There was no Kristellnacht on the South Mall

IN his review (November 5) of Gerard Murphy’s new book, The Year of Disappearances: Political Killings in Cork, 1921-1922, Eoghan Harris refers to a comment (not a “jibe”) I made several years ago (now quoted in the book) that “there was no ethnic cleansing on the South Mall”.

Senator Harris suggests that in the light of Dr Murphy’s book I might wish to “revisit “the comment.

“Ethnic cleansing” is a phrase I shouldn’t have used. Indeed, since it has a clear and specific meaning in the context of the Balkans in the 1990s, it is anachronistic and misleading to apply it to other complex historical conflicts, as in the Ireland of 1920-1923.

Otherwise, I stand over my remark. I simply meant that the prominence of Protestants in Cork’s commercial life was largely unaffected by the upheaval of 1920-’23. Indeed, Dr Murphy makes it clear that, far from being an eccentric opinion, mine is “a widely held belief” and that “it is generally accepted by historians that… urban Protestants… maintained their hegemony and their control of the professions right into the years of the Free State”.

Moreover, as far as I can see from the book, the author nowhere states that the exodus of Protestant residents from the Blackrock and Douglas areas was accompanied by a collapse of Protestant commercial interests in the city centre.

Unless, of course, Senator Harris has startling new evidence of a Kristellnacht on the South Mall some night in the early 1920s?

John A Murphy

Rosebank

Douglas Road

Cork