Ireland

New book shows how forced disappearances were a brutal feature of Irish conflict for 200 years

Author Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc uncovers the terrible history of abduction and killing, which began long before the Troubles

The cover of the new book by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, which will be published in February. Picture: Merrion Press
By Paul Ainsworth

A new book will explore how abduction, murder and leaving loved ones in the dark on the location of victims’ remains in Ireland was not a tactic of terror confined only to the Troubles.

The Disappeared: Forced Disappearances in Ireland 1798-1998 is due to be released next month, and the book sees Co Clare author and historian Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc examine how the killing of civilians and military or political opponents, and secretly burying or disposing of their bodies, had been a grim feature of Irish conflict for 200 years.

The writer has conducted extensive research into historical forced disappearances, and his work even led to the recovery of the remains of a British soldier, 18-year-old Private George Duff Chalmers, who was killed by the IRA in 1921 in Co Clare during the War of Independence.

A stone slab in Co Clare marking the location of the remains of Private George Duff Chalmers, one of those disappeared by the old IRA in 1921.

The term, ‘The Disappeared’ is now commonly associated in the north with victims secretly buried by paramilitaries during the Troubles, including Columba McVeigh, the Co Tyrone 19-year-old abducted in 1975, and the focus of a recent search in a bog in Co Monaghan, which concluded without success in November.

Although covering a 200-year period of forced disappearances, the new book still highlights the Provisional IRA’s brutal abductions, which promoted the formation of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The commission’s work has helped in the recovery of the majority of the Troubles Disappeared.

A description of Ó Ruairc’s new book, to be published by Merrion Press on February 15 states: “The Disappeared cuts through the exaggeration and myth that pervade the popular history of the Irish struggle for freedom. The author upends the commonly held belief that the Provisional IRA disappeared more victims than the ‘Good Old IRA’ of the War of Independence, demonstrating that the vast majority of those ‘disappeared’ throughout Irish history happened long before the re-emergence of the tactic by the PIRA in the 1970s.

Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc

“Behind each disappearance there is a face, a life story, and a family left searching for answers. Ó Ruairc deftly incorporates this human element, paying tribute to those who were disappeared on both sides of the conflict.”