This paper (originally titled: ‘Civil War Archives: Somewhere between Memory and Truth‘) was given by MSPC Director, Cécile Chemin, on the occasion of the symposium organised at University College Dublin, on the day of the premiere of the cantata ‘Who’d ever Think It Would Come To This?‘ on 30 September 2022.
Annegret Fauser (University of North Carolina), Diarmaid Ferriter (UCD) and Síobhra Aiken (Queen’s University, Belfast) also presented papers on the day.
More information on civilwarcantata.ie , including interviews.
To start, I want to compliment Kate Manning (UCD Principal Archivist), fellow archivist, for coming up with this vision mixing her love for music and her mission towards archives. I want to congratulate Ed Vulliamy, Anne-Marie O’Farrell and Kellie Hughes for their wonderful work. I can only imagine the hours spent on a project such as this one.
To prepare this paper I thought about the place of archives in helping us getting unstuck from the stagnation of meaning that the country has experienced for decades, decades of ambivalence produced by the Civil War and by its aftermath. Síobhra’s brilliant work (Síobhra Aiken, Spiritual Wounds, Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War) shows that if it is true that words failed many in the aftermath of the war, many voices broke the silence but were smothered by official/political lines which framed the Civil War as an unspeakable thing, narrativised it as an inconvenient stage in the search for independence and therefore better forgotten. State-produced oral history projects such as the Bureau of Military History deliberately skipped it, and for a long time, as Síobhra says, history books mysteriously ended with the Truce in 1921. not palatable, they said.
Trauma associated with the civil war induced a silent phase due to shock but like all trauma, it must be processed. Because it is a process. People filled forms for pensions, a lot of them! They explained what they had done. They wrote about it in diaries, in correspondence, talked about it as a way to exorcising what they had gone through. Of course, sometimes not knowing that those papers would be accessed for research 100 years later.
Archives can help with the processing of this painful phase and with viewing the historical thing differently. Not on their own however, not through their sheer existence, but through their use because that’s truly when they take flight. Today we’ll hear a wonderful artistic response to this, acting as an unconventional commemoration. We’ll see that those sorts of uses of primary sources are very important in releasing us from anxieties of traditional commemorations.
As David Armitage exposes in his Civil War – History in Ideas, the term civil war is a concept and that attempting to confine civil war within a single definition have led to complication and contestation.
Naming things, giving them all-encompassing definitions, giving them a clear start and an end is a way of framing. And we do a lot of framing to give ourselves a feeling of control. That applies to the labels, patterns and boundaries we apply to the civil war and its participants. By fixing meanings, we also smother the individual experience. We give everyone an homogenised view of their life during and after the war.
“Civil War is, first and foremost, a category of experience; the participants usually know they are in the midst of civil war long before international organizations declare it to be so. Yet it is an experience refracted through language and memory….(…) it is an experience framed – some might say distorted – by the conceptual heritage of civil war (…) Civil War must be understood in the realm of ideas that are both inherited and contested”.
Wanting a single meaning is human reaction but it can only lead us so far.
Patterns and labels: to help us deal with disorders, to help make violence and atrocities and chaos more manageable.
Definitions to put agreed words on things we are told cannot be uttered.
Strict time spans that everybody agrees on to make sure we know when a war starts and when it ends are neat Boundaries to enclose what inevitably spills over in reality.
Labels of Pro and Anti to know for sure who’s on which side with all the attributes that come with it. So we know, so we’re in control, it’s reassuring. So we know what to think. Life, after all, must go on and we don’t have time to remember. Political lines of the time and for years that followed fixed those meaning and clear divisions. For history making, for legitimacy claims. Yet, if the victors may afford to forget, very often they cannot escape the archives.
A civil war is a lot of things but it is certainly not neat, ordered and clear. It’s destructive, it’s messy, it’s a cacophony of grief, of pain, of violence , of poverty, of loss, that is enduring long time after the agreed end. It escapes all kinds of attempts to find suitable definitions, categories, labels.
Armitage then, proposes that a sounder method and that is to try and excavate all the meanings. Of course here he’s referring to the inherited concept of CW but the phrase for me also suits my vision of archives. Because this is what they’re good at: they sit at the intersection of memory and the historical truth, they’re never entirely one thing or completely the other.
Excavate all the meanings
Civil Wars are destructive…for individuals, families, communities and although the participants do realise that they’re going through traumatic events at the time. Some have no clue about what it’s about to do to them. We, the reader, the archivist, we know. We know because we have their files, their words, their testimonies.
The trauma first comes from the fact that to call a war civil is to acknowledge that both sides know each other; it’s terrifying because it is a reflection of ourselves through fighting, it is making us see ourselves in the mirror of hostility. Who’d ever think it would come to this?
Trauma, in Civil War archives is everywhere. It’s not called trauma, it’s called nervous breakdown, it’s called mental, neurasthenia, it’s called lunatic, it’s called insanity, psychosis, in a few cases, it’s called dying in the psychiatric institution or the hospital or the union..
But it’s also called weak, it’s called alcoholism, it’s called disability, it’s called incapable of self-support, it’s called incapacitated, it’s called disease, it’s called deep poverty for years, grief, regrets, it’s called mothers, widows dealing with loss and deep financial strife, it’s called a life not lived or wasted. and it is relentless.
Again, once you’ve put your head in the archives, in the wonderful collections in UCD used for this project (Eithne Coyle, Ernie O’Malley, Mulcahy, Frank Aiken, Spring Rice) calling it a national trauma feels like another label usurping what is fundamentally a very intimate experience. Although you may have lived through some events with companions and shared some common experience, the relationship between yourself and the world is uniquely yours. National trauma does encompass all but it suffocates the experiences of a burden that takes many forms. State commemorations recognising all the participants and all the dead have shown their limits.
One thing can be certain is that claimants for pensions and dependants keep writing to the Army Pensions Boards, referees, seeking political or legal representation, sometimes for years.How do you go by processing and accepting the state of your life if your financial survival depends on constantly looking back?
If indeed the nation has endured traumas, like in all processing stage, it’s better to know than not knowing, it’s better to talk than not talking. I’m not saying that archives act as therapy but in countless cases, their existence and availability have brought closure, or at least some sense of understanding of oneself, or of a particular time or have been crucial for one’s identity and life. (Mother/baby homes, adoption papers, recording someone’s origins is incredibly impactful, emotionally and for very practical reasons too).
We have a lot to rejoice about in Ireland.
We’re incredibly lucky to have a well documented revolution. We’re lucky to have some much documentation, so much material to examine, so much that talks about us. Because there exist out there memory vacuums. Many studies have examined the effects and deep impact of state (newly independent for instance) without archives, without the possibility to look back at themselves and what happened to them. These vacuums are dangerous because they can be filled with much nonsense that truth is lost and doubt never leaves.
Hearing other voices – Complexifying – Ripples
Well documented events although necessary to know and remember cannot be revisited ad aeternum. These are the epicentres of hurt. More interestingly, these epicentres create ripples around them. These ripples are sometimes lost or unheard. Archives and personal testimonies document what’s around, what comes after. Perhaps history making has been too focused, obsessed with who killed who and not enough with what who was around, what happened after, what goes against the grain but also what’s uncomfortable.
In her programmes notes, Anne-Marie O’Farrell writes: I wanted the voices to tell their story, without it being overshadowed by their being associated with a particular side in the conflict”.
That’s important, that’s about ethical remembering (this concept was expressed by President Higgins also during Machnamh 100). Commemoration does not need to be exclusive or exclusionary, and that exploring the experience of the “other” need not entail a rejection of the values of one’s own side.
It also has to be about what’s around, what comes after, what happens to people. This is why collections like the pension files are so important because not only do they talk about the events themselves, they say something about the ripples of those events, the impact of those waves. It’s probably more thought-provoking and interesting than focusing over and over on the development of military operations and who killed who. You can only revisit the epicentre of an event so many times. What I am saying is that archives and through the use of them can offer us great opportunities to shift the perspective and explore other ways of telling and other ways of hearing about why we are the way we are and why we feel the way we feel.
Those ripples care little about pro and anti. They care little when wars start and end, It’s about anger, deep bitterness and disillusion. It’s a human thing. And this is how we excavate all the meanings.
Since the Ballyseedy atrocity (Kerry in March 1923) is mentioned in the cantata, I turned to the archives to look at what happened around, in particular at the women linked to the aftermath of the massacre. whose names are not known.
Files relating to the men who were killed in Ballyseedy:
Stephen Fuller (sole survivor; service pension application) MSP34REF6759
John Daly DP51 (application lodged by Patrick Daly, father).
John O’Connor DP4098 (application lodged by Eileen and Catherine, daughters).
Timothy Tuomey DP5819 (applications lodged by Jeremiah and Johanna Tuomey, parents).
Michael Connell DP6068 (applications lodged by James Connell, father and Mary Connell, sister).
Patrick Hartnett DP9533 (applications lodged by Mary Hartnett, sister and Edward/Edmond Hartnett, brother).
James Walsh DP4728 (applications lodged by Johanna Walsh, mother and Mary Dunne, sister).
George O’Shea DP6572 (applications lodged by Annie O’Shea, mother and Ellen O’Shea, sister).
Sarah Sheehy, Joan Cavan, Annie Kenna, Mary O’Sullivan, Bridget Cantillon, Bridie O’Connell, Ellen Bourke were among those who helped collecting the remains of the bodies of the men blown up.
Most of them applied for a service pension (some of them were successful) but some also lodged a disability claim later on in life as their service left heavy imprints on their physical but also mental state. This includes horrific experiences like the Ballyseedy aftermath.
. Sarah Sheehy (MSP34REF56706) for instance, lodged a disability pension in 1937: “I attribute my breakdown to my activities during the Civil War. I had to do very hard work, not suitable to a woman at all. (…) I was held up at night many times by Free State soldiers. (…) After the Ballyseedy mine tragedy I was one of the party that gathered the remains of the dead – bodies, brains, clothes.” Sarah suffered from extreme exhaustion, nervousness, extreme nervous prostration”. “I broke down in 1924”. Travelled to America, had another episode there and was seeing a doctor constantly, upon her return to Ireland, she got sick again.
Despite Dr Shanahan asserting that her mental state makes her wholly unfit for work, the assessment from APB puts her at only 60% of disablement and therefore not enough to reach the minimum required of 80% in order to get a disability pension. As her state worsens, another medical assessment is performed and she eventually gets her special allowance.
. Mollie O’Shea was George O’Shea’s sister. George was one of the prisoners killed at Ballyseedy. It is her brother Daniel who has to fill in her service pension application. Mollie O’Shea was an active member of Cumann na mBan in North Kerry , “she got a nervous breakdown after our brother Capt George O’Shea was killed in the mine at Ballyseedy. She has been in he mental hospital in Killarney”.
Mollie O’Shea was admitted as a patient in Killarney Mental Hospital in February 1928. By order of the President of the High Court dated 16 July 1943, her affairs were placed under the care of the Court. She died 6 years later.
. Ellen Bourke (MSP34REF14285) was present at Ballyseedy and helped to clear the bodies. “I helped to try and get bits of their remains. I don’t like thinking about it!”. In 1927 she had to go to a nursing home due to nervous debility. A clinical examination assessed her with claustrophobia, agoraphobia, loss of appetite, dyspepsia. In 1949 diagnosed with neurasthenia and severe nervous depression. Fought to get her claim for incapability of self support accepted. She was means tested but died 2 years later.
. Joan Cavan (MSP34REF59972) helped prepare the bodies of IRA members for burial after their shooting at Currahane and assisted in removing the remains of the men killed at Ballyseedy as well.
Through her evidence to the Advisory Committee, we learn that she already had to bring the remains of her brother killed by the Free State just the year before. That’d be a lot for anyone.
Mary Fitzgerald (MSP34REF35734) herself unsuccessful for a service pension but awarded a special allowance under the APA. Her brother Patrick was arrested in March 1923 and a report was sent to her the following day that he had been among those killed in the mine explosion at Ballyseedy. On the day following the explosion she had been taken to Ballyseedy to assist in gathering the bodies of those killed. Later it turned out that that owing to a mistake he was left behind. In September 1923 she gave birth to a baby “who was an invalid”. She claims the child never walked or spoke and died at 3 years old. She attributed the child’s condition to the fright she got upon receiving the news of Patrick’s supposed death.
The situation on the other side is just as sordid and grim. Financial help is sought from both sides.
So how do we commemorate, how can we commemorate? All this hurt and violence? All these lingering years of ripples? How do we get unstuck?
On Inclusivity
Dr Anne Dolan claimed that in the context of a civil war, ‘remembering together is dead’. I agree with that. Going through each of those files, we come in to contact with a multiplicity of voices, of experience, regret, shame, disillusionment ….Ireland has been through decades of ambivalence, Dolan says, and ambivalence is a lot more difficult to commemorate than the public stories of heroics.
On the occasion of Machnamh 100, she quite rightly points out that inclusivity is not just who we are prepared to hear but also what we’re prepared to hear them say.
She takes Charles Dalton as a striking example of the compulsion to speak: he was interviewed by Ernie O’Malley, he gave a Witness Statement to the BMH, he made his pension application (including a disability claim in respect of his degrading psychological state as a patient in Grangegorman hospital) and wrote a memoir. We can have some sympathy for him over the impact of what he was made to do. On the other hand we also have to hear Eamon and Anne Hughes broken down parents lodging a dependency claim to the APB following the loss of their son possibly killed by Dalton in October 1922. Dolan asks: Is commemoration agile enough to accommodate all the hurt here?
To illustrate this ambivalence further, I would mention the killings at Altnaveigh here. 17 June 1922, a bit outside the agreed start of the Civil War and in South Armagh so the context is different….This raid was in reprisal for the killing of two men and in the operation a number of houses were burned down and eight people were shot dead (he states that 7 were B Specials based in Newry and that one was a woman).
James Marron was one of the reprisal party and the raid left a psychological imprint on him.
Ambivalence is everywhere.
Inclusivity and Generosity and Humility
We know that partisan approach creates more divisions. A binary vision is too narrow and reinforce an ‘Othering’ which contributes to reject some parts of history, some stories therefore denying the experience of those affected by them. Remembering all voices is above all morally sound. It’s in fact transformative. Generosity and humility can lead to forgiveness, or at least to valorising others’ experience. This requires those who have been excluded from the official narrative; this requires a study of social class background of all the Volunteers; this requires a study of women voices, of their participation and of gender-based violence…..it requires all.
These are all things offered in the Archives if one wants to see.
Accepting uncertainty and Embracing complexities – Work of the Archivist
It is presumptuous to assume that archives can flip long held positions and engrained national narratives, like historical skillets but they are well able to complexify them, disrupt them, and bring nuance to our vision of the past because they are pushing our conveniently fixed temporal boundaries, they muddy the waters over who’s Pro-and who’s Anti; like all wars, they are are chaotic, full of grey areas and very often fragmented.
In many ways, creating a database is all about categorising and periodising for convenience sake, so information can be retrieved and sometimes it is incredibly difficult because we do have to apply labels to people, tick boxes so we can find them again but we also need to treat them with care and tell their story or at least as much as we find in the file.
Building a database necessitate labels and fields but it leaves us unsatisfied for the cases we know are there, not completely fallen through the cracks but not completely visible either in all the noise of claims, evidence, testimonies, files.
Yet, a database enables us to see where that periodisation we’ve been told to settle for, Rising/War of Independence/Truce/Civil War is much much less neat that what we’ve been told for years. There was no Truce in the north, people die before June 1922 and continue to die after we’ve told the Civil War ends.
Perhaps as archivists we’re more comfortable with being uncomfortable or not knowing for sure.
But this is what stands and what we all have to deal with.
Any periodisation and divides created either for convenience or to ensure legitimacy by political narratives are never neat and never tidy. Everything is blurred and there are a lot more voices to hear.
Archives push those boundaries and expose the ripples of epicentres of the Civil War.
Those ripples keep giving and we know we still want to talk about the small stuff because we know the small things are never insignificant.
In a way getting those names and experiences out of an old box, cleaning the files, preserving and describing them, telling all voices’ stories is an act of commemoration in itself. It gives enough order to find the voices that we do not know while keeping the internal chaos/dynamism of it all. It doesn’t smooth over too much and more importantly the act of putting entire collections out into the public domain is showing a desire to remember all shapes of experience. Admittedly, many collections had they been made available years ago would have shaped the Decade of Centenaries differently.
The role of the Archivist is to illuminate meanings, not hide them. Archivists have become self-aware of their place in this work. We share more than ever before, we write more about the content of our collections, we create projects to mediate these meanings, collaboratively like the project we’re all meeting for today. We shed lights on what sticks out, what hurts, what goes against the grain. We point at things, telling historians, “hey!! look here! It’s more interesting than over there”. Or “hey…nobody has ever really dug into this. You should be doing that”.
Creative use of primary sources
Artistic responses and creativity release tensions, they take us away from the heaviness and anxieties of traditional commemorations.
This is how we excavate meanings too. This is how we view differently.
We must use archives and use them in all their forms.
Today, the strength of this project is the collaborative and creative process that generated it. Music is beauty and is music useful. [I got my first name as my mum loves music. Cécile is the patron saint of music and musicians. My mum chose the name because she always said that “la musique adoucit les moeurs”. (Music soothes those moving day nerves/Music is good for the soul), “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast” (William Congreve’s 1697 play The Mourning Bride)].
Acts of Commemoration
What I will remember from the Decade of Centenaries is the willingness to fund the cataloguing and releasing of archival material. Also as archivists, we’re not naïve, we know funding comes and goes with varying political agendas, and yet we’re the antithesis of political agents, what we want is the maximum of information to be out there, in a way that does not comprise our ethical promise to the documents and in a way that will encourage more deposits for archives throughout the country.
Projects like today’s are possible because archives were deposited in the first place, formally entrusted to an institution…In order to have ethical commemorations, we need ethically acquired, preserved, catalogued collections, made available to all by professional archivists who are aware of their potential biases/frames, and who will be given the time to extract the various voices in the material.
Building our MSPC database, cataloguing archives, making them available and using them are acts of commemoration. This cantata is an act of commemoration in itself.
To me these gestures are more meaningful and forward looking than any monument erected. They show a willingness to do justice.
And this is something to be joyful about.
International Council on Archives/ Conseil International des Archives
A CODE OF ETHICS
Military Service Pensions Collection 