As a direct consequence of the death of three National Army soldiers during a botched raid on the barracks in Headford on Sunday April 8 1923, six anti-Treaty young men, already in Galway jail, were selected for immediate execution. They had been arrested during a raid on their training camp in the Currandulla area six weeks earlier.
The six men were Frank Cunnane (Headford ), Martin Moylan (Annaghdown ), Sean Newell (Headford ), Michael Monaghan (Headford ), James O’Malley (Oughterard ), and Sean Maguire (Cross ). Sean was only 17 years of age. On Tuesday they were taken from Galway to the old workhouse in Tuam which was used as a military barracks. The following morning they were shot at 8am. In his final letter to his mother Frank Cunnane wrote that ’There may be some who think our line of action a hopeless and foolish one, but the voices of Pearse and Plunkett and those who died for the same cause in 1916 inspired me to follow in their footsteps…’ Relatives were not informed until after the executions.
At a time when the Civil War was coming to an end, the general reaction in Tuam was one of shock and sadness. Taken with the four young men from the Headford/Caherlistrane area, who were executed on January 20, added to the six young men shot two months later, must have left a feeling of anxiety and helplessness throughout the community. Not quite knowing how to react, the Tuam Town Commissioners, at their meeting on April 18, passed a resolution condemning both the attack on the Headford barracks by the anti-Treaty forces, and the execution of prisoners by the Free State.
‘Benevolent neutrality’
This resolution led to a strong rebuke from Galway TDs Patrick J Hogan and Pádraic Ó Máille. Ó Máille had accompanied Séan Hales TD who was assassinated in Dublin the previous December. Ó Máille, wounded but survived, was the intended victim.*
Hogan criticised Tuam Town Commissioners for adopting an attitude of ‘benevolent neutrality’, adding that negotiation was not an option between what he described as ‘anarchy and civilised government.’
In a letter to the Tuam Herald, Ó Máille laid the blame firmly at the feet of the anti-Treaty forces stating:
‘These men got ample opportunities recently of ceasing the struggle against their countrymen, but unfortunately they persisted in their mistaken course.
I deplore the loss of life as much as anyone, but I am sorry to say many valuable lives had to be sacrificed in order to save the country from destruction. You in Tuam, in common with the rest of the country, suffered a good deal at the hands of the Irregulars. Your railway and bridges were broken, and the business of the district almost brought to a standstill. There was not much consideration shown to you by those carrying out the work of destruction..’
‘Dump your weapons’
On the same day that the six men were shot in Tuam the national newspapers reported that Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the anti-Treaty forces, had been killed. It was only a matter of time before he was tracked down, or division among his staff would insist on a cease fire. The previous February at a meeting of his Southern Division Council, 16 of the 18 officers told him the military position was hopeless. Lynch was for fighting on.
Tom Barry, who opposed the Anglo Irish Treaty, and who was widely respected as a prominent guerrilla leader during the War of Independence, where he had led his Cork Brigade through a number of successful attacks at Kilmichael and Crossbarry, also called for an immediate end to hostilities. His argument was barely rejected by six votes to five.
On April 10 the National Army was seen approaching Lynch’s secret hideout in the Knockmealdown Mountains in Co Tipperary. Gathering up all his papers and documents he, and six of his men, tried to escape in the opposite direction. They almost ran into a further unit of the army which opened fire. Lynch was seriously wounded. He passed the papers to his next in command, Frank Aiken, who made his escape. When the soldiers arrived Lynch identified himself. He asked for a priest and a doctor. He was carried to a local pub, and from there to the hospital in Clonmel, where he died later that evening. **
Two weeks later Aiken ordered the anti-Treaty forces to dump their weapons, and go home.
Cost of the war
The ten month Civil War, though short, was bloody. There is no doubt that the executions and assassinations during the period left a poisonous legacy of bitterness. It cost the lives of many public figures, including Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, Arthur Griffith, Tom O’Higgins, Liam Mellows, and Liam Lynch. Both sides carried out brutal acts: the anti-Treaty forces killed a TD and several other pro-Treaty politicians, and Free State supporters; while the Government executed anti-Treaty prisoners, officially and unofficially.
Precise figures for the dead and wounded are still unknown. The pro-Treaty forces suffered between 800-1000 fatalities from all causes. It has been suggested that the anti-Treaty forces' death toll was higher. For total combatant and civilian deaths, a minimum of 1,500 and a maximum of 4,000 have been suggested
It is estimated that 199 country houses were destroyed during the same period. Some mansions were burnt in the fighting of the early months of the war in the belief that the enemy would use them as barracks; but the campaign against these homes, many of which contained great libraries and works of art, began in earnest in late 1922. The leadership of the anti-Treaty forces orchestrated a campaign of ‘Big House destruction’ across Ireland. Equally, the damage to local infrastructure was immense. Railway bridges were destroyed, roads were trenched or mined.
Peacefully settled
In time the anti-Treaty forces, under Éamon de Valera, would reinvent itself as Fianna Fáil; while the pro-Treaty adherents became Cumann na nGaedheal/ Fine Gael, under WT Cosgrove and Eoin O’ Duffy. Surprisingly, despite its ‘defeat’ in the Civil War, Fianna Fáil would dominate Irish political life for most of the 20th century.
In 1927 when Fianna Fáil candidates, led by De Valera, were first elected to the Dáil, they stunned the country by taking the Oath of Allegiance to the British king (part of the agreed Anglo-Irish Treaty ), effectively recognising the legitimacy of the Free State. The mere thought of taking the oath had so vexed De Valera that he refused to do so, a gesture which triggered a split in the Dáil, in December 1921, and a walk-out by De Valera and his supporters. Yet, after ten months of bitter Civil War, he claimed, when taking the Oath in 1927, that it was a ‘meaningless gesture’.
When elected as the Government in 1932, Fianna Fáil set about dismantling what they considered to be objectionable features of the treaty: abolishing the Oath of Allegiance, removing the power of the Office of Governor General (British representative in Ireland ), and abolishing the Senate, which was dominated by former Unionists and pro-Treaty Nationalists.
In 1937 Fianna Fáil passed a new constitution, which made a President the head of state, did not mention any allegiance to the British monarch; and which included a territorial claim to Northern Ireland. The following year, Britain, which would soon face the Second World War, where the Atlantic would become a battlefield, returned without conditions the seaports that it had kept under the terms of the Treaty.
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, this state was able to demonstrate its independence by remaining neutral throughout the war, although Dublin did tacitly support the Allies. Ironically in the same year De Valera enacted the Offences Against the State Act and the Emergency Powers Act under which five IRA activists were executed by hanging.
Finally, in 1948, a coalition Government, containing elements of both sides in the Civil War (pro-Treaty Fine Gael and anti-Treaty Fianna Fail, left the British Commonwealth and described the state as the Republic of Ireland.
By the 1950s, the issues over which the Civil War had been fought were largely peacefully settled. The question has to be asked: what did the Civil War achieve?.
NOTES: * As a result of the killing of Hales and the wounding of Ó Máille, the Provisional Government ordered the execution of the four anti-Treaty leaders who were captured at the collapse of the Four Courts garrison in June 1922. One of the four was Ó Máille’s comrade-in-arms Liam Mellows, who had led the Easter Rising in Galway. Ó Máille was horrified at the death of his friend, and disapproved of the Government’s action. It was rumoured that Ó Máille had personally asked that Mellows be shot.
He wrote to the Mellows’ family, and received the following reply from Mrs Sarah Mellows and Barney Mellows, the mother and brother of Liam: ‘We know full well that you had neither hand, act or part in planning or being a party to the executions, if so they may be called, of December 8 1922. We wish that once and for all, idle and slanderous tongues may be stopped and to assure you we feel very sorry that you have suffered so much.’
Some years later Ó Máille met and spoke to one of his attackers. He told the man he felt no animosity towards him and understood he was only carrying out orders.
** At first the army thought it had shot Éamon de Valera, as they described the wounded man as ‘tall, thin, wearing glasses’. Lynch was buried beside his friend Michael Fitzgerald (who died on hunger strike ) in Kilcrumper cemetery, Fermoy, Co Cork. In 1935 a large monument, consisting of a Round Tower, guarded by four bronze wolfhounds, was erected at Goatenbridge, Co Tipperary, near the site of his capture. Historian Meda Ryan has suggested that Lynch may have been shot by one of his own men in order to remove the major stumbling block to surrender.
Sources this week include Troubled Times - War and Rebellion in North Galway 1913-1923, by Jarlath Deignan, Frank Fahy - Revolutionary and Public Servant, by Michael Fahy, Civil War in Connacht by Nollaig Ó Gadhra, War of Friends exhibition at Galway City Museum, Beyond The Twelve Bens- A history of Clifden and Connemara by Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill, and Marion Nikolakos, Galway Library Services.
