RTE's `Civil War' distortion of history

RTE's programme on the Civil War, The Madness From Within, billed as marking its 75th anniversary, was so unbalanced and distorted that it is difficult to know where to begin. It also included several important factual mistakes that even an elementary familiarity with the period would have avoided.

Among these were that the Irish Treaty "delegation" was "led by Michael Collins" (it was Arthur Griffith); that Griffith was the "leader" of the provisional government (Collins was chairman of the provisional government; Griffith was not even a member); that the provisional government was "elected by the people" (it was appointed without an election by the pro-Treaty members of Dail Eireann after the vote on the Treaty); that Rory O'Connor was "commander-in-chief" of the anti-Treaty forces (he was director of engineering; Liam Lynch was chief-of-staff of the Executive forces); that Collins was successful in having a "republican" constitution for the Irish Free State adopted (it was rejected by the British), and so on.

The view laboured throughout this programme was that pro-Treaty Sinn Fein (led by Michael Collins) was pragmatic (therefore, right), and that anti-Treaty Sinn Fein (led by Eamon de Valera) conducted a campaign of "murder and sabotage" against it. That is about as unbalanced and as far from the truth as it is possible to get. In fact, Sinn Fein was a political party with Dail Eireann as its (single-party) government. While Sinn Fein members and supporters remained neutral and certainly fought on both sides in the Civil War, Sinn Fein itself was not involved.

The war was fought between the (rapidly recruited) forces of the proTreaty provisional government (later of the Free State government), and the anti-Treaty volunteer army (IRA, an old name revived during the War of Independence), which had its own executive, temporarily placed under the authority of the Dail. Sinn Fein encompassed diverse political views, from left to right, united in the superior purpose of national self-determination. Clearly a compromise treaty such as that signed could not meet the aspirations of all these diverse elements, and of the army. Any settlement from London must have had some opposition. The unfulfilled hope of both Collins and de Valera, who saw themselves as leaders in a multi-party Dail, was that this would be constitutional.

The essential issues under the Treaty were that the Republic was to be disestablished and replaced by the Irish Free State; and that this involved an oath of allegiance to the British monarch. Although the former was disputed, it was the latter issue of the oath which was the critical one. Collins himself maintained that he had more sympathy with the anti-Treaty side than with his pro-Treaty supporters, and that support for him would mean a republic "within two years".

The malicious and wildly inaccurate demonisation of de Valera - in almost inverse ratio to the trivialisation of Collins - in recent years, was continued in the RTE programme - one contributor going so far as to contend that Dev was "obscene" and was responsible for the Civil War.

The war began on June 28th, 1921, when provisional government troops attacked the army Executive in the Four Courts. It ended in May 1923 with the defeat of the Executive forces.

De Valera had neither power nor authority over the Executive forces, the leadership of which - from the outset - ignored his persistent attempts to end hostilities. When he sought to persuade the pro-Treaty authorities to convene the coalition Dail agreed between Collins and himself, he was rebuffed by them too.

That agreement was the Collins/de Valera pact, initiated by Collins, to achieve what de Valera called "a definite constitutional way of resolving" the differences in Sinn Fein. The pact envisaged a panel from both sides going before the electorate on June 16th to return a coalition republican Dail. The British, wishing to destroy republicanism but unable to do so themselves, claimed that this pact violated the Treaty. When Collins drafted a Free State constitution republican in tone, the British rejected that too. They decided to break the pact by strict enforcement of their own interpretation of the Treaty and by attacking the Four Courts. Collins, defending the pact, said that only enemies of Ireland were displeased with it. But he was persuaded and two days before the election, rejected it.

On June 22nd, Sir Henry Wilson, the bigoted anti-Irish former Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was shot dead in London (on old orders of Collins), providing the British with a casus belli. They still had considerable forces in Ireland and ordered their GOC in Dublin to attack the Four Courts, changed their minds at the last moment and pressurised Collins to do so instead. He at first resisted, but the attack began on June 28th. Although pro- and anti-Treaty elements had confronted each other before, there was no widespread outbreak of hostilities until then.

Since there had been a serious breach between the anti-Treaty forces in the Four Courts and those in the Clarence Hotel, it is probable that Collins reasoned that he had only a small garrison to deal with, and that this might be done with little, if any, loss of life. What he evidently did not know was that the breach had been healed mere hours before the attack so that he faced, in fact, some 80,000.

Astonishingly, The Madness From Within made no reference to the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood). Founded in 1856, this organisation constituted itself the acting government of the Republic of Ireland until such time as the people elected a government of their own. In 1919 it accepted the authority of the Dail, but never rescinded a second decision that its chairman, or head centre, would be President of the Republic.

The head centre in 1921 was Michael Collins. And, throughout his career, Collins consistently used the IRB as his power base.

The provisional government - with neither mandate nor legislature - at the behest of the British attacked the army Executive in the Four Courts. On the other hand, the Executive prolonged the war beyond any reasonable justification.

The main questions are: why was there a Civil War? Who began it? Who fought it? Why did it last so long? What were the respective roles of the leadership on either side? What were their intentions, and what was the role of the British?

Regrettably, none of these issues was adequately, or at all, dealt with in this bowdlerised presentation.

Eoin Neeson is the author of The Civil War, 1922-23. His forthcoming work, Birth of a Republic, a history of the republican movement, particularly from 1900 to 1923, will be published this year.