An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March 2019 www.dfmagazine.ie 24 | However it would be wrong to automat- ically assume that these three killings were all sectarian. The widow of one of the victims stated in her application to the British Government's Irish Grants Commission that her husband, William Latimer, a Protestant farmer, was killed because he had supplied intelligence information to the RIC. Furthermore she did not ascribe a sectarian motive to his killing. John Henry Bernard the former Protestant Archbishop of Dublin declared that "During the melancholy years 1920 to 1923 there have indeed been outbursts of violence directed at Loyalist minorities but for the most part it has been because they were Loyalists, and not because they were Protestant, that members of the Church of Ireland suf- fered." Likewise Lionel Curtis, an advisor to the British government, who visited Ireland in secret in 1921 reported to the British cabinet that: "Protestants in the South do not complain of persecution on sectarian grounds. If Protestant farmers are murdered, it is not by reason of their religion, but rather because they are un- der suspicion as Loyalists. The distinction is a fine but a real one." It is important also to remember that, just like the modern Irish Defence Forces, the makeup of IRA in the War of Indepen- dence reflected wider Irish society and not just the majority Catholic population. Protestant IRA Volunteers such as William Hull in Antrim, Edward Waters and the Gray brothers in Cork, George Leopold and Samuel Irwin in Dublin, Peter Steepe, Otto Hasselbeck, George Imbush and Stanley Harris in Limerick, Walter Mitchell in Offaly and the Plant brothers in Tipperary fought alongside their Catholic comrades in arms for the Republic proclaimed in 1916 and ratified by Dáil Éireann in 1919 which promised to "cherish all of the children of the na- tion equally" and guaranteed "religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens" The overwhelming majority of the historical evidence suggests the IRA suspected people of being spies based on their activities, and not because of a campaign of anti-Protestant ethnic cleansing. Tom Barry, the leader of the IRA's 3rd West Cork Brigade Flying Column claimed that the IRA always operated on this basis and that reli- gious prejudice was never a motivating factor for them: "We never killed a man or interfered with a man because of his religion, we didn't give three straws, they were human beings to us and they were treated as that and there was never a breath of sectarianism … They were no more shot because they were Protestant or Jew or Atheists or anything else. They were shot because they had in their own confessions that they were doing the job, and they had caused the loss of Irish Republican Army men's lives." Although the IRA was a 'volunteer army' waging guerilla warfare, both the rank and file and IRA General Headquar- ters made determined throughout the War of Independence to adopt, as far as was possible in the circumstances, the structures and regulations of a regular standing national army - a chain of com- mand, accountability to Governmental authority, direction from the Minister of Defence etc. The IRA's methods of detecting and punishing suspected spies followed the standard operating pro- cedures then practiced by other armies and in particular the British army where many IRA Volunteers had learned their soldiering. For example, many of the fea- tures of IRA executions including the use of firing squads, tying the condemned person to a fixed post before shooting and the use of "spy labels" mimicked British army practice in the First World War at a time when the execution of civilians as alleged German spies by the British forces was common. Spy mania on the Western Front resulted in the execution of hundreds of civilian suspects. Private B.W. Page of the London Irish Rifles recalled an incident when a telephone was found in the house of a peasant girl who was friendly with British troops. The discov- ery was considered by the British Army as sufficient proof that she was guilty of being a German spy and all of the oc- cupants of her house were subsequently arrested and executed. Likewise, Captain J.C. Dunn of the Royal Welch Fusiliers recorded in his diary for 5th May 1918 - "A heavy drizzle nearly all day. The propri- etor of Charlie's Bar at Amiens is said to have been shot, a wireless outfit and other incriminating discoveries are al- leged. Also there's a story of the shooting of a cheque changer at Béthune…" The British saw such measures as a military necessity and their propaganda proudly boasted about the harsh treat- ment they dealt out to suspected spies. British magazines like 'The War Illus- trated' showed images of the bodies of alleged German spies shot dead, their bodies labelled with a notice that simply read "SPY" and dumped on the roadside. These images were published with glee- ful headlines such as "Short Shrift for Spies at the Battle-Front." By 1920 British propaganda in 'The Illustrated Police News' printed a remarkably similar im- Comdt Tom Barry, OC Flying Column of 3rd West Cork Brigade, IRA. Fig. 3 - Spy label attached to Patrick Larmour's body.

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