Hidden History or hidden agenda – the real story

by Bronterre O'Brien Sun Oct 07, 2007 23:51

A great piece of work.

Harris and his cohorts do have a hidden agenda.
Harris was a student of John A. Murphy, revisionist historian. Revisionism is an attempt to de-legitimatize the Irish peoples' long struggle for freedom and democracy.

The SF/WP publication, The Irish Industrial Revolution, a Harris/Smullen effort, gives a revisionist account of the development of Irish underdevelopment and absolved imperialism of its crimes. Mick O'Riordan rightly attacked it on these grounds.

Without memory an individual's identity is under threat. The attack by Harris and the other empire-loving historians is an attack on the collective memory and identity of the Irish people.
The long history of the Irish peoples opposition to the imperial project has inspired anti-imperial forces throughout the world. In reference to Ireland, Marx said; the nation which enslaves another forges its own chains. He could have been referring to the Anglo-U.S. attack on Iraq.

Since the 1600s Ireland has been imperialisms laboratory. 'Destroying in order to save'- imperialism's modus operandi did not begin in Hue, Vietnam, or in Falluja, Iraq. It began here.

It is no accident that Harris and his school are now taking the neocon position with respect to the Anglo-American attack on Iraq. Despite the so-called peace process and its attempt to incorporate all-ireland into the Anglo-American imperial project, neither culturally nor politically, have the Irish people acquiesced in this elite-led subordination.

And the problems associated with the accompanying neolib economics are daily becoming more obvious and more acute. Ireland remains a weak link in the Anglo-American empire. Harris and his enablers Ahern and T. O'Reilly are attempting to destroy the historical memory of resistance. Its vital for Irish economic, cultural and political survival that they not succeed. But they can and will be defeated. The above article makes a valuable contribution to this process of resistance.

by gameball Mon Oct 08, 2007 12:57

A very good piece of research Pat. It wasn't an ethnic massacre, but also the Sinn Fein argument in 1918-19 about representing the "ancient people of Ireland" probably didn't sound very attractive if you were named Pearson and Stanley.

Someone should do a book on the Land Commission effect in 1900-2000; the cost, who paid for it, who benefited, was it worth it, and so on. All sponsored by the town-based taxpayer. If your grandfather bought twenty acres of Co Meath on tick in 1910 and you are selling it off for bungalows today, you'd prefer to keep it quiet. There's one that Harris won't be doing.

by JInky Jimmy Johnstone - BICO hypocrite alert Mon Oct 08, 2007 17:15

The below is a report from that well known Unionist journal An Phoblacht on a speech given by Richard English in the Linenhall Library. It was nicely illustrated by a photo of Professor English with Mr. Gerard Adams MP. English is a Unionist, as he is entitled to be. But his work has been well recived by republicans in the past. See other AP/RN reviews. This type of hyper-historical 'exposure' would be very valid if it wasn't coming from a group of people who strated all this revisionist stuff back in the 1970s. You don't believe me? See the Irish Communist, November 1970 for a description of the IRA as 'fascist' and a 'Roman Catholic sectarian militia.' This and similiar descriptions were the stock in trade of the British and Irish Communist Organisation, or the Peking Lodge of the Orange Order to their friends. This group are now trading under the Aubane Historical Society title and are simply reversing all they believed in in the 1970s in order to curry favour with naive members of Sinn Fein and washed up ex-Trots who ended up in the party.

http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/4026

by seamas o loingsigh Mon Oct 08, 2007 18:37

What was the point of Jinky Jimmy Johnstone's comment. Otherwise there was an excellent contribution and series of comments on the Pearson shootings. This is important as it faces up to the powerful forces in the revisionist movement and in RTE. JJJ does not disagree with Pat Muldowney's position. But he seeks to distract people's attention away from the main issue by dragging in other matters. His comment to my mind is a spoiler. And I have to wonder why he made it.

by William O'Brien Mon Oct 08, 2007 22:21

Agree with Seamas on JJJ's 'noisey' comment – JJJ’s link does not even make sense (the best he could come up with?).

On the substance of Gameball's comments, one the best sources I have come across on the class struggle on the land (which is what it was) is Fergus Campbell's Land and Revolution: Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland 1891–1921, OUP, 2005.

In his review of the book (American Historical Review, February 2007) arch 'revisionist', TCD's David Fittzpatrick, notes Campbell's eagerness "to claim novelty for his own methods and findings, and to extricate himself from the increasingly uncomfortable company of "revisionist" historians such as Paul Bew, Peter Hart, and myself".

I don't know about anyone else, but personally I could not think of a better recommendation for Campbell's research. For those who may not be aware of him, Fitzpatrick has slipped fairly effortlessly under the radar, while contributing to and promoting much of the the nonsense notion that Irish rebellion is essentially a product of religious mania. All I can say is: welcome to the limelight, David (though I doubt that he will demean himself to the extent of contributing his thoughts here).

The Irish times review of Campbell by Brendan Ó Cathaoir observed: "Dr Campbell suggests [ that a] radical tendency beneath the surface of the republican movement has been airbrushed out of our history".

So, what does Campbell say? Basically that a thoroughgoing revolution in land ownership took place between 1880 and.... well, it's hard to say. The work of the Land Commission was not complete until the 1970s. The jury is still out on that one.

Some think that the land question was solved with the Windlesham Land Act of 1903. Reading Cambell it is clear that the class struggle on the land was not suspended after that date – the 1903 Act was only put on the statute books after a much more limited 1902 Act was met by sustained and violent opposition.

The Land Acts were a product of organised violence or the threat of violence on the land. They were also the product of the fact that the 'law of the League', organised through the the ‘All for Ireland League’, was superior to the British 'law of the Land'. In the popular and powerful 'land Court's' we see an incipient situation of 'dual power' during the first decade of the 20th century that re-appeared with the Sinn Fein courts during the War of Independence and swept away with little difficulty the pomp and panoply of the British court system. They were supported by nationalists and unionists alike, because the deliberations were democratic and, more to the point, they were essentially fair. The Sinn Fein Courts did not spring from nowhere.

While a mechanism for peasant ownership was put in place after 1903, neither side of the property divide ceased to pursue its economic interests. Landlords attempted to subvert the intent of the Act by renting on a short-term basis to substantial graziers, while the landless and the poorer renters used the land courts and cattle driving (large groups forcibly driving cattle 20 miles or so from their pasture) to make such endeavors either impossible or else uneconomic.

Campbell's research helps escape from the shallow conception of the struggle between 1916-21 as a simple minded purely nationalist escapade, whose class struggle elements were supplied by petty and localised sectarian hatreds. He gives substance to a democratic revolt that reached into every aspect of Irish society and that is a far cry from the limited concoctions of the revisionists.

Reading Campbell also helps put Muldowney's well-researched account into perspective. It is interesting that the Pearsons originally obtained their substantial holding through the Land Commission, and then attempted to act as a ruling class faction in miniature, a stance the departing Anglo-Irish Landlord class had been forced to abandon. They resemble the AWB (remember them in South Africa – the ones who resisted the fall of apartheid to the bitter end – those nuts in the lederhosen who tried to shoot their way to retaining a white nirvana).

Also interesting that the execution of two members of the family were a bonus in disguise for the long-term economic prospects of the family enterprise – having conned the Land Commission and even the Loyalist distress Committee in Britain into forking out compensation and restitution over and above the odds. The terms ‘hard nosed’ and ‘brass neck’ come to mind.

It will be fascinating to see how the documentary turns out, eventually.

(Free chapter of Campbell's book at link below)

by aristotle Mon Oct 08, 2007 22:46

Isn't it just amazing how some people get hot and bothered by the atrocities of long ago. It is hardly news that many in the Protestant and Cof I communities, fearful of their future under a Roman Catholic majority resentful of their former religious and political oppression, sided with (or were at least sympathetic to) the Crown forces. Conversely, it is hardly news that members of the Catholic Sinn Fein movement used the cover of the disturbances to exact petty vengeance and violence and robbery on Protestant neighbours for no better reason than that they were Protestant. Wars are ugly and the moral dislocation which always accompanies wars everywhere allows unpleasant people to give in to their unpleasant urges. It is a racist conceit that Irish Catholics are immune from the grim realities of human nature at its worst.

Of course 'plus ca change .......' . Much more recently the vicious minorities who comprised the paramilitaries on both sides of the sectarian fence quite successfully ethnically cleansed whole districts in the cities and towns of Northern Ireland - not forgetting the Provo campaign to remove by murder and intimidation the protestant farmers of South Armagh and Down and the borderlands West of the Bann.

However, we are thankfully in more optimistic times. A new power-sharing administration is running Northern Ireland and we must move on - while never forgetting how war morally dislocates us all and makes moral imbeciles of a few without regard to race creed or colour.

by Erskine Childers Mon Oct 08, 2007 23:57

The big problem with Aristotle's patronising and factually incorrect remarks is that the Sinn Fein minister for Agriculture was.... Robert Barton (a Protestant). How come there were so many Sinn Fein Protestants? Were they plotting against their co-religionists? Sectarianism was a product of British policy. Divide and rule was both a goal of British political management and a military necessity. Both policies failed. They succeeded in Britain's political slum in the North of Ireland, whose political structures today are testament to the fact the British rule in Ireland is sectarian rule. The only way in which nationalists can be guarantee any rights in the north is by denying majority rule, the 'normal' signal of democratic legitimacy.

Aristotle was 'hot and bothered' enough to contribute his twopence worth in yet another effort to derail the discussion. How many more will we see?

by Erskine Childers Tue Oct 09, 2007 00:04

(I was too hot and bothered when I wrote the above to notice two typos - corrected below)

The big problem with Aristotle's patronising and factually incorrect remarks is that the Sinn Fein minister for Agriculture was.... Robert Barton (a Protestant). How come there were so many Sinn Fein Protestants? Were they plotting against their co-religionists? Sectarianism was a product of British policy. Divide and rule was both a goal of British political management and a military necessity. Both policies failed. They succeeded in Britain's political slum in the North of Ireland, whose political structures today are testament to the fact that British rule in Ireland is sectarian rule. The only way in which nationalists can be guaranteed any rights in the north is by denying majority rule, the 'normal' signal of democratic legitimacy.

Aristotle was 'hot and bothered' enough to contribute his twopence worth in yet another effort to derail the discussion. How many more will we see?

by JInky Jimmy Johnstone Tue Oct 09, 2007 09:44

Comments were for those who think the Aubaneites are good old fashioned nationalists who have had enough of revisionism. They are not. They invented half the revisionist camp's arguments. Re Fergus campbell, an interesting book, but Campbell if I'm not mistaken is a mate of Peter Harts (who read the draft of Campbell's book, according to the copy I have here) and a mate of Terence Dooley. So who is a revisionist and who is not? Campbell asserts that there was a sectarian dimension to the revolution and he also agrees with Dooley's thesis that land, not nationalism, lay behind at least some of the activities of the volunteers.
My other point was that it is easy for someone to say so and so is a UNionist, but if they are happy to endorse Tom Hartley's collection and have a photo taken with Gerry A then they are clearly a Unionist of a diofferent variety. Plus in these enlightened times republicans now share power with Unionists and it won't be long before Sinn Fein are endorsing what was 'high revisionism' a few years ago. BTW didn't Dolley play football for Monaghan? Typical revisionist west brit...

by aristotle Tue Oct 09, 2007 09:54

Sectarianism happens when two or more communities with different political loyalties occupy the same territory. Imperialism often mitigates or masks the potential for conflict. External wars and wars of 'liberation' usually unleash it. The latter often occur where the imperium becomes weakened or allows one of the local groups become dominant over the other. These are truisms from the Roman Empire through to the Soviet Empire.

Sinn Feinnism is a Roman Catholic pathology. Just because a few non-Catholic 'Uncle Tom' do-gooders were involved in the Republican movement hardly displaces the obvious. It is similarly obvious from election demographics that a small minority of (mainly) middle-class Catholics vote Unionist and a large portion of the Northern Catholic population is quite happy to retain the advantages of UK citizenship. These facts do not displace the manifest reality that Unionism is a non-Catholic thing.

The interesting thing about the terrorists is that their victims are as likely to be from their own communities as from the other because of their tendency to faction-fighting and to diversify into drug-crime and extortion with inevitable local turf-wars. To be fair, it has to be admitted that the Catholic communities in the North have knuckled down much better to the new dispensation - and de-criminalization seems to be taking hold in these communities more rapidly than within the majority community.

Now, calm down like a good fellow.

by Eamonn de Paor Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:27

Good work, Pat Muldowney.
But it is no secret that the Pearsons were Black and Tan collaborators. William Pearson proudly declared this fact in his compensation application to the Distress Committee/Grants Committee. Here is the extract from his application form:

5. Do you claim that the loss or injury described was occasioned in respect or on account of your allegiance to the Government of the United Kingdom? If so, give particulars on which you base this claim.
[Pearson’s response:] Yes. I was always known as a staunch Loyalist and upholder of the Crown. I assisted the Crown Forces on every occasion, and I helped those who were persecuted around me at all times.

Did Hidden History simply ignore the historical record, or what?

by Turps Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:28

So unionism will become something benign, like it was intended to be from the beginning in 1920? If enough Catholics accept it all will be sweet reasonableness, eh Ari?

by gameball Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:09

If you were able to buy property in Offaly today, the legal paperwork still refers to it as 'King's County', just as Laois is still 'Queen's County', settled in the 1550s. That king being Philip II of Spain, a multi-continental imperialist and well got with all the popes in his day.

The Land war divides between the tenants' right to buy (tenants who might have been on the spot for generations) up to 1903, and the move after 1922 to acquire untenanted land. The Dáil reports up to 1950 are littered with requests about dividing this farm or that, without any concern as to how the new owners were going to do more than scratch a living from 20 acres. But the new owners' votes were well harvested, and scratching a living was presented as a virtue.

That land reform process would have happened if we had accepted home rule in 1920, and we would have had a united Ireland by 1970, if that was important. I don't see how such an all-Ireland solution can be described as imperialist. I didn't get enough education to work that out. It sounded too slow and weak if you were a young volunteer, is my guess.

The Pearson matter has nothing to do with Northern Ireland today. I would not call the whole war of independence the 'Tan war', as the Tans were set up half way through. And the mix-up over whether the volunteers were democratically accountable to the Dáil and its electorate, or to its own executive, was the cause of the civil war here in 1922-23.

I'm all in favour of revisionists when there are historians like Pat to work on the grey areas. We have moved on from the sort of history that was taught to kids who left school aged 14. Did any of us learn what happened to the $5m collected for the Irish Republic in the USA by Dev in 1919-20? Agendas aplenty.

by Barry Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:15

the fact a foreign country decides it has the right to determine your countrys political system against your own wishes is imperialist . Your point seems to be that if wed kissed ass long enough then Britain would have done the decent thing . As regards some united Ireland in the future....Ireland was already united . Britain partitioning it and directly occupying part of the national territory was a crime . Its clear you regard opposing this intereference as wrong.. a mistake . A youthful rush of blood to the head by immature young men . Perhaps an error we should apologise for ?
A civil war occured because Britain continued to exerise interference in Irish political affairs ( it actually demanded of the free state authorities they go on the offensive) and conflict occured between those who agreed and those who disagreed over Britains right to determine Irelands political future .

We have indeed " moved on " as regards the imparting of history to our kids . We are being encouraged to be ashamed of having rebelled against the crown and to reagrd it as a criminally sectarian enterprise committed against an empire that would have done the decent thing ..eventually .The bullshit in this programme is a fine example of where we have moved to and where we will continue to move .

by Barry Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:19

as British troops still occupy part of our country its patently clear we arent independent as a nation , therefore war of independence is even more inaccurate a term as tan war . In fact as its just a small period of a long running conflcit that involved the black and tans its probably more accurate a description .The Anglo Irish conflict has not yet been resolved .

by gameball Tue Oct 09, 2007 13:39

No Barry, we don't have to apologize for anything that happened in 1919-23. But it happened as it did, and airbrushing or Harris-ing it, or interpreting it by today's standards doesn't help anyone. It was untidy in many ways. We know how proud the men of 1919 were and all must have seemed very straightforward to them at the time.

I'll go along with 'partial war of independence' as well. We weren't independent of England economically until the 1970s and then we jumped into the EEC and now we are all good little European Unionists for the time being.

Have a look at Dev's preferred Treaty of 1921 and you won't find a 32-county republic. The treaty ports, payment of imperial debt, separate status for Belfast, dominion status, compo for the RIC, a nod to George as head on the commonwealth, are all in there. Presented in secret during the treaty debates, published after:

http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/DT/D.P.A.170001.html

And therefore not resolved 100% Barry, but the border is gone and the Brits are now paying £billions to keep everyone happy so it could be worse. And most of us Dubs are happy with that. We couldn't handle people like Paisley in the Dáil, asking difficult questions and looking for billions off us. We elect the likes of Ms. B. Flynn; go easy on us please.

by JInky Jimmy Johnstone Tue Oct 09, 2007 13:52

As it happens I don't think the Pearson killings were motivated by hatred of Protestants. But calling historians names and setting yourself up as an independent voice when you have an agenda as long as your arm (which includes whitewashing Bertie- see the Irish Political Review published by Pat Muldowney's friends) is not on either. BTw have you read Terence Dooley's book on the Wild Goose Lodge?

by Plato Tue Oct 09, 2007 13:55

...how Briitish War of Independence propaganda has magically reappeared in the mouths of historians? The occupiers were really the honest brokers between two warring tribes; the War of Independence was not motivated by politics or ideology but by sectarianism and lust for violence, etc. One would almost suspect the historians to be, well, pushing an agenda. Which you can never suspect revisionist historians of, because their methods are of pure science and reason, as distinctly opposed to the emotionalism of those who have the temerity to suggest that imperialism is unjustified.

by Fred Allan Tue Oct 09, 2007 14:10

The Oxford DPhil which Fergus Campbell's book was developed from was supervised by Prof Roy Foster. Of RF's many research students over the years, Campbell is one of his obvious success stories. Only people who don't understand the debate would suppose there must be tension between Campbell's class-based analysis of the revolution and Foster's work. And if you want to see lots of nasty stuff about the Black and Tans you will find it in the second volume of Foster's Yeats biography.

'Revisionist' and 'revisionism', in this context, is now a meaningless term of abuse. Irish historical writing has matured beyond the simplistic binaries of Unionist and Nationalist narratives. It is thanks to the work of historians, 'professional' and 'non-professional', working away in archives, conducting interviews and so on which means subjects such as this be discussed in any meaningful way.

by William O'Brien Tue Oct 09, 2007 16:41

(JJJ concedes: "As it happens I don't think the Pearson killings were motivated by hatred of Protestants". But JJJ has a problem with the author for some other reason - the publication he wrote for expressed a view JJJ disapproves of on another subject. Thank you, the author is now suitably 'exposed'. )

As for Fred: the rest of us are too thick to understand 'we are all historians now', beavering away together in the archives. Forget the 'simplistic binaries' of nationalist and unionist, says Fred. History is now, to use a suitably religious expression and to quote Father Ted, "an ecumenical matter".

No bias, no political agenda of any kind.

I would believe it if I was born yesterday.

It is clear that some research is given greater weight in academia and in the Media, for reasons that have nothing to do with history and everything to do with politics. For instance Paddy Heaney and Pat Muldowney's research was regarded as second best because it challenged the prevailing political and historical orthodoxy suggesting that the anti-colonial movement in Ireland is and was a sectarian movement.

As part of a critique of Ken Loach's 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley', Roy Foster criticised Luke Gibbons' assertion (in an essay accompanying the published film script) that Protestants who were shot during the War of Independence suffered their fate for informing, not for religious reasons. Foster states sniffily, "The 'evidence' remains unproduced". He then writes, “this judgement would certainly not stand for the murder of, for instance, the Pearson Brothers in Kinnity Co Offaly in June 1921, and the burning out of their house”. Foster’s source for this conclusion, "a recent local study". This appears to be Foster’s reference to Alan Stanley's strung together reminiscences in 'I met Murder on the Way, the Pearsons of Coolacrease'.

There is no way a professional historian of Foster’s experience would cite such a clearly unhistorical and plainly biased source, devoid of evidence (never mind a clear narrative), unless he was biased toward its conclusions. A 'professional' historian might have considered Paddy Heaney's acount, would at least have been aware that Stanley's was a contentious and debatable view. What “binaries”, simplistic or otherwise, would Fred Alan apply to Foster’s lamentable observations in this case? If Foster was citing an academic source, he might presumably have given us its name. His approval of the embarrassingly thin gruel offered in Stanley's account, in comparison to his ignoring (or ignorance perhaps) of that in the originally published account by Paddy Heaney, is significant.

In the same film critique (Dublin Review Autumn 2006), Foster referred to the "skill and empathy" with which Peter Hart “raised merry hell with local historians" after Hart had alleged that the IRA went around shooting random Protestants in the area where the film was set, West Cork. Critics of Hart's view are are mentioned. They are not important enough to be named, or perhaps their criticism is too important to have too much attention drawn to it, by naming the authors. Hart’s critics are considered "local" yokels to the dismissively cosmopolitan Professor Foster (born and brought up, as it happens, in the locality of Co Waterford). The critics, Brian Murphy, Meda Ryan and, now, John Borgonovo are not granted the same right of audience to Professor Foster's historical imagination. Foster prefers instead the views of a historian, Hart, who claimed to have interviewed a veteran of the November 1920 Kilmichael ambush six days after the last one died, and who, as a matter of habit, it has been shown conclusively, censored evidence questioning his (and also, it appears, Foster's) preferred conclusions. For this Peter Hart won manyy academic prizes and plaudits, including the 1998 Ewart Biggs prize (Jury Chairperson: one Roy Foster. Roy still chairs it - a long gig, has he ever thought of letting someone else have a go?)

Foster identifies with Hart, and David Fitzpatrick pigeon holes himself in the same category as Hart, alongside the recently ennobled Lord Bew of QUB (the former 'Marxist' historian). Unprompted, in 2007, Fitzpatrick acknowledged that Campbell does not want to be part of their “revisionist” club – the one that Fred Allen says no longer exists.

Fred Allen thinks there is nothing fishy going on. Perhaps he should swim around a bit more in increasingly choppy historical waters.

(Campbell is Roy's 'success story'? And here was I thinking Campbell wrote the book himself. What would have happened If Roy had attempted to stop Campbell succeeding? Was that an option he had open to him? Intriguing observation from Fred.)

by Bronterre O'Brien Tue Oct 09, 2007 18:15

Baron Bew and Senator Harris have longtime service in support of the imperial-imposed repressive political structures of Ireland. Their patrons are the ruling class of Britain and its Irish sub-branch Fianna Fail. The Belfast Agreement signals the incorporation of all Ireland, North and South, into the Anglo-American imperial project. Foster and his fellow revisionists have reduced historical investigation to propaganda whose aim is to make all-Ireland safe for Anglo-American political economy.

by Fred Allan Tue Oct 09, 2007 18:36

Re. Campbell. I obviously wasn't questioning his authorship or independence of mind. But it's hard to imagine he got his job without a very warm reference from his former supervisor. Consequently, there is an irony in the Foster detractors holding up Campbell as anti- or post- or something- 'revisionism'.

Yeah, Ewart-Biggs is a bit of a club.

This debate about Hart is a good example of revisionism in action. New evidence is being brought to light and is challenging his account. Revisionism is what historians do and Foster is too ready to take the Hart line. There are ideological issues bound up with this debate and I'd be interested to know what you think RF's wider position is. He's certainly a cosmopolitan (unlike the essentialist Yeats) and I'm sorry that William O'Brien seems not to be (unless there's some self-hate in there too). Try it and feel the love! I don't know on what grounds RF is a Unionist in the way that English and Bew are.

Re Loach. Interesting this. Foster was much nicer about the film than I expected. I saw it as Loach's standard take on the lost socialist revolution (cf Land and Freedom). If only that was the case. Sadly, Irish nationalist opinion was a lot further from socialism than the film suggests.

Revisionism? A hackneyed debate kept alive by middle aged men and women who cut their teeth in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s - and those Young Turks wanting their jobs... About time we liberated ourselves from their agenda.

If only William O'Brien's All-for-Ireland League had got off the ground we might not be having this exchange. Fred Allan was probably among those who thwarted it as an ideological compromise...

by Great Cthulhu Tue Oct 09, 2007 19:08

In the past, Roy Foster and Martin Mansergh both criticised the Aubane Hysterical S....sorry, Aubane Historical Society. These Blaspheming Heretics must be punished!

by D. Kelleher Tue Oct 09, 2007 20:43

The above piece effectively rebuts this latest effort by the Harris/RTE network to undermine the Irish peoples struggle for freedom. But to attack Harris and support his patron, Ahern, is incoherent, and strongley suggests that the BICO/Aubane project-whatever it is-belongs more in the annals of psychopathology than politics.

by RICKY - ORANGE ORDER Tue Oct 09, 2007 22:39

You Republicans will say anything to try and justify your bloody sectarian war against Prtotestants In The ROI. Facts are Protestant numbers in the South amounted to 160000, pre Independance war , but by the end of the Twenties their numbers had been reduced to around 100000.
Contast this to the number of Catholics in Northern Ireland in 1921-400000, now there are almost 700000. I can see from these figures which part of Ireland the minority really suffered oppression.

by barry Tue Oct 09, 2007 22:51

the border has not flipping gone . Partition is very much still with us. Id have noticed i assure you if it wasnt .
Jesus . WTF is it with free staters ?

by Charlotte Despard Tue Oct 09, 2007 23:23

"You Republicans will say anything to try and justify your bloody sectarian war against Prtotestants In The ROI."

When did this war start? When did it end? Who died? Where are they buried?

by RICKY - ORANGE ORDER Thu Oct 11, 2007 14:41

Charlotte, 1921,at Partition started the most recent persecution which still continues ,albeit to a lesser degree today. You can find examples of this by using the following keyword.

by Caobhin Thu Oct 11, 2007 15:01

There was ethnic cleansing if you mean that Ascendancy elements upped and left the south once they no longer had a foreign army to force people to tug their forelocks to them anymore.

Or where exactly are these 60,000 missing protestants supposed to be buried then?

by JInky Jimmy Johnstone Thu Oct 11, 2007 15:46

To William O'Brien; I'm not claiming to have a devastating argument about this. But where the original argument comes from does matter and BICO, in their past or present guises, are not to be trusted. I notice Bronterre O'Brien notes Eoin Harris and his Irish Industrial revolution for example. Well that book was largely ripped off from the BICO pamphlet 'The Economics of Partition' by one Brendan Clifford, then BICO's chief ideologist now Aubane Historical Society head honcho. Simply calling historians 'Unionist' or 'Big House' nostalgics undermines Mr. Muldonwney's own arguments, because neither English or Dooley fits the stereotypical bill. And if local historians who have a different view on the programme are taking part in it than whats the problem? Are you saying Pat Muldowney should ahve the programme to himself? The internets a wonderful thing, because I see from a browse that Fergus Campbell, held up above as the last word in anti-revisionism co-organised a conference at Maynooth in 2003 with Terence Dooley. Keynote speaker? Prof, now Lord Paul Bew.

by Bronterre O'Brien Thu Oct 11, 2007 17:17

My issue of 'The Economics of Partition' is dated 1992. ( there may, of course, have been an earlier version) 'The Irish Industrial Revolution' is dated 1978.

D. Kelleher, above, makes a good point; Aubane attacks Harris and supports Ahern who put Harris on the Senatorial welfare roll. Harris is rewarded for his anti-republicanism by the leader of Fianna Fail. The Aubane shallow green nationalism should not be mistaken for republicanism.

But Aubane incoherence does not not detract from the empirical validity of Muldowney's piece. And they are not currently so obviously in the service of power and wealth and privilege as Senator Harris and Lord Bew.

by Librarian Thu Oct 11, 2007 18:15

The National Library in Dublin has two editions of "The Economics of Partition" (1972,1992)
and the Harris pamphlet was published in 1977. It's possible the B&ICO influenced
that pamphlet, although I couldn't say for sure.
On 26th and 27th of October, B&ICO/Aubane bigshots Brendan Clifford and Jack Lane
are launching new books. http://www.atholbooks.org/book_launch.php

Why not ask them if they influenced Harris?

by A.G. Ramanujan Thu Oct 11, 2007 22:02

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose first sought help from Russia. They did nothing, so he went to Germany. This was also a disappointment to Bose. Even though Hitler was at war with Britain, he supported Britain's Empire in India and he aspired to emulate in eastern Europe such tyranny over so-called inferior races. Bose is our great hero in India. Like B.R. Ambedkar (great leader of the Dalits or Harijans), these days Bose is more highly regarded by us than even the Mahatma himself. He was prepared to use Japanese help to get the British out, because he knew that free India could easily keep Japan at bay.

by A.G. Ramanujan Thu Oct 11, 2007 22:30

More than any of our other great leaders, the Netaji was first and foremost a socialist.

by Sceptic Thu Oct 11, 2007 22:45

Every element of atrocity justification and terrorist apologia is in Mr. Muldowney’s exposition above. The victims are blackened as much as possible seemingly by republican hearsay - there being no other sources of information available or any other source is dismissed as Castle or loyalist propaganda (propaganda comes from one side only, the clear stream of truth is on our side exclusively I suppose), the perpetrators are actually the noble and oppressed victims, the executions were reasonably quick – in fact he victims were lucky in the circumstances. It was wartime anyway and bad things happen in all wars etc so there is no moral turpitude or war crime involved or bad conscience later. The say so of an IRA CO is enough to damn two young brothers to a terrible and cruel death with no further comment necessary. The bitter closing of ranks and minds even at this remove in years. Along with the constant slated language (Black and Tan terrorists v. the Irish Army). Was it a lawful war with lawful combatants? The authority did not come the Dáil, which had not declared a war and that would have been the democratic authority. There is no room for empathy in this account; no room for decency; no room for scruple of any kind, whether Christian or secular. Just ourselves, our ever so ancient hatreds, our justifications, our precious grievances. There is no reason why one could not justify the Omagh bombing or any other atrocity along these same lines.

This is a hate filled and repellent piece of work.

by Eamonn de Paor Thu Oct 11, 2007 22:58

To JJJ:
If Richard English is satisfied with the Unionist tag (no crime, I presume), and if Terence Dooley is happy to be known as admirer of Big Houses (no crime either), then surely it is no crime to note this in acknowledgement, even if one is unsympathetic to their viewpoint?

by Starkadder Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:57

Why is Muldowney praising the Axis collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose ?
"There is no getting away from the fact that Bose deliberately ignored the moral evil that Nazi Germany represented. He had lived in Germany for much of the 1930s and the early 40s. He must have known something of what was going on.... But he was not sufficiently disturbed by Nazism to reject Hitler's help. Similarly, his alliance with Japan ignored the atrocities that the Japanese had perpetrated against people in the countries they had occupied."
Learn More:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050305012751/http://www.an...m.htm

by P.J. McAree Fri Oct 12, 2007 11:33

Starkadder should take this up with the people of India, where is hardly a town or city without a street, monument or building named after S.C. Bose. Perhaps their main concern is with the atrocities inflicted a bit closer to home, rather than those perpetrated far away in eastern Europe and China? The colonial atrocities and genocides were the template for late-comers like the Nazis and Imperial Japanes, but they are glossed over nowadays - isn't this the problem with our new history? Incidentally, did anyone notice the Indian reaction to the 150th anniversary visit by the group of descendants of colonials killed at Lucknow in the so-called Mutiny? Looks like India needs a bit of Hidden History to help them to understand how lucky they were that people should cross the ocean to improve them and help them!

by Bronterre O'Brien Fri Oct 12, 2007 16:44

The 'two nations' theory appeared in India after the Muslim/Hindu insurrection of 1857.

That Harris is a poseur and charlatan is common knowledge:

http://indymedia.ie/article/83820

To untangle the intertwined, ideological acrobatics of Harris/Clifford is probably impossible. But they both repudiated the writings of Marx on Ireland to assert their own pro-imperial 'marxism'. Megalomaniacally they knew more about 'marxism' than Marx himself. For this foolishness they drew on Hazelkorn and Warren. From this spurious platform they attacked republicanism and became agents of imperialism. The Belfast agreement which denies the right of the Irish people to self-determination and facilitates the incorporation of all of Ireland into the political economy of the Anglo-American empire is completely in accordance with this Bico/Harris stance. Both Harris and the Aubanes support the corrupt Ahern who played a key role in this defeat of the Irish struggle for freedom and democracy. Attacking Harris and his propaganda while supporting Ahern his benefactor shows that confusion reigns in Aubane.
The ruling classes have handsomely rewarded Lord Bew and Senator Harris for their pro-imperial efforts while the Aubanes struggle on pamphleteering. Whatever their motivation, the piece by Muldowney is to be welcomed because in this particular instance, it effectively rebuts the pro-imperial propaganda of the Harris/RTE network.

by Starkadder Fri Oct 12, 2007 17:22

Actually, Hannah Arendt pointed out the link between colonialism & Fascism in the 1950s.
Next you'll be telling us Elvis Presley will be the next big thing!
In the 1970s, the B&ICO advocated Bill Warren's line that imperialism was "progessive" to
toady to their Unionist patrons.
And if the Aubane Historical Society were really interested in attacking imperialism, how come they never mention Imperial Germany's massacre of the Namibians, or the Turks' butchery of the Armenians?
They only mention imperialism when they can use it to indulge in pub bore Brit-bashing.

(And the first anti-semitic organisation to openly voice the Idea of exterminating all the
Jews were the Russian Black Hundreds-who were also anti-British).

by Starkadder Fri Oct 12, 2007 23:21

Actually, Bronterre is right-a two-nations theory was mooted by the likes of Jinnah to argue for the partition of India.

The idea that Ireland was "two-nations" was originally argued by Victorian and Edwardian conservatives like W.F. Monypenny, (best known for his biography of Disraeli) who wrote a book called the "Two Irish Nations" in 1912.
There's a discussion of the "Two-Nations" idea here:
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1972/...h.htm

by Bronterre O'Brien Sat Oct 13, 2007 00:55

My point was that the Muslim/Hindu unity in the 1857 uprising was a real threat to the British empire in India. And it was an integral part of British imperial policy to promote this spurious two-nation nonsense.

http://india_resource.tripod.com/hist-2nation.html

A similar 'two nation' theory in Ireland derives from the same source-British imperial policy.

Those who promoted such notions are clearly agents of imperialism.

That Harris and Clifford are now supporters of Fianna Fail and its corrupt leader Ahern shows that Fianna Fail and what it represents are antithetical to the political and economic interests of the Irish people. Its important to keep this in mind while accepting that the Muldowney fact-based piece refutes, in this instance, the pro-imperial activity of the Harris propaganda network.

by Starkadder Sat Oct 13, 2007 09:26

W.F. Monypenny was certainly an advocate of British Imperialism in Ireland.
As for the Aubane crowd, perhaps they're going after the Anglo-Irish because they percieve them as a
threat to a particular conception (Conservative Catholic Nationalist) of the Irish nation, that they have now adopted. Hence the attacks on people
like Elizabeth Bowen and W.B. Yeats, as well as the Irish Political Review's hostility to the Irish Times.

by A Cynic Sat Oct 13, 2007 09:54

Muldowney seems to painting the Pearsons in the Blackest possible light, the passage about" some poverty stricken cabin dweller or landless labourer with a hungry family, looking down from the mountainside at the Pearsons’ fat cattle, glossy horses and lush crops in rolling acres of the fertile plain." could have been taken straight from a Soviet propanganda pamphlet..

Although Muldowney seems to have always been a nationalist, the embrace by the other ex-BICOers of the Irish nationalism they
spent an enormous amount of time and money fighting is genuinely baffling.

by Barry - 32 csm Sat Oct 13, 2007 12:13

I think we've drifted well away from the central issue of the article . While the aubane people have indeed found their road to damascus in the strangest and most unexplained of circumstances , of a more pressing concern is as to why a national broadcaster seeks to persue the agenda of portraying a national liberation struggle as a sectarian pogrom . This is an agenda in common with other sustained attempts imperialist historians to reinforce the notion that colonialism was benevolent and the struggle for national sovereignty a backward sectarian affair .
Its very clear this Pearson family were active British informers and armed loyalists and therefore their removal was not only legitimate and justified but highly necessary under the circumstances as they presented a very clear , present and armed danger to the lives and welfare of those in the field against colonialism .
The lame , dishonest and often hysterical attempts to argue otherwise are part of an overall agenda , whether its bedwetting regards scullabogue or Peter Harts phantom interviewees the agenda is there was no defence of a republic and national sovereignty , simply sectarian savagery of the very kind Britain was only here to prevent . Rebellion against foreign rule must be deemed a criminal act we should be ashamed of . Such propaganda is incessant either from programmes such as this or the likewise crap spouted on a daily basis from various newspaper scribes .

So , its quite clear this agenda exists . The logical approach then is to question its purpose . Why expend the effort and expense in the first place ?

by John Martin - Irish Political Review Sat Oct 13, 2007 13:21

Can I compliment Barry and Bronterre O’ Brien on a mature approach to politics?

In advancing a particular political cause their approach is to seek alliances and areas of common interest between people and groups so as to maximise political effectiveness on an immediate political issue.

Such an approach reserves the right to disagree vigorously with allies on other issues.

This approach contrasts with the childishness of some of the other posters who prefer to take every opportunity to indulge in disagreements over other matters and attempt to undermine the immediate political objective under discussion even though they have no substantial disagreement with it.

by Doctor Who Sat Oct 13, 2007 18:30

There's a discussion of BICO here, where it won't annoy Mr. Martin.

http://splinteredsunrise.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/the-s...tape/

by Barry Sun Oct 14, 2007 23:13

Oh, I'll tell you a tale of peace and love
Whack fol the diddle o the die do day
Of a land that reigns all lands above
Whack fol the diddle o the die do day
May peace and plenty be her share
Who kept our homes from want and care
Oh, God bless England is our prayer
Whack fol the diddle o the die do day

Now our fathers oft were naughty boys
For pikes and guns are dangerous toys
At Ballinahabwee and at Bunker's hill
We made poor England cry her fill
But old Brittania loves us still

Now, when we were savage, fierce and wild
She came as a mother to her child
Gently raised us from the slime
And kept our hands from hellish crime
And she sent us to heaven in our own good time

Well, now Irish men forget the past
And think of the day that's coming fast
When we shall all be civilized
Neat and clean and well advised
Oh, won't mother England be surprised?

by Pat Muldowney Fri Oct 19, 2007 20:54

In the publicity and announcements of this documentary, including a trailer shown on Tuesday October 16, there was not a hint of the existence of any explanation of the execution of the Protestant Pearson brothers other than the explanation implied in the working title
"Atonement: Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands".

Local people in Offaly, where these events took place, contributed to the programme in good faith but found themselves the target of trick interview questions such as:
“What is your evidence that the Pearsons were spies and informers?”
But the Pearsons were sentenced to death by war-time Court Martial, not for spying and informing, but for attacking and shooting two Irish soldiers in full knowledge that those Irish soldiers were on army duty resisting the Black-and-Tan terror. And this trick question about the Pearsons as spies/informers was asked by the programme makers in full knowledge of this true and fully documented reason for the executions. Furthermore, it was asked in full knowledge of the official RIC corroboration of the truth of the Court Martial charges against the Pearsons, that the Pearsons did indeed attack and shoot two Irish soldiers on duty.

But were the Pearsons in fact spies and informers, in addition to shooting up the IRA road-block? Well, after nearly a hundred years, when all the people involved in those events are long dead and no longer available for cross-examination, it would be difficult to get stronger confirmation of this than William Pearson’s written declaration that “I assisted the Crown Forces on every occasion”, (Pearson Application to Grants Committee).

HIDDEN HISTORY’S HIDDEN AGENDA

This trick question about the Pearsons’ spying/informing was one of many such tricks employed by Hidden History during production, some of them described in the original article above.

Why did Hidden History engage in such trickery? Hidden History’s Hidden Agenda was to conceal or deny or obscure the true reason for the executions in order to advance their own spurious land-grab theory. Furthermore, by springing trick questions they could wrong-foot unsuspecting interviewees and make them look evasive and defensive on camera (“Look at them! There they are, almost a century later and still in denial!”). The intention was to produce an unfavourable contrast with other interviewees who were, after many years of silence, prevailed upon to describe, with great reluctance, and more in sorrow than in anger, a forgotten sectarian atrocity of malevolent and hideous proportions.

But anger is what the Hidden History trickery intended to induce in the programme viewers, the Irish public. That was the Hidden Agenda during production. It was as puerile, as shallow and as dishonest as that.

HIDDEN HISTORY HIDES MULDOWNEY!

When I became aware of the Hidden History production I telephoned Niamh Sammon and followed up with three short letters noting that there were two sides to this story. After mentioning that I was aware of the RTÉ working title
"Atonement: Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands in 1922"
I eventually received a reply to my three letters, followed by an invitation to be interviewed for the programme in July.

By this stage I was fully briefed by earlier interviewees from Offaly. So I had been made aware of key facts about the Pearsons, and of Niamh Sammon’s trick questions. For instance, in addition to the trick questions mentioned in the article above, I was asked “What is your evidence that the Pearsons were spies and informers?” about a dozen times, even though I had never claimed that they were – they were sentenced to death for a much more serious offence than that.

Following the interview I wrote a report of it, including the transparent trickery, and sent it to RTÉ.

On 17/10/2007 I received a telephone call from the Niamh Sammon to tell me that my contribution would not be used. The four letters below constitute the final part of my contact with the programme and with RTÉ. There was a reply to the first letter, saying that both sides would be presented, and that the working titles and publicity did not constitute the programme itself. There was no reply to the other three letters.

1.
Mr Cathal Goan
Director-General
RTÉ
Donnybrook
Dublin
27/09/2007

Dear Mr Goan

RE: Hidden History: Guns and Neighbours [Atonement: Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands]

The description of this programme in RTÉ’s new schedule announcement at
http://www.rte.ie/tv/newseason/thestorystartshere.doc
http://tvsales.rte.ie/autumn/content/factual/hidden-his....html
describes the 1921 execution of the Pearson brothers as an atrocity in furtherance of a land-grab, as follows:

"HIDDEN HISTORY Guns and Neighbours | The Killings at Coolacrease RTÉ One The bloody tale of a bitter land dispute, involving a family of Protestant farmers in County Offaly, which comes to a deadly conclusion during the War of Independence. Featuring interviews with descendants of the men who carried out the killings, this portrait of a forgotten atrocity features substantial newspaper archive research, IRA witness statements and military documents from the period."

The relevant, official documentary evidence from both the Irish and British sides proves beyond doubt that there was no atrocity and no land grab. The documentary makers have this evidence in their possession. Their denial of the evidence proves that their objective is propagandist, not investigative.

Can you confirm that RTÉ intends to broadcast this programme? What is the broadcast date?

Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

2.
Ms Niamh Sammon
Mint Productions
205 Lower Rathmines Road
Dublin 6
Date: 17/10/2007

Dear Ms Sammon

Hidden History documentary October 23 2007:
Pearson Executions 1921
=================================

You telephoned me yesterday to inform me that my contribution to your programme will not be broadcast, but you did not tell me why.

The essential points of my contribution were:

(1) William Pearson’s declaration that he was a collaborator (“I assisted the Crown Forces on every occasion”, April 14 1927, Pearson Application to Grants Committee); and

(2) the official RIC report, confirming the IRA Court Martial report, that the Pearson brothers were shot because they had fired on an Irish Army road-block and wounded two of the soldiers (“the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road, had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused, had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died.” Court of Enquiry, July 2 1921).

These points establish that, in a war provoked by the military suppression of the democratically elected government, the execution of the Pearsons was a legitimate war-time action.

Can you please tell me why my contribution will not be broadcast?

Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

3.
Mr Cathal Goan,
Director-General, RTE,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4
Date: 17/10/2007

Dear Mr Goan
Hidden History documentary October 23 2007:
Pearson Executions 1921
=================================

Many thanks for your letter dated 2 October 2007 which I received by email on 11th and by post on 13th, delayed by UK postal strike.

My primary purpose and ambition was to be proved wrong in my concerns about bias in the Pearsons documentary, and that a breach of the Broadcasting Act could be averted. And failing that, to alert viewers to the bias. The trailer for this programme which followed last night’s Hidden History of De Valera/Churchill was consistent with and reinforced the message (ethnic cleansing/ atonement/ sectarian atrocity/ land-grab) of the earlier publicity and announcements. There has as yet been no mention of an alternative explanation of the executions. Your comments on the prejudiced and unbalanced publicity and announcements do not amount to a justification.

Suppose for the moment that this publicity is by way of provocative hypothesis to be subjected in the actual broadcast to balancing comparison with alternative views. The simplest way to do this would be to include in the broadcast the relevant bits of my interview. That is, (1) William Pearson’s documented acknowledgement that he was a collaborator; and (2) the RIC confirmation of the Irish Court Martial’s reason for the executions – that the Pearsons had shot two Irish soldiers. Earlier interviewees from Offaly did not have this documentation to hand at time of interview, and anyway they were entitled to expect that a well-resourced and fair-minded production would itself gather and present all such relevant (though not readily accessible) evidence.

My contribution will not be in the documentary. So will this evidence be presented at all, and, if so, who will present it? Somebody who is convinced of the opposing view and who will diminish the force of this evidence and declare it irrelevant or unimportant or even false? That is what Niamh Sammon tried to do when she interviewed me, but I believe that I overcame this challenge in debate. I believe that is the reason why my contribution will not now be included.

Contributors such as Alan Stanley have been given a preview of the documentary, but nobody from the opposite side of the argument has been allowed to see it.

I request from you a preview. And I suggest that contributors from Offaly be offered a preview, just like those from the opposing side of the argument. If not, why not?

Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

4.
Mr Kevin Dawson
Factual Programmes Director
RTÉ
18/10/2007

Dear Mr Dawson

From enquiries, other contributors to this programme were involved in many hours and days of discussion, preparation and investigation. Apart from a two-hour interview, my contact with the programme during production consisted of three one-minute phone calls (the first one of which was initiated by me), three one-page letters, and a written report.

I cannot help it if the programme makers found it taxing to have to interact to this extent with someone who disagreed with the working title
"Atonement: Ethnic cleansing in the Midlands"
as a description of those events.

Just one issue remains, and this is a question that only you can answer, so I address it now to you.

Under what circumstances, and for what reason, did you come to publicly present the programme's working title in Clontarf Castle last May as :
'Atonement: Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands' ?

Where did you get the idea that this title was a fair summary of the proposed programme content?

Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

by Bronterre O'Brien Sat Oct 20, 2007 03:12

The HIdden History programmes are imperial propaganda brought to us by our national broadcasting service.
The link is to a piece that discusses how their last programme distorts the relationship between De Valera and Churchill and how they whitewash the anti-Irish bigotry of Churchill-and such anti-Irish bigotry of Churchill and other British leaders has had disastrous consequences.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexaminer/pages/story....1.asp

by General Mulcahy Sat Oct 20, 2007 12:51

I see that Niamh Sammon who censored Pat Muldowney's contribution to the programme (going out next Tuesday) has a puff piece in the Irish Times today. See Muldowney's letter to Sammon above, sent after he was told he was being censored.

Why is the the Irish Times promoting a censor, who is afraid of alternative evidence? Will the IT give equal space to the alternative viewpoint - in a short and easily ignorable letter perhaps.

by Barry - 32 csm Sat Oct 20, 2007 13:31

Local historians in Belfast have for years been outlining the officially sponsored nature of the dreadful massacres which occured in Belfast around the period when Britain carved the island up into the administrational units it regarded as necessary for maintaining control and influence . Fieldmarshall Sir Henry Wilson himself was responsible for organising the forces which unleashed ferocious sectarian terror in the north . The leader of a particularly brutal murder gang in Belfast , District Inspector Nixon , which used guns , knives , bayonets and sledghammers to dispose of its victims was awarded an MBE in 1923 for the services he rendered to the crown in Ireland .

Sadly neither RTEs revisionist bullshitters nor the former BICO-ites in Aubane are remotely interested in this aspect of Irelands hidden history despite the wealth of patently ignored sources and historical resources . Because as far as both are concerned we residents of Irelands most troubled province arent part of the Irish nation , therefore no national atonement is necessary for abandoning ourselves to such atrocities that Churchill must surely have applauded , ensuring Nixon got his MBE for his sterling service .

http://mcmahon.rushlightmagazine.com/

Their respective postions in the 1970s , when BICO pretty much applauded the sectarian massacre of catholic "non nationals" and RTE current affairs under Harris adopted the policy of ignoring the inconvenient "non nationals" and instead promoting the propaganda of the UDA leadership as factual news are a definite issue for atonement in my opinion . Abandondoned in the 1920s , rounded upon and demonised from the 1970s till now . Cast out of the nation itself by their respective lines of propaganda which regard us as every bit as inconvenient to the status quo as Nixon , Churchill and Wilson regarded us .

by Idris of Dungiven Sat Oct 20, 2007 14:44

Is there any chance that the truth of this matter can be brought to a wider audience than just those who read Indymedia?

Thousands more people are going to read that piece of bad journalism and worse history by Niamh Sammon in today's IT than will read the dissection of the case above.

If for no other reason than that historical truth should be preserved, this needs a much wider dissemination.

(and in case anyone is wondering, I do not now, and have never been, a supporter of violent republicanism).

by linker Sun Oct 21, 2007 05:36

A brutal crime just before the end of the War of Independence hints at the darker side of the conflict, writes Niamh Sammon

No doubt June 30th, 1921, began like any other for the Pearson family of Coolacrease, Co Offaly. Life on that day would have revolved around the usual farm chores, but today, there was an extra task at hand. With the sun in the sky, two sons of the family, Richard (24) and Abraham (19), and a friend of theirs, William Stanley, were saving the hay, determined to make the most of the good weather.

What had this family done to deserve such a dreadful retribution? The Pearsons were members of a peaceable, non-political, dissenting Protestant sect known as the Cooneyites, and their attackers were drawn from the local Catholic community.

The Killings at Coolacrease will be broadcast next Tuesday at 10.15pm on RTÉ1

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/newsfeatures/2007/1020....html

by Reel Journalist Sun Oct 21, 2007 17:41

From Sammon's Irish Times article yesterday:
"...And it was more surprising still when an old man made it his business to let our camera crew know "You could get shot for asking those kind of questions."..."
(see http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/newsfeatures/2007/1020....html)
Sammon quotes something that an un-named fourth party allegedly said to an un-named third party.
And this is a "journalist" working for RTE's "Factual" Programmes!!!
So somebody makes a violent threat against crew members employed by Sammon, crew members whose safety she is legally responsible for.
Did she discharge her legal responsibilities and report this violent threat to the Gardai to find out what was going on?
Or - perish the thought! - is this just another sensation-mongering ploy in RTE's Hidden Fantasy?

by Biffo Sun Oct 21, 2007 19:35

Hold on a minute. This is a death threat. And the programme is going out on Tuesday. So even if Niamh is not worried about her own safety, surely she must have a care for the crew member(s) to whom the death threat was made, who must now be in deadly peril? Surely she must go to the police immediately, identify the elderly terrorist, and ensure that the law of the land is upheld?

On the other hand, maybe it's a lie as Reel Journalist suggests. The old men that Niamh and her crew actually came in contact with, in what she implies is a sparsely populated, close-knit area, must be small in number, so the target of the slander can be easily identified by a simple process of elimination.

Does this individual, or the handful of people that she has put in the frame, have any comeback against this outrageous slander?

But let's get Reel. We all know it's just so much hot air. When Dublin 4 talks to itself in the Irish Times, it neither knows nor cares whether mucky Paddy and thick Biddy can hear what it is saying. And let's face it, Paddy and Biddy don't care very much about what Lady Niamh says to Lord Eoghan - not after 1916-21. We can thank what Lady Niamh calls "IRA gangs" for that.

by Reel Journalist Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:24

Yes. We've got democracy now. We don't have to do what we're told, and think what we're told, by our betters. Hidden History propaganda and RTE censorship can't take that away from us.

by JInky Jimmy Johnstone Mon Oct 22, 2007 13:37

If this turns out to be as bad as everyone says, then denounce away. However given that none of us have actually seen it yet, is there not a touch of the Ruth Dudley Edwards types attacking Michael Collins and the Wind That Shakes the Barley about all this? Local historians who disagree with the programme's thesis were interviewed on it were they not? Lets see whats its like.

by Donald Mon Oct 22, 2007 14:11

One historian has been censored - we know that.

by Reel Journalist Mon Oct 22, 2007 14:14

Don't raise your hopes too high. If Muldowney's reports above are right they may have been caught out by the trick questions and misdirection of a D4 smart-alec.

by Pat Muldowney Mon Oct 22, 2007 16:55

A reply has arrived to the fourth letter above (Kevin Dawson Director of Independent Productions, RTE), stating that "Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands" was never a title, sub-title or working title of the Hidden History documentary. He states that it was merely
"a bullet-point for a speaking note, a slug in a power-point presentation".

Here is my reply:

Dear Mr Dawson

Thank you for your reply. The words "ethnic cleansing" appear first in your RTÉ document of May 30 2007. The publicity drive this weekend highlighted ethnic cleansing. See for instance Sarah Caden's Sunday Independent article entitled:
"Speak it in a whisper: Irish ethnic cleansing".

This is just one of the numerous bogus atrocity myths that the RTÉ document, the programme announcements, trailers, working titles, propaganda articles and radio interviews are giving legs to.

The RTÉ description "Ethnic cleansing in the midlands" was attached by you to this programme in a public way in Clontarf Castle on May 30 2007, five months ago. The link between this long-held RTÉ interpretation of the programme and the current pre-broadcast propaganda drive is clear and obvious.

The current atrocity-propaganda drive is comprehensive. I cannot possibly go through all the current bogus atrocity stories now, but here is an example. Shooting in the genitals has been trumpeted. The medical reports prove that this is false. Richard Pearson received superficial wounds to the right groin and left shoulder. This where the torso joins the right leg and left arm, respectively. There were no medically reported injuries to the genitals.

But the central dishonesty of the programme is clearly expressed in the following statement in your letter, of what this documentary is all about:
"whether the incident at its heart resulted from real fears of Loyalist spying or from sectarian/ agrarian tensions, or some mixture of these things."

This is the central piece of misdirection which is at the heart of the programme. I experienced it directly myself when I was interviewed by Niamh Sammon for the documentary in Kinnitty Castle on July 28. I had been alerted to this tactic and gave no quarter to it. And I believe that is the reason why my contribution has been censored.

In fact the Pearsons were NOT sentenced to death for spying. They were sentenced to death by Irish Court Martial for shooting two Irish soldiers on duty, and this is corroborated by the RIC report given to the British Court of Enquiry into the deaths. That is what the "incident" resulted from. There is no mystery, no puzzle as to why they were executed. The authorities on both the Irish and British sides were in agreement on this. Nearly a century later, and with no grounds whatever to doubt the well-documented reasons given by both sides at the time, Hidden History and RTÉ have invented a mystery in order to insert a new and bogus explanation of " sectarian/agrarian tensions".

The programme and its associated propagandists (which, from your Clontarf Castle slide and the above quote from your letter, include RTÉ) pose the red herring of whether or not the Pearsons were spies and informers - a lesser crime. Thus deliberately obscuring and concealing the actual, more serious and officially documented reason for the executions.

RTÉ's responsibility for the current wave of sensationalist myth-making is perfectly obvious. Your Clontarf Castle slide and the above quote from your letter prove this.

Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

by Pat Muldowney Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:26

The email correspondence below ensued from yesterday's RTE Radio One Tubridy show, which, for anyone who has not heard it or recorded it, should be available on-line:
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thetubridyshow/

1.
To: The Tubridy Show, & the Pat Kenny Programme
9.20 a.m. Tuesday 23/10/2007
Hidden History: The Killings at Coolacrease
Further to earlier telephone call, I request the opportunity to present the censored information which was not presented on yesterday's Tubridy show.
Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

2.
To: The Tubridy Show, the Pat Kenny Show, RTE Radio 1
12.31 p.m. 22/10/2007
The Tubridy interview with Hidden History Director Niamh Sammon this morning did not disclose the relevant documentary evidence which proves the opposite case - that the Pearsons were guilty as charged, and their execution was a legitimate act of war and nothing to do with greed for land.

The documented evidence, not in the interview and censored from Tuesday's RTE Hidden History programme, includes:

(1) William Pearson's declaration that he was a collaborator ("I assisted the Crown Forces on every occasion", April 14 1927, Pearson Application to Grants Committee); and

(2) the official RIC report, confirming the IRA Court Martial report, that the Pearson brothers were shot because they had fired on an Irish Army road-block and wounded two of the soldiers ("the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road, had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused, had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died." Court of Enquiry, July 2 1921).

The documented evidence confirms that the other atrocity allegations in the interview are also false. I was interviewed for the Hidden History programme and presented this evidence, but my contribution has been censored by the Hidden History programme makers.
I request that balance be provided by RTE Radio on this contended issue.
Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

3.
To: The Tubridy Show, & the Pat Kenny Programme
9.20 a.m. Tuesday 23/10/2007

Hidden History: The Killings at Coolacrease

I request the opportunity to present the censored information which was not presented on yesterday's Tubridy show.

Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

4.
10 a.m Tuesday 23/10/2007
Dear Mr Muldowney,
Thank you for your emails regarding tonight's Hidden History programme on RTE 1 television.

I have seen a preview of the programme and feel satisfied that it presents a range of differing views on the events at Coolacrease. I am also satisfied that Ryan explored alternative explanations for the Pearson killings in yesterday's interview with Niamh Sammon on RTE Radio 1.
Regards,
Tom Donnelly
Series Producer, The Tubridy Show

5.
10.15 a.m Tuesday 23/10/2007
Dear Mr Donnelly
My email was not about tonight's programme. It was about yesterday's Tubridy Show. The Tubridy Show, which may have been heard by more people than will view tonight's Hidden History, did not mention the documented RIC corroboration of Irish Court Martial, nor William Pearson's signed declaration that he was a Black&Tan collaborator. Furthermore, it repeated without challenge false atrocity stories which are contradicted by the documented evidence. For example, the myth that the Pearsons were shot in "their sexual parts", (to quote the Tubridy Show).
I repeat my request for the opportunity to present a balancing account, on radio, of range equivalent to the Tubridy Show.
Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

by The couch-meister 2000 Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:16

The people in the local area saw it as a land grab - a bad business all round. Why would the locals lie about it?

by Reel Journalist Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:52

Why would the RIC lie to the British Military Court of Enquiry at the time?

by Mairtin - none Tue Oct 23, 2007 13:45

Although hesitating to contribute to this forum, I think I would feel worse if I said nothing.
Certain facts seem apparently to have been completley omitted; who conducted the IRA Court Martial on the fate of the Pearsons? What were their names ? From what authority did they get their right to pass sentence ? Was it sanctioned by IRA leadership ? By the Minister of Defence of the First Dail ? Or was it decided locally ?
Who amongst the Pearsons shot on the IRA party cutting down the tree ? Was it Richard and Abraham Pearson ? Who gave evidence against them ? If it was Abraham and Richard, was the charge read to them ? Or were they just unlucky enough to have been in Coolacrease when the ambush party arrived ?
This to me seems to be the heart of the matter. A justice system, even our own imperfect example has accountability, and records. Even a kangaroo court makes a pretence of formality. The reason this case won't go away is the lack of this solid evidence. In its absence, hearsay and slander can be made to fill the gaps.
If the people shot at Coolacrease weren't those involved in shooting upon the IRA party then this action was a reprisal, and reprisals were something the Black and Tans have been rightly castigated for, as apart from its injustice, it undermined their cause.
Reprisals were something real fascists like the SS carried out in Lidice. It is truly terrifying how contributors above can revel in the murder, judicial or otherwise, of two young men.

by Reel Journalist Tue Oct 23, 2007 14:03

According to the reports above, the RIC independently came to the same conclusion as the Irish war-time Court Martial, and formally gave their evidence to the British Military Court of Enquiry on July 2 1921 a few days after the Pearson executions.
The RIC testified that "the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road, had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused, had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died."

by Violette Szabo Tue Oct 23, 2007 18:16

Can 'Mairtin - none' lay his hands on the records of the French Resistance during the Second World War? I bet they kept them meticulously, while dealing with those who collaborated with the fascists of the SS.

It is strange how he can mention an atrocity carried out against a French town by the Nazi SS, and at the same time wax lyrical about collaborators with the forerunners of the SS, the Black & Tans.

BTW Mairtin, what would you have made of IRA attempts to exercise retribution against William Joyce from Galway, who went on to join Mosley's Blackshirts, before metamorphosing into 'Lard Haw Haw' in Nazi Germany, after being, like the Pearsons, a Black & Tan collaborator in 1920-21?

After that performance, if he was a football team, that would be his score: Mairtin - none.

by dwight Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:23

Having read this thread before broadcast I was suprised the programme was as balanced as it was. Paddy Heaney and Eoghan Harris cancelled each other out in their biases. It could have done with more rigorous research instead soft focus shots of brothers walkng through shaking barley... now what does that remind me of?

by Sigmund Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:59

The programme was pretty unbalanced - but as balanced as it was because of the hoo-hah created by Pat Muldowney and the people in Offaly.

The stuff from Harris about the Pearsons being shot in "their sexual parts" because they were Protestants is a either a Freudian or a historical parody. Possibly a bit of both. Such a rich fantasy life Harris must have about Protestants and their parts.

The story of the Pearsons being shot in their genitals is complete bollocks. But that never stopped Harris before and it won’t stop him now. Expect more in the same vein from the maestro of moronic moralizing next Sunday. I look forward to it in the sizzling SIndo.

by Mairtin Wed Oct 24, 2007 13:19

Unfortunatley the calibre of this debate remains on the the same adolescent level. If one expresses any unease with summary execution based on spurious evidence, the only response appears to be hysterical personal attack.
In relation to William Joyce, as the IRA were allies of Nazi Germany during the war, I imagine William Joyce would have gotten off lightly.

by JInky Jimmy Johnstone Wed Oct 24, 2007 16:14

Watched the programme. Think the Pearsons were Loyalists not ordinary Protestants. However it was not the revisionist beanfeast predicted in the first thread above and the comments of many people here would suggest they would rather unadulterated soft focus propaganda of behalf of the Tan War IRA. The labelling of people as 'revisionist' 'Unionist' etc does not lead to serious discussion and this programme, while obviously biased in favour of the Pearsons was not simply 'D4, west Brit' revisionism. I thought the Offaly IRA historian was given a good whack to make his points.

by Pat Muldowney Wed Oct 24, 2007 16:42

The issue is whether the executions were a legitimate act of war, or whether the two men were killed in order to further a sectarian, agrarian agenda – that is, a land-grab by Catholics. The programme came down heavily on the latter side, and is now being widely used to portray the Irish anti-colonial war as being largely motivated by a desire for ethnic cleansing.

The words “ethnic cleansing” were not used within the programme itself. But anybody who watches it finds these words coming automatically to mind. The programme is artfully designed to make both of these statements true. And just in case there are any slowcoaches in the class, RTÉ itself has been bridging the infinitesimal difference between the two statements for a long time, certainly since the Kevin Dawson slide with the description “Atonement: Ethnic cleansing in the midlands” in Clontarf Castle on May 30, and right through to Ryan Tubridy’s on-air statement on October 21 that land-grabbing is another word for ethnic cleansing.

But there is a great big hole in the middle of the RTÉ Hidden History programme. There was an even bigger one in the Tubridy Show (RTÉ Radio One) coverage of the issue on 21/10/07. The gaping hole in the Hidden History account is the total absence of any mention of the most comprehensive and best-documented investigation of what actually happened, an investigation which Hidden History has deliberately tried to keep hidden.

Given the origins of the programme in Alan Stanley’s book and Eoghan Harris’s Sunday Independent article in 2005, it is not surprising that the programme challenged the validity of the ruling of the Irish Court Martial held in June 1921 which found the Pearsons guilty of initiating an armed attack on an Irish Army unit engaged in road block activity in resistance to the Black and Tan terror aimed at suppressing the democratically elected Irish government; for which the Court passed the death sentence.

But this was not the only Court which met to adjudicate on the fate of the Pearsons. This Hidden History programme supposedly set out to examine forensically what happened on June 30 1921, the day of the executions. So how did it happen that the programme never mentioned – not once – the other Court, which met on July 2 1921 to do exactly the same thing? This is the elephant in the room, the great big gaping hole in the centre of the Hidden History thesis.

After watching the programme, how many people would guess that there had already been a forensic examination of the executions, one which was at least as anti-national and anti-republican as Hidden History, one which was infinitely better placed to find out what exactly happened and why, and one which documented and recorded its proceedings for posterity?

It is not that Hidden History did not know about the British Military Court of Enquiry which met on that day in Crinkle Military Barracks, Birr. When I was interviewed for this documentary in July 2007, I found that they knew everything about it. So why did they not lay bare the findings of this Court? Surely this must be crucial to the story. And it comes, not from the Irish side but the British.

The problem for the Hidden History/Eoghan Harris line was that the British Military Court of Enquiry, operating completely independently, found exactly the same as the Irish Court Martial. The Chief Inspector of the Queen’s County RIC testified to the Court that “the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road, had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused, had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died.” In other words they deliberately and knowingly attacked with firearms members of the Irish Army on military duty engaged in resistance to the Black & Tan fascist suppression of the democratically elected Irish government, in the name and authority of which the Irish soldiers were acting.

There are many other reasons why Hidden History sought to conceal the existence of the Court of Enquiry. The fact is, the evidence presented there completely demolishes the atrocity propaganda of Hidden History, the Tubridy Show, and the recent Hidden History/Eoghan Harris-inspired newspaper publicity about the Pearsons.

For instance, in numerous recitals of the propaganda, and in the dramatized re-construction shown by Hidden History, the women of the Pearson family are placed in the yard where the executions took place and are forced to watch the two men being shot. At the Court of Enquiry, the women themselves testified that they were taken, not to the yard, but to a grove of trees a safe distance from the house. Within the grove it was physically impossible to see inside the enclosed yard where the two men were taken. This is explained in the original article above.

Eoghan Harris salaciously described the gunshot wounds that the two men received: He said they were shot “very deliberately, in the genitals, in their sexual parts, in their sexual organs”. Other versions, again inspired by Hidden History/Eoghan Harris, are practically pornographic and I will not repeat them here. But what the medical evidence given to the Court describes is a range of injuries from the legs to the shoulders, all of them superficial according to the reports, and none to the genitals. According to the evidence, none of the wounds was fatal, and the men died from shock and blood loss. If they had received timely and adequate medical attention it seems their lives could have been saved.

The medical evidence of the Court says that one of the superficial injuries received by one of the men was to the right groin. Anatomically – remember, this is scientific, medical evidence presented to a formally convened Court operating under British law – the right groin is where the right leg joins the torso. There is a modern euphemism in which groin means genitals. But the evidence says right groin, not groin, and this was a Court, dealing forensically with actual fact, not euphemism. Not at all like Hidden History.

There is much more that can be gleaned from the Court of Enquiry. Along with the Irish Court Martial Report, this is where a real investigation of the Pearson case should have started. When I was interviewed by Niamh Sammon for Hidden History I presented the evidence from the British Court of Enquiry. A couple of weeks ago I received a phone call from Niamh Sammon to tell me my interview would not be used. When I asked why I did not receive an answer. Having watched the programme I believe I now know the reason.

by Violette Szabo Wed Oct 24, 2007 17:16

I do apologise to Mairtin for engaging in what he construes as an "adolescent... hysterical personal attack". Can't detect evidence of it myself, but then I am not the sensitive type.

As for William Joyce, the future Lord Haw Haw, the IRA tried to assassinate him for informing. He was 15 at the time. They missed. Got a problem with that, Mairtin - missing, or trying to hit him in the first place? Try to wrap your delicate sensibilities around that one.

I wonder what the French Resistance would have done? Any clues, Mairtin? Maybe, go smoke a Gauloise while you think about it.

by Donal Murphy Wed Oct 24, 2007 17:44

Harris is hardly unbiased. He is Unionist, pro-imperialist. Just last week he was in London helping to launch the latest book by Unionist, Baron Bew. This was held at a think-tank headed by neocon, Dean Godson, which is virtually a branch of the Conservative party. What can you expect from a sewer but sewerage. That Fianna Fail choose to put such an enemy of Irish freedom as Harris in an Seanad reveals much about current political developments
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/83820

by Ninehostages Wed Oct 24, 2007 21:47

As a viewer from Northern Ireland I happened on the Coolacrease programme by accident last night. I found it informative with biased contributions from both sides. This was an incident that I knew nothing of although I was aware of atrocities on both sides.
I have read down through weeks of arcane and rambling contributions!!!! I am amazed that people can spend so much effort on fighting an eighty/ninety year old incident.
I must praise RTE for showing it - It shows a great maturity to air a programme that challenges a nation's myths of its founding heroes.
I do feel that the pro-IRA arguments did feel a bit hollow - at the end of the day a large group of men attacked civilians farming on their own land and shot two unarmed young men in cold blood and burned out the rest of the family - hardly a glorious action against crown forces!!!
But this is with 20/20 hindsight - And even I could be biased?

My perspective - It was wrong and should not have happened but it did and the reasons (right or wrong) only the men at the time know!

BUT grow up if you are a republican and accept that there were and still are very few 'white hatted' good guys on one side and all the others are the bad guys! I am sure that land grabbing was probably a subliminal thought running through a lot of these type of incidents.
Be mature enough and secure enough to accept that humans make mistakes and do terrible deeds.

I found the sight of the derelict house at the end very moving and depressing but curiously peaceful - hey nature takes us all in the end.
Well done RTE - I'll watch again!

by Langstrom Moynihan Wed Oct 24, 2007 23:24

In the Senate today:

Senator David Norris: I also welcome the fact that Gerry Adams has condemned the outrage that took place and indicated that members of the nationalist community should give evidence to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I strongly agree with Senator Harris that this awful, brutal incident took place within context of Republicanism. There is no doubt about that. The chilling words, “Now you know who is in charge here” brought to mind that very remarkable programme, “The Killings at Coolacrease”, for which I pay tribute to RTE. It was broadcast last night and Senator Harris played a prominent and distinguished part in it. He was splendidly forthright, decent and honest. I was very ashamed by some of the things that were said. There was a horrible and nasty, small minded bestial attempt to smear retrospectively the Pearson family and I deplore that.

by Ned Stapleton Thu Oct 25, 2007 07:49

Mr Maturity, 'ninehostages' (above) , says, "I am amazed that people can spend so much effort on fighting an eighty/ninety year old incident."

Then, without blinking an eye, he praises those who spent thousands of Euros dredging up the "eighty/ninety year old incident" from the depths of obscurity:

"I must praise RTE for showing it - It shows a great maturity to air a programme that challenges a nation's myths of its founding heroes."

'Ninehostages' shows that he is not shy of fighting the "eighty/ninety year old incident" himself, despite what he says above: "I do feel that the pro-IRA arguments did feel a bit hollow."

The problem about the "nation's myths" argument, is that these are new TV myths about sectarian land grabbing and anti-Protestantism. The historical record, statements of Irish Protestants at the time, disproves the new mythology. They stated quite openly, including southern unionists, that they had no fears on sectarian grounds. They knew that those killing and being killed on both sides were fighting for a cause. The Pearsons fought for a cause - no shame in that per se. There is very little confusion or real dispute about that. The historical record is there. The Pearsons shot to kill, they were shot.

David Norris, usually a fair minded (but also an honest impressionist) individual, should research the period. He should ponder this, why, if there was sectarian land grabbing going on, was the Sinn Fein Minister for Agriculture a Protestant?

My take on it is that if Pat Muldowney and the people in Offaly had not pointed out the agenda of Niamh Sammon/Eoghan Harris, the programme would have been far more unbalanced than it was.

They deliberately left out part of the story and invented new "parts" - the Harris stuff about the Pearsons being shot "in their sexual parts" is simply new atrocity propaganda. Dublin Castle had a sophisticated machine in 1921. They had characters working in Dublin Castle at least as colourful and imaginative as Eoghan Harris. They would have said it at the time if they thought they could get away with it. They did not. It was not/ is not true. The medical report exists. But not on the Sammon/Harris programme.

Why did the programme ignore documented historical evidence?

Pat Muldowney had the definitive historical evidence. Furthermore, he produced it at his interview with Niamh Sammon of ReelStory Productions. ReelStory Productions (Niamh Sammon - silent partner, Eoghan Harris) could not integrate Muldowney's evidence into their agenda. They censored him and the evidence that upset the myth they want implanted in the public mind.

End of story..... unless of course RTE wants to fulfil its public service remit and bring to its public's attention the material that their bought in programme censored.

by Pat Muldowney Thu Oct 25, 2007 09:49

Letter to Press re Cover-up and Censorship:
===============================
To editor:
Hidden History Cover-up and RTE Censorship

A tidal wave of atrocity stories has resulted from the RTÉ Hidden History programme on the 1921 execution of the Pearson brothers in Co. Offaly. These atrocity stories are bogus. Senator Eoghan Harris’s salacious statement that the two men were shot “very deliberately, in the genitals, in their sexual parts, in their sexual organs” is false, as is the other atrocity propaganda put out by RTÉ.

Within days of the executions a British Court forensically investigated the Pearson executions, taking evidence from police, from eye-witnesses and from medical experts.

The report of the British Military Court of Enquiry in Lieu of Inquest, held on July 2 1921 in Crinkle Military Barracks, Birr, Co. Offaly agrees with the Hidden History version in only one respect – that the two men were shot by the IRA. The British report disproves all of Hidden History’s atrocity propaganda. And it establishes that the Pearsons were guilty of the charge brought against them by the Irish Court Martial the previous month, for which they were sentenced to death. That is, the Pearsons made an armed attack on members of the Irish Army who were on operational duty resisting the Black and Tan terror war against the democratically elected Irish government of the time.

Here is a test for anyone who watched the programme. Do you remember hearing anything about the British Court of Enquiry into the shootings? Is it not strange that a major investigation by an anti-Republican legal body was not mentioned? In fact the programme stated positively: “There was no official investigation into what happened that night”.

As the author of a publication about those events (“The Pearson Executions in Co. Offaly 1921”, Aubane Historical Society, 2007), I was interviewed for two hours on July 28 by Niamh Sammon of Hidden History, and I presented the British evidence. Two weeks before the programme was broadcast Ms Sammon telephoned me to inform me that none of my contribution would be used. Now I know why.

What happened to the Pearsons was a tragedy. But they brought it upon themselves. RTÉ’s cover-up and censorship is a travesty, an abuse of the viewing public, perpetrated deliberately and artfully for a political purpose.

Pat Muldowney

by the great only appear great Thu Oct 25, 2007 11:24

I'd say a lot of ppl are reading this thread - very interesting - the whole country is talking about it - hopefully enquiring minds are also reasonably efficient google scholars

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=hidden+history&meta=
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=hidden+history+pear...meta=

by Bronterre O'Brien Thu Oct 25, 2007 17:38

As Pat Muldowney indicates above, the national broadcaster, RTE, is engaged in propaganda and censorship for a political purpose.

For more than 20 years RTE had an official censorship policy with Eoghan Harris and his Stalinist sect deeply involved. When the Soviet empire collapsed in 1989 Harris was the first rat off the sunken ship.

Harris has, in Seanad Eireann, called for the restoration of the death penalty, for a Gardai shoot-to-kill policy, and, yesterday, for internment without trial of 'suspects'. The authoritarian, anti-democratic thrust is clear.

Freedom of expression and due process are coming under sustained attack from the Fianna Fail-appointed Senator Harris.

Politically Harris is a Unionist and neocon. The ground is being manured for a visit of the welfare queen, Lizzie Saxe-Coburg, and for further subordination of Ireland to Britain.

by Gibbon Thu Oct 25, 2007 19:48

One notable aspect of national memory distortion in the Soviet Union was the technique of airbrushing. As Stalin's paranoid purges systematically eliminated real or imagined rivals from the political and military scene during the 1930s the editors of the succeeding issues of the Soviet Encyclopaedia got to work. They airbrushed disappeared revolutionaries from historical photographs. They withdrew previous editions of the Encyclopaedia from library shelves. They witheld mention of the disappeared from the new issues.

RTE airbrushed Pat Muldowney's vital evidence from its programme. Don't let these manipulators away with it.

by Lexum Thu Oct 25, 2007 21:55

What was Pat Muldowney's vital evidence? Who is Pat Muldowney?

by Texum Thu Oct 25, 2007 23:02

In answer to your two questions, Pat Muldowney is the author of the thread (originally) and his evidence is documentary. He gives one example above.

Next question please.

by IPrice hyke Thu Oct 25, 2007 23:36

Licence increase 35per cent, inflation the same. and wages down 35 par cent

by Pat Muldowney Fri Oct 26, 2007 17:21

The various atrocity allegations can be examined separately, though there is some overlap. The shooting of the two men is described by Eoghan Harris in these terms:
“That’s not an execution. That’s an atrocity. Shooting them, very deliberately, in the genitals, in their sexual parts, in their sexual organs, what it really says, you are the Other. You are an Outsider. We hate you. Go away and die.” (Tubridy Show 22/10/07, Hidden History 23/10/07)

Below are six extracts giving the various accounts, in chronological order, which relate to this particular atrocity allegation, starting with the British description and ending with the RTÉ version.

1.
==
British Military Court of Enquiry held at Crinkle Military Barracks, Birr, Co. Offaly, July 2 1921:

[RICHARD PEARSON]
The Court having assembled pursuant to order, proceed to view the body and take evidence.

1st Witness: Frederick William Woods civilian medical Practitioner of Kinnity Kings County having been duly sworn in states:-

At Kinnitty on the 30th June 1921 I was leaving the dispensary in the village at about 18.55 hours. A civilian informed me that he was sent in to ask me to go out to attend to two of the PEARSON boys who had been shot. I at once proceeded to COOLACREASE house where the PEARSONS live, arriving there about 1930 hours and found RICHARD H PEARSON lying on a mattress in a field at the back of the house. I examined him and found a superficial wound in the left shoulder, a deep wound in the right groin and right buttock, the entrance (?) of the latter being in front. In addition there were wounds in the left lower leg of a superficial nature and about six in the back which were glancing (?) wounds. In my opinion these wounds were all caused by either revolver or rifle bullets, and were fired at close quarters. I dressed the wounds anti-septically and after attending to his brother ABRAHAM PEARSON I returned to KINNITTY at about 20.45 hours. At about 22.40 hours the Police came to my house and asked me to come to COOLACREASE House I found RICHARD H PEARSON dead. In my opinion the cause of death was shock and sudden haemorrhage as a result of gunshot wounds. The fatal wound in my opinion was that on the groin.

Cross-examining by the Court
Q No. 1 Do you not consider a groin wound to be a serious one?
A 1 I do if such a wound implicates the blood vessels.
Q2 Did the groin wound of the deceased implicate the principal blood vessels?
A2 It did not
Q3 Did any of the other wounds implicate any of the principal blood vessels?
A3 None that I saw.
Q4 When you first saw the deceased was he losing much blood?
A4 He had apparently lost a considerable amount of blood.
Q5 In view of this loss of blood was the deceased’s condition precarious?
A5 It was.
Q6 On being called by the Police to examine the deceased for the second time did you find any wounds which you had not previously discovered?
A6 I did find one.
Q7 Was this wound a dangerous one?
A7 It was.
…
FINDING:
The Court finds that the deceased RICHARD HENRY PEARSON, male 24 years of age farmer of COOLACREASE House Kings County died on 30.6.1921 of shock and haemorrhage as a result of gunshot wounds inflicted at COOLACREASE House by armed persons unknown and that these persons are guilty of wilful murder.
Given under our hand this 2nd day of July at BIRR, Kings County.
(Signatures)
…
[ABRAHAM PEARSON]
The Court having assembled pursuant to order, proceed to view the body and take evidence.

1st Witness. Lt. Colonel C.R. Woods R.A.M.C. (retired) in medical charge of CRINKLE BARRACKS, BIRR, having been duly sworn states:-
At 0200 hrs on 1 July 1921 I was called to the MILTARY HOSPITAL, BIRR. I found the deceased lying there suffering from gunshot wounds. His wounds were dressed by me. I examined his wounds and found extensive wounds on left cheek, left shoulder, left thigh and lower third of left leg. In addition there was a wound through the abdomen. The latter wound had an entrance at the front and appeared to have its exit at the lower part of the back, fracturing the lower part of the spinal column. In my opinion death resulted from shock due to gunshot wounds.
(Signed) C.R.Woods Lt. Col. RAMC Retired.
…
FINDING:
The Court finds that the deceased ABRAHAM PRATT PEARSON, male 24 years of age farmer of COOLACREASE House Kings County died on 30.6.1921 of shock and haemorrhage as a result of gunshot wounds inflicted at COOLACREASE House by armed persons unknown and that these persons are guilty of wilful murder.
Given under our hand this 2nd day of July at BIRR, Kings County.
(Signatures)

2.
==
Extract from the account given in the King’s County Chronicle (local Unionist newspaper) on July 7 1921:

A military enquiry, in lieu of inquest, was held at the Military Barracks, Birr, on Sunday morning of last week, at 11 o’clock, to investigate the cause of death. A “Chronicle” reporter was permitted to be present during the taking of medical evidence.

Dr. Frederick W. Woods, M.O., Kinnity, stated that on Thursday night a civilian called to his house and said that his presence was required at Coolacrease House, where two men had been shot. The messenger asked him to go at once, as one of the men was dying. He left immediately on his bicycle, and on arriving, found the two men on a mattress in a field. He first attended Richard Henry, who was in a dying condition, and then attended to the other man, Abraham. He treated the wounds of both men antiseptically. Richard seemed to have bled considerably, having superficial wounds in the left shoulder, right groin and right buttock, in addition to which there were several wounds in the back, one of which had probably penetrated the lung. He also found a wound in the lower left leg, also of a superficial nature. They might have been caused by rifle or revolver bullets, which, in his opinion, were fired at close range, the wounds being saturated with blood. He spent an hour and a half at the house, which he left at about 9.15 p.m. On his way home he met Dr. Morton, who also examined the wounds. Both of the men were then removed to the Military Barracks, where Richard Pearson died of his wounds about two hours after admission, and Abraham on the following morning. In his opinion the cause of death was shock and sudden haemorrhage, caused by gunshot wounds, the fatal shot having been that which entered the right groin.

The medical evidence in connection with the death of Abraham was identical. The remains were moved to the family burial place at Ballacolla (Queen’s County), on Sunday.

3.
==
Extract from Statement of the Dublin Castle Propaganda Department dated July 9 1921:

… The shooting was carried out so that both men should die in agony, both being hit in the stomach and thighs. …

4.
==
The description of the shooting and wounds in Alan Stanley’s 2005 book “I met murder on the way”:

On the first barrage of dumdum rounds to the groin, for pity’s sake, they did what we all would have done. They turned their backs and took the remaining fire to the buttocks first, and then to the back, as they began to fall.

5.
==
The description in the Tubridy Show, 22/10/07:

Niamh Sammon:
The two boys were lined up against the stable wall. And then they were shot in a very bloody, brutal manner. The fatal shots were to the groin. And then they turned away from the fire and they were shot in the buttocks. And they were left then to die, because none of the shots were fatal. So they bled to death. One of the boys, it took him seven hours to die. The other, Abraham, didn’t die for another fourteen hours.
…
Eoghan Harris (clip):
That’s not an execution. That’s an atrocity. Shooting them, very deliberately, in the genitals, in their sexual parts, in their sexual organs, what it really says, you are the Other. You are an Outsider. We hate you. Go away and die.
…
Ryan Tubridy:
It seems to be exceptionally brutal. The fact that they were shot in the groin, and then they spun around in pain and got shot in the backside, if you will. Was that meant? Were they aiming there?
Niamh Sammon:
Again, there are two different versions of this. Some people say that a lot of these men, I mean, a very powerful contribution to the programme, his father was in the Offaly IRA, his father wouldn’t have been there that day, but he said that a lot of these men would never have shot a gun in their lives. They might have only shot a dog in their lives, and others not at all. And they just weren’t used to handling weapons. But it does seem that a lot of them ended up in the groin area. So some people say it was deliberate. It was symbolic. I mean these were Protestants. They were Outsiders.

6.
==
Hidden History programme, 23/10/07:

[Most of the description consists of a filmed dramatisation employing visual and other non-verbal methods of description and suggestion. The verbal description is the one given by Eoghan Harris, quoted in the previous extract, no. 5.]

Eoghan Harris:
That’s not an execution. That’s an atrocity. Shooting them, very deliberately, in the genitals, in their sexual parts, in their sexual organs, what it really says, you are the Other. You are an Outsider. We hate you. Go away and die.

[To be continued.]

Note:
The current Village magazine (Issue 131, November 2007) has an (edited) article by me entitled: Hidden History: The Killings at Coolacrease. The sub-heading reads: “The Hidden History documentary, inspired in part by Eoghan Harris, is a distortion of what actually happened at Coolacrease, when two young Protestants were murdered.” I did not write this sub-heading, and I believe that the Pearsons were executed in a legitimate act of war. They were not murdered. I have asked Village for a correction.

by Limerickman Sat Oct 27, 2007 02:07

I would be grateful if someone could clear up one important point of information. Did Mick Heaney die from his stomach wounds *before* the shooting of the Pearsons?

by Limerickman Sat Oct 27, 2007 02:47

There is another speculative hypothesis - that the IRA execution squad , unenthusiastically carrying out an order from GHQ, shot to wound rather than kill. Any thoughts?

by Turps Sat Oct 27, 2007 05:25

As somebody who had a brief Q & A with John Martin recently, where I queried the attitude of BICO people to Stalin etc,, I'd like to take this opportunity to say I'm mighty impressed by Pat Muldowney's research into the War of Independence episode in Offaly. He has surely refuted the false history in the RTE documentary.

Keep it up, you Aubaners. I hope other media besides Village will pick up on your detailed work in this area.

I was impressed by John Martin's frank replies to some of my unrelated questions too, though I'm still wary of BICO's colourful background.

by Pat Muldowney Sat Oct 27, 2007 11:43

A statement of the shooting and its effects is missing from the list given in the post above. It is located chronologically between items 4 and 5. It is the one given by Eoghan Harris in his Sunday Independent article of 2005. I was aware of this when making the list, but did not have the article with me in the internet cafe and, as far as I can remember, Harris's 2005 version is much the same as the version he gave in the Tubridy Show and in Hidden History.
But for completeness I will get it and post it, just in case there is any suspicion of an RTE-type cover-up and censorship in Indymedia.

by crookstown Sat Oct 27, 2007 13:40

Does some remnant of the Ned Stapleton Cumann still exist within RTE given Harris' apparent influence at the Station to this day?

by Joker Sat Oct 27, 2007 14:52

Just get on with it Pat.

by Ger Hayden Sat Oct 27, 2007 17:18 gph2000 at gmail dot com

As a child in the '70's I remember a discussion taking place between my mother, grandmother, a former employee of the Pearson family (all now deceased) and another neighbour still living. I was about eight at the time, which puts the timing around the then alleged return of Sid Pearson to Coolacrease. From what I recall of the discussion, the Pearsons were shot in of the presence of their mother.

The other thing I recall from growing up was an opinion that they a non aligned hardworking family and were unfortunate victims of Connolly, an over zealous commander from North Offaly (I'm sure that the fact that Connolly was also responsible for some of my Grand-Uncles having to flee the country during the civil war is merely coincidental!).

The first I heard of the Pearsons firing any shots at anyone was about two years ago, from one of Paddy Byrnes sons. I dont recall my grandmother mentioning it perhaps it was out of regard for the then elderly former employee of the Pearsons- because as a firm friend of Tom Donnelly's sister she would certainly have known about it.

In the mid 80's an elderly neighbour also now deceased pointed to a spot in a field behind where I would subsequently build a house as being where two of the Pearsons were shot. This was probably where the were picked up about a quarter of a mile from the ruins of Coolacrease Hse.

There were two very definate misconconceptions I carried from childhood. The first was that six people died that day. Four in Coolacrease - either split two and two between the hayfield and homestead, or all four at the homestead and that William Pearson and Sidney were arrested and shot in the town where the were attending a fair.

The other was the surviving female Pearsons left for Australia immediately after the shooting.

Finally the statement on the program the the demise of the ruins would mark the last physical link to the Pearsons in Cadamstown is not true. That property includes a very substantiual cattle pass under the R421, known to me as the 'Bullock Arch' it is at the bottom of the hill as you approach from the Laois border, and looks to all the world like a bridge over a dry riverbed.

by Pat Muldowney Sun Oct 28, 2007 12:34

Rather than relying on hearsay, or what I think I can remember here and now of Harris's 2005 Sunday Independent article, I will post the exact quote from this article at a later date. So yes, Joker, I'll get on with it.

Transcript of the Tubridy Show interview, RTÉ Radio One, Monday 22/10/2007
========================================================

Ryan Tubridy:
Tomorrow night, I want to tell you about a documentary which will be shown as part of the excellent Hidden History series on RTE One television. This one is called The Killing at Coolacrease, and it’s one which has already ruffled a few feathers. It’s interesting, in Phoenix magazine it has been criticised as “the mother of all revisionist polemics”. People like Eoghan Harris for example have written very passionately about Coolacrease, calling it, quote, an appalling atrocity, unquote, and its effects are still felt today. The Killing at Coolacrease. It’s about the killing of two young Protestant farmers called the Pearsons, at Coolacrease House in Co. Offaly, just days before the end of the War of Independence. Niamh Sammon is the producer and director of this documentary, and has produced some excellent goods for RTE TV before. She has joined us this morning. Niamh, it’s nice to see you again, thanks for coming along. I suppose we had better put it in context, geographically whatever about historically. What is Coolacrease, where is it?

Niamh Sammon:
Coolacrease is a townsland in Offaly. It’s very close to a village called Cadamstown. Some people might know Kinnitty, that’s very close as well. It’s at the foot of the Slieve Bloom mountains. A very rural part of the country, not a lot of good land. And where the Pearsons were living, the farm they had, it was good land, and obviously at the time there was a huge degree of land hunger. And what we found in the documentary, that land played, probably played, a very important part in this whole story.

T:
Well there’s a surprise, land in issue an Irish history and politics! But this was a very important element to it. Because I was watching the programme, a preview of it, last night. And you could see the land map. They had a good stretch of ground, surrounded by smallholdings all around it. And this seemed to be an important element to the story.

S
It’s an important element of the story. And you know, land was so powerful a political tool at the time that it was almost impossible, I suppose, for Sinn Féin, you know, to walk away from the land aspect of this. So you can see in 1919 the way this has become, this is becoming wrapped up into our whole fight for independence. And if you look at the Pearsons' land, as you say, it’s a big block of 340 acres, and it’s surrounded by small uneconomic, unviable holdings.

T:
OK, so let’s just call that Reason 1 as to why there might be problems for the Pearsons living in this area. Problem 2 is their religion. They had this kind of Amish element to them. What were they?

S:
That’s right. I mean, obviously this is a difficult time for, you know, any Protestant, you know, living in rural Ireland at this time. You know, faith was always an important badge of identity, and, you know, the sectarian split along Protestant loyalist and Catholic nationalist lines had been cemented already in the nineteenth century. But for the Pearsons, I mean, they were different again because they were Cooneyites, they were members of this, ahm, low-church, ahm, dissenting Protestant sect As you say, they were very like the Amish. I mean even in dress and appearance, you know, the women would have worn very simple clothes, simple dress. They were very peaceable. They didn’t believe in any, sort of, established churches or any, there was no hierarchy in their religion. So these were very very simple people. I mean they would have been sort of quite isolated even within the established Protestant religions. And then they were isolated again because they had just moved to Coolacrease. I mean they had only been living there since 1911, and, you know, coming into an area, they were outsiders, they had bought this, this very big parcel of land, which many people would have felt in the area should have been divided up amongst local Catholics, because it actually came out of the division of a very very big estate under the 1903 and 1909 Land Acts

T
So they had lots going against them. And the case is now building against them as we speak. Albeit by accident of birth and politics and geography, if you like. And another one would be that one of the daughters appeared to be dating an English soldier. Which is not the sort of thing you do in their circumstances at that time. [Niamh Sammon laughs.] And I’m not being facetious about it, because I don’t want to be, because the story gets quite serious and quite brutal. But it is an unfortunate, of all the men to date.

S
What we were told when we started researching, this was, that one of the daughters was dating a member of the Crown Forces, be it RIC, or British Army. So we obviously we investigated this. And then what we discovered, we went to Australia, and we talked to, you know, the family, the descendants of the Pearsons. And we opened a photograph album and there was a picture of this, this, this woman’s father, has married this girl, called Tilly, And, and we said who is this person. Well she said, this is my father. He was an RIC officer and he was from Offaly. So it’s quite possible that Tilly Pearson was actually seeing her husband at the time. So obviously it puts a much more innocent complexion on the relationship than, you know, she was seeing a British Army officer and therefore she was passing on information to the Crown Forces. It’s quite a leap of the imagination to make that assumption.

T;
But that’s what strikes me about the programme you made, there was a lot of leaping going on. So let’s look further then at the local IRA Brigade, if you like. They seem to the kind of Keystone Cops of, of the IRA in Ireland at that time. I mean the official documents suggest that these guys were kind of eejits and they weren’t up to much now by way of military excellence

S
They weren’t up to a whole lot. I mean if you actually look at, you know, Richard Mulcahy who was the Chief of Staff of the IRA at that time, and he said they were incompetent, they were slovenly, you know, their shooting skills were absolutely dreadful, I mean, really they were appalling. And the War of Independence in Offaly was really, really quiet. What happens is it all starts to, to hot up in 1921, and an organizer came down from Dublin in 1921, and suddenly all these things start to happen.

T
What was his name? He was an interesting man.

S:
His name was Tom Burke and he was a very interesting character. Very, kind of like Ernie O’ Malley, you know, he was a medical student in Dublin, he was bright. And towards the end of the War of Independence, I mean, we talked to one academic Richard English who said there was a sense that, you know, the IRA was looking after its housekeeping before the Truce. All these things were happening. So he’s sent down from Dublin and suddenly, you know, the Offaly IRA are getting it together. They ambushed and killed two RIC officers in May. Remember the Pearsons were killed in June. This was a, this was a big success for them. And then spies are being targeted and they’re being shot at the time as well.

T
So now we have the …

S:
Suspected spies, I should say.

T;
Well, absolutely. But I just thought that Tom Burke’s arrival was like the Cleaner (laughs). He came down to clean up this act, to get it sorted out. Suddenly people start droppin’ like flies all around the place. An extraordinary power and a kind of macabre approach to things. But that’s what they, what they did. Now. Now we have a political hothouse. We have the land, the religion, the political landscape, and we have the military difficulties. And let’s enter the stage, then, the Pearsons’, I suppose, truck with the IRA. How did it come to a head?

S:
Well, it all came to a head, I mean, the Pearsons were suspected as spies. We’ve looked at the evidence, we couldn’t find any evidence that the Pearsons were spies. Then one night, the IRA fell a tree on the Pearsons’ land.

T
Yeah?

S:
Blocking a convoy of Black and Tans coming through. The Pearsons find out about this. And remember this is 1921. At this stage they’re probably terrorised. Because other Protestants have been burnt out of the area, its houses have been burned and so on. So they go down with their shotguns. Ahm. And there are two very different versions of what happened on that night. According to the Pearsons, they told the IRA to get off their land. And they fired, they had shotguns as every farmer in the country would have had at that time, and they fired their guns into the air to scare them off. Now according to the local IRA the Pearsons fired directly at them. And shot at and wounded two of their men. Now, nobody died, ahm, and the, you know, the nationalist side would accept that. But afterwards, ahm, we don’t really know what happened that night, it would be true to say. Afterwards there was a meeting. And at this meeting, Tom Burke, he sent a statement to headquarters afterwards and he says, you know, the Pearsons are planters, he uses this language, they’re suspected of running an underground militia from their home, and they shot at and wounded two of our men, and, you know, because of all these reasons, I have decided that they will be executed and their house burned.

T:
Now. The execution itself, it was exceptionally bloody, it was grisly, it was ugly. And It was just very different, by the sound of it. Tell us, tell us what happened.

S:
It, it was a beautiful June day. And the two boys were Richard who was 24, and Abraham who was 19, were in a hayfield with their friend William Stanley.

T
Yeah.

S;
Now, it is said. – the Pearsons always said they got a warning from a man who was at the IRA meeting, who liked them, because it is said they were very good neighbours and he told them this was going to happen. And, William Stanley believed this warning, the Pearsons weren’t so sure. So William Stanley was the first to see this raiding party, and between 30 and 40 IRA men literally coming over the hill, descending on them. And he shouted to the Pearsons to run for their lives. He ran, and he escaped, he was a very good runner. But the Pearsons, I mean when he looked back he said they were rooted to the spot. And what happened was, they were rounded up, they were brought back to the house which was ransacked, the women were taken out , the house was burnt down. Then they were brought outside to the yard, the two boys were lined up against the stable wall, and then they were shot in a very bloody, brutal manner. The fatal shots were to the groin. And then they turned away from the fire. And they, they, they were shot in the buttocks. And they were left then to die, because none of the shots were fatal. So they bled to death. One of the boys, it took him seven hours to die. The other, Abraham, didn’t die for another 14 hours. And they were nursed by their mother and sisters who witnessed this.

T
They saw it happening.

S:
They saw it happening.

T:
OK. The interesting thing is that nobody, there is no verdict as to who or what actually happened in terms of the innocence or guilt of the Pearsons. But here’s some of the reaction that was given to you in the programme. It’s a kind of mixed reaction.to what happened that day.

[Music, clips]
It was crazy, it was brutal, it was wrong. Even in death a person is entitled to dignity.

People resented I suppose, the way they were shot. But they were executed. That was it.

That’s not an execution. That’s an atrocity. Shooting them, very deliberately, in the genitals, in their sexual parts, in their sexual organs, what it really says, you are the Other. You are an Outsider. We hate you. Go away and die.
…
[End of music, clips]

Of course that’s Eoghan Harris there, ending that element of contribution to your programme. When you went down to research the programme, Niamh, did you find it a fairly straightforward operation to find, you know there’s always local historians, people with a story to tell, people with links to the past, how did that go?

S:
Well, this really surprised me. We went down and we knocked on doors in Offaly and, ah, very few people would talk to us.

T:
Did they know what you were talking about?

S
Everybody knew about this story.

T:
Really?

S:
Everybody knew about this story. Everybody had an opinion about this story. For every person who said the Pearsons got what they deserved, other people would say it was absolutely dreadful, and really this was a land-grab and it shouldn’t have happened. But a lot of the people who would say things like that, they just simply wouldn’t go on camera, as they said we have to live in this area. We couldn’t live in this area if we said these things. I was also told, you know, it was a very strongly Republican area still, you know. So you know there would have still been, ahm, really a sort of lingering sympathy for the men who took part in this. But also you were talking to the descendants of the men who had been involved in the Offaly IRA. So obviously they wanted to protect the reputations of their, you know, their fathers and their uncles. And, you know, most of these people they were, they were good and they were decent people, but they got caught up in a really, ahm, horrific incident, and it was an ugly war.

T:
As one of the guys said in the programme, they had no choice, that’s what they had to do. Take the gun, off you go.

S:
Well, I mean, I don’t know. I mean it’s very difficult to look back on this incident and, you know, obviously it’s 2007, I think our judgements on these things are very different but, ahm, ... to ... to do such a thing, ahm, it seems extraordinary for us now, it was such a brutal act.

T:
But I thing that the fact, it seems to be exceptionally brutal. The fact that they were shot in the groin, and then they spun around in pain and got shot in the backside, if you will. Was that meant? Were they aiming there?

S:
Again, there are two different versions of this. Some people say that a lot of these men, I mean, a very powerful contribution to the programme, his father was in the Offaly IRA, his father wouldn’t have been there that day, but he said that a lot of these men would never have shot a gun in their lives. They might have only shot a dog in their lives,[laughs] and others not at all. And they just weren’t used to handling weapons. But it does seem that a lot of them ended up in the groin area. So some people say it was deliberate. It was symbolic. I mean these were Protestants. They were Outsiders. And a lot of Protestants at this time, remember, they were being run out of the country, they were absolutely terrorized.

T:
It’s funny, because you said land grab, that’s known nowadays as ethnic cleansing isn’t it, I mean, it’s the language of the time.

S:
Well I mean, we’ve obviously, we’ve looked at this, and I don’t think that was something that was being organized from Sinn Féin Headquarters. But at a local level, these things were happening, and there was very little attempt made to control these sort of – ah, this obviously was more than an agrarian outrage but, you know, in other parts of the country, when you think of Dunmanway in West Cork in April 1922, when ten Protestant men were shot over a three day period, a three night period, you know, the oldest man was 82, he was blind, the youngest, there were two sixteen year olds, and after that hundreds of people fled from that area. Now some of them came back, but a lot of people stayed away. So, you know, we have to ask, why, why did these people go, I mean, they were terrorized.

T:
You went to Australia to find the Pearson descendants, obviously, and what’s the mood in the Pearson descendants camp, I mean, do they feel they were run out, do they feel that they were innocents?

S:
Yeah, they, they do, yeah. I mean, you meet these people and they’re very gentle, decent, people, and you really get this sense of confusion, how could this have happened to our family.

T:
Maybe their family were spies and traitors?

S:
Well, I mean, obviously, fine, we’ve looked at the evidence of that and we haven’t found any evidence that they were. And it’s presented, both sides are presented very clearly in the programme and I hope that people will watch it.

T:
But you feel that the evidence comes down firmly on the side of their innocence, and that they were innocent victims of a bloody time in Irish history?

S:
Well, it’s very difficult for there to be any definites you know looking back at something that happened 86 years ago But all I can say is, you research a story very, very carefully. You look at every shard of evidence there is and we couldn’t find any.

T:
Are you surprised by the reaction that you’ve been getting since the programme has been made?

S:
Ahm, yes , I am, I mean I think this is, ah, it’s a side of our, our history that we don’t look at very often., you know, ahm, …

T:
Is it the mother of all revisionist polemics?

S:
Ahm, I wouldn’t say that, but I think it’s another side, ahm, to the War of Independence. You know, the War of Independence is always glorified in our history. You know, obviously, winning our independence is something to be celebrated, but the brutality of a lot of the things that happened at this time has been hidden from us. And it is quite shocking to look back, and to realize that our fathers, and uncles and grandfathers, committed these acts.

T:
And had many acts committed upon them.

S:
And had many acts committed upon them.

T:
By Crown Forces and other people like that.

S:
It was, it was a cruel time. We’ve obviously, we’ve heard about the Black and Tan outrages and everything. That was equally terrible. But we have to look at what was, the, the things that were done, you know, to Protestants in this country.

T:
Horrendous story. Absolutely. … It’s another fine production from you, Niamh, congratulations, I thoroughly enjoyed looking at that and I think everyone who has even a passing interest in history, and Irish history in particular, will enjoy looking at that, well, not enjoy, but be intrigued to watch that story.

by crookstown Sun Oct 28, 2007 20:25

Eoghan Harris seems to enjoy a lot of influence in RTE yet.

In 2001, he and Gerry Gregg made a much-criticised documentary on Des O'Malley which was shown on RTE.

by John Cadden Mon Oct 29, 2007 01:36

I see that Eoghan Harris' piece in the Sindo today, which had "balls" in the headline, mentions the dasdardly bloggers. That's you and me folks.

Thanks Eoghan. Should be worth a few hits.

by Emmanuel Kehoe - Sunday Business Post October 28 2007 Mon Oct 29, 2007 23:01

Very interesting on the 'Cooneyites' in review below of RTE programme - Cooneyites were, by all accounts, a sort of Protestant 'Militant Tendency' back then. Not the sort of analogy that Eoghan Harris might appreciate, given his well known aversion to 'trots'.

Looks like Pat Muldowney was right on the button on that one as well. Censored for being right - sure why else would you censor someone?

Agenda
When History and hearsay collide
by Emmanuel Kehoe
Sunday Business Post October 28th 2007

Context is an essential part of viewing historical events. This is especially true of television documentaries purporting to reveal this or disclose that or tell the truth behind some event or other.

One danger is that an event or series of events can be 'sexed up' or cast in a sensational light - as in the recent two programmes about Nazis in Ireland.

Another is that people with axes to grind influence the making of a programme, or that commentators are chosen to be the right fit. Historians, commentators and filmmakers - even television reviewers - don't always come with clean hands, unsullied by prejudice.

There were deeply unpleasant incidents in the War of Independence. It was, after all, a war. At least, those who took part in it saw it as such. Innocent people were certainly murdered by both sides and it's true there were a number of killings of Protestants or loyalists done in the name of the Republic that could be seen to have their roots in local animosities and score-settling rather than in the grim necessities of guerrilla war.

In Hidden History: The Killings at Coolacrease (RTE 1) Dr Terence Dooley of NUI Maynooth, who has written much on the agrarian element of the Troubles, said, ''The revolutionary period was essentially used as a pretext to run many of these Protestant farmers and landlords out of a local community for locals to take up their lands."

Many might find his use of the word 'essentially' in the context of the national enterprise as a whole somewhat hard to swallow.

In the case of Hidden History, his observations placed the killing of Richard and Abraham Pearson by the Offaly IRA in the context of land hunger. The Pearsons, who had a farm of 200 acres in Co Laois, had bought a 339 acre farm in 1911 from another Protestant family in Co Offaly and this handing on of land from one to another, Dooley said, added a sectarian tinge to the situation.

Basically, the programme seemed to suggest, the Pearsons were surrounded by Catholics living on uneconomic holdings who saw in the Troubles their chance for a landgrab.

But the War of Independence was not driven by ethnic cleansing. It wasn't some kind of Balkan cauldron. There was no mass oppression of ethnic or religious minorities or wholesale atrocities, no Srebrenice.

In the cities, Protestants who dominated the legal and accounting professions were not herded onto cattle boats and expelled. It wasn't Idi Amin's Uganda.

The Killings at Coolacrease was made by experienced documentary maker Niamh Sammon who previously made the Haughey and Fine Gael series for Mint productions, both of which were shown on RTE.

Two nicely timed pieces, one by herself in the Irish Times (A True History of Violence) and another by Sarah Caden in the Sunday Independent (Speak it in a Whisper: Irish Ethnic Cleansing) no doubt increased interest in the film.

Sammon says her own interest was stirred when she read a book by Alan Stanley, the son of William Stanley who was staying with the Pearson family, but who escaped the IRA when they arrived on June 30, in 1921.

William Stanley, as the programme pointed out, was already in trouble with the IRA, though whether it was from simply associating with members of the RIC or actively assisting Crown forces remains a matter of bitter debate in the area, probably even more bitter now things have been stirred up.

The Pearsons, she wrote, were members of a ''peaceable, non-political, dissenting Protestant sect known as the Cooneyites''.

They were likened in the programme to Amish. But were the Pearsons entirely peaceable? Locals accused them of harassing people who used a traditional Mass path over their land, of being spies and informers and perhaps, most outlandishly, of running a local militia.

Finally there was an incident in which Richard Pearson shot at a group of local IRA men cutting down a tree on Pearson's land to block a road.

''The Pearsons are merely doing what they think any law abiding citizen should do and legally they are within their rights to defend their land and as they would see it to protect it against terrorist activity," Professor Richard English of Queens University said. Within their rights maybe, but off their heads.

When the two young men were shot it was alleged they were killed in front of their women relatives and shot in the genitals and the buttocks and left to die. Eoghan Harris said he wanted to see documentary evidence that Pearson had actually wounded an IRA man in the shooting over the tree, but viewers might have liked to see documentary evidence of this very peculiar, brutal method of execution presented here as fact.

Harris wrote about the Coolacrease killings some time ago, and it appears to be one of those isolated incidents out of which he cuts a stick to beat a rather large drum. In the film Harris recalls that ''My father ran a small wholesale grocery business in the 50s and the Cooneyites used to come into him.

''They were terribly quiet, very, very gentle decent people. They were pretty much withdrawn from the world as a whole. I would say they found the whole world outside confusing. They were really husbandry people, you know, the land. Quiet evenings spent in reflection and meditation. These are the kind of people they were."

But were they entirely so? Founded by William Irvine, an evangelising Scot, in 1897 and Edward Cooney the son of a Fermanagh magistrate, the Cooneyites still exist today, some in Ireland, some in the United States and in quite large numbers in Australia where the Pearsons moved after the killings and the burning of their home.

Some today would regard them as a cult and their beliefs in 1921 would have set them apart from their mainstream, churchgoing Protestant neighbours.

Whatever about the Cooneyites today, or when Harris met them, in 1909 they were creating a bit of a stir at their convention in Ballinamallard, Co Fermanagh, so much so that the New York Times reported on August 9 under the heading 'Cooneyites Await the Millennium': ''It is the belief of the sect that the millennium may be ushered in at any moment, and prayer meetings are being held almost continuously. . .

''All the pilgrims are dressed in coarse, plain clothing. The men are unshaven and wear rubber collars. On the heads of the women are straw sailor hats. All are busily engaged in manual labor or domestic duties milking, butter making, cooking, sewing, boot-making, carpentering, etc - every one being assigned to a daily task."

Reporting on the same convention on August 5, 1909 the Fermanagh newspaper, he Impartial Reporter, was rather more hostile.

''Mr Cooney spoke for over two hours. It was not a Gospel address, or one of teaching; but one of condemnation of those who differed from his views. They were all going to hell. He knew all about it . . . He repeated his denunciation of John Knox, Calvin, John Wesley; they had all gone to hell . . .There was the usual torrent of abusive talk, bristling with denunciation and everlasting torment . . . it was a repetition of former harangues . . .

''One of the first points which would strike a listener to Mr Cooney's discourse, was the entire lack of charity and kindness. Mr Cooney is excellent as a spouter of damnation and hell fire, but when it comes to the love of God, and the tenderness of the Saviour for mankind, Mr Cooney appears to know nothing of it."

" 'We are the light,' he [Cooney] proceeded, 'and the condemnation of Fermanagh is, that they won't have the light, but choose the darkness, Methodist darkness, Episcopalian darkness, Plymouth brethren darkness, Salvation Army darkness, Roman Catholic darkness: you have been with the clergy, and supported them here, and you will be with them in hell.

What would you think of the Rev Jesus, MA or BA, with £3 a week with an encouragement to get married with £12 a year or 'Father Jesus' hoping to die a Pope some day, or 'Rev Jesus' with his eye on the Archbishopric of Canterbury, or 'Lieutenant' Jesus hoping to become a Colonel or General some day in the Salvation Army?

'Would to God that this dirty devilish poison crammed into you at the Sunday school, took in through every bone of your body in the clergy house, as the workings and doing of Christianity were crushed out of your lives.' "

Does this suggest that the Pearsons, not so long afterwards, might have been somewhat less benign and pacific than Harris or Sammon makes them out to be and that this, combined with a stiff-necked loyalism and their extensive lands may have made them more noticeable than other loyalist Protestants in the area?

Is it conceivable that a group following Cooney's preaching could, for example, hassle local people over the sensitive issue of a right of way to Mass?

Television histories have an odd habit of leaving the viewer wondering. This film, with its mixture of innuendo and hearsay, claim and counterclaim made me wonder what truth could be got out of the story at all and what wider reference it could have.

A tragedy certainly, but how significant today when young men are so casually and brutally murdered in criminal conspiracies almost every day of the week?

by Ger Hayden Mon Oct 29, 2007 23:15

Now, I am trying to find out more, but my recollection of sympathy for the Pearson family has been echoed by the two other people with handed down stories that I managed to speak to over the weekend.

I'm not sure where that fits the revision theory. From where I see it the revisionists want us to start seeing the Pearsons as victims, but that is what I always was given to believe them to be and now in the process of reopening the incident they have drawn attention to the fact that the Pearsons may indeed have had a case to answer. I must ask one of my fellow Model Electronic Railway Group enthusiasts to open the file on their next visit to Kew!

by Chucky Tue Oct 30, 2007 01:01

Don't fall into their trap, Ger Hayden. Dig deeper.

by Pat Muldowney Tue Oct 30, 2007 13:55

The eerie media quiet over the weekend – the total silence from the familiar opinion-piece pontifications of our new and more dictatorial parish priests, the complete absence of the carefully selected letters of horror and outrage of our new and more fanatical altar-huggers – this eerie quiet tells its own story. All we got was the Cardinal’s – sorry, Senator’s – pathetic whinge about how his grand plan was frustrated by a Hobgib – a “highly organized brigade of green ink bloggers” (Eoghan Harris Column, Sunday Independent, 28/10/2007).

So take a bow, Hobgib. Never forgetting the Indymedia volunteers behind the scenes who make it possible to break through the media conspiracies of silence and propaganda, and who do not get trips to Australia at public expense to report damn-all.

But as one of the Hidden History contributors memorably said: “Even in death a person is entitled to dignity”. So perhaps a moment of dignified silence is called for, to mark the demise of the Harris/Sammon/RTÉ atrocity propaganda. A brief period of calm reflection, a wake if you will. An interlude in the necessary work of teasing out the actual details of the distortion, the lies, the manipulation of public sentiment; the role of the academics who used this travesty to promote their own propagandist version of history; and not least, the responsibility of the government, which gives the national broadcaster the power to do such things.

But first a point from his Sindo column, in which the Senator complained about the “bombarding of TV Executives”, poor things, with dense missives from the Hobgib. You’d think I’d shot the two of them in the groin. Below is one of the three letters I sent to Sammon, and copied to two RTÉ officials and to the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources which is responsible for RTÉ. Immediately after being interviewed by Sammon on July 28, I sent a report to RTÉ, and to the Department of Communications, of the evidence of bias I had detected in the programme during my interview, a report which I will post on this thread later, in the process of unravelling the Hidden History deceit, the complicity of RTÉ, and the ultimate responsibility of the government for the conduct of the national broadcaster.

To complete the bombardment, I sent, along with the interview report, an explanation of what actually happened to the Pearsons, based on documented evidence. This explanation consisted essentially of the article at the start of this thread, but with an extra paragraph. The reason I did not publish this paragraph was because on reading it again before posting, I thought it was a bit cheap, below the belt, unworthy of presentation to the Indymedia community – whatever about RTÉ and the Department of Communications.

But that was before I read the Irish Times articles by Niamh Sammon (20/10/07) and Ann Marie Hourihane (25/10/07). So here is the paragraph censored (by me) from the article at the start of this thread:

“As it happens, the tree [felled for road-block] was at the point on the roadside where the Pearsons’ farm adjoined the farm of J.J. Horan, one of the two Irish soldiers who were arrested and jailed the day after they intervened to stop the Pearsons threatening with guns the terrified little family groups of church-goers as they wended their way down from Slieve Bloom through the narrow, tree-growing strip of land which was the mass path. There is a theory that it was the Pearsons who informed on J.J. Horan and his comrade. I firmly believe that this theory, widely held in the local area, is completely mistaken. This is not a criticism of the locals, you understand. I mean, they are just simple Bog Folk from Offaly, you know, and Offaly is, like, so-o not Donnybrook. I passed through it once, and do you know, the Irish Times arrives there a day late! Imagine! Actually, it was, like, a local planter clan of Slieve Bloom informer elves called the Sleeveens that did the informing. Unfortunately I have not yet managed to get hold of the Sleeveens’, like, moubile phoune records or something. Or the, you know, security camera tapes from Kinnitty RIC Station. Whatever. I mean, ahm, I have no actual, ahm, documentary evidence just yet to prove the treachery of those evil Sleeveen informer elves and finally lift the finger of suspicion from the Pearsons.”

Documentary Evidence of Bombardment of TV Executives by Hobgib:
=================================================

Letter to Sammon, RTÉ and the Department of Communications:

Ms Niamh Sammon
Reel Story Productions
167 Captains Road
Dublin 12

Date: 07/07/2007

Dear Ms Sammon
“Atonement: Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands”
Proposed Hidden History documentary: Pearson Executions 1921
===============================================
You have not replied to, or acknowledged, my letter of 18/06/2007 (copy enclosed), handed to you by Steve Carson of Mint Productions, which describes two opposite and conflicting understandings of the 1921 executions of the Pearson brothers in Co. Offaly. That is, sectarian murder and ethnic cleansing on the one hand, or legitimate act of war on the other.

The title of your proposed Hidden History documentary, “Atonement: Ethnic Cleansing in the Midlands”, implies that your programme espouses the ethnic cleansing view. If so, you disregard the well-documented facts of this case; thereby inflicting a grave injustice on the families of the people in the Co. Offaly area who suffered imprisonment, injury and death because of the actions of the Pearsons at that time, and who may now be defamed by an inaccurate, biased and unhistorical interpretation to be broadcast with the full authority and prestige of RTÉ.

It further implies that you have broken the guarantees of objectivity and even-handedness that you gave to the Co. Offaly people who helped you to make this programme and who trusted your guarantees. These are a generous and forgiving people who, in the interests of harmony and community relations, were content when the war was over to allow the actions of the Pearsons to lapse into oblivion as a mere historical footnote; to let bygones be bygones even though the Pearsons were active participants in the Black-and-Tan terror. Undoubtedly any such breach of trust on your part will reflect on the reputation of RTÉ. And giving wings to a particularly toxic and bogus interpretation of the execution of the Pearsons will undoubtedly rebound on local community relations. Who is going to make Atonement for that?

Section 18 of the Broadcasting Act, under which RTÉ operates, obliges programme makers involved in programmes dealing with matters of public debate to be objective, impartial and fair to all interests concerned. Your failure to respond in a timely manner to the letter I sent to you, or to act on its contents, suggests that a historical fraud, presented in sensationalist fashion, will be foisted on the public in the name of RTÉ.

Please respond at your earliest convenience, stating whether you intend to present both sides of the debate in an even-handed manner, giving each substantive position equal access to the airwaves, and with each position being allowed to respond to all broadcast allegations in open, fair and respectful manner. Please also give me the names of the historical or other advisors for this proposed film, and the name(s) of the scriptwriter(s).

Yours sincerely
Pat Muldowney

P.S.
For the record, Steve Carson, who passed on my letter of 18/6/07 to you, was at pains to deny any connection between Mint Productions and your Hidden History film on the Pearsons.

by John Martin - Irish Political Review Tue Oct 30, 2007 15:18

The other target of Harris’s ire in the Sindo was the Protestants who keep their heads down. And it was very noticeable that there were no local Protestant contributors to the programme (with the possible exception of Alan Stanley whom, I understand, is from the neighbouring county of Laois).

During the war of independence some Protestants contributed to the national struggle. Some, particularly in the Bandon area, sided with the Crown forces. Perhaps the majority did what Harris suggested they shouldn’t have done and kept their heads down. Many of these would had a sentimental attachment to Britain, but were equally aware that the 1918 election demonstrated that the country had gone Republican. After the war of independence many of these settled down and contributed to the development of the fledgling Irish State.

But now Harris resents the fact that these people are not interested in submitting to his political agenda and fighting again old battles that were lost.

It is likely that the local Protestants saw the Pearson brothers as victims of a war, a war which they did not want to get involved with and which they didn’t want to re-live more than 86 years later.

It was interesting that the programme suggested that the Pearson brothers were “left for dead”. But they were not alone. Their brother David, mother and sisters were left on the scene. Hours past before a doctor arrived. And the doctor seems to have thought that the wounds were quite superficial. He didn’t seek extra medical assistance. The Pearson’s burning house must have been seen for miles. Also, William Stanley, who escaped was unable to find help (assuming he sought it).

I don’t have an explanation for what happened immediately after the botched execution of the Pearsons. It seems that the Pearsons were isolated from both the local Protestant and Catholic communities. Certainly, the documentary had no interest in shedding light on this. It had a different agenda.

by Limerickman Tue Oct 30, 2007 20:11

The Hart/Harris modus operandi is extremely difficult to counter. First of all you concoct a sectarian atrocity spiel from the 1919-1922 period which requires only very flimsy evidence to give it a figleaf of plausibility. Then you hammer away as if it is all hard fact. Then you put the burden of proof on the doubters - 'Prove that this did not happen' - difficult in view of the time lapse and the paucity of records. And finally, their most effective weapon, you scream 'sectarian denialist/apologist' at anyone who tries to question their platform.
Difficult to counter but you, Pat Muldowney , have done a superlative job - E.H.'s miffedness is proof positive of that.

by middle of the road Tue Oct 30, 2007 21:51

When is a law abiding citizen an informer.
by Middle of the Road Wed Oct 24, 2007 22:23
I am sure that I will receive much vitriol and abuse in relation to my above statement. I fully believe that it is absolute rubbish to describe the unfortunate Pearson family as collaborators and informants.

Like it or not the Forces representing The Crown were the legitimate forces of law and order in Ireland at the time. If William Pearson observed or believed he had information on " the freedom fighter " he was duty bound to inform the relevant authorities. I think if you accept the logic in this it is clear who the paramilitaries were in this sorry episode. Also this kind of outrage was not an isolated incident. Every county in Ireland has it's own story of the property and livestock of landowners being attacked and destroyed, why ? because these people had a different opinion regarding the politics and religion of our land.

This is not revisionist opinion just plain fact.

by One side of the road Tue Oct 30, 2007 23:25

(If you hang around too long in the middle of the road you are likely to get knocked down.)

Those who thought they were supporting the forces of law and order in supporting the Black & Tans were a very small and also very committed minority. They were opposing the vast majority and attempting to put down the democratic wishes of the majority through reprisals, executions, internment and torture. They knew they were supporting one of two systems of power in Ireland - an old order based on coercion in preference to a new government based on consent.

British propaganda attempted to portray armed opposition to British terror as a "murder gang", when most of the murdering was being done by British forces.

The Pearsons chose a side believing their side to be right. They took up arms on that basis.

Emmanuael Keogh in the Sunday Business Post (above) quotes unionist historian Richard English on the Pearson's view of "terrorists". They became combatants on that basis. Another way of looking at it, as Keogh points out, is that they were simply off their heads. Their cult-like beliefs as part of a religious sect with extremely negative attitudes toward other religious denominations, another Keogh observation, indicates that they lacked a basic necessity for survival, common sense. When the Nazis were defeated at the end of the Second World War it became prudent for followers of Hitler to keep their heads down. The Pearson were in the same position as the Irish attempted to gain control of their own country. They stuck to their guns and took the consequences.

The Pearsons resisted against overwhelming evidence that the days of lording it over the Irish unbelievers were over. That is their tragedy. No more. No less. Most Protestants in the South were reconciled to or supported democracy. The Pearsons were not and did not. As emblems of Protestant victimisation they fall flat on Eoghan Harris's face.

by middle of the road Wed Oct 31, 2007 20:26

Believe as you wish, any force or organisation that resorts to killing civilians with a view to imposing their will on others are in my view terrorists. No matter if it is Northern Ireland, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe or Ireland at the turn of last century.

It is a clear line, and even though I do not have a problem with the nationalist beliefs, there is a civilised way of going about things. Yes there were outrages on the Crown forces side ie Black & Tans, but two wrongs do not make a right. We could have still obtained our independence without the bloodshed and unrestrained vandalism, 95 houses burned in north Munster between the years of 1919 to 1921, the majority because the owners were of a particular persuasion.

Regards.

by Paul O'Hara Wed Oct 31, 2007 23:39

"…any force or organisation that resorts to killing civilians with a view to imposing their will on others are in my view terrorists. No matter if it is Northern Ireland, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe or Ireland at the turn of last century."
Very well. Every conflict that has ever been fought out in the history of the human race has involved on either side some force or organisation that has resorted to killing civilians with a view to imposing their will on others. All of these on every side in every conflict have been terrorists and must be condemned by all right thinking people.
Just where does that get us?
Surely we have to separate the ends from the means, accept that that the means are always unpleasant and consider the ends. British Imperialism governed Ireland by terrorist means with no democratic mandate. Irish revolutionaries opposed British terrorism with a terror of their own that was all the more effective for being grounded in the democratic mandate given to Sinn Féin in the 1918 election.
Democracy is a terror to those who oppose it.
The Pearsons opposed the democratically expressed will of the Irish People and fell victim to the terror that democracy visits on those who oppose it.
Democracy is terrible. History is terrible. Humanity is terrible.
But humanity is all we are. History is all we have done. And democracy is all we have to work with.
It was Phil Sheridan I think who said War is Hell and said it while raising Hell in Georgia. And it is, always and everywhere. But if we are to counter oppression and champion freedom then we have to spend some time in hell.
Or lie passive quaking pacifists as the Black and Tans of this world build their idea of a paradise?

by Sceptic Thu Nov 01, 2007 00:25

“THE PEARSONS OPPOSED THE DEMOCRATICALLY EXPRESSED WILL OF THE IRISH PEOPLE AND FELL VICTIM TO THE TERROR THAT DEMOCRACY VISITS ON THOSE WHO OPPOSE IT.”

Democracy is civilised – it is not terrible. It is terrorism and murder and coercion that is terrible. Getting lessons on the defence on democracy from republicans of your stripe is interesting. Down through the decades the IRA have had little difficulty in attacking this democratic state when it suited them eg. the killing of diplomats, Gardai, army, elected politicians apart from all the ordinary crime to finance it. And until after it went on ceasefire in the north the majority of the nationalist community up there opposed its armed campaign. Where was the respect for democracy in all of that? Furthermore the Sinn Fein success at the 1918 election was not a mandate for Soloheadbeg and the wholesale slaughter that followed it. You use the label Black and Tans liberally though the regular security forces which were targeted were the locally recruited RIC and the regular British forces. It would be more manly to admit that atrocities happened on your side as well as on the British side and not try to justify your own one. “Great Hatred, Little Room” as Yeats wrote and you personify it in your callousness and hardness.

by Bronterre O'Brien Thu Nov 01, 2007 02:28

George Washington was a terrorist who rebelled against the lawfully constituted authority. America would have eventually have gotten its independence from Britain by peaceful means. Many, many thousands who were loyal to Britain were forced to flee to Canada and had their property confiscated. Thomas Paine, a propagandist for the George Washington terrorists, received the farm of one of the loyalists. And it is no accident that this Paine fellow was also a member of an Irish terrorist group, the Society of United Irishmen. Shamefully, every July 4th the United States (as its now called) celebrates this illegal terrorist rebellion. Hopefully, Senator Eoghan Harris or Ms. Ruth Dudley Edwards will write to George Bush and ask that he cancel these outrageous celebrations of a terroristic, unlawful event.

by John Martin - Irish Political Review Thu Nov 01, 2007 20:11

Brendan Behan said that the “terrorist” is the person with the small bomb. And it seems that it could equally be said that those who are obliged to feel guilty about their past are the small countries.

The USA doesn’t agonise over moral dilemmas in its war of independence. The French don’t have any doubts about their revolution and rightly dismiss any criticism from the English re: the Vendee rebellion as reactionary.

The English, of all nations, don’t have the slightest doubt about the righteousness of their wars. Gordon Brown recently declared that the British had nothing to be ashamed about their imperialist wars. They were for the good of the world.

The “Glorious Revolution” was nothing if not glorious. The slaughter in Ireland in the 1640s by Cromwell was in the name of progress against a barbaric race. Cromwell’s statue stands proudly in front of the British houses of parliament.

A few years ago Cromwell was voted one of the top ten Britons in a television poll. The greatest Briton in the poll was Winston Churchill. That nice Mo Mowlom said that Churchill’s decision to send the Black and Tans to Ireland was to restore democracy.

And yet we Irish are obliged to feel guilty.

There is no doubt that the Hidden History programme was a damp squib. It was forced to moderate its initial position. The ethnic cleansing position had to be abandoned thanks to Pat Muldowney and the historians Paddy Heaney, Phillip McConway and others. As Pat Muldowney has pointed out the ethnic cleansing allegation could not be stated in the documentary but was implied and given credence by newspaper articles and a radio interview about the documentary.

The modus operandi of the revisionist project is to make an extreme position part of the normal national discourse. A previous revisionist intervention was made by Peter Hart when he suggested that the Crown forces at the Kilmichael ambush had not made a false surrender and therefore had been murdered in cold blood. When it emerged that the evidence was based on interviews with survivors who were dead at the time the interviews took place, one historian declared that the debate had become a bit sterile. We must move on.

The Coolacrease documentary gave the appearance of balance. But the debate was on issues that there was absolutely no factual basis. No doubt the programme makers will claim that it gave both sides of the story but why were the issues raised in the documentary the subject of debate?

If there was a land grab why didn’t the programme examine who bought the land after the Pearsons left? Debate would have been superfluous if it had given such information.

Why were we having a debate about shooting in the genitals when the inquest from the Crown forces made no such finding?

Why were we having a debate about whether the IRA volunteer was shot by the Pearsons or not, when descendants of the volunteer were still alive and could be interviewed? The person in question died 5 years after the shooting. Is there evidence that his death had a cause other than the shooting?

But the real debate is why is the State broadcasting service sponsoring this anti national view of the war of independence? And why is it left to private individuals and small political groups to defend from attack the values upon which this State was founded?

by antiviolence Thu Nov 01, 2007 21:04

I too believe that Ireland's independence could have been achieved by peaceful means. The 1916-1921 period is, clearly, one of the saddest moments in Irish history. The violence on both sides was quite unnecessary. One of the worst elements of this was instilling the belief in young impressionable adults that full independence could be achieved by shooting one's way to the negotiating table with the British. The IRA not the British began the shooting war in 1916 and again in 1919. 1916 was a ridiculous waste of human life and yes so too was the First World War. Michael Collins was arguably one of the most cynical as well as most able of his generation. Sadly, he blackened the fine work he was doing as minister for finance in the underground government by engaging in an extremely dirty war targeting law abiding policemen in 1919 and gunning them down in broad daylight. It was Collins's cynical killing campaign that brought the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries to Ireland and this was probably his intention. Terrorise the population and provoke the government to reply with brutality. He possibly didn't believe how successful he would be as the tans and auxies often behaved despicably during the short time they spent here. Incidentally, it always amuses me when people speak of the tan war when this body of men only arrived in March 1920, over a year into the IRA's terror campaign. This is also something that Ken Loach fails to address in his film. IRA terrorism against and intimidation of RIC men in 1919 brought us the tans and auxies in 1920.

by Sceptic Thu Nov 01, 2007 21:04

Washington was not a terrorist. He led uniformed armies openly, observed the conventions of war and treated POWs remarkably well by the standards of the times. Also unlike the IRA he did try to subvert against a native and democratic American Government, when established. I'd be quite happy to debate George Washington and the American War of Independence but this has been introduced in this instance to muddy the waters by way of an invalid comparison fallacy. Were there atrocities committed by the colonial rebels during the American War of Independence? Yes, some and those who committed them are morally responsible for them.
Does that excuse Irish republicanism its atrocities in 1922/3? Not at
all - the moral responsibility rests with those who committed those. It is as well to acknowledge hate crimes and murderous cruelty by your own side but it takes bigger men than we have seen on this thread so far. What we have seen instead are poorly founded attempts to make the killing of the Pearson brothers an act of “democracy”. Interesting all the same how defenders of republican atrocity down the decades since 1922 have suddenly got such a tender regard for democracy. It was those who fought the IRA in its various guises in this state in the decades since independence who were the true defenders of democracy. It was the IRA that was "anti national".

by Barry - 32 csm Thu Nov 01, 2007 21:07

"Democracy is civilised – it is not terrible."

indeed , the failure to respect democracy in Ireland is a terrible crime committed by the British against the Irish nation . Thats why democracy in Ireland is continually undermined by black and tans , regular crown forces , westminster decrees , threats of immediate and terrible war , partition and loyalist vetoes over the practice of a national democracy .

"It is terrorism and murder and coercion that is terrible."

Indeed it is , especially as a traditional British response to the practice of national democracy in Ireland .

" Getting lessons on the defence on democracy from republicans of your stripe is interesting."

but a waste of time by virtue of your disdain for the notion of an Irish national democracy

"Down through the decades the IRA have had little difficulty in attacking this democratic state when it suited them eg. the killing of diplomats, Gardai, army, elected politicians apart from all the ordinary crime to finance it."

The diplomat ( singular) your referring to was the spy chief Ewart Biggs , executed in reprisal for his organisations repeated massacres of civilians on the streets of Dublin , Dundalk and Monaghan using no warning car bombs . He was also a representative of a country not only bombing Irish cities but occupying its national territory and violating its national sovereignty . In light of this his presence in Dublin was not only highly inappropriate but highly dangerous for him personally in light of the situation already outlined .

"And until after it went on ceasefire in the north the majority of the nationalist community up there opposed its armed campaign. Where was the respect for democracy in all of that? Furthermore the Sinn Fein success at the 1918 election was not a mandate for Soloheadbeg and the wholesale slaughter that followed it."

It was a mandate in opposition to the occupation of Ireland by Britain and the terrorism used by Britain to suppress national democracy . The defence of that democracy was and is perfectly legitimate . The attacks by Britain on Irish democracy fully illegitimate . You seem to be suggesting in order for resistance to foreign occupation to live up to your democratic expectations the occupying power must first put in place a specific referendum or plebiscite as to whether or not its permissable to shoot at occupying forces . Ridiculous like the rest of your pro British ballsology .

"You use the label Black and Tans liberally though the regular security forces which were targeted were the locally recruited RIC and the regular British forces. "

all of whom ,as Tom Barry pointed out in his celebrated account of the period, were merely scum in a different uniform with the same job as the Black and Tans and who behaved no differently .

"It would be more manly to admit that atrocities happened on your side as well as on the British side and not try to justify your own one. “Great Hatred, Little Room” as Yeats wrote and you personify it in your callousness and hardness. "

given the complete and total lack of cochones displayed in your lick spittle defence of colonialism and imperialism and your denunciations of Irishmen in possession of both dignity and cochones , youve quite the nerve lecturing anyone on their manliness .

by Sceptic Fri Nov 02, 2007 00:23

You don’t seem to realize that it is the repulsion at the violence and vicious extremism of republicans that have more than anything else put Irish society at large off anything to do with a United Ireland agenda. Moreover the Anglophobia of the republican movement is not shared by Irish society. The usual ad hominem tendencies of the extreme republicanism best exemplified by D Morrison are demonstrated in your post especially labels of pro Brit sentiment and loyalties on the part of those who nationalism is of a less violent variety than your own. By this reckoning John Hume is a “stoop”, Garret Fitzgerald a “blueshirt”, Cardinal Daly and Fr. Denis Faul were “anti national”, the Redmonites something else in their time, the Pope was “duped” into condemning your lots violence at Drogheda in 1979 and so on. That as well as smearing the victims – there is not a shred of truth about Ewart Biggs and the Dublin bombings. In any case who set the pace in bombings in London, Birmingham, Belfast, Le Mon House, Claudy and all the rest with great loss of innocent life? The authors of those atrocities are hardly in a position to assume great indignation and finger pointing postures over the Dublin bombings. Particularly since 1923 the various IRAs have been a very anti democratic elitist tendency and it is necessary for decent people to condemn them if only as an act of political hygiene as Barry Desmond used to put it.

by Harry - The Well, Well, Well foundation Fri Nov 02, 2007 12:59

In Offaly, there is more freedom for the opposing view than in the new Irish Times office block or in RTE, in the backwoods of Dublin Four - though the Irish Times published a letter criticising RTE today. A bone to the bog people, that should satisfy them.

Click on stories from Offaly Independent and Tullamore Tribune to read them (with your mouse).

Criticism of RTE and of Irish Times bias

Not so much a 'hidden' as an ignored history says Paddy Heaney

by MIcheal Scully Sun Nov 04, 2007 00:58

The following is an article I have sent to all of the local papers in the midlands. I was very suprised that none of them took the time to publish it. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it would seem that thhere are those out there who are happy enough to see the actual truth of such and important event in our local history in the midlands to become 'Hidden History' and for myth, rumour and lies to prevail?

"I am incensed and the recent program which was put on air by RTE. That this program of such importance and aired during prime time television was in its manner knowingly misleading. It is the approach in which the program was produced that I find to be of greatest offence to the people of the midlands.

I believe that much of the debate which followed this program could have easily have been averted had this program been equal to both sides and had given to viewers all the documents and accounts of those who could have added to the truth, for better or worse, of this sad event.

We can safely say that the program earned its title of Hidden History. The viewers were lead into a false history that, as the program progressed, slipped from fair balancing of historical information, as well as hearsay, into a launch pad of idle speculation, one-sidedness and open attacks against the very people who fought to free this country from such overt sectarianism, least we for get the penal laws.

I was surprised and disappointed by the producer, Niamh Sammon, who had earned a strong reputation for her previous work to have suppressed key interviews and sections of documents which she had before the program was aired. I speak of course of an entire interview with Dr. Pat Muldowney, an avid academic from the University of Ulster. Why was it that not even on utterance of his was included and yet others were allowed to make wild, and completely unsubstantiated, claims? There was no mention of a letter sent to the producer by Dr. Muldowney as early as June (that’s four months ago), which to anyone charged with producing a program that was supposed to be both fair and impartial should have set off alarm bells, or at least a careful reassessment of the facts.

I would like to point out the following points which were either not included or explored sufficiently in the program:

In a statement given by William Pearson, April, 1927 to the Southern Irish Loyalist Relief Association, Irish Grants Committee File, in the Key Archives, London, and from the relative safety of Suffolk, England and which according to the document would “be treated as confidential”, and presumably never know to Irish people he claimed the following. “In the end of June 1921 after constant threatening, I had a private warning”. This would seem to suggest that they had time to prepare and arm themselves, or leave. He also claimed that he was not there when the event happened but could still claim that there were “about 500 men engaged in the outrage” He also claims that after his sons were shot that “the Military came out an looked after the livestock on the farm.” And yet we lead to believe that there was no strong connection between this family and the local Crown Forces. Perhaps one of these men was the one who would later marry Tilly Pearson in 1925. Even Ruth, her daughter, suggests in the program that they “would have known one another for quiet a while…. They were courting at the time.”

That one possible cause of the tensions in the area was over a “mass path”. It is suggested that this was used as a route for I.R.A members travelling between areas, as it may well have been. Again hidden from this particular version of history is the obvious fact that for Catholics this would not merely be just a shortcut but an important religious space, possibly leading to an earlier mass rock, or to and from the church. Like it or not for any protestant to try and deny this route of passage, at any time, would bring about a stark reminder of the savagery and contempt which had been inflicted in times gone by.

Further to this is the suggestion that the Pearsons offered fuel to the crown forces. Surely this cumulatively and combined with the presence of Willaim Stanley (alias Jimmy Bradley) a relative of the Pearsons, who had been warned out of his own home in Queens County (Laois) of alleged collaboration with the enemy and was living with them must have been seen, even by the Pearsons, that such actions like these, even if only rumour, could only lead to greater evidences for the local I.R.A unit to move with force against them.

From this documentary we were lead to believe that it was mostly protestant families which were targeted. The truth is that all members of any of the crown forces, and their collaborators, were legitimate targets. In fact, seven R.I.C men were killed in Offaly (formerly Kings County ) during1920 -1921. Four were killed in Westmeath and only one was killed in Laois (formerly Queens County ).

In the program we are told that there was no official enquiry and briefly shown the left hand side of a document with suggested motives for the killings. The following is the full text of that section of the Military Court of Inquiry in lieu of an inquest:

“Possible motives:
1. The acquisition of Pearson’s land which is very rich. In support of this, Pearson was driving through KINNITY in a Police lorry on the morning after his sons murder when Father Houlahan, a local Priest, asked him what he was going to do with his farm now.

2. Revenge by Sinn Fein. It is said by the C.I Queens County that the two Pearsons boys a few days had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road. Had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Shinners, one of whom it is believed died. It is further rumoured when the Farm house was burning, two guns fell out of the roof”

In the Military Court of Inquiry in lieu of Inquest held on the 2nd July, 1921 at Crinkle Barracks into the death of Richard Henry Pearson Ethel May Pearson told:

“My mother who was in a fainting condition was carried by my two brothers into a little wood we called the Grove and we all went with her by the order of the raiders. Six of the raiders, two or three of whom were masked, ordered my brothers down into the yard. I saw the raiders search my brothers and place them against the wall of the barn and shoot them.” Also that “I could identify the man who appeared to be the leader, and some of the others. Susan, her sister reports that “I could identify some of the raiders and have seen them in KINNITY.” Surely at this enquiry it would seem justifiable to have named them. It would also seem strange that while the program makes out that they were shot on purpose in the groin and buttocks that Susan states clearly that “They placed by brothers, shortly afterwards, against the wall and shot them. When they fell they shot them again” There is no mention of intentionally aiming at any part of them. Given that the raiders carried an array of weapons we should in the interest of fairness ask of what quality were these weapons and when used was it possible that some of the pellets did hit Richard in the groin.

Mr Frederick William Woods, who gave evidence and was described as a civilian medical practitioner:

Q: Do you not consider a groin wound to be a serious one?
A: I do if such a wound implicates the blood vessels.
Q: Did the groin wound of the deceased implicate the principle blood vessels?
Q: It did not.

Lt. Colonel C. R. Woods states that he had at 2am dressed wounds of Abraham Pearson. “I examined his wounds and found extensive wounds on the left cheek, left shoulder, left thigh and lower third of left leg. In addition there was a wound through the abdomen.” The question then should be posed; Does this seem like a deliberate shooting at a particular a part of the body? It would seem more sporadic than not?

The emphasis of this program seems to be centred around the relationship between the Pearsons and the local community. The reality is that Tom Burke, Officer Commanding Offaly No.2 Brigade, was the one who sanctioned the action against the Pearsons, that they were separated from the rest of the family, that they did receive the order of execution against them and they were killed under those orders. Burke “.. ordered that these men be executed and their houses destroyed.” However it must be noted that this was done only after he had arrived that there was “no doubt” as to why this action must be taken.

It would seem unfortunate that no reference was made to a similar case in Offaly at that time. On 1st April, 1921, just shortly before the killing in Coolacrease, a local man from Tullamore was killed. What is said to be known at this stage was that he was on active service, to attack the local R.I.C in Tulllamore. It was reported at the time that a shooting had occurred in the late evening of the Friday and that a body, identified as his, had been found in a field nearby the next morning. He too, it appears, was shot in the stomach. Did he die close by while trying to escape or was he left to die screaming in pain over night as were the Pearsons? What is clearly reported is that his family who lived almost opposite the barracks were not informed for three days, nor it seems did they did know what had happened to his body. His funeral was a massive event and local shops had been ordered by crown forces not to close, which they ignored. It was reported that there was much intimidation of mourners at the graveyard. Was this a possible reason for a reprisal to be carried out somewhere else in the county? Also some have suggested to me that a local girl linked to one of the R.I.C men who had shot Mathew Kane was later tarred and feathered and left out tied to a gate in public. At this point much of it is still speculation, which to be made anything of must be properly researched. If is found to be the case it would seem to support an argument for direct action against collaborators or persons likely to pass on information.

What is undisputable is that no definitive account of any such deaths should be issued publicly until all known avenues are explored. This programme should have been rescheduled to allow for new documents which had been made available to the producer to be to be properly incorporated to give a move fuller and more even and fairer account. I would suggest that if anything this will in the long run only cause further clouds of mystery over the event. I hope that for all who care to know that the above will clear up some of the mess that this program has caused for the people of the midlands.

There are many such different horrible accounts from all sides involved during the period of 1916 – 1923. All sides of which deserve the opportunity to produce what documents and testimonies as are available on an equal basis for all to see. I can only hope that future productions will be more thorough.

Michéal Scully, Tullamore, Offaly

by ec Mon Nov 05, 2007 17:05

joe gave the senator the run of the place and kept pat on a very short leash

by scalder Mon Nov 05, 2007 19:57

Looks like RTÉ are looking to put this one to bed and say they took a balanced approach, "sure we gave Paddy time to set it right on Liveline".

by crookstown Mon Nov 05, 2007 20:32

Harris still has influence in RTE

by scalder Mon Nov 05, 2007 20:41

Paddy was very weak alright, but Harris is a master of sensationalism, he uses emotive language and refuses to engage with the facts. He refuses to address the medical evidence, the men were shot in more places than the groan so why focus in on these wounds? There were shoulder and other wounds too so these certainly undermines the theory that the group deliberately targeted the men’s genitals. Harris looks to uncover offence or intimidation where there was none – cajoling or coaching the Person chap into saying he was intimidated by his colleges reaction. He refused to accept when he said he felt free to comment. He is determined to paint the picture of a sectarian past, he and other look to highlight a number of incidents which to any fair minded person pail into to virtual insignificance when compared with the atrocities of the of the Crown and their allies.
Incidents like Scollabogue in my own county are truly sickening but I am often surprised that these sort of incidents were so few when you take cognisance of scale of murder and brutality on the part of the crown.

by Bellboy Mon Nov 05, 2007 22:48

By chance was talking to a researcher on liveline. She said that the majority of calls and texts fell on the side of the Pearsons. There was a real feeling of "who the hell are these guys" (Heaney and Muldowney). The word "bigot" was mentioned more than once (probably not helped by Heany's "protestants up to their dirty tricks" comment).

by Reel Journalist Mon Nov 05, 2007 22:53

The clerical analogy that someone gave earlier in this thread is a good one. The Cardinal/Senator is furiously lashing out with his crozier, denouncing ("Liars!", Holocaust Deniers!") heretics and unbelievers with threats of Hell Fire and all sorts of hysterical abuse. The Reverend Mother (Madam Kennedy) provides a pulpit for her Postulants/Novices Niamh Sammon and Ann Marie Hourihane. But where have the Reverend Professors of Canon Law disappeared to, now that fight is on? Has the sour-faced evangelist from Belfast (Richard English) slipped out the back door? What about the Creeping Jesus Terence Duffy from - wait for it - Maynooth? And what's-his-name from Mater Misericordiae(?) - the smirking altar-boy?
Was it really worth our while ditching the old dictators, who only required occasional conformity, for the new ones and their obsession with thought-crime?

by Joker Mon Nov 05, 2007 23:54

These so-called historians must have known about the doctoring and suppression of evidence. Would you buy a used book from these people?

by T. Belford Montague Tue Nov 06, 2007 00:53

The oppressed low-Church Protestants of Ireland are lucky to have a champion of the calibre of Senator Harris. And its indeed a shame that they are too cowed down to protest their own oppression. The time has come to organize as Empire Loyalists. Fraternal assistance will be given by those, still true to the Crown, whose ancestors were forced to flee the American Revolution.
http://www.uelac.org/PDF/loyalist.pdf

by Andrew Murphy Tue Nov 06, 2007 04:32

The Cooneyites have been known by many names:

http://www.factnet.org/cults/cooney/index.html

In the Duffy show yesterday the Cooneyites were compared to the Quakers. Here's what William Trimble of The Impartial Reporter said of them back in 1910:

Perhaps the highest form of Christian communism has been exemplified in the Society of Friends, for which I have always had a profound admiration. They exhibit love towards one another in a Christian spirit; and when one of their number fail in business, he is placed on his feet again. If he fail again, the same thing occurs; and then he obtains a third and last chance. No other Christian community exhibits this spirit of Christian communism in the same way. Nay, I have known an honest man who failed through stress of circumstances to be slighted by members of his own congregation, when, on the very contrary, it was their duty to come to his assistance. We might all -- Protestants and Roman Catholics alike -- take pattern by the Society of Friends in this and other respects, if we cannot adopt all their views. And the spirit of love, of charity, of brotherly kindness so remarkable with the Quakers, is the very opposite of the bitterness, jeers and sneers, and factious opposition of the Tramps, who have been taught by those who should know better, to mock and insult those who may happen to differ from them in opinion.

http://home.earthlink.net/%7Etruth444/BRG1-1-1WCT.html

by p.k. Tue Nov 06, 2007 07:31

Heaney destroyed his reputation on the programme - the floorspace he desired to air his views (and which he claimed was denied him in the doc) was given to him and he didn't take advantage of it. He said very little and when Joe tried to get something from him he ducked and dived. He evaded many of the questions and points Joe raised. For somebody who wanted to present the "truth", he was as clear as mud.

by seosamh Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:15

I though it strange how Joe Duffy refused to accept the term “Irish Army” as being legitimate, surely putting him on the side of those who opposed the Irish War for Independence, as they too refused to accept the legitimacy of the Army or the Government of the Republic. However I think using disputed language weakened Pat’s case in this instance as it immediately painted him as a hard liner.

Pat is pointing to cold hard written facts/documents, while Harris and others appeal to the emotions and it’s a hard battle to win. Harris wants us to believe that the IRA unit set out to effectively torture these two young men by shooting in their genitals. The unit are castigated for not actually finishing the two off, leaving them with a chance of survival – surely a change at living was preferable to a bullet to the head? They were given the chance and received medical aid, insufficient unfortunately for them but they had a fighting chance and could have survived.
If ALL the shots had been to the groan region then their might be a case to answer, but they were not, the evidence presented by Pat shows that the wounds were all in fact away from the major organs. To me this points to a few possibilities, poor aim on the part of the firing party – effected by nerves, it could point to an unwillingness of the firing party to actually kill the men – each choosing not to fire at the vital organs, finally Harris’s theory that it was a deliberate action designed to torture and degrade.

I won’t try to say this incident was pleasant or clinical, but why focus in on these incidents looking to find some hidden wrong, these same people who are leading the charge to uncover ethnic cleansing in Ireland are the same ones who tell us to move on and forget the wrongs inflicted on us by English forces and their proxy forces. It seems that hurt and guilt are supposed to be a one way street. Never mind the massacres and torture inflicted by loyalist gangs in 1798 or indeed 1969. Never mind the mass murder of 9 years war or the suppression of the Desmond Rebellion by the great Queen Elizabeth, forget about the corporate guilt of the British state in the deaths of a million in the Great Famine.

by Claire Guerin Tue Nov 06, 2007 14:08 claire at tara-foundation dot org

The selective amnesia goes further, though, seosamh. If we are to accept the charge of targeting of Protestants by the IRA, we must also ignore the Catholics who were also targeted as collaborators. From the study I have done, I would estimate that the majority of those shot as spies or collaborators were Catholics. This would also tally with the figures Tom Barry gave for Cork.

It would be possible to criticise the policy of executions on a reasoned basis, and utilising the facts. It is abhorrent to many, and the Minister for Defence Cathal Brugha was extremely reluctant to sanction it officially. The shocking nature of the practice - which was later used against Nazi collaborators in Europe - was a great propaganda opportunity for others. Those involved in British propaganda had already declared that the aim of British propaganda was 'verisimilitude' - in other words, plausible falsehood. They alleged that Protestants were being targeted in a sectarian war - a very clever tactic. If the British administration was a benign parent vainly trying to keep peace between two warring tribes, then partition to keep them apart was only necessary, and the War of Independence was not a war for independence, but a campaign of gang warfare. Unfortunately, some historians have chosen to accept British propaganda on this subject uncritically and completely and represent the situation exactly as Dublin Castle did.

I'm waiting for a documentary about the Catholic victims of the execution policy, but not holding my breath. After all, why bother with facts when you can inflame emotion by throwing around terms such as 'ethnic cleansing' and 'Holocaust deniers'?

by Bronterre O'Brien Tue Nov 06, 2007 14:57

On the Joe Duffy show Harris made the point that we cannot deal with what happened during the last 30 years in the North if we don't deal with happened during the 1916-1922 period. The Senator is surely right. And neither can we deal with the 1916-1922 period if we don't understand the previous history.
There has been too much hidden history.
Lest we forget: Just two instances at random.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688-1693 is also known as the Bloodless Revolution. Only 600,000 Irish were killed. They were lucky it wasn't bloody.
The Rathcormac Massacre, 1835, 12 people killed because a widow could not pay 40 shillings to support a parasitical clergy of a religion which was not hers.
The British government in Ireland, viewed as legitimate by Harris and Joe Duffy, owed (and owes) its authority to such atrocities and genocidal wars of conquest. By contrast, the IRA drew its democratic mandate from the sovereignty of the Irish people.
We are ruled by a corrupt, incompetent, grossly overpaid shoneen, Bertie Ahern, who has appointed a unionist neocon chancer, Eoghan Harris, to the Senate. How did we get to this point? By not dealing with the past. If we don't remember the past we are destined to repeat it.
Let us begin by drawing up a list of atrocities and demand that the national broadcaster, RTE, make a series of programmes exposing those responsible for the genocidal nightmare of Irish history from which we have yet to awaken.

by Terence Tue Nov 06, 2007 17:39

Now it is clear why RTE Radio One's Liveline did the item on the Pearsons' execution yesterday - they are afraid of a Complaints Commission investigation of the television programme, 'the Pearsons of Coolacrease (Hidden History October 23 2007, RTE One TV).

Philip McConway (a credited researcher on the programme) reveals that he gave Reel Story Productions information that contradicted the incorrect information in the programme. He is now going to complain to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission - click on the Sunday Times article to make it readable

RTE will argue that whatever balance was missing on the TV programme, Hidden History, was provided by RTE yesterday on Joe Duffy's radio programme. All in all, not to be too paranoid about it, an attempted stitch up, but one that went haywire when Fianna Fail nominated Senator Eoghan Harris came on and started accusing people of telling lies and of being like 'holocaust deniers'. Just a bit over the top, and possibly libelous too.

A Pearsons relative, who lives in Dublin, was on and came across as an all-round genuine Aussie bloke. Harris plaintively asked him if he was he "afraid": "Nah Mate, I ain't afraid, I gets a bit of slagging from the lads, mind". He seemed to be chuffed to be so close to history, despite the grim fate that befell his forbears. Good on Yah, Mate.

Today, another Pearsons relative was on. When Joe D asked her if Protestants were attacked, she said that Protestants and Catholics were attacked. Exactly right.

Bit ropey on the Cooneyites though. She said they would not have had firearms, that they were pacifists - It is accepted by more or less everyone that they did have firearms and that they did fire on the IRA roadblock. Though Niamh Sammon of Reel Story Productions argues that they fired "in the air". The buckshot must have gone up, come down, and landed on the stomach of Paddy Heaney's relative, who must have been sunning himself at the time. Sounds about as plausible as Harris's "they shot them in the genitals, in their sexual parts" line. That was a magic bullet, by the way, the "genital" one, since the one bullet is presented as being responsible for shooting two people in the one unfortunate spot. It is a pity the medical evidence does not back up the theory. One of those "boring" details that Eoghan Harris complained about yesterday.

All in, all from Harris's, Sammon's and RTE's point of view, a bit of a balls up.

(click on newspaper story to make it readable)

Sunday Times 4 November 07 - the reason why RTE put on Liveline programme - fear of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission

by crookstown Tue Nov 06, 2007 18:47

In the 1980s Harris and his mates had massive influence in RTE.

It seems to me that that influence has not entirely dissipated.

by crookstown Tue Nov 06, 2007 18:51

BTW, it was funny to hear Harris' friend, Carew, criticising Jack Lane for being a former member of the communist BICO.

Is he unaware of Harris' past as a leading commie?

by Sceptic Tue Nov 06, 2007 18:54

“THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN IRELAND, VIEWED AS LEGITIMATE BY HARRIS AND JOE DUFFY, OWED (AND OWES) ITS AUTHORITY TO SUCH ATROCITIES AND GENOCIDAL WARS OF CONQUEST. BY CONTRAST, THE IRA DREW ITS DEMOCRATIC MANDATE FROM THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE IRISH PEOPLE.”

This is rather anti-intellectual Anglophobic polemic. For one thing the IRA had no democratic mandate for its various campaigns in the 1940s, 1950s or during the more recent troubles. I am no defender of the British Empire or the many episodes of bloodshed that took place over its history but it was acquired remarkably peacefully considering the amount of territory involved and was governed with less cruelty and exploitation than other comparable European or Asian empires. And 600,000 Irish killed in the 1688 period? I believe that to be a gross exaggeration.

by Anamnua Tue Nov 06, 2007 19:06

I would have to regretfully say that the rapier precision Pat Muldowney displays in this thread was sadly lacking when he locked horns with E.H. yesterday - the latter successfully browbeating him on a number of occasions. When engaging with Harris you just have to stand toe to toe and slug it out.
One point - Harris virtually shouted down Muldowney when he tried to point out the difference between the right groin and genitalia. Harris spouted his trademark denialism/muddying the waters line. Speaking as a medic and reading it as the medics at the time would have P.M.'s 'take' was spot on. The two areas were close but crucially distinct. It is like saying being shot in the ear is the same as being shot in the brain.

by crookstown Tue Nov 06, 2007 19:11

The figure of 600,000 probably refers to the cromwellian war

by Claire Guerin Tue Nov 06, 2007 19:14

Does anyone have an exact quote from Harris regarding exactly who he was calling holocaust deniers etc.? Also who was the last person on today - the one who said that there were no Black and Tans in Offaly?

by Tom Canoe Tue Nov 06, 2007 19:23

Tom Carew (an Eoghan Harris groupie - did RTE ring him or did Harris ring him?) was the guy who said the Black & Tans and Auxies only went through Offaly to got to the races. Recently on RTE's Questions and Answers he said that, like Harris, he voted Fianna Fail too. Pity he didn't get to be appointed a Senator, maybe he'll be appointed a horse instead.

by Rexel Tue Nov 06, 2007 21:36

Jack Lane on liveline today making an arse of himself...this thread is dying.

by Texel Tue Nov 06, 2007 22:14

Jack Lane did fine. It is hard to discuss with someone (Joe Duffy) who has no idea that the local government structures had transferred allegiance to Dail Eireann, that the Sinn Fein civil courts had taken over from the British courts system (which were left with few if any cases to deal with). Loyalists even used the Sinn Fein courts, as they were regarded as fair. The RIC and British forces tried to close them down, just as they waged a war on the Irish economy. Most Irish people gave their allegiance to Dail Eireann. They regarded it as their government. The trade unions gave their allegiance to the Dail and did all they could to disrupt the British war effort.

Joe Duffy did not appear to know this, asked dumb questions and made dumb observations - testament to the woeful state of knowledge of what happened during the War of Independence. Duffy appeared to have no idea about the scale of the conflict, or that the conflict was between those who supported the imperial or the Irish government.

Irish government?, what Irish government, Duffy snorted continuously. Good job he was not snorting at the time? Is this the same Joe Duffy who used to be a student radical? Must be someone else.

by Pexel Tue Nov 06, 2007 22:31

Jack Lane pattered out a script and when Joe (not exactly a cutting-edge historian) questioned him, he spluttered, farted, stuttered and paused...

Jack Lane did not do fine.

by scalder Tue Nov 06, 2007 22:31

Just listened back online again and Harris said.

A group "of which Paddy Muldowney is one, like an itinerant travelling circus, are like holocust deniers..."

Is that liableous?

by Pexel Tue Nov 06, 2007 22:34

Nope

by Anamnua Tue Nov 06, 2007 22:41

'' one of the most retarded comments''
On the contrary my line of work involved a detailed study of anatomy the significance being that I know *exactly* what the docs in question were talking about. But you don't need a detailed knowledge only the vaguest smattering. Harris's spurious conflation was idiotic - an appropriate adjective also for anyone who tries to defend it directly on indirectly.

by E.S.C. Tue Nov 06, 2007 22:55

This blog is pretty active this evening for those interested in history. Is no-one watching the current Hidden History?

by Texel Tue Nov 06, 2007 23:51

Pexel - you obviously have a problem with people who do not go around screaming "genitals", "sexual parts", "Holocaust deniers", 'posh Protestants", all day long.

Some people actually consider what they have to say, before they say it. Harris has the advantage that he can make it up as he goes along, and Carew, his disciple, is following faithfully in his footsteps.

For the uninitiated:
When you think Eoghan Harris, think Bill O"Reilly on Fox News (check him out on U Tube) - or the book titles of Al Franken, such as, 'Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)' and 'Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot: and Other Observations' .

by Claire Guerin Tue Nov 06, 2007 23:55

Thanks for the info, Tom and scalder.

by Bronterre O'Brien Wed Nov 07, 2007 03:44

In my post (above), 600,000 should read 60,000.
But its impossible to obtain an accurate figure, especially as both sides used a 'scorched earth' policy, so who knows how many soldiers and civilians died in the Williamite wars to establish the Glorious Revolution. My point was that to call it 'bloodless' as some historians do, is surely a mockery of those who died.
Sceptic (above) does not, i notice, question the legitimacy of the IRA in the War of Independence. Those who derived their authority from the will of the people ordered the execution of the Pearson brothers. Thats the basic point that neither Joe Duffy nor Harris wants to accept.
The authority of the British government in Ireland was (and is) derived from genocidal wars of conquest. Those who deny this are in a state of imperial arselickery.
From its wars of extermination against the Irish in the 17th century, through the millions it killed in India, to its massacre of tens of thousands of Kenyans during the Mau Mau freedom struggle in the 1950s, to Bloody Sunday in Derry 1972, the history of the British empire is a history of exploitation, of terrorism, massacre and atrocity.
And its no accident that propagandists for imperialism, such as Harris and his stooges in the media and academia, support the Anglo-American imperial attack on iraq. And thats another reason why RTE's role in pro-imperial propaganda needs to be exposed.

by Assorted Wed Nov 07, 2007 07:27

Anamnua replied to someone "But you don't need a detailed knowledge only the vaguest smattering".

That seems to be the theme to this entire thread.

by Pat Muldowney Wed Nov 07, 2007 08:11

Ref Bronterre O'Brien above: That's exactly the point.

The British Empire, as it is now understood, started in the Laois-Offaly Plantation in the 16th century. The very same West Country gentry (Bristol area, mainly) then took on the Chesapeake Plantation. That was Virginia, after the Protestant Elizabeth 1. Laois-Offaly were Queen's/King's County after the Catholic Queen Mary, and her Catholic husband King Philip of Spain, giving us Maryborough (Port Laoise) and Philipstown (Daingean). Genocide as a method of dealing with the human obstacles to the gentry Plantation rent-rolls was developed in the Munster and Virginia Plantations. It was discussed in detail by Edmund Spenser and others at the time, and continued as a successful and accepted practice around the globe right through to the 20th century, when it got a bad name for a while from some Johnny-come-latelies in Europe.

The literature of genocide continued from Spenser onwards. For example, here is what Sir Charles Dilke said in his extraordinarily successful book "Greater Britain" (eight editions, starting with the first in 1860). He found that "the difficulties which impede the progress to universal domination of the English people lie in the conflict with the cheaper races". He prophesied that "the dearer [races] are ... likely to destroy the cheaper peoples, and ... Saxondom will rise triumphant from the ... struggle". Proof of this was that "the English in America are absorbing the Germans and the Celts, destroying the Red Indians, and checking the advance of the Chinese". He said "The Anglo-Saxon is the only extirpating race on earth. Up to the commencement of the now inevitable destruction of the Red Indians of Central North America, of the Maoris, and of the Australians by the English colonists, no numerous race has ever been blotted out by an invader." And "No possible ... events can prevent ... Italy, Spain, France, Russia becom[ing] pigmies by the side of such a people."

This success did not come easily. Universal warfare was (and is again?) the routine. Britain has fought about 200 wars in 300 years, winning almost all of them. Of the 300 or so countries in the world, about 200 contain the graves of British soldiers. As we enter the week of Remembrance, officially we are only celebrating the post 1914 British military operations (including the Black and Tan War, the Kenya War and the British actions in Derry's Bloody Sunday). But in spirit and in practice we are commemorating all British Wars. I say "we" deliberately. For instance, on last Sunday morning the Tricolour was carried in War Commemoration alongside the Union Jack at the Cenotaph in the Diamond in Derry.

This may seem removed from Coolacrease. But it is the underlying issue, as manifested by Joe Duffy denying the legitimacy and authority of the Irish government elected in 1918, and by Niamh Sammon declaring in Hidden History that "there was no official investigation" into the 1921 Offaly events. The investigation by the Irish government representative Thomas Burke does not count in her view. And the British investigation was covered up by her.

The Hidden History programme was broadcast by RTE, not to investigate whether or not an atrocity took place in Offaly, but to give propaganda support to the imperial/genocidal outlook which is being put about by academic historians such as Richard English, Terence Duffy and (the other one) in the Hidden History programme.

by Pat Muldowney Wed Nov 07, 2007 08:45

P.S. to above:

Why did the Empire turn west - to Chesapeake and New England, via Ireland?

Because the Middle East Muslims blocked the route to the wealth of the Orient. In other words, they controlled the world's resources. Not of oil at that time, but of oriental produce which the west desperately wanted. Just like now.

by crookstown Wed Nov 07, 2007 15:13

Pat Muldowney makes a good point

The first genocidal plantation in Ireland was made by the Catholic Mary and Philip of Spain.

The fact is that English rule in Ireland was genocidal whether or not the English were Protestant or Catholic

Religion was irrelevant , ethnicity was the main factor

I think this applied in the recent Northern conflict also

It's noticeable that the only organised racist attacks of recent years have occurred in Loyalist parts of the North.

by Epson Wed Nov 07, 2007 15:19

TCM Archives > Western People > 2007/10/31 > Can we learn the lessons of history?

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 :

FRONT | NEWS | SPORT | LOCAL NEWS | OTHER NEWS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can we learn the lessons of history?

IN my spare time I study a bit of history. And the more detailed the study the more I realise how complex reality is – particularly that version of reality embedded in the mists of time. At the moment I’m wading through the eighteenth century. Every contemporary document has to be held up to the light because everyone has an agenda and without contextualisation – that ugly word – it’s difficult to decipher the truth.

For example, at present I’m reading a letter sent to Rome by Bishop Philip Phillips, who was bishop of Killala from 1760 to 1776 – before his later demotion to Achonry and subsequent demotion to Tuam. Phillips never lived in Killala diocese but he assured the Pope that ‘though I am outside the diocese it is possible, walking at a quick pace, to get to my diocese in the space of two hours.’

He lived at Cloonmore House, Carracastle, so it would be a fair pace to get to Foxford bridge, the diocesan boundary, in two hours. Philips visited every parish, he told the Pope, once a year apart from four parishes ‘sited in very rough and almost inaccessible mountains’ which he visited every three years.

At face value it seems a poor enough effort yet at the time it was regarded as exceptional because during Penal Times most Killala bishops lived on the continent. So context is everything.

Future historians will need to understand context to make sense of the condemnation of Sinn President Gerry Adams, of the murder of 21-year-old Paul Quinn last week. A group of men lured Quinn to an isolated farmyard where he was set upon and viciously and horrifically attacked with iron bars and bats and later died from his injuries.

Gerry Adams condemned the killing, which seemed to have all the hallmarks of an IRA beating that went too far, and suggested that anyone who knew anything about it should contact the PSNI or the Gardai. For all of three decades, until the recent peace agreement, Adams had refused to condemn punishment beatings so future historians will need to be aware of how the same atrocity is acceptable/right or unacceptable/ wrong depending on whether it was ‘before’ or ‘after’.

Part of the difficulty with accepting a Before or After scenario is that the Now truth implies that the Then behaviour was wrong. No doubt ‘retired’ IRA men and women find it difficult to accept the new dispensation which implies that the mayhem they created for so long had to be set aside as unacceptable. So efforts are made to have commemorative marches or get-togethers to remember specific incidents and to keep the troops happy. Thus the Army Council of the IRA is encouraged to find a new role as a glorified commemorative agency. Anything to deny that the mayhem of the last 30 plus years made no sense.

One of the complexities of history is pretending that no one lost – or that what everyone knows was unacceptable can be presented as if somehow it all made sense as part of some long vague plan. Another example of this was the recent RTE One television documentary, The Killings at Coolacrease.

A family of Protestants, the Pearsons, farmed a significant holding of more than 300 acres in Co Offaly. Two or the four sons, Abraham (19) and Richard (24) were shot by a party of IRA men while they were saving hay on a bright June day in 1921 before their mother and siblings. Whether by design or accident they were shot in the genital and buttock areas and died many hours later in terrible agony.

Whatever mixture of politics, envy, land hunger contributed to justify the killings. Then wouldn’t convince many people Now. Yet what was remarkable about the documentary was the effort to contrive to balance the programme by facilitating those who sought to justify what was clearly unjustifiable by any standards. This reeked of burning crosses in the southern states of America and left viewers with the distinct feeling that the republican wound on the body politic, at present being dressed up in commemorative little flourishes, will continue to fester until it has to be lanced again.

The Pearsons, like so many other Protestant families, eventually left for Australia, after Sydney (a brother of Abraham and Richard) found a note on the plough warning the family to get out. And one wonders how many other Protestant families were forced from their lands not because of some political rationale but because envious neighbours conveted their fertile acres.

The story of the decline in the Protestant population in the years of the Troubles and in the early days of the Free State has never been told. Or at least not told through the experience of people like the Pearsons, local stories that remain untold because so many would be compromised in the telling. Yet it seems obvious that if we want to slay the demons of the past they have to be systematically unmasked and acknowledged.

Otherwise they go underground or reinvent themselves in different form or keep the flame intact until another generation can be convinced, for whatever reason, to go down that dismal road again.

In South Africa a process was set in place whereby the past – those who suffered and those who caused the suffering – could be redeemed through acknowledgement and forgiveness.

As yet we haven’t found the courage to adopt that approach to the North. But until we do we will continue to put the future at risk. The story of the Pearsons is another reminder of our failure to deal with the past.

by Limerickman Wed Nov 07, 2007 18:22

Re : Mayo People.
Unfortunately it looks as if Sammon and Harris have won the propaganda war.

by John Martin - Irish Political Review Wed Nov 07, 2007 19:00

I don’t accept that Harris and Sammon have won anything.

The original programme title was “Atonement: ethnic cleansing in the midlands”. It had to withdraw that title. And the programme makers have been on the retreat ever since.

They have failed to prove that there was a land grab. As Paddy Heaney indicated three ex British Army soldiers bought the land immediately after the Pearsons left.

They have failed to prove sectarianism. None of the other neighbouring Protestant landowners were molested.

They have failed to substantiate Eoghan Harris’s allegation that the Pearsons were shot in the genitals. Richard Pearson was shot in the groin among other places in his body. Abraham was not shot in either the groin or genitals.

Their panic was illustrated by the incoherent rant of Eoghan Harris on Monday’s Live Line. He accused Pat Muldowney of being a “holocaust denier”.

The only sense that can be made of that statement is that Harris believes that a holocaust was perpetrated by Irish Republicans against Protestants in the 1919-21 war of Independence. He has not withdrawn that remark. Joe Duffy apologised but Harris did not.

This debate is not finished.

by Sceptic Wed Nov 07, 2007 19:01

WHY DID THE EMPIRE TURN WEST - TO CHESAPEAKE AND NEW ENGLAND, VIA
IRELAND? BECAUSE THE MIDDLE EAST MUSLIMS BLOCKED THE ROUTE TO THE WEALTH
OF THE ORIENT. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY CONTROLLED THE WORLD'S RESOURCES.
NOT OF OIL AT THAT TIME, BUT OF ORIENTAL PRODUCE WHICH THE WEST
DESPERATELY WANTED.

This is a fanciful analogy. It was the Iberians and Dutch who sought an
overseas route to the Asian spice trade. Early British settlement in the
Americas was by religious refugees and later by tobacco ventures.
Besides Britain could hardly be described as an empire at the time. Had
other European powers been able would have behaved no differently in
Ireland. The idea that there is anything wrong with having empires and
acquiring land by force is a modern 18th century and largely British
idea. Empires did not go out of vogue until the mid twentieth century.
One can't judge earlier centuries by modern standards. Going on about
the British Empire and wars ignores that it very easily acquired. A few
battles with the French got them Canada and just one very short campaign
got them Egypt also from the French. Acknowledging any of this does not
make one some kind of camp follower of the Brits but it is less likely
to make one a defender of hate crimes.

SCEPTIC (ABOVE) DOES NOT, I NOTICE, QUESTION THE LEGITIMACY OF THE IRA IN THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. THOSE WHO DERIVED THEIR AUTHORITY FROM THE
WILL OF THE PEOPLE ORDERED THE EXECUTION OF THE PEARSON BROTHERS. Does
this mean you accept the IRA had no democratic mandate for their later
campaigns? In any case I do contest the legitimacy of the IRA in 1922 -
a war of independence was not what the people thought they were voting
for in 1918. Even if you do allow them a mandate of sorts then it does
not follow that the Pearson killings were OK. They could still be an
atrocity. To accept this does not de legitimise the campaign for
independence. Atrocities can happen in any war whether committed by
State forces or by insurgents of one kind or another. The view that
atrocities can only be committed by the opposite side to your sympathies
and not by your own side is dangerously delusional.

by Reel Journalist Wed Nov 07, 2007 20:12

The propaganda blitz of Harris & Co has collapsed.
But anyone who opposes their propaganda needs to speak up about it, write to the papers etc. Otherwise no point in whinging about Harris.
I've done it, and it works.

by crookstown Wed Nov 07, 2007 20:50

No-one can deny that the British empire was genocidal.

There were man-made famines in Ireland and Bengal,and opium dealing in China , for which they fought two wars.

In eastern North America, British settlers systematically killed off the Indians ,for example the Pequots of New England

by Joker Wed Nov 07, 2007 21:26

To Sceptic:

Whether it was called Plantation (16th & 17th centuries), or Colonisation (18th & 19th c's), or Imperialism (20th), or Globalisation (21st),
it mattered little to the people on the receiving end, while they were being expropriated, ethnically cleansed, poisoned, murdered, or (in the words of Sir Charles Dilke quoted by Muldowney above) "extirpated". I'm pretty sure these people thought that Plantation/Colony/Empire was "wrong". Dilke claimed supremacy for Britain in such activities. It is hard to challenge or deny this claim.

The Virginia Plantation and Its brown gold (tobacco), along with the West Indian white gold (sugar) were the economic resources which served Britain before navigation advances enabled it by-pass the Ottoman Muslim barrier to achieve what became the Indian Empire.

Both Virginia and West Indies preceded New England, which earned a living partly by servicing the vast West Indian slave and death camps.

by Joker Wed Nov 07, 2007 21:51

Sceptic: "Acknowledging any of this ...[makes one]... less likely to [be] a defender of hate crimes."
Oh, I see! To prevent outrages against German tourists, let's just shut up about Nazi atrocities!!

by Reel Journalist Wed Nov 07, 2007 22:08

Getting the Empire might not have been quite so easy, Sceptic, if the fuzzie-wuzzies had had rifles, artillery and machine-guns instead of bows and arrows.

by Sceptic Wed Nov 07, 2007 22:23

The Irish famine of 1845 was caused by blight in an unsustainable monoculture farming situation. The British did not cause it There efforts to deal with it might have been inadequate but that is a different issue. The early British settlement in the Caribbean for example was not a glorious episode. Yet it was a British idea and British agitation that did away with the slave trade eventually. There is much saving grace in that. Prior to that the idea that slavery was wrong or inhuman was not a general one. it just so happened that the Irish were not in a position to own slaves themselves or to colonize at that time. It is unfair to apply your own modern standards to people who lived hundreds of years ago. Or to blame the British of today for what the British of the seventeenth century did.

by Hectic Wed Nov 07, 2007 23:08

The Irish famine of 1845 was caused by blight in an unsustainable monoculture farming situation.

(Gee, big words.) Irish peasants were forced to live on small uneconomic holdings, while rich parasites who owned the land, landlords, screwed as much out of them as they could (bet they congratulated themselves on Wilberorce's campaign against the slave trade.) and then left them to die by the roadside.

The British did not cause it.

No, they prolonged it. In 1846, the liberal regime of Lord John Russell applied 'new' ideas about the poor being undeserving and withdrew all the remedial measure and the subsidised corn put together by the previous paternalistic Tories. So we got 'Black 47" with 10,000 a week dying in their hovels or trying to eat grass in the fields.

But economically it made good sense, sheep and cattle were more profitable than having too many unproductive monocultural humans cluttering up the countryside.

There efforts to deal with it might have been inadequate but that is a different issue.

Let us not talk about it then? A discrete veil please.

The early British settlement in the Caribbean for example was not a glorious episode.

Ok, but moving swiftly along (but, love that "glorious" - as in "The early German effort at 'lebensraum' through the holocaust was not a glorious episode").

Yet it was a British idea and British agitation that did away with the slave trade eventually. There is much saving grace in that.

A 'British' idea, a very, very 'British' idea. Hip hip hooray. Pity it did not have any effect when Britain supported the slave states in the US Civil War.

Prior to that the idea that slavery was wrong or inhuman was not a general one.

No, just held by people like Spartacus and other non-entities. Good point.

It just so happened that the Irish were not in a position to own slaves themselves or to colonize at that time.

And furthermore neither were the slaves or those who were colonised (for example, the Irish, but no, wait, scratch that, don't mention the war) . But, if they had been, then why we would not be having this stupid conversation. We would be having a different stupid conversation.

It is unfair to apply your own modern standards to people who lived hundreds of years ago. Or to blame the British of today for what the British of the seventeenth century did.

In 36 years it will be the 100th anniversary of the start of the holocaust. I hope Sceptic is still around to make his excuses.

by Bronterre O'Brien Thu Nov 08, 2007 00:48

The key question,-the one that Harris, Duffy, revisionism generally, and Sceptic (above) are afraid to confront and answer,- is:

What is the source and origin of governmental power and authority? Is it the will of the people or is it conquest, genocide and extermination?

Mass murder by Britain occurred in Ireland in the 1840s, in India in the 1940s and in Kenya in the 1950s.
(note: the enumeration of these instances does not preclude others)

Madeline Albright, Clinton's secretary of state, admitted that half a million Iraqi children died as a result of U.S policy in Iraq. With the Anglo-American attack of Blair/Bush the dead surely now number millions.

Imperialism is an ongoing and clear and present danger, and Ahern, Harris's patron, is providing a key logistical node at Shannon to help his Anglo-American imperial masters destroy Iraq.

We appear to be a long way from Coolacrease, but we're not.

The Hidden Agenda programmes are a propaganda stick to demean and deligitimate Ireland's resistance to the depredations of imperialism.

Harris and his stooges are cynically using the tragedy that befell the Pearsons to distort and misrepresent Ireland's struggle for freedom and independence. They have won nothing because this ground will continue to be contested.

We must demand that the National broadcaster live up to its name. Much of Irish history is indeed hidden. And a national broadcasting service, paid for by the people, should surely serve their interests and not be a tool of wealth and power and privilege.

I respectfully suggest to RTE that it devote time and resources to examine the following issues.

What led to the Rathcormac massacre in 1834?

What is the real story of the British war crimes at Clonmult, Cork, in 1921 when several IRA men who had surrendered were summarily murdered by the British military?

What is the continuing influence of Frank Kitson who began his murderous career in Kenya in the 1950s and continued it in Ireland, Burma, Central America....Are his tactics being used in Iraq, and is Ahern facilitating this by subsidizing the U.S military machine at Shannon while leaving the Irish public and workers to the mercy of the 'free market'? (Ahern of course may be busy stuffing his illgotten bloated salary into shoeboxes)

Charles Trevelyan, one of England's best and brightest, and a mass murderer, received his genocidal training at the East India Company's college at Hailyeybury from Thomas Malthus. Malthus is still a major influence on neolib and neocon ideology. What role did Malthus' ideology play in mass exterminations in Ireland and in India and what is its current role in promoting regressive social policy in Ireland?

The conquest of Ireland subjugated the people and land to capitalist imperial exploitation. Irish agriculture provisioned the West Indian slave plantations in the 18th century. Many of the conquerers also owned slave plantations. The tropical produce was sold in Europe and the capital was available to purchase further slaves. What effect did this incorporation of Ireland into the capitalist triangular slave trade have on Ireland's subsequent economic underdevelopment?

Surely these are some of the questions that we the people should demand that our national broadcaster explore. Others will of course have other issues.

For twenty years RTE engaged in censorship. That legacy is still there, and is now expressed in pro-imperial propaganda. Ahern's appointee to the Senate, Harris, is still using RTE to subvert the peoples struggle for liberty.

What is the secret agenda of Harris and Ahern?

by Reel Journalist Thu Nov 08, 2007 04:25

I fully agree with what Bronterre O'Brien has identified above as the key question.
If Joe Duffy and the State Broadcaster RTE do not accept the legitimacy of the first Dail, then which Dail do they accept as legitimate, and why?

by Joker Thu Nov 08, 2007 07:00

Bigger question is whether the present Dail (30th) recognises the authority of the First Dail.
If not, it should call itself the 29th Dail, not the 30th.
But in that case, the Second Dail (elected pre-Treaty) is equally illegitimate, making the current one the 28th legitimate or actual Dail.
The British did not recognise the Second Dail, and when, post-Treaty, they dealt officially with members of the Second Dail, they pretended they were dealing with the entity they had tried to create under their 1920 Government of Ireland Act.
So if the First Dail is not now recognised, our present state authority is derived from the British 1920 Act, which, in turn, derives its power from the 1801 Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland.

I think we should be told!

by Pat Muldowney Thu Nov 08, 2007 08:39

It's more serious than that. By likening me and others to Holocaust Deniers, Senator Harris, a member of the Oireachtas, implies that a Holocaust, or something like it, was perpetrated in the 1920's.

If this is the case, then, while it is too late to have Nuremberg-style trials of the perpetrators with appropriate punishment of the guilty ones, it is imperative that major State and United Nations Investigations of the Holocaust be conducted, that a detailed report be prepared of those who suffered the Holocaust, and that appropriate memorials be constructed to them.

Compensation should be paid to any Holocaust Survivors still living, now in their 80's or 90's. The State which was the product of Holocaust was not, like Nazi Germany, destroyed and a new one put in its place. So this also must be a matter for the United Nations.