Madam, - Niall Meehan, as usual, misrepresents my work (June 23rd). I have never argued that "ethnic cleansing" took place in Cork or elsewhere in the 1920s - in fact, quite the opposite. Nor does my book The IRA and its Enemies suggest that no Protestants were "guilty" of "informing" (at least by IRA standards) or that they were the only group to be targeted.
What I do argue - based on a great deal of evidence from both sides - is that Protestants were no more likely than Catholics to inform, but that they were much more likely to be suspected, and vastly more likely per capita to be killed (or otherwise attacked) as a result.
Nor were they alone. Ex-soldiers and those referred to as "tramps" and "tinkers" were also frequent victims, as were other perceived social deviants. What they all had in common was a marginal position in local society. The IRA, a product of local communities, couldn't get away with killing respectable farmers or shopkeepers - let alone priests - and tended to suspect outsiders anyway. It is surely a familiar enough pattern in human affairs: fear, anger and prejudice.
My argument is thus about the nature of violence and community, not the straw man that my critics like to attack. As for the massacre of Protestants in April 1922, there is absolutely no publicly available evidence available to suggest that any of those killed were informers or members of some loyalist underground. They do not appear on any IRA intelligence lists, for example.
Mr Meehan's suggestions - that religion had nothing to do with it, the IRA wasn't really responsible and the victims were probably guilty anyway - only reveals his commitment to the party line.
We should always be profoundly suspicious of excuses for killing, no matter who offers them. - Yours, etc,
PETER HART, Department of History, Memorial University, St John's, Newfoundland, Canada.