Commemorating the Irish Civil War: History and Memory, 1923-2000 (review)

The Irish Civil War (January 1922-May 1923) was the end of the military struggle for what is now the Republic of Ireland. The Civil War was radical republicanism's response to the signing and ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the Irish war of independence. Fought between former comrades (as many civil wars are), the Irish Civil War's "Free Staters" wanted to accept the compromise of the Treaty, thereby creating the Irish Free State, whilst the "anti-Treatyite" republicans wanted to continue the war regardless of the price. During the course of this war, the Free State executed seventy-seven republican "Irregulars" (IRA men) for treason, three times those executed by the British during the Easter Uprising in 1916. The Civil War cost the lives of some of the greatest heroes of the struggle for independence, men like Arthur Griffith, Cathal Brugha, Erskine Childers, and, of course, Michael Collins.

The Free State won, but then had to run a country with a population, fragmented along numerous lines by hatred, who had endured varying levels of violence since 1916 and earlier. At the same time, this unstable government, rightly unsure of itself, was called on to commemorate Ireland's Civil War dead. The continuously inadequate, and sometimes dispassionately thoughtless, responses are the subject of Dr. Dolan's book. How should an insecure government remember its soldiers who died fighting the "wrong war" (p. 4)? Indeed, in this war that no one wanted, both sides engaged in brutality and murder on a scale that was not achieved against the British. How could government foster unity in the wounded and stunned population? As Dolan asks, "does civil war, by its very nature, demand silence" (p. 4)?

Dolan deals with these questions by examining various attempts at commemorating the war from its end through to the present. She begins with the government's first attempt in 1923 to imitate the Cenotaph in London, on the cheap with a wood and plaster replica. This monstrosity was allowed to remain in place, in front of Leinster House, the Dáil Éireann's (parliament) building, until 1939. Already beginning to rot within a couple of years, by the end of the 1920s, with the former antitreaty rebel party in office, the Dublin Cenotaph stood as a monument to the inadequacy of the former ruling party—the "victors" in the Civil War. Thus commemoration gave way to politics.

The many plans and attempts to commemorate the life and death of Michael Collins is a major part of the book. He was seen by the anti-Treaty side as a traitor, but his death was mourned by all, including interned anti-Treaty prisoners in Kilmainham Jail in Dublin, and even, if one is to believe them, Tom Hales and the other men who killed him (pp. 26, 67-68). As one of Ireland's most famous sons of that era, Collins's monument would seem reflexive, but, as Dolan shows, it was held hostage to political expediency (in the form of the Cenotaph), political folly, and, later, de Valera's vindictiveness.

After examining the remembrances of Griffith and why he has been largely left out of the commemoration, Dolan then looks at the treatment of the rank and file of the Free State's National Army. But in the process of detailing these issues, Dolan unveils the government's continuous failures to do right, or even abide by its promises to soldiers and their families. Her quick discussion of the travails of the Collins family to place a simple cross on Michael's grave is indicative of the problem. That it was constantly interfered with, denied, eventually approved by Eamon de Valera, whom many implicate in Collins's assassination, demonstrates the political fear and instability of the times. President de Valera personally approved it on the conditions that only Collins's brother, Séan...