Shining a light on a dark and bloody past

RTÉ has done a great service to us all and to the historical record by its screening of CSÍ: Cork ’s Bloody Secrets on October 5 on the massacre of innocent Protestants in the Bandon valley in 1922 at a time when hostilities were supposed to have ceased between Ireland and Britain, and before the civil war began.

The deliberate seeking out and slaughter of these innocents have for far too long gone off the radar. It is commendable to see a light being shone into such a dark corner of our history.

At times the great injustice done to those people was sometimes compounded by various spurious claims of justification — that they were informers and the like.