Recent Post: The 1922 border war
Partnership with Museum on Fermanagh Internee Project
On May 23, 1922 the Northern Ireland government activated section 23 of the Special Powers Act and introduced internment across Northern Ireland. My latest research project, funded by a Royal Irish Academy Decade of Centenaries Bursary, looks at the impact of this internment operation on county Fermanagh. Over a two year period, 80 plus individuals from the county were imprisoned without trial, often in incredibly difficult circumstances. These included local government officials, elected representatives, IRA activists as well as those politically uninvolved. The Public Records Office in Northern Ireland (PRONI) houses a file on most internees, while the Irish Military Archives have incredible detail on republican activity in the county. PRONI records often include intercepted personal correspondence, intelligence reports, and appeals against internment. Meanwhile, Military Archives contain pension records of IRA veterans as well as membership rolls for each republican unit in the county. Using these two resources and local newspaper archives, it has been possible to construct detailed profiles of the lives and afterlives of internees. All this information will be used for a peer reviewed academic piece-but I want to reach a broader audience. So, I am delighted to partner with Fermanagh County Museum, Enniskillen Castle to make all the internee profiles available to Museum visitors in the near future. I will also present the research at a Museum event later in the year. More details to follow…..
To give a flavor of what a profile looks like, here is one of the better known individuals;
Seán (John) Sheehan (25) (Seán Ó Siocháin) the Brooke, Enniskillen was a revenue official arrested in the general roundup of May 23, 1922. Documents captured by the police indicated that Sheehan was Commandant of the IRA’s 4th Brigade, 1st Midland Division. Police considered him an ‘educated man’ and ‘the brains of the IRA’. Sheehan’s IRA pension files confirms that he was a senior republican. Among the actions he carried out on behalf of the IRA were;
- He was second in command for the attack on Lisbellaw RIC station, June 1920
- He passed to Michael Collins the English home addresses of 80 members of the Auxillary Division of the RIC
- He passed intelligence in advance of the attack by the IRA on the Custom House in Dublin
- He was involved in organising border raids in Fermanagh in February 1922
- He was involved in planning the capture of Belcoo RIC barracks in March 1922
- He got intelligence for the IRA from a Protestant RIC officer in Enniskillen. This officer told him that just before the introduction of internment ‘a complete list of [IRA] officers’ was captured by the Police.
Sheehan was released on April 6, 1923 on condition that he moved south and take up a job with the Free State’s new revenue service. After his release, Sheehan wrote to the Irish Independent (October 5, 1923) describing the ‘filthy’ conditions internees faced. He said ‘we are so concerned with election affairs etc. [in Free State] that probably the fact that these northmen are still in existence and incarcerated under the most inhumane conditions imaginable has been completely forgotten.’ Ó Siocháin continued his career with the Revenue Commissioners until 1959, living in Blackrock, Dublin (Monaghan Argus, July 18, 1959). He died in 1976.
Seán Ó Siocháin’s full file (HA/5/1661) can be accessed at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. His Military Archive file can be accessed here.
Stories from a Border Kitchen 