Madam, - Dr Peter Hart's letter of June 28th stated: "I have never argued that 'ethnic cleansing' took place in Cork or elsewhere" during the War of Independence. That is not accurate. In his article "The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland" (in Unionism and Modern Ireland, Gill & MacMillan, 1996), Dr Hart wrote of this period: "Similar campaigns of what might be termed 'ethnic cleansing' were waged in parts of King's and Queen's Counties, South Tipperary, Leitrim, Mayo, Limerick, Westmeath, Louth, and Cork".
He also compared the Irish Revolution to Bosnia and "the postwar 'unmixing' of people in Europe". Dr Hart's landmark book The IRA and Its Enemies essentially attributed the shooting of Protestant civilians in Cork to the IRA's "fear of a desire for revenge", rather than the actual guilt of those victims. I disagree.
My upcoming book Spies, Informers, and the "Anti-Sinn Féin Society" studies the executions of suspected informers in Cork city during 1920-1921. Of the IRA's 30 civilian killings, five victims were Protestant and 19 were ex-servicemen.
The latter number should be placed in the context of the city's large ex-soldier population, which included over 5,500 veterans of the first World War. Overall, my research revealed no IRA campaign against the city's Protestant, unionist and ex-servicemen institutions and leaders.
Among Cork's executed "spies", clear evidence linked some of them to the crown forces, while others were shot without any explanation. Today it is impossible to establish guilt in many cases. British records about informants are fragmented, incomplete, and often unreliable. IRA records were destroyed during the conflict for security reasons. However, surviving documentation indicates the Cork city IRA only targeted civilians it believed were passing information to the crown forces.
The Cork city Volunteers certainly had the means to identify local citizens working with British forces. Volunteers systematically intercepted mail, tapped phone lines and monitored telegraphs around the city. Republican spies and sympathisers could be found in key workplaces throughout the town. IRA intelligence officers closely watched British bases and personnel. One IRA spy penetrated the British army's Cork command at its highest level, and had access to sensitive information that we must assume included the identities of local civilian informants. Her story can be found in Florence and Josephine O'Donoghue's War of Independence, which I edited. - Yours, etc,
JOHN BORGONOVO, San Francisco, USA.