Eunan O'Halpin is Professor of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College Dublin and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Irish History. His CV and publications can be viewed at http://people.tcd.ie/Profile?Username=ohalpine
This paper discusses the performance of the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in anticip... more This paper discusses the performance of the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in anticipating and assessing the dangers posed to British interests by instability in Ireland between 1965 and 1972, and in setting the parameters within which intelligence operations to counter terrorism were mounted. It concentrates on the performance of the central intelligence assessment machinery of British government, not on the politics of Anglo-Irish relations.1 It explores the performance of the JIC, at least as revealed by the redacted material available in the public archives, in terms of intelligence organization and intelligence failure.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of how many people died as a consequence of Irish ... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of how many people died as a consequence of Irish political violence between April of 1916 and December 31, 1921. While some of those who died during the Irish Revolution are well known, most are not even recalled in historical footnotes. This book identifies their backgrounds, why they died and who was directly responsible for their deaths. It focuses solely on fatalities in a conflict which involved four main sets of protagonists — civilians, rebels collectively termed 'Irish military', police, and the British army — but other forces were also involved in nine-county Ulster, where some of the violence was attributable to the partisan Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) formed in November of 1920, to loyalist paramilitaries and civilians, and to nationalists who were not republicans. What most distinguishes 1916 from later years are the high proportion of civilian casualties and, within that category, of female deaths; the absence of any sectarian element in killings; and the absence of targeted killings — other than by execution following courts martial of the leaders of the rebellion — by either Crown forces or the rebels. What also distinguishes 1916 from 1919–21 is the absence of Ulster loyalist action against the Catholic minority during and after the Rising, in contrast to the considerable violence from 1920 onwards of which the Catholic civilian population were the main targets and the community which lost most people.
<jats:p>Academic study of the development of Irish political parties has been hampered by a... more <jats:p>Academic study of the development of Irish political parties has been hampered by a shortage of primary source material available to historians and political scientists. This is because the headquarters records of parties, where they have survived, are generally fragmentary and ill-organised, and because few national politicians or party organisers have left papers for research.</jats:p> <jats:p>The shortage of primary sources on the major political parties is reflected in the standard academic works dealing with their development, from Maurice Manning's <jats:italic>Irish political parties</jats:italic> (1972) and Michael Gallagher's <jats:italic>The Irish Labour Party in transition, 1957–1982</jats:italic> (1982) to Richard Dunphy's recent <jats:italic>The making of Fianna Fáil power in Ireland</jats:italic> (1995). These are largely based on secondary sources, on interviews, and on the private papers of individual politicians. Where scholars have had access to party records, furthermore, it has generally been on an informal and improvised basis. It was in such circumstances that John Bowman, while preparing <jats:italic>De Valera and the Ulster question, 1917–1973</jats:italic> (1982), and Dermot Keogh, while researching <jats:italic>Ireland and Europe, 1919–1948</jats:italic> (1988), were given sight of some of the records of the Fianna Fail national executive committee and the parliamentary party.</jats:p>
... While working as a research student on the inter-war British Treasury and its mercurial perma... more ... While working as a research student on the inter-war British Treasury and its mercurial permanent secretary Warren Fisher, I developed my interest in security and intelligence matters, in terms both of British defence and foreign policy in the 1930s and of the evolution of the ...
This paper discusses the performance of the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in anticip... more This paper discusses the performance of the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in anticipating and assessing the dangers posed to British interests by instability in Ireland between 1965 and 1972, and in setting the parameters within which intelligence operations to counter terrorism were mounted. It concentrates on the performance of the central intelligence assessment machinery of British government, not on the politics of Anglo-Irish relations.1 It explores the performance of the JIC, at least as revealed by the redacted material available in the public archives, in terms of intelligence organization and intelligence failure.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of how many people died as a consequence of Irish ... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of how many people died as a consequence of Irish political violence between April of 1916 and December 31, 1921. While some of those who died during the Irish Revolution are well known, most are not even recalled in historical footnotes. This book identifies their backgrounds, why they died and who was directly responsible for their deaths. It focuses solely on fatalities in a conflict which involved four main sets of protagonists — civilians, rebels collectively termed 'Irish military', police, and the British army — but other forces were also involved in nine-county Ulster, where some of the violence was attributable to the partisan Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) formed in November of 1920, to loyalist paramilitaries and civilians, and to nationalists who were not republicans. What most distinguishes 1916 from later years are the high proportion of civilian casualties and, within that category, of female deaths; the absence of any sectarian element in killings; and the absence of targeted killings — other than by execution following courts martial of the leaders of the rebellion — by either Crown forces or the rebels. What also distinguishes 1916 from 1919–21 is the absence of Ulster loyalist action against the Catholic minority during and after the Rising, in contrast to the considerable violence from 1920 onwards of which the Catholic civilian population were the main targets and the community which lost most people.
<jats:p>Academic study of the development of Irish political parties has been hampered by a... more <jats:p>Academic study of the development of Irish political parties has been hampered by a shortage of primary source material available to historians and political scientists. This is because the headquarters records of parties, where they have survived, are generally fragmentary and ill-organised, and because few national politicians or party organisers have left papers for research.</jats:p> <jats:p>The shortage of primary sources on the major political parties is reflected in the standard academic works dealing with their development, from Maurice Manning's <jats:italic>Irish political parties</jats:italic> (1972) and Michael Gallagher's <jats:italic>The Irish Labour Party in transition, 1957–1982</jats:italic> (1982) to Richard Dunphy's recent <jats:italic>The making of Fianna Fáil power in Ireland</jats:italic> (1995). These are largely based on secondary sources, on interviews, and on the private papers of individual politicians. Where scholars have had access to party records, furthermore, it has generally been on an informal and improvised basis. It was in such circumstances that John Bowman, while preparing <jats:italic>De Valera and the Ulster question, 1917–1973</jats:italic> (1982), and Dermot Keogh, while researching <jats:italic>Ireland and Europe, 1919–1948</jats:italic> (1988), were given sight of some of the records of the Fianna Fail national executive committee and the parliamentary party.</jats:p>
... While working as a research student on the inter-war British Treasury and its mercurial perma... more ... While working as a research student on the inter-war British Treasury and its mercurial permanent secretary Warren Fisher, I developed my interest in security and intelligence matters, in terms both of British defence and foreign policy in the 1930s and of the evolution of the ...
This presentation on 'An All-Island War': Ireland 1922-24' was given on 1 June 1922 as part of th... more This presentation on 'An All-Island War': Ireland 1922-24' was given on 1 June 1922 as part of the Courts Service of Ireland's series of centenary reflections. The link includes the contribution of Ruth Cannon BL, who spoke first, who has made a particular study of the general impact of the Four Courts fighting upon women, activists, workers, and civilians.
This is the cover of my forthcoming, long-awaited book detailing and analysing deaths arising fro... more This is the cover of my forthcoming, long-awaited book detailing and analysing deaths arising from Irish political violence between April 1916 and December 1921
Christopher Andrew and David Dilks (eds.), The Missing Dimension (Basingstoke, 1984); and K.G. Robertson (ed.), British and American Approaches to Intelligence (Basingstoke, 1987), 1984
These two book chapters from 1984 and 1987 deal respectively with my research interest in British... more These two book chapters from 1984 and 1987 deal respectively with my research interest in British government in Ireland during the revolutionary era, and with arcane organisational aspects of British intelligence history. Both draw mainly on official records and on private collections of papers. Although the Nathan papers had been available in Oxford for many years, only the late Leon O'Broin had made much use of them to explore Dublin Castle's response to the threat of rebellion in 1915-16. He was a pioneer of systematic archival research, whose meticulous work I built on while rather taking it for granted.
The second chapter is based largely on Treasury and other official records which, because of their seemingly anodyne file titles, had not been as thoroughly weeded of material relating to intelligence and security organisations and activities as they might have been. I also found a surprising amount of information in official British publications, even during the Second World War, especially in the annual estimates volumes presented to parliament.
This work identifies, describes and analyses fatalities arising from Irish political violence bet... more This work identifies, describes and analyses fatalities arising from Irish political violence between April 1916 and December 1921.
In Vivid Faces, Roy Foster explores the social and cultural as well as the political and conspira... more In Vivid Faces, Roy Foster explores the social and cultural as well as the political and conspiratorial interactions of some of those who made the Irish revolution. He focuses on "young, politically interested people in the pre-revolutionary period before moving on to the events of the revolution itself, and the subsequent fallout". His aim is to construct a
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The second chapter is based largely on Treasury and other official records which, because of their seemingly anodyne file titles, had not been as thoroughly weeded of material relating to intelligence and security organisations and activities as they might have been. I also found a surprising amount of information in official British publications, even during the Second World War, especially in the annual estimates volumes presented to parliament.