The Funeral of Harry Boland

A Machine Readable Version

Christopher Baran

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By Christopher Baran    

The bloodshed during the Irish Civil War, fought between June 1922 and April 1923, could have been much worse than it was. Civil strife in the same general period in, for instance, Finland in 1918, a nation of about the same general population as Ireland, claimed six times as many casualties in open fighting and more than ten times the number of political executions, not to mention thousands more deaths in sectarian violence and lives lost in prison camps. ( Lee 68-69) True, the Irish Civil War was a small-scale event in terms of such things, even as the Anglo-Irish conflict was a small-scale event, in terms of the number of individuals involved in operations on both sides. However, the Irish experience is different from that of other nations in the concerted effort made by both sides to eliminate the leadership class of the opposing faction. It is this experience, the personal threat made against the Ieading Irish politicians, the loss of friends and colleagues, or the threat of such, which would leave such a searing imprint on the minds of Irish leaders in years after.

In this context, consider the eyewitness account by Irish painter Jack B. Yeats of the funeral of Harry Boland, member of the Irish Déil and close associate and personal friend of both Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins. Boland, like his more famous associate, Collins, became a victim of the Civil War, mortally wounded during his arrest in the summer of 1922 by forces from the Irish Free State. (MacGreevy 249) Boland had sought to be a peacemaker between the two factions, the 'official' Free State government organized in accordance with the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the Irish War for Independence, and the mutinous elements of the old Irish Republican Army. ( Lawlor 187) His death, as MacGreevy implies in his article, was perhaps the result of overzealousness on the part of Free State authorities. MacGreevy stresses that Boland was unarmed at the time of his arrest, ( MacGreevy 249) a subtle reference to the legal maneuvering of the Free State government. Rebel leaders were arrested and, in some cases, executed, not for treason or mutiny, but rather for illegal possession of arms, as minor as a revolver in Erskine Childers's case. ( Lawlor 212) MacGreevy does not seem sympathetic to the old Free State government. However, one must remember that, by 1942, when MacGreevy was writing his article on Yeats' historical paintings for the Capuchin Annual, Eamon de Valera, the ostensible leader of the rebel party, had reentered Irish politics and, in fact, been elected the president of the Republic.

In truth, de Valera's actual control over the rebels has been disputed by modern historians. The motives behind the 'Irregular' IRA men, as the rebels came to be called, and their armed opposition to the official Free State government, are numerous and complex. For the rank and file soldiers, low morale, problems with and adequate equipment, and the unlikely prospect of finding civilian jobs following demobilization at the end of the Anglo-Irish conflict, all had a part to play in the disenchantment felt against the Free State authorities. (Lawlor 161-63) The historical command and control structure of the Irish Republican Army is also partly to blame. The Army had never before been completely under control of the civilian political leadership, instead relying on its own elected 'executive' to provide strategic and tactical direction. (Lawlor 155-58) The situation was made more complicated by the multiple positions held by certain individuals like Collins, on the one hand a high-ranking military officer, but also a cabinet minister. There previously existed a certain tradition of self-direction on the part of the military which was difficult to take away in the time of economic hardship in Ireland around 1922.

The conventional interpretation that the Irish Civil War was fought over democracy, as opposed to military dictatorship, is something like the suggestion that the American Civil War was fought over state's rights. It is true that a majority of the Irish electorate in the south approved the Anglo-Irish Treaty and, by implication, the partition of Ireland. (Lawlor 190-91) It is also true that a majority of northerners had, as early as 1913, made clear their desire to have nothing to do with any government centered in Dublin. (Lee1-14) As early as 1913, northern Protestants formed the Ulster Volunteer Force to oppose Irish home rule by force of arms. N However, just as the historian cannot ignore the role of slavery in American history as 'the final straw' behind the eventual break between the American states, one cannot ignore the ideological differences in the Irish nationalist movement that finally provoked armed conflict. In the Irish case, the fatal difference proved to be the idealistic (and rather naive) insistence by some military officers on an Irish republic comprising the entirety of the island, in opposition to the more pragmatic, and realistic, approach of Collins and the Free State partisans, willing to take what they could from the Treaty negotiations in 1921. Cathal Brugha, former minister of defense in the revolutionary cabinet under de Valera, was killed in action in Dublin against Free State forces in July 1922. Collins remarked on Brugha that, 'because of his sincerity I would forgive him anything,' (Lawlor 196) including, one supposes, civil war.

The insurgency in Ireland, to a certain extent, can be understood as a personal feud between the leaders on both sides. It certainly had personal ramifications, particularly for those associated with the Free State government. The rebels, one supposes, perceived the ideals of revolutionary struggle as being compromised by the Anglo-Irish Treaty and followed an equally extremist policy in responding to it, making their uncompromising approach the single legitimate one in their minds. In a newspaper interview in March 1922, rebel leader Rory O'Connor, months before the initiation of real hostilities, commented on his party's relationship with the existing civilian government. O'Connor reported that the 'Irregulars' had 'repudiated' the Dáil over the Treaty and intended to replace the elected parliament with an 'executive' controlled by the Army. When asked if this meant military dictatorship for Ireland, O'Connor reportedly replied, 'You can take it that way if you like,' (Lawlor 167) more or less expressing a total disregard for public opinion. However, one would suggest that occurrence of the Irish Civil War had more to do with the personal animosities of the leadership class and the ideological differences relating to the Treaty of the participants than it did with any more ethereal debate about democracy.

Both sides in the Irish Civil War suffered the loss of notable personalities from among senior military and political leaders. Harry Boland was among the first to die, fatally wounded in an altercation in Dublin with Free State forces that had come to arrest him, on August 2, 1922. Several days later, Michael Collins wrote to Kitty Kiernan, responding to rumors that Collins had spoken ill of Boland, remarking, 'My condemnation is for all those who would put themselves up as paragons of Irish Nationality, and all the others as not being of concern.' (Ó Broin 212) Presumably this does not include Boland, who had made an unsuccessful attempt before the outbreak of hostilities to draw the two sides together. Boland's last words are reported to have been, according to MacGreevy, 'I forgive everybody.' (MacGreevy 250) There must have been at least some rumor of greater animosity on Boland's part, for Collins wrote to Kiernan that he could not believe that Boland asked, as the dying man was taken in for surgery, 'Have they got Mick Collins yet?' Ó Broin 210. If Boland did indeed say that, he must have made a great change of heart from less than a year earlier, for he himself had written to Kiernan, commenting of Collins, 'I need not say to you how much I love him, and I know he has a warm spot in his heart for me, and I feel sure no matter in what manner our Triangle may work out, he and I shall always be friends.' Ó Broin 22. Despite the title, the editor of this volume reprints some of Boland's correspondence as well. N

Less than three weeks later, Collins himself would be dead, shot in the head in an ambush by less than a dozen rebel insurgents. The rebel chief-of-staff, Liam Lynch, remarked that it was imperative 'to shoot such men as... Collins, whose former services to the republic had been splendid.' Lynch observed that the Free State government had lost a great talent that could not be replaced and praised the units involved in the skirmish. In this fashion, through the direct, personal threat to the leadership of the Free State government, the opposition would learn 'the folly of trying to crush the republic.' (Lawlor 198-199) In November, the Free State government put the 'emergency powers' granted to it by the Dáil to their first use, executing Childers and four other military prisoners. By the end of the month, Lynch made assassination formal policy among the rebels, issuing to his forces standing orders to shoot a number of Free State officials if and when they were encountered. The first week of December, two Free State Dáil members became the first victims of this policy.

The Free State authorities, under the leadership of W. T. Cosgrave, who had succeeded to the chairmanship of the interim government after the death of Collins, replied to this attack with the execution of four well-known IRA officers, (Lawlor 212-13) among them Rory O'Connor and Liam Mellows, both captured in the fighting in Dublin that claimed Brugha's life, plus two other well-known officers. Liam Lynch would not live to see the following summer, killed in action the second week of April 1923, by which time rebel morale had suffered badly. His successor as chief-of-staff, Frank Aiken, under de Valera's influence, before the end of the month ordered the surrender and disarmament of remaining IRA units. (Lawlor 222-25) The Civil War finally ended, but not before searing the memory in the minds of the survivors on both sides and exerting a lasting influence on Irish politics. (Lee 68-69.)

Harry Boland, one of the first, but by no means the last, victim of the conflict, probably was one of the most innocent, in terms of having less of an active role in the activities of either party. The rendition of his funeral by Jack B. Yeats, complete with honor guard of rebel IRA men, memorializes the forgotten men that fell on the wrong side of the conflict — their only crime, perhaps was believing too hard. It is also significant as Yeats's painting is the only visual record of the funeral, as all cameras were confiscated at the gate. (Arnold 194) There is a ballad concerning the 1916 Easter rebellion, part of which declares, ''Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky, than at Suvla or Sud el Bar.' These battles from the Middle Eastern theatre of the Great War, themselves obscure enough, formed part of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign that claimed the lives of numerous soldiers from around the British Commonwealth. It is this sense of patriotism and sacrifice for home and country that forms the central image of Yeats' painting. MacGreevy implicitly stresses the excesses of the Free State government, but, whatever Yeats' personal feelings, his painting is as much memorial to the rebels as it is to the tragedy on both sides.