Buried Lives Read online

  This exodus took place sometime after ‘Westminster statutes knocked Protestants off their public pedestals’, in the colourful words of David Fitzpatrick.54 However, it should be noted that most rural Protestants lived simple lives, owning small farms, while in urban areas they were shopkeepers, solicitors, bank officials and clerks. By 1920, Protestant landlords had sold most of their lands to their tenants under the 1903 Wyndham Land Act. The Reform Act of 1884 had ‘placed electoral power in most constituencies in the hands of the small farmers and labourers … In 1898 the gentry lost control of county government. The Local Government Act of that year … transferred local administration from grand juries, landed oligarchies to elected county, urban and rural councils’.55 Protestants had, in effect, lost political power and the economic power that goes with the ownership of large estates, though they remained strong in the financial, business, industrial and legal sectors. As an editorial in The Irish Times put it when the 1926 census was published:

  Although the Protestant population of the Free State constitutes only seven and a half percent of the whole, its social and economic status is most important … they form 38 per cent of the barristers, 37 per cent of the solicitors … of the higher bank officials, 53 per cent are Protestants. They are represented strongly also in insurance, brewing, shipping and virtually all the commercial trades.56

  Fergus Campbell has made it clear that there was no major greening at the top levels of the civil service before 1922. He notes that over a third of ‘the senior membership’ was Catholic in 1911 and that no ‘systematic “greening” process was underway’.57 In the RIC, only 9 per cent of ‘the senior police officers’58 were Catholics in 1911.

  It was a period of guerrilla warfare, followed by civil war characterised by ‘ethnic violence’ and ‘terrorism, communal conflict, displaced people, assassins, gunmen, and gun-runners’.59 It was a period of change and turmoil in which the small Protestant community in southern Ireland, largely supportive of the British connection, found itself increasingly isolated and undefended. It was a crisis; a fundamental turning point at which those who chose to stay on tended to withdraw into the comforts of their own world, mindful of earning the goodwill of their huge Catholic majority neighbours.

  Many Protestants went because they felt unwanted and estranged in the new Ireland. Lloyd George wrote to Andrew Bonar Law about the position in which Protestants found themselves in 1918: ‘the little Protestant community of the south, isolated in a turbulent sea of Sinn Féinism and popery’.60 While there was no policy of ethnic cleansing by the Free State government, Peter Hart and Gerard Murphy have concluded that, at least in Co. Cork, a substantial number of Protestants were targeted and murdered by the IRA in what can only be considered sectarian murders. Hart has written at length about a mini pogrom of small farmers, ordinary businessmen and a Church of Ireland clergyman, who were targeted in the Bandon Valley in April 1922.61 He is clear about the motivation:

  The atmosphere of fear and polarization provided the communal context of the massacre. One could not have taken place without the other. Protestants had become ‘fair game’ because they were seen as outsiders and enemies. Not just by the IRA but by a large segment of the Catholic population as well … Their [Protestants’] status was codified in the political language – or mythology – of the day in terms such as landlord, land grabber, loyalist, imperialist, Orangeman, Freemason, Free Stater, spy, and informer.62

  Southern Protestants were almost all loyalists, opposed to separation and anxious to be part of the multi-national, multi-racial two islands with representative government based in London. But they were a tiny minority. When religion was part of social status, land holdings and a willingness to serve in the British forces, this encouraged ethnically directed violence, particularly after the Treaty and during the civil war, leading to an exodus.

  Sexton and O’Leary point out in Building Trust in Ireland that: ‘There can be little doubt that the main causation underlying this exodus was a sense of apprehension in certain of these communities associated with the transition to national independence in 1922 and the upheavals which attended the event.’63

  Diarmaid Ferriter goes on to suggest that sectarianism played an influential role in the behaviour of the IRA:

  Sectarianism too played its part and there was no shortage of abusive political language to identify enemies (‘land grabber’, ’loyalist’, ‘imperialist’, ‘Orangeman’, ‘Freemason’) and assert the need for their killing. In the same manner, labeling one an informer could in fact cover a multitude of sins, agrarian and domestic included.64

  The editorial in the Church of Ireland Gazette reported on 9 September 1921 that, according to a rector from an urban area in the West, his congregation had been reduced by half. Another clergyman expressed ‘little hope that this exodus will be stopped and less that those who have gone will return’. It was a ‘most grave matter’ for finances and there was a ‘large breakdown in parochial finance in many dioceses, consequent on the exodus of the people.’65

  The Gazette reported on 7 October 1921 that the Church of Ireland congregations were ‘vanishing’ and that:

  Over a large part of the country the already sparse congregations are being reduced to vanishing point – memories of the “terror” have burnt very deep – anyone who knows Southern Ireland knows also the undercurrent of feeling urging the elimination of Protestantism [my italics]…the fact remains that a migration of younger clergy has begun.

  So young clergy, the lifeblood of the Church of Ireland, were protesting with their feet in some dioceses. In 1920, there were 911 clergy in the Church of Ireland in the 26 counties, excluding the diocese of Clogher, which contained parts of Donegal, Monaghan and Louth, but by 1930 the number had reduced by almost a third, to 647.66

  The violence directed against the Protestants in some parts of the South between 1919 and the Truce of July 1921 was largely the by-product of the guerrilla war between the IRA and the British Army and the Royal Irish Constabulary, augmented in 1920 by the RIC Special Reserve (RICSR) and the Auxiliary Division RIC (ADRIC). After the Treaty, however, violence against the minority increased following the withdrawal of the Crown forces and the disbandment of the RIC. A breakdown of law and order quickly followed with the outbreak of civil war, leading both Catholics and Protestants to flee.

  The situation became so serious that the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Gregg, accompanied by the Bishop of Cashel, Dr Miller, and a leading Protestant businessman, Sir William Goulding, went to see Michael Collins in May 1922, following the murders of thirteen Protestants in the Bandon valley, to ask whether the Protestant minority should stay on. Collins ‘assured them that the government would maintain civil and religious liberty’.67 However, Collins was in no position to protect Protestants and was shortly afterwards killed in an ambush near Bandon. Dr Miller’s dioceses in south Tipperary had suffered by then but in north Tipperary, the Bishop of Killaloe ‘had warned in the summer of 1921 that the Church of Ireland population of his diocese had slumped to 5,876 – down by two-thirds from its Victorian heyday and a decline the Bishop described as “almost staggering”’.68

  As far as sectarian motive was a factor in this decline, the historian Richard English has pointed out in Irish Freedom:

  If Catholic Ireland defined itself as the nation, then historically the process had also worked the other way, as Protestant Britain had effectively defined itself in exclusive ways too. Thus it was that the 1919–21 IRA (and their enemies) on occasions exhibited an ugly sectarianism of word and deed.69

  Apart from sectarianism, land hunger was a powerful motivation for violence and intimidation of Protestant ‘planters’ in the period 1921–23. By 1921, much land had been transferred from landlords to tenants, thanks to legislation from Westminster. Various land acts since 1885 had made it possible for tenants to purchase land, the price being fixed on a number of rental years. In total, almost 2.5 million acres were sold under the land acts from 1881 to 1896,
for which landowners received almost £24 million.70 However, ‘it was not until the passage of the Wyndham Land Act of 1903 that a revolutionary transfer of landownership began’.71 Dooley, however, makes it clear that:

  While the Land Acts of 1903 and 1909 had made a major contribution to the transfer of land from landlords to tenants they did not end landlordism in Ireland. Prior to the enactment of the 1923 Land Act, there were approximately 114,000 holdings on three million acres that had not been sold.72

  Marianne Elliott points out that the safety valve of emigration had been closed during the First World War, leading to young men being landless, and some resorted to burning out Protestant landowners:

  Given the land hunger, the resentment of Protestant privilege, and the unusual numbers of impoverished young males in the country because the First World War had closed off emigration, it would have been surprising had sectarianism not been an element in the burning of almost 300 ‘big houses’. Expectations raised by the Land Acts had not been satisfied.73

  However, a number of ‘big houses’ were burnt for reasons not in any way associated with land hunger, but instead as retaliation for Black and Tan house burnings, theft of contents and for military reasons to prevent occupation by British forces. A separate chapter will examine the ‘big house’ burnings.

  The question of compensation for those who fled, lost property or land and suffered malicious injury soon became a dominant issue. Initially, a voluntary body, the Irish Registration Bureau in London, offered to help refugees with accommodation and with prosecuting claims for compensation. It reported in May 1922 that: ‘the list of the poorer people who have had to fly is very bad, as they have arrived in London without means of subsistence and are dependent on the charity of friends. A number of these refugees have come together and formed a committee.’74

  The British Government eventually accepted that it had to come to the rescue of the refugees. The Irish Distress Committee, an official body, was formed in May 1922 to deal with the 20,000 or so people who arrived in London in the spring of 1922, who were given refugee status. These people were largely made up of disbanded members of the RIC, British ex-servicemen and civilians loyal to the British regime in Ireland. Sir Samuel Hoare was the first chairman, followed by Lord Eustace Percy, and in March 1923 it was reconstituted as the Irish Grants Committee (IGC). In the first six months it received 3,349 applications. By November 1922, 598 Protestants and 1,063 Roman Catholics had been helped with loans and grants. By 1923, 4,330 applications were approved for loans and grants and advances ‘amounting to £52,000 on compensation decrees and on arrears of rent’.75 The second interim report of the IGC for 1923 declared that £11 million in grants had been supplied to refugees and £7.8 million loans advanced. The IGC reported that it had ‘in this way resettled a considerable number of refugees in this country and have been able to arrange for the emigration of others to the Dominions’.76

  An advocacy body, the Southern Irish Loyalists’ Relief Association (SILRA) helped with information and recommended cases for compensation. This Association was very active from 1922, with Lord Linlithgow as chairman with the support of many conservative MPs. Major White was the secretary, thorough and sympathetic, with a network of informants in Ireland. The files of the Irish Grants Committee make it clear that Major White referred many cases to them for compensation.

  Another advocacy body was the London-based Irish Compensation Claims Association (ICCA), representing loyalists who felt that they had been hard done by, and it was quick to point out that much more was needed. Robert Sanders, from the Glen of Aherlow in Co. Tipperary, was chairman and another Tipperary man, Lord Dunalley, whose mansion was burnt in 1922, was an active lobbyist.

  Under the heads of working arrangements agreed on 24 January 1922, the British and Provisional governments agreed that each would be responsible for payment of compensation to its own supporters and that awards already given should stand. As for damage to property, ‘in the pre-Truce period each side was to pay for the losses it had inflicted.’77 Awards made by county councils prior to the Truce under the Criminal and Malicious Injuries Acts which had not been paid or defended, were to be suspended, and a new commission was established with three members: one from the Free State, Senator J.C. Dowdall; one from England, C.H.J. Thomas from the Inland Revenue; and Lord Shaw, the chairman, a lawyer from Scotland, agreed by both governments.

  The commission was to consider claims for damages from 1 January 1919 to 11 July 1921. However, as time went on, many claims were made for post-Truce compensation for damages to property and for personal injuries. The Free State government enacted the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act in 1923 to deal with such claims. All unpaid awards under undefended decrees between 21 January 1919 and 11 July 1921 were annulled. ‘Injuries committed after the 11th July 1921 on which a decree had been made prior to the passing of the act were to be re-opened and re-heard on the application of the applicant or the minister of Finance.’78

  Significantly, compensation did not cover consequential losses, theft of money, jewellery and furniture ‘if it could be proved they had not been taken by the members of an unlawful association’.79 In effect, this referred to the Irregulars in the civil war and, as Terrence Dooley has pointed out, because of ‘the amount of looting that took place by locals who … more often than not belonged to no such association, big house owners were to be hard pressed to prove the legitimacy of their claims.’ Lord Dunalley’s original claim was for £100,000 but his ‘claim for compensation for the loss of contents was dismissed by the county court judge in May 1924’80 because he could not prove that property was stolen by the Irregulars.81 Dunalley’s mansion was situated in Dolla, Co. Tipperary, and his solicitors thought goods were stolen ‘by the “mountainy” people [locals around the Silvermines area] after the burning’ of his mansion in August 1922.82

  R.B. McDowell tells us that:

  The workings of the Shaw Commission, the land act of 1923 and the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act, 1923, left loyalists in the 26 counties disappointed and with a strong sense they had been badly treated. Acting ‘under the mantle’ of the Shaw Commission the sub-commissioners had reduced the judges’ awards on average by 40 per cent.83

  The ICCA objected to the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act as, under its terms, no compensation was allowed for personal injuries.

  Compensation for damage to buildings was to be based on full or partial reinstatement. Full reinstatement meant the restoration of the old building as it stood before, while partial reinstatement was awarded for building a smaller house on the same site or anywhere in the Free State. The judge had power to award a further sum to defray architectural and legal expenses. Some owners of big houses, fearing they might be attacked again, chose to build new houses far from their old ones, moving to Dublin and Wicklow. Terrence Dooley took a random sample of 50 big houses throughout the 26 counties and concluded that awards came to only 26 per cent of the claims made.84 There was little or no compensation for the valuable furniture, silver and pictures often stolen and which found their way into small houses in the neighbourhood of the burnt mansions.

  In Dublin, the Shaw Commission worked in Ely Place, but when Sir Samuel Hoare visited Dublin in September 1922, he was ‘shocked by how slowly the Commission was working’ and urged that ‘it should immediately revise its methods and increase its staff’.85 Shaw resigned in November and Sir Alexander Wood-Renton, a prominent lawyer, replaced him. The work was soon undertaken with much more effect, two valuators being appointed for each of the 26 counties ‘to assess claims, with claimants having the right to appeal to the commissioners.’86

  There was much criticism of the reduced awards made by the ICCA. In July 1924, Edward Carson dramatically said in the House of Lords: ‘Commission’s inspectors … used the most tyrannical methods towards claimants to come to an agreement out of court.’ On the restitution awards it meant:

  You, sir, have been driven out of Ireland, you
r house and your furniture has been burned; you have probably been shot; your wife and family have been in danger, but you must go back and rebuild your house and live among the people who drove you out.87

  The Shaw Commission wound up its activities in February 1926, when Wood-Renton wrote to President Cosgrave, advising that he was returning to London and thanking him ‘for the courtesy and assistance that have been extended to us during the whole period of our work by the Free State Government and its officers’.88 Cosgrave acknowledged this letter on 24 March, stating that he ‘was fully sensible of the tact, resource and hard work demanded by your own especially difficult position as Chairman’.89

  There were awards made in 17,792 cases, of which 22,682 were not ‘within the ambit of the Commission’,90 and £7,048,332 was paid out of £19,107,281 claimed.91 The sum of £7 million was considerably lower than the budgeted amount of £10.3 million mentioned by the Minister for Finance in the Dáil in April 1925. He then estimated the British Government was due to pay £3.6 million of the total £10.3 million to cover damage inflicted by Crown forces from 1919 to the Treaty on 11 July 1921. In addition to this amount, in August 1924 it was controversially agreed that the British Government would pay £900,000 for claims from 1919–22. Lord Danesfort raised this in the House of Lords in June 1925, saying that it had not been sanctioned by the House of Commons and was in breach of the terms agreed by heads of government in 1922. Carson thought the reason behind the agreement was that the Free State had informed ‘the British Government that they could never prevent a republic unless more money was given away to recompense men who used the property that was destroyed in Ireland to murder British troops and police’.92