times letter of 23 June,
which I subsequently pointed out in my response (3 July). As a matter, also, of record, in a letter to
History Ireland (17.4, July August 2009) responding to Fitzpatrick (17.3, May June 2009), I cited
Hart’s contrasting ethnic cleansing statements.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   3  

negotiate misinformation and distortions. Fortunately, in the case of Gerard Murphy at

least, Irish historians are seeking to uphold scholarly standards. For example, Fitzpatrick
drew attention to some of Gerard Murphy’s ‘amazing coincidences’, where he comes to
outlandish conclusions based on tangential evidence and happen-stance. In our separate
reviews of Murphy we drew attention to these and even (coincidentally) cited the same
examples. But it is also remarkable that I can identify similarly amazing coincidences in
Hart’s work, including one with which Professor Fitzpatrick is likely already familiar.

I would like to address Hart’s account of the killing of eleven and the disappearance of a
further three people in West Cork in late April 1922, during the unstable period following
the Treaty split in January 1922. An IRA officer was shot dead in Ballygroman near Ovens
on 26 April, after which three Protestant loyalists disappeared, assumed killed. Over the
next three nights, April 27-29, ten Protestants were shot dead in the adjacent area. One
more was reportedly wounded severely, while others whose homes were visited escaped.
The perpetrators were never identified (a consideration that might temper commentary on
this particularly complex subject).

These shocking unprecedented events caused fear, dismay and outrage. According to
Dorothy Macardle (1951, p. 705) they were ‘violently in conflict with the traditions and
principles of the Republican Army [and] created shame and anger throughout Ireland.’ Hart
disagreed and described them as part of a pattern beginning in the summer of 1920, in this
case a series of random, copycat, killings. They were simply the ‘worst’ example during the
conflict of republican anti-Protestant violence. The killings had, in other words, a dominant
motive of sectarian hatred. It is this ‘massacre of 14 men in West Cork in April [1922] after
an IRA officer had been killed… [that] might be called ethnic cleansing’ (1996, p. 92).

Two years later Hart concluded in his detailed examination, ‘These men were shot because
they were Protestants’ (p. 288). Why then did he exclude the phrase ‘ethnic cleansing’ from
this 1998 analysis, having used it in 1996? The decision may have resulted from the
attempt to correct a significant error in the 1996 essay. The mistake originated in Peter
Hart’s 1992 doctoral thesis completed under Fitzpatrick’s supervision, in which Hart
exaggerated the number of fatalities and also their geographical spread. Partial correction
of the error in 1998 compounded the mistake with regard to the geography of the April
killings. I will endeavour to explain.

Taking out one too many Harbords

In Chapter 9 of his Ph.D. thesis, ‘Taking it out on the Protestants’, as part of his analysis of
the April killings, Hart recorded the shooting of two men, ‘Richard Harbord’ and
‘Reverend Ralph Harbord’. According to the doctoral thesis, Richard Harbord was killed
on the evening of 27 April at Murragh, a few miles east of Dunmanway, near Ballineen-
Enniskean. On the same night, Hart reported that the Reverend Ralph Harbord was shot and
wounded at Rosscarbery, twenty-five miles away from Murragh. The separate shootings of
Ralph and Richard Harbord are emphasised in the following four references, as well as in a
list accompanying a map drawn by Hart depicting, ‘The West Cork Massacre’.

1. P. 367
Further down the Bandon River, the Murragh rectory was also visited
and the son of the Rector, Richard Harbord, was killed.

2. P. 369
The Reverend Ralph Harbord was shot the same night in
Rosscarbery, but escaped with only a wound.17 [17 Rev. Ralph
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   4  

Harbord statement (CO/762/58)]

3. Pp. 377-8
The next night (April 27-28) another cluster of killings is evident.
John Buttimer, Greenfield, McKinley, Howe, Chinnery and Richard
Harbord all lived in and around Ballineen and Enniskeane [sic],
along the same stretch of the Bandon valley.

4. P. 378
The other two victims, Robert Nagle in Clonakilty, and the Reverend
Ralph of Rosscarbery, lived south of the Bandon river and were
clearly attacked by a different party – or parties – altogether.

5. P. 380

In Hart’s first citation the victim, Richard Harbord, is presented as the son of the Murragh
Rector, whose name was Richard C.M. Harbord. Reverend Richard C.M. Harbord was also
the father of ‘Reverend Ralph of Rosscarbery’ (citation 2 and 4). If Hart were correct, that
would mean that Reverend Richard C.M. Harbord’s two sons were shot on the night of 27-
28 April, as Hart reported Ralph injured at Rosscarbery and Richard killed at Murragh.
However, despite repeated references to the attacks, Hart left this critical familial
connection out of his account. This is remarkable because that relationship undermines
Hart’s argument that the West Cork shootings were random IRA attacks on local
Protestants. It hardly seems random that two brothers were shot twenty-five miles apart on
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   5  

the same night, unless this was ‘an amazing coincidence’.6

The familial relationship is difficult to deconstruct for general readers, essentially because
Hart’s account of the massacre is incorrect. Some newspaper reports were at first unclear
whether it was Reverend Richard C.M. Harbord or his son who was killed. In fact, the
Reverend Richard C.M. Harbord, who retired in 1931, died in 1939 at the age of 81.
Furthermore, he had no son known by the name ‘Richard’.7 No one called ‘Richard
Harbord’ (reverend or otherwise) was killed on 27-28 April 1922. The only Harbord shot
(but not killed) at Murragh was Reverend Ralph C.V. Harbord, who Hart claimed was
wounded many miles away at Rosscarbery. To summarise: despite Hart’s claims in his
dissertation, there was no Richard Harbord killed at Murragh nor a Ralph Harbord
wounded at Rosscarbery.

We should now consider how such a series of errors could have appeared in Hart’s doctoral
thesis.

Hart relied on newspaper reports on who was killed and on the time and place of attacks,
reports that appear to have been substantially accurate. Some initial errors were clarified
and corrected by newspapers themselves. For instance, confusion over the names of two
victims, Alexander McKinley (as Gerald Peyton) and John Bradfield (as John Shorten),
was soon rectified.8 In relation to the Harbords, on 29 April 1922 the Irish Times reported
uncertainty over the death of either, ‘the Rev. Richard C.M. Harbord, of Murragh Rectory,
or his son’ (emph. added). The local Cork Constitution reported similarly in a prominent
article published the same day. However, immediately below this was a second article
headlined ‘Son of Rector’, which confirmed that it was ‘now established’ that the unnamed
Rector’s son was the victim. The Irish Independent, Morning Post (London) and Belfast
News Letter reported on 29 April that the (again unnamed) Rector’s son was shot at
Murragh. This and other newspaper accounts gave the impression that he had died. The
Belfast News Letter on 3 May included Ralph Harbord in its total of 11 April 27-29
fatalities, possibly leading Hart to embrace and also to extend this report (p. 370),

‘Eleven men were shot dead, and another wounded. All were Protestants…
[N]ever so many at once or so many (apparently) randomly’.

In fact the Murragh victim, Ralph Harbord, lay fighting for his life after an operation to
save him. The Murragh shooting victim was therefore correctly identified more often than
not as the Rector’s unnamed son on April 29, together with a mistaken impression that he
had been killed.

Newspaper reporting likely explains Hart’s belief that the Reverend Richard Harbord’s son
was murdered at Murragh. That Hart failed to connect Richard and Ralph Harbord is more
surprising, particularly as the 1911 Census identifies only one family with that surname in
County Cork.9 Even less satisfying is Hart’s identification of the Murragh victim as
                                                                                                               
6
There were two Buttimers killed also, but Hart established they were from different
denominations, one Church of Ireland (John), the other an unrelated Methodist (James).
7
http://www.kinneigh.cork.anglican.org/farranthomas/murragh_chalice_and_paten.asp (accessed
14 Apr 2011). A son named Charles Richard Llewellyn Harbord was recorded in the 1901 census
aged 15. He was not entered in 1911, having, presumably, left home (see note 9).
8
‘Peyton’ and Shorten’ were the names of close relatives living in the same house as the victims.
9
The online version of the 1911 census transcribes the Harbord surname as ‘Harford’,
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Teadies/Murragh/373943/ (accessed, 9 Apr
2011)
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   6  

‘Richard Harbord’ (and ‘Richard’ as the Rector’s son) when no son of Rev’d. Richard C.M.
Harbord with that first name existed. Hart cited no sources on the killing of ‘Richard
Harbord’ and once the mistake is recognised this becomes alarming. That is because there
are no references to an inquest, funeral, or burial for the supposedly murdered ‘Richard
Harbord’ in any newspapers in the weeks following the episode. Nowhere does the name
‘Richard Harbord’ appear in the press without being attached to a clerical title, ‘Reverend,’
ruling out a possibility that Hart assumed a Richard senior and junior occupied the Murragh
rectory. How then can we explain Hart’s misreporting of the episode?

From his text, it seems possible that Hart mistakenly understood that two Harbords were
shot, Ralph at ‘Rosscarbery’, and ‘Richard’ at Murragh, within hours of each other, but that
they were unrelated and the incidents were unconnected. It might be reasoned this is
another case of sloppy note-taking10 or utter confusion on Hart’s part. But this is
unsatisfactory when compared to Hart’s meticulous research on the other victims of the
April massacre, including survivors. In these cases he used census returns and other
material to identify victims’ ages, occupations, places of domicile, religion11, and, where
names were initially misreported in the press, their true identities. But when it came to the
two Harbords, he abandoned this rigour. Given some reported uncertainty with regard to
which Harbord was shot, Hart’s task was to clarify possible confusion. Instead, he both
deepened and extended it. It seems a serious oversight that Hart neglected to investigate a
family relationship between two Harbords shot on the same night many miles apart.

There is also a further anomaly within Hart’s list of victims provided after Fig. 6 above
(citation 5). Here, Hart failed to provide a first name to the Harbord believed killed at
Murragh on 27 April. This might indicate Hart was indeed uncertain about the name of the
Rector’s son. But elsewhere he clearly identifies the Murragh victim as ‘Richard’ (citations
1 and 3). This forename omission is remarkable because (apart from some missing
footnotes on p. 405) it is the only typo I can identify in over 500 pages of text in the Ph.D.
thesis. Several sources could have resolved the anomaly over the victim’s correct first
name, including the parish records at Murragh.12 Alternatively, an account of Ralph
Harbord being wounded on the rectory steps at Murragh appeared in the Church of Ireland
Gazette, 5 May, and the Morning Post, 11 May 1922, which Hart (apparently) overlooked,
though both publications were cited elsewhere in Chapter 9.13 Hart again overlooked, it
seems, an Irish Grants Committee claim from Rev’d Richard C.M. Harbord, for nursing his
‘dangerously wounded’ son back to health (and for damage to fixtures and fittings) after a
28 April rifle fire attack on Murragh Rectory.14 Hart cited twenty-two other such claims in
Chapter 9, mainly from relatives of victims, but not from the Reverend Richard C.M.
Harbord.15 It is more curious since Hart stated in the thesis (p. 412) that he had examined
                                                                                                               
10
A proposition first put forward by John Regan (2006) in his review of Meda Ryan’s Tom Barry,
IRA Freedom Fighter (2003), to account for anomalies in Hart’s analysis of the 28 November 1920
Kilmichael Ambush. For more detail on these anomalies, see Meehan 2010a.
11
He reported one as Catholic, James McCarthy (a survivor), another a Methodist, James Buttimer,
the rest Church of Ireland. Information cited later (note 20) suggests two Catholic victims, neither
of whom were killed.
12
We may also note that, coincidentally, the alliterative ‘Reverend Ralph of Rosscarbery’ appears
without his surname (citation 4), the only point in the text where this occurs. Then there is the
added curiosity in citations 2 and 5 of a date and a time for the ‘Rosscarbery’ attack. How was that
arrived at?
13
See Thesis (1992) for Gazette, 2, 16, 23 June 1922 on pp. 370, 376, 388; Post, 28 April, 1 May, 1
June 1922 on pp. 374, 386, 388.
14
I discuss Richard and Ralph Harbord’s claim in more detail later.
15
The compensation claims were actively co-ordinated by the Southern Irish Loyalist Relief
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   7  

compensation claims from the ‘approximately 700 Cork applicants’, but not it would seem
Rev’d Richard C.M. Harbord’s.16

It is important to Hart’s reconstruction of the April massacre that Reverend Ralph Harbord
was wounded in further away Rosscarbery (area '9' in Hart map, above), and not at
Murragh (area '6'). This reinforced Hart’s contention that the violence of 27-28 April was
widespread, sporadic, and random. Hart’s citation relating to Ralph Harbord in Rosscarbery
comes from the latter’s compensation claim to the Irish Grants Committee in Britain in
1926. However, that claim file does not state where the attack took place, reporting only
that he was shot in the back and gravely wounded in April 1922. In his Grants Committee
claim, Ralph Harbord provided a Rosscarbery address, where he served as a clergyman
after 1924.17 In 1922 Ralph worked as diocesan curate in Limerick and was visiting his
father’s home when he was shot. No source states that Ralph Harbord was wounded in
Rosscarbery, which makes Hart’s conclusion even more suspect.

That two members of the same family were shot on the same night in separate incidents
should have queried Hart’s narrative about a spontaneous eruption of ethnic violence across
West Cork. In Hart’s dissertation, however, ‘Richard Harbord’ and ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’
remained unrelated and unconnected. On the other hand, keeping the two Harbords separate
strengthened Hart’s theory about the episode because they stretched the geographical area
over which the massacre happened. And this is critical, as Hart explained (p. 378):

‘It is possible that a single gang was responsible for most of these deaths,
travelling down the Bandon River from Dunmanway …[but] it would have been
impossible for them to have also been in Clonakilty and Rosscarbery on the
same night as the killings around Ballineen.’18

From this Hart concluded

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Association. The following Irish Grants Committee applications were cited by Hart in Chapter 9:
Arthur Andrews (CO/904/104), Samuel Baker (CO/762/109), Henry Bradfield (CO/762/185),
Samuel Byford (CO/762/86), Rebecca Chinnery (CO/762/31), William Daunt (CO/762/100),
Richard Godsil (CO/762/34), Rev. Ralph Harbord (CO/762/58), W.B. Hosford (CO/762/4),
Elizabeth Fitzmaurice (CO/762/46), William Fitzmaurice (CO/762/12), Richard Helen
(CO/762/33), Catherine Howe (CO/762/31), William Jagoe (CO/762/4), James McCarthy
(CO/762/13), Thomas Nagle (CO/762/3), John Nyhan (CO/762/192), William Perrot (CO/762/121,
William, John and Walter Ross (CO/762/180), Thomas Sullivan (CO/762/175), Edward Woods
(CO/904/133), Matilda Woods (CO/762/133).
16
Hart concluded that 2% of Cork claimants (15 out of ‘approximately 700’) indicated they had
provided information to British forces, but does not list them. On the page following Hart discussed
and distorted a British intelligence assessment, which concluded that Protestants generally did not
inform. Hart cited the first part of the British assessment and omitted a qualification treating as an
exception the area where the April killings took place in the Bandon Valley, (see discussion p. 16
following, also see Hart book, p. 305-6). Curiously, Hart also stated that the Grants Committee
‘received 800 compensation claims from declared Cork loyalists’ (p. 60, n. 18). These self-
contradictory assessments are also in Hart’s book, pp. 305, 319, n. 4).
17
Rev’d Ralph C.V. Harbord, CO/762/58. It should be pointed out that non-disclosure of where the
attack took place is odd. I discuss later the possibility that Ralph Harbord kept secret from his
father, who claimed separately for expenses incurred nursing Ralph back to health, his claims and
their outcome.
18
He added, ‘No one group could have carried out all of the night’s attacks in view of the distances
involved and the state of the roads at that time’. Of course, distances diminish with Rosscarbery off
the map, while the roads issue is discussed later.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   8  

‘The most plausible explanation is that there were at least two, and possibly as
many as five, separate groups involved …The fact that the murders stretched
over three nights and encompassed so many different districts argues against the
massacre being an organised effort, and for it being a series of copy-cat killings
carried out by a dozen or so gunmen, probably motivated by similar fears and
desire for revenge.’

So, in pursuit of this thesis, Richard and Ralph’s blood-relationship goes unidentified by
Hart, and, similarly, Ralph is, somewhat miraculously, relocated from the rectory at
Murragh to Rosscarbery on the terrible night of 27-28 April 1922. That nobody examining
the thesis and/or supervising its revision into an Oxford University Press monograph
noticed any of this would be remarkable.19

It might be said that there is no need to make a fuss about Hart’s doctoral thesis, because
Hart privately identified the errors in his thesis and rectified them in his 1998 book. But,
whatever about ‘Richard Harbord’, Hart’s removal of ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ from the
discussion implied that he was immaterial to Hart’s characterisation of the April killings.
But, as we have seen, this ‘event’ played an important role within Hart’s narration of the
massacre. It is to that issue I now turn. I look at the territory within which the killings
happened and the time taken to carry them out, since Hart’s conclusions are dependent on
these details.

Attempting to discover where and possibly how and at what time the killers did their grisly
business may help us to understand what they thought they were doing as they did it. Or it
may not. The closer you get to the ground, the less you notice its overall shape and the
same goes for historical interpretation. In this case we have dead bodies and quite a lot of
smoke, but no smoking gun or guns. Interpretation is easier to express and to grasp to the
extent that the partial reality of evidential detail is kept at a safe distance from the
conclusions drawn from it. However, Hart gave the impression that he examined everything
in forensic detail. We are entitled to go over the ground again to ascertain if the historical
sleuth, who was (as Fearghal McGarry noted, Irish News, 28 August 2010) a fan of crime
fiction, presented all relevant evidence at his disposal. If nothing else, it will establish a
definitive sequence of time and place, something so far missing from the discussion.

The Geography of the April Killings

The prior significance of Hart’s ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ (area ‘9’ in Hart map) related to his
being geographically distant from the main clutch of killings. Usefully, he provided Hart
with a victim significantly further away from the Clonakilty fatality, Robert Nagle (area
‘8’), who was comparatively closer to the killings on the night of 27-8 April in and around
Ballineen and Enniskean. Arguably, Hart’s characterisation of sporadic, spontaneous, anti-
Protestant violence, carried out by multiple IRA groups was more dependent on ‘Ralph of
Rosscarbery’ than on any other victim, save Nagle.

After discussing the significance of nine of what were then presumed to be eleven 27-29
April victims in his 1992 thesis Hart stated (p. 378),
                                                                                                               
19
See thesis, p. 136, ‘The worst wave of killings came in April in west Cork after the death of an
I.R.A. officer near Bandon. Fifteen Protestant men were shot in revenge...’ Compare with book, p.
115, in which the identical point is made with the number shot changed to ‘fourteen’, a figure that
includes the wounded Ralph Harbord. Hart’s book, The IRA and its Enemies (1998), was originally
mistakenly advertised in his 1996 essay, which contained the Harbord error, as being published that
year.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   9  

“The other two victims, Robert Nagle in Clonakilty and the Reverend Ralph of
Rosscarbery, lived south of the Bandon River and were clearly attacked by a
different party – or parties – altogether.”

Surprisingly, the loss of ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ did not affect this conclusion in the book.
However, compare Hart’s clear 1992 exposition above, with his comparatively vague 1998
presentation (p. 282),

“The other victims, in and around Clonakilty, lived south of the Bandon Valley
and were clearly attacked by a different party – or parties – altogether.”

Hart‘s claim in the book that a completely separate IRA group attacked ‘victims’ (plural)
south of the Bandon Valley is based on a replacement of ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ with a
second (though unharmed) Clonakilty victim. Richard Helen reported he had ‘escaped
providentially from my captors’, who called for him at Donovan’s Hotel. Hart’s thesis that
multiple IRA parties were at work hangs by this thread. But the dead Robert Nagle and the
survivor Richard Helen in Clonakilty cannot bear the weight of this argument.20

Examination of time and territory is required in order to see what was or was not possible
for one or more groups of killers.
Taking the timing of the killings first, it was not a subject on which Hart provided much
clarity. In fact he introduced his account of three 27 April killings in Dunmanway (and
Chapter 9 itself) with a timing mistake (p. 365),
‘At one o’clock in the morning of April 27th 1922, James and Clarina Buttimer
of Dunmanway were awakened by shouting and banging at their door’.21
He wrote of David Gray being attacked ‘at about the same time’, with no time given for the
earlier attack on Francis Fitzmaurice, the first of ten unexplained killings. The correct
sequence can be established. Inquest testimony placed the attack on Fitzmaurice at
12.15am, that on Gray after 1am and the attack on Buttimer at about 1.20am (not ‘one
o’clock in the morning’). Table One, based on newspaper (mainly inquest) reports available
to (and otherwise relied upon by) Hart, sets out a sequence of time and place.

                                                                                                               
20
Curiously, while Helen’s experience is upgraded in the 1998 book, despite his stating initially that
he was attacked on 22 May 1922, that of another Grants Committee claimant, ex RIC Sergeant and
Dunmanway resident, Thomas Sullivan, is diminished in both thesis and book. Hart refers to him
departing out of ‘fear for’, rather than from an attack on, his life, because he ‘heard voices outside’
when he was in bed. Sullivan actually claimed that after he made his escape on 27 April, ‘4 raiders
got into my house and into the bedroom where my wife… still was’. Hart cites Sullivan’s statement
at length (1992, p. 366; 1998, p. 274), but not this part. As a Catholic Sullivan did not fit the
Protestant profile Hart suggested was the basis for these attacks. On the basis of his claim, which is
problematic (like others), Sullivan joins James McCarthy as the second putative Catholic loyalist
targeted in Dunmanway on 27 April 1922. Richard Helen (CO/762/33), Thomas Sullivan
(CO/762/175).
21
See book, p. 273, for the same mistake introducing chapter 12.
 Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   10  

TABLE ONE: April killings (+ wounding, disappeared) - Who, When, Where

(Including, ‘Richard Harbord’ and ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ from Hart thesis in bold italics)
Hart Hart narrative Sources:
Who When (date) When (time) Where Map Sequence + (newspaper news
Number Page No (thesis) + inquest reports)
O’Neill, Michael Wed 26 APRIL 3am Ballygroman (near Ovens) 1 13, p.373 SS 29Apr
Woods, Herbert (Morning) Ballygroman (near Ovens) 1 14, p.374 SS 29Apr
Hornibrook, Thomas (Morning) Ballygroman (near Ovens) 1 15, p.374 SS 29Apr
Hornibrook, Samuel (Morning) Ballygroman (near Ovens) 1 16, p.374 SS 29Apr
Fitzmaurice, Francis Thurs 27 April 12.15am Dunmanway 2 3 p.366 SS,IT 29Apr
Gray, David 1am (after) Dunmanway 2 2 p.365 SS,IT 29Apr
Buttimer, James 1.20am (about) Dunmanway 2 1 p.365 SS,IT 29Apr
22
Howe, Robert Thurs 27 April 10.30pm Ballaghanure (near Ballineen) 3 4 p.366 IT 2May
Nagle, Robert Thurs 27 April 11pm (after) Clonakilty - McCurtain Hill 8 11 p.368 IT 29Apr, 1May
23
Harbord, Ralph Thurs 27 or 28 April Not known Murragh (near Enniskean) n/a n/a IT,CC,BN 29Apr
24
Chinnery, John Fri 28 April Early… morning Castletown (near Ballineen) 4 5 p.367 IT 29Apr
McKinley, Alexander 1.30am Ballineen 5 6 p.367 IT 1May
25
Buttimer, John 2am Caher (near Ballineen) 7 8 p.368 IT 2May
Greenfield, James 2am Caher (near Ballineen) 7 9 p.368 IT 2May
Bradfield, John Sat 29 April 11pm Killowen (b/w Enniskean-Bandon) 10 12 p.369 IT 12May
Fictitious events:
‘Richard Harbord’ Thurs ‘27-28 April’ Enniskean – Murragh 6 7 p.367
‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ Fri 28 April ‘same night’ ‘Rosscarbery’ 9 10 p.369
[SS  =  Southern  Star,  IT  =  Irish  Times,  CC  =  Cork  Constitution,  BN  =  Belfast  News  Letter.  Material  within  inverted  commas  by  Peter  Hart.]  

Though timings may be approximate the sequence seems clear:

• 26 April, 4 victims (1 killing of an IRA officer and the disappearance of three

loyalists believed responsible) in Ballygroman between 3am and the following
morning;
• 27 April, 3 killings in Dunmanway between 12.15 and 1.20am;
• 27-28 April, 5 killings between 10.30pm and 2am around Ballineen-Enniskean
(mainly in and around Ballineen), plus one nearby wounding (to Ralph Harbord at
Murragh Rectory, Enniskean26);
• 27 April, 1 killing ‘after 11[pm]’ of Robert Nagle in Clonakilty;
• 29 April, 1 killing at 11pm of John Bradfield in Killowen between Ballineen-
Enniskean and Bandon, though closer to the former.

Hart’s thesis map of the killing locations (Figure 6, p. 380, excluded from the 1998 book)
was rather rudimentary. It contained an unidentified and inaccurately drawn outline of what
appeared to be the Bandon River, with nameless places where most killings took place
indicated alongside, together with an outline of the coast below. Hart’s map contained:

• Area ‘1’. 26 April, Ballygroman, near Ovens;

• Area ‘2’. 27 April, Dunmanway;
• Area ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’, ‘6’, ‘7’. 27-28 April, Caher-Castletown-Ballineen-
Enniskean-Murragh, where (according to Hart) ‘six’ of ‘eleven’ killings took
place (including ‘Richard Harbord’);
• Area ‘8’. ‘27/28’ April (reported Hart), Clonakilty;
                                                                                                               
22
See, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Castletown/Ballaghanure/408903/
23
Ralph Harbord said 27, whereas Richard reported 28 April, in their separate Grants Committee
claims.
24
See, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Castletown/Castle_Town/408933/
25
See, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Kinneigh/Caher/409050/
26
Richard Harbord’s headed notepaper address at the Grants Committee was ‘Murragh Rectory,
Enniskean’.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   11  

• Area ‘9’. 28 April (reported Hart), Rosscarbery, where ‘Ralph of

Rosscarbery’ was ‘wounded’;
• Area ‘10’. 29 April, Killowen.
Leaving aside the fictitious Harbord elements in Hart’s map, the killings occurred during
27-29 April in an area more compact than Hart’s indistinct map suggests. I clarify this with
a new map below that, for ease of comparative reference, again displays Hart’s.27

                                                                                                               
27
‘Southern Ireland touring map, 1: 250,00 scale, 4 miles to one inch, 2.5miles to 1cm’, AA, 2010.
I compared this map to ‘Léarscailiocht Éireann, Survey of Ireland (Ordnance Survey), 1:253,440, ¼
inch to I mile, Sheet 16’, n.d., that reproduces the 1904 edition. The roads and places indicated are
directly comparable to those in the later map, which I use solely because it reproduces more clearly
than the earlier version (thanks to Pat Maloney, Cork, for the earlier map). I looked also at a
comparable 1985 edition ‘Esso motor-map No. 8’ map of Ireland, 6 miles to one inch, that would
have been one of a number of maps available to Hart. I also present, below, a detail from Ordnance
Survey, ‘Discovery Series 86, 3rd Edition, scale 1:50,000’, 2cm to 1km, 2010, to indicate more on
the Ballineen-Enniskean-Murragh area.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   12  

 
 Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   13  

Detail - Ballineen-Enniskean-Murragh-
Clonakilty (area 3 above and below)

Hart’s map ignores relevant roads and places of interest in

the area, emphasising instead the unnamed (inaccurately
traced) Bandon River. This is potentially confusing to most
readers unfamiliar with local topography. The new map
reproduces the unnecessarily wide area described by Hart’s
outline. It highlights 4 specific areas where killings took
place, that are crucial to understanding the geography of the
April killings (a 5th being the fictitious ‘Rosscarbery’
event). Taking the new Area 3 in my map (p. 12 and left),
five people were killed and one wounded on the late night and very early morning of 27-8
April in the area surrounding Ballineen-Enniskean between 10.30pm and 2am. All were in
relatively close proximity. The killing of Nagle, a sixth victim in Clonakilty, ‘after 11[pm]’
is, it would appear, the only problematic area for the argument that one group of killers was
involved.

Let us consider, to the extent possible, ease or difficulty of movement within the area
indicated.

The April 27-29 killings fell along a road network that Hart’s text and map excluded, but
which mine includes. Three killings took place in Dunmanway early on 27 April. Five
more, plus one wounding, occurred over the night of 27-28 April near Ballineen-Enniskean
(mainly in and immediately north, north-west, of Ballineen), nine miles by road from
Dunmanway. Another took place late on 27 April in Clonakilty (Robert Nagle), nine and a
half miles by road from Ballineen-Enniskean. One final killing of John Bradfield occurred
one day later on 29 April in Killowen, east of Ballineen-Enniskean.

Beyond an obscure reference to ‘the state of the roads’ (p. 378), Hart’s text (in addition to
his map) did not otherwise mention them. He cited no evidence that roadways between
Dunmanway, Ballineen-Enniskean and Clonakilty were obstructed ten months into the
Truce in late April 1922.28 Roads trenched during the conflict in West Cork were

                                                                                                               
28
William H Kautt, Ambushes and Armour, the Irish Rebellion 1919-1921 (2010, p. 4), discusses
‘countermobility operations [that] became a major factor in the IRA strategy’, involving extensive
trenching and obstruction of roadways (see chapter 3, ‘Operations against British Transportation in
Ireland’, pp. 52-90). Their function was to obstruct Crown force armoured mobility not IRA
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   14  

reportedly repaired nine months earlier in August 1921.29

Nagle’s inquest recorded the time of the attack on him in Clonakilty as half an hour or
more after the attack on Robert Howe in Ballaghanure, above Ballineen-Enniskean. The
time of the subsequent attacks on Ralph Harbord in Murragh on 27-8 April and on John
Chinnery, ‘early morning’ on 28 April, in Castletown above Ballineen (after the attack on
Nagle) are least satisfactorily established. They were possibly attacked between 11pm on
27 April (Nagle, Clonakilty) and 1.30am on the 28th (McKinley, Ballineen). The Nagle
timing, ‘after 11[pm]’, is itself relatively imprecise – how long thereafter? However, it
appears there was an ample two-and-a-half hours within which to carry out these attacks
after the Nagle shooting in Clonakilty, before 1.30am when McKinley was attacked in
Ballineen. In these circumstances, it is not Nagle who is anomalous, but John Chinnery,
since his location in Castletown, north of Ballineen, was nearby Howe in Ballaghanure,
killed at 10.30pm on 27 April. But (taking timings given at face value) it appears that
Chinnery was not killed immediately after Howe. Then again, Chinnery was also relatively
near Buttimer and Greenfield in Caher, who were jointly attacked at 2am on 28 April.
Plausibly, Chinnery’s ‘early morning’ attack might also have been after the attack on
Buttimer and Greenfield at 2am. In which case only the attack on Murragh rectory occupies
the time-frame between the killing of Nagle in Clonakilty and McKinley in Ballineen.

By and large, the proposition that one group within this space carried out the killings, given
the time available and the short distances they were required to travel, is not violated by
these observations.

It was mainly because of the supposed Rosscarbery attack (which did not occur) that Hart
argued that a single IRA group could not have carried out all the attacks. But if
Rosscarbery is correctly removed from the equation, the evidential basis for the
disconnectedness, sectarian spontaneity, or randomized targeting, on which Hart insists, is
weakened considerably. While Hart dropped the Rosscarbery shooting from his 1998 book,
he did not drop the argument that it facilitated. Instead, he offset the loss of his imagined
‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ victim with a potential Clonakilty victim. The survivor, Richard
Helen, was conjoined with a real fatality, Robert Nagle, also in Clonakilty. However,
unlike Rosscarbery, Clonakilty is sufficiently close to the main shootings to associate
Nagle’s killers with those around Ballineen-Enniskean.

There is no compelling evidence, therefore, to support Hart’s highly speculative conclusion

that separate groups of ‘copy-cat’ killers embarked on a simultaneous sectarian killing
spree in this confined area of country. Most observers might arrive at an opposite
conclusion if the killing chronology and roadway connections were presented clearly.
However, Hart failed to do so both in his thesis and also in his book, whose April killings
chapter provides no map or tabular breakdown whatever.

The balance of probability, suggests that an organised body, rather than disparate groups,
were responsible.

Motivation

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
operations. Wilfrid Ewart’s A Journey in Ireland 1921 (1922, republished 2008), details
encountering in May 1921, amongst other obstructions, ‘a 12 foot high obstacle, not dissimilar to,
though far more substantial than a fence at Aintree’ in Offaly, between Birr and Kilcormac (p. 125,
see also, pp. 105-6, 124, 129, 140).
29
Sheehan (2011) p. 163.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   15  

These observations relate to motivation, on which subject I now offer some further
observations. The suggestion of motivation for the killings has emphasised either the
Protestant affiliation of victims (Hart, 1992, 1996, 1998) or previous loyalist activity on
behalf of British forces (Ryan 2003, Murphy, 2008a, 2008b). Hart’s random selection of
Protestant targets drives his sectarianism thesis. But how randomly chosen were those
attacked? Were the victims simply members of the Protestant community or did their
attackers view them as having been an active loyalist subset of that community, as perhaps
one victim discussed below may have been viewed?

Those critical of Hart suggest that a maverick IRA group may have been involved in the 10
killings, after the disappearance of Woods and the Hornibrooks on the morning of 26 April.
The killings met with universal condemnation from both sides of the pre-Civil War division
on the Treaty. The pro-Treaty Dáil Cabinet referred on Friday 28 April to ‘certain
elements… taking advantage of the current transitional period in Ireland to wreak private
vengeance’. These sentiments were reciprocated without hesitation on the anti-Treaty side.
On 28 April the 3rd Cork Brigade Commandant, the anti-Treaty Tom Hales, issued a
military order. He stated, ‘in view of shootings and other occurrences… any soldier in the
area’ who interfered with or who insulted any person would be subject to punishment up to
and including execution, (Irish Times, 6 May 1922). One day later, however, on 29 April, a
final victim, John Bradfield of Killowen, was shot dead. John Bradfield was, according to
the Cork Examiner (1 May 1922), one of three members of the same extended family
‘killed in West Cork’.30 His cousins, T.J. and Thomas Bradfield, were it seems outwitted
during the War of Independence, in that they thought IRA officers they were speaking to
were Crown forces. In his Bureau of Military History Witness Statement (BMH WS, No.
470), Dennis Lordon stated that on 21 January 1921, T.J. Bradfield mistook a,

‘party [of IRA] officers for Auxiliaries, and after a short conversation started
to give complete information as to the movements of local members of the
IRA, even to the extent of minute descriptions of a ‘dug-out’ in the district in
which some local men had slept and left their arms… he also arranged to give
further information later on through his local clergyman and pressed very
hard for the immediate capture and execution of certain local boys who were
members of the IRA. This farmer was placed under arrest and later tried for
espionage and found guilty. He was executed that night.’

In the case of Thomas Bradfield, of Desertserges (east of Enniskean), as related in the

BMH WS (1,684) of James (‘Spud’) Murphy, on 31 January 1921 he was taken in by Tom
Barry, who introduced himself as a British officer. Thomas Bradfield gave Barry at least as
much information by as that provided ten days earlier and suffered the same fate as his
cousin.31

Was that why John Bradfield was shot, on suspicion of having acted as had his cousins? At
John Bradfield’s inquest, representing the republican police was Stephen O’Neill. He had
been present when Captain Woods killed his brother, IRA officer Michael O’Neill, in
Ballygroman on 26 April. O’Neill said a curious thing. After vigorous condemnation of the
act and a promise to protect Bradfield’s relatives, he said, ‘I wish to condemn this murder –
if it can be called murder – or, at least, this cowardly outrage’ (Irish Independent, 2 May

                                                                                                               
30
Hart was aware of this fact, book, p. 287.
31
In his Guerilla Days in Ireland, pp. 109-10, Tom Barry relates this episode, though withholds
Thomas Bradfield’s name. On the formation, function and history of the Irish Bureau of Military
History, see Diarmaid Ferriter, ‘In such deadly earnest’, Dublin Review 12, Autumn 2003,
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   16  

1922). If Bradfield’s shooting was not considered ‘murder’ (as a sectarian killing might
more likely have been regarded), was it construed as an unauthorised killing, in violation of
the Truce, of a previously active loyalist who had aided British forces.

Hart took unusual steps to avoid presenting evidence of loyalist identity or activity. Brian
Murphy (2008a, p. 212-3; 2008b, Appendix 3) pointed to Hart distorting by part-omission
an important British intelligence comment on active loyalist informing in the Bandon area,
where the April killings occurred. Murphy also charged that Hart subsequently obscured
this distortion in a version of the British assessment he edited, published in 2002 as part of
the Irish Narratives series (edited by David Fitzpatrick). As Murphy pointed out, Hart also
declined to publish in this volume, without informing the reader, an entire section of the
intelligence assessment portraying Irish ‘civilisation’ as generally ‘inferior’ to the English
type, but that, interestingly, did not accuse Irish nationalists or the IRA of being sectarian.

That is a general point, what of evidence at a more intimate and detailed level? In 1926 the
Southern Irish Loyalist Relief Association (SILRA) coordinated compensation claims for
‘the Irish Grants Committee, which was charged [by the British government] with
compensating those who suffered for their loyalty to the Crown’.32 Loyalty may have been
a basis for claiming compensation, but Peter Hart presented it as a façade for Protestantism.
This was his conclusion with regard to the April killings; the religion of the victims was the
lowest common denominator and the highest common factor. It was ‘inescapable... These
men were shot because they were Protestants’ (1992, p. 386). This argument is
problematical due to weaknesses, ellipses and elisions within Hart’s presentation. He
ignored Grants Committee evidence that undermined his argument, such as Catholic victim
claims or evidence of active loyalism. Hart treated assertions of loyalty within claims as
formulaic. He excluded characterisations of those killed as ‘Loyalists’, dismissed or
ignored Catholic victims’ experiences and presented republican attacks as randomly
directed against Protestants and as therefore sectarian in intent.

Six claimed survivors of the April 1922 attacks declared to the Irish Grants Committee
their understanding of the circumstances under which victims were attacked and killed.
Hart chose not to publish such characterisations:

• Ralph C.V. Harbord, ‘There were none but Protestant Loyalists shot during the
period in question’;
• Richard James Helen, ‘There had been three loyalists shot in Dunmanway a
neighbouring town the previous night’;
• William Jagoe, ‘an armed gang visited the town and murdered three well-known
loyalists. Several other loyalists escaped… On the next night 5 other loyalists
were murdered’;
• James McCarthy, ‘... on the night of the triple murder of loyalists in
Dunmanway...’;
• William Perrot, ‘On that same night a number of loyalists were shot all over the
country’;
• Thomas Sullivan on IRA activity generally, ‘[Dunmanway was] a district in which
during the period named several loyalists were shot’.33

All six used the term ‘loyalist’ in these utterances, one (Ralph Harbord, a Church of Ireland
minister) conjoined it with Protestantism. Two of these claimants, named McCarthy and
                                                                                                               
32
Hart, thesis, p. 382, n. 57.
33
References for Grants Committee files in note 15.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   17  

Sullivan, were Catholics. Hart treated them differently from the others. James McCarthy
reported that his ‘bar premises’ in Dunmanway suffered gunfire attack, from which he had
a ‘miraculous escape’, while Thomas Sullivan claimed he escaped before raiders entered
his house and bedroom in Dunmanway. Hart, however, ignored Sullivan’s claim that his
house was raided and reported in the thesis that McCarthy’s ‘life was not threatened’, while
Hart marginalised McCarthy further in the book.34 The premises of three victims, James
McCarthy, Reverend Richard C.M. Harbord and William Jagoe were fired upon. Possibly
these attacks are in the same category, with the proviso that while the bullets missed
McCarthy and Jagoe, one hit and wounded Ralph Harbord. But Hart did not contextualize
McCarthy in this manner, nor did he explain why he undermined McCarthy’s and ignored
Sullivan’s claims.

The Grants Committee did not accept Sullivan’s claim, on the basis that he did not declare
the raid on his house and bedroom to an earlier RIC Tribunal, from which he received £145
for furniture, over £101 for ‘disturbance’, and annual ‘compensation’ of £195. However,
Sullivan left Dunmanway for England for a year on 28 April, leaving a wife and children in
severe difficulty. The committee granted Sullivan a further £200 for the distress caused to
his wife, double the amount granted to Rev’d Richard C.M. Harbord for his. Hart ignored
the basis of Sullivan’s compensation claim, his flight from Dunmanway, and his view that
the attacked ‘loyal inhabitants in Dunmanway’ included him.

Sullivan’s experience of how the Grants Committee viewed his claim was not unique. Most
April killings survivors’ claims were treated sceptically. James McCarthy claimed £300
and was grateful to receive £100 compensation for a February to May 1922 boycott of his
bar, because of his loyal ‘hospitality’ to Auxiliaries and Black and Tans.35 That was
relatively straightforward. On the other hand, William Perrot, who said the April killers
visited his home near Clonakilty in Perrot’s absence, received £700, a lot less than his
claim. The Grants Committee observed,
‘It will be observed that the original claim of £602 has been increased to
£2,124, in my opinion, very exaggerated.’
It was further described as,
‘excessive… no proof of allegation… no evidence of continual interference
(or indeed of interference at all)… no claim for consideration… in every
sense excessive… The applicant has already claimed everything, indeed more
than everything…’
Perrot’s claim that as a loyalist he suffered discrimination in the sale of his land was
dismissed out of hand. Perrot had merely ‘missed the market’. Do the question marks
placed on these claims place one also on Perrot’s claim that the April killers visited his
house in his absence? If so, Hart, while mentioning Perrot’s various claims (see, p. 286),
did not raise them, though he undermined the more modest claim of James McCarthy.

One claimant was particularly successful, on the basis of declaring permanent physical
impairment. However, he may not have informed an immediate family member making a
                                                                                                               
34
See note 20 on Sullivan and later discussion. McCarthy in Hart thesis, 1992, p. 383, changed to a
note in Hart book, 1998, p. 285, n. 83, ‘life and livelihood were never threatened’.
35
McCarthy’s payment was, however, the subject a long letter of complaint to the Grants
Committee from ‘P. O’Donovan, Law Clerk’, Dunmanway. He had penned, he wrote, the claims of
a number of beneficiaries, from whom he received a cut, with the exception of James McCarthy. He
wanted to know what McCarthy received, as O’Donovan alleged that McCarthy told him he
received nothing.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   18  

separate more modest claim in relation to this same injury. Rev’d Richard C.M. Harbord,
claimed a modest £200 in total for nursing his son, Ralph C.V. Harbord, back to health and
for fixtures and fittings damaged in the attack on Murragh Rectory. He reported that the
Free State had already paid a separate £200 doctor’s bill. The Committee noted
confidentially, however, that his son, Ralph Harbord (who died in 1966, aged 7536), was
compensated to the tune of £1,700 by the Irish Free State (Personal Injuries) Committee,
plus £500 for mainly medical expenses, having claimed £6,000. The Grants Committee
awarded Ralph Harbord an additional £500 on top of this £2,200, though Ralph applied for
an additional £3,000. In relation to the Free State award, the Committee stated, ‘The awards
made in that case would fully meet any [£200] claim by his father for the extra expense’.
An ‘ex-gratia’ payment of £100 in respect of shock experienced by his wife was,
nevertheless, made to a somewhat puzzled and dissatisfied Reverend Richard C.M.
Harbord. Possibly, Ralph Harbord had not made his father aware of the extent of these Free
State payments.37  

One discontented claimant produced significant information bearing on a possible

motivation for the April killings. £200 was awarded ‘ex gratia’ to the providential escapee
Richard Helen. He had previously received £225 for dislocation to England. Helen
appealed this ‘beggarly treatment’ claiming, ‘my loyalty cost me thousands of pounds’.
Helen appealed unsuccessfully, enlisting support from former RIC District Inspector and
RAF Flight Lieutenant, BD Higmaw, who detailed life saving anti-IRA information
supplied by Helen. Higmaw declared Helen ‘a resolute fearless supporter of the British
flag’. Hart asserted that no April killings victim mentioned being ‘active in opposing the
IRA’.38 He either ignored or misread this part of the Richard Helen claim file.

In addition to Helen, the draper William Jagoe, who said his premises were fired upon,
alleged that after the July 1921 Truce an IRA intelligence officer told Jagoe he was one of
seven in Dunmanway ‘marked down for assassination’. Jagoe was also informed of a
‘marked man’, Patrick Joseph Cronin, a Catholic loyalist and formerly a Royal Navy rating,
who was shot dead that same evening in August 1921. This significant information in
Jagoe’s compensation file, corroborated in a Grants Committee claim from Cronin’s
parents, was ignored in Hart’s presentation.39

Hart’s conclusion that the April killings happened because ‘Protestants were ‘fair game’’
(p. 390) is not supported by evidence; or rather, ignoring contrary evidence supports his
published view. It is therefore irresponsible. That concludes, for the moment, my analysis

                                                                                                               
36
Irish Times, 16 Sept. 1966; 1911 census (see note 9).
37
Another anomaly, while Rev’d Richard C.M. Harbord’s claim stated that the Murragh Rectory
was attacked on 28 April, Ralph Harbord stated that the attack on him was on 27 April. Curiously
(as noted), he did not state where the attack took place. Hart dated the ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’
wounding on 28 April and the ‘Richard Harbord’ killing at Murragh on ‘27/28 April’. Richard
Harbord (CO 762/155), Ralph Harbord (CO/762/58).
38
Richard Helen (CO/762/33). Hart thesis, p. 382, n. 57; book, p. 285, n. 79.
39
Jagoe added that he was ‘well known’ as a ‘staunch loyalist’ (CO/762/4). If he said this privately
in pursuit of compensation, publicly, he protested in the 10 June 1922 Southern Star that he was
resolutely non-political and denied Free Mason and Orange sympathies allegedly attributed to him.
He asserted, though, that he had contributed to the Irish White Cross Fund, a 26 February 1921 War
of Independence Dáil Éireann initiative set up to relieve distress, whose Trustees included Michael
Collins, Arthur Griffith and Mrs Erskine Childers (Irish Times, half-page Irish White Cross
advertisement, 14 March 1921). Patrick Joseph Cronin’s parents’ (Mary and James) file reference is
762/92/2. They were granted £400 for the death of their son, on whom they were dependent.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   19  

of the consequences of Peter Hart’s relocation of ‘Ralph of Rosscarbery’ to Murragh and

the textual elimination of ‘Richard Harbord’.

Conclusion

It may be reasoned in his defence, despite these documented silences, that Hart’s
corrections to his 1992 thesis in 1998, the identification of Ralph Harbord at Murragh, not
Rosscarbery, and realisation that the dead ‘Richard’ was in fact the injured ‘Ralph’, might
indicate that his were indeed genuine mistakes. Identifying Ralph as the only victim in the
Harbord family in 1998 removes the anomaly of two members of the same family being
shot in separate locations on the same night. So why would Hart knowingly introduce
errors into his thesis, which might undermine his interpretation? That seems counter
intuitive. The 1998 revisions Hart made to the thesis may indicate that his errors were
genuine and that he was acting in good faith, despite some sloppiness. But it does not
explain why Hart’s argument was not modified when the evidence it relied upon was.
Instead, Hart simply reassembled his evidence to fit his conclusions. This suggests that his
conclusions drove the presentation of his evidence, rather than the other way around.

In his 1996 essay (republished in 2003), Hart for the only time clearly argued that ‘ethnic
cleansing’ was a feature of the Anglo-Irish conflict. At that time Hart still claimed a
‘massacre of 14 men in West Cork in April [1922] after an IRA officer had been killed’
(1996, p. 92). This total of 15 fatalities included ‘Richard Harbord’. In his book published
two years later, Hart’s detailed investigation (nearly identical to his 1992 thesis account)
reduced this total to 14, having lost ‘Richard Harbord’ along with the controversial 1996
phrase ‘ethnic cleansing’.40 Losing ‘Richard Harbord’ and relocating ‘Ralph from
Rosscarbery’ may not have forced Hart to retreat entirely from his ‘ethnic cleansing’
hypothesis, but they apparently caused him to present it less explicitly. Such subtle tact
seems to have been lost on his critics, though it might explain the defensiveness expressed
in his 2006 letter to the Irish Times.

Historians cannot know the past in any absolute sense, and the best they can hope to
achieve are plausible interpretations. It is plausible that Hart did not see critical
contradictory evidence until it was too late. What makes it less plausible is that each of the
mistakes cited here point in the same direction. Hart argued that there was a random
massacre conducted by multiple IRA units, and each of his mistakes bolstered this
interpretation:

1. Identifying ‘Richard Harbord’ adds to the number of victims;

                                                                                                               
40
Besides sorting out real from unreal Harbords, Hart included anonymous interviews with some
local Protestants in the 1998 Book. Apart from the intriguing description (p. 282) of one killer as
‘‘a black I.R.A. man’ who ‘shot shot people for miles around’’ these added little. The only other
substantial innovation was withdrawal from the book of two thesis suggestions that an IRA officer,
Frank Busteed, whose father was a Protestant, and who became an atheist, might have been one of
the killers. See Meehan 2008, for more on the possible significance of this information (also
Meehan in Murphy and Meehan, 2008b, and Meehan, 2010a). Irish nationalists sometimes refer to
what they perceive as a particularly bigoted unionist as ‘a black Protestant’. Might ‘black IRA man’
be a backhanded Cork Protestant reference to an IRA volunteer with Protestant connections, like
Frank Busteed? Unfortunately, Hart’s removal of Busteed as a possible April killings participant
meant the speculative connection could not occur to the book’s readers. Hart also suggested in the
book (p. 282) that Clarina Buttimer, wife of Dunmanway victim Francis, ‘seems to have recognised
at least one of her husband’s attackers’, though no source was cited in support of this observation.
Her inquest testimony directly contradicted it (see Meehan in Murphy and Meehan, 2008b, p, 24, n,
85).
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   20  

2. Mis-locating Ralph Harbord to Rosscarbery widens their spread across county

Cork;
3. Failure to identify the family relationship between these two people
strengthens the argument for a random sectarian massacre;
4. Missing the account of the wounding of Ralph Harbord at Murragh in the
Church of Ireland Gazette and the Morning Post facilitates this conclusion;
5. Failure to cite Richard C.M. Harbord’s Irish Grants Committee application,
with an account of the wounding of Ralph C.V. Harbord at Murragh, also
facilitates Hart’s conclusion;
6. Failure to account for significant contrary information in other Grants
Committee files (in particular Richard Helen’s) facilitated Hart’s conclusion
that the killings had a sectarian motivation.
7. The dissertation map excludes a road network that connects victims Hart
argues are unconnected;
8. Imprecision in Hart’s killing chronology increases the feasibility of additional
IRA killing squads.

Defenders of Hart’s methodology may claim that these are unexceptional errors. Yet, they
resemble previously documented anomalies elsewhere in the chapter, the doctoral thesis
and of course the book.41 Together, they form a recurring pattern suggestive of
manipulation of evidence in support of a foregone conclusion. Unavoidably, the question is
posed as to how thoroughly Hart’s 1992 doctoral thesis was supervised and ultimately
examined.

Hart’s particular method of interpretation stands closer to historical verisimilitude than to

historical research. When we look beneath the dead calm of Hart’s impeccable prose, we
discover not a foundation of accurate references and transparent citations, but confusion,
misrepresentation, and inaccuracy that creates evidential anarchy. Much of what is written,
it is true, is based on fact, but parts of the story, often pieces vital to its telling, frequently
rest on no evidence at all. The account provided in Hart’s doctoral thesis and his 1998 book
is a species of historical propaganda, which exists in the half-light found between Hart’s
evidence and the story he wants to tell.

By way of final conclusion, nowhere in Professor David Fitzpatrick’s published work does
he explicitly endorse the term ‘ethnic cleansing’, as Hart applied it in 1996. But, as his
review of Gerard Murphy’s ‘disorganised dossier’ demonstrates, he remains eager to
advance this interpretation on the basis of Hart’s research, by misrepresenting Hart’s work
in an ahistorical manner. And this prompts a second, equally important, observation. The
evidence in Hart's doctoral thesis is recast, amended, and indeed invented in support of his
proposition that the West Cork massacre was a random, spontaneous, event. But it is also
noteworthy that in Fitzpatrick’s account of Hart’s advancement of his ‘ethnic cleansing’
interpretation, he recasts the dates of publication, amends Hart’s views on the issue, and
invents the idea that he continued to endorse his original interpretation when he specifically
repudiated it. This shared methodology is my final, ‘amazing coincidence’.

The penchant for claiming that the IRA were engaged in ethnic cleansing arose out of a

                                                                                                               
41
See Ryan, 2003, 2007; Borgonovo, 2007; Murphy 2008a, Murphy and Meehan, 2008b; Meehan,
2008, 2010a. Fitzpatrick criticised Borgonovo’s research in his Gerard Murphy review,
reproducing, in the course of his criticism, Murphy’s consistent misnaming of Borgonovo’s book
on the intelligence war in Cork City.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   21  

political context during and after the IRA ceasefire in Northern Ireland in 1994, and of the
‘peace process’ that led to the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. It was part of a
continuing attempt by political and academic elites in southern Ireland, reinforced by
opinionated news media, to distance Irish people generally from nationalist versions of
Irish history. Making it seem sectarian made increasingly secular minded southern
nationalists uncomfortable with their own identity and therefore even more so with
northern counterparts, the main object of the exercise. This conceptual distance was further
extended by 23 years of rigidly applied southern broadcasting censorship. In that sense
Peter Hart’s research fulfilled a function. For example, two activist journalists and regular
promoters of Hart’s research, Kevin Myers and Eoghan Harris, used it in tandem with their
opposition to the peace process.42 The problem is, however, that a significant portion of
Hart’s research is not history. It is crime fiction with footnotes that has successfully
convinced a lot of people for some time.

Predicting the future is not work for historians and producing agreement on the past is not
their task. However, I doubt we will encounter further citations concerning the late Peter
Hart’s advocacy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in 1920s Ireland. Such advocacy will require new and
adequate evidence. Peter Hart’s, like Gerard Murphy’s, will not do.

                                                                                                               
42
See Meehan, 2010 a. In a newspaper survey of violence after the 1921 Treaty, as a part of Irish
Times coverage of the imminent 1994 IRA ceasefire, Kevin Myers wrote that anti-Treaty leader
Eamon de Valera ‘stayed silent’ on the April 27-9 killings. Perhaps appropriately, this article opens
by referring to ‘popular and academic myths’, as de Valera condemned the killings, Irish Times, 27
August 1994. See Macardle on de Valera, 1951, p. 705.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   22  

Thanks

I thank Meda Ryan, Brian Murphy, Chriostoir de Bearoid and Pat Maloney for their invaluable help
in the course of writing this essay. I am particularly indebted to Jack Lane who located essential
archival material in Kew not once but on a number of occasions.
 
Reviews of The Year of Disappearances, by Gerard Murphy
Reviews of and commentary on Gerard Murphy’s, The year of Disappearances, Political Killing in
Cork, 1920-23, Gill & Macmillan, 2010 (to date), may be accessed in a sidebar at,
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1053. They are, in chronological order of publication:
1. Meehan, Niall, ‘An ‘amazing coincidence’ that ‘could mean anything’: Gerard Murphy’s
The Year of Disappearances’, Spinwatch, 17 November 2010
2. Nic Dháibhéid, Caoimhe, ‘Rumour, gossip and coincidence’, Irish Times, 11 December
2010.
3. Borgonovo, John, ‘History Ireland Book Review: Gerard Murphy, The Year of
Disappearances’. Vol. 19, No. 1, January February 2011.
4. Ó Ruairc, Pádraig Óg, ‘Book Review: The Year of Disappearances. Political Killings in
Cork 1921-1922’. The Irish Story, 9 March 2011.
5. Biagini, Eugenio, ‘The Year of Disappearances. Political Killings in Cork 1921-1922’,
Reviews in History, Institute of Historical Research, March 2011.
6. Fitzpatrick, David, ‘History in a Hurry’, Dublin Review of Books, N. 17, Spring 2011.

Articles on The Year of Disappearances by Gerard Murphy

1. ‘Eoghan Harris looks at a new book by Gerard Murphy that describes the ‘descent into
savagery’ by the Cork No 1 Brigade of the IRA in 1920 and 1921’, Irish Examiner, 5
November 2010, by Eoghan Harris.
2. Historical detective trail reveals ‘ethnic cleansing’ by IRA in Cork’, Sunday Independent, 7
November 2010, by John-Paul McCarthy.
3. ‘‘The IRA campaign in Cork against Protestants and non-republicans was on a truly vast
scale’, Irish Independent, 12 November 2010, by Kevin Myers.
4. ‘Author owns up to errors in IRA Cork deaths book‘, Sunday Tribune, 16 January 2011, by
John Downes.

Archival sources
Bureau of Military History Witness Statements (duplicates) at National Archives, Bishop Street,
Dublin 8; Irish Grants Committee files at (British) National Archives, Kew.

Newspapers
Belfast News Letter, Cork Constitution, Cork Examiner, Irish Times, Irish Independent, Morning
Post (London), Southern Star, Sunday Independent.

Books and articles

Barry, Tom, Guerrilla Days in Ireland, Anvil, 1989.
Borgonovo, John, Spies, Informers and the ‘Anti-Sinn Fein Society’, the Intelligence War in Cork
City 1920-21, IAP, 2007.
Ewart, Wilfrid, A Journey in Ireland 1921, G.P. Putnam & Son, 1922.
Ferriter, Diarmaid, ‘In such deadly earnest’, Dublin Review 12, Autumn 2003.
Fitzpatrick, David, ‘History In A Hurry’, Dublin Review of Books, No. 17, Spring 2011,
http://www.drb.ie/more_ details/11-03-17/History_In_A_Hurry.aspx.
Hart, Peter, The Irish Republican Army and its Enemies, Violence and Community in County Cork,
1917-1923, Ph.D. Thesis, Trinity College, Department of Modern History, 1992.
Distorting  Irish  History  Two  –  Niall  Meehan   23  

Hart, Peter, ‘The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland’, in Richard English and
Graham Walker (ed.), Unionism in Modern Ireland, Gill & Macmillan, 1996.
Hart, Peter, The IRA and its Enemies, Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923, OUP, 1998.
Hart, Peter (ed.). British Intelligence in Ireland 1920-21 - the Final Reports, Cork UP, 2002.
Hart, Peter, The IRA at War, OUP, 2003.
Kautt, William H. Ambushes and Armour, The Irish Rebellion 1919-1921, IAP, 2010.
Macardle, Dorothy, The Irish Republic, a documented chronicle of the Anglo-Irish conflict and the
partitioning of Ireland with a detailed account of the period 1916-23 (orig. publ. 1937),
Second Revised Edition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951.
Meehan, Niall, ‘After the War of Independence, some further questions about West Cork, April 27-
29 1922’, Irish Political Review, Vol 23, No 3, March 2008.
Meehan, Niall, ‘Distorting Irish History: the stubborn facts of Kilmichael, Pete Hart and Irish
historiography’, Spinwatch, November 2010a.
Meehan, Niall, ‘An ‘amazing coincidence’ that ‘could mean anything’: Gerard Murphy’s The Year
of Disappearances’, Spinwatch, November 2010b.
Murphy, Gerard, The Year of Disappearances, Political Killing in Cork, 1920-23, Gill &
Macmillan, 2010.
Murphy, Brian, ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley: Reflections on the Writing of Irish History in the
Period of the Easter Rising and of the Irish War of Independence’, in Ruan O’Donnell (ed.),
The Impact of the 1916 Rising Among the Nations, IAP, 2008a.
Murphy, Brian and Niall Meehan, Troubled History, a 10th Anniversary Critique of Peter Hart’s
The IRA and its Enemies, Aubane, 2008b.
Ó Ruairc, Pádraig Óg, ‘Book Review: The Year of Disappearances. Political Killings in Cork 1921-
1922’. The Irish Story, 9 March 2011
Regan, John, review of Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter by Meda Ryan, History, 91 (301), January
2006, pp. 163-4,
Ryan, Meda, Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter, Mercier, 2003.
Ryan, Meda, ‘The Kilmichael Ambush: exploring the ‘Provocative Chapters’’, History, 92 (306),
April 2007, pp. 235-49.
Sheehan, William, A Hard Local War, The British Army and the Guerrilla War in Cork 1919-1921,
Spellmount, 2011

(Articles by Meehan available at, http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan)