The Irish War of Independence by Michael Hopkinson

Author:Michael Hopkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan

14

THE WAR IN KERRY AND CLARE

KERRY

For all its republican tradition, many observers feel that Kerry made a disappointing contribution to the War of Independence. It was absurd, though, for Eoin O’Duffy to claim in 1933 that: ‘Kerry’s entire record in the Black and Tan struggle consisted in shooting an unfortunate soldier the day of the Truce.’ There were more killings of RIC men in Kerry than in any county outside Dublin and Tipperary. The animosities of the Civil War period distorted judgment of Kerry’s role in the preceding conflict. Attacks on the RIC and British reprisals were particularly widespread and brutal in the county. It had one of the highest figures for overall casualties in the conflict, fifteen dead or injured per 10,000 residents, but compared with neighbouring west and north Cork, its guerrilla activity was much less successful.1

Kerry claimed the first attack on a police barracks since 1916 at Gortatlea, near Tralee, in April 1918, though it was unsuccessful. In the rest of 1918 and in 1919 raids and attacks on police were few and far between. The transition from barracks attacks to ambushes was swifter in Kerry than in most other counties, and flying columns were formed before the autumn of 1920. The Kerry One flying column on 13 July 1920 killed two constables in an ambush near Dingle. A spate of murderous attacks on RIC men at the end of October and beginning of November 1920, coinciding with Terence MacSwiney’s death and funeral, resulted in what became known internationally as ‘the Siege of Tralee’, a series of reprisals and burnings by the RIC on public buildings and business premises. While talk of famine conditions was an exaggeration, the town was effectively closed for business in the first ten days of November.2

At the same time as Hamar Greenwood was ducking questions about the Tralee situation in the Commons, the famous journalist Hugh Martin was being threatened on the streets of Tralee by police. Martin’s articles in the Daily News had become known for exposing Black and Tan atrocities and these threats only caused Martin to emphasise Tralee’s notoriety. He reported that Tralee ‘is like a town with the plague. Not a shop is open and people remain behind closed doors and shuttered windows from morning to nightfall. An hour before darkness sets in, women and children leave their homes and go anywhere they can for the night.’3 The town suffered many more reprisals in the months to come.

The British made matters even worse by false propaganda concerning the so-called ‘Battle of Tralee’. A confrontation between the IRA and Black and Tans and Auxiliaries at Ballymacelligott on 12 November in which two IRA men were killed, was blown up by Dublin Castle officials as ‘the fiercest and probably the largest-scale of any fight between Crown forces and the Volunteers’. A Pathe Gazette film of the affray which faked a scene, including clear footage of the Vico Road in Dalkey, County Dublin, was easily exposed by the IRA. In the days following, a company of Auxiliaries under Major B.

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