An interesting article from the Irish Times in 1924 detailing Southern Irish Loyalist Relief Association (SILRA) propaganda on ‘starving’ unemployed ex-servicemen, republicans gaining everywhere, IRB running the show and in the grip of bolshevists and communists. The Roman Catholic Church, a force for good (‘up to a point’), losing its grip.
I tackeled this issue as follows recently in The EMBERS of REVISIONISM (preview at www.academia.edu/34075119/):
References to the ‘anti-Protestant tinge’ emerged during the 1920s and 1930s. Irish Times journalist Lionel Fleming, son of the Anglican Rector of Timoleague, West Cork, noted them in his memoir, Head or Harp (1965).
Unharmed but fearful members of ‘the gentry’, who in 1922 ‘made their way instantly to England, became ‘a powerful factor in … anti-Irish propaganda by all the right wing newspapers’. As a result, ‘the stories of persecution multiplied and a warm hearted British public subscribed thousands of pounds to the Distressed Irish Loyalists Fund’. Fleming singled out in this context Morning Post reporting and that of C.H. Bretherton. in 1936 Fleming wrote an editorial response:
‘We have… no patience with the attempts that are being made to suggest that the loyalists who remained in the Free State are being treated unfairly, or that any discrimination is being made against them.’
‘Evidence’ cited by historians and journalists today of IRA sectarianism during the War of Independence relies to a degree on propaganda generated at the time and afterwards, The allegation was rejected emphatically by spokespersons for southern Protestants, not least the then Protestant and unionist Irish Times. In response to a serious though brief southern sectarian reaction to renewed attacks on Catholics in Northern Ireland, the newspaper observed in 1935:
‘The South is too familiar with political disturbance, but not, during the last two hundred years, with bigotry… [A]lthough many Protestants suffered during the “troubles,” it was not for their faith but for their political views.’
That appeared to be a settled opinion. In 1924 John Henry Bernard, TCD Provost (1919-27) and former Anglican Archbishop of Dublin (1915-19), whose family was from Co. Kerry, declared,
‘During the melancholy years 1920–1923, there have, indeed, been outbursts of violence directed at loyalist minorities, but for the most part it has been qua loyalist and not qua Protestant that the members of the Church of Ireland have suffered.’
As ‘a convinced unionist’, Bernard might have been pre-disposed to allegations of IRA sectarianism.
Even earlier, on 26 May 1922 the quite unionist and anti Irish nationalist Church of Ireland Gazette responded to the killing of 13 Protestants in the Bandon Valley on 26-29 April 1922, which seemed then, exceptionally, like a sectarian attack:
‘We represent the Protestant minority in Southern Ire-land, a minority which is defenceless, not so much on account of its numerical inferiority as on account of the fact that it has not needed to defend itself against anything or anybody.’
In other words, implied the Gazette, Protestants were not IRA targets during preceding hostilities. Earlier still, on 11 May the representative Protestant Convention that packed out Dublin’s large Mansion House, declared:
‘That we place on record that, until the recent tragedies in the County Cork [the 26-29 April killings], 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.’
Well, sure, as long as you’re murdering them for being loyalists rather than for being Protestants.
In fairness, I think it was more for being active spies, collaborators, and informers than any political affiliations.
In the context of the War of Independence, the Civil War and incidents like The Burnings in Lisburn, the IRA showed remarkable discipline.
Notably, there were no Ballyseedys directed against any Protestant or Unionist contemporary civilian populations, nor indeed anything remotely comparable to the Kingmills massacre in the modern era.
Well that’s all right, then
Who ‘convicted’ the victims of ‘spying’ and who sentenced them?
Well, I’m sure that morally everyone would prefer bloodless velvet revolutions, but that’s generally not how history and progress works.
If you’re setting Ireland up to a moral standard that you clearly don’t apply to the British Empire then you’ll end up tying yourself up in ever-tightening knots as you applaud Imperialism, but condemn Resistance to Imperialism.
You will defend the Slave-owner and the status quo, and be repulsed by the Slave uprisings.
Similarly, you will weep for the 150 British soldiers killed in Easter 1916, but show casual indifference to the 300+ British soldiers executed as cowards.
And that’s obviously a morally repugnant place to defend.
Time for a rethink methinks.
I don’t applaud imperialism nor do I defend slave-owning and nor am I repulsed by slave rebellions.
Nor do I weep at British soldiers killed in Easter 1916 not show casual indifference to British soldiers executed as cowards.
So by your own standard I don’t have any morally repugnant place to defend.
I do, however, condemn the massacre of Protestants in Cork, which you appear to support. Maybe you’re in the morally repugnant place?
But Tam, we have already established that these “Protestants” that you’re so concerned about weren’t killed because of their religious affiliations, they were killed because of particular roles they chose to play in a militarised conflict.
Real academics and historians have concluded the same.
Whilst your faux outrage at faux events with faux victims is indeed touching, Im wondering if it stretches to the victims of the Ballyseedy Massacre?
How do you know what roles they played? How did their murderers? These were surely war crimes.
@ Tam
It seems a strange cause celebre to hang your coat on after all these decades, especially since it has been thoroughly debunked.
Perhaps it’s time to bury it alongside the Comber Letter, the Sinn Fein Oath, and the Popish Plots.
Absolutely 100% correct HC, but unfortunately the revisionists, of which there are many, would like to have people believe otherwise. Hopefully they are wasting their time.
Ireland was taken by the English in order to progress their Protestant agenda.
Their intention was to eliminate the Catholic population and replace it with a Protestant one.
What they failed to grasp was that the sectarianism was mainly a Protestant past time. Irish men and women always saw the Protestant invaders as intruders on their faith but more importantly, as time progressed, as empiricists who were to crush the Irish nation.
That became the mode under which the IRA mostly operated in the 19th century. The sectarianism was militant Protestants’ only agenda in the 19th century, and beyond.
If they had fought to save the union with England and dismissed the heavy religious overtones then maybe they could have had a different outcome both during the rebellion and now.
Dan, there were no Protestants when Ireland was ‘taken’ by England.
Sorry re 19th century ^ – I meant 1900s or 20th century!
A very interesting read Niall. There will be many Loyalists in the North who will not take kindly to the rebuttal of their core narrative of ethnic cleansing of Protestants from the 26 Counties after the British withdrawal there.
So what is the explanation for the large movement of Protestants out of the Free State, as it then was? Usually migration is impelled by “push” factors encouraging people to leave their current location and by “pull” factors encouraging them to choose a different one. What is irrefutable is that the Protestant population fell by around 33% between 1911 and 1926, from 327,179 to 220,723, though some sources put the decline as larger. There seems to have been a very recent increase in Protestant numbers in the Republic, prior to that it had been predicted that Protestants would disappear entirely by the mid-2040s.
It was more to do with emigration with the British Army, and inter-marriage than.anything nefarious.
The recent increase is apparently due to the immigration of African Christians.