Anti-climax and the assassin

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LIAM O'Flaherty's 1928 novel, 'The Assassin, now reprinted, is about the assassination of the Irish government minister Kevin O'Higgins in 1927.

O 'Higgins was gunned down on his way to 11 o'clock Mass. His killers were never caught.

It was a killing that gladened the hearts of an awful lot of people in Ireland. For O'Higgins was the hated 'strong man' of the Free State government which, with English backing, had defeated the Republicans in the bloody Civil War which came to a ragged end in 1923.

Civil war

It was the most bitter civil war, that war between two factions of Sinn Fein, with former comrades pitted against former comrades, regarding each other as traitors or incorrigible lunatic incendiaries.

It was the worst of civil wars also because it was fought on clear policies. It is astounding, but nevertheless true, that it was not fought on Partition.

The nearest thing to a clearly defined issue was the choice between the Free State (in the Commonweaith, and with the King of England as the King of Ireland), and De Valera's formula of 'external association': Ireland in the Commonwealth and recognising the King not as King of Ireland, as such, but as King of the Commonwealth of which Ireland was part.

The Republicans lined behind De Valera's plan.

In the course of the war, 77 men, prisoners, were executed in captivity by the Free State government. Atrocious deeds were done as the Free State fought to reconquer heavily Republican areas like Kerry.

O 'Higgins was the minister most associated in people's minds with the repressions of the Civil War. He was the 'strong man' . But the reputation outstripped the reality.

He was the man known to have said, 'Take them out and shoot them' when in December 1922 the Cabinet discussed the retaliatory shooting of the STUF Mick Ackersley reviews Liam O'Flahert! 's novel 'The Assassin', recently reprinted.

four prisoners, including Republican leader Rory O'Connor, who had been best man at O'Higgins' wedding a year earlier. And they had taken O'Connor out and shot him together with the three others, in retaliation for the shooting of a Free State deputy, Sean Hayles, by the Republicans.

Terrible deeds, and a terrible reputation to have.

In fact O'Higgins had strongly opposed shooting the hostages, and was the last member of the Cabinet to agree — with the weary brutal words that would haunt him to his grave. You can still feel the hatred in the words of the fierce song about the shooting of O'Connor, Mellowes, Barratt and McKelvie: "Take it down from the mast, Irish traitors, It's the song we Republicans claim, It can never belong to Free Staters, You' ve brought onut nothing but shame, And you've murdered our brave Liam and Rory, You've murdered young Richard and Joe, Your hands with their bloc are still gory, Fulfilling the work of the foe"

'Fanatical'

It finally caught up with O'Higgins that Sunday morning in 1927 on his way to Mass.

O'Flaherty's version of the O'Higgins assassination tells about the return from America to Ireland of a cynical and embittered, 'fanatical' and ultimately despairing, revolutionary, Michael MacDora, to kill O'Higgins.

It follows him from his arrival in Dublin until he leaves Ireland 'forever', the deed done.

It goes with him through the terrible world of the Dublin poor, lodging houses, betting shops and so on. It is a world dominated by the ebbing back of the vast national revolutionary movement into its channels, unsatisfied.

O'Flaherty takes MacDora through this world where leaders of the newly bureaucratised Irish unions hob-nob in hotels with hard-faced capitalists. (O'Flaherty was a Republican protest demonstration

MOEL LEMASS " WARDENED

ON THE TV But little time had they to pray For whom the hangman's rope

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