Where was morality in shooting dead of elderly woman?

IN his letter headlined ‘Religion had nothing to do with struggle for independence’ (Irish Examiner, July 31), Pádraig Ó Cuanacháin takes me to task for suggesting that the killing of Mrs Lindsay and the sparing of Fr Shinnick was a sectarian response to their roles in trying to avert the Dripsey ambush in Co Cork and going to their relevant ‘sides’ in order to so do.

The facts speak for themselves. Maybe Mr Ó Cuanacháin might care to comment on the unlawful killing also of Mrs Lindsay’s employee, James Clarke, a Protestant.

If, as Mr Ó Cuanacháin suggests, there was an offer to spare Mrs Lindsay, it only aggravates the position. He also makes the Freudian slip of comparing the situation to the French resistance and the Germans — the latter gallant allies of those who perhaps executed Mrs Lindsay. Birds of a feather.

As he also referred to women’s rights and the vote, I wonder if he has any opinion on the morality of shooting dead the elderly Mrs Lindsay.

Mr Ó Cuanacháin says she was held in captivity for some time and that in a letter to General Strickland, the IRA offered to “not harm your people” — surely the ultimate proof of what I am saying.

Mr Ó Cuancaháin goes on rail against the Irish Parliamentary Party, the bishops and whoever.

Might I remind him that the Irish Party were decent people, and if Home Rule had come about it would have been as good as, if not a lot better than, what finally emanated with all the bloodshed, sectarian killings, emigration and poverty following on 1916, the War of Independence and Civil war.

It is fashionable to debunk the Irish Party. In 1979, when Charles Haughey was making a grab for power from Jack Lynch, he described the Irish Party as being self-centred and having ‘debased’ politics. Imagine that from him!

There are many ghosts that any nation — be it Germany, France or whoever — has to face up to, and in Ireland the sectarian killings in west Cork is one of them.

As I come from the nationalist tradition, my father having taken part in the War of Independence, I realise too easily how labels such as spy, informer, Free Stater, unionist, etc, can be trotted out, as the family of poor Jean McConville have also discovered in recent times.

Brendan Cafferty

Creggs Road

Ballina

Co Mayo.