Was the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson the murder that triggered the Irish Civil War
Categories: Historical news
Was theassassination of Sir Henry Wilson the ‘murder that triggered the Irish CivilWar’?
There hasbeen a welcome proliferation of publications marking the centenary of the IrishCivil War. This book by Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy is a must-read onthat conflict as well as Ireland's wider revolutionary period. McGreevy notonly detailed the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson in London on 22 June 1922,but he placed the assassination in the context of the political upheaval thatled to the rise of the Irish Free State.
that theassassins, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O'Sullivan, despite their injuriessustained in battle (both served with the British Army during World War I andlater joined the Irish Republican Army), were able to pull off the attack.managed, it was extraordinary in itself. ,The assassination of high-profilefigures was a long-standing tactic of militant Irish republicanism, andMcGreevy painstakingly details how and why Wilson became a target for the IRA.
Born inCounty Longford in 1864, he was a prominent military figure during World War Iand a much-lauded unofficial advisor to Prime Minister Lloyd George. Heventured into the military and political world, and when his armed serviceended, he was elected as an MP for the hardline federalist North Downsconstituency.
Unlike manyin Whitehall, who had come to recognize the need for, if not the need for, HomeRule for Ireland, Wilson vehemently protested, especially in his swift anduncompromising public pronouncements. This is not to say that he failed torecognize how repugnant the executions of Republican prisoners like Kevin Barrywould be, but that Wilson's public image was that of a 'radical partisan',as described in the Irish Independent.
ThePresident of the Provisional Irish Government, Michael Collins, used thebloodshed in Ulster (and Wilson's association with the worst excesses of theSpecial Constabulary that was created to restore order) publicly to FieldMarshal as a 'violent Orange Partisan'. To label. If the killers inLondon needed a clue, it was one of many. McGreevy's book sheds light on themany nuances and complexities in British and Irish politics at the time.
After all,this is the story of two British-born Irish Republicans who kill an Irish-bornBritish imperialist. Reggie Dunne and Joe O'Sullivan share a background in themilitary – O'Sullivan lost a leg in the war and Dunne experienced the PTSD thatplagued so many former servicemen – but also in Republican circles in London.The pair used their war medals to divert attention from their undergroundgunfights, intelligence work and espionage.
Their Catholicreligiosity and willingness to embrace the tradition of suffering andsacrifice among Irish martyrs tied them together. A major argument of the GreatHatred is that the killing sparked the Irish Civil War. There is no doubt thatits effect was like shaking a lit match in an already smoldering politicalcauldron.
The captureof four courts in Dublin by anti-treaty forces, in violation of the terms ofthe Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which concluded the War of Independence,led to the condemnation of Westminster. The so-called treaty elections of June1922, in which both sides of the treaty division attempted to agree apost-election alliance in advance, were met with deep skepticism by theBritish government.
The killingof an MP, who was that government's top military adviser, was, in many ways,the last straw. Whether or not the murder was formally sanctioned by MichaelCollins is much of the final chapter and the reader has no doubt as toMcGreevy's conclusion – supported by much evidence – in that regard. A majoraid in charting the story of the killers are the records kept in the MilitaryArchives of Ireland, which thankfully survive, unlike many records that rise insmoke when bombs rained down on four courts in late June 1922. The shootingjust a week before the Fall of the Four Courts was Henry Wilson's one major,and perhaps hitherto underestimated, factor in provoking the war.
RonanMcGreevy’s rivetingand expertly presented survey of events and their wider contexts ensures thatthe assassination at 36 Eaton Place on 22 June 1922 is rightly positioned atthe heart of that most traumatic of periods in the history of Ireland.