Why IRA killers of the Pearson boys were guilty of a war crime
What Mr Heaney refers to as alleged shooting of an IRA man near the Pearson lands is merely reported rumour given at the inquest as to why this atrocity was carried out. This is reinforced by Niamh Sammon’s excellent research and reporting for the Hidden History series.
In any event, even if these rumours were true, we find the apologists for these murders describing it as an “execution” carried out on lawful orders.
What about courtmartial, the right of defence and natural justice. Sinn Féin did secure 47% of the vote in the 1918 election, but that did not give lawful authority where laws were not promulgated or passed.
The absence of these critical matters, plus the burning of the house on their siblings and parents who had done no wrong, and the leaving of the boys for hours to suffer and die in agony, push this whole episode into the category of a war crime if one goes down the road of legality.
The remaining family members had to flee the country.
Fr Murphy says there were no sectarian elements to IRA attacks around the country. He quotes some Protestants who in 1920 spoke out that they had found no hostility.
That was before the horrors that were to come in places like west Cork, Galway and Tipperary a year or two later.
Let me quote some facts in support. The Church of Ireland Gazette of June 16, 1922, speaking of east Galway, said that “if the campaign against Protestants which has been carried on there since last month is continued in similar intensity for a few weeks more, there will not be a Protestant left in the place. Presbyterian and Church of Ireland, poor and well-to-do, old and young, widows and children all alike have suffered intimidation, persecution and expulsion”.
In Tipperary, the Bishop of Cashel, Dr Miller, said on August 5, 1921: “Five of our members have been foully murdered without the slightest justification.”
In November the same bishop appealed to Protestants in the area not to emigrate in face of intimidation. Other examples exist elsewhere.
The Presbyterian journal, The Witness, reported on June 17, 1921: “The plight of the Protestants in the south and west is sad in the extreme. They are marked, they are watched, they are raided, and some of them have been dragged out and shot like beasts. An air of suspicion and dread is about them day and night.”
In his book The IRA and its Enemies, Peter Harte outlines the sectarian murder of Protestants that took place in the Bandon valley, many of them after the truce was signed. Some of those Protestants killed were old and disabled, and included two young boys in their teens by the names of Alexander McKinley and Robert Nagle, both only 16; James Buttimer, aged 82 and almost blind, John Bradfield, aged 69 and bedridden; Francis Fitzmaurice, aged 70; Rev Harbord (a very godly man) returning to his rectory late at night. Nothing in troubled times, or in every maelstrom of events like the 1920s, is perfect, and one can almost accept that. What I cannot accept is that no stain or wrongdoing can ever attach to the IRA of the time — that there were no sectarian events, that old animosities did not surface and that “this was our land to be taken back, etc”.
Mr Heaney and Fr Murphy, please examine the evidence. The truth will set us all free.
As Shakespeare so succinctly put it: “Murder though it hath no tongue will speak with most miraculous organ.”
Brendan Cafferty
Creggs Road
Ballina
Co Mayo
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