Cork and Kerry treated as 'hostile foreign country', civil war conference hears
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The civil war in Cork and Kerry was different with the Dublin brigades of the National Army treating the region as a "hostile, foreign country", a major conference on the centenary of the Civil War heard.
While in Cork, Dublin guards were transferred for carrying out reprisal killings, this was not the case in Kerry. Reprisals by the Dublin brigade in the National Army against 'irregulars' actually increased, the conference at Siamsa Tire in Tralee heard.
Ragtime music was played by the National Army in Tralee when the relatives opened the coffins and found mangled bodies of those blown to bits in Ballyseedy, it was recalled.
“The character of the Civil War in Kerry was much more intense,” John Dorney, historian and editor of the Irish Story website, outlined.
Initially, locals were quite pleased to see the National Army in Kerry. However, the Dublin brigades did not endear themselves to the population, rounding up young men at Mass and in dance halls.
In Cork, after a number of killings of anti-treaty men, local Cork National Army troops refused to go back out on patrol with the National Army until the culprits were sent away by Emmet Dalton. “In Cork there was some degree of accountability,” Mr Dorney said.
However, in Kerry, National Army Major General Paddy O’Daly took a different approach and there was an upsurge in reprisals. By the end of March 1923, some 34 irregulars were killed most of them prisoners and including at Ballyseedy, Countess Bridge Killarney and Cahersiveen.
By 1923, and including the war of independence, Kerry had experienced ‘ a level of violence and brutality’ counties in Connaught and elsewhere had not experienced, historian Dr Thomas Earls Fitzgerald said. The Civil War was not just about two military sides and “fatal violence”.
Workers and trade unions held general strikes. The Labour Party had its best election in the Spring of 1922 with workers wanting the violence by the two elite military sides to end and hunger and emigration to be addressed.
“People wanted an end to all the violence,” Dr Fitzgerald said.
Women generally were not killed, but Cuman na mBan played a pivotal role in the war, the conference was told. Civilian women suffered a lot, including harassment, being jailed and sexual violence.
The third day of the conference on Saturday will deal with gender violence in Kerry where a number of women were raped and sexually harrassed as part of reprisals.
Dr Mary McAuliffe of University College Dublin will deliver a paper ‘Unmitigated Blackguardism’: The Treatment of Militant anti-Treaty Women in Kerry by the National Army during the Irish Civil War.”
It will also hear from Dr Margaret Ward of Queen’s University Belfast on "‘Keeping our Heads Down’ – Northern Women and the Impact of the Civil War"; and Dr Gemma Clark of the University of Exeter on "A new State Forged by Fire?: The Role of Arson in the Irish Civil War".