Madam, – Nick Folley raises some interesting points in his letter (October 13th).
I had ancestors who were in the Royal Irish Constabulary. While others were attacked when they were on leave at home, my ancestors apparently didn’t do anything to invite retribution (one was supposed to have prevented a major Irish city from being burned by British forces), since they were always able to take leave and return home safely to a heavily Republican area during the conflict.
Nonetheless, they left the Free State for the North to finish their service. They were Catholics, and I’m sure many other people’s Catholic ancestors had a similar experience. The area in which they came from (north Roscommon) was also heavily populated by mostly well-to-do Protestants. I heard of only one Protestant family who left from there; it was not out of intimidation but of a man’s loyalty to his South Irish Horse regiment. He was also an ancestor of mine.
As an American very familiar with the history of the American revolution, the hundreds of thousands of loyalists who fled the colonies – many out of fear of their lives, others out of loyalty to their king – when British forces departed, makes Ireland’s exodus of loyalists pale by comparison. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – RTÉ on its website describes Cork’s bloody secret as occurring during the War of Independence. In fact the murder of the 13 Protestants occurred in April 1922, 10 months after the Truce and the end of the war. It was an action which was perpetrated by anti-Treaty dissidents. The policies of the Irish Volunteers who fought in the War of Independence and later of the emerging National Army, were totally opposed to sectarianism in all its forms. A perusal of the Mulcahy GHQ papers in the archives of University College, Dublin, makes it quite clear that the political and military heads during the War of Independence were opposed to any form of sectarianism and this policy was widely observed. It is difficult to understand why this atrocious event in Cork should be put on the same national level as the long-standing sectarianism which prevailed in Northern Ireland. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – With all due respect to the experiences of Nick Folley’s grandfather (October 13th), my own Mayo-born father had a different story which he related to me shortly before he died. As I’m sure was the case with many of the young men at that time, he was peripherally active with the IRA in the Co Mayo region – he was one of those who applied for an IRA pension but was rejected.
He related how he and several of his pals were told to meet in a field, after Mass, for “instructions” from a senior IRA man. Five of them went to the field where there was a group of up to 30 others already gathered.
None of them knew the identity of the IRA man who spoke. He told the group, in blunt terms, that Protestant families were living off the fat of the land and would have to be “dealt with”. He finished by saying “Do it your own way lads – do it for Ireland”. While some of those present got cold feet, there were cheers all round from most of the crowd. As my father only told me this story eight months before he died, I strongly suspect that he may have known more than he was willing to tell me. One way or the other, it had obviously weighed on his conscience for most of his life. Under the circumstances, RTÉ’s documentary, CSÍ: Cork’s Bloody Secret, might only have revealed the tip of the iceberg. – Yours, etc,