The Feast of St Fergal was last week – November 27 – so perhaps it’s no harm to examine the honour reflected on his memory by Fergal Keane, the most garlanded celebrity bearing his name in these secular times, when hagiography has bee jettisoned and verifiable facts reign supreme.
I have in my hands a Comment 2001 page of THE INDEPENDENT (of London) dated 27 October 2001 dominated by the headline “Ireland has paid a high price for its dishonest myth-making” with a subheading “ The people of Ulster must come to terms with the history thy want their children to learn.” The comments under the headlines came from Fergal Keane.
He made the valid point that many politicians in the Twenty Six Counties praised the actions of the IRA in the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-1921 and condemned those of the IRA of later years. But Keane condemned them 50 years afterwards. And I can see a great number of mitigating circumstances for later militant action.
Keane does not recognise the validity of the Republic established by the electoral mandates of 1918 to 1921 in parliamentary and local government elections. In this he is at one with Cardinal Logue, the Catholic hierarchy and the Pope at the time, but not, I imagine with the angels. Like a latter-day Stalin, he might ask “How many divisions has the Irish Republic?”. Besides, he has a deal with the BBC. He is in their pocket just as their money is in his,
He was particularly angry that IRA men hanged and buried in unconsecrated ground in 1920 and 1921 had been given Christian funerals and full Military Honours eighty years later. Two of those hanged had not been at the scene of the ambush for which they were hanged, as is clear from the witness statement given by their solicitor, Michael Noyk, to the Irish Bureau of Military History. The other eight were acting on the authority of the Irish electorate and the Government it established in an election “regarded on all sides as a plebiscite” according to The Times of London.
Members of the Crown Forces killed by the IRA had public funerals in Ireland, and woe betide shops on the funeral routes which remained open, or witnesses to them who kept their hats on. An RIC “ Auxiliary Police Cadet” a British Army Officer Veteran of the Great War shot in Listowel in 1921 had an impressive funeral in Dublin and interment in Glasnevin in 1921, with fellow “Cadets” armed to the teeth in attendance.
The funeral can be seen on Youtube.
Mr Keane should be aware of the regular Royal Irish Constabulary’s reaction in Listowel when visited by Churchill’s hand-picked thug, General Tudor, their new Commander, and Colonel Gerard Bryce Ferguson- Smythe, his cut-throat sidekick in 1920. Smythe said the more people the RIC shot, the better. The regular RIC men took-off their belts and weapons and resigned. Tudor threatened the Constables with Court Martial, but they had better knowledge of the law than he had. One of the Constables, Jeremiah Mee, gave a witness statement to the Bureau of Military History.
Keane’s column is full of bile. He refers to “de Valera’s fairy-tale country” the 1930s . The phenomenal rate of public-authority house building at the time was no fairy tale. Nor the phenomenal growth of factories, the expansion of clothing manufacturing and aid given to those with skills to come over from England, which had James Dillon sneering that Sean Lemass couldn’t pronounce their names.
Some of the incomers were Jewish, who were never discriminated against or sneered at by Fianna Fail nor its organs. De Valera may have had his head in the clouds occasionally but his feet were on the ground and he had both a magnetic and a moral compass.,
Born in New York and with a constituency in Clare, he was very interested in aviation. Dev went down to Rineanna where a land-based bomber, converted into a tanker, was to fuel a Flying-Boat In mid-air which was to attempt a transatlantic flight. Dev was invited to watch the experiment from another Flying-Boat, which had been stripped of its seats and internal fittings. With Dev was Frank Aiken, Defence Minister, Sean Leydon perhaps the State’s most brilliant Civil Servant ,Terry de Valera (Dev’s youngest son).
When in the air, the pilot wanted to move close to the departing plane so that his passengers could wave to its Crew. He banked gently to starboard,and the plane was out of view, turned again and saw he was approaching It at speed. Then it banked suddenly and Taoiseach, Defence Minister and Civil Servant were thrown about, with Frank Aiken, a well-built man, landing on the teenage Terry de Valera. All the pilots involved in the experiment were British, with whom Dev got on famously- contrary to propaganda myth.
Keane advocated a Truth Commission back in 2001. I doubt he’d broach the subject with General Sir Nick Carter and his friends.
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