IRISH HISTORY: British intelligence was understandably disparaging in 1922. Echoing Tory and unionist commentators, officers believed Ireland, or the greater part of it, had been "lost" - not because of gunmen shooting at the RIC, augmented by the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, from behind ditches - but due to the vacillating Liberals.
"The Irishman, without any insult being intended," wrote Sir Ormonde de l'Epée Winter, looking the part on the cover of Peter Hart's new book, "somewhat resembles a dog, and understands firm treatment, but, like the dog, he cannot understand being cajoled with a piece of sugar in one hand whilst he receives a beating from a stick in the other." In reality, the IRA, acting under the authority of Dáil Éireann, had fought the Crown forces to a stalemate, which was resolved through the mutual compromise incorporated in the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
Historians have accepted that, in the intelligence arena, British ineptitude was exposed by the organisational genius of Michael Collins. This judgment is challenged by the release of two confidential reports prepared for the army and the police in early 1922. The police report indicates a marked improvement in operations superintended by Col Winter. His post-mortem, though self-serving and flawed, provides a unique account of intelligence from the inside.
This latest volume in the Irish Narratives series, comprising those reports, is a significant contribution to the study of Irish revolutionary history. In his masterly assessment, Dr Hart concludes that rarely has the secret life of the British state been so exposed to inquiry.
The editor appears disingenuous on one point, however, about which he has written in an award-winning book on the IRA in Cork. The army report said "many Protestant farmers" in the Bandon area gave information to the British forces during the War of Independence. Hart comments in his notes: " . . . there is no evidence that they acted en masse despite this statement". But is this report not evidence? After all, it is described as "the single most important - and by common consent the most trustworthy - source we have" on the reinforced intelligence regime.
This report found that "secret service was on the whole a failure in Ireland". Although British intelligence performed more than adequately in a contest of hide, seek and kill, it never succeeded in infiltrating the underground.
While acknowledging the brilliance of Collins, Hart points out that his secret service gained supremacy in Dublin only; ultimately, Britain was unable to achieve a decisive victory in either military or intelligence terms; "nor, despite later protestations, was one in the offing in the summer of 1921".
According to the British intelligence chief, Col Winter, one unnamed TD who voted against the Treaty had volunteered information while in prison. Had the Second Dáil, which assembled in University College Dublin on December 14th, 1921, access to Winter's report the Treaty would have been ratified by a larger margin than 64 votes to 57.
If journalism is the first draft of history, Free State or Republic constitutes primary source material. First published in March 1922, it is based on reports of the public sessions of the Treaty debates, extending over 12 days, which Pádraig de Búrca and John Boyle wrote for the Irish Independent.
As Patrick Murray points out in his introduction, their pen pictures illuminate the printed record. For instance, Éamon de Valera "brooded with the silence of a man whose dream had been shattered". Yet de Búrca - who blamed him later for fomenting civil war - did not doubt de Valera's sincerity and honesty.
In recording his vote against the Treaty, "the voice was that of a man who is an unwilling witness to a great tragedy". De Valera broke down when the motion was carried: "It was an awful moment. Women were weeping openly. Men were trying to restrain their tears. Some because of the approval for the Treaty - but all because of the final parting in that body which had won the love of Ireland and the respect of the world".
As with many other young men, the Spanish Civil War was Frank Ryan's finest hour. Dublin in the inter-war years was a cold place for a socialist republican dissident.Born in Co Limerick in 1902, Ryan was interned during the Civil War. After graduating from UCD, his skills as an agitator and propagandist elevated him to the IRA leadership.He organised a demonstration against O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars. Seeing the recent Abbey production, which presented Pearse as a mindless militarist, one has some sympathy with Ryan's stand in the raw 1920s.
One has less sympathy for his role in harassing Armistice Day commemorations. He demanded that the Free State emulate the North, where displaying the Tricolour was forbidden, by banning the Union Jack. Ryan lacked ideological clarity in an age when the concept of tolerating conflicting opinions had negligible support on both sides of the Border.
In Spain, however, Ryan was valiant in battle; he became an important figure in the propaganda section of the International Brigades; and enjoyed "wild nights" in Madrid with Ernest Hemingway. Wounded, he was sent home to convalesce, but returned to Spain to evacuate his comrades. Nora Harkin remembers seeing Ryan at a farewell party: "A light was shining on his cheeks - full of tears".
Captured in 1938, he was sentenced to death but spent the next two years in Burgos prison. A number of influential figures worked to save his life: including the Irish minister to Spain, Leopold Kerney; and his right-wing protagonist, Eoin O'Duffy, who appealed to Franco for clemency.
Franco refused to release Ryan, but permitted his "escape". Accordingly, he was handed over to Abwehr (German military intelligence) on the French border.
Kerney's report of these events caused turmoil within the Department of External Affairs, McGarry reveals. "The potential implications for Irish neutrality of a diplomat facilitating the transfer of Ireland's highest-profile political prisoner to Nazi Germany were serious." Éamon de Valera insisted that Ryan should not be allowed to return home during the war, as it "would entail all sorts of complications".
Ryan faced two options in 1940 - to stay imprisoned in deteriorating health or accept Abwehr's help. His motives in returning to Germany after an abortive mission to Ireland later that summer are more difficult to understand. After the IRA chief-of-staff, Seán Russell, died from a perforated ulcer in a U-boat off the Irish coast, Ryan chose freely to return to Germany. McGarry concludes that it confirmed "his willingness to collaborate, albeit to advance republican goals".
Ryan was not the only one to miscalculate when England had its back to the wall. De Valera, fearing an Allied defeat and his own fifth column, rejected a British offer to approach the Northern government to join in steps to create a united Ireland in return for Southern entry into the war. Republicans, in a society maimed by the Civil War, had an enormous capacity for self-delusion when it came to the relative nature of British oppression.
Following Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, Ryan became increasingly disillusioned with the war. Except for Francis Stuart, he did not associate with Irish expatriates in Berlin and died in 1944.
Based on new archival source material, Dr McGarry sheds much light on the adventurous if inconsistent life of Frank Ryan. This concise biography, by the author of IrishPolitics and the Spanish Civil War, is marred by the inexplicable absence of an index.
The contents of this book of essays are almost as fascinating as its cover. It shows the grave of Maj Willie Redmond in Belgium, with nuns looking on, during the visit of an Irish delegation shortly after his death in 1917.
The Oxford-based editors have no illusions about the Great War. It was "a general European catastrophe which embodied nationalistic violence at its most extreme". Furthermore, "wherever they fought and for whatever cause, the Irish of 1914-22 were both killers and victims and the circle of suffering spread well beyond the combatants".
• Brendan Ó Cathaoir is an author and an Irish Times journalist
British Intelligence in Ireland, 1920-21: The Final Reports. Edited by Peter Hart. Cork University Press, 109pp. €12
Free State or Republic? By Pádraig de Búrca and John F. Boyle. University College Dublin Press, 93pp. €13.90
Frank Ryan. By Fearghal McGarry. Historical Association of Ireland,
89pp. €9
Ireland and the Great War: "A war to unite us all"? Edited by
Adrian Gregory and Senia Paseta. Manchester University Press, 226pp hbk £47.50, pbk £14.99