IN THE run-up to a commemoration of police killed by the IRA in the 1920s, Fine Gael has said a minority of Royal Irish Constabulary members did not act professionally and were not nationalists.
The organisers of the event in Dublin tomorrow say they want to remember RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police officers who died during and after the War of Independence and in 1916.
A Fine Gael spokeswoman said there was no reason the event should not go ahead in what she described as the current era of reconciliation and commemoration.
“If men like Collins, Cosgrave and Mulcahy were able to distinguish between the majority of RIC members who acted professionally and remained nationalists, and a small minority who did not, we see no reason why those who wish to should not be able to honour members of the RIC and DMP,” she said.
The event, to be held in Glasnevin Cemetery, has been organised by two retired members of An Garda Síochána, although it has no association with the Garda Síochána Retired Members’ Association or with Glasnevin Trust.
Organiser Gerard Lovett said the point of the event was not to denigrate the role of the IRA and others in 1916 and 1922 but to remember RIC members whom he said had been “airbrushed out of history”.
He said a number of retired police officers from the Republic and Northern Ireland would attend.
“We’re into a decade of commemoration and all are being commemorated except the RIC.”
Sinn Féin said it had “no issue” with an “unofficial” commemoration of RIC and DMP members.
“The RIC and DMP were key elements in the brutal and often murderous enforcement of British rule in Ireland against the democratic wishes of the Irish people,” a Sinn Féin spokesman said.
“As such they were combatants in the War of Independence and were targeted as such by the IRA in the pursuit of freedom and independence.
“However, Sinn Féin has no issue with individuals who may wish, in an unofficial capacity, to mark their deaths.”
A Government source denied that the RIC was being excluded from the decade of commemorations.
“There’s no writing anyone out of history, I can assure you.”
