Protestant decline a result of sectarianism

IN response to PJ Feeney (Irish Examiner letters, July 24), the post-truce and indeed pre-truce killings of Protestants had an ethnic basis and were the outcome of a sectarian anti-Protestant strategy pursued by the IRA during the War of Independence.

WT Cosgrave made this quite clear in 1922, as pointed out by Robin Bury (Irish Examiner letters, July 10).

Much of the Protestant minority were at the mercy of prejudiced, lawless men, who subjected them to intimidation, persecution and expulsion.

I am originally from Dunmanway, west Cork, and my own grandparents were part of this minority community.

In the early 1920s, and especially during the month of April in 1922, they spent many nights away from home, sleeping in barns and fields, fearing for their family and home, and those of their friends, being ransacked and destroyed.

I note that Mr Feeney is from Dripsey, where Mrs Lindsay’s and James Clark’s execution by the IRA took place.

Events such as these have been washed from local public consciousness and virtually written out of Irish history. Yet the men who carried out their murder are honoured as patriots.

Where is Mrs Lindsay’s and James Clark’s memorial?

Protestant numbers decreased drastically between 1921 and 1923 and never picked up.

As the historian Patrick Buckland wrote in Irish Unionism, the period 1920-1924 “shattered the confidence of those (Protestants) who remained in Ireland and undermined their determination to continue distinctive political activity”.

It was for their very survival and safety that they kept their heads below the parapet .

As for Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland, undoubtedly they suffered from some forms of discrimination, but their numbers have gone from strength to strength and, with the help of a private army, they have obtained a powerful political voice.

If the Republic of Ireland can finally begin to recognise the role of many Irishmen in the Great War, such as the recent Somme events, why not recognise the horror and victimhood inflicted on many of its Protestant people after World War I?

Ian Beamish

Thornfield

Ashleigh Wood

Monaleen

Limerick.