Liam Deasy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liam Deasy was an Irish Republican Army officer in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War of the 1920s.
Deasy was born in Bandon in county Cork in 1898.
In the War of Independence (1919-21, he was an IRA officer in the Third Cork Brigade (West Cork). He served under Tom Barry in the unit's best known actions; the Kilmichael Ambush in November 1920 and the Crossbarry Ambush in March 1921. His younger brother, Pat, died in the action at Kilmichael.
He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty which ended the war. In the months that followed, he along with others like Eamon de Valera and Liam Lynch tried to persuade Michael Collins to re-negotiate aspects of the Treaty, especially to remove an oath to the British King from the constitution of the new Irish Free State. When fighting broke out in Dublin, in June 1922, between pro and anti-treaty forces, Deasy sided with the anti-treaty IRA in the ensuing Irish Civil War, however, he was reluctant to fight his former comrades and voiced the opinion that the fighting should have ended with the Free State seizure of th Four Courts.
In late July, he commanded 1500 Anti-treaty fighters who held a line around Kilmallock south of Limerick city against about 2000 Free State troops under Eoin O'Duffy. Deasy's men were the most experienced IRA fighters of the 1919-21 war and they held their position until August the 8th, when they were outflanked by seaborne landings on the southern coast of Ireland. Deasy's men then dispersed. He went on the run in the south east of the country.
In January 1923, he was captured by Free State forces near Clonmel and sentenced to death. He then signed a document ordering the men under his command to surrender themselves and their arms to the government and for this he was spared execution. Republicans denounced hm as a traitor and a coward for this action but Deasy argued in his book, "Brother against Brother", that he was opposed to continuing the civil war anyway and would have called on republicans to surrender whether or not he was captured.
After the war he took no further part in politics, but served in the Irish Army during The Emergency as the Second World War was known in Ireland.
He died in 1974.
[edit] Sources
- Liam Deasy, Brother against Brother
- Edward Purdon, the Irish Civil War 1922-23.
