'A Few, But Not Many'
Barry Keane’s Massacre in West Cork
Barry Keane in his response to my review of his book Massacre in West Cork in the Dublin
Review of Books of April 2014 claims that my review contains ‘many errors’.[1]
However, he has ‘too much respect for the people living on our island’ to list
them all, which is one way of suggesting something without producing any
evidence to support it. He is implying however that I am guilty of multiple wrongs so
it is important that I respond to the ‘errors’ he does present.
Central to his thesis is the claim that Major Percival, commander of the Essex Regiment in West Cork, stated that ‘local loyalists provided him with most of his
information’. In the book he uses this as a starting point to build up a
picture of large-scale collusion between West Cork Protestants and Crown forces
during the War of Independence. He states that Percival had a map on his wall
on which he pinned the names and locations of the homes of the loyalists who
were helping him. This would of course, if it were correct, suggest that
Percival’s area was indeed over-run with loyalist informants. So it is
necessary to look at what Percival actually said before drawing conclusions
from it.
In a section called ‘The Inhabitants of the Country’
Percival, who was ‘trying to establish the political sympathies of every civilian’
writes: ‘I found the best way to do this was to keep a large six-inch map on the
wall of my office. On the map every farm and detached house is marked and, as
we got information, I filled in the name of the occupier of each farm or house.
I also kept in a book a note of the political sympathies of these occupiers. I
was therefore able, before any officer went out on a raid, to give him all the
available information as to whom he was likely to find in each house.’[2]
Clearly, what this says is that all the houses in his area – many of which were
hostile since they were liable to be raided – were marked on his map and this
was his way of collating intelligence information. It is hard to see from this
how anyone could turn it around to mean that this was a wall map consisting of
loyalist informers’ homes.
As regards Protestants in his area, Percival divides them
into the Ascendancy class whom he terms the ‘Old Landlords’, who ‘had English
sympathy but avoided active participation’, and ‘the Protestant element’ namely
‘large farmers and shopkeepers . . . A few, but not many, were prepared to
assist Crown Forces with information.’ The important words here are ‘a few, but
not many’, a detail which Keane neglects to tell us. While it is true that Percival stated that he had to visit these at night,
it is equally clear from his account that he was lamenting the paucity of
information and help he was getting from Protestants, rather than the other way
around. Even in the one clear-cut example of collusion that Keane presents,
that of Tom Bradfield, he quotes Denis Lordan who in turn quotes Bradfield as
saying ‘I’m not like the rest of them around here at all’ before going on to
admit that he was passing on information.[3]
Obviously ‘the rest of them’ were not doing this. As another informant in the city put it: 'I wasn't like the spineless so-called "loyalists" there.'
Nobody who knows anything about the War of Independence in
West Cork will deny that there were Protestants in the area who gave
information to British forces during the conflict, the ‘few, but not many’,
mostly farmers, and that they paid dearly for it, just as I am sure there were
‘a few, but not many’ Catholics who gave similar information. But there is no evidence of a large-scale conspiracy nor is
there real evidence to link these farmers with those murdered in April 1922.
In his letter Keane also claims that whether or not an
actual Anti-Sinn Fein League existed (as a cover for some counter-revolutionary
organization among Protestants) does not matter. He says that this point is
irrelevant. If that’s the case then why did he spend a significant amount of
his book claiming that it did exist while ignoring the reams of evidence that
it was a name used by undercover RIC and military death squads? Funnily enough,
he states in his letter that ‘in early 1921 the RIC Commissioner at Bandon
stated that local loyalists were providing information and that some had been
shot as a result. I don’t remember noticing that in his book. I’m sure he will
be kind enough to fill us all in on that one since I seem to have missed it.
Indeed I would be eager to get my hands on such a valuable piece of
information.
Keane claims I engage in what he calls ‘bizarre speculation’
about his motives. Yet among the many extraordinary, some might say bizarre,
statements Keane himself makes for a widespread loyalist conspiracy is that
‘many West Cork loyalists were English born and viewed a war against their
fellow countrymen with disbelief and horror. To succeed, the IRA had to
neutralize this group.’[4]
His evidence for this comes from the 1911 census which states that, of the 641
Protestants living in Bandon in 1911, some 46 were English-born. (There were
also 19 English-born military.) Forty-six persons (or 7%), at least some of
whom were bound to have been children in West Cork’s most populous town is
hardly enough to constitute ‘many’. Nor is it bizarre speculation on my part to point
out that an extrapolation from Percival’s ‘a few, but not many’ to a widespread
loyalist conspiracy has little evidence to back it up. In fact, the opposite
may be the case. As Major (later Field Marshall) B.L. Montgomery who was
stationed in the city from late 1920 put it: ‘We were not brought into such
close contact with loyalists as you were and the result was I think that we did
not appreciate their suffering to the same extent … I think I regarded all
civilians as ‘Shinners’ and I never had any dealings with any of them.’ So much
for a cabal of loyalist spies helping out the military in the city.
His other point is that I ‘snidely suggest’ that he
contributes to the partisan Wikipedia webpages devoted to the massacre. I never
for a moment suggested that Barry Keane would even dream of contributing to these
pages which are not just partisan but are so full of distortion that they
amount to little more than a pack of lies. But the Anti-Sinn Fein League as a
supposed cabal of loyal Protestant civilians and which Mr Keane trumpets has
long played a starring role in these web pages and this may still be the case
for all I know. (I gave up looking up these years ago since they consisted of
little more than bigoted propaganda.) It is legitimate to be concerned that
Keane’s work might be used to feed such distortion and I felt it was important
to point this out. I also thinks that this frames the contemporary debate in
its broader context, given that the internet is where most of these issues are discussed. Having said all that, I felt on balance that I gave enough
praise to Keane’s book that the charges he levels at me seem a little over the
top. I just think data should be presented as it is, rather than the way we
would like it to be. So, 'many errors'?. I think not. This is surely a case of the kettle calling the pot black.
[1]
See my review, DRB, Issue 53, 7 April 2014, and Keane’s reply DRB Issue 55, 5
May 2014.
[2]
This is reproduced in William Sheehan’s excellent British Voices from the Irish War of Independence, (Cork 2005),
from which the subsequent quotations are also taken.
[3] Massacre in West Cork, p86.The second quotation is from James McDougall, CO762/112.
[4] Massacre in West Cork, p57.
