Murphy's work shows also shows that some of the evidence used by revisionist historians to demonise the republican movement originates in British misinformation and even forgery. This material was consciously produced to discredit opposition to British rule in Ireland in the war of independence. Murphy's findings shed light not just on British propaganda but on the conformist subservience of academics to the powerful.

Here is a long excerpt from a Sunday Times piece on his work:

Murphy has uncovered documents in the British national archives that he claims reveal the workings of a "department of publicity" that invented "official reports" of events between 1919 and 1921. Many of these reports, as well as forged IRA documents, have been accepted as historical fact, he says. The black propaganda unit was under the command of Basil Clarke.

Although propaganda was disseminated in earlier conflicts this is believed to be the first time the British used more underhand methods. They were competing with Sinn Fein’s propaganda machine in a battle for British and world opinion.

Murphy said: "This was a highly organised unit divided into three sections and located at army headquarters in Parkgate Street, in Dublin Castle and in the Irish office, London.

"From the files in the archive in London, you can discern the complicated manner in which this department, numbering no more than 10 permanent members, operated."

Murphy says the unit developed an "official report" system, fabricating events for both external and internal dissemination. The reports were designed to undermine the IRA, and also to boost morale in the police force and among auxiliaries. "Unfortunately these reports have in recent years formed the basis of what are perceived as reliable historical accounts," said Murphy, a member of Glenstal Abbey community.

He believes the British spin machine went to work to lessen negative publicity over the torture and killing, by British forces, of Tom Hales, a Sinn Fein member. They also tried to soften the impact of the events of Bloody Sunday 1920, when the Black and Tans killed 12 spectators and one player at a football match in Croke Park.

The historian says his new evidence debunks recent theories based on British military accounts of the ambush at Kilmichael. These "official reports" portray Tom Barry, the commander of an IRA flying column, as demanding that no prisoner be taken, even though British soldiers had surrendered. Seventeen auxiliaries were killed by the IRA during the ambush. Murphy says it is now clear that this report was not compiled by field commanders but by the publicity department, which also distributed counterfeit editions of Sinn Fein’s daily news sheet.

Colonel Charles Foulkes, the officer in charge of British chemical warfare during the first world war, was one of the department’s key operators and revelled in his work. In an internal memo that he wrote in 1921 to a fellow officer, Foulkes states: "You may remember me in connection with chemical warfare in France. I am now running a variation of this sport, ie propaganda in Ireland."

Foulkes first came up with the idea of distributing leaflets from the air calling for local IRA units to surrender. The ploy met with little success and the unit then seems to have concentrated on subverting media coverage of events.

Murphy said: "This unit marks a very important stage in the development of British propaganda methods where competing versions of events vied for the attention of the British and world public.

"Its work ranged form forging ‘stolen’ IRA documents to writing articles that were carried in newspapers. It is a form of atrocity propaganda that would also be used in the British Empire’s conflicts in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan." [1]

Furthermore:

"Basil Clarke said we must engage in propaganda by news rather than propaganda by views and he said we must do this in accordance with truth and verisimilitude, that is the air of being true but not strictly true," says Dr Murphy. "Major Street said that for propaganda to work it must be dissolved in some fluid which the patient will readily assimilate and official news is the best way of doing that." [2]

A report of a talk by Murphy in Dublin extends the story:

In August 1920 Basil Clarke, a journalist, was appointed head of the Department of Publicity in Dublin Castle. Clarke had been a director of special intelligence after World War I. Assisting him in Dublin Castle was the new Press Officer, HBC Pollard. Pollard is perhaps best known now as the author of 'The Secret Societies of Ireland', in which he expressed strongly racist views of the Irish. He became editor of an internal newsletter circulated to each police barracks in Ireland, a publication which at times contained articles amounting to incitement of the Black and Tans to carry out reprisals.

On 30th August 1920 the new Propaganda Department produced the first issue of a 'Survey of the Weeks Activities', aimed specifically at countering the impact of the 'Irish Bulletin'. The archives reveal that the work of the Department was meticulously organised, with a card index system containing possible headlines, themes and outlines of anti-Republican articles. The cards did not contain any sources for the articles, no actual documentary evidence that any of the stories were grounded in fact.

Murphy described Clarke and Pollard as 'consummate wordsmiths' who pioneered the presentation of propaganda as 'News', rather than as 'Views'. Drawing on their experience as both war and political propagandists they developed the Department by ensuring that journalists became reliant on Dublin Castle as a source of news. Twenty or more journalists visited Dublin Castle daily, to be fed the 'official' news. These journalists became dependent on this source of news and they received subtly worded material, which had the appearance of truth. Special 'leaks' of papers and photographs were arranged. Great emphasis was placed on labelling the Dublin Castle sourced news as 'official', which gave it the illusion of being authoritative and truthful. [3]

The use of some of these propaganda documents as genuine historical sources by pro-British historians as exposed by Murphy is a testament to the power of propaganda as well as of the extent to which official historians are capable of fabricating history in the interests of great power.

The particular case raised by Murphy of the Kilmichael ambush goes to the heart of the history of the Irish rebellion. The historian Peter Hart in his book The IRA and its Enemies alleges that IRA lies have given a false impression of the event. A BBC report notes 'In his book published before Dr Murphy's research, Dr Hart says that the British information on the ambush "seems to have been remarkably accurate" while Tom Barry's account was "riddled with lies and evasions".'

The BBC report also states that Hart:

says the notion of a "false surrender" was made up to excuse the execution of defeated auxiliaries in cold blood. As well as presenting a report allegedly made by Barry to his IRA commanders - which some historians dispute as a British forgery - he cites seven unpublished accounts, including two from anonymous witnesses he interviewed.

"Seven accounts by eye witnesses, two of whom were interviewed by me, say there was no false surrender. Either they explicitly deny it or they make no mention of it at all in their accounts.

"So I think there is an enormous preponderance of evidence giving accounts of the ambush radically different from Tom Barry's," says the former Queen's University academic and now associate professor of history at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.

The ambush intensified the war in Cork: Martial Law was declared on 11 December 1920 citing the mutilations, and on the same night the centre of Cork was sacked by British forces. [2]

Murphy's research challenges this account, showing that the official report described by Hart as 'remarkably accurate' emanated from the propaganda unit of Dublin castle. But Murphy's criticisms go further. Hart describes the IRA as pursuing a strategy of sectarian assassination - of killing Protestant landowners because they were protestant: 'all of the nightmare images of ethnic conflict in the twentieth century are here… sectarianism was embedded in the vocabulary and syntax of the Irish revolution, north and south' (The IRA at War, 1916-23, 2003, p 240). Hart's sources include what he regards as 'the most trustworthy' source, the Official report of Army intelligence on the rebellion. But Hart abuses this source by selectively quoting it and leaving out two crucial sentences which indicate that IRA attacks on landowners were motivated by the fact that they were informers: 'it proved almost impossible to protect these brave men, many of who were murdered' reports the British Army record. As well as selective quotation Hart also appears guilty of excising text from the original document in his edited version of the record of the rebellion. Some of the excised material, which he does not acknowledge is excised paints a picture of the British Army as a hotbed of racist ideologies. The official report notes that Irish 'civilisation is different and in many ways lower than that of the English' and 'entirely lacking in the Englishman's distinctive respect for the truth'. 'Many were of a degenerate type' the report notes.[4]

Murphy's research is interesting for its expose of one of the strands of the genesis of British propaganda. Basil Clark plays a key role in this story. After he left Dublin Castle, Clark set up one of the first PR agencies in Britain called Editorial services in 1924 and was part of the circle involved in both state and corporate propaganda activities against the left and against democracy in the 1920s and beyond.

Furthermore as Niall Meehan puts it, Murphy's research shows that:

sophisticated British propaganda played a role in attempts to define the conflict then, and that it has re-emerged in contemporary historical accounts of the period. The revelation of persistent British attempts to define their enemies as sectarian, while themselves promoting sectarian allies, may inform our view of the present as much as it may help our understanding of the past. [5]

Notes

^2. Diarmaid Fleming 'War of words' over battle, BBC Online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4043737.stm Last Updated: Friday, 26 November, 2004, 10:49 GMT .

^3. Mags Glennon 'Aspects of British Propaganda during the War of Independence: A talk by Dr Brian Murphy OSB Teachers Club, Dublin - 16th October 2004', The Blanket, 21 October 2004 http://lark.phoblacht.net/mg201010g.html

^4. Brian Murphy 'Peter Hart: The question of sources', Irish Political Review (Vol 20 No 7) July 2005, Download pdf version here:Murphy.pdf

^5. Niall Meehan 'The War of Independence 1919-2004: What Is The Dispute About Kilmichael And Dunmanway Really About?' Indymedia Ireland, Friday, Dec 3 2004, 3:31pmhttp://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=66994&comment_order=desc&save_prefs=true

Listen to audio of talk by Brian Murphy in Cork 15 April 2005: 200 at 'Political Culture in Cork - an answer to revisionist historians and journalists' by Jack Lane Saturday, Apr. 23, 2005 at 2:45 PM This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Aubane Historical Society Millstreet Cork, Ireland http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/4572.php