Sir, - Conor Brady's review of Richard Abbott's Police Casualties in Ireland 1919-1922 (Books, September 2nd), refers to the "murder" of Sgt Henry Cronin.
I beg to differ. My father was one of the men involved in the shooting of Henry Cronin in Tullamore in 1920 and I spoke to him about the Cronin affair on a number of occasions - the last about a month before he died. It was he who received orders from Michael Collins to kill Sgt Cronin, who had come to Collins's notice from a contact in Dublin Castle. We can safely assume that it wasn't because of the over-zealous apprehending of petty thieves and brawling drunks that Cronin came to attract the attention of Collins. One wonders just what his "notes" contained.
Of course it all resolves around whether or not the IRA campaign of 1920-21 was a just war. The fact that the British refused to accept the decision of the Irish people in the 1918 election, and that the IRA - for all its incongruities - was the army of the First Dail, would suggest that it was.
You apparently disagree. We have a right to expect from The Irish Times a more balanced interpretation of historical happenings, however horrific they may be - Yours, etc.,
John Clarke, Glendaniel, Tullamore, Co Offaly.
PS: As always in Ireland, ironies abound. One of the groups which attended the reception for Archbishop Cronin in 1960 (?) was comprised of surviving members of the Old IRA in Tullamore.
The detail in this letter makes it clear that Sgt Cronin was a casualty of the struggle for independence. There was no intention to identify Mr Clarke's father or anyone else as a murderer. - Ed., IT.