1920 Burning of Cork by British Forces

[SirOrmondeWinter]

Today marks the 95th anniversary of the burning of the commercial and municipal heart of Cork city in southern Ireland by British forces acting on behalf of empire. That year was a fateful one for Ireland. The republican Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás MacCurtain, had been murdered in front of his family in March 1920 by members of the security forces. MacSwiney's death focussed world attention on British policy in Ireland. The USA led international condemnation of it. A Cork jury cited David Lloyd George as being responsible for MacCurtain’s murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomás_Mac_Curtain

MacCurtain successor Terence MacSwiney died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, London, in October, in protest at his illegal arrest. He was Lord Mayor of Cork city in Ireland and a republican. He went without food for 74 days and died despite being force fed in the last week of his hunger strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_MacSwiney

In November in Croke Park football ground British forces whose commander claimed they were ‘out of hand’ killed 14 spectators, including one of the players. Even if we accept that someone in the crowd fired first, a British court of enquiry found that the shootings ‘exceeded the demands of the situation and were indiscriminate’. These finding were all buried as classified by the British government until 2000 when the papers were released.

Less than two months later the Auxiliaries (Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary), better known as the Black and Tans and the brainchild of Winston Churchill, burned some five acres of the centre of Cork city. The heart of the city's commercial and civic life was destroyed, including many of the city's civil records, the Carnegie Library and department stores. Over 30 businesses were destroyed and 2000 people lost their livelihoods.

The British government initially (and characteristically) blamed the citizens and rebels of Cork city itself and not its own agents of law and order. Anyone using or quoting Hansard as a primary source for this event will obviously be entirely misled. However, the evidence of who was responsible is now irrefutable.

The following 50 minute long documentary produced by the Irish national TV broadcaster, RTE, covers all of the main events of 1920 in Cork that led to the burning of the city.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXT105miU44

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iRngkPexYk

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFZr6YxIhuQ

Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjbO4wFqH-c

God bless the Black and Tans, the heroes of the Great War who saved the lives and freedom of thousands of Irish Unionists and made the IRA and their supporters suffer as they had made innocent Unionists suffer at their hands. A few salient facts you should add to your post;

1. Thomas McCurtain was the head of the local IRA and responsible for the murders of dozens of innocent people. He got exactly what he deserved.

2. So was Terrence MacSwiney. And he got exactly what he deserved too. Your sympathy should be with their victims, not with the murderers. If he wanted to kill himself, good riddance, what choice did he give his victims?

3. The Auxies at Croke Park were fired on first by the IRA in the crowd, here's a picture of the guns they recovered afterwards;

4. The IRA supporters of Cork deserved to suffer as they had made the Irish Unionists suffer, feel no pity for them, only for their Unionist victims. The Auxies beat them down and forced them to agree to the Treaty giving Britain victory, made them care about the IRA's victims whereas they hadn't before.

How can you still think such nonsense in the era of the Shamrock Awakening?

 

[Harpo]

Ten days after the burning of Cork New York City Council considered conferring the freedom of the city on the widow of the murdered Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence McSwiney, and it also adopted a resolution which read as follows:

To make the world safe for democracy and to establish the principle of self-determination for the people of all nations, eloquently proclaimed by the President of the United Sates on our entrance into the World War, were the purposes for which this government entered into that agonizing conflict.

The world has seen some startling exhibitions of hypocrisy’s masquerade in the guise of civilized government culminating in the destruction of the business section of Cork City by the black and tan military forces of a gunman administration, because the people of that city would not repudiate the principles for which McSwiney laid down his life and for which the colonists of North America struggled successfully in the Revolutionary War against a despotic power.

Neither the sinister influence of diplomatic intrigue, the enervations of refinement resulting from the bloated accumulations of blood-stained war wealth, the lie ‘agreed on’ by a prostituted portion of a ‘kept press’, nor the insolent propaganda of monarchical subjects, either here or abroad, will ever drive these sublime purposes from the minds and hearts of American citizens.

Although the fight for Irish independence began with a revolution in 1916, in a series of four general and local elections between 1918 and 1921, the people of Ireland repeatedly voted in favour of the republic that was first proclaimed by the Easter Rebels on the steps of the GPO in 1916. See the following links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_local_elections,_1920
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_elections,_1921

The British response throughout this period was to wage a war of terror on the Irish people using DORA, the Defence of the Realm Act (1914), and the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (1920). Democratically elected public representatives went on the run, lord mayors and aldermen were imprisoned or killed, town halls were repeatedly burnt to the ground, municipal records were destroyed, town centres were sacked and looted, and the people and their property had no rights to safety or protection. The burning of Cork was not an isolated incidence where Crown forces ran amok:

The town of Fermoy was sacked twice by British troops from the local Victoria Barracks in September and again in November 1919. That was over a year before the burning of Cork and long before the Black and Tans or the Auxiliaries were ever even established and sent to Ireland. The town of Thurles was shot up in January and in March 1920. In the summer of 1920 the town halls of numerous Irish towns were burned down, e.g. Thurles, Tuam and Trim. All of the municipal records of Trim were lost. And these examples can be replicated over and over again in the Ireland of the period.

At the same time, while these events were going on in Irish towns and villages, the British prime minister Lloyd George acknowledged the fact that the Irish people had democratically chosen full independence. In a speech he gave in Porthmadog, Wales in June 1920 he said:

Two-thirds of the population of Ireland demand the setting up of an independent Republic in that island. At a recent election they re-affirmed that demand. Every effort I have made, publicly and otherwise, to secure a modification of that demand has failed. They have emphatically stated they will agree to nothing less. [Lloyd George, 25 June 1920]

A month later he invited De Valera, President of the Irish Republic, to negotiate terms and 'explore the possibility of a settlement'. Dev had already been arrested days earlier by the military but was released by the authorities in anticipation of this invitation.

Happy New Year everyone. May it be a healthy and prosperous one for all.

 

[SirOrmondeWinter]

Ten days after the burning of Cork New York City Council considered conferring the freedom of the city on the widow of the murdered Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence McSwiney, and it also adopted a resolution which read as follows:

To make the world safe for democracy and to establish the principle of self-determination for the people of all nations, eloquently proclaimed by the President of the United Sates on our entrance into the World War, were the purposes for which this government entered into that agonizing conflict.

The world has seen some startling exhibitions of hypocrisy’s masquerade in the guise of civilized government culminating in the destruction of the business section of Cork City by the black and tan military forces of a gunman administration, because the people of that city would not repudiate the principles for which McSwiney laid down his life and for which the colonists of North America struggled successfully in the Revolutionary War against a despotic power.

Neither the sinister influence of diplomatic intrigue, the enervations of refinement resulting from the bloated accumulations of blood-stained war wealth, the lie ‘agreed on’ by a prostituted portion of a ‘kept press’, nor the insolent propaganda of monarchical subjects, either here or abroad, will ever drive these sublime purposes from the minds and hearts of American citizens.

Although the fight for Irish independence began with a revolution in 1916, in a series of four general and local elections between 1918 and 1921, the people of Ireland repeatedly voted in favour of the republic that was first proclaimed by the Easter Rebels on the steps of the GPO in 1916. See the following links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_local_elections,_1920
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_elections,_1921

The British response throughout this period was to wage a war of terror on the Irish people using DORA, the Defence of the Realm Act (1914), and the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (1920). Democratically elected public representatives went on the run, lord mayors and aldermen were imprisoned or killed, town halls were repeatedly burnt to the ground, municipal records were destroyed, town centres were sacked and looted, and the people and their property had no rights to safety or protection. The burning of Cork was not an isolated incidence where Crown forces ran amok:

The town of Fermoy was sacked twice by British troops from the local Victoria Barracks in September and again in November 1919. That was over a year before the burning of Cork and long before the Black and Tans or the Auxiliaries were ever even established and sent to Ireland. The town of Thurles was shot up in January and in March 1920. In the summer of 1920 the town halls of numerous Irish towns were burned down, e.g. Thurles, Tuam and Trim. All of the municipal records of Trim were lost. And these examples can be replicated over and over again in the Ireland of the period.

At the same time, while these events were going on in Irish towns and villages, the British prime minister Lloyd George acknowledged the fact that the Irish people had democratically chosen full independence. In a speech he gave in Porthmadog, Wales in June 1920 he said:

Two-thirds of the population of Ireland demand the setting up of an independent Republic in that island. At a recent election they re-affirmed that demand. Every effort I have made, publicly and otherwise, to secure a modification of that demand has failed. They have emphatically stated they will agree to nothing less. [Lloyd George, 25 June 1920]

A month later he invited De Valera, President of the Irish Republic, to negotiate terms and 'explore the possibility of a settlement'. Dev had already been arrested days earlier by the military but was released by the authorities in anticipation of this invitation.

Happy New Year everyone. May it be a healthy and prosperous one for all.

What nonsense, anti-British bigotry and hypocrisy and you know it. Irish Nationalist's version of 'democracy' is 'vote for the murderer who murdered your neighbour for being different to you and then keep on voting for him when he keeps on murdering them'. And you wonder why you were hated and why the security forces and loyalists after showing HERCULEAN restraint make you suffer with reprisals? As the IRA had made Irish Unionists suffer first?

When you punch me in the face repeatedly because you hate my religion, race and cultural identity and I eventually punch you back, that doesn't make me as bad as you, nor does it justify you attacking me in the first place.

Irish Nationalists got EXACTLY what they deserved and have only themselves to blame, their pathetic attempts to play the victim are contemptible. There were no Unionists or Protestants in the IRA's sick and evil totalitarian vision of Ireland where everyone was the same. We would just be murdered and ethnically cleansed from our homes.

Those 'democratically elected representatives' were MURDERERS, that's why they were on the run. But then the lives of their victims meant NOTHING to Irish Nationalists. It was the IRA who waged a war of terror on the Irish people, all the security forces and the government wanted to do was stop them.

Lloyd George always accepted independence but he wasn't going to leave Irish Unionists to be persecuted by the monsters who had murdered their families.

We Irish people were ALWAYS free, independence for the South was gained by Irish Nationalists having the home rule bill passed, not through their genocide and atrocities. Woodrow Wilson did not advocate ethnic slaughter and rightfully ignored Irish Nationalists at Versailles as they didn't share his democratic values and had supported German tyranny.

And of course if Nationalist Ireland has the right to break away from the rest of Britain how can Northern Ireland not have the right to break away from the rest of Ireland? By your logic the elected TD for any area can declare his area independent of the rest and then murder those who oppose him without regard to the wishes of the rest of the country.

Thank god for the Auxies, Black and Tans, soldiers, RIC and Loyalists who defeated the IRA and forced them to accept Home Rule, saving the lives of thousands of Irish Unionists (and moderate Nationalists of course) and the freedom of the Irish people and giving justice to the IRA's victims.

Here's to the future, disgusting views like Harpo's rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

 

[Warwolf]

''A sense of grievance???-I thought that 's what motivated our southern neighbours into their present frantic anti-EU behaviour patterns ?

And the Scots into their frantic anti-English behaviour.

As for Brexit, it's the greatest thing to happen to Britain since 1945.

 

[Ancientgeezer]

 

[Nemowork]

That'll make them run to their mammys

Standard issue Webleys are ok.

That .32 Browning 1900 pocket pistol with the Fabrique National grips is interesting

The derringer on the left is kind of sad and lonely

But that Webley Mk 1 automatic on the right is interesting

 

[annelouise17]

Smart ass!

 

[Commodus]

As Cork was a big commercial centre - why would the army allow it to be burned? At the time, Ireland was still part of the Empire, no? So wouldn't a city like that help enrich that Empire through commerce?
Was it really planned, or just a spontaneous moment of collective bloodlust? Because attempting to burn down a thriving city is just throwing money away.

 

[Macconermaoile]

[QUOTE why would the army allow it to be burned?][/QUOTE]

The army burnt stuff too. The following occurred in Templemore.
Some members of the 1st Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, then barracked in Templemore, decided to carry out reprisals against the local population. Their decision followed the killing of a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC ) District Inspector, William Harding Wilson by the IRA.


Crown forces broke from barracks and burnt the market house to the ground, after soaking it with petrol, which was stolen from a nearby garage. Town’s people fled in panic or peeped, in terror, from behind their shuttered windows as two shops were burned to the ground, while armed men fired off their rifles indiscriminately. The glass in every window for over 600 yds, which had not been already heavily shuttered, was smashed by this indiscriminate rifle fire.

The reprisals were reported as having begun around 10.30 pm, when most of the town’s residents had retired to bed. The noise, made by the studded boots of some thirty to forty soldiers, was heard coming up from the direction of the barracks. They broke into Morkin’s pub & grocery premises first, claiming to be Black and Tans. While there, they looted a quantity of whisky, which they drank in the main street. They then targeted Michael Kelly’s public house, taking more spirits, which they again consumed, before setting the same premises on fire.
They ended the night by setting fire to the town hall and by this stage were so drunk with looted alcohol, that two of them were burnt alive in their own fire.

 

[Edric Streona]

Thought the Croke Park Massacre was by Auxillery Division members. Not Black and Tans or the Army. Auxillery Division were Irish (recruited all over GB and Ireland though) police reserves right? Or wrong?