1920 and the last lockdown of Tralee
SIMON BROUDER LOOKS AT EVENTS IN TRALEE A CENTURY AGO WHEN A ‘BLACK AND TAN’ REIGN OF TERROR SAW TRALEE LOCKED DOWN AND ITS PEOPLE NEARLY STARVED IN AN OFTEN FORGOTTEN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE ATROCITY
WITH Kerry in lock-down it may seem like we are living in unparalleled times but it is far from the first time the people of the Kingdom have been forced to shelter in the homes in the face of a crisis.
For the most recent example we need only look back a century to 1920 and the ‘Siege of Tralee’ at the height of the War of Independence.
Though the siege is often forgotten by historians it is one of the worst examples of Black and Tan brutality against civilians during the conflict.
The nine day siege had it’s roots in death of Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney on hunger strike and a death sentence being handed down to young Dublin republican Kevin Barry, both of which occurred on October 31, 1920.
To retaliate the leadership of the IRA immediately sent out orders that Volunteers should killing or injure as many Crown police and soldiers as they could.
Though the order was soon rescinded the message never reached Kerry where a wave of shootings began.
Prior to this the IRA had killed only four RIC members since 1916. Over 24 hours Kerry Volunteers would shoot 16 RIC members and a naval officer, killing seven of them.
Among them were 23 year old Constable Patrick Waters, a four-year RIC veteran from Galway and Constable Ernest Bright, a Londoner in his early thirties.
Waters and Bright were captured by the IRA’s Strand Road Company in Tralee who killed the RIC men and dumped their bodies in a hidden location on the outskirts of the town. They have never been found.
One story has it that the bodies were burned in the furnace of the Gas Works, but later some of those involved have reportedly said the pair were buried near “The Point” at the end of the canal in Blennerville.
There is also anecdotal evidence that the RIC men’s bodies were moved at some point and hidden in a tomb at Clogherbrien cemetery.
What happened over the next nine days in Tralee, as the Tans tried to secure the return of their missing colleagues, made the front-pages of newspapers around the world.
The violence began in the early hours of Monday November 1 – the day of Barry’s actual execution – when the Tans burned down the County Hall in Tralee, which was then opposite the Dominican Church.
There followed and orgy of violence that saw the townspeople terrorised and one local volunteer, Tommy Wall, shot dead.
News that Kerry County Hall had been burnt down by the Crown spurred the interests of several international journalists who had been in Cork to attend McSwiney’s funeral.
Two of those reporters immediatley made their way to Tralee by Train to find out what was happening in the Kingdom.
One later recounted how – after meeting a number of British soldiers – he and his companion were told to walk to the corner of the street and look at a typed notice affixed to the wall.
One of the Tans then read out the notice, It read:
“Unless the two Tralee policemen in Sinn Féin custody are returned before 10 a.m. on the 2nd inst. reprisal of a nature not yet heard of in Ireland will take place in Tralee and surroundings.”
“After ten o’clock tomorrow it won’t be safe for anybody in Tralee whose face is not known,” one of the Tans warned.
They were true to their word. Countless houses and businesses were sacked, civilians were brutally beaten and homes were burned. Within hours the streets were deserted as the populace cowered indoors afraid for their lives.
When food quickly began to run out Black and Tan soldiers blocked bakeries and provision shops forcing famished women and children from the doors at the point of a bayonet.
Jean de Marsillac of Le Journal in Paris was on of those who reported on the atrocities unfolding in Tralee.
“All the afternoon, except for soldiers, the town was as deserted and doleful as if the Angel of Death has passed through it,” he wrote.
“Not a living soul in the streets. All the shops shut and the bolts hastily fastened. All work was suspended, even the local newspapers.”
Perhaps the most influential report came from Hugh Martin of The Daily news whose coverage of the Tans’ actions – Burning County hall and threats made against him – caused a sensation in London and led to questions in the House of Commons about the threat to the reporter.
“There are no steps being taken against journalists in Ireland, “Sir Hamar Greenwood, the Chief Secretary for Ireland declared. “Ireland is the freest country in the world—for journalists.”
Soon the events in Tralee were front page news across the world.
“Notices posted in Tralee state that unless two policemen in the custody of Sinn Feiners are released this morning reprisal on a scale unprecedented in Ireland will occur in Tralee,” the Sydney Evening News reported on its front page on the other side of the world.
“The inhabitants are expecting a night of terror and are fleeing. The shops are shuttered, and the streets deserted.”
By Friday, November 5, sto
ries from Tralee were making the front pages of the New York Times; New York Tribune, and Chicago Tribune in the United States, the Montreal Gazette and the Calgary Herald in Canada, and as the Sydney Evening News in Australia.
“I do not remember, even during the war, having seen people so profoundly terrified as those of this little town, Tralee,” wrote Jean de Marsillac
“The civil authorities are powerless; that there is literally nobody in the world to whom one can appeal, and from whom one can demand protection.”
Tom McEllsitrim and his Volunteers tried to relieve the pressure on Tralee with an attack at Ballybrakc near Farranfore – on November 8 – that claimed the lives of two Black and Tan constables and helped divert the Tans attention away from Tralee. Two days later the siege was lifted.
Given the enormous attention it garnered in the International Press it is surprising that many historians tend to gloss over what happened in Tralee in early November 1920.
That may well be because of another incident the following weekend the, so called “Battle of Tralee” and the British forces, subsequent, farcical attempt at propaganda.
The Friday after the Siege of Tralee was lifted Black and Tans raided a creamery in Balydwyer eventually leading to a gunfight between the Tans and around 1o IRA volunteers.
As it happened two Auxiliary tenders carrying a film crew, photographers and an English Journalist were part of an a Crown convoy involved in the gun battle.
The cameramen rigged up their movie camera and began filming what, they claimed, was the first live ambush ever filmed.
Instead of around 10 men firing on them, the Auxiliaries estimated they were about seventy in the ambush party and the officer in charge ordered a retreat to Castleisland.
Next day the Battle of Tralee made the front page of The Mail in Adelaide, Australia. “The engagement was the fiercest and probably the largest scale of any fight between Crown forces and the Volunteers,” Dublin Castle had announced in a press release.
Pathé then made a film of the ‘Battle’ but it was promptly exposed as a fake, because the original film had been heavily thing had been embellished with scenes staged on Vico Road in Dalkey, county Dublin.
Which was immediately spotted when the film was shown to a Dublin audience. Indeed one of the men supposedly lying dead on the road gave the whole thing away by getting up before the filming had finished.
Sadly the exposure of the fake newsreel led many to think all the reports about Tralee the previous week were just as false.