OscailtWind that Shakes the Barley script publishedIrish Times piece examines the conflicts opened up by the War of Independence
Breaking news: Italian MP, Sgarbi denounces the Statistical Fraud on COVID-19. The speech of the Member of Parliament Vittorio Sgarbi in the session of the Italian Camera, Meeting no. 331 of Friday 24, April, 2020. Vittorio Sgarbi, denounces the closure of 60% of the businesses for 25,000 COVID-19 Deaths, of which the National Institute of Health says 96.3% died NOT of COVID-19 but of other pathologies. That means only 925 have died of the virus. 24,075 have died of other things.2006-06-24T14:53:18+00:00Indymedia Irelandimc-ireland@lists.indymedia.iehttp://www.indymedia.ie/atomfullposts?story_id=76800http://www.indymedia.ie/graphics/feedlogo.gifTwo letters on THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY in Irish Times Fri June 23 2006http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76800#comment1552592006-06-24T14:53:18+00:00Niall MeehanTHE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY'
Madam, - In his article on Ken Loach's The Wi...<strong>THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY' </strong><br />
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Madam, - In his article on Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley (June 17th), Luke Gibbons correctly asserts that there is no evidence of "ethnic cleansing" of Protestants in West Cork during the War of Independence.<br />
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He is also correct to draw attention to the fact that racism was a prevalent British attitude. The British army regarded the entire population as their enemy.<br />
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Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, then Brigade Major Bernard Montgomery, typically remarked: "It never bothered me a bit how many houses we burned. . . I regarded all civilians as 'shinners', and I never had any dealings with them."<br />
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Such sentiments were also to be found in the minds and actions of those who set up and ran variants of the shadowy "Anti-Sinn Féin Society".<br />
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Such "loyalists" gathered intelligence and went on RIC and Auxiliary raids to "spot", assassinate or torture their quarry.<br />
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They were not representative of the whole Protestant community, many of whom were sympathetic to the republican cause. Protestants generally held little regard for the Black and Tans who, without distinction of creed, burned both Protestant and Catholic-owned property.<br />
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British forces openly encouraged the loyalists and this has led some to conclude mistakenly that they were British forces in mufti. The revisionist historian Peter Hart holds this view. He spoke on it in a recent Rebel County documentary on the Ken Loach film on RTÉ 1.<br />
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Hart concluded that Protestants shot for informing were innocent of such activities.<br />
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Hart's view is a favourite among Orange Order members, as Drew Nelson, grand secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, explained to Gerry Moriarty (June 17th). Nelson believes, on the basis of Hart's research, in a "massacre of Protestants that took place. . . on the main street of Dunmanway, in April 1922". There is no evidence that Protestants were shot because of their religion.<br />
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There is evidence that informers, whose names were left behind by departing Auxiliaries, were shot from April 26th to 28th, 1922 near Bandon, contrary to express IRA orders. The shootings were condemned by all shades of then pre-Civil War republican opinion.<br />
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Two historians in particular, Brian Murphy and Meda Ryan, should have been interviewed. Murphy researched the topic in his recent work on The Origins and Organisation of British Propaganda and Meda Ryan dealt with it in her recent Tom Barry biography.<br />
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Murphy first drew attention to the racist British attitudes cited in Luke Gibbons's piece. Possibly the documentary makers were also not aware that Irish Academic Press will soon publish John Borgonovo's Spies, Informers and the Anti-Sinn Féin Society. It undermines the contention that the IRA was sectarian in countering the activities of loyalist spies.<br />
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This is a subject that, I am sure, will excite further interest in the debate that The Wind that Shakes the Barley has opened up. - Yours, etc,<br />
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NIALL MEEHAN<br />
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Madam, - Luke Gibbons in his piece on Ken Loach's The Wind That Shook The Barley, states that the only Protestants killed by republicans in Cork during the War of Independence and Civil War were spies and informers.<br />
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What are we to make, then, of this passage from Peter Hart's The IRA and Its Enemies? (Hart is most likely one of the "revisionists" referred to by Mr Gibbons.) He describes a killing rampage carried out by the Cork anti-Treaty IRA over two nights in April 1922. At the end of the bloodbath "ten men had been shot dead. All were Protestants. Hundreds [of their fellow Protestants] subsequently went into hiding or fled their homes in a wave of panic".<br />
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Denis Lourdan, a local IRA guerrilla member, put it candidly: "our fellas took it out on the Protestants".<br />
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Is Mr Gibbons saying that all these people killed or terrorised were informers and deserved their treatment? - Yours, etc,<br />
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AG MATHEWS<br />
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<strong>Note: the reference to 'Our fellas took it out on the Protestants' in AG Mathews' letter (above) is the product of yet another Peter Hart misrepresentation. Dennis Lordan (not 'Lourdan') was talking in a light-hearted manner about a completely unrelated incident later during the Civil War to his friend, Dorothy Stopford, who was…... a Protestant. </strong> <br />
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see Meda Ryan, Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter, 2003, page 165. <br />
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The impression that Peter Hart gives is that Roman Catholics and Protestants had little or no social interaction and had more or less separate community lives. While in socio-economic terms Protestants in general had a higher economic status and while they were, in the main, unionists, community relations were quite normal. Their unionism was not generally of the fanatically sectarian Ulster unionist variety, though the minority of ‘Anti Sinn Fein society’ types certainly did attempt to impose the type of ‘ulsterisation’ in Munster that they imposed on nationalists in the north of Ireland. Unlike in the Six Counties, they failed in Munster.<br />
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I have been reading recently a memoir by a Protestant solicitor in Skibbereen, who relates his participation in, and winning, the first case in the first Sinn Fein Court in the town. He later relates his participation in further Sinn Fein Courts, the threats to arrest him by the RIC, and the security measures he happily participated in to thwart the British authorities. <br />
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He later relates the panic in Protestant circles over the April killings, since it was not known initially what the motive was. It was natural to assume that it was an attack on Protestants per se. Since the attacks ended as quickly as they had begun, stamped out firmly by the IRA in the form of Tom Barry, Liam Deasy and Tom Hales, the mainly Protestant males who left in a hurry came back. <br />
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The Protestant solicitor, after venturing forth to Dublin and then to South Africa, left there in 1924 and returned to Skibbereen via New Zealand and Australia in 1926. He worked as a solicitor, and was prominent in community affairs. He ventured abroad often, married in his 60s and lived a happy and fulfilled life in the community in Cork. Like most southern Protestants, he had no hang up about regarding himself as Irish. I expect to be writing further on this in the near future.<br />
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<em>I hope to be permitted to point out the misrepresentation (above) in the AG MAthews letter, if someone else does not point it out.</em>New book on Kilmichael refutes Harthttp://www.indymedia.ie/article/76800#comment1554572006-06-26T09:34:47+00:00SEAN O CEILLEACHAIRIrish Independent 26 June 2006
TOM BARRY AT KILMICHAEL
I wish to refer to the...Irish Independent 26 June 2006 <br />
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<strong>TOM BARRY AT KILMICHAEL</strong><br />
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I wish to refer to the ongoing controversy created by revisionist historian Peter Hart who made a number of derogatory statements in his 1998 publication, accusing Tom Barry of misconduct at the Kilmichael ambush in November, 1920.<br />
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Hart's justification for such strong condemnation of Barry is based mainly on the following: Firstly, a British Army Report of the time, which has since been shown to be produced for propaganda purposes. The historian, Brian P Murphy, in his recent publication 'The Origins and Organisation of British propaganda in Ireland 1920' shows that Peter Hart, while rejecting Tom Barry's account of Kilmichael and accusing him of lies and evasions, relies on a British Report of December 2, 1920 which "was explicitly designed to spread lies and evasions by a process of verisimilitude."<br />
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In other words, the British approach to spreading propaganda was designed to give the impression that the content was truthful.<br />
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As Brian Murphy states, "Hart has failed to recognise the hand of Basil Clarke and his propaganda team at work."<br />
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Secondly, Hart claims to have interviewed survivors of the Kilmichael Ambush as another source for his account of the event.<br />
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At a recent historical presentation at University College Cork, I put it to Peter Hart that, given the dates that his alleged interviews with ambush survivors took place, it could not have been possible for him to conduct such interviews.<br />
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Records show that, with one exception, none of the ambush participants were alive. He (Hart) again refused to name his interviewees.<br />
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It is interesting to note that Meda Ryan, in her book 'Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter', states that participants of the period were willing to discuss the Kilmichael ambush with her when she interviewed them in the 1970s and early 1980s.<br />
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It is now obvious that Hart's account of the ambush at Kilmichael is not credible.<br />
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He has dug a hole from which he will find it difficult to extricate himself.<br />
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Anyone wishing to find out the true facts on Kilmichael can obtain proof in a book to be launched at the Munster Arms Hotel, Bandon, on Friday night, June 30.<br />
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This publication gives fascinating details, supported by photographic identification, of those who participated in the ambush. It also gives insights into their background and lives.<br />
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Peter Hart has now some major explanations to give regarding his sources. Let's hear from you, Peter. SEAN O CEILLEACHAIR, CORK<br />
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<strong><em>The event at which Sean O Ceilleachair challenged Peter Hart is linked below:<br />
<a href="http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75885" title="http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75885">http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75885</a></strong></em>