Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc: We should seek to find the 'disappeared' of the War of Independence

During the Spanish Civil War, more than 140,000 people were ‘disappeared’. More recently, during the Syrian Civil War, there have been over 75,000 cases of forced disappearances.

The number of disappearances perpetrated by the Provisional IRA was far smaller by comparison, yet they have attracted significant global media interest. 

Disney+ recently commissioned a 10-part series on the disappearance of Jean McConville which is due to be broadcast this year.

The legacy of those ‘disappeared’ in Northern Ireland still forms part of political commentary around Sinn Féin’s electoral prospects.

No doubt the killings of Columba McVeigh and others disappeared by the Provisional IRA whose bodies are still missing will be raised in political debate again in the coming months.

The fact that almost five times more people were disappeared by the so-called “good Old IRA” during the War of Independence does not seem to trouble the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil politicians who honoured them during the recent Decade of Centenaries celebrations.

Leading statesmen from both parties including Richard Mulcahy, Seán Mac Eoin, Seán Moylan, and Frank Aiken were responsible for the execution and secret burial of their political opponents.

Even Nobel Peace Prize winner Seán MacBride had personally ordered the execution and disappearance of a suspected spy in Clare in the 1920s.

In short, Éamon de Valera’s and Michael Collins’ comrades dug far more shallow graves during three years of the War of Independence than the Provisional IRA did during 30 years of the Troubles.

Sixty bodies still missing since the War of Independence

The bodies of approximately 60 of those killed by the IRA during the War of Independence era are still missing.

Unlike those disappeared during the conflict in Northern Ireland there is no official body akin to the ICLVR engaged in recovering the remains of the dozens of people whose bodies are still hidden all over the Republic.

During the Troubles, the majority of those disappeared by republican paramilitaries were civilians or Provisional IRA volunteers suspected of being British spies. Only one British soldier, Captain Robert Nairac, was disappeared during that conflict.

By contrast, more than half of the 94 people disappeared by the “good Old-IRA” during the War of Independence were British soldiers or serving members of the RIC including Black and Tans.

Hiding executions was Old IRA policy 

There were several reasons why the IRA hid these executions. 

The most obvious is that hiding a body concealed evidence of the killing and made it difficult for British courts to convict anyone.

The secret execution of alleged British spies also created confusion within British spy networks and this was exploited by the IRA as a way to expose other informers by hoping they would panic and ‘break cover’. 

Commandant Jerome Davin of the IRA’s 3rd Tipperary Brigade, argued that disappearing suspected spies helped prevent reprisal attacks by the Crown forces: “While speaking about spies, I never agreed with the policy of labelling them after execution and leaving their bodies on the roadside.

That policy embarrassed the people who lived in the houses near where the bodies lay and perhaps resulted in reprisals being carried out on those people. I preferred to have the spy buried quietly and leave an air of mystery about his fate. 

In the majority of cases the IRA hid those they had executed by burying their bodies in remote bogs, on hillsides or deep within isolated forests. However IRA units in the midlands frequently ‘disappeared’ their victims by drowning them in the River Shannon.

These included Edward Canning from Roscommon town who was killed by the IRA in November 1920 and an English Black and Tan Constable Robert Buchanan who was executed by drowning after being captured at the Scramogue Ambush in 1921. 

In Donegal, the IRA hid the bodies of two English Black and Tans they had executed and threw them off a cliff into the Atlantic Ocean.

Remains from 1920s executions recovered 

The bodies of those who were disappeared in rivers, lakes, and at sea by the IRA are in most cases well beyond recovery. 

However in recent years the bodies of several of those who were executed and secretly buried by the IRA in the 1920s have been successfully recovered.

• Thomas Kirby, a former British soldier from the village of Golden in Tipperary, had worked as a spy for the British Army during the War of Independence helping to lead and direct their raiding parties. He was captured by the IRA, tried, and secretly executed in January 1921 and his body was buried in a bog at Turraheen, near Rossmore.

In 1990, a dying IRA veteran made a final request on his deathbed that Kirby’s remains would be recovered. The body was subsequently dug up and reinterred in Clogher Cemetery near Clonoulty.

• In 1998, a skeleton from the War of Independence era was discovered in the Galway gaeltacht concealed in a rudimentary coffin that was hidden in a shallow grave.

Personal belongings found in the coffin including an engraved pocket watch, a wedding ring, glasses, a fountain pen, and some sticks of chalk quickly enabled the gardaí to identify the skeletal remains as those of Patrick Joyce.

Joyce was the principal of a local Catholic school. He had written several letters to the RIC giving them accurate intelligence information about the IRA and their activities as well as spurious information he had concocted about neighbours he held personal grievances against. Joyce was ‘disappeared’ in 1920 after the IRA intercepted several of the letters.

• Most recently in May 2018, the remains of George Duff Chalmers were recovered from a bog in Drumbaun near Miltown Malbay in west Clare. Chalmers had been a Private in the Royal Scots Regiment of the British Army and was captured by the IRA in June of 1921 when he left his barracks to visit a local girl he was courting.

The IRA appear to have wrongly suspected Chalmers of being a spy on an intelligence mission and he was executed within a few hours of being captured. His body was reinterred at Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.

The burial places of dozens of others who were disappeared during the War of Independence are recorded in a wealth of historical records. These include official government records, Department of Defence papers, Department of Justice files, and veteran testimony from the IRA Volunteers who dug the graves. In some cases there are maps drawn by the executioners showing the exact location of the burials.

• Private Reginald Brown a deserter from the British Army was executed after being held prisoner at a cottage in Ballyvaloon near the village of Grenagh in Cork. Denis Dwyer, who was one of Brown’s executioners, stated that he buried the soldier “300 yards from the cottage”. The cottage where Brown was held still stands today and is easily located.

Both the tale of Brown’s execution and the approximate location of his grave in a field to the south of it are widely known locally. Archaeological surveying techniques could easily uncover the exact burial place if there were the political will to do so.

• Longford schoolteacher John McNamee, a suspected British spy, was drowned by the IRA in Lough Ree and buried by his executioners on the shoreline to the left of the pier at Barley Harbour where it remains today.

Brian Bradley, a Catholic farmhand accused of being a British spy was secretly executed by the IRA in January 1921. He was buried at Rathmanoo Wood, a tiny copse near Moynalty in Meath. There has never been a search for his body.

RIC Constable Thomas Walsh was captured by the IRA, summarily executed, and buried near a ringfort at Ringwood, Blarney. Ringwood is due to be developed for a housing project raising the possibility that an archaeological examination of the site in advance of building works could lead to the recovery of Walsh’s remains.

Michael Williams, a former RIC constable alleged to have been one of Tomás Mac Curtain’s assassins was executed in 1922 at the farm of Martin Corry in Cork. Corry was a local IRA officer and later a Fianna Fáil TD. According to an a contemporary report “Williams was buried in the field to the right of a lane at the rear of Corry’s house in the corner nearest the house. A ‘spy’ was buried in the same corner a fortnight previous.” The location of the laneway and layout of the fields on Corry’s Farm have not changed since the 1920s.

The reported burial place of Michael Williams is very easily identifiable. 

The alleged spy buried next to him was William Dalton a Protestant Loyalist from Cork who had previously served in the British Army.

While the establishment and work of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victim’s Remains has been a great success in finding the remains of those “disappeared” during the modern Troubles in Northern Ireland, there is clearly a lack of political will to make any effort to recover the bodies of those disappeared during the War of Independence era.

The legacy of the Troubles has ensured that the political establishment in Ireland is decidedly uncomfortable about the violence used to establish the modern Irish state.

• Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc is the author of The Disappeared: Forced Disappearances in Ireland 1798-1998, published by Merrion Press
• The book will be launched by Andy Bielenberg in Easons, St Patrick’s Street, Cork, on Friday, February 23.