Loyalists in Mayo during the Irish Civil War
“We, a few people swimming in a great ocean…”
“with us there has been a very tolerant spirit evidenced at all times. Indeed were it not for this spirit we, a few people swimming in a great ocean, could not survive”
Solicitor John Garvey was well known in Ballina town. He was Crown solicitor for nineteen years, a respected local politician and leading organiser for local recruitment into the British army during the Great War (his son, Captain Ivan Harold Garvey was killed in action, on 20 Feb 1917 in West Flanders, Belgium). In the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence, while well aware of how numerically small his Protestant unionist community was in Mayo, he was still able to tell his friend, Colonel Crawford in August 1921, with some pride that unlike in the latter’s violently sectarian Belfast, in Ballina loyalists felt safe and secure with the goodwill of their nationalist neighbours. While Garvey understood his treasured union with Britain was now lost forever, observing ’we have "our all" in the West and our only chance of saving anything we have is by silence in the midst of this great revolutionary change’. [1] Garvey, and those of his community who were loyal to the British crown, could not have imagined what was to come.
Inexorably, following the deep division within republicanism over the Anglo-Irish Treaty terms, the country descended into an all-out civil war by June 1922, after months of increasing tensions and civil strife. The Royal Irish Constabulary had been disbanded in 1921 leaving the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ostensibly in charge of policing. However, all civil or military authority was eroded as anti-Treaty republicans gradually succumbed to the Free State soldiers of the new Irish Government. By July 1923, following a chaotic year with both sides fighting a haphazard, stuttering campaign of ambush, raid and capture, the war was effectively conceded by anti-Treaty republicans to the fledging Irish Free State.
As both sides struggled for legitimacy and resources in a post-British country ill-equipped and ill-prepared for a protracted guerilla war, those who professed loyalty to the old union of Great Britain and Ireland were caught in the middle, feeling abandoned by the Crown as the war swirled around them.
References:
[1] ‘Letter from Mr John Garvey to Colonel Crawford’, 21 Aug. 1921 (PRONI, D1700/5/4/62).
[2] ‘Letters to Charles Kean O’Hara from John Garvey, Downhill, Ballina, County Mayo’, O’Hara Papers (Ballina, Co Mayo, 1922 1923) (NLI, MS 36,440/7).
[3] ‘CO 762, Post-Truce Loyalist Claims’; ‘No. 49-8, Garvey, John of County Mayo’; ‘MS 36,440/7’, f. Letter dated 24 February 1923.
[4] ‘Castle Gore, Ballina’ in Tuam Herald, 9 Sept. 1922.
[5] ‘CO 762, Post-Truce Loyalist Claims’; ‘No. 49-8, Garvey, John of County Mayo’; ‘MS 36,440/7’.
Photos:
[a] Anti-Treaty forces abandon Sligo police barracks (after burning it) on July 1st, 2022 © Padraig Kilgannon (Private Collection)
[b] John Garvey and daughter Sheelagh with views of their Downhill House © Martin J. Leonard Collection
[c] John Garvey at Vevay House, Bray. L to R; Harrie, John, their son Cmdr Douglas Armstrong (nickname 'Tiny') and grandchildren John and Mary© Martin J. Leonard Collection
A despondent John Garvey wrote to Major Charles Kean O’Hara on 11 November 1922, painting a picture of hopeless desperation in Ballina as the Free State held a tenuous grip on the town, while rumours swirled of the countryside outside being paralysed by Irregular (anti-Treaty republican) operations and harbouring an expected repeated large-scale assault (Ballina had been briefly held by them two months previously).
“You have no idea of the trouble we have had here […] The town has been taken and retaken and now there is a rumour that we are to be attacked again. Much damage has been done in the town itself and our Post Office is a ruin, and it has now been taken over by the Free State army […] Most of the people who can afford to go are leaving.”
Garvey also informed the Major of the departure of his friends, “Miss Pery Knox-Gore left Ballina House for good this week, and Miss Gore of Killala is leaving next week, and many others have abandoned their homes. We are determined to stay on to the end and my wife says she will only leave when she is carried out”. These would prove fateful words. [2]
At midnight on 18 February 1923 Garvey’s ‘Downhill House’ mansion was attacked by up to fifty armed and masked men who forced the shocked Garveys outside into the rain with their son (home on-leave from the army). They set fire to the building, destroying it with all personal possessions and contents. No motive was given for the attack and the shocked Garvey wryly noted to Major O’Hara that up to that night, he thought he had not a single enemy.[3] Yet, his was not the first local mansion to be destroyed. Lord Arran’s Castle Gore, by Deel Castle, was burned down by armed and masked men on 3 September 1922, as was Massbrook house, only a few miles away across Lough Conn.[4]
Following his compensation claim to the local courts in 1924 for the burning of his Downhill House, John Garvey received a poorly composed threatening notice:
Sir,
At a Private meeting of the I.R.A. we condem you claim which you dident get honest. We see you still use bribery to gain you point. To long you rope is let go you have to suffer for you deeds and will never live heare to see a home built at this communitys expence so take this as a warning to clear out or to suffer the consequence. So to Belfast or to hell with you.
You life lies in you own hands. I am the friend not the enemy so after 10 days be willing to meet you Maker. The I.R.A. is not dead yet, you friends is the Black an -tans. If you dont clear out you will meet the same death
However, the letter was effectively redundant, as the owner of the ‘largest family solicitor business in Ireland’ acting for local landlords, ‘titled families and squires’, had left Ballina the previous year, relocating to Bray, Co. Wicklow with his distraught wife. [5]
While Garvey’s Compensation claim file now held at the National Archives at Kew, London, reveals he did receive significant recompense from the British Government, public mention of republican’s actions in loyalist claims for compensation, was clearly fraught with danger of retaliation and must have acted as a dampener in such applications by his contemporaries. Yet many did and their claim files may be found in the Irish Distress & Irish Grants Committee Files and Minutes (1922-1937) now held at The National Archives in London.
© Liam Alex Heffron, 10 May 2024.