Despite that, he wasn’t bitter about what occurred. The terrible things were done by, mainly, men in extraordinary circumstances for a brief period at an epochal time in the island’s history. Lemass by 1969 had served the State, against which he had fought in the Civil War, as taoiseach. He wasn’t going to attempt to portray his side as victims or the other as demons.

Last October, on the anniversary of the start of the executions during the Civil War, Erskine Childers engaged in a Twitter conversation with Danny Morrison. 

Childers’ great grandfather, also Erskine, was executed in the conflict in what was almost certainly an illegal action, and definitely perpetrated out of hatred, which is inexcusable. 

Morrison is a former director of publicity for Sinn Féin, the man who coined the phrase “the armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other”, to describe the dual strategy of the provisional movement during the Troubles.

Childers posted a reference to Ernst Blythe, a leading Free State figure who had many years after the conflict expressed the opinion that the government had been “decisive” in carrying out executions during the Civil War.

“I love when people say ‘they were not really fascists’,” Childers tweeted.

“Exactly,” Morrison replied. “A bloody State founded on the bloody executions of true patriots. And the fascists were proud of their work because they were ‘decisive’.” 

In Danny’s telling, the government of a new State that won 78% support in an election to establish the State, was fascist, while those who died attempting to smash that State, against the wishes of the vast majority, were true patriots.

The vignette illustrates the attitude displayed by Sinn Féin in how it has insisted in remembering the Civil War over the last year.

Most commemorations held by others than the party have included a quiet acknowledgment that terrible things were done by both sides over a course of months during a time when violence was the primary means of resolving disputes.

Sinn Féin has taken a different approach. Repeatedly, party activists have sought to emphasise the terrible things that were done by the Free Staters, inferring that the exclusive inheritors of 1916 and all that flowed from it were on the anti-treaty side.

Last November, on the anniversary of the first executions, a group of Sinn Féin activists held an early morning vigil outside Mountjoy.

Just last month, the Irish Examiner reported on the party’s preference for its own commemoration of the massacre at Ballyseedy, Co Kerry, rather than attend the non-political official event. There have been many other similar scenarios at local events around the country.

This is quite obviously part of a narrative attempting to directly link the history of the party, which was formed in 1970, with that of the anti-treatites in the Civil War. 

Of course, the attempted link is only to those who died in the conflict as the bulk of survivors gravitated very quickly towards pursuing their aims peacefully within the new State.

The dead are there to be claimed, while those who lived wrote their own legacy.

If, for instance, Sean Lemass had been executed during the Civil War then he would have found himself being cast as a hero of the Provos, a man whose ideals were betrayed by his comrades, but taken up by a later generation of self-appointed patriots.

Stephen Fuller, the sole survivor in Ballyseedy, where eight of his comrades were blown up, had nothing to do with Sinn Féin throughout his life through to his death in 1984. Yet somehow the party believes it has a unique connection to those who died that night.

Sinn Féin’s distortions conveniently ignore the big truths about the Civil War.

Both sides were passionate about their positions, as brilliantly illustrated recently in Theo Dorgan’s rendering of the treaty debates.

Most senior figures on both sides wanted to avoid a violent split.

The issue of partition was not central, or even held any significance, in the argument. 

Those who supported the treaty had the moral authority of the backing of a large majority of the people. That authority, however, was severely damaged by the atrocities, including the executions carried out in the name of the new State.

The anti-treaty side was intent on making the new State ungovernable and considered that the people had no right to be wrong. They were effectively, as pointed out by supreme court judge Gerard Hogan last year, engaged in “an army coup d’etat”.

The one saving grace from the whole tragedy was that within months there was a realisation that it was futile, that no more lives should be lost, and that there was no alternative to working within the parameters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

The provisional movement came into being half a century later in an entirely different context. 

It was determined to violently impose a socialist 32-county republic on the vast majority who had no truck with their aims or methods. It considered the government in the south to be illegitimate and had contempt for the peaceful methods of the civil rights movement which was largely responsible for dismantling the sectarian scaffolding of the northern statelet.

And for over 25 years, the provos continued to kill anybody whose death might advance the pursuit of their warped vision, which ultimately had to fail if democracy was to mean anything.

Bid to hijack history

While Sinn Féin desperately attempts to hijack history in this centenary year, there is great reticence about the one real link it, and the wider provisional movement, has in the narrative of violent nationalism.

The dissident republicans are from the same gene pool, same origins, exercise the same violent pursuit of an unobtainable Ireland that the provos engaged in for so long.

However that’s not the kind of image the current iteration of the party wants to be associated with; too likely to alienate voters, too close to the bone. Far more profitable to reach into history and root around for a bogus connection.

Today, Sinn Féin’s popularity is down to disillusionment with the politics of the Civil War parties on bread and butter issues. 

Interestingly, the party no longer espouses the socialist republic for which the provisional movement killed so many. It has shown itself capable of mixing it in a wholly democratic forum and may well have a serious contribution to make to governance.

It would, however, be well-minded to concentrate on that, take ownership of its own history, and desist from any further attempts to smear by association those who died in a completely different context a hundred years ago.