a massacre designed to scare Catholics – The Irish Times

A large gray ledger with a crown symbol and the inscription “George V” on the front lay forgotten for almost a century in the magnificent Norman limestone cemetery of Norwich Castle in the east of England.

It contained intelligence reports from the Royal Norfolk Regiment in Belfast from 1922, which detailed the sectarian violence that erupted in the city at the time, leaving hundreds dead, mostly Catholics.

Curiously, a century later, the files record the battles that Norfolk soldiers fought there not with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), but with members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and loyalist gangs, with members of both killed.

And they document the most notorious sectarian murder to hit Belfast this year – the murder by a loyalist gang of wealthy Belfast Catholic publican Owen McMahon, four of his six sons and a staff member at the family home in north Belfast.

It was a massacre designed to strike fear into the city's middle-class Catholics.

Four of the murderers made no attempt to conceal their identities and wore RIC uniforms when they broke into the McMahons' home on Kinnaird Terrace, off the Antrim Road, on March 22, 1922.

McMahon was kidnapped to the dining room along with his sons Bernard, 26, Frank, 24, Patrick, 22, John, 19, Thomas Gerald, 15, and Michael, 11, and an employee, Edward McKinney, 26.

There, the leader of the murder gang asked them to say their prayers before they shot Owen McMahon. The rest were shot one by one, with the exception of 11-year-old Michael. Nineteen-year-old John survived; the rest fell victim to the weapons.

For a century, many historians believed that the ringleader that night was RIC Inspector John Nixon, although during his life Nixon won two libel cases against newspapers that dared to print the accusation.

Now historian Edward Burke of University College Dublin has written Ghosts of a Family, in which he examines the murders cited as justification by one of Field Marshal Henry Wilson's IRA assassins – the act that sparked the Irish Civil War.

[ Ghosts of a Family review: Superlative account of the sectarian McMahon murdersOpens in new window ]

Burke believes the gang's leader was not Nixon, even though Nixon had other blood on his hands. Instead, he blames David Duncan, a man “ridden by paranoia and sudden acts of extreme violence” who died in Canada.

Sectarian violence in Belfast was nothing new since 1920. By the time the treaty was signed in December 1921, 198 people had been killed. At the beginning of 1922, violence increased again. In March, 69 more people were killed, including the McMahons.

At this point, only a quarter of the city's population was Catholic, but they accounted for more than half of the dead. However, the McMahons' “destruction” had a class element: “It was a family that exemplified the nationalist success of the last 50 years,” says Burke.

“They had allied themselves with leading nationalists like Joe Devlin and the Catholic Church, achieved enormous success and lived comfortable lives,” says Burke.

“So that was extremely shocking because people were like, 'Am I next?' Even Joe Devlin thought they were coming for him. So will they attack the Catholic Church? WHO? Lawyers, journalists, anyone?

No prosecution occurred, but local rumors in north Belfast quickly identified Duncan, who had served with the Royal Irish Rifles in Flanders and Gallipoli but ended the war as an alcoholic.

He later joined the Auxiliaries but was dismissed in December 1921 for misconduct. On his return to Belfast he joined the Ulster Imperial Guards and quickly became involved in their sectarian attacks across Belfast, where they clashed with the Norfolks.

After arriving in Belfast, the Norfolk Regiment quickly fell into the hatred of Catholics after committing violence on the Falls Roads. Soon, however, they were praised for being “as willing to shoot Orangemen as Shinners.”

When they learned of this, the Norfolks pushed for reform of the RIC, warning: “If they do not investigate and prosecute the atrocities, they may lose the faith of the Catholic population forever,” Burke says.

“Here is a British regiment that is the main obstacle to loyalist killings. The IRA is unable to muster the same resistance. That’s why the IRA didn’t target the Norfolks,” says the UCD historian, “that’s one thing that gets overlooked.”

The Norfolk intelligence officer who highlighted the collaboration between RIC officers and loyalist gangs was Eric Hayes, who later ended World War II as a major general in Asia.

There, Ian Freeland was one of his best aides, who later led the Royal Anglian soldiers (the successors to the Norfolks) back onto the streets of Belfast on August 15, 1969, as a new generation of conflict began.

“It’s the same regiment. Yet Freeland has no institutional memory of his own regiment's actions in the 1920s. They had the information in their own archives. “They were warned that if they didn’t do something, it would come back to haunt them,” Burke said.

In truth, it didn't suit anyone to remember it.

For “understandable reasons,” Burke says, given the events after 1969, the Irish state has not had “great desire” to remember that British soldiers had been “instrumental” in the defense of Catholic areas in Belfast against loyalists half a century earlier had been.

“The British found it embarrassing that British soldiers shot police officers on the streets of a British city. The British state didn’t want to remember that either,” he adds.

An example of the shadow left by history: Martin McAlinden, a member of the Official IRA, was killed by British soldiers in May 1974 along with another member of the Official IRA in a ruined farmhouse near Newry, Co. Armagh. killed, where explosives were later found.

His mother, Anne, was the daughter of Owen McMahon's only sister. One of her sons later described her as scrupulously law-abiding. But he said she could never respect or trust the police who blamed her for the murder of her uncle and cousins ​​52 years ago.

Ghosts of a Family: Ireland's Most Infamous Unsolved Murder, the Outbreak of the Civil War and the Origins of the Modern Troubles by Edward Burke is published by Merrion Press