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- Herausgeber: UCD Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
From an adolescent farmer to a local Sinn Fein activist and provincial guerrilla leader, and eventually to chief-of-staff of the IRA, Frank Aiken has an early, hidden history. As with so many of his political generation, Aiken's path to politics began amid the violent upheaval of the Irish revolution. In a career spanning 50 years he served in numerous high-profile ministerial roles and earned widespread recognition for his work as Ireland's representative to the United Nations. Yet these later successes masked a controversial past. This comprehensive study provides the first in-depth look at Aiken's role in Ireland's turbulent revolutionary period, 1916-23. Drawing on a wide variety of original archival sources, this book blends elements of biography and local study to offer both the first exhaustive account of Aiken's role in the conflict, and the first in-depth study of the broader context of republican politics and violence in Ulster in which he played such a pivotal role. This book creates a detailed map of Aiken's formative years, exploring the early movements of the man which would place him at the forefront of Irish and international Free State politics.
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FRANK AIKEN’S WAR
THE IRISH REVOLUTION 1916–23
MATTHEW LEWIS
Contents
Acknowledgements
I have incurred many debts while researching and writing this book. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Marie Coleman for first suggesting the topic, and for supervising the resulting doctoral thesis at Queen’s University Belfast. I would also like to extend my very special thanks to Fearghal McGarry, my secondary supervisor, and to Keith Jeffery and Joost Augusteijn, the thesis examiners. Their comments, suggestions and advice have been invaluable. Likewise to Eoin Magennis, Rory O’Hanlon, and Mark Feighery for sharing their knowledge of the subject in interviews and/or correspondence, and for providing many useful leads.
The research for this book was made possible by an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which I hereby gratefully acknowledge. I had the pleasure of drafting and redrafting the manuscript during postdoctoral fellowships at the Centre for War Studies at University College Dublin and the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. For the former opportunity, I thank Robert Gerwarth and the European Research Council; for the latter, I thank Philip Dwyer and the Faculty of Education and Arts. The production of the book has also been assisted by funds from a New Staff Grant at the University of Newcastle. I thank the School for Humanities and Social Science for making this possible.
I have discussed aspects of this project with many people over the past number of years, and have benefitted greatly from their thoughts and insights. These include (in no order): Robert Lynch, Brian Hanley, Sean O’Connell, Liam Kennedy, and Michael Hopkinson. Special thanks go to Shaun McDaid and William Mulligan, for their thoughts on various pieces of draft work. Likewise to Noelle Moran and Conor Graham at UCD Press, and the anonymous reviewers, for their guidance in the process of transforming the thesis into a monograph. I am also grateful to an array of colleagues who have suggested readings and sources, or otherwise offered ideas and advice. In particular I wish to acknowledge Erica Doherty, Stuart Aveyard, Mary Clarke, Caomihe Nic Dhaibheid, Brian P. Murphy, Chris Magill, Gajendra Singh, Tomas Balkelis, Mark Jones, James Matthews and James Kitchen.
In addition I would like to thank the staff at the following libraries and archives: Queen’s University Library Special Collections, the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives of Ireland, Trinity College Library, the Archives Department at University College Dublin, the Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich Memorial Library, the Irish Military Archives, Kilmainham Gaol Museum, the National Archives Kew, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, Louth County Archives and Belfast Central Newspaper Library. Very special thanks go to Mary McVeigh and the staff at Armagh Local and Irish Studies Library, who have always provided such a pleasant and welcoming atmosphere in which to research, and also to Dhruba Banerjee at Mint Productions for providing a DVD copy of their documentary, ‘Aiken: Gunman and Statesman’.
Lastly, I want to thank my fiancée Kim for her love, patience, and unwavering support throughout the research and writing of this book. The finished product is dedicated to her.
Abbreviations
ONE
INTRODUCTION
Frank Aiken was one of independent Ireland’s most prominent politicians and international statesmen. A founding member of Fianna Fáil, and a close confidant of Eamon de Valera, he served in numerous high profile ministerial roles in a career spanning 50 years. As Minister for External Affairs in the 1950s and 1960s, he also gained considerable international recognition as Ireland’s representative to the United Nations where, in his determined attempts to carve out a distinctive Irish identity in the assembly, he became known for his pursuit of a non-aligned stance on issues such as the representation of the People’s Republic of China and nuclear non-proliferation.1 Retiring in 1973, he was widely respected throughout southern Irish political circles for his service to the nation in both its domestic and international affairs, a sentiment that was expressed repeatedly in the many tributes offered upon his death on 18 May 1983.2
Like many of his political generation, Aiken was a product of the politics and violence of the Irish revolution, the tumultuous seven-year period in which Ireland experienced a war for independence, partition, and a bitter civil war. Between 1916 and 1923, Aiken’s involvement in the conflict facilitated his trans formation from a teenage farmer to a provincial activist and guerrilla leader, and eventually to chief-of-staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As a republican organiser, a Sinn Féin local government representative, and the commandant of the IRA’s Fourth Northern Division, he became the central figure of the revolutionary movement in his native Armagh and its hinterlands of south Down and north Louth. Despite his later prominence in Irish politics, however, this aspect of Aiken’s past is remarkably obscure. For decades it received little notice from historians or commentators alike, beyond occasional discussions of his role in the civil war; specifically, his futile attempts to secure unity between rival republican factions in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, his early neutrality in the conflict, and his issuing of the ceasefire and dump arms orders that eventually brought it to an end in May 1923.3 It was only in the late 1990s that other aspects of his role in the revolution began to attract greater attention, with sensationalised revelations of his complicity in sectarian atrocities, and of his involvement in the joint-IRA offensive, an abortive plan for a republican invasion of Northern Ireland in May 1922.4
Even amid this growing interest, however, Aiken’s role in the Irish revolution has remained largely unexplored. There are various reasons for this lack of scholarly enquiry. In many respects, it is symptomatic of both the scarcity of source material for his earlier years (an issue discussed in more detail later) and the more general dearth of research into his life and political career. Yet it is also a reflection of the fact that up until the mid-1990s Irish historians rarely engaged with the subject of republican politics and violence in the six counties that became Northern Ireland in this period. With the advent of the more recent ‘troubles’ in 1969, it was perhaps thought unwise to explore such a topic lest it should inadvertently serve to glorify or legitimise physical force republicanism, or for fear that it might further fuel sectarian bitterness by drawing attention to past atrocities. Consequently, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, scholarly discussions of events in north-east Ulster were dominated by the high politics of partition, or the histories of unionism and constitutional nationalism.5 The violence experienced in the region was typically characterised in terms of sectarian rioting, exemplified by intense bouts of intercommunal conflict in Belfast, Derry and various towns throughout east Ulster between 1920 and 1922. Sinn Féin and the IRA received little attention, and a consensus emerged that republicanism was too weak, too disorganised and too unpopular across the six counties to have been of any particular relevance there.6
It is only since the mid-1990s that historians have shown a greater interest in Ulster’s experience of the revolutionary period, and with it the fortunes of the republican movement in what became Northern Ireland. Eamon Phoenix’s 1994 study of northern nationalism revealed a wealth of new information concerning Sinn Féin’s activities in the province between 1918 and 1922. This was followed in 1997 with the publication of Joost Augusteijn’s comparative local analysis of the IRA, which included Derry amongst its six case studies. Looking beyond published work, moreover, in 1998 Charles Stephen Day completed an excellent doctoral thesis on the subject of political violence in the Newry and south Armagh area between 1912 and 1925.7 It is only really in the past decade, however, with the release of new source collections, and, perhaps, the prevailing political stability in Northern Ireland, that this handful of studies has expanded to form a distinctive branch of the historiography. Amongst the most important additions since 2000 have been Robert Lynch’s The Northern IRA and the Early Years of Partition, Jim McDermott’s Northern Divisions: The Old IRA and the Belfast Pogroms, Tim Wilson’s Frontiers of Violence: Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia, and most recently Fergal McCluskey’s Fenians and Ribbonmen: The Development of Republican Politics in East Tyrone.8A number of scholarly biographies of republican figures from Ulster have also been published by historians such as Fearghal McGarry, Tom Feeney and Marnie Hay.9
The greater awareness of Aiken’s revolutionary past that has emerged in recent years owes much to this body of research. It was Lynch’s history of the northern IRA, for instance, that highlighted his central role within the organisation in the six counties during this period, particularly in 1922, and the considerable violence that he oversaw in his ‘unique fiefdom’ in the borderlands of Armagh, south Down and north Louth. Lynch’s study was also the first to add substance to allegations of Aiken’s complicity in sectarian atrocities during the conflict, rumours of which had first surfaced in republican propaganda in 1986, and were subsequently publicised in Toby Harden’s Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh in 1999.10 Indeed, the confirmation of these revelations – which concern Aiken’s responsibility for republican reprisals that claimed the lives of six Protestant civilians near Newry in June 1922 – has drawn the most attention to his role in the Irish revolution. Its inclusion as a point of focus in an RTÉ documentary on his life and career in 2006 captured the notice of both commentators and historically minded members of the Irish public.11 Yet in the absence of a biography or a published study of the conflict in the borderlands of Armagh, south Down and north Louth, Aiken’s place in the conflict, its significance, and the broader context of republican politics and violence in which it occurred, remain obscure.
Therein lies the premise of this book. It is not a traditional work of biographical history; the limitations of the sources alone rule out any such straightforward approach. Nor does it claim to be a comprehensive local study of the revolutionary period. Rather, it seeks to combine elements of both of these approaches to shed new light on Aiken’s role in the conflict, and to elucidate the provincial experience of republican activism in which he played such a crucial part. This approach is desirable for two reasons. First, Aiken’s experience of the conflict was so closely bound with that of the wider republican movement in Armagh, south Down and north Louth that it would be difficult to gain a sufficient understanding of either in isolation. Secondly, it will allow the study to address a range of themes and historical debates concerning the Irish revolution, and revolutionary republicanism in particular, that have rarely been addressed within the unique social and political context of six-county Ulster. These include, but are not limited to, the factors motivating individuals to engage in armed struggle, the dynamics of sectarian and intra-nationalist violence during the conflict, the social structure of the republican movement, and the nature of revolutionary republican ideology.
The approaches adopted by the study inevitably raise certain questions. First and foremost, given that biographical analysis requires a degree of empathy with the subject, how does one write objectively about an individual who was involved in morally abhorrent acts such as the killing of civilians? In this respect, the book’s biographical aspect aspires to an approach that Robert Gerwarth describes as ‘cold empathy’, an attempt to reconstruct the life of the subject ‘with critical distance, but without reading history backwards or confusing the role of the historian with that of a state prosecutor’.12 So far as is possible, therefore, the facts will be allowed to speak for themselves, and the analysis offered will seek to explain – not to judge, justify or excuse – Aiken’s actions.
The local study aspect of the book also presents certain issues. In particular, how should the geographic parameters be selected? Unlike most local histories of the revolutionary period, which tend to focus on an individual county, this study takes a somewhat unconventional approach.13 It transcends both provincial and county boundaries in recognition of the fact that, for Aiken and his comrades, the conflict did not conform neatly to local administrative units.14 The Fourth Northern Division, for instance, had its origins in a handful of Irish Volunteer companies in the districts of Newry and south Armagh, but by 1921 had expanded to encompass Armagh, south Down and north Louth. This was an acknowledgement of the structure of local republican networks, and longer-standing social, economic and cultural ties in the region. Accordingly, the study takes Armagh, south Down and (to a lesser extent) north Louth as its broad geographic focus, though out of necessity it will often focus more intently on one or other component area within this larger borderland region.
There is also the question of how one ensures that the experiences of an individual locality are contextualised in an effective way. In this respect, the study adopts the guiding principle of previous local histories of the revolutionary period. The Armagh, south Down and north Louth region will provide the focus for an in-depth analysis of the various themes and issues encompassed within the subject, but so far as is possible an engagement with other regional histories and relevant secondary texts will be used to place these local findings within a broader national (or indeed international) context.15
Some readers might question the periodisation adopted for the study. The period from 1916 to 1923 is only one of a number of possible chronological frameworks within which the Irish revolution can be considered.16 It is employed here for the simple reason that it proves the best fit for the subject at hand. Although Aiken showed some signs of political activity prior to 1916, it was only after the Easter rising that his revolutionary journey truly began. Furthermore, while it could be argued that his revolution stretched beyond the collapse of the IRA’s civil war campaign, and perhaps only ended when he entered the Dáil as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) in 1927, it is clear that 1923 marked a watershed in both the republican struggle and Aiken’s own role in it, and he himself recognised this.17 The years 1916–23 also provide a logical timeframe within which to explore the provincial experience of the revolutionary republicanism in Armagh, south Down and north Louth. Prior to 1916, separatism was a marginal political viewpoint in these areas, and it was only after the Easter rising that the movement became a significant political force locally. The year 1923 also provides an appropriate end date, marking the collapse of any significant republican resistance to the newly constituted order both north and south of the border.
The research for this study has presented considerable challenges in terms of source material. Although Aiken left a sizeable collection of personal papers, the majority relate to his later political career. A large quantity of the Fourth Northern Division’s records appear to have been destroyed at the close of the civil war, and few contemporary documents relating to the Sinn Féin organisation across Armagh, south Down and north Louth appear to have survived the period.18 Furthermore, Aiken was notoriously reticent about his role in the conflict. He rarely discussed this aspect of his life with family members and declined to submit a statement to the Bureau of Military History. This may have been an indication of trauma resulting from the conflict. Certainly, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that speaking of the civil war could make him agitated and emotional.19 It is just as likely, however, that his aversion to recording his experiences was simply a reflection of the contentious nature of the events in which he was involved. In his later years, for instance, when an acquaintance hinted that he should write a memoir, he is said to have replied ‘I am not doing any writing […] because anything I could say would be challenged by someone else’.20
Notwithstanding these considerable limitations, there are a greater variety of sources for the subject than one might expect. Despite his reluctance to discuss the conflict, Aiken did record some of his experiences in a handwritten statement and a personal chronology of the conflict. The former appears to have been composed in 1925, when he was IRA chief-of-staff. The latter was compiled around 1933, possibly in preparation for his Military Service Pension application.21 In the 1950s, he also granted interviews to both Ernie O’Malley and Florence O’Donoghue.22 Generally speaking, these reflections focused on his attempts to intervene with southern leaders to avert the civil war in 1922 and hint at a determination to prove his own absolution (as an opponent of the Treaty) from any sense of collective culpability for that conflict. It is also entirely possible, however, that he chose to emphasise this aspect of his past for political reasons, or in a conscious effort to shape his own legacy. Alongside Aiken’s own testimony, moreover, 25 of his comrades from Armagh, south Down and north Louth provided witness statements to the Bureau of Military History. Among these is a richly detailed account written by his former adjutant, and life-long friend, John McCoy, which Aiken read and endorsed as an accurate portrayal of their activities during the period.23 McCoy and two other former divisional officers also provided remarkably candid interviews to Ernie O’Malley in the 1950s.24
In addition, there is a wealth of material with which to research the history of the republican movement in Armagh, south Down and north Louth during this period. The Kilmainham Gaol Museum in Dublin, for instance, holds a substantial collection of papers relating to the Fourth Northern Division, among them a revealing memoir of events in Dundalk in 1922 by former quartermaster Padraig Quinn.25 The Louis O’Kane collection at the Cardinal Ó Fiaich Memorial Library in Armagh contains a wealth of material relating to the local republican movement in this period; though unfortunately for conservation reasons an aged collection of tape recorded interviews with IRA veterans has been inaccessible during the research for this book. In addition to these collections, some contemporary correspondence and reports regarding the local IRA, and occasionally Sinn Féin, survive amongst the personal papers of figures such as Richard Mulcahy, Michael Collins and Maurice Twomey. Combined with information from local and national newspapers, police reports, and other official records held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, the National Archives, Kew, the National Archives of Ireland, and the Irish Military Archives, there is no shortage of material with which to study the politics and violence of the conflict in the region.
Drawing on these collections, this book aims to construct a portrait of the personal and provincial experience that was Frank Aiken’s Irish revolution. What emerges is a multifaceted narrative of an individual’s pathway to and from revolutionary activism, a political movement’s futile struggle to gain ground amid a largely hostile population, and the violent excesses of militant nationalist ideology. If this restores some complexity to the way in which Aiken’s formative years are understood and remembered, beyond the prevailing caricatures of the reformed gunman or the sectarian thug, it will have achieved its first goal.26 If it provides readers with a more nuanced view of the nature and the dynamics of the conflict at a grassroots level in Ulster during this period, beyond the simplistic discourse of tribalism and sectarian hatreds, it will have achieved the other.
NOTES
1. Dáil Éireann Members Database, http://www.oireachtas.ie/members–hist/default.asp?housetype=0&HouseNum=19&MemberID=1 (accessed 18 Feb. 2013); Aiken served as Minister for External Affairs from 1951 to 1954, and again from 1957 to 1969; for more on this phase of his career see A. Bhreatnach, ‘Frank Aiken and the Formulation of Foreign Policy: 1951–1954, 1957–1969’ (MA thesis, University College Cork, 1999).
2.Irish Times, 19, 20, 21 May 1983.
3. See, for example, D. Macardle, The Irish Republic (London, 1937), pp 759, 761–3, 846; L. Skinner, Politicians by Accident (Dublin, 1946), pp 151–69; M. Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin, 1988), pp 169–71.
4. T. Harnden, Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh (London, 1999) pp 135–7; Irish Times, 17 Nov. 1999; ‘Aiken: Gunman and Statesman’ (Mint Productions, 2006); R. Lynch, ‘Explaining the Altnaveigh massacre’ in Eire/Ireland, 45: 3& 4 (fall/winter, 2010).
5. See, for example, E. Phoenix, Northern Nationalism: Nationalistic Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940 (Belfast, 1994); A. C. Hepburn, A Past Apart: Studies in the History of Catholic Belfast (Belfast, 1996); J. F. Harbinson, The Ulster Unionist Party, 1882–1973: Its Development and Organisation (London, 1973); P. Buckland, Ulster Unionism and the Origins of Northern Ireland (Dublin, 1973); M. Laffan, The Partition of Ireland, 1911–1925 (Dublin, 1983).
6. See, for example, Laffan, The Partition of Ireland, pp 73–6; C. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford, 1983), pp 340–4; J. Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917–1973 (Oxford, 1982), pp 72–3.
7. Phoenix, Northern Nationalism; J. Augusteijn, From Public Defiance to Guerrilla Warfare: The Experience of Ordinary Volunteers in the Irish War of Independence, 1916–1921 (Dublin, 1996); C. S. Day, ‘Political Violence in the Newry/Armagh Area, 1912–1925’ (PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1998).
8. R. Lynch, The Northern IRA and the Early Years of Partition, 1920–1922 (Dublin, 2006); J. McDermott, Northern Divisions: The Old IRA and the Belfast Pogroms (Belfast, 2001); T. W. Wilson, Frontiers of Violence: Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia 1918–1922 (Oxford, 2010); F. McCluskey, Fenians and Ribbonmen: The Development of Republican Politics in East Tyrone (Manchester, 2011).
9. F. McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: A Self-Made Hero (Oxford, 2007); T. Feeney, Seán MacEntee: A Political Life (Dublin, 2009); M. Hay, Bulmer Hobson and the Nationalist Movement in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Manchester, 2009).
10. Lynch, The Northern IRA and the Early Years of Partition, pp 48, 145–9; Harnden, Bandit Country, pp 134–8; the first publication to reference Aiken’s complicity in sectarian reprisals was R. P. Watson’s Cath Saoirse an Iúir: Newry’s Struggle (Newry, 1986), a local history pamphlet that appears to have been produced by members (or sympathisers) of the provisional republican movement, and which carries a clear political message. A passing reference to its production appears in the memoir of IRA ‘supergrass’ Eamon Collins, though he mistakenly refers to it as a memoir; see Eamon Collins, Killing Rage (London, 1997), p. 317.
11. ‘Aiken: Gunman and Statesman’; for commentary see Sunday Independent, 17 Dec. 2006.
12. R. Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (New Haven, 2011), p. x.
13. See, for example, D. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, 1913–1921: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution (Dublin, 1977); P. Hart, The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–1923 (Oxford, 1998); M. Coleman, County Longford and the Irish Revolution, 1910–1923 (Dublin, 2001); J. O’Callaghan, Revolutionary Limerick: The Republican Campaign for Independence in Limerick 1913–1921 (Dublin, 2010); M. Farry, The Irish Revolution, 1912–23: Sligo (Dublin, 2012).
14. The validity of the county as a geographical unit for local studies of the Irish revolution has been questioned, see J. Augusteijn, ‘The emergence of violent activism among Irish revolutionaries, 1916–1921’, in Irish Historical Studies, 35: 139 (May 2007), pp 329–32.
15. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, p. x.
16. P. Hart, The IRA at War (Oxford, 2003), pp 11–12.
17. See, for example, Aiken to de Valera, 1 June 1923, University College Dublin Archives Department (hereafter, UCDAD), de Valera papers, P150/1752.
18. O’Hanlon to Aiken, 9 May 1923, UCDAD, Twomey papers, P69/35.
19.Irish Times, 13 Nov. 2008.
20. ‘Aiken: Gunman and Statesman’; Irish Times, 13 Nov. 2008; U. MacEoin, The IRA in The Twilight Years, 1923–1948 (Dublin, 1998), p. 913.
21. Untitled statement by Frank Aiken, c.1925, IMA, Bureau of Military History Contemporary Documents (hereafter, BMH CD) 6/36/22; ‘Chronology’, c.1933, IMA, BMH CD 6/36/22; copies of these documents are also held in the Aiken papers, UCDAD, P104/1308. Aiken’s Military Service Pension was released by the Irish Military Archives in Jan. 2014; Frank Aiken, Irish Military Archives (hereafter, IMA), Military Service Pensions Collection (hereafter, MSPC), MSP34REF59339.
22. ‘Notes of interview with Frank Aiken at Leinster House 18/6/52’, National Library of Ireland (hereafter, NLI), O’Donoghue papers, Ms 31,421; Frank Aiken, UCDAD, O’Malley notebooks, P17b/90.
23. John McCoy, IMA, Bureau of Military History Witness Statement (hereafter, BMH WS) 492; I am very thankful to Dr Eve Morrison for this revelation.
24. Johnnie McKay [McCoy], UCDAD, O’Malley Notebooks, P17b/90; Mick Donnelly, UCDAD, O’Malley notebooks, P17b/116; Mick O’Hanlon, UCDAD, O’Malley notebooks, P17b/106.
25. Padraig Quinn memoir, Kilmainham Gaol Museum (hereafter, KGM), McCann Cell Collection, 20/M5/IP41/08.
26. See, for example, ‘Aiken: Gunman and Statesman’; Sunday Independent, 26 June, 14 Aug. 2011; ‘Frank Aiken: A man of war, a man of peace’, www.politics.ie/forum/history/157924–frank–aiken–man–war–man–peace–6.html (accessed 6 Dec. 2013).
TWO
A PRELUDE TO REVOLUTION
Francis Thomas Aiken was born on 13 February 1898 in Carrickbracken, Co. Armagh, a rural townland situated within a mile of the village of Camlough on the main road to Newry.1 At the turn of the century, Carrickbracken had a population of 284. Its inhabitants were a mixture of farmers, agricultural labourers, and textile workers employed at the nearby linen mill in Bessbrook.2 The youngest child of James and Mary Aiken, Frank was born into a prosperous farming family which held considerable influence in the wider Camlough area by virtue of its relative wealth, property holdings and nationalist political connections.
The Aiken family are believed to have had their roots in the Ederney area of Co. Fermanagh. Frank’s grandfather, Thomas Aiken, was of a Presbyterian background, but was said to have married a Catholic and subsequently left the district to settle in Truagh, Co. Monaghan. An alternative version, recorded in local folklore, suggests that his departure was due to his alleged links to the United Irishmen. Either way, it is evident that his choices in life, whether personal or political, resulted in his estrangement from his wider family circle.3
Frank’s father, James Aiken, came to Newry in the 1870s. He established a construction business in the town, with premises in Monaghan Street, and it is believed that he was responsible for a number of the churches built in the south Armagh area during these years.4 In 1881, he settled at Carrickbracken, and acquired substantial holdings in the decades that followed, including land and rental properties in Carrickbracken, Derrymore and Newry.5 By 1911, the family was farming around 56 acres and letting as many as 38 houses, the latter including a cluster of properties in the High Street area of Derrymore known as ‘Aiken’s Row’. The farm and lands at Carrickbracken alone held a rateable valuation of £43.6 The total holdings, however, were valued closer to £177.7 To put this into context, 52.9 per cent of those living on agricultural holdings in Co. Armagh at this time resided on properties with a rateable valuation of £15 or under.8
Although a relative newcomer to the area, James Aiken quickly integrated into the local community. This was facilitated by his marriages into two well-known families; the Cardwells and the McGeeneys. His first marriage, to Catherine Cardwell, ended tragically when she died in March 1885, most likely as a result of complications arising from childbirth. This was followed by the death of their daughter, Mary, less than three years later in January 1888.9 His second marriage, to Mary McGeeney, took place in 1887, and the couple went on to have seven children; James, Mary (May), Magdalene (Madge), Annie (who died in infancy), Gertrude, Nano and, finally, Frank.10
James also became active in local politics during these years, at a time when the nationalist home rule movement was only just beginning to make headway in the region. Positioned on the provincial boundary between Ulster and Leinster, the Aiken’s hinterland of Newry and south Armagh marked a political frontier which various southern Irish nationalist movements throughout the nineteenth century had consistently had difficulty penetrating.11 This became particularly pronounced from the 1870s onwards, when longer-standing nationalist demands for the repeal of the 1801 Act of Union were re-articulated in the cause of home rule, and a clear gulf emerged on the issue between the Catholic-nationalist south and the Protestant-unionist north-east. Consequently, it took a decade of concerted efforts before this latest nationalist movement – represented by the Irish Parliamentary Party (hereafter the Irish Party) from 1882 – became a significant political force locally. This was confirmed with the election of Alexander Blaine as the South Armagh constituency’s first nationalist MP in 1885, an event which marked the beginning of three decades of constitutional nationalist dominance in the region.12
James Aiken’s first steps into local nationalist politics came in 1881, when he was appointed as vice-president of the Camlough branch of the Land League. Later that same year, he was also elected as a poor law guardian for the Camlough division.13 There is little evidence of his activities in the former role, or his specific views on the land issue. It is likely, however, that they reflected those of other local nationalists, who were primarily concerned with ensuring that the informal rights afforded to tenants under the ‘Ulster custom’ were appropriately defined and observed. This much was indicated in testimony provided to the Bessborough Commission in 1880 by Canon Charles Quin, the Camlough based parish priest for Lower Killeavy, and an ardent and influential south Armagh nationalist.14 Nevertheless, the only firm evidence of James Aiken’s stance on the land issue, or indeed his role in agitating for reform, came in 1884 when during a meeting of the Newry Board of Guardians he successfully proposed a resolution calling on the government to ‘introduce a measure during the present session to extend the benefits of the Land Law Act to leaseholders, and reducing the percentage on loans.’15
More is known of James’s activities as a poor law guardian, a role in which he served until the end of his life. He routinely attended the meetings of the Newry Board of Guardians, and regularly contributed to discussions on the day-to-day business with which the body was typically concerned, such as the collection of rates and the maintenance of the Newry workhouse. As might be expected of a shrewd businessman, his interjections usually concerned financial matters, on which he consistently advocated retrenchment.16 It was perhaps fitting, therefore, that in 1889 he was named as one of three special defendants in legal proceedings brought against the guardians by the Local Government Board (LGB). This concerned a decision to refer four suspected rabies patients to a Cavan folk healer named Philip McGovern, instead of following the usual, more costly, practice of sending them to Paris for treatment at the Pasteur Institute. The LGB refused to pay for the ‘McGovern cure’ and instead sought to make James and his fellow defendants liable for the expense. The dispute was eventually settled with the Newry guardians opting to cover the costs for the treatment from their own coffers.17
James Aiken became a prominent nationalist figure in Newry and south Armagh through his service in these roles. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s his attendance was regularly noted at local nationalist conventions and events.18 Following the Parnell split in 1890, he took an anti-Parnellite position, as did the vast majority of south Armagh nationalists. This united stance in the region was due, in part, to the considerable influence of the clergy. At various points in 1891, Cardinal Logue, Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh, used the scandal arising from revelations of Parnell’s affair with Kitty O’Shea to denounce the disgraced leader. Driven as much by political motives as by moral outrage, Logue sought to use the situation to reassert the church’s influence within nationalist politics, and successfully marshalled the clergy in a concerted campaign against Parnell and his supporters.19 Locally, this agenda was vigorously pursued by the aforementioned Canon Charles Quin. In his zeal he forced the dissolution of the William O’Brien’s Gaelic Club in Camlough, an act prompted by the Gaelic Athletic Association’s (GAA) support for Parnell. He also proved pivotal in securing the selection of the anti-Parnellite Edward McHugh as the preferred nationalist candidate in the 1892 election, a nomination seconded by James Aiken. McHugh subsequently went on to defeat the sitting Parnellite MP Alexander Blaine.20 This unified anti-Parnellite stance in South Armagh was not entirely attributable to the influence of the church, however. It also reflected a more general tendency against factionalism in the area throughout the 1885–1918 period. Though distinct divisions were often noticeable during the selection of election candidates, fears that a split vote might benefit unionism ensured that intra-nationalist electoral battles were relatively rare.21
The 1890s saw James attain further status and influence locally. In 1893, he was appointed as a justice of the peace (JP). Following the reforms of the Local Government Act in 1898, he was co-opted as a member of the new Newry No.2 Rural District Council (RDC) and was subsequently elected as its chairman, though his attempt to secure election to the new Armagh County Council for the district of Richhill failed miserably when he received only 12 votes. He was also appointed as chairman of the Newry Board of Guardians at this time in recognition of his past service, a move facilitated by the fact that the nationalists had now secured a majority on the body.22 It was in this latter role that he revealed his more radical inclinations, adjourning a resolution welcoming Queen Victoria on her visit to Ireland in 1900 ‘until Ireland became free.’23
Within a year of his new local government appointments, however, James was forced to relinquish his duties due to ill health. He died four months later, on 12 August 1900, aged 59. Frank was two years old at the time, and his father’s death was the first of three close family bereavements that occurred in his childhood years. In 1908, his older sister Gertrude died shortly after turning 15. This was followed in 1913 with the death of his mother Mary, at the age of 48. It is difficult to know how these bereavements affected Frank, though the death of his mother had a particularly important impact on him and his sister Nano, who were aged 15 and 16 respectively. As the youngest, their mother’s passing hastened their transition into adulthood. Although they were looked after by their older sisters May and Madge, and to a lesser extent by their extended family, in reality the pair had little in the way of authority at home. It was perhaps as a result of this shared experience, and their close ages, that they became particularly close, and together went on to develop shared interests in both the Irish language and revolutionary republican politics.
Frank’s early years provide a number of possible clues as to the origins of his nationalism, beyond the obvious influence of his family background. Like many of his peers from the Newry and south Armagh area, he later attributed his youthful politicisation to the influence of folk tales of the area’s turbulent past. There was certainly a rich history from which to draw such stories. Though south Armagh was largely untouched by the seventeenth-century Ulster plantation, determined attempts to settle the area in the late 1700s generated considerable conflict between newly arrived Protestant settlers and dispossessed native Irish Catholics. The subsequent emergence of the Peep O’Day Boys (the forerunner of the Orange Order) and its Catholic equivalent, the Defenders, prompted considerable violence in the region. Indeed, the most notable local incident, an attack by the Defenders on a Protestant schoolmaster and his wife in Forkhill, in which the victims had their tongues cut out and fingers hacked off, remained deeply embedded within the northern unionist psyche. Though originally little more than a rural protest group, the Defenders organisation became politicised through its involvement with the United Irishmen during the 1798 rebellion. In the decades that followed, however, it retained much of its original character as an expression of ‘social banditry’, using intimidation and underground courts to maintain social norms, and carrying out sporadic attacks on local authority figures. Outbreaks of violence and unrest involving the group, and successor organisations such as the Ribbonmen, continued well into the nineteenth century, with agrarian outrages and attacks on officials, such as tithe collectors, proving particularly virulent in the 1810s, 1830s and 1850s.24
Combined with local narratives of the penal laws, the United Irish rebellion and the famine, this legacy of violence and banditry provided the basis for a folk memory of local resistance to English intrusion, invasion and misrule; a theme which was in keeping with a particular view of Irish history that formed a central tenet of revolutionary republican ideology.25 Aiken later claimed that it was the ‘horror stories from the old about life during the famine’ that had the greatest impact on him, a rare insight which he offered to an academic researcher in 1972 while explaining his initial involvement in the revolutionary movement.26 He was not alone in expressing such sentiments, however. His future friend and IRA comrade John McCoy, for example, later recalled his grandfather’s tales of ‘Redmond Count O’Hanlon, Johnson of the Fews, a famous Priest hunter, [and] his own recollections of the 1848 rising and the local activities of the Fenian days.’ To McCoy’s mind, these stories had ‘unpredictable results and helped to mould my later actions.’27 The legend of the seventeenth-century bandit Redmond O’Hanlon, in particular, held a special resonance for McCoy, and for other future revolutionaries in the region. An impressive mythology had formed around the outlaw, who operated in the area around Slieve Gullion throughout the 1660s and 1670s.28 Tales of his exploits were well known locally, and were often retold in an overtly politicised manner. In March and April 1913, for example, the Frontier Sentinel, the area’s main nationalist newspaper, published a serialised biography of O’Hanlon in which he was romanticised as the original ‘Irish guerrilla patriot’.29 The real allure of the legend, however, lay in the fact that O’Hanlon was a remarkably common surname in south Armagh. This ensured that many youths (McCoy included) could lay claim to him as an ancestor.30
As intriguing as these recollections of the radicalising power of local history and folklore might be, however, they must be treated with caution. As Augusteijn has observed, factors such as these were often attributed significance with hindsight, despite the probability that they were insignificant in their causal effect.31 Indeed, it is likely that many of Aiken’s contemporaries in Newry and south Armagh grew up with these tales without acquiring republican leanings, or becoming actively involved in the politics or violence of the revolutionary period.
Perhaps a more plausible influence on Aiken’s early ideological development during these years was his educational experience. Having first attended the local national school in Camlough, Aiken subsequently went on to study at the Abbey Christian Brothers’ School (CBS) in Newry. Contemporaries and historians alike have frequently observed the influence of a Christian Brothers education in the development of the Irish revolutionary generation. Teaching a curriculum which promoted a strong nationalist outlook, the Christian Brothers did much to instil their pupils with three of the central tenets of revolutionary republican ideology; Catholicism, cultural nationalism and a view of Irish history which emphasised the struggle against English rule.32 Although Aiken left no recollections of his time at the Abbey CBS, others who attended the school left little doubt as to its importance in aiding the development of their nationalist outlook. Patrick Casey, who was in the year below Aiken, recalled that ‘these men did more than anything else to influence and mould my outlook on the national ideal.’ In particular, he noted the influence of Peadar McCann, a teacher at the school, and a well-known local advanced nationalist and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), who went on to become a prominent figure in the Sinn Féin movement in Newry in 1917 and 1918.33
For Aiken, however, the main ideological contribution of a CBS education appears to have been in the fact that it sparked a life-long passion for the Irish language, which in turn inspired his involvement in the Gaelic League. Though it is uncertain exactly when Aiken joined the organisation, we do know that he was appointed as secretary of the Camlough branch in 1914 and remained active in this position until 1920.34 This branch is likely to have been created in late 1913 amid a resurgence of the organisation in the Newry and south Armagh area, which police reports suggested was being carried out by men of ‘advanced views’.35 As Eoin Magennis has observed, there is also good reason to suspect that it was closely affiliated with the organisation’s Newry branch, Craobh an Iúr. The latter was heavily involved in the organisation of summer schools at the nearby Irish college in Omeath, Co. Louth, in which Aiken, along with his sister Nano, became active in 1915 and 1916. Roisín ní Beirne, a neighbour, and a close friend of Nano Aiken, was also on the Newry branch’s committee.36 Given that Craobh an Iúr eventually became a cover for local separatist activity after 1916, such links, however informal, are potentially significant in that they may have offered Aiken a way into the revolutionary movement. As will become clear later, however, it is uncertain what role (if any) this network actually played in facilitating his early activism.
Historians have long recognised the Gaelic League’s importance as a ‘central institution in the development of the Irish revolutionary elite’, with a majority of republican leaders having been members at some point in their youth.37 Aiken himself gave much credit to his involvement in the organisation, and ‘his appreciation of the Gaelic language’, for inspiring his early participation in the revolutionary movement; though, like many of his peers, his Irish was far from proficient.38 Even so, Aiken’s involvement in cultural nationalism cannot be considered as an early indication of advanced nationalist idealism. Despite the Gaelic League’s deserved reputation as a hotbed of revolutionary activity, it was officially a non-political organisation, and in its early years in particular its membership was drawn from a wide range of social and political backgrounds.39 Nevertheless, the ethos of the League, with its objectives of reviving the Irish language and Gaelic culture, may have aided the cultivation of separatist ideals; instilling a sense of distinctiveness, a historical justification for nationhood, and a definition of ‘Irishness’ based on cultural and racialist notions of the Gael. It might also be argued that the organisation helped to nurture the Anglophobic and culturally chauvinistic attitude that became a recognisable feature of the revolutionary republican mind-set.40
The importance of such ideals in Aiken’s political thinking is certainly suggested by the (admittedly sparse) evidence of his revolutionary beliefs, the most contemporary espousal of which features in his correspondence with Richard Mulcahy shortly after the outbreak of the civil war in 1922. In one letter, for instance, he remarked that ‘the only sure test to guide an Irishman was whether or not by taking a particular course he would develop into a clean honourable Irish speaking Irishman.’ In another he highlighted the importance of the rejuvenation of Irish civilisation as an objective of the republican struggle:
Our fight against England since 1916 was simply active expression of the faith always in the Irish people, the love of our country, its language, its traditions, its possibilities for greatness fanned into flames by the sacrifices of the Easter Week heroes, and took the form of organising the Nation under a republican form of government to develop its resources and free it from British rule that was destroying our civilisation.
This correspondence also exhibited a degree of Anglophobia on Aiken’s part, with quips about provisional government soldiers becoming ‘as rotten and British as the British themselves.’41
Cultural nationalist ideals clearly formed an important element of Aiken’s revolutionary outlook, but this was not necessarily typical of those individuals who became involved in the republican movement locally after 1916. Such influences are rarely mentioned in the recollections of those local men who joined the IRA in Armagh and south Down during this period. Though there are occasional references to membership of either the Gaelic League or the GAA, few of Aiken’s comrades appear to have attached the same significance to cultural nationalism as an explanation for their involvement in the revolution as he later did.
The Gaelic League was not the only organisation that Aiken joined at this time, however. In 1914 – at the height of the third home rule crisis – he also enrolled in the Camlough Company of the Irish Volunteers, becoming both its secretary and lieutenant.42 At this time, Irish nationalists were on the cusp of achieving what had been their primary goal since the 1870s, an Irish parliament with limited powers of self-governance. In opposing the move, however, unionists had made clear their intention to resist the extension of the measure to Ulster. Under the leadership of Sir Edward Carson, plans were laid for the establishment of a provisional government for the province, and impressive displays of defiance were staged, the most notable of which came in September 1912 when 447,197 unionists signed the Ulster Covenant (or a parallel declaration for women) affirming their determination to oppose home rule by all necessary means.43 Across Armagh and south Down there were 52,228 signatories, the vast majority of whom (33,997, or 65 per cent) were based in the constituencies of North and Mid. Armagh. The figures were considerably lower in South Armagh (4,941, or 9.5 per cent) and South Down (13,299 or 25.5 per cent).44 As might be expected, this reflected the variations in the respective strengths of the Catholic and Protestant communities in the region. North and Mid. Armagh had Protestant majorities of 67.5 per cent and 55.5 per cent respectively. In contrast, South Armagh and South Down had Catholic majorities of 68 per cent and 53.5 per cent respectively.45
In 1913 and 1914, unionist resistance went a step further with the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) – a paramilitary organisation boasting 100,000 members – and the procurement of large quantities of arms.46 It was not long before this unionist example had inspired the creation of a nationalist counter-force, the Irish Volunteers, in November 1913, and by the following summer it seemed as though the country was standing on the brink of civil war. Locally, UVF companies began to appear almost immediately after the force was founded in January 1913. By the following September, Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) estimates suggested that the organisation had 2,015 members in Newry and approximately 6,000 across Armagh.47 The presence of the force, and its open performance of parades and military drills, clearly held the potential to generate conflict in the region. Throughout 1913 and early 1914, however, local nationalists offered little in the way of an organised reaction. Though police reports often remarked that ‘party feeling was running high’, up until as late as April 1914 there was no Irish Volunteer presence in either Armagh or Down. Existing nationalist organisations, such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) and the United Irish League (UIL), were also routinely described as offering no response to the unionist resistance.48 Indeed, it was a similar story throughout the province. In January 1914, the RIC Inspector General could report that ‘the nationalists of Ulster remained passive’, despite the first stirrings of the Irish Volunteers in Donegal and Tyrone.49
It was only in May and June 1914 that Irish Volunteer companies began to form in Armagh and Down. This came shortly after the Irish Party had managed to wrest a degree of control over the organisation, and had made clear its newfound support for it. Within the space of two months 32 companies had been established across Armagh, with an estimated membership of 5,000. In Down, in the same period, 52 companies were formed with a membership of 6,667. Although there is no firm evidence to suggest when or how Aiken’s local company in Camlough was formed, it is likely that it also emerged at this time. Consequently, while it might be tempting to look upon his involvement in the organisation as the first step on his path to revolution, this was not necessarily the case. There is nothing to suggest that he was any different from the thousands of other constitutional nationalist men who swelled the organisation’s ranks in this period, once the Irish Party had signalled that it was acceptable to do so. At most, his youthful involvement in the Irish Volunteers suggests that, like many of his generation, he was influenced by the prevailing trend of popular militarism current throughout Europe in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Such ideals were readily visible in Ireland during this period with a rising number of ‘pseudo-military youth groups’ such as the Baden Powell scout movement, its Irish equivalent Fianna Éireann, and more significantly with the creation of the UVF, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). As Fitzpatrick has observed, the ‘common rhetoric of militarism transcended political divisions’, and for ‘unionists, nationalists and republicans alike, soldiery was an ideal to be extolled rather than a menace to be confronted.’50 There are certainly hints of such militarism in some of Aiken’s political pronouncements in later years. During a speech at an Easter rising commemoration in Dundalk in 1925, for instance, he stated his belief that the young should ‘train in arms and be prepared to defend the rights of the country in arms.’51 Nevertheless, although his brief flirtation with the Irish Volunteers in 1914 certainly suggests an emerging nationalist outlook, and perhaps an attraction to the perceived values of military life, it can by no means be considered as an early expression of revolutionary tendencies or ideals.
Despite the fact that there were now two opposing paramilitary formations operating openly across Armagh and south Down, the region remained peaceful for the duration of the crisis. Leaders on both sides actively sought to avoid confrontation. In Newry, for instance, Day has observed that ‘marches and drills tended to take place in defined areas or at pre-set times in order to avoid clashes’. Other areas ‘were considered “neutral” and it was understood that neither side would enter them.’52 This peaceful, if somewhat tense, co-existence continued throughout the early summer months until, on 28 July 1914, Irish issues were eclipsed by the advent of the Great War. The implementation of the Government of Ireland Act, which was finally enacted on 18 September, was put on hold for the duration of the conflict with the proviso that an accommodation must be reached with the unionists of Ulster. As military reservists were called up for service, incidents of drilling involving both UVF and the Irish Volunteers declined, and tensions eased considerably.53 Indeed, over the next two years, with the region experiencing something of a boom as a result of rising agricultural prices and wartime demands for local linen, the as yet unresolved issue of Ulster’s potential exclusion from home rule melted into the background, and community relations returned to some kind of normality.54
For Aiken, the outbreak of the Great War marked the end of his first stint in the Irish Volunteers. With the split in the organisation over the Irish Party’s support for the British war effort, most companies in south Armagh appear to have either affiliated with the Redmonite faction – the Irish National Volunteers (INV) – or to have simply ceased functioning. The latter was the fate of the Camlough Company, but this can certainly not be read as an indication that Aiken or his comrades had become any more advanced in their nationalist ideals. Though they may not have integrated in to the INV, there also appears to have been no attempt to affiliate with the anti-Redmondite Irish Volunteers. This was not for lack of opportunity. Indeed, an organiser from Belfast was noted to have visited Camlough in June 1915 to encourage recruitment for the organisation, though he appears to have made little headway.55 The company’s collapse likely reflected a degree of ambivalence concerning the Irish Party’s support for the war effort – particularly in light of the nationalist leadership’s encouragement for enlistment – or perhaps a degree of disillusion in the aftermath of the split.
Following the demise of the Irish Volunteers in Camlough, Aiken showed no further signs of political activity until 1917. Instead he channelled his energies into his cultural nationalist pursuits with the Gaelic League and the Irish college in Omeath. In 1914, following his graduation from the Abbey CBS, he also took over the management of the family farm, though it seems likely that there was plenty of opportunity for him to pursue further study, if he had so wished. The Aiken family was in a comfortable position financially, and his older siblings, James and May, had both progressed to higher education, James becoming a doctor and May obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree. According to family lore, however, Frank was not a particularly enthusiastic student. His performance was satisfactory enough. In 1913, for instance, he had obtained seven passes in the middle grade of the intermediate examinations.56 Yet his attendance was erratic, particularly after the death of his mother, and earned him the nickname ‘corr lá’ (or ‘odd day’). As Magennis suggests, institutional learning appears to have held little appeal for him, and he was more inclined towards self-education.57 For that reason, it is likely that he was quite content to leave formal education behind, and to instead assume the role of the quintessential ‘strong farmer’.
