Hidden History debate casts light into some dark corners

THE Irish Examiner is to be congratulated on the amount of space it has given in its letter columns to the debate on Niamh Sammon’s Hidden History programme on RTÉ on the killings at Coolacrease.

The charge that the programme was insufficiently nuanced may well be true, but reflects in large part the limitations of TV history, limitations which are offset byvisual opportunities with which cold print can rarely compete.

In any age, executions rarely reflect well on the perpetrators and, when carried out on a large scale, can ruin a cause. They did not happen on any large scale on the Irish side in 1916-1921, though the 1922-3 period was slightly worse.