'Ethnic cleansing' in the War of Independence: myth or reality?

(From Irish Independent)

LEST it be lost in the muddied waters of Kevin Myers's prose, let me reiterate the claim in my introduction to the screenplay of Ken Loach's film The Wind That Shakes the Barley that prompted his agitated misreading of my argument (June 28).

There is no evidence that Republicans in the War of Independence pursued a campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' against either Anglo-Irish or Protestants in West Cork. There were deplorable incidents, as no war goes according to plan, still less a war of insurgency. This is the upshot of Loach's powerful film, which shows that nobody can escape such intense conflict without deep scars, moral, psychological or otherwise. Even when justice is on one's side, there is no getting away from the terrible human cost of violence.

But such incidents do not amount to a campaign of systematic extermination, as the term 'ethnic cleansing' implies. There was discussion of a war of extermination, but it was on the British side, as fears were expressed by officials such as Sir Alfred Cope that only total war could annihilate Irish political opposition to British rule, given its mass popular support.

It was perhaps this appalling vista more than any other factor that brought the British to the negotiating table: the Irish War of Independence could not have been won without an all-out offensive on the Irish population. The atrocities of the Black and Tans provided a trial run for such a war of attrition, as did the vicious pogroms in Belfast, alluded to by Kevin Myers, which were indeed sectarian in character. This touches on the kernel of the issue. Kevin Myers accuses me of double standards, but there is a profound difference between opposing an unjust system, and perpetuating one.

The central question concerns the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland, and whether Irish independence could have been wrested from the might of the British Empire without a recourse to arms. I am one of those who believe it would have been preferable if separation was achieved by peaceful means, but that was as unlikely an outcome as an Ireland in which people could sing, hand on heart, Breandan O hEithir's spoof ballad on 'The Gentle Black and Tan'. Father Michael O'Flanagan, vice-President of Sinn Fein, related the story of a farmer who protected himself from an attack by a bulldog using the prongs of his ...