Cork woman's new book shines a light on dark side of the revolution

DESCRIBING her book on the Irish revolution as an unconventional and personalised telling of Ireland’s darkest days, Ellen McWilliams shines a light on her family’s role in the fight for independence.

Ellen, whose book, entitled Resting Places: On Wounds, War And The Irish Revolution is to be published on November 2, is a UK-based academic, lecturing in the department of English at Exeter University.

She is originally from Desertserges, Enniskeane. Her maiden name is McCarthy.

“You couldn’t get a stronger West Cork name,” says Ellen, who reflects on her Catholic upbringing in the area during the 1980s and 1990s.

She says she is ‘haunted’ by the killings in the War of Independence and the Civil War, and in particular, by the Dunmanway massacre of April, 1922, which affected the wider area in which Ellen was brought up.

Ellen’s great-grandmother was active in Cumann na mBan and her grand-uncle fought for independence as well as in the anti-Treaty IRA.

The book reveals why the events of those days remain deeply personal for Ellen; how they shape her life as she moves to England and marries an English man who is an expert on Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War. The couple have a seven- year-old son, James.

Ellen says she felt a need to write about her family history, “not least for my small son, who has his own complicated place in this history with an Irish Catholic mother and an English Protestant father.

I wanted to write the book for James in a way that is personal and that maybe manages to move beyond the political divide.

As it happened, the Desertserges that Ellen grew up in was like “an experiment in inter-collective space in that every other household along our road is Catholic, Protestant, Catholic or Protestant,” said Ellen.

“It took me a long time to realise that not everybody in Ireland grew up in a mixed community.

“Those faces were such a part of my early childhood. They are really the people I’m writing for in this book. It’s a kind of loving memory of that area.

Some of them are still with us. Some are gone in the last five to ten years as my parents’ generation gets older.

It’s only very recently that Ellen discovered her great-grandmother’s application for a military pension. Her name was Ellen Foley. She lost her husband in 1916 when he became ill offering assistance in the Easter Rising.

“Reading between the lines, my great-grandmother was radicalised by grief and became a dedicated Cumann na mBan activist in Bandon,” said Ellen.

“She ran a safe house and set up a hospital to treat wounded soldiers. During the Civil War period, that hospital was commandeered by the Free State army.

“In her military pension application, she describes being shot at three times by a neighbour who had ed the Free State army. She was very quietly spoken about all of this.

“Sean Buckley, the head of intelligence for the Third West Cork Brigade, gave her a glowing reference, saying she was unstinting in her for the republican cause all the way through to 1923.

“But even with that, she was denied a pension.

She appealed the decision and was awarded a medal for services to republicanism.

Ellen’s mother’s uncle Gerry was awarded a pension.

“His story is full of extraordinary anecdotes. Probably the most significant is that he was one of the IRA men who burned down Bernard Castle, the home of Lord Bandon.

“At the age of 20, Gerry was one of the IRA men put in charge of holding Lord Bandon hostage. Lord Bandon was treated very well by the IRA.”

The book also deals with the story of “what historians refer to as the outrages against the Protestant community,” said Ellen.

“I’ve tried to be inclusive and to think of the feelings of all of the families in the area, some of whom were hurt by this history.”

What came as “a real shock” to Ellen and contributed to the “emotional struggle” in the book was the discovery that Protestant neighbours and friends were adversely affected by the Dunmanway massacre in which 14 men were killed or in some cases disappeared. Of the 13, 13 were Protestants.

“That made me aware of my own short-sightedness. As an academic, I teach seminars on the literature of the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War.

And yet here I had this extraordinary story in the back fields, hiding in plain sight.

“As (UCC historian) Andy Bielenberg wrote, silence was the usual mechanism that people in this area embraced, Catholic and Protestant neighbours, Treaty and anti-Treaty families, drawing a line under it.

“That’s the way people coped with their traumatic history.”

The house that Ellen grew up in was once home to Thomas Bradfield, a Methodist farmer who was shot in the War of Independence.

“It’s very unnerving to read about the house you grew up in, in the history books, said Ellen.

“That history has been examined quite closely since the 1990s. It’s just that, for some reason, any time I encountered it, an instinct told me that it was best to leave it, until suddenly I couldn’t stay away from this history.

“It began to present itself in a way that became all-consuming for a while in the writing of it.

“It’s like a haunting. I felt the need to write it down for future generations.”

Resting Places: On Wounds, War And The Irish Revolution is published by Beyond the Pale Books.