In histories of the War of Independence and Civil War, Leitrim and Kildare sit among the so-called ‘quiet counties’, the wallflowers of the Irish Revolution, often ignored at the time and generally forgotten in the aftermath. Their designation as quiet counties stems largely from the fact that the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.) in both Leitrim and Kildare carried out few attacks on the crown forces during the War of Independence. Yet, to concentrate entirely on one aspect of the Irish Revolution, however important, is misguided. Two additions to the Four Courts Press series on the Irish Revolution assess the transformations that occurred in Leitrim and Kildare and explore the various methods of resistance deployed in those counties between 1912 and 1923.
Patrick McGarty, in his study of Leitrim, examines ‘the consequences of the Irish Revolution for a small rural community in the north-west of Ireland’. Before 1916, the ‘profoundly inward-looking nature of local politics’ ensured that the Irish Parliamentary Party (I.P.P.) had a wide support base. By 1918, that support base had crumbled, partly, McGarty argues, because the county's two M.P.s offered unwavering support for Irish recruitment to the British army. Although the outbreak of the First World War had seen widespread support in Leitrim for recruitment, such support had dissipated by the conscription crisis of 1918. By then, Sinn Féin had emerged as the county's dominant political force, a process that is clearly documented in the book's early chapters.
McGarty skilfully details the contours of conflict in Leitrim between 1919 and 1923, contextualising the violence that occurred during those years. Across rural Ireland, I.R.A. activity was driven by small groups of officers, some of whom had formerly been soldiers in the British army. It was those officers, men such as James Tormey in Westmeath, who organised and carried out attacks on the crown forces. Leitrim's I.R.A. lacked such figures and McGarty is blunt in his assessment: ‘The absence of both effective leadership and arms hindered I.R.A. activity in Leitrim.’ It was only during a brief period in February and March 1921, after I.R.A. General Headquarters (G.H.Q.) sent Seán Connolly to Leitrim, that the local I.R.A. had effective, or active, leadership. That period was brought to a brutal end at Selton Hill in March 1921, when Connolly and five of his I.R.A. comrades were killed in a gunfight with the crown forces. For the most part, the local I.R.A. resorted to relatively low-risk activities such as the trenching of roads, raids on mail trains and the enforcement of the Belfast Boycott, a task in which local branches of Cumann na mBan were prominent.
Despite the small number of I.R.A. attacks on the crown forces in Leitrim, the county suffered what McGarty describes as ‘extreme levels of state violence’. His claim that Leitrim therefore ‘differed from other regions’ can be disputed since Westmeath, another of the quiet counties, experienced similar levels of violence from the crown forces, particularly during 1920. However, his related claim that the crown forces in Leitrim responded in a manner disproportionate to the level of I.R.A. activity is demonstrably correct. McGarty details numerous attacks by the various sections of the crown forces on civilians, creameries and businesses, such as the offices of the Leitrim Observer newspaper. That violence was, McGarty argues, an effort to intimidate a civilian population that had supported and sustained a widespread campaign of boycott against the crown forces.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty gained widespread support in Leitrim, although sections of the I.R.A. opposed the agreement. Yet, they did not organise a unit in Leitrim, instead joining anti-Treaty units in Sligo and north Roscommon. The anti-Treaty I.R.A. unit based in Arigna, County Roscommon regularly moved through north Leitrim and Cavan, attacking a range of targets from national army soldiers to private homes and businesses. Indeed, McGarty accuses the Arigna-based force of blurring ‘the thin lines distinguishing political agitation from ordinary crime’. Their national army opponents, in turn, were implicated in various crimes, including the torture and assassination of prisoners.
McGarty also charts other forms of violence. His research uncovered only a few examples of cross-border conflict extending from Leitrim into Northern Ireland and no evidence of widespread sectarianism in the county. Agrarian unrest and land seizures were uncommon in Leitrim between 1912 and 1923. He concludes that the relatively low level of land agitation was a result of the composition of land holdings in Leitrim with the vast majority of farms being smaller than 50 acres, allied to an above average rate of land purchase by tenant farmers. In that respect, Leitrim differed from nearby counties such as Roscommon, Sligo, Galway and Mayo, all of which saw widespread agrarian unrest at various stages between 1912 and 1923.
Kildare, as described by Seamus Cullen, likewise witnessed relatively low levels of violence, particularly during the War of Independence. The county's I.R.A., according to Cullen, ‘lacked the leadership of their Munster colleagues and were inhibited by a lack of arms’. It also had to contend with the high concentration of British army troops in the Curragh camp and other barracks. Despite such challenges, Cullen states that the I.R.A. was able to gain control of Kildare's countryside and smaller towns between 1919 and 1921. That control was made possible by the retreat of the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.) from rural barracks in the spring and summer of 1920. By August of that year, the police held only six barracks in Kildare, which they had transformed into socially isolated fortresses. The absence of the R.I.C. created space for the Dáil Éireann counter-state to flourish, particularly during 1920, an experience that Kildare shared with Leitrim. In both counties, the success of this counter-state presented a formidable challenge to the existing structures of state political power and the representatives of British rule in Ireland.
While the I.R.A. in Kildare generally avoided open confrontation with the crown forces, they assisted the counter-state by acting as a police force, especially in rural areas. Apart from policing, the Kildare I.R.A. concentrated on activities such as road trenching. Cumann na mBan, despite having branches throughout the county, kept a similarly low profile. As Cullen demonstrates, the Kildare I.R.A.'s primary achievement was intelligence gathering, specifically the regular interception of police communications which were subsequently passed to I.R.A. G.H.Q.
Cullen's chapter on the Civil War in Kildare is particularly informative and he highlights a number of distinguishing features in the county's experience of the conflict. From its beginning, the national army held all the county's towns and military barracks (the British army departed the Curragh camp in May 1922), thereby ensuring its supremacy. The anti-Treaty I.R.A. attempted to counter that supremacy with guerrilla warfare such as the ambush at Graney Cross in October 1922 during which the national army suffered four fatalities. Subsequently, the government and the national army inflicted retaliation on the anti-Treaty I.R.A. in the form of official executions. Seven prisoners were executed by firing squad on the grounds of the Curragh camp in December 1922. Other prisoners convicted of offences carried out in Kildare were later executed in Carlow Barracks and Dublin's Keogh Barracks (formerly Richmond Barracks).
The Civil War, as Cullen explains, ‘adversely affected the unionist population in Kildare’. The conflict's final months witnessed anti-Treaty I.R.A. attacks on Protestant-owned farms and houses, particularly in the south of the county. Cullen explores the extent to which that intimidation was a factor in the decline of the county's Protestant population, although he notes that the primary contributor to the fall was the withdrawal of the British army from Kildare. The barracks vacated by those departing soldiers were quickly transformed into prisons. A notable aspect of the Civil War in Kildare was its vast population of captured members of the anti-Treaty I.R.A., who were incarcerated at the Curragh camp and in Newbridge's army barracks. In October 1923, months after the end of the Civil War, over 5,200 of those prisoners were still detained in Kildare.
By that stage, Kildare had, as described by Cullen, ‘returned to its Redmondite roots’. The first half of his book explains how those roots had seemingly rotted away by 1918, while Sinn Féin bloomed. Yet, the election of August 1923 resulted in local victories for former Redmondite nationalists George Wolfe and John Conlon, although it was Labour which topped the poll. It is Cullen's judgement that ‘the politics of the majority in Kildare reverted to a viewpoint held in the pre-revolutionary period’. His analysis shares similarities with that of McGarty, who concludes that, despite the significant and fundamental political change that took place in Leitrim during the Irish Revolution, there ‘was little alteration in the structure of society’.
Both books, as characteristic of the wider Irish Revolution series by Four Courts Press, are well-structured, providing a clear narrative of events between 1912 and 1923. That narrative is interspersed with frequent digressions during which particular aspects of each county's history are analysed. Taken together, the books give a voice to a couple of the quiet counties and make a valuable addition to the historiography of the Irish Revolution.
