Rory O’Connor belongs to an unfortunate category of Irish republicans. Like the Manchester Martyrs, Kevin Barry and Bobby Sands, he is chiefly remembered for the way he died.
As every good Leaving Cert history student knows, the Dubliner and three other anti-Treaty IRA officers were shot without trial in Mountjoy jail on December 8th, 1922. Officially a warning to the new Free State’s enemies, it has more often been condemned as an act of revenge for the unrelated killing of a government TD.
Most disturbingly, O’Connor’s death was approved by home affairs minister Kevin O’Higgins barely a year after “the sublime Rory” (O’Higgins’ words) had been best man at his wedding – making their broken friendship a poignant symbol of Ireland’s Civil War divide.
Drawing on previously unpublished family documents, Gerard Shannon’s biography shows why O’Connor also deserves recognition for his turbulent life. It contains new information about his upper-middle-class childhood in Monkstown, suffering at the hands of a violent father and radicalisation by the Easter Rising leader Joseph Plunkett.
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A three-year period spent constructing Canadian railways was useful preparation for his role as the IRA’s director of engineering, teaching Volunteers how to make bombs and organising prison breaks.
Outraged by the Anglo-Irish Treaty’s compromises, O’Connor wanted its negotiating team arrested and even threatened a military dictatorship. He then led a dramatic but doomed occupation of Dublin’s Four Courts, precipitating Civil War and his own demise aged just 39.
While Shannon chronicles O’Connor’s activities in copious detail, it’s the shrewd analysis of his character that makes this a valuable contribution to the historical record. He emerges here as a sickly, brooding, drily humorous diehard, more comfortable at a chessboard than a GAA match (his final days in jail were spent carving sets and organising tournaments).
Much like Éamon de Valera, he fantasised about an Ireland full of “prosperous rural people”. Sadly, he lacked Dev’s political instincts and one IRA colleague claimed he “hadn’t the brains of a hen”. Shannon’s verdict is kinder, acknowledging O’Connor’s “dangerous, foolish and anti-democratic” rhetoric but praising his integrity and suggesting that even now a state apology for his illegal execution might be appropriate.
“Who are you?” was the pointed question from one journalist when O’Connor first became a public figure. This rigorous, authoritative and impeccably balanced portrait is the best answer we will ever have.
