Buried Lives

by Bury, Robin;

  We moved on to the lrish language and unsurprisingly, he thought it was taught ‘with no love and no feeling behind it’. He mentioned that a government department even brought fishermen from Connemara to the area to help to revive the language, but it was a failure. Ian associates the language with backwardness, as everything he read as a boy was in English. They removed science subjects to give time for Irish and it ‘played no part in anything we did outside school’. His nephew’s background is Scottish and he was being forced to learn a language that had nothing to do with his culture. ‘It should be left there for those who want to learn it, or for romantics or dreamers. It was taught along with glorifying violence because the leaders of 1916 were in all schools with their names in Irish, even in Bandon Grammar School.’

  Growing up in Dunmanway, he was ‘within a community within a community’, so the people clung to their own. The community was ‘self-sufficient to an extent but when it came to politics, you just never got involved really because you’d always get the insult’. Ian’s father wanted a golf course in Dunmanway, ‘but it went to Skibbereen. He could not get the support of the community, only his own people’.

  As far as Protestants in the Republic are concerned, Ian says, ‘we are leaderless’. He believes that there is an attitude of ‘we must be friends, we all have the one God’. He feels that too many of our clergymen were ‘bending too much to fit in with them’. The leaders were not teaching ‘our culture’ in the schools, unlike Judaism or Islam. A lot has to do with Ireland’s ‘rugged individualism’, or entrepreneurial spirit: ‘look at all the inventions that came from Britain, and all the sports’. There is a spirit of ‘questioning things’, and not accepting laid-down doctrines.

  Despite these characteristics, Protestant numbers have fallen, so they have little strength. Ian mentioned that ‘the Anglo-Irish landlords left, like the Percivals in Castletownbere. They had to leave by boat as the house is right on the sea and they were picked up by a vessel out at sea.’ All their possessions – including tapestries – were burnt to the ground. ‘You look at all the fabulous treasures that were destroyed in the country just by pure hatred.’

  [In Bandon] they [the IRA] had taken the old Lord Bandon who was in his 80s, and old Lady Bandon stood up and sang ‘God Save the Queen’ repeatedly as the house burnt. That is one thing I admire about the old Protestant tradition. They had stiff upper lips and had real fight in them.

  The middle classes left and the country was left to people who were not forward thinking; Ireland therefore did very badly, as it was somewhat inward looking. The attitude was ‘I’d rather be poor than do business with Britain and Britain had a stepping stone to the world. A lot of poor people suffered because of separation and the self-sufficient economic theories of Arthur Griffith proved a disaster.’

  We discussed the huge part that the Irish played in building the Empire, another fact that is not commonly known.

  Some were government officials. They are not recognised for their role in supporting the Empire, especially by the British Governments today. In fact the Irish left the British Commonwealth in a fit of nationalist pique, thanks to Sean McBride whose mother, Maud Gonne, was partly British and was treated abominably by McBride. Maud Gonne went around in weeds for ever after her husband was shot in 1916, despite the fact she hated him. Perhaps only in Ireland could such self-serving, narcissistic behaviour be admired, especially from a Protestant. They are good at that, from Wolfe Tone to Childers.

  Ian believes that once a Protestant becomes a nationalist they go to extremes to prove themselves. Ian has seen how in mixed-religion marriages, offspring can be brought up to not just reject their Protestant culture, but become hardened nationalists. He knows of one child of such a marriage who became a nationalist. We then discussed closer relations with Britain, which Ian considers to be:

  … a slow, reluctant process. They don’t want to admit there are any of us left here or that there were any atrocities towards us a long time ago, 80 years ago, but there has been a Chinese torture towards us, drip, drip, drip through their education system. They want everything that is British but do not want to put a British stamp on it. Everybody’s watching BBC, the soaps, they are living just like any other British person, even the shops. Homebase opened up two weeks ago and you couldn’t get into the place when it opened. People want these shops.

  The main problem is with the monarchy, the Queen and the Union flag, a red rag to a bull even if you explain that St Patrick, St Andrew and St George make it up. Mary Harney said we are closer to Boston than to Berlin but we are much closer to London. Irish people go to Canada, Australia and New Zealand and to England. If they can’t live with English ways of life and laws, why go to England?

  So why did we leave Britain?

  This country was in a serious recession for 70 years after it left Britain and everything was going very well before and in farming everything was excellent in the country. There was a boom time in business here. And the Irish who went to America, why didn’t they come back and set up businesses here then if they were such perfect patriots.

  Ian went on to mention some people in west Cork, who have worked very hard and are ‘bent and twisted with arthritis. They had really hard lives and basic lives as well when they could have had so much more in an expanding world. They had pulled away from industrialisation and left the real world.’

  The following letter from Ian and his wife Elizabeth was published in the Irish News on 3 February 2003 in response to Martin Mansergh’s assertions that southern Protestants got a very fair deal, and it sums up Ian’s attitudes:

  Time to put the heating on for Protestants

  HAVING read Senator Martin Mansergh’s piece ‘The south is a warm house for Protestants’, my wife and I felt compelled to reply.

  It appears that Mr Mansergh is at variance with himself, his identity and the culture to which he comes from. My wife and I are not ex-Ascendancy. He could claim this title. He is in fact more English.

  In no way does Mr Mansergh reflect any significant body of opinion among living generations of Protestants in the south. Coming from Protestant backgrounds, we had to submit and come to terms with living in an Irish state as our businesses, livelihood and survival depended on it. Yes, we have integrated into the community – we are not assimilated.

  How can we embrace the national anthem and flag of the south, as the two entwined have been adorned by people whose sole purpose has been to remove me and my cultural existence from my homeland. Feeling vulnerable, Protestants don’t speak up so as not to attract any unwanted attention upon themselves for fear of consequences. When they do speak up they are called ‘whingers’.

  As Home Rule was on the statute books, the 1916 rising was unwarranted. Think of all the lives that have been lost unnecessarily since.

  Why was there a pogrom of the Protestants from 1920–26? Why the Ne Temere decree which more than decimated the Protestant population? In the 1980s Dr Noel Browne’s comments – ‘a state where no Protestants need apply’ – wasn’t encouraging. Why the recent state funerals for dead IRA men when there has been no reciprocation for the victims those people had murdered?

  Did Mr Mansergh’s party consult minority religions when the wording for the last referendum bill was put together? No. Why wasn’t a member of the Reform Group asked to attend the recent forum? Is it because we are not supposed to exist? Why have so many Protestant churches had to close? It wasn’t because of the heating bills to keep them warm.

  In Donegal, Protestants make up 10 per cent of the community and yet only one per cent are civil servants. In a recent survey (Derry-Raphoe) 78 per cent of Protestants believe that equal opportunities do not exist.

  I’m discriminated against because I’m British and I’m not entitled to a British passport in southern Ireland yet Northern Ireland nationalists are entitled to Irish passports. 2

  I want to live in a genuinely plural, liberal democratic state capable of accommodating social,
cultural and religious diversity whether you aspire to be Irish, British-Irish or British. The people of Scotland have the option of the normal range of politics – right, left and centre, all three being unionist parties with a small ‘u’ in addition to a nationalist party.

  Is it too fanciful to ask Mr Mansergh to tolerate a similar evolution here where the Reform Movement can be tolerated alongside the main political parties in southern Ireland?

  This state has been a cold house for Protestants for far too long. It’s time to put the heating on, Dr Mansergh.

  IAN AND ELIZABETH BEAMISH

  Limerick

  Protestant numbers have ceased to drop in the South. From 10.4 per cent in 1911, the population continued to decrease; it was 7.4 per cent in 1926, 5 per cent in 1960 and 3 per cent in 1991. However, there was a slight rise in 2011, when numbers increased to 3.5 per cent. This is largely due to an increase in the number of Protestant immigrants. Native Irish Protestant numbers, though, are not increasing significantly. In the 1950s, the Sparsely Populated Areas Commission closed 144 churches, and closures have continued since. It was reported that 6 churches closed in Cork city recently and 5 in Limerick city. Many Church of Ireland members do not attend services. It could be said that the Church of Ireland is fading away.

  As for recognition of Protestant identity and its association with Britain, there is little doubt that people view Irish identity in a broader way. President McAleese said at the opening of Brakey Orange Hall in 2008 in Baillieborough, Co. Cavan that ‘It is possible to be both Irish and British, possible to be both Orange and Irish. We face into a landscape new possibilities and understandings’.3 Nevertheless, terms such as ‘West Brit’ and ‘Anglo-Irish’ are in common parlance, denying the Irish identity of southern Protestants, as is made clear in interviews in Heather Crawford’s book Outside the Glow, where both Protestants and Catholics thought that Protestants are all too often seen as outsiders. Given the nature of the emotional and intellectual inspiration of the founding fathers of the Free State, this is not surprising. The inclusive dreams of Wolfe Tone and Thomas Davis were cast aside. Protestants were on the one hand required to be part of the nation and to be outside the nation on the other.

  There have been major steps in recent years in recognising the Irish contribution to the British forces in the two world wars, with visits by Queen Elizabeth II to the Irish National War Memorial at Islandbridge in 2011. Bishop Paul Colton of Cork, Cloyne and Ross believed that the complexity of Irish history was being recognised, and this gave ‘the lie to the heresy … that there was only one way in which you could meaningfully be said to be an Irish person – mythical Celtic, oppressed and Roman Catholic.’4 The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, laid wreaths in May 2014 at war graves of Irish and British soldiers who fell in Belgium and Flanders in the First World War. This has led to an acknowledgement of those who followed the call of John Redmond to join the British forces in 1914.

  John Redmond has been all but airbrushed out of Irish history following the unmandated insurrection of 1916, when a minority secret organisation, the IRB, which was part of a minority armed organisation the Irish Volunteers, took up arms in a hopeless military initiative to separate from the United Kingdom. The rebellion was countermanded by Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, but this order was ignored by the IRB leaders, Patrick Pearse in particular. Furthermore, Roger Casement, who had organised a shipment of arms from Germany that was intercepted by the British Navy, called off the insurrection.

  What MacNeill said at the time is worth quoting:

  I do not know at this moment whether the time and the circumstances will yet justify distinct revolutionary action, but of this I am certain, that the only possible basis for successful revolutionary action is deep and widespread popular discontent. We have only to look around in the streets to realize that no such condition exists in Ireland. A few of us, a small proportion, who think about the evils of English government in Ireland, are always discontented. We should be downright fools if we were to measure many others by the standard of our own thoughts.5

  There were few ‘evils’, if any, ‘of English government in Ireland’. Ireland enjoyed all of what were considered the major freedoms in 1916, and Home Rule was enacted by Westminster. Had John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party survived, it is likely that the outcome would have been more inclusive for southern Irish Protestants and that the nature of Irish identity would not have been, in the words of Bishop Colton, ‘only one way in which you could meaningfully be said to be an Irish person – mythical Celtic, oppressed and Roman Catholic.’6

  7

  Some Donegal Voices

  I continued my research on today’s Protestant attitudes with a visit to Co. Donegal. The Protestant community there is larger than in any other county in Ireland, and beleaguered as it has often felt since independence, it has maintained its beliefs and different culture since 1922. This is partly because it is a border county in constant touch with fellow Protestants in the North.

  Let me start with the sad story of Joe Patterson and his family, forced to leave Letterkenny for Vancouver in Canada in 1974. At that time he and his wife, Margaret, were 39, his son David was 10, and his two daughters 9 and 5. He had owned a farm of 150 acres and a thriving, long-established meat business.

  Letterkenny is very near Derry, which had become a focus of bitter sectarian strife by 1970. The Pattersons were one of the few Protestant businesses in the town, and they were concerned about anti-Protestant sentiment crossing the border. That year, some of the butchers working in the Patterson business had joined a trade union, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). Shortly afterwards, 4 tonnes of meat and some cash were stolen. Joe saw his meat-packaging material being used by another company in Letterkenny, but never discovered how it got there. He was the only user of this product in Donegal.

  He tackled the shop steward, who admitted responsibility for the missing meat and cash, but said he had no idea ‘what happened to it’. Joe dismissed him. The next day the ITGWU members went on strike, supported by George Hunter, County Secretary of the ITGWU in Londonderry. The Gardaí were informed and supplied with the names of witnesses; they questioned the suspect but found no evidence of theft. Some time later, the suspect married a girl from Carrick-on-Shannon, where he bought a small farm. The Gardaí could not explain where he obtained the money for this purchase.

  The Pattersons joined the Federated Union of Employers of Ireland, the strike was settled a week later and an agreement was signed by the ITGWU to avoid further strikes. But trouble soon flared up again. During the strike, Joe lost considerable business and had to take the difficult decision of laying off one of his employees. He called for a meeting with the union members, which was repeatedly refused over a six-week period. To protect his business, he laid off an ITGWU man, giving two weeks’ notice. The next day the union members went on strike, again breaking the agreement with the ITGWU.

  In Derry, George Hunter refused to take the calls Joe made every 20 minutes for 3 days. Eventually George arrived in Letterkenny in a state of great excitement, barged into the office, slammed his briefcase on the desk and used foul language in front of a female employee. Joe suggested that George should leave, compose himself and start again, which he did. At that point, Hunter admitted that the strikers had broken the agreement, the strike was unofficial and that Joe was free to lay them off. Aware that trade unions have 3 weeks to decide whether to support a strike, and wary of Hunter’s ‘business ethics’, Joe decided to wait. He asked for a court injunction to prevent further pickets, but this alarmed the police, who advised Joe’s solicitor that should the injunction be broken, offenders would have to be arrested, with the likely outcome of riots backed by nationalists in the Bogside in Derry. There might even be loss of life. For the Pattersons, it was a no-win situation. They withdrew the injunction. Hunter then lent official support to the strike, as Joe had s
uspected he would.

  Following a threat to bomb his house, Joe sought a meeting with the senior IRA officer in Letterkenny, whom he had known for many years. Surprisingly, the response was positive and they met in the IRA man’s home at night. Joe produced the threatening letter and was assured that the IRA was not involved. Yes, the IRA had been approached by the strikers and he, the local IRA man, had refused to help. Undaunted, the strikers went to the IRA headed by Martin McGuinness in the Bogside of Derry. Shortly afterwards, McGuinness paid a visit to Letterkenny to find out what was happening. Joe knew Martin McGuinness from visits to the abbatoir in Derry, where McGuinness worked. The IRA’s response to the strikers was that if Joe’s family was harmed, they would pass the names of the offenders to the police in the North and South. Furthermore, the IRA offered protection, which he turned down.

  Joe was threatened and persecuted. If his car was seen in Letterkenny, his wife often got a phone call, telling her where his body could be found. The police were aware of this and offered him a handgun under instructions from head office. He turned this down.

  The strike lasted 8 weeks, ruining the Pattersons’ meat business. It was finally settled by a Rights Commissioner, Mr Con Murphy. However, the representative of the Federated Union of Employers, John Quinn, announced to Joe just before the meeting took place that he would not support him. Trade union officials admitted religious discrimination, acknowledged the theft and accepted that the aim of the strike was to finish the Patterson business. The strike achieved its aim. When they reopened, few customers supported them and they closed shop on 2 June 1973.