Buried Lives

by Bury, Robin;

  On the recognition of bishops by the media, he pointed out that ‘the Church of Ireland bishops are always referred to on the radio as the Church of Ireland bishop, but whenever they refer to the Roman Catholic bishop, they refer to him as, for example, the Bishop of Dromore. This means the Church of Ireland bishop is not the real bishop.’

  He also noted that Protestant numbers had fallen drastically, as noted earlier in this book. In 1920, the town nearest to him was full of Protestant shops, but today there is only one left. ‘This is the story of rural Ireland. In the north, by way of contrast, the Catholic people have gone from strength to strength, both in numbers and in prosperity.’

  I next went to Co. Wexford for a meeting with a small Protestant farmer, whom I will call John. He told me that he, like his fellow Protestants, had learnt to keep his head down. It had been bred into him. He was of the opinion that the Protestants were persecuted not for their religious beliefs but for their political opinions. If they criticised ‘the sectarian nature of the Irish State, or the rebels of 1916, they would be in hot water. It wasn’t always that way. In 1798 when the rebellion took place in and around Enniscorthy, there were 4,000 loyalists living there. Today there are none.’ His farmer friend, who lives nearby and to whom John introduced me, said that if it were not for the British, there would be no Protestants left in Wexford, and in the South generally, as they intervened to stop the massacre of Protestants during 1798. ‘Part of the reason Protestants were murdered was because they administered British rule in Ireland, even the clergy could be magistrates.’ But, he added:

  … the British soon forget who their friends are, and even find them an embarrassment, and as a result they are not supporting the unionists in the north and should not have allowed all the IRA murderers out of prison without getting the IRA to put away their weapons and say ‘the war is over’.

  I asked John how he thought he fitted into the local community and he told me that he was invited to the President’s reception in Áras an Uachtaráin on 12 July 1998. The then President, Mary McAleese, had made a real gesture to the southern Protestant community by hosting a reception on 11 July. She invited people from the Orange Order in the South, as well as Protestant judges and professionals and journalists like Bruce Arnold. John was pleased to go. But he is convinced that people in the area got to know of this, because he was given the cold shoulder by some of his neighbours for about a year. It was not clear why they should react in this manner. Perhaps it was because neighbours were aware that some people from the Orange Order in Northern Ireland had been invited and John was considered a sympathiser? Did John over-react?

  John believed that Protestants like him had no political voice. He had approached Ivan Yates, a local retired Fine Gael Protestant government minister, about the possibility of a united Ireland, something all southern political parties sought. If we were really serious about this, John suggested, concessions would have to be given to the unionists. For instance, the South should go back into the Commonwealth of Nations, should have a new flag and anthem, an all-Ireland parliament located between Dublin and Belfast, a Human Rights charter. However, Yates considered these suggestions to be unsellable in the South. He did not want to even debate them in Fine Gael circles, where he was respected and had considerable influence. Yet, as John pointed out, Fine Gael has no plan nor discussion document to prepare for what would happen if one day 51 per cent of the electorate in the North votes to remove the border. Then again, no party has. It is a long way off, if it ever happens.

  John was convinced that Ireland had suffered considerably by leaving the UK. As far as he was concerned, had the country remained a part of the UK, it would have enjoyed an infrastructure comparable to Scotland’s, which he thinks is first rate. If it were not for the EU, there would be no good new roads, no motorways. He also considered that if the UK had not been on Ireland’s doorstep, the country would have been as poor as parts of South America, with large families living below the poverty line. The Irish health service is inferior to the National Health Service provided in the North. However, the Irish road network has improved hugely since I interviewed John, with motorways connecting all the major cities to Dublin along with funding provided by a generous EU.

  He is convinced, despite the party’s pluralist rhetoric, that Sinn Féin wants the unionists out of the North. Unionists need only look to what happened to the Protestant loyalists in the South if they want to understand what would happen to them in a united Ireland.

  Look what happened after the Second World War in Europe. The Russians had tried to suppress Christianity in countries they conquered after 1945 but when they withdrew, Christianity made a comeback and is stronger than ever. Here this will never happen as far as the Protestant community is concerned as there are far too few left and their churches are closing down all the time all over the country. It has been a complete triumph for the Roman Catholic Church.

  When some unionists in Northern Ireland whom he knows talk about the South, they say ‘you Protestants must be very happy as we never hear you complaining’. Yet when he tells them that Protestants keep quiet because they fear consequences, unionists find this hard to accept.

  My example of going to the President’s reception in the Park shows what my neighbours think about my tradition expressing itself. Then there was the murder by the IRA of Senator Fox in Monaghan when he spoke up, something which horrified John Bruton. But then Bruton is about the only truly pluralist man in the Dáil and look what they did to him.

  However we should remember that Senator Fox was murdered in the 1970s, and that times had changed when John went to the Áras. Nevertheless, John’s perception is that his Protestant tradition is not at ease in expressing itself.

  I next travelled to Limerick to meet a scion of one of the Beamish families, who have been in Ireland for over 400 years. Ian Beamish is from Mellane near Dunmanway and went to school in Bandon Grammar, an old Protestant foundation secondary school with a proud tradition. He emphasised that his mother came from a poor Protestant family: ‘It is a myth that all Protestants are wealthy. Most were not.’

  Ian is in his 30s and works for Analogue, the large US computer parts manufacturer, in Limerick. His wife, from Limerick, is a devout member of the Church of Ireland. He is a member of the Orange Order.

  His family memories go back to the War of Independence, when local people cruelly cut the hooves off the Beamish cattle and left them to bleed to death. But he added that the Beamishes were ‘strong people’ and that ‘through their family history they hanged one or two people for attacking them’. There was a cake shop owned by the Wilsons in Dunmanway, a Protestant family. According to Ian’s father:

  … when the lady who owns it was a little girl, the IRA came into the house, they had them all huddled, the head IRA man went over to take the bread, and the little girl said, ‘Don’t let him take that, Mammy,’ and the IRA man put a gun in her mouth and told her to go back and sit down in the corner.

  A boy with whom Ian went to school told him that his family also ‘had all been huddled into a corner, his grandfather was pinned to the door with a gun at the back of his head, and was told, “Don’t you dare say anything about what goes on in this house tonight.”’

  The IRA had used that house as a stakeout to ambush an army patrol that was passing. The house was chosen to try to make the patrol believe the shots were coming from Protestants … Even to this day there is a man outside Dunmanway, one of my father’s best friends, who heard gunfire (he lives in a mountainous area), and thought it was a guy shooting rabbits, but this was rapid fire, and he went up to investigate, and it was actually the IRA who were practising. They put a gun to his head and told him if he ever spoke about this, they would kill him. That’s a threat he has lived with and that’s only ten years ago.

  Returning to the Troubles, Ian informed me that ‘Michael Collins came from 12 miles outside Dunmanway. Sam Maguire was born in Dunmanway town and is buried in the local church.
Maguire was in the British civil service and recruited Collins. Maguire got very sensitive information on Ireland and used to come over on the boat to Dublin to give it to Collins personally as it was too risky to post it. Based on some of this information, Collins organised the ‘Bloody Sunday’ murders of the British Army intelligence men who were murdered in cold blood. Ian believed that Collins had let down Sam Maguire, as he did not give him the position he wanted as chief of the Irish civil service. Be that as it may, Maguire was rejected by his own local Protestant people and died of tuberculosis, an unhappy man.

  Ian’s grandfather had his own pub and farm and had built himself up over the years. He had also worked for Atkins, selling flowers and farm machinery in the local area, so a lot of farmers knew who he was.

  He was well respected and that’s why when certain pressures were coming on Protestants in the town he used to get tipped off, you know. People would say to him out of the blue, ‘I recommend not to be around and it could be in the afternoon and you’d better get out of town tonight,’ and he said that he used to grab my father and wrap him up in blankets and go about four miles outside to cousins of ours. One night the IRA shot five Protestants in the town and one of them was eighty something, he was almost blind and he just answered the door and they shot him dead … When my own father died, we had found bank accounts in England, Barclays. My mother said that through the years if the pressure ever got too much, he had to get out and he had a bank account waiting for him in England and he could leave overnight. He lived all his life with that in the back of his mind. He was self-employed and he had to keep his mouth shut. To stay in business and to survive you just had to keep your mouth shut.

  Ian continued:

  I remember when the hunger strikes were on in the H block and I did not really understand what they were but I soon found out. I went to school in Bandon Grammar and going to school we were called ‘Proddie woddie green guts’. I remember the day Bobby Sands died that the headmaster called an assembly and he just said if you need to ring your parents to collect you, go ahead and I would advise you to take your school ties off going home. I remember going down the town and getting kicked in the backside, and funnily Roman Catholics were also getting it, as it was an interdenominational school where there were Catholics as well.

  I asked him why he joined the Orange Order.

  Where I grew up a lot of the Church of Ireland people felt British. I felt proud that the community I grew up in had done everything to keep their traditions and religion and I felt very pro-British. I felt Britain was the cradle and fountain of everything I enjoyed in life. I can’t be the only one who feels like this. I could never identify with the GAA, céili music, I could appreciate it but I could not identify with it. I wanted to be involved with far wider thinking and world. No one had taught me to be like this so it must be myself.

  He saw an Orange parade on 12 July and thought that ‘they must be proud to parade and are not afraid to walk out as Protestant and British. I felt that that was what I could identify with. My Dad said, ‘Don’t bring that on yourself.’

  Dad was not in the Orange because he was in business and we would really be driven out. I answered back a few people in the shop, and my Dad told me we were going to have our windows driven in because of me. One day one guy called Margaret Thatcher a ‘bitch’ and I said isn’t, she’s one strong woman, isn’t her ancestry from Kerry? Her grandparents are from Kerry. I remember playing with a little toy gun and I said ‘I am going to join the British Army,’ and said it was the finest army in the world and I got an awful doing for that. I just thought standing behind the shop counter, I am not going to make money like this and take this abuse … I admire the way the Orange Order honours the war dead. No one lines up here on 11 November. I got a copy of the sash from a relative and I used to put it on and was told to turn it down.

  Ian then rang the Orange Order in Belfast and was put in touch with the Lodge in Dublin. He was told not to go ahead as ‘the fear factor came in again’ but he ‘did not care as he did not want to live his life like that’. He then joined and has ‘no regrets since. The amount of people I have met who opened my world.’

  Someone came into the shop once and said, ‘I think it is so funny to see these people dressed like this on 12 July trying to be Englishmen’. I said, ‘They are not trying to be Englishmen. They are witnesses for their faith. It’s a walk. It is to remember what we fought for in 1690, the rule of law, parliament, democracy. It is very Irish.’ The man, who was a clergyman who came from England said, ‘It is not Irish, the Famine is Irish.’ So I said, ‘Sorry, now, if you go down to that church and look at the tablet inside the door, that’s our history, the names of the people from that church who are now dead who fought in two world wars. The Famine is part of history but that is also our history. Orangemen defend their church.’

  Returning to the subject of the Orange Order, he went on:

  There used to be eight Orange lodges in Bandon. A man who is on the board of Bandon school was visiting relatives in northern Ireland and the old lady was very sickly and said, ‘there is something under the bed and take it away but don’t open it until you get home’. It was the original Orange banner from Bandon. He did not know what to do with it. They had closed the Protestant church, which was the largest one in Ireland, and they had turned it into a heritage centre. It is now on display.

  When Ian and a few others went to discuss the Twelfth of July celebrations with Mary McAleese in Áras an Uachtaráin, he mentioned the banner and the president asked if she could have it to display in the Áras on the day. So Ian approached someone on the committee in Bandon, whose father was in the IRA, and he agreed. The whole Bandon committee was invited and all of them went. ‘The celebration in the Park went off very well but unfortunately all the good we had done was ruined by events at Drumcree.’ The Drumcree resistance to parades had been at its height in the 1990s and there had been high tensions in 1998/99.

  We have some republican clergymen in Co. Cork and one told people if you want to buy your poppies, go down to the Roman Catholic church and buy them there. So they did and came back. But people were not at all happy and some wanted to get rid of him. Particularly with the history of what happened to the Protestants in the area. Unfortunately the Church of Ireland is full of appeasing, wet clergy like that who are more interested in appeasement than in principles. That is why the Church of Ireland has got so weak. Rome matters more than their own.

  Many southern Protestants, however, would not agree with these strong sentiments.

  Kevin Myers and John Bruton have commented that there are very few Union flags flown in the South. Ian agrees:

  I was down in the Blackpool shopping centre in Cork city. I was in there one day looking around and there were 22 flags in the centre and 3 of the flags were flying upside down. Canada was upside down with the maple leaf turned around and some of the flags you would not know where they came from. There was nothing from England, Scotland, Wales. They even had the Vatican flag flying. There was no Union flag, our nearest neighbours, our biggest tourists, so I said I would hop the ball here where Michael Collins and Roy Keane are big heroes. I just said to the lady behind the information desk there were 3 flags there flying upside down and she asked which ones. So I said, ‘With all these flags, there is nothing to mark our nearest neighbour.’ So she said, ‘Which neighbour?’ And I said, ‘England, Scotland and Wales,’ and I got a look as if I was joking and she said, ‘You’re serious? I don’t think that would be appropriate here.’ So I said, ‘Why not?’ So she realised I was not taking the mick and she said she would make a note and tell the manager. She wanted my details but I left it at that, as my name would be handed around. There’s still a chip on the shoulder.

  I was at work on Saturday after the Rangers and Celtic match and one guy turns to me and says, ‘Those dirty Orange bastards,’ and he looked at me. I said, ‘That’s a nice greeting to give me coming into work. If I had come in and insulted yo
u, you’d have had me up for bigotry.’ So he said, ‘I did not mean anything by it, sure I was born over there. I have a British passport. I have two of them. I have a British and an Irish passport.’

  So Ian told him that he was more British than he was, as Ian only has an Irish passport, though he very much wants a British one and is upset that the British did not agree to let Irish people have them as part of the Belfast Agreement. After all, anyone who wants an Irish passport in the North can have one. Apparently the right for Irish citizens to hold British passports was in the original agreement but later removed.

  One day, someone suggested that Ian must be very disappointed in England, as they had lost the World Cup. He pointed out that he had been born in Ireland and, furthermore, his family had been here for 400 years and had no family connections in England.

  Some other guy who was a lapsed Catholic said that a priest had said that every town in Ireland should have a statue of Winston Churchill so they could spit on it when they came out of Mass. The same man said that all the world’s problems can be blamed on English Protestants and American Jews.

  On mixed marriages, Ian believes that there is no longer ‘the same severity’ about the enforcement of the Ne Temere decree and that ‘about half the children who go to the Church of Ireland playgroup my daughter attends are from mixed religion marriages’. He thinks a lot of influence can come from the clergyman and he describes:

  … an excellent clergyman in town now [Revd Hewitt], and all the mixed marriages he goes and visits and in fairness to him there are some coming back to church now. A lot has to do with the clergyman and that is what is wrong with the Church of Ireland … we don’t know our culture, we are not taught our history, it’s not coming from the Church of Ireland anyway. I grew up in Dunmanway and my parents worked very hard … when a bill was due, it was paid. We were called black Protestants and we used to think, why don’t they like us? I remember I had played soccer and one guy asked me if I would play Gaelic and some of the lads were dead sound and others called us ‘jaffas’ after the oranges!