A final salvo on historical rights and wrongs around Listowel Mutiny

Colonel Gerald Smyth was brave, while Jeremiah Mee was treacherous

Nothing I wrote previously prevents one from seeing Colonel Smyth as brave and Constable Mee as treacherous.

My purpose was to highlight points of historical fact and evidence relevant to the Listowel Mutiny.

The most significant was the consistencies between the mutineers’ version of Smyth’s Listowel speech and his actual instructions. One example is Smyth’s affirmation that he had ordered the seizure of homes if police stations were burnt and directed that “inhabitants must be turned out of the house on to the street.” (His words.)

The fact of Mee being a spokesman rather than a leader is not a “red herring”. It reveals the extent of the obstinacy Smyth encountered in Listowel.

Mee’s and other mutineers’ later statements, whatever their biases, bear this out as does Smyth’s subsequent government briefings.

In making these points I rely on close comparisons of first-hand testimony, but I give primacy to Smyth’s accounts.

Also, far from claiming that “distinctions” existed between Sinn Fein/IRA in 1920, I emphasised that Sinn Fein included the IRA. The IRA was but one component in a broader Sinn Fein orchestrated insurgency. Significantly, Smyth spoke only of Sinn Fein because he believed that defeating one component was insufficient and that Irish republicanism needed to be rooted out in all its guises.

In this, he faithfully adhered to earlier proclamations of Lord Lieutenant French and Chief Secretary Macpherson.

Wesley Curry, Belfast BT10

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