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The Dunmanway massacre 100 years on: Informers, reprisals and leadership out of control

Historian Andy Bielenberg on a notorious episode in the Irish Revolution

Herbert Woods, centre, shot dead an IRA man, Micheal O’Neill, who had broken into his relatives’ home, Ballygroman House in April 1922. Wood and two relatives were killed in revenge and 10 more local Protestants were also shot dead.

Andy Bielenberg
Fri Apr 15 2022 - 07:00

British military forces were in the process of withdrawing from the south of Ireland by April 1922, in the latter stages of the truce. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) had by then been disbanded in west Cork and British army units were being withdrawn.

The Essex regiment had already departed, including the detachment at Bandon, and the last British soldiers would leave Ballincollig Barracks a few weeks later on May 17th. The newly established provisional government had no authority in the area. Anti-treaty IRA units and Irish Republican Police occupied various barracks across west Cork.

While there had been a significant decline in violence since the Truce, compared to the extreme violence which convulsed Co Cork during the final year of the War of Independence, there was still much uncertainty about the political future, not least in the maintenance of law and order.

When four members of the IRA from Bandon Barracks, led by Acting Commandant Micheal O’Neill, knocked at the door of Ballygroman House near Ovens at 2.30am on April 26th, 1922, the Hornibrooks were understandably reluctant to open up. The most likely reason for this visit was to commandeer a motor car. Since further demands to open the door were ignored the leader of the group entered an open window and moved into the darkness of the house with an electric torch. He was then shot by one of the denizens and his comrades carried him back outside where he died shortly after.

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O’Neill was the first IRA volunteer killed in west Cork since the Truce began on July 11th, 1921. The IRA party quickly summoned reinforcements and laid siege to the house until the occupants surrendered later that morning. Thomas Hornibrook, his son Samuel and a relative, Herbert Woods, who had fired the fatal shot, were seized by the IRA, held in captivity and subsequently shot and buried in a bog at Farranthomas near Newcestown. The house at Ballygroman was subsequently burned out by the IRA and the land was seized as one of the so-called “spy farms” in west Cork, where the anti-treaty IRA took control of more farms and land transfers of loyalists than elsewhere.

The dire fate of the Hornibrooks was later attributed by intelligence in the Cork Command of the National Army to straight revenge for the killing of Michael O’Neill, but matters did not rest there. A spate of killings took place in the following nights when 10 more Protestants were shot dead. After 12.15am on April 27th, three fatal attacks took place in the town of Dunmanway where retired draper James Buttimer, chemist David Grey and solicitor and land agent Francis Fitzmaurice were shot dead.

Other households attacked provided survivor testimonies, which indicated that at least 10armed persons were involved in the violence and local IRA men were recognised among them. The testimony from a widow of one of the victims also indicated they were anti-treaty IRA.

Evidence in compensation claims applications suggests that a number of those targeted in Dunmanway appear to have been on friendly terms with crown forces during the War of Independence period. Moreover, some had declared their support for the provisional government, but this only further alienated them from the anti-treaty IRA in the area.

More Protestant households were fatally attacked the following night in the vicinity of Ballineen/Enniskean, when Robert Howe, John Chinnery, Alexander McKinley, John Buttimer and James Greenfield were all fatally shot. In Clonakilty, young Robert Nagle was also shot dead. His father Thomas appears to have been the primary target (he was listed as a suspected informer in 1921) but he survived by hiding behind a cupboard. Some days later on April 29th, John Bradfield, an elderly farmer, was shot dead at 11pm at Killowen, though his brother William appears to have been the original target. William had escaped and fled to England. He stated in a compensation claim that “the attack was made on the suspicion that the claimants were spies for the British government”, though he does not claim to have provided such assistance.

The compensation claims made to the Irish Grants Committee in the greater Ballineen-Enniskean district do not imply that those shot had assisted crown forces with information. But it is clear from recently released IRA pension evidence, for this district, that the victims fatally targeted in late April 1922 were under observation and strongly suspected by the local IRA. A number of them had certainly been visited by the Dunmanway auxiliaries in 1920-21, but this in itself was hardly incriminating, even if they dealt with them as a matter of tact.

Moreover, farm labourer James Greenfield was an unlikely informer. Although other households in the districts with the names Howe and Buttimer had evidently provided some information, according to an auxiliary intelligence diary picked up by the IRA from the Dunmanway workhouse shortly after the auxiliaries left early in 1922, no evidence has yet emerged that Howe or Buttimer were informing. Although young McKinley, originally from Belfast, had close family associations with the RIC, no evidence of his involvement in informing has yet emerged either. A clergyman, Ralph Harbord, was also shot and badly wounded at Murragh, though he was certainly not informing (his brother being the target). Other households were also attacked in the area and a number managed to escape, suggesting that it was intended to kill additional victims while others were threatened and went into exile.

At the time, many within the IRA leadership cadre on both sides of the treaty divide immediately spoke out, condemning the sectarian implications of these attacks, including de Valera and Childers. A stern local directive issued by Brigade Commandant Tom Hales, that no soldier was to interfere with any person and that he would protect all citizens “regardless of creed or class”, revealed that, firstly, he too had discerned a sectarian dimension in these attacks. And secondly, that the anti-treaty IRA leadership in west Cork had lost control.

This warning did not prevent the final attack on April 29th against John Bradfield whose inquest was held at Killowen. Since this was close to Bandon, District Inspector Daniel O’Neill, Irish Republican Police (the brother of Michael) was present and stated that “in the first place he wished on behalf of the police of the district, to express his sincere sympathy with the relatives of the deceased. He wished to condemn this murder, or at least cowardly outrage, and to add that regardless of class or creed, the police would do their utmost to stamp out these crimes.”

O’Neill was indicating that he was fully supporting Hales’ leadership in this matter and he did not view these killings as legitimate revenge for his brother’s death – which raises some questions about his subsequent identification by senior Free State intelligence sources subsequently as one of the perpetrators. He was identified nonetheless by the Morning Post as among the reinforcements who subsequently arrived at Ballygroman, where he was alleged to have injured Woods’ face with a rifle butt.

The only IRA witness statement to mention the Dunmanway massacre, on the other hand, denied it had any sectarian features, but the witness having been stationed in west Cork prior to these events may well have reflected the views of the perpetrators. Yet, Denis Lordan of Kilbrittain, in describing the massacre stated explicitly that “our fellows took it out on the Protestants”.

Yet given that a majority of the spies and informers shot by the Cork IRA between 1920 and 1922 were Catholics, it is not plausible to suggest that military expediency was the sole cause. While some of those killed appear to have been assisting crown forces in the War of Independence, others were clearly not. Crucially, a truce was in progress, which should have protected all. The selection of targets was characteristic of a sectarian reprisal for the killing of O’Neill. In several episodes, victims other than the intended target were shot.

Although Catholic suspects were among those killed by the IRA in the War of Independence, none were killed in these attacks. In the context of the Truce, and micro-historical dynamics of war and revolution in Co Cork, these killings were the exception to the rule, in terms of scale, ferocity and sectarian targeting.

Local anti-treaty IRA units based in Dunmanway, Ballineen-Enniskean and Clonakilty were hardly entirely oblivious to these attacks. In the area where the greater number of these killings were carried out, there is some evidence of a belief that Protestants had been involved in some kind of anti-independence movement. Testimony from the West Cork Brigade leadership suggests that this opposition had been eliminated in 1921. In the greater Ballineen-Enniskean area, in contrast, such a belief was still explicitly expressed in the IRA Brigade activity reports. Some local military pension claims also state that some members of such a movement only later came to light and the killings in April 1922 focused on them.

The so-called anti-Sinn Fein movement appears to have largely been orchestrated by crown forces as part of its counter-insurgency strategy during the War of Independence. The full extent of civilian involvement is difficult to ascertain but it is clear that crown force intelligence in west Cork did tap loyalist civilian sources more successfully than elsewhere in 1920-21.

The final household targeted in late April 1922, when the entirely innocent John Bradfield was shot, brought things back to pre-truce enmities. Two related members of this family had been fatally attacked early in 1921 and their farms subsequently confiscated as spy farms, when they were suspected of passing on information to the British.

The killing of Thomas Bradfield of Knockmacool House, Desertserges early in 1921 by the IRA elicited a reprisal in a matter of weeks, when a gang comprising two dozen or more picked up the Coffey brothers who were shot in a field close to their house. On a piece of tin near one body was written “vice Bradfield. Anti-Sinn Fein”. On the other body was written “convicted of murder”.

These counter-insurgency killings created a belief within the IRA in the locality that a network of Protestant civilians was working against them. This left suspected families highly exposed to violence when crown forces withdrew from west Cork in 1922, regardless of whether they were actual informers, or not.

Andy Bielenberg lectures in history at University College Cork. His books include An Economic History of Ireland since Independence.