Madam, - Peter Hart writes (June 28th) that "Niall Meehan, as usual, misrepresents my work". That, indeed, is a serious charge, but let us see.
He states: "I have never argued that 'ethnic cleansing' took place in Cork or elsewhere in the 1920s".
My letter (June 23rd) did not say he did, and Luke Gibbons (June 17th), whom I cited as using the phrase "ethnic cleansing", did not name him at all. I referred to the Orange Order's use of Peter Hart as an authority on "murders" of Protestants in West Cork (Gerry Moriarty interview with Orange Order Grand Secretary Drew Nelson, The Irish Times, June 17th).
However, It would not have been "misrepresentation" had I stated what Peter Hart denies. In 2005 Peter Hart said: "There was no ethnic cleansing in the Irish revolution. . .but there was ethnically targeted violence". If there is a real distinction here it is not clear to Peter Hart's Memorial University History Department. Its web page states, under "Research", that Peter Hart researches "ethnic conflict and cleansing in Ireland".
Peter Hart, in The IRA at War (2003), wrote: "Similar campaigns of what might be termed 'ethnic cleansing' were waged in parts of Kings and Queens Counties, South Tipperary, Leitrim, Mayo, Limerick, Westmeath, Louth and Cork. Worst of all was the massacre of 14 men in West Cork in April [ 1922], after an IRA officer had been killed breaking into a house." Now, Peter Hart refers to a "massacre of Protestants". Is this ethnic "conflict" or "cleansing"?
The evidence in fact suggests that these maverick, post-Treaty, pre-Civil War killings targeted loyalist British agents, in which close relatives were shot dead in two cases. They were stamped out locally by the IRA, but were "motivated by political and not sectarian considerations", to quote historian Brian Murphy's disagreement with Hart on this point.
Hart complains that "there is no publicly available evidence" that those shot were loyalists or informers. The evidence is an intelligence diary left behind by Auxiliaries as they evacuated Dunmanway Workhouse. Hart noted (1998) that it was published in the Southern Star in 1971, with the loyalist informers' names removed out of deference to local families. A similar consideration informed Tom Barry in his Guerrilla Days in Ireland (1949).
Hart claimed that, apart from the name excisions, this "invaluable series of articles reproduces the complete text". However, despite not possessing a key piece of the jigsaw, Hart made speculative assumptions about the victims of the April killings. The assumptions turn out to have been wrong. The publicity Peter Hart gained for his sensational findings caused a response in which the linked names from the Auxiliary diary were published in 2003.
On the April killings, Hart (1998) cites "by common consent the most trustworthy source we have", the British Record of the Rebellion, to the effect that Protestants generally were not guilty of informing because "except by chance, they had not got [ information] to give".
He failed to quote a key sentence following, stating: "an exception to this rule was in the Bandon area". This is where the killings that Hart described took place. On January 18th, 2003 an Irish Times review of Hart's editorship of The Record, by Breandan Ó Cathaoir, stated that Peter Hart "appears disingenuous" on this point. Madam, I see no reason to disagree with your reviewer.
In my opinion Peter Hart, despite demonstrating his research and some flashes of insight, is not an objective historian of the Irish War of Independence or of its immediate aftermath.
- Yours, etc,
NIALL MEEHAN, Offaly Road, Cabra, Dublin 7.