The McGurk's Bar Bombing and the Plot to Deceive Two Parliaments

Historians are slaves to the keepers of documents. At best, we can only present a small part of the past and use our skills to interpolate (guess) the missing pieces of the puzzle. This is why history is both frustrating and such fun. A carefully constructed theory can be exploded by a scrap of paper. In Massacre in West Cork I had to rewrite entire chapters after I found the Dunmanway Diary in the Military Archives and the release of Michael O'Donoghue's Bureau of Military History statement. Though unsuccessful in this case, I was seeking information about the 'Activities of named paid informants against Irish Secret Societies 1892 [sic]-1910.The article both outlines the difficulties of research inside the sensitive parts of a state's anatomy and gives hope that the culture of excessive secrecy can eventually be overcome . The views expressed are my own personal observations on the outcome and I interested parties to comment o this draft.

Criminal Justice Matters, 2014

2000

Contemporary British History, 2010

When British Paratroopers shot dead 13 people at a civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1972 it dealt a hammer blow to British government claims of neutrality and moral authority in dealing with the escalating violence in Northern Ireland. Existing historical accounts of Bloody Sunday treat the killings as the outcome of a more-or-less unified military anxiety at increasing disorder in Derry, combined with unexpected events on the day, presenting the killings as the outcome of essentially responsive actions by the British military. In so doing they lend support to the ‘cock-up’ theory that represents the killings as the outcome of a series of errors of interpretation and communication. This article provides an alternative interpretation of the political and military decision-making process, challenging key elements in the analysis in the existing literature. By contrast with existing accounts, it argues that the Bloody Sunday operation was a calculated plan devised at a very high level to stage a massive and unprecedented confrontation that would disrupt and shatter an established policy of security force restraint in the city of Derry. It argues further that the operation that day emerged from an intense internal struggle to shape security policy that reflected deep divisions within the security forces, analysing the statements and evidence of key participants much more critically than existing accounts do. It argues that high-level decision-making is central to the explanation of the outcome that day and that the operation raises serious questions about the relationship between political decision-making and the operational decision-making of the army in Northern Ireland.

Christopher Andrew and David Dilks (eds.), The Missing Dimension (Basingstoke, 1984); and K.G. Robertson (ed.), British and American Approaches to Intelligence (Basingstoke, 1987), 1984

These two book chapters from 1984 and 1987 deal respectively with my research interest in British government in Ireland during the revolutionary era, and with arcane organisational aspects of British intelligence history. Both draw mainly on official records and on private collections of papers. Although the Nathan papers had been available in Oxford for many years, only the late Leon O'Broin had made much use of them to explore Dublin Castle's response to the threat of rebellion in 1915-16. He was a pioneer of systematic archival research, whose meticulous work I built on while rather taking it for granted. The second chapter is based largely on Treasury and other official records which, because of their seemingly anodyne file titles, had not been as thoroughly weeded of material relating to intelligence and security organisations and activities as they might have been. I also found a surprising amount of information in official British publications, even during the Second World War, especially in the annual estimates volumes presented to parliament.

Aubane Historical Society, 2020

The essay accompanies and expands on a talk at Belfast's Feile an Phobail (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrpAi-Z3bk). It analyses research by Anne Dolan, Terence Dooley, Diarmaid Ferriter, Brian Hanley, Fearghal McGarry, Eunan O’Halpin and Tim Wilson, published between 1986 and 2018. Over nearly thirty years, historians mistakenly depicted the IRA's killing of Kate Carroll in April 1921 in Monaghan as sectarian. Carroll was one of three women the IRA executed between 1919-21 during the War of Independence, out of approximately 196 in total. The essay discusses errors of fact and of interpretation, and also how treatment of Carroll's death represents a symptomatic failure by revisionist historians in Ireland. The essay reproduces for the first time an explanation of why Kate Carroll was killed. The information had been in the possession of one of the historians discussed in the essay, but was not detailed in his available research on the subject. The essay also discusses the phenomenon of historians’ interest in alleged sectarian attacks on Protestants in southern Ireland, compared with relative disinterest in anti-Catholic pogroms in and around Belfast in the new territory of Northern Ireland, whose 100th anniversary falls in 2020-22. Niall Meehan is the author of The Embers of Revisionism (https://www.academia.edu/34075119). 31 August 2023, typo corrected p2, some sentences re-written, pp2-3. Earlier, in noting historians who mistakenly concluded that no Protestants were elected to the senate, I wrote that six were. That should have been five (p3, see n17).

History Ireland, 2010

The Saville report is highly critical of the immediate commander of 1 Para, Colonel Derek Wilford, for ignoring restraining elements in his orders and precipitating the deaths of 13 innocent people in Derry on 30 January 1972. But, asks Niall Ó Dochartaigh, was Wilford really out of step with elements higher up the chain of command? The most illuminating evidence that we have of high level military decision-making in relation to Bloody Sunday is contained in a series of interviews conducted in 1983 and 1984 by Desmond Hamill for a book that he was writing about the British Army in Northern Ireland....

"An analysis and critique of the controversy and debate surrounding the publication in 1998 of a history of the War of Independence in West Cork. The allegation that sectarianism was a feature of Irish republican ideology and action during the period 1920-22 is examined in the context of claims made in Peter Hart's 'The IRA and its Enemies' (OUP 1998). Niall Meehan's essay examines problematic anonymous interviews. By comparing Peter Hart's 1993 PhD thesis 'The Irish Republican Army and its Enemies' (TCD 1993) with Hart's 1998 book 'The IRA and its Enemies', some anonymous interviewees cited by Hart may be identified. Problems arising out of this identification are discussed, for example whether two IRA veterans of the the November 1920 Kilmichael ambush were alive when Hart claimed to have interviewed them anonymously. The cover of 'Troubled History' features the 18 November 1989 'Southern Star' coverage of the death of Ned Young, the last Kilmichael veteran to die. Hart's thesis and book claim an interview with an anonymous Kilmichael veteran one day later. On the chapter, 'Taking it out on the Protestants', questions are posed with regard to information in the thesis that is withdrawn from the book. For instance a possible perpetrator of the 'April killings', April 26-29 1922 near Dunmanway West Cork, is named in the thesis, but excised from the book. Other significant changes are noted, also. The essay is part of a projected larger study, examining the effect of the Troubles post 1968 in Northern Ireland intruding on the history of the War of Independence between 1919-21. In addition, the ramifications of censorship perfected by Conor Cruise O'Brien in the 1970s in southern Ireland will be examined in this wider context. [See also, under 'papers': Distorting Irish History [One], the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish Historiography, Nov 2010 Distorting Irish History Two, the road from Dunmanway: Peter Hart’s treatment of the 1922 ‘April killings’ in West Cork, May 2011] [Download PDF below]"

This dissertation aims to determine whether the response of the British security forces to insurgency and terrorism in ‘the Troubles’ was legal, or whether the response constitutes a ‘dirty war’ – a conflict in which illegal practices are widespread, systemic or politically sanctioned. It examines both the legal actions and the illegal practices undertaken by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the British Army and the other involved security agencies, and forms an analysis of the nature, reasoning, prevalence and outcome of these practices. It is accompanied by an assessment of the responsibility and accountability of the British government and security community during the post-‘Troubles’ years. This study draws upon a wide variety of sources, including very recently published evidence, which sheds new light into the willingness of these agencies to admit guilt for illicit practices.

2013

The British government's dealings in Ireland have long been characterised by cover-ups, deceit and perfidiousness. This includes collaboration between British security forces and loyalist paramilitaries, the obstruction of legal investigations, the refusal to hold public enquiries, and the introduction of a new form of intelligence-led policing which, in many cases, allowed informers to act with impunity.