Dunmanway Killings - Conflicting Conclusions

Conflicting Conclusions

It is not clear who ordered the attacks or carried them out and no faction or member of the IRA ever claimed responsibility. Historian Peter Hart has written that the killers were identified by several eyewitness sources as local IRA men. He concludes that from two to five separate groups must have done the killing, and writes that they were likely "acting on their own initiative - but with the connivance or acquiescence of local units." Hart's analysis of the identity of the killers has been challenged by other historians, including Brian Murphy, Niall Meehan and John Borgonovo. Jack Lane suggests the possibility that British agents provocateur were responsible, in an attempt to provoke Britain to re-occupy the 26 counties.

At the time the press, including the Belfast Newsletter (1 May 1922), the Irish Times (29 April 1922), and The New York Times, stated that the killings at Dunmanway were in reprisal for the ongoing killings of Catholics in Belfast, such as the McMahon Murders and the Arnon Street Massacre. Tim Pat Coogan suggests that O'Neill's death precipitated the murders. Hart has also written that the killing of O'Neill "provided the spark" which was inflamed by the "Belfast pogroms" Meda Ryan also writes, "The outrages were 'sparked' when Capt. Woods shot IRA man Michael O'Neill in the hallway of Thomas Hornibrooke's house".

The motive for the victims being targeted remains a point of contention between historians. Brian Murphy and Niall Meehan each write that victims were killed because they were informers on behalf of Crown forces, citing the intelligence diary left by Auxiliaries as they evacuated Dunmanway.

Peter Hart writes that they were primarily revenge killings, perpetrated without a clear rationale by "angry and frightened young men acting on impulse." He suggests the targets were local Protestant men whose status as enemies in the eyes of the killers was codified in "political language of the day... landlord, landgrabber, loyalist, imperialist, Orangeman, Freemason, Free Stater, spy, and informer." He continues, "these blanket categories made the victims' individual identities... irrelevant." Tim Pat Coogan concurs, writing, "the latent sectarianism of centuries of ballads and landlordism claimed ten Protestant lives" that week.

According to Meda Ryan, All of those killed were described as "committed loyalists" and "extremely anti-Republican". The three had been in contact with the Essex Regiment based in Bandon during the conflict, supplying information on the local IRA. She writes it was "firmly established" later that Fitzmaurice and Gray had been informers, and that their information had done a great deal of damage to the IRA. In Gray's case (as a ten-year-old girl averred to Meda Ryan) he sought out "information from children in their innocence" and hence children were warned against chatting with Gray despite his kindness. Ryan writes that Fitzmaurice, Gray, Buttimer, and Harbord were associated with the Murragh "Loyalist Action Group" known locally as the "Protestant Action Group," and all were involved in espionage. All the surnames of those shot in this period were listed as "helpful citizens" in Auxiliaries' documents found in Dunmanway; in two cases, only last names were given. Peter Hart disputes that the men had informed on the IRA. He writes that the term informer was used a form of "generic abuse" and he finds "no evidence whatsoever" that they had been active in opposing the IRA.

Meehan writes that the killings were not "motivated by either land agitation or by sectarian considerations." Brian Murphy agrees, citing a British document A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1921:

the truth was that, as British intelligence officers recognised in the south, the Protestants and those who that supported the Government rarely gave much information because, except by chance, they had not got it to give. An exception to this was in the Bandon area where there were many Protestant farmers who gave information. Although the Intelligence Officer of the area was exceptionally experienced and although the troops were most active it proved almost impossible to protect those brave men, many of whom were murdered while almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss.

He concludes that "the IRA killings in the Bandon area were motivated by political and not sectarian considerations. Possibly, military considerations, rather than political, would have been a more fitting way to describe the reason for the IRA response to those who informed."

Most recently, historian John Regan, in his paper, The Bandon Valley Massacre Revisited, has argued the incident is most likely best understood in the light of IRA fears that the British were planning a reoccupation of the south of Ireland and was a preemptive move against people believed to have been informers. He has argued that the selective use of evidence by Peter Hart to emphasise the sectarian dimension to the killings highlights a wider problem in the politicisation of Irish history.