I think that some English people’s grasp of the history of Ireland might have
arisen from reading graffiti written on the bog walls in the Bull in Ambridge.
Indeed, a review of the Cambridge History of Ireland in
HISTORY IRELAND a couple of years back suggests that the reviewer’s opinion of
that book differs little from mine in this matter.
In the village of Combe Martin in Devon the yokels spend from Friday to Monday over the Spring Bank Holiday hunting the “Traitor Earl of Rone” an old tradition, revived in the 1970s after a break of 100 years. The “Traitor” a,k.a. Aodh O Neill died peaceably in his bed in Rome in 1616 but in this charade he dies, to put it as politely as possible, by a thousand cuts, as each yokel in turn shoots him dead, but the “traitor” miraculously revives, so all can share the glory.
It’s perhaps significant that the custom was revived in the 1970s. When i arrived in London 56 years ago this week it seemed to me that Anglo-Irish quarrels were buried forever.
Newspapers, radio, TV were friendly, jokes about the Irish did not depict us stupid, but the reverse. Dave Allen was probably the favourite comedian, Val Doonican the favourite easy-listening singer, and the Beatles were proud of their Irish roots.
Sharing the surname, charm and irresistibility of the late occupant of the White House was no disadvantage either.
At Easter 1916 British media were unstinting in their praise of the 1916 Insurgents, and when they turned their attention to the IRA of 1966 did not demonise them. The IRA had called off border war four years earlier’ though a maverick had just blown up Nelson Pillar in Dublin – a crazy stunt that might have killed some of its citizens.
The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times saluted the 1916 Insurgents such as President de Valera and Taoiseach Sean Lemass, Cabinet Ministers and Opposition leaders. Apparently the only hostile comment , by an Irish Jesuit Professor, was wisely suppressed by the Order’s Journal “STUDIES”.
Between 1921 and 1970 not many British veterans of the Black and Tan War cared to write memoirs. Apparently they were not proud of their conduct, or there was no market in Britain for their stories. Britishers were embarrassed at what had been done at the time.
Irish accounts – Dorothy Macardle’s magisterial chronicle covering the years 1912-25, THE IRISH REPUBLIC, veteran Ernie O’Malley’s ON ANOTHER MAN’S WOUND,,andTom Barry’s GUERILLA DAYS IN IRELAND were bestsellers in Ireland and went into many editions, apparently unchallenged by British veterans or academics.
The events arising from the RUC bludgeoning the pro-democracy Civil Rights demonstrators of October 5 1968 in Derry (which you may check on Youtube) utterly changed media and academia in Britain and Ireland. Truths which were known to all who lived through the War of Independence, and the immediately succeeding generation were denied. Lies put out by Dublin Castle during the Tan War, and nailed as lies at the time, were recycled and continue to be recycled in Britain and in Ireland.
While Ernie Malley and Dorothy Macardle (and Frank Gallagher and Robert Brennan) were alive there was no chance that Dublin Castle’s old lies would gain any traction, or attract the unprincipled hacks in Irish media, academia and politics. Major Tom McDowell of MI5, a Director of The Irish Times, British Ambassador Sir Andrew Gilchrist and Harold Wilson’s crooked fixer Lord Goodman managed a great coup, established the secretive, oathbound Irish Times Trust to ensure that THE IRISH TIMES would serve the interests of the British Establishment.
In 1970 an Irish Government arrangement to import a handful of light weapons to defend Catholic areas from armed onslaughts of Royal Ulster Constabulary, B “Specials” and Orange mobs was botched and Taoiseach Jack Lynch treacherously dismissed senior ministers and tried to have them and a conscientious Army Officer acting under orders convicted of crime. The jury, quite rightly found the accused not guilty.
The teaching of history in Irish schools and universities was abandoned and charlatans with crazy theories established lucrative careers while British troops and their friends made many a killing.
Tom Barry died in 1980. His reputation as a brilliant and honourable soldier in the War of Independence – The Twentieth Century’s First War for Democracy was unassailable.
It was another eight years before Peter Hart claimed to have interviewed a veteran who had taken part, under Tom Barry, in the Kilmichael Ambush of November 28 1920.
Peter Hart claimed to have interviewed the last of the Irish survivors of the Ambush, 97 year-old Ned Young on 19 November 1989, whereas Ned Young had died on 13th November 1989. Ned Young’s son claimed that Ned had had a stroke in 1987 and have been unable to conduct a conversation, even had he been alive on 19th November 1989.
Peter Hart argued that Tom Barry was a murderer and a liar and that the IRA were sectarian fanatics engaged in ethnic cleansing. Half the Pricks on the Make and Elizabeth’s Irish Whores still swear by him.
I don’t know whether they commune with him often, for he died in his forties, about 10 years ago. He came from Newfoundland and his work proven to be historically worthless, though, I would assume, lucrative.
The American Minister in Dublin during WWII, Edward Gray, was equally anti-Irish. He lived in what had been the Chief Secretary’s residence in the Phoenix Park during the British regime. He sought advice on how to deal with de Valera from Arthur Balfour, who had been Chief Secretary in the 1880s. The fact that Balfour had been dead since 1930 was no more of an obstacle to Gray, than the demise of Ned Young was to Peter Hart.
Back to the Yokels hunting “the Traitor Earl of Rone.” The revival of the custom in the 1970s was not mere coincidence. The insulting “Irish” jokes, the poisoning of the media, the bought treachery of Irish institutions happened together and has not abated.
The Yokels of Combe Martin aside, the anti-Irish media campaign in England appears to me to have been a complete failure. I have not encountered it outside the media.
I have never felt the need to hide my identity, nor, if asked, my opinions in 56 years in England.
P.S. The Rebel Earl of Tyrone features in “ELIZABETH’S IRISH WARS” by the late Cyril Falls. Elizabeth’s Irish Whores seems a good description of many of today’s hacks.
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