This tree has rotten roots and bitter fruit

Eoghan Harris - Sunday Independent 9 October

THE story Alan Stanley tells in Life magazine today touches a raw nerve in the Irish Republic. Based on his self-published book, I Met Murder on the Way, he tells how in June 1921, shortly before the Truce, an IRA gang descended on a defenceless Protestant farm family, the Pearsons of Coolacrease, Co Offaly, and carried out an appalling atrocity. Alan's account asks awkward questions, not just of Roman Catholic nationalists, but of those who call themselves Protestant republicans. But first let me say why the story affected me so deeply at a personal level. The Pearsons of Coolacrease belonged to a small Protestant sect called the Cooneyites, whom Alan Stanly aptly compares to the Amish of Pennsylvania. Many years ago in Cork I knew such a Cooneyite family.

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Back in the fifties, as a boy, I worked for my father in his small wholesale grocery business in James St. This was before the days of cash and carry and there were few personal callers to break the monotony. So I well remember the rainy day when I was packing tea and looked up to see I was not alone. Standing patiently inside the draughty door, waiting for me to finish my task, were a small family of what I would have called country people. But these figures seemed from a far-off time: a tall angular man with a short beard in a plain black coat, a tall handsome woman in a brown bonnet and a long brown coat that almost touched the ground, a young girl, my age, with blue woollen gloves, blue coat, and plain black buttoned shoes, whose modest gaze could not disguise her delight at the rare treat of being up in town. Later my father told me they were called Cooneyites. I have never forgotten their aura of invincible innocence. It was the start of my life-long respect for low-church Protestants. Tildy Pearson would have looked like the girl with the gloves whom I saw in my father's store so many years ago, and who thanked me with a sweetness which still breathes its benediction after almost50 years.

To attack a family like that calls to high heaven for atonement. Alan Stanley's book helps make historical amends, not only to the Pearsons, but to the 50,000 Protestants who were bullied, frightened and burned out of their modest farms, both before and after the Truce, and whose story has been suppressed by nationalists. And thereby hangs a complex tale.

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First a few facts. Between 1911 and 1925 the number of Protestants in the South fell by a massive 34 per cent with a sharp peak between 1920-24 when about 10,000 Protestants left Ireland. In his forthcoming book, with the appropriate working title Buried Lives, Robin Bury has factored in the deaths of World War One and those who left with the British garrison. That still leaves 50,000 Irish Protestants, modest artisans, small farmers and shopkeepers, run out of the country. This may have encouraged the emigration of some 10,000 Protestant artisans from Dublin. Among those who left were Pearsons of Coolacrease.

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Naturally you will have no trouble figuring out why Southern nationalists might not want to hear about these tribal intimidations by the IRA. These stories subvert our smug assumption that the only sectarians are Loyalist sectarians. But the Pearson atrocity was not an isolated incident but part of a persistent pattern of persecution, intimidation and murder - what might charitably be called "erratic ethnic cleansing". Increasingly, in my experience, Roman Catholic nationalists can cope with these truths. Admittedly a minority of mad nationalists, still believe that admitting these atrocities gives "ammunition" to Paisley & Co. Actually the opposite is true. Northern unionists are always relieved when Southerners admit to such atrocities. It means that we have no hidden agendas.

But what is truly amazing is the sort of well-heeled Southern Protestant who will claim to be speaking in the name of ecumenism or the peace process or whatever they believe will go down well with people in certain circles. Actually most Dublin Protestants don't know anything about the atrocities against their rural co-religionists in places like Cork, Carlow and Longford. And most don't want these tragedies dragged up because it is socially inconvenient. But their cowardly desires do not close the case. As Yeats says, buried men thrust their way back into the public mind. Besides, many rural Roman Catholics well remember secrets whispered at home. The Pearsons suffered in silence. So did thousands of Protestants in modest circumstances. And I have a hunch that the persistent self-suppression of this dark history and the policy of keeping the head down must have done some damage to the Southern Protestant psyche.

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Martin Mansergh has some title to being the top Southern Protestant in denial. And it has left its mark. Last week, in his Irish Times column, he said something which pins down the peculiar psychology of many Southern republican Protestants. "The grounds of my family home in Tipperary, let when my father was young, was the scene of the murder in 1931 of Garda Supt Curtin, who had allegedly threatened some local volunteers with the law. This led to the introduction of draconian legislation in the final months of the Cosgrave administration in 1931 and to a split in the Labour Party. A faded cross on the wall by the gate marks the spot. Close by, I have planted a beech tree, given to me five years agoby Gerry Adams, as a 'Treeof Peace'." This makes me sick for three reasons. First, the bad politics of the phrase about the "draconian legislation" of the Cosgrave government. Second, the repugnant spectacle of a republican Protestant planting a tree given him by Gerry Adams. Third, because it provides a rotten role model for any young Protestant Irishman.

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Let me, from my Roman Catholic nationalist background, put the matter simply. The Pearsons family did not deserve what was done to them, and neither did the 50,000 artisans and farmers who were driven out of their homes and across the world. Facing our tribal past helps us understand the fears of Northern Protestants - and is good for our souls. That is why I reject the right of posh Protestants to plant some green plastic Tree of Liberty with Gerry Adams. Any such tree is rotten to the roots and will bear only bitter fruit. Peace starts with a prayer for the Pearson boys.

Eoghan Harris

Eoghan Harris