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Sat 03 Mar 2010Power, parish and proscription
HISTORY: ROY FOSTERreviews The Fethard-on-Sea Boycottby Tim Fanning, Collins Press, 240pp, €14.99
‘THE BEST advice I ever got was from a priest in a religious order who told me to shut the gate when my wife and children were home and never let a priest, minister or bishop of any denomination past it.” Seán Cloney’s reflection, 30 years after the 1957 boycott of local Protestants by their Catholic neighbours, expressed a hard-won wisdom. It is also an uncharacteristically sharp riposte from the man at the centre of the storm: as Tim Fanning eloquently shows, Cloney’s dignity and generosity of spirit enabled himself and his family to survive a bitter episode in Irish social history. Very few other people come out of it with credit.
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