THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE-SECTARIAN OR POLITICAL? by Tom Cooper

Readers of the Sunday Independent will no doubt be familiar with the relentless spreading of anti-nationalist/anti-republican bile spearheaded by columnist Eoghan Harris, in particular his almost weekly assault on those who fought against British occupying forces during the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1921, claiming republicans were motivated by sectarianism and engaged in the ethnic cleansing and the extermination of Protestants in west Cork.  This period in Irish history was one of turmoil and disorder in which the legitimate authority of the State, brought about by the1918 general election when Sinn Fein received a massive electoral endorsement winning 75 of the 103 seats and which was endorsed by the first Dáil Éireann in January 1919, was rejected by the British government.  It is regrettable that some columnists writing in the Sunday Independent, and other publications, regularly portray, falsely, the struggle for freedom from colonial oppression during the War of Independence as generalised anti-Protestant sectarianism. It is also regrettable that Independent newspapers has allowed a partisan figure like Harris to dictate understanding of this period of Irish history almost uncontested as alternative viewpoints differing from those of Mr Harris are mainly ignored. Eoghan Harris regularly raises the alleged sectarian killing of ten Protestant civilians in the Bandon Valley in Cork in April 1922. The reason for these killings is a matter of contested debate. Did republicans fight a sectarian war or a political war during the War of Independence? If we are to accept the view of southern Protestants then it was a non-sectarian campaign. After the April 1922 killings, a Protestant Convention, fully representative of southern Protestantism, met in the Mansion House. On 11 May 1922 they resolved, ‘that until the recent tragedies in the County Cork, hostility to Protestants by reason of their religion, has been almost if not wholly, unknown in the twenty six counties in which Protestants are in a minority.’ Furthermore, the killings of these 10 Protestant civilians was acknowledged by leading Methodist Crown Prosecutor and west Cork independent TD Jasper Wolfe (who coordinated loyalist compensation claims) as non-sectarian. In other words, Protestants regarded these killings as exceptional. Trading on and promoting society’s capacity for self-doubt and introspection, Mr Harris generates a propaganda diet reminiscent of that promoted by Carson and Craig. They drove thousands of Catholics out of jobs and houses in 1920-22. Brave Protestant socialists who opposed this unionist sectarian drive to divide the working class in the six counties were also driven out.

Present day Protestants who oppose Harris’s views on the War of Independence are also subject to ad hominem attack.  Dr Martin Mansergh, who served under three Fianna Fáil leaders as Director of Research, Policy and Special Advisor on Northern Ireland, was a target of Eoghan Harris on this very issue. Writing on October 9th in 2005 on the killing of the Protestant Pearson brothers in Coolacrease, Harris had the effrontery to term then Senator Mansergh a “posh southern Protestant” who “provides a rotten role model for any young Protestant Irishman”. Harris was equally offensive the following week: “Dr Martin Mansergh…. has a posh accent. I could almost hear his dulcet tones in his Irish Times column last week”. Eoghan Harris’s narrow-minded sectarian vision of Irish identity, the one promoted almost weekly in the Sunday Independent, is contrasted by the broadminded response from southern Protestants in Irish civil society during 1920-22. They said exactly the same as their co-religionist of today, Dr Mansergh, that Republicans were non sectarian in the War of Independence. Indeed, one of the reasons we had a War of Independence in the first place, was in reaction to the sectarian nature of British rule.

It is regrettable that Eoghan Harris is given almost unchallenged column inches to promote partisan politics in defiance of objectivity and fairness. It is also unfortunate that narrow-minded sectarian propaganda is published uncritically by the Sunday Independent, ironically in the name of balance and fairness. It is unworthy of a newspaper of supposed record to relentlessly permit allegations that Roman Catholics felt such hatred for their Protestant neighbours, purely on the basis of religious belief, that they harassed, persecuted and even murdered them generally in a sectarian manner. These allegations by Harris, almost on a weekly basis in the Sunday Independent, that the primary motivation behind the killings of Protestants during the War of Independence was sectarian, is itself sectarian.

Also during this period of the War of Independence another contentious claim of sectarian killings of Protestants emerged which was referred to as the “Coolacrease killings” in Co Offaly. Two brothers named Pearson were killed by the IRA in June 1921. This was acknowledged by the IRA. Following these killings Fr Montgomery Hitchock, a historian and Rector of nearby Kinnitty, stated that the area was ‘absolutely free from sectarian feeling, not to say bitterness’. He had ‘never known one case of religious intolerance. We can only live and let live down here’. How could a Church of Ireland clergyman square the killing of the Pearsons (who were not “pacifists”) with this statement? It can only be that during the course of the conflict, when a member of a minority religious community was attacked, it was generally perceived as being due to activity not religious identity.  However, having been in search of a suitable ‘atrocity’ perpetrated by republicans against innocent Protestants during the period of the War of Independence, Ireland’s political revisionists appear to have settled on the killings of the Pearson brothers as their cause célébre. Claims that the exposure of the killings at Coolacrease has made an important contribution to debunking the ‘sordid lie’ of the War of Independence, clearly implies that these killings were either sectarian in nature or a land grab by the IRA. However, events and words in Offaly at that time suggests otherwise.

The Pearson family were very much part of the local community and were held in high esteem by their neighbours. Indeed, the father William Pearson was so well regarded as to be elected an officer of the Kings County Farmers Association in Kinnity.  In June 1921 the Cadamstown, Co Offaly, unit of the IRA was ordered to block the Birr-Tullamore road in anticipation of a British army convoy traveling this route. At around midnight the roadblock party came under gun attack with three IRA casualties. Following an investigation by officers of the local IRA leadership, the identities of the attackers was established as the three Pearson brothers of Coolacrease.  The Pearson farmhouse was kept under observation and their mail was intercepted. It was noted that British staff army officers were regular visitors to the farmhouse. Having satisfied themselves that not alone were the Pearsons responsible for the armed attack on members of the IRA, but were also passing information on republicans to the British army, Thomas Burke, Officer in Command No 2 Brigade Offaly IRA ordered that the three brothers be executed and their house burnt. This order was carried out on June 30th 1921 and both Richard and Abraham Pearson were executed as British spies. The Pearson brothers had deliberately and consciously engaged in an act of war on the British side in the War of Independence, so their execution was a legitimate act of war. The sole motive in these IRA executions was political, without regard to creed or class.  Many Catholic collaborators were also subject to the same treatment. Indeed, just prior to the execution of the Pearsons, the South Offaly Brigade IRA killed one spy, two informers and three RIC men – all Catholics. Between 21st September 1920 and 29th June 1921 six RIC men were shot dead in Co Offaly alone, all Catholics. It appears that the compilation of the chronicle of events surrounding the Coolacrease incident disseminated by British verisimilitude is now being peddled by Irish history revisionists, whereby the acceptable version of ‘facts’ are those favourable to British/unionist propagandists.  Although the War of Independence was won, the battle against revisionism continues.

Publishing relevant evidence is not for the purpose of condemning or condoning historical events, however, it may prevent contemporary observers using them for tendentious purposes creating heat where there should be light.