Sir, – I refer to I refer to Mártan Ó Conghaile’s letter (August 4th) in which refers to the tithe wars of 1831-1836. These were policed by the County Constabulary, the Peace Preservation Force and the military, but not the RIC.
The police and the blunt instrument of the military were enforcing the law of the land against secret societies. These agrarian-based societies were vicious in the extreme, and in 1831 in Kilkenny a party of constabulary numbering 40 were faced with an angry mob estimated at 2,000. The result was a chief constable and 16 of his men were killed and seven seriously wounded.
However, although we should not forget our past, neither should we be prisoners of our past. A man’s political conviction is his own affair and surely should not attract harm or death. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – When my grandmother was being brought up, her own maternal grandfather was never mentioned in the house, so she came to suspect there must have been some great shame in the past. Years later she discovered what that “shame” was: her grandfather had been a member of the RIC.
The letters of Mr Ó Conghaile and Dr Kennedy (August 4th and 5th) display a neat vision of Irish history divided between the good and the bad, the traitors and the patriots. No doubt some RIC men were thuggish; some police always are.
They certainly defended the forces of property and the state, for that is the role of all police in any age. And no doubt, like police in any age, most of them tried to make their communities that bit safer and more peaceful for their neighbours.
When we try to ignore the complexities of history we discover, like my grandmother, that we have lost part of who we are. – Yours, etc,