Madam, – On October 5th, I was a commentator on the RTÉ CSÍ: Cork's Bloody Secrettelevision documentary programme dealing with murders of 13 west Cork Protestants in April, 1922. Appearing on the same programme, Senator Eoghan Harris claimed that at least 60,000 Protestants were "driven out" of the new State in those years and that was a "conservative estimate".
He stressed that the figure represented ordinary Protestants, “small farmers, small shopkeepers”, and did not include former servants of the ousted British regime such as disbanded policemen and demobbed soldiers. Neither did it include, presumably, those who left because they felt unable to accept the ideology and culture of the new dispensation.
Outside of these categories then, according to Senator Harris, at least 60,000 southern Protestants were subjected to an "enforced exodus" on a massive scale, to ethnic cleansing, in fact. He has made these unsubstantial allegations repeatedly (for example in the Sunday Independent, May 24th, 2009).
It has been well said that history is what the evidence compels us to believe. It is now time for Senator Harris to produce the detailed, documental evidence (no surmises or estimates, please) in support of his dramatic claims. He should do so in the interests of historical truth and of community relations. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – David Adams (Opinion, October 8th) on the CSÍ: Cork's Bloody Secretprogramme, broadcast by RTÉ on October 5th, correctly challenges us all to face up to bigotry and sectarianism of all descriptions. RTÉ has done a great service to us all and to the historical record by its screening of the programme, which dealt with the massacre of innocent Protestants in the Bandon valley in 1922 at a time when hostilities were supposed to have ceased between Ireland and Britain, and before the Civil War began.
The deliberate seeking out and slaughter of sometimes elderly and infirm as well as two young boys have for far too long gone off the radar, and how wonderful to see a light being shone into such a dark corner of our history. At times, the great injustice done to those people was compounded by various spurious claims of justification – that they were informers and the like. But hardly mentioned until now was the question of land, religion and settling of old scores in that Protestantism was at times equated to Britain and the invader.
And while the programme showed that perhaps it was a maverick and isolated attack condemned by all sides at the time, I am not so sure about that, as other examples exist in east Galway, Mayo, Leitrim, Midlands and Border regions and elsewhere. And how wonderful to see a relative of one of those Protestants killed speak such wonderful Irish, a language which in the public mind is seen all too often as being hijacked by the adherents of violence.
Finally, even now, can the location of the bodies of those innocent killed be identified if possible, and the remains be returned to their families? For all their perniciousness and evil, the modern IRA blood brothers of the recent 30-year campaign in Northern Ireland have made efforts to do just that with the disappeared. Decency, humanity not to mention Christianity demands no less. – Yours, etc,