Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald has described the execution of her maternal great-uncle during the Civil War as a “brutal betrayal of the struggle for independence”.
James O’Connor (24), from Bansha, Co Tipperary, was executed along with six other men on December 19th, 1922 at the notorious Glasshouse in the Curragh Camp.
The seven men had been discovered in a hideout at Mooresbridge on the edge of the Curragh on the night of December 13th. An eighth man was beaten to death on the spot.
The seven who were captured were found to be in “possession without proper authority” of weapons, which was a crime punishable by death under laws passed during the Civil War by the Free State government.
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Speaking at a Sinn Féin event in Dublin’s Pearse House to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Civil War, Ms McDonald said she was moved by a letter sent by her great-grandmother Bridget seeking a pension for his service and her “powerful refutation of her son being branded a criminal”.
“James was a good man. An Irish soldier, a patriot,” Ms McDonald said.
“Through her words, I reflect not only on his sacrifice, but also on how nation building is not some intangible notion.
“It is a journey woven together by the threads of the human stories of our shared history; a tapestry of the lives lived by ordinary people in extraordinary times.
“Reading my great-grandmother’s letter, I think also about how much of her life was sculpted by the razor-sharp chisel of colonialism and domination.
“For her, the loss of her beloved son to a bitter Civil War, executed by his own, was the ultimate and heartbreaking manifestation of the oppression she experienced.
“Free State executions of republicans were a brutal betrayal of the solidarity, comradeship and togetherness that drove and galvanised the struggle for independence.”
Ms McDonald said the Civil War happened because the Free State, “backed by powerful economic interests, decided to forcibly suppress their republican opponents”.
The British ruled by “divide and conquer” and were successful in Ireland in fostering divisions between Irish republicans.
The Free State use of British field guns to shell anti-Treaty rebels holed up in the Four Courts was “essentially, an action that reflected the survival route chosen by the British Empire”, she believed.
“To threaten, to manipulate, to coerce with the aim of turning Irish person against Irish person. The Free State succumbed to that tactic. The IRA resisted it.”
As a result of the Civil War, the defeated republican side “saw the hope of a free, united and socially just Ireland dashed”.
The end result of the Civil War was that power in Ireland has “rarely being wielded in the interests of the people of no property”, she stated.
“For decades, power has been on the side of financiers, big landlords, the golden circles. For whatever else might be said about the causes and the course of the Civil War, this can be said: most on both sides were motivated by patriotism as they saw it and did not see their goal — whether Free State or Republic — as a means of personal advancement in careerist politics.”
While the South became a deeply conservative state which “marginalised women, the poor and political progressives”, she continued, Northern Ireland became a one-party state which excluded nationalists from power.
“Essentially, it was another British system to turn the people of this island against each other. All this dysfunction are symptoms of a colonial hangover, of the damaging interplay between power, war and dominance.”
She accused British prime minister Boris Johnson of trying to manipulate political unionism in a way that Conservative politicians manipulated Edward Carson 100 years ago.
“Exploitative power, which is the nature of British rule in Ireland, will always seek a route for survival. That hasn’t changed in a century.”
