Galway 1920

On Sunday evening a lorry carrying RIC Auxiliaries and trailing the republican tricolour after it visited Moycullen in County Galway as the congregation left Mass. Eight of the Auxiliary force at revolvers point separated the men from the women and herded the former into an adjoining field. Then they were addressed by a member of the force, who told them that they were about to restore to his home an agent on a local property, and if a hair of his head was touched, six republicans would fall in his stead. The agent had been residing at Galway since the withdrawal of a squadron of Dragoon Guards, under whose protection he had been. Following an ambush of the police at Ardrahan, the Sinn Féin Hall was burned down’.

A few days later, on 21st October 1920, the newspaper published further example of police ‘frightfulness’ in the remote west of Ireland. These reports, which have the ring of truth, were said to be ‘From our Special Correspondent in Galway’.

Police Terrorism in Galway

‘For three weeks past reprisals on the scale of those at Balbriggan and Tubbercurry have ceased, but the authorities still hope, by maintaining what is called systematic pressure, to stamp out the more violent section of the Sinn Féin movement. Reports which appear daily in the Irish newspapers suggest that this systematic pressure takes the form of wrecking with bombs the houses of suspected men and the terrorizing of suspected individuals. Today’s newspapers contain accounts of proceedings in Galway which, if true, would constitute a monstrous example of frightfulness. They were stories of men being stripped and flogged and sent home without clothes. I determined to come to Galway to test the truth of these accounts for myself. These stories come from remote country villages and have grown in the telling, but the facts, as I have been able to ascertain them, show that many young men in the countryside have been subjected to calculated rough usage and indignity.

The first story,...