Peter Hart Digs A Bigger Hole

by Bookworm Fri Aug 05, 2005 18:01

Yeah. I was browsing in a well-known bookshop and came across that issue of History Ireland. I thought his article was weak and relied too much on attacking his opponents rather than presenting any new evidence. So I did not bother to buy it. Surely they owe it to their readers to publish articles of a higher standard than that.

by Deirdre Clancy Sat Aug 06, 2005 13:59

I wasn't familiar with Hart until the controversy arose, and then read the History Ireland material on both sides of the debate. I have to say I was stunned that Hart didn't address how he was supposed to have interviewed dead people - it's a very basic question. Or, if they happened to be exceptionally long-lived, I'm stunned as to how he feels he can get away with not naming them. It's a journalist's privilege not to name their sources under certain circumstances - but not a historian's. I'm also stunned that more mainstream historians aren't challenging Hart publicly, and that Jack Lane seems to be doing their job for them. I admire the tenacity.

Well done also on refuting those bizarre letters by Pierce Martin in Village, with his spurious underhanded criticisms of my grandfather...

by Fintan Lane Sat Aug 06, 2005 15:11

Peter Hart's response to his critics in History Ireland wasn't great - too curt and off-hand for my liking - and his unwillingness to name his interviewees is more than a mite disappointing. When historians fail to cite their sources, we are truly dealing with faith-based historiography and that is not a good thing. I, for one, do not understand Dr Hart's stance regarding the interviews.

That said, there are a number of distinct matters at issue. Some of his critics, in my opinion, go too far when commenting on his treatment of the massacre of 13 Protestants in the Bandon/Dunmanway area. This event arose from the killing of a local IRA man, and as a result of developments in Belfast, and it was NOT a coincidence that all those killed were Protestants. There were Catholic loyalists in west Cork also, but they didn't suffer during this particular revenge attack. Yes, Hart ignored a very important remark in British intelligence documents on informers among the Protestant loyalist community in the Bandon area, but the existence of informers doesn't explain the sustained killings that occurred.

Hopefully, Hart will reply to his critics in a more comprehensive manner at some stage. His piece in History Ireland certainly won't quell the critics, and in some ways added fuel to the fire - the analogy he drew, for instance, between IRA actions in Ireland and US actions in Iraq was less than convincing. US troops are currently engaged in an imperialist occupation; the IRA was engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle against the might of the British Empire.

I suspect the debate will go on.

by Fintan Lane Sat Aug 06, 2005 15:20

I should have said that the existence of informers doesn't FULLY explain the sustained attack on Protestant loyalists in west Cork. Obviously, the existence of informers (not unusual among people who saw themelves as British and, hence, were acting patriotically by their own standards) was a factor in that it increased republican antipathy to the Protestant loyalist community, but the presence of such informers was long-known. This particular massacre arose from specific events and cannot be seen other than as an attack on the Protestant loyalist community.

by Jack Lane - Aubane Historical Society Sat Aug 06, 2005 15:31 jacklaneaubane at hotmail dot com

Re Fintan's point about Catholics not being executed in that episode in Dunmanway: the fact is that there were no Catholics on that list and more Catholics had been been 'officially' executed as informers than Protestants. Barry and Meda Ryan give the exact numbers. My understanding is that Catholic informers were much more despised that Protestant ones and therefore even more likely to suffer for it than Protestants.
I should say, by the way, that a few typos and missing inverted commas have crept into my earlier piece.

Jack Lane

by R. Isible Sat Aug 06, 2005 20:49

I'm afraid that I don't have anything concrete to add. Just admiration and applause for the quality of this writing. I especially like this:

"Anyone who has listened to some local accounts of ambushes will know that they were really massive affairs and the only wonder is why the IRA did not use the occasions for fundraising by selling tickets for the events."

by Niall Meehan Sun Aug 07, 2005 00:23

The letters Peter Hart is (not) replying to are at:

www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/13.3FeatB.html

April Killings

I refer Fintan Lane to the discussion on the Indymedia piece “Playing handball against a haystack” (referred to in the archive of coverage of this issue above) and also to the “What is the dispute…summary” also linked in the archive.

Meda Ryan’s ‘Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter’ (Mercier 2003) contains most detail on the circumstances surrounding the April 1922 killings of loyalists. Her book is due to be republished in paperback with additional information in September.

The main point is that those shot in April 1922 were all on the Dunmanway Workhouse Auxiliary list of informers (or “helpful citizens” as they were termed) and that there was an organisation on a sectarian basis of paramilitary loyalism in the area. British forces encouraged it. Peter Hart tries (vainly) to make it appear as though the IRA was a mirror image of sectarian loyalism in the north of Ireland. He denied the documentary evidence of the existence of paramilitary loyalism at every opportunity in order to give unwarranted consistency to his view that Protestants in general were targets. It is another of his failings.

I have been reading new evidence on the existence of this unique, to the south, body of organised loyalism. As in virtually every other important matter that Peter Hart touches on, when the detail is examined the argument falls apart.

Hart’s view that Protestants in general were seen as “the enemy” is, as far as I am concerned thoroughly discredited at this stage.

The audio of the April 2005 Brian Murphy meeting (again, see link in archive above) contains extensive information on this subject. Murphy points out the existence of an extensive body of Protestant support for the national struggle, despite British attempts to suppress it and Peter Hart’s attempt to ignore it. Incidentally the Murphy audio also contains a Q&A with Jim Lane (Fintan’s father I believe) on the April killings – after which Jim Lane says to Brian Murphy “I accept what you are saying.”

(Non) reply

I too found Hart’s (non) reply exceptionally disappointing – a lot of verbiage and very little substance. It is summed up in the phrase that Jack Lane picks out: “…what was happening in Ireland was not a war”. With Peter Hart black is white and two plus two makes five.

I look forward to the next issue of History Ireland. I am sending a letter in which I will pose concisely for Peter Hart, as helpfully as I can in the circumstances, the questions he has not answered.

by John Sun Aug 07, 2005 02:16

April 1922 (when the Protestants were killed) was after the War of Independence, wasn't it? I mean, the Truce was in place. What possible threat did informers or spies pose at that stage? Am I missing something?

by R. Isible Sun Aug 07, 2005 04:26

It says "that there was an organisation on a sectarian basis of paramilitary loyalism in the area. British forces encouraged it."

so I'd imagine the thinking was that these were:
1) people that were a core of paramilitary loyalism and hence a direct threat to the free state
2) there was direct revenge against people that had acted as informers

Those taken either singly or together do not form the basis for arguing that the killings of the 13 people were done on the basis of sectarianism. In order to show sectarianism you'd have to show that the killing occured solely because of the religion of the killed.

by Niall Meehan Sun Aug 07, 2005 10:17

The comments from ‘John’ and ‘R.Isible’ make points which I would like to try and answer.

John makes a good point and one I did not clarify. I have done so in earlier Indymedia pieces. See the critique of Hart History Ireland interview, plus ‘Playing Handball Against a haystack’ (plus commentary on this point), and in the debate summary ‘What is the debate …” (all referred to I the archive link at the base of jack Lane’s piece above). ‘R.Isible’ does refer to my earlier comment here, but possibly more detail is required.

Local Revenge?

John is right that the killings took place after the Truce and after the IRA had declared an amnesty for spies and informers. Fintan lane is also correct above to state that the killings took place after the shooting dead of an IRA volunteer Michael O’Neill on Wednesday 26 April by three loyalists who were named on the Auxiliary list of loyalist informers (that the Auxiliaries had left behind inadvertently, after evacuating their barracks in Dunmanway Workhouse). These three loyalists were the first victims of the April killings. They were Magistrate Major Thomas Hornibrook, his son Thomas and ex British Army officer Captain Herbert Woods.

The remainder of the killings took place on April 27 and 28 1922. It is therefore reasonable to speculate that the killings were in revenge locally for the death of O’Neill. All the victims were from the list of loyalist informers – with two exceptions. The son and brother of two informers were shot, the reason being in their case alone that the list supplied only surnames and not first names.

Real Sectarianism

Undoubtedly there was a breakdown on discipline in republican ranks. It was exceptional and it was not sectarian (as I have tried to explain in an earlier piece). This was at a time when Roman Catholic nationalists were being slaughtered wholesale in the North of Ireland in a real spate of sectarian killings, house burnings and workplace expulsions (also targeted at trade unionists protesting at these fascist type measures) affecting thousands. Republican discipline held in the south in the face of this massive provocation. The fact that there was not a similar spate of events in the South is testament to the fact that relations between the two religious communities have always been far more benign where nationalists were in the majority. This has something to do with the more democratic and non-sectarian nature of Irish republicanism (as distinct form unionism) historically.

Protestants reject British sectarian label

It is important to point out that Protestants in the South, even after the April killings (before it became known that those shot were on a list of loyalist informers – revealed by Meda Ryan in 2003 in ‘Tom Barry: IRA freedom Fighter’), expressed publicly they view that they were not under threat from their neighbours. In fact some publicly suggested that they were more under threat from the measures taken by British forces (Black & Tans, RIC, etc) than they were from the ‘Sinn Feiners’ - see Brian Murphy audio on this point. Even the British had to admit that their attempts to stir up sectarian feeling in the south, to depict the battle as one between two sectarian groups (in a classic ‘divide and rule’ strategy) largely failed. It succeeded where there were large concentrations of pro British elements, in the northern counties where a sectarian state was set up and failed spectacularly some years later (we are still dealing with the aftermath), and partially where local conditions had created the seedbed of loyalist sectarianism in the area surrounding Bandon (known locally as ‘the Londonderry of the South’).

Republican condemnation and defence

The IRA condemned the shootings immediately (the first to do so was the Belfast Brigade), both sides in the pre-Civil War Dail united to do so also. Local Sinn Fein Councils also did likewise without hesitation.

The IRA set out to stamp out the killings. One of the effective measures taken was to place IRA guards on the houses of remaining list members and of other loyalists. Tom Barry, who had been in Dublin in negotiations attempting to prevent Civil War, returned to Cork and helped set up these defensive measures (Meda Ryan’s book has interviews with some of those doing the guarding). Barry said that the war was over and that the loyalists were their neighbours, with whom they should now live in peace. Manus O'Riordan has detailed how Barry put the run on some who attempted to take advantage by stealing cattle belonging to local Protestant farmers. Barry was never slow to identify prejudice in Roman Catholics, in fact as quickly as he could spot it among loyalists. They point is that sectarian prejudice was overtly characteristic of loyalist unionism, not generally of republicanism. The facts bear out the validity of this generalisation.

Hart links Kilmichael Ambush and Dunmanway Killings

None of this is detailed in Peter Hart’s book (Hart seems to have a complete inability to find any positive qualities whatever in Tom Barry, most peculiar on some levels). Hart ignores pertinent evidence (possibly because of deficiencies in his research, definitely because of censorship of important evidence). Hart conjoins the Kilmichael ambush of November 1920 during the War of Independence and the Post Truce killings of April 1922. He wrote of the April killings: “they were as much a part of the reality of violence as the killings at Kilmichael. The patterns of perception and victimization they reveal are of a piece with the whole revolution”.

Hart’s misuse of the evidence in the British ‘Record of the rebellion’ arises in this context. He quotes the Record to say the British admitted that they did not get information from Protestants because “they did not have it to give”. Hart left out the next sentence, which clearly explained that the exception was in the Bandon area, where there was active informing that the IRA successfully identified and dealt with.

In short that is one of the reasons why there is sometimes a tendency to not detail the distinction between the War of Independence and Truce periods. The confusion arises initially I think with Peter Hart’s confused description and conjunction of unrelated events, and the attempt to answer him.

Sorry if I have gone on too long. Hope that clarifies matters.

by Kevin Mannerings Fri Aug 12, 2005 13:49 kevin.mannerings at vr-web dot de 0049 1747409041

Like Deirdre Clancy, I am not familiar with the detail of this controversy. She is right to note that Peter Hart stands accused of failing to reply to the accusation, that he claims to have interviewed dead soldiers. She wonders why mainstream historians are not challenging Hart to produce the interview notes. In contrast to Deirdre, I am not surprised at this. In my view academic historians do not appear bound by any standards worthy of the name. For my part, I have followed two controversies involving forgery for some time, the Zinoviev letter and the Casement diaries.

It is a source of endless entertainment ot me that professors of history have been prepared to tell the world that the Zinoviev letter was genuine. None of them has ever seen the document. Only one person has ever claimed to: Madame Belgarde said she was present at the forging of the document in Berlin in 1924.

In the same manner, a committee of academics organised from Goldsmiths College, London claim to have done exhaustive forensic reseach on Casement's diaries. Both before and after they did their work, I pointed out to them that there is obvious evidence of bleaching and interpolation in Casement's January 1911 diary. Like Peter Hart, they are not prepared to put their evidence in the public domain. We still have not seen the results of any video spectral analysis done on the Casement diaries, nor do we know exactly which handwritten words were compared with which.

This is not history, it is codology. They get the money for research, but they don't deliver the goods. It is a farce that those of us on the fringe are left the task of sorting this out.

by David Leeson - Laurentian University Thu Sep 08, 2005 00:03 cliodule at hotmail dot com

I am new to this debate, but I would like to make a couple of points in Peter Hart's defence.

First, I have heard and read a number of accusations about bias. At best, it seems, Hart is being accused of being misled by wartime British propaganda. At worst, he is being accused of having a pro-British and Unionist agenda.

I suppose it is possible that Hart has been misled, but speaking from personal experience, I do not believe for a moment that he harbours any kind of anti-Irish or anti-nationalist agenda. In 2003, I published an article in the _Canadian Journal of History_ on the Croke Park Massacre of 21 November 1920. Parts of this article were based on the same documents which Brian Murphy has been examining in his research on British propaganda. In my work, among other things, I was able to expose the British government's attempts to cover up the massacre and misrepresent it as a battle between the police and the IRA.

Peter Hart was one of this article's peer reviewers, and he recommended my work for publication: in fact, he praised it highly. As a result, I find it difficult to reconcile accusations of pro-British bias with my own experience. If Hart has some secret anti-nationalist agenda, he could have easily furthered this agenda by giving my article a poor review and preventing (or at least delaying) its publication. Instead, he recommended it for the CJH's annual graduate student essay prize! I am not yet convinced that the views he expressed in _The IRA and Its Enemies_ are mistaken, but I am convinced of this: if he has made mistakes, they were honest mistakes.

One reason I am not yet convinced that Hart is mistaken concerns the captured 1920 report to which his work refers. Meda Ryan and Brian Murphy have suggested this report is not genuine. I have not yet had a chance to read anything more than their letters and public statements on this subject, but I have not yet seen them address one point that seems important to me.

The report in question was reproduced in a printed document preserved in the Strickland Papers at the Imperial War Museum, entitled _The Irish Republican Army (From Captured Documents Only)_. I have read this document myself: it was an official War Office publication intended to help British Army officers understand the IRA's tactics and strategy; besides the report on the Kilmichael ambush, it also includes, for example, a captured report on a street battle between Auxiliaries and the men of the Dublin Brigade on 14 March 1921, which I found very useful for my own research.

If this captured report on the Kilmichael ambush was a product of Basil Clarke's Dublin Castle propaganda machine, as Brian Murphy and Meda Ryan seem to be suggesting, then why was it reproduced in what was essentially a training manual? I can understand, for example, why the British government would try to disinform the public in the wake of the Croke Park massacre. But why would they disinform their own soldiers, by providing them with bogus enemy documents to study?

I have noted with some interest that Peter Hart asked this very question in his exchange with Brian Murphy and Meda Ryan in the Irish Times in 1998: "why would the British army forge a document which does not agree with its version of events, and then keep it secret except to mislead its own officers as to IRA methods?" In my opinion, neither Murphy nor Ryan gave a satisfactory answer to that question.

I look forward to reading both Ryan's and Murphy's published work--especially Murphy's, since it will be based on many sources which I have examined myself. These sources are open to everyone at Britain's National Archives, and in the Imperial War Museum: and until other people have examined these sources, as we have, I think some of them should be a little more circumspect in what they say about Peter Hart and his work.

by Jack Lane - Aubane Historical Society Wed Oct 05, 2005 15:19 jacklaneaubane at hotmail dot com Aubane, Millstreet, Co. Cork

I have just seen David Leeson's comments. I believe that his central point about the status and purpose of the 'report' on the Kilmichael ambush has been explained (again) and in some detail by Meda Ryan in the current issue of History Ireland.

by Kevin Mannerings Wed Oct 05, 2005 17:28 kevin.mannerings at vr-web dot de

With respect, I am having difficulty in taking David Leeson's contribution seriously. Peter Hart stands accused of claiming to have interviewed people who were dead. To reply to my question about the standards historians recognise, without even addressing this accusation, only makes matters worse.

Now I don't know if the accusation is true, but it has been made carefully and without polemic. Why is it being ignored?

A rogue historian would be one who invents facts to suit his case. This is not a question of whether the historian involved is objective, or a decent chap.

Rogue scientists, who fake their research, end up in the dog house. No other scientist would defend them for a minute. The public is entitled to expect that academics registered at universities funded by taxpayers maintain strict standards to prevent cheating and bogus claims. Historians should be no exception.

I am not suggesting that Peter Hart is a rogue historian, but he should defend himself against the accusation which has been made, or withdraw the claims he is making, as they reflect very badly on the work of other historians. It is not acceptable that David Leeson tries to defend Peter Hart by ignoring this.

Wasn't it Voltaire who said that history is the lie historians agree on? The question here is not just about what happened at Kilmichael, it is about how historians work.

by eeekkkkk Wed Oct 05, 2005 20:57

"But why would they disinform their own soldiers, by providing them with bogus enemy documents to study?"

Niger Documents anyone? Dodgy Dossiers anyone? Bush telling his whole country iraq responsible for 911 anyone? Maps leading armies to wmd sites and finding nothing?

Nothing changes.

by kevin murphy - 32csm Wed Oct 05, 2005 21:48

British troops in Belfast were once told by their top brass to paint holy pictures of the virgin Mary on their APCs as they were sure the deeply religious and superstitious IRA wouldnt attack them .

Undercover troops in S Armagh were once told to paint occultist symbols on abandoned farmhouses and to mutilate pet dogs in mock satanic sacrifices to make it appear "ould nick" was on the prowl . This tactic apparently would terrorise the even more superstitious rural IRA off the roads at night .

SAS man Captain Niarac believed he could pick up drunken loose talk on IRA men by swanning into the 3 steps pub in S Armagh and singing Danny Boy on the stage . According to British military thinking this would immediately endear him to the misty eyed drunken locals . As we all know Irish peasants immediately give people who sing this songs tearful bearhugs , buy them a whiskey and anounce they are a friend for life .

The British were still giving their soldiers extremely duff information over 50 years after Kilmichael . These type of daft tactics cost many of them their lives .

by pat c Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:51

"On Writing a Critical Biography of a National Hero"
by Dr Peter Hart.
Meeting Room
Royal Irish Academy
19 Dawson St
Dublin 2

Tuesday 11th October 7pm .
Booking essential, 6762570

by freddie starr Fri Oct 07, 2005 15:46

"Michael collins ate my hamster - because it was a protestant"

What historical skullduggery does Hart have up his sleev now ?

by pat c Fri Oct 07, 2005 17:53

hart has an article in the latest edition of the dublin review on his new collins bio. hes making a big thing about the confusion re what jobs collins held between 1906 and 1915. he suggests that collins may have lied about his employment record when he applied for the post of secretary of the National Aid Associaion in 1917!