While the Little World of Charlie Flanagan was trying to foist a celebration of Royal Irish Constabulary on Irish citizens at those citizens’ expense, Jack Lane of the Aubane Historiclal Society and his colleagues have been producing a full reprint of the official newspaper of Dail Eireann, giving news and war reports from 12 July 1919 to 11 December 1921.
One might imagine that in the Decade of Remembrance that this job would have
been commissioned and funded by the Oireachtas and executed by scholars from
Irish Universities and widely disseminated and submitted for review by scholars
worldwide. But that was not the agenda of the establishment in Dublin. The
lying propaganda of the British administration in Dublin Castle of
1919-1921 which the IRISH BULLETIN effectively exposed at the time, is
routinely recycled in THE IRISH TIMES today and in supposedly historical works
by writers such as Robert Kee, one of the many scholars who were once full-time
agents with MI5 or MI6.About 4 volumes totalling about 2,000 pages have been
produced already.
And for some time the IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW has been publishing, each month,
what the IRISH REVIEW was publishing 100 years previously.
In January 1919, following the landslide victory of Sinn Fein and the
establishment of the Republic and its Parliament, Dail Eireann, the cutting
edge of British repression was the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Municipal, County Council and other Local Elections were due in 1920 and the
high command of the RIC advised its masters in London that they should impose
Proportional Representation, so that Sinn
Fein would not have as successful a result as they had in the Parliamentary
Election.
The elections were to be held in January 1920. And among the many activities of
– the RIC reported in the IRISH BULLETIN-
January 12
Armed RIC raided the residency of Mr P. P. Doyle, Chairman of Athy Urban
District Council (Co. Kildare) in order to dismantle his motor car.
The Sinn Fein Election Rooms in Kingstown, Co. Dublin, were raided by the RIC
who seized all the Election literature.
January 16
Mr Hynes, organising for the Gaelic League in Kinvarra,, Co Galway, was
arrested and remanded in Galway Gaol.
Sinn Fein voters on the way to the polls in Cork by a large party of
ex-soldiers. Armed RIC men arrived in a motor lorry and arrested two of the
Sinn Fein Party.
Mr W.J.Grogan, Confectioner, of Phibsboro, Dublin, was arrested when leaving
his shop and imprisoned in the Bridewell. Np reason was givn for this act, nor
any charge preferred. Mr Grogan is aged 60 and has been in failing health for
many years.
Armed RIC dispersed and cleared the City Hall of Sinn Fein sympathisers
during the Municipal Elections at Cork. Soldiers with Trench
helmets and fixed bayonets paraded the streets while voters were going to the polls,
January 19
In Balbriggan, Co Dublin the RIC raided the premises of A,C,Williams,
Newsagent, and seized all copies of “The Watchword of Labour”
official organ of the Irish Labour Party. In Capel St,, Dublin. Mr Patrick Fay
was arrested by the RIC and deported to Wormwood Scrubs without charge or
trial. He was not associated with any political party.
In Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, sympathisers who gathered to give a send-off to two
political prisoners who were being conveyed ti gaol, were charged by a force of
RIC who batoned them and fired shots from their revolvers.
These are but a few of the activities of the RIC at the time. Their targets
were unarmed people and they particularly picked on political candidates Sinn
Fein and Labour, Trade Unionists and teachers of Irish. American newspapers
addressed to private citizens in Dublin were seized on the grounds that they
contained frienly references to the Republican Movement in Ireland
The Local Elections confirmed endorsed the verdict of the General Election .of
thirteen months earlier and most Councils in Ireland affirmed their allegiance
to the Republic and responsibility to its national parliament – Dail Eireann.
About seven weeks after taking office, the new Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomas
MacCurtain was murdered in his house in the Blackpool area of the city by
members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Regular members, not Auxiliaries or
Black and Tans.
A couple of days earlier, St Patrick’s Day, the RIC broke up a children’s
concert in the Parochial Hall, in Howth, County Dublin. A Unionist member of
the District Council, where Sinn Fein, Nationalists and Unionists worked in
amity, had a letter (which thhe IRISH TIMES actually published!! condemning the
RIC action.
To give Charlie Flanagan his due, he seems to be following the agreed agenda of
most Leinster House politicians and of Maurice Manning the
“mastermind” of the decade of remembrance. It goes further than
national amnesia. It endorses and repeats the lies which Desmond Fitzgerald,
Lawrence Ginnell, Frank Gallagher, Robert Brennan, Erskine Childers and
Piaras Beaslaoi exposed and refuted in THE IRISH BULLETIN and other
publications one hundred years ago.
When, in April 1919, after a full debate Dail Eireann called for the
ostracization of the RIC , by a unanimous vote, that force’s crimes against the
Irish people were enumerated by Eoin MacNeill (later a founder of Fine Gael) he
described them as PERJURERS.
Oliver Flanagan was a man of public, and publicised, piety. Is Charlie
Flanagan’s championship of the Royal Irish Constabulary: an example of FILIAL
PIETY?
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