Article’s affection for Colonel Gerald Smyth blocked out facts about the Listowel mutiny

(The article by Gordon Lucy can be read here: ‘The one-armed Irish warrior who was a determined opponent of IRA,’ July 27)

Unfortunately, the article’s presentation of events surrounding the infamous 1920 Listowel Mutiny does a disservice to your readers and to Smyth’s memory as it allows affection for the man to block out objective facts and evidence.

Gordon Lucy is certainly correct to view Constable Mee as a malcontent within the RIC and “the spokesman” for the mutinous constables in Listowel. But it is an all too common error to regard Mee as the “ringleader for his colleagues”.

In reality, his fellow constables never appointed any sort of “leader” and there is much evidence of different individuals from that group acting on their own initiative.

I was likewise disappointed to see your author following writer Kevin Myers’ ill-informed presumption that the description of the event published in the Freeman’s Journal was purely Mee’s account. Mee may have drafted the document, but it was signed by no less than 14 constables stationed in Listowel at the time.

It is also a vast overstatement to label the constables’ rendering of Smyth’s speech as “fabrication.” Exaggeration, perhaps, which was the line Smyth himself took in his later rebuttal.

Yet there are notable consistencies between Smyth’s account and that of the RIC officers who he addressed on the day.

For example, we know from Smyth’s own testimony and earlier written orders issued from his Cork office that he did give instructions for: the relaxation of police code regulations on the discharge of firearms; the shooting of any person suspected of being armed who did not instantly raise their hands when ordered; the acceptance of some risk of mistakes being made; the withholding of police names from inquests; and the requisitioning of civilian homes (preferably, but not exclusively, of Sinn Feiners) and the eviction of the occupants wherever local barracks were burnt.

The key point is that Smyth’s objective was to stamp out Sinn Fein which included the IRA (significantly, he never mentions the IRA by name, only Sinn Fein).

Tragically for him, he inherited a command in which, as your article states, certain officers “had no stomach” for his tactics.

Wesley Curry, Belfast BT10

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