Series of killings in County Cork, Ireland
The Dunmanway killings, also known as the Bandon Valley Killings, the Dunmanway murders or the Dunmanway massacre, refers to the killing (and in some cases, disappearances) of fourteen males in and around Dunmanway, County Cork and Bandon Valley, between 26–28 April 1922. This happened in a period of truce after the end of the Irish War of Independence (in July 1921) and before the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June 1922. The massacre became a matter for historical controversy and debate following the publication of Peter Hart's book "The IRA and its Enemies" in 1998. Of the fourteen dead and missing, thirteen were Protestants including one Methodist and one was Roman Catholic, which has led to the killings being described as sectarian. Six were killed as purported British informers and loyalists, while four others were relatives killed in the absence of the target. Three other men were kidnapped and executed in Bandon as revenge for the killing of an IRA officer Michael O'Neill during an armed raid. One man was shot and survived his injuries. Recent evidence confirms that the killings were carried out by unnamed local IRA members.
It is unclear who ordered the attacks or precisely who carried them out. However, in 2014 the "Irish Times" released a confidential memo from the then-Director of Intelligence Colonel Michael Joe Costello (later managing director of the Irish Sugar Company) in September 1925 in relation to a pension claim by former Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer Daniel O'Neill of Enniskeane County Cork, stating: "O'Neill is stated to be a very unscrupulous individual and to have taken part in such operations as lotting [looting] of Post Offices, robbing of Postmen and the murder of several Protestants in West Cork in May 1922. A brother of his was shot dead by two of the latter named, Woods and Hornbrooke [sic], who were subsequently murdered."
Sinn Féin and IRA representatives, from both the pro-Treaty side, which controlled the Provisional Government in Dublin and the anti-Treaty side, which controlled the area the killings took place in, immediately condemned the killings.
The motivation of the killers remains unclear. It is generally agreed that they were provoked by the fatal shooting of IRA man Michael O'Neill by a loyalist whose house was being raided on 26 April. Some historians have claimed there were sectarian motives; others claim that those killed were targeted only because they were suspected of having been informers during the Anglo-Irish War, and argue that the dead were associated with the so-called Murragh Loyalist Action Group, and that their names may have appeared in captured British military intelligence files which listed "helpful citizens" during the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1921).
Background.
Political context.
The Irish War of Independence was brought to an end by negotiations in mid-1921. The truce between British Forces and the IRA came into effect on 11 July 1921, after talks between the British and Irish political leaders. Under the terms, British units were withdrawn to barracks and their commanders committed to "no movements for military purposes" and "no [use of] secret agents noting descriptions of movements". For its part, the IRA agreed that "attacks on Crown forces and civilians [were] to cease", and to "no interference with British Government or private property".
The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, after negotiations between British and Irish leaders. On 7 January the Dáil (Irish Parliament established in January 1919) narrowly accepted the Treaty, by 7 votes. The Dáil was then split into two factions, those who accepted and those who rejected the Treaty. Under the terms of the treaty, a Provisional Government was set up to transfer power from the British regime to the Irish Free State. British troops began to be withdrawn from the Free State in January 1922, though they retained the option to intervene in Irish affairs should the Treaty be rejected and the Irish Republic re-established.
On 26 March 1922, part of the IRA repudiated the authority of the Provisional Government on the basis that it had accepted the Treaty and disestablished the Irish Republic declared in 1919. April saw the first armed clashes between pro and anti-Treaty IRA units, including the anti-Treaty occupation of the Four Courts in Dublin, the killing of a pro-Treaty IRA officer in Athlone and a gun attack on government buildings in Dublin. According to historian Michael Hopkinson, "the transitional [Free State] government lacked the resources and the necessary acceptance to supply effective government". In this situation, some IRA anti-Treaty units continued attacks on the remaining British forces. Between December 1921 and February 1922, there were 80 recorded attacks by IRA elements on the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), leaving 12 dead. Between January and June 1922, twenty-three RIC men, eight British soldiers and eighteen civilians were killed in West Cork, part of the area which would become the Irish Free State.
In County Cork.
West Cork, where these killings took place, had been one of the most violent parts of Ireland during the Irish War of Independence. It was the scene of many of the conflict's major actions, such as the Kilmichael and Crossbarry ambushes. It contained a strong Irish Republican Army (IRA) Brigade (the 3rd Cork Brigade) and also a sizeable Protestant population – roughly 16%, some of whom were loyalists and affiliated to a loyalist vigilante group. The local IRA killed fifteen suspected informers from 1919–21, nine Catholics and six Protestants. They responded to the British burning of republican homes by burning those of local loyalists. British intelligence wrote that "many" of their informers in West Cork "were murdered and almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss".
Republicans suspected the involvement of a local "Loyalists civil wing" in the killing of two republicans, the Coffey brothers, in Enniskean in early January 1921. The discovery of documents in Dunmanway by republicans later supposedly confirmed the existence of counter-insurgency espionage in the area, which resulted in many purported informers getting safe passage to England.
British forces were withdrawn from west Cork in February 1922. The only British forces left in the county were two battalions of the British Army in Cork City. The local IRA was almost unanimously anti-Treaty and not under the control of the Provisional Government in Dublin in April 1922. At the time of the Dunmanway killings, none of the leaders of the Anti-Treaty Cork IRA were in the county. Tom Hales and Sean Moylan were in Limerick, along with much of the Third and Fourth Cork IRA Brigades, trying to prevent the occupation of that city's military barracks by Pro-Treaty troops. Tom Barry and Liam Deasy were in Dublin attending an Anti-Treaty IRA meeting. They returned to Cork on 28 April, purportedly with a view to stopping any more killings.
Paul McMahon wrote that the British Government had authorised £2,000 to re-establish intelligence in southern Ireland, especially in Cork, in early April 1922. On 26 April, the day after the raid on Hornibrook home, three British intelligence officers (Lts Hendy, Drove and Henderson) and a driver drove to Macroom with the intention of gathering intelligence in west Cork, where they entered an inn. There, the officers were drugged and taken prisoner by IRA men, taken out of the country to Kilgobnet and then shot and their bodies dumped.
In Dunmanway.
In Dunmanway itself, a company of the Auxiliary Division evacuated their barracks in the workhouse. The IRA found confidential documents and a diary they left behind: these included a list of names. The information – according to historian Meda Ryan – was so precise "only a very well informed spy system could account for some of the entries in the book". Flor Crowley, who analysed the diary, said "it was the work of a man who had many useful 'contacts' not merely in one part of the area but all over it." The list, however, did not contain any of the names of the Protestants killed.
The IRA's Third Cork Brigade had killed 15 informers between 1919 and 1921, according to Tom Barry, adding "for those who are bigots" that the religious breakdown was nine Catholics and six Protestants. Ryan writes, by way of justification, that the Auxiliaries' files showed that some Protestants in Murragh had formed a group known as the Loyalist Action Group, affiliated to the Anti-Sinn Féin League and the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. The IRA suspected the group of passing information to British forces during the War of Independence. These included a Black and Tans military intelligence diary. This diary was reproduced with the names excised in "The Southern Star" newspaper, from 23 October to 27 November 1971, in consecutive editions. Photographs of the diary were published in "The Southern Star", which published them again with another article on the intelligence haul in its Centenary Supplement in 1989.
Killings in Ballygroman.
On 26 April 1922, a group of anti-Treaty IRA men, led by Michael O'Neill, arrived at the house of Thomas Hornibrook, a former magistrate, at Ballygroman, East Muskerry, Desertmore, Bandon (near Ballincollig on the outskirts of Cork City), seeking to seize his car. Hornibrook was in the house at the time along with his son, Samuel, and his nephew, Herbert Woods (a former Captain in the British Army and MC). O'Neill demanded a part of the engine mechanism (the magneto) that had been removed by Thomas Hornibrook to prevent such theft. Hornibrook refused to give them the part, and after further efforts, some of the IRA party entered through a window. Herbert Woods then shot O'Neill, wounding him fatally. O'Neill's companion, Charlie O'Donoghue, took him to a local priest who pronounced him dead. The next morning O'Donoghue left for Bandon to report the incident to his superiors, returning with "four military men", meeting with the Hornibrooks and Woods, who admitted to shooting O'Neill.
A local jury found Woods responsible and said O'Neill had been "brutally murdered in the execution of his duty". O'Donoghue and Stephen O'Neill, who were present on the night of the killing, both attended the inquest. Some days later, Woods and both Hornibrook men went missing, and in time were presumed killed. The "Morning Post" newspaper reported that "about 100" IRA men returned from Bandon with O'Neill's comrades and surrounded the house. It reported that a shootout ensued until the Hornibrooks and Woods ran out of ammunition and surrendered. Meda Ryan claims the report in the "Morning Post" was "exaggerated". Peter Hart writes that the Hornibrooks and Woods surrendered on condition their lives be spared. When Woods admitted it was he who fired the shot that killed O'Neill, he was beaten unconscious, and the three hostages were "driven south into hill country", where they were shot dead. Sometime later the Hornibrook home was burned, the plantation cut down and the land seized.
On 13 April, Michael Collins had complained about British newspaper reports on attacks against Protestants in Ireland to Desmond Fitzgerald. Collins said that while some of the coverage was "fair newspaper comment", the "strain of certain parts is very objectionable". Alice Hodder, a local Protestant from Crosshaven some 23 miles to the southeast, wrote to her mother shortly afterwards about Herbert Woods,His aunt and uncle had been subject to a lot of persecution and feared an attack, so young Woods went to stay with them. At 2:30 am armed men ... broke in ... Woods fired on the leader and shot him ... They caught Woods, tried him by mock court martial and sentenced him to be hanged ... The brothers of the murdered man then gouged out his eyes while he was alive and then hanged him ... When will the British Government realise that they are really dealing with savages and not ordinary normal human beings?
The letter was forwarded to Lionel Curtis, Secretary of the Cabinet's Irish Committee, on which he appended the comment "this is rather obsolete". Matilda Woods later testified before the Grants Committee, while applying for £5,000 compensation in 1927, that her husband had been drawn and quartered before being killed and that the Hornibrooks were taken to a remote location, forced to dig their own graves and shot dead. Both Ryan and Hart note that Matilda Woods was not in Ireland when her husband disappeared and there is no record of his body ever being located.
Killings in Dunmanway, Kinneigh, Ballineen, and Clonakilty.
Over the next two days, ten Protestant men were shot