The Disappeared: Forced Disappearances In Ireland 1798-1998

Christopher Owens 🔖 “Was it not corrupt to bury mother of 10 Jean Mc Conville. Is that acceptable to you. Selective outrage I thinks.”

Now who do you think wrote this? Some do-gooder who likes to think they’re a Good Person? An apologist for the British Army? A Twitter account that commemorates the deaths of loyalist paramilitaries without disclosing said fact?

Well, it was none other than Sinn Fein TD Chris Andrews.

In 2012, using a sock puppet account, he proceeded to tweet out various criticism/insults aimed at various colleagues in his then party, Fianna Fail. Unsurprisingly, he was sacked when it emerged that he was behind the account. Embarrassingly for him, he had also attacked Sinn Fein about the Northern Bank robbery and the disappearance of Jean McConville. Tellingly, he was allowed to join the party (and is currently suing The Irish Times over an article about Hamas).

While it would be easy to dismiss this as playground politics, it is notable just how little Andrews seemed to know about the history of Fianna Fail, particularly how certain TD’s had ‘disappeared’ people themselves during the War of Independence. Indeed, the “good old IRA” disappeared more people in three years than the Provos did in thirty. When considered with the south’s whitewashing of its recent history (and barmy plans to commemorate their oppressors), it’s perhaps not surprising that this fact is not universally acknowledged.

One person who has been doing their bit over the last two decades to not only separate truth from revision but also to help identify remains of the disappeared has been Padraig Og Ó Ruairc. Author of Truce: Murder, Myth and the Last Days of the Irish War of Independence his work has been praised by the likes of Ed Moloney as representing “…a refreshing, overdue and honest break with that mendacious past [of Irish revisionism]. It is to be welcomed with open arms” and his work has led to the recovery of one of the disappeared, Private George Duff Chalmers, who was killed and secretly buried in Co. Claire in June 1921.

Beginning by discussing the 1798 rebellion and the fact that many informers, loyalists and British soldiers were secretly buried after being killed before going through the various groups that the disappeared belonged to (loyalists, British soldiers, spies, RIC, identifiers etc), their name and their stories.

Going through the litany of deaths and secret burials, one can’t help but think of the Billy Batts sequence in Goodfellas transported into an Irish context, but this must be balanced out with some pathetic details about the killings (one was an alcoholic whose weakness was exploited by the British, while another wrote a letter to his commander before being executed).

Of course, it’s worth noting that the British also participated in such tactics, although admittedly not in the same volume. Ó Ruairc cites the North King Street massacre as one example, describing it as:

…the largest massacre of civilians by the British Army. In scale it outstripped the slaughter…in Croke Park in 1920…the Ballymurphy Massacre in 1971 and…Bloody Sunday in 1972. Yet the British government has never acknowledged the full role of British soldiers in perpetuating the…massacre and the Irish government has never commemorated the innocent civilians killed.

Interestingly, when it comes to the notion of such tactics being war crimes, Ó Ruairc doesn’t have much to say on the subject, more interested in tackling the hypocrisy of successive southern governments and arguing that the remains should be given back to the descendants for reburial but that “The Irish state is somewhat in denial over the level of violence used in the war of independence. They don’t want to go digging up the bodies” and that the British aren’t interested either as it would raise awkward questions.

Overall, I am quite content to declare this an important book about the Irish struggle for independence and one that:

⚰ emphasises that (as Toxic Holocaust once sang) war is fucking hell

⚰ helps fill gaps in our knowledge about certain periods of Irish history

⚰ allows for a better understanding of why they occurred

⚰ makes us realise that such actions were not an aberration within Irish republicanism

⚰ demolishes the “good old IRA playing fairly” myth.

If there is to be reconciliation, we need to be honest about the past. Pádraig Ó Ruairc has started the ball rolling. Let’s hope others come along. And let’s hope that the collection of brain-dead career politicians in the Dail do something about their own skeletons in the closet instead of sneering at the Nordies for having done the same thing.

Pádraig Og Ó Ruairc, 2024, The Disappeared: Forced Disappearances in Ireland 1798-1998. Merrion Press. ISBN-13: 978-1785375026

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.