Irish Republican Army

The outcome of the first  West Cork History Festival

The advertising blurb for the First West Cork History festival this year told us that it,

"… will span a diverse set of places, historical subjects and periods, from the local to the international, ranging from the Knights Templar to the events of the Irish revolutionary period in West Cork. Leading historians will be joined by journalists and senior diplomats, and while much of their focus will be on Irish themes, the perspective will be international. The festival will be informal, participatory and with a menu for the intellectually omnivorous."

This was all very welcome but it is a pity that the Festival did not invite any local historians to address it on the history of West Cork and in particular on the controversial issues that have bedevilled that history since publication of the late Professor Peter Hart’s work. He created the current interest in West Cork’s history some twenty years ago. Everybody knows this. This Festival was indebted to him for this interest.

However, the serious discussion on his work occurred outside the Festival in the pages of the Southern Star and elsewhere. This is a collection of the correspondence from that paper and other items that deal in detail with the ‘legacy issues’ arising from
Professor Hart’s work. The first letter, from Tom Cooper, generated 22 more items of correspondence and a news report, between 27 May and 26 August 2017 on three topics:

1. Three letters, from Cooper and Simon Kingston, on the festival;
2. Four letters, from Cooper and from Gerry Gregg on his and Eoghan Harris’s documentary, An Tost Fada (‘The Long Silence’), plus one newspaper report;
3. Five letters each from Eve Morrison and Niall Meehan, three from Barry Keane, and one each from Donald Woods and John Regan, on Peter Hart, Tom Barry and the 28 November 1922 Kilmichael Ambush.

In addition, due to Barry Roche in the Irish Times reporting RTÉ’s re-editing of An Tost Fada, Tom Cooper had a letter published on his role in that decision. It occasioned three replies, to which the Irish Times denied Cooper a response, which we publish here. We also publish an important 2014 letter from Meda Ryan to History Ireland, in response to a commentary on Ryan by Eve Morison (in a review of Pádraig O Ruairc’s book, Truce).

This is by far the most useful outcome of the Festival despite not being part of it. Another event that played both on and offstage was the Sunday Times (‘Éire’ edition) dismissal of Peter Hart’s original supporter and a festival contributor, Kevin Myers.
In his column on the morning of the last festival day, Myers combined misogyny and anti-Semitism, attacking women generally and Jewish women in particular. He had made his reputation, alongside Hart, criticising IRA commander Tom Barry and other
republicans. Myers spent his festival afternoon beside a female Jewish rabbi, under a portrait of Tom Barry. That part, you couldn’t make up.

We hope that the organisers of next year’s Festival will arrange for a continuation of such forensic discussion of West Cork’s history. They can do so by ensuring that the local and national participants in the Southern Star discussion are invited to the
Festival. It is surely sensible that such contributions are made at the Festival as well as outside it. It would be useful also to ascertain how to apply to join the secretive Festival Committee.

Jack Lane, Aubane Historical Society.

A debate in 2017-18 in History Ireland on the killing of 13 Protestant civilians plus four members of the British Army (including three intelligence officers) in late April 1922 in West Cork. Beginning with Bielenberg's critique of Gerard Murphy's Year of Disappearances (2010). Letters were sent in response by the late Prof David Fitzpatrick, Barry Keane, Jeff Dudgeon, John Borgonovo (with Bielenberg) and Niall Meehan. See also: 'Examining Peter Hart', https://www.academia.edu/8348624/; 'The Embers of Revisionism', https://www.academia.edu/34075119/