The real history of Churchill and Dev was well hidden in TV series

THE face-off between Eamon de Valera and Winston Churchill in this week’s Hidden History TV programme on RTÉ 1 was a case of hiding history and promoting distortion.

The programme was superficial to the point of absurdity, as it repeatedly failed to put events in context. It might as well have been made from the propaganda of 60 years ago because there was little or nothing in it that was not known then.

Viewers were told that Churchill was Minister for War during the Irish War of Independence and that he eventually favoured a negotiated settlement. But they were not told he backed Chief of Imperial General Staff Henry Wilson who called for British forces to put lists on the doors of Catholic churches of local people who would be shot as authorised reprisals if any members of the security forces were killed.