Buried Lives E-Book

Robin Bury

• Herausgeber: THP Ireland
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 458

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The early twentieth century saw the transformation of the southern Irish Protestants from a once strong people into an isolated, pacified community. Their influence, status and numbers had all but disappeared by the end of the civil war in 1923 and they were to form a quiescent minority up to modern times. This book tells the tale of this transformation and their forced adaptation, exploring the lasting effect that it had on both the Protestant community and the wider Irish society and investigating how Protestants in southern Ireland view their place in the Republic today.

Leseprobe

To John, my brother.

First published in 2017

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

1 The Protestant Exodus

2 Personal Stories: 1919 to 1923

3 A Chain of Bonfires

4 Low-Intensity Unhappiness

5 Grabbing their Children

6 Some Protestant Voices

7 Some Donegal Voices

8 The Triumph of Intolerance

Epilogue

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to my brother, John, for all his encouragement and for starting me on the long journey of writing this book. He was puzzled by our mild apartheid-style lives in east Cork and set me on this road of exploration and discovery some twelve years ago. This led to an M.Phil. dissertation in Trinity College Dublin in 2012/13 when I researched a point of time in history which was pivotal for Protestants in Southern Ireland.

I thank David Dickson for his patience and guidance as my supervisor for the M.Phil. He suggested I concentrate on Protestants in Co. Tipperary during a period of armed conflict, an area not examined in any considerable detail by historians. He sometimes respectfully disagreed with drafts for my dissertation and helped to make me ‘keep on my historian’s hat’, as he put it, to shape and balance my writing.

Thanks to those people in the taught graduate M.Phil course in Modern Irish history who gave support and encouragement to a rather mature student. Eunan O’Halpin encouraged me to apply and accepted my last minute application, for which sincere thanks. Anne Dolan’s knowledge of the period is highly impressive, though we did not always see eye to eye. David Fitzpatrick, my examiner, provided me with much valued help for my research on the decline in Protestant numbers.

I am particularly grateful to the very helpful people in the Representative Church Body Library (Milltown, Dublin), particularly Susan Hood and Mary Furlong who met my endless demands for information and leads. Thanks also to Aideen Ireland, Head, Reader Services Division, and the National Archives of Ireland, who helped me to locate Irish compensation archives. Mary Guinan-Darmody in the Tipperary Libraries Study section graciously met my many requests for research material used in the dissertation, particularly newspaper reports. David Griffin in the Irish Architectural Archives has been a friend and inspiration.

Thanks to the various Church of Ireland clergy in Roscrea, Cashel and Nenagh, and to Marjorie Quarton in Nenagh, who gave unstintingly of their time and who introduced me to people who supplied sources of information on local history.

Eoghan Harris has been hugely supportive for many years and I am indebted to him for suggesting the title, Buried Lives, where my surname comes into play. Dr Mark Dooley read early drafts and made a number of suggestions for shaping the book in its early stages: to him sincere thanks. Also to Dr David Butler of University College, Cork.

Gerald Murphy gave me much information on the various cases of Protestant intimidation in the early chapters of the book, adding most valuable insights. His book The Year of Disappearances: Political Killings in Cork, 1920–1921 was highly revealing and shocking.

Brian Walker more than anyone else, made possible the finalised version of the book. He tirelessly edited it in a gentle and humorous manner. His own book, A Political History of the Two Irelands, much quoted by me, is inspirational.

Finally, my family gave me the strength and untiring support to keep going. My siblings Catherine, Richard, John and Anne, and my children Sophie, Emily and Mark. Thank you all. Sophie, and your generous partner Bill, both in Toronto, merit particular thanks for proof reading my dissertation up against a very tight deadline. This dissertation forms the backbone of this book.

Preface

Some 12 years ago my brother, John, told me that he was puzzled by the apartheid lifestyle our Church of Ireland family experienced when growing up in east Co. Cork in the 1950s and ’60s. My father was a clergyman, the Dean of Cloyne, the seat of an ancient bishopric and famous for the Irish philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, who once lived there. We lived in isolation, among a small scattering of Church of Ireland people who worshipped in the three little churches in the parishes of Ballycotton, Corkbeg and Inch as well as the ancient Norman cathedral in Cloyne. We mixed with our own faith at whist drives in the Deanery, parish fêtes and private tennis parties. The only Catholics I knew when growing up were the local doctor and shopkeepers. The Church of Ireland members included the once large landlord, the Longfields/Ponsonbys, whose children were educated in England, the now-famous Allen family, who ran a restaurant near Ballycotton, and the Pierces. Philip Pierce was English and his wife, Lucy, was Welsh. He was a pacifist who left England during the Second World War to start a pottery in Shanagarry. His Shangarry pottery brand became a household name in Ireland. So why had this mutually accepted form of apartheid, which had deeply divided the Catholic and Protestant communities and nation, come to be?

It is a long and troublesome story that this book attempts to tell. I have used the subtitle of the Protestants of ‘Southern Ireland’ rather than ‘Republic of Ireland or ‘Irish Free State’, because this book goes from before 1921 until the present. The early twentieth century saw the transformation of the southern Irish Protestants from a once strong people into an isolated, pacified community. Their influence, status and numbers had weakened greatly by the end of the civil war in 1923 and they were to form a quiescent minority up to modern times. The historian Patrick Buckland believed that after 1917 there was a ‘disintegration’ of the Protestant southern unionists. Their numbers fell sharply, events having ‘shattered the confidence of those who remained in Ireland and undermined their determination to continue distinctive political activity.1 They were denied ‘a powerful Senate’ in the constitution of the Free State, and a new Ireland emerged based on blood, religion and – above all – enmity with Britain. A homogenous society came into being, nationalist and Catholic with an ‘Anglocentric obsession’.2 In such a world, those supporting England were unwanted, their rights as a minority in conflict with the ethos of the Free State.

In the words of another historian, Marianne Elliott, Irish nationalism was ‘another form of religion in disguise’; Irish Catholics ‘became the “real Irish” in common perception’.3 In the newly independent Ireland, ‘the prevailing Catholic and anti-English ethos … has caused real problems, and the claims that the Protestant minority has been treated well by the State rather ignores the fact that in that ethos Protestants had been considered England’s “garrison” and un-Irish, tolerated rather than accepted’.4

In 1911, Protestants in the 26 counties numbered some 300,000 (excluding Protestants in the British Army, which departed in 1922), or 10 per cent of the total population. By the time of the last census in 2011 there were only 137,000 southern Irish Protestants (excluding non-Irish Protestants), or less than 3 per cent of the population. They had become an insignificant minority, having once ‘played such a conspicuous and powerful role in Irish life’.5 They had been responsible for much of Ireland’s finest architecture, both domestic and civic. In Dublin, once called an English city, the Protestants built superb buildings, which are ‘in all their geometrical simplicity and austerity, among the glories of domestic architecture … The Georgian squares, the Houses of Parliament on College Green … and the great public buildings designed by James Gandon had their counterpart in the country houses of the gentry.’6 They produced a glittering array of the world’s greatest writers, among them Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, Sean O’Casey, John Millington Synge, George Bernard Shaw, and, more recently, Samuel Beckett. They produced important painters in the nineteenth and early twentieth century such as William Orpen, Paul Henry, Jack B. Yeats and Francis Bacon. They led the country in manufacturing industries, too: international brands Guinness, Jacob’s Biscuits and Jameson Whiskey, among many others, were dominant in commercial and financing enterprises. Their decline and virtual disappearance was a loss to an independent Ireland.

Protestant disintegration had started in the late nineteenth century, when their economic strength had been fatally eroded by a series of land acts which placed the land of Protestant landlords in the hands of their tenant farmers: Ireland, therefore, quickly became a land of peasant proprietorship. Their once-strong influence at local government level was removed by the Local Government Act of 1898.

The process of their becoming an insignificant silent, even silenced, minority began in the early twentieth century. It accelerated rapidly during the years between 1919 and 1923, a period of armed rebellion and civil war. The period immediately before and after the signing of the Treaty, up to the end of the civil war, saw many Protestants come under attack when they ‘felt the threat of harm and dislocation with particular acuteness.’7 At that time the screws were turned on some of their often isolated and defenceless communities by violent nationalists. Agrarianism played an important part, with land being seized and cattle driven off. Protestant businesses were boycotted and up to 300 ‘big houses’ owned by Protestants were burnt down. During this period, and until 1926, possibly as many as 40,000 people emigrated; Protestants who would otherwise have stayed on had there been neither violence nor the threat of violence. Statistics do not reveal the exact number of those who fled, but ‘it is fair to say … that the pressure exercised on unionists … partly accounts for the striking fall in the Protestant population of the 26 counties between 1919 and 1923.’8

In the family documentary, The Other Irish Travellers, Fiona Murphy touchingly tells the story of her Church of Ireland family in Co. Mayo before and after Irish independence. Her family, termed ‘planters’, had lived there for hundreds of years and had been given land by the British Crown. They held much affection for the land and people. Yet Fiona Murphy asks at the beginning of the documentary,9 ‘How does a whole community know when it’s time to just go away? That their faces don’t fit? That they’re not wanted?’ She points out that, as far as they were concerned, ‘you were different anyway because you were a Protestant’, and goes on to claim that the exodus of the Protestant community from 1919 in large numbers ‘was a polite form of ethnic cleansing’. In some cases, this was perhaps far from polite, as we will see in the early chapters of this book. The violence directed against many Protestants, the burning of their houses and their decline in numbers, will be addressed in the first three chapters in some detail.

What sort of Irish State emerged after 1921? How did this affect the dwindling Protestant minority? The violence directed against them had all but ended in 1923, except for the widespread anti-Protestant riots and assaults in 1935, but the Gaelic, Catholic, nationalist emphasis of the State and its educational system, particularly in terms of the new emphasis on teaching of history in a hibernocentric manner, left little doubt that the ex-Unionist community had become marginalised. Chapter 4 looks at the new Ireland that came into being after 1921.

As well as nationalism of a narrow nature, which isolated Protestants once loyal to the Crown, a Protestant religious affiliation saw to it that ‘you were different’, as Fiona Murphy asserts. If a Protestant married a Roman Catholic up to 1970, the Roman Catholic Ne Temere decree of 1908 seriously eroded Protestant numbers in the many mixed-religion marriages that took place. This is examined in some detail in the infamous Fethard-on-Sea incident in Chapter 5.

How do some Protestants relate to modern Ireland with its many transnational companies and its increased prosperity following membership of the European Union? How did they adapt, or fail to adapt? A series of interviews with Protestants in Chapter 6 and 7 give an account of some contemporary attitudes, including those of Protestants in the Orange Order, and chapter 8 is devoted to the failed attempt in 2000 to commemorate the founding of the Orange Order in Dublin. Finally, the Epilogue looks at some aspects of the position of Protestants in the modern Republic of Ireland post the economic collapse and much weakened position of the Catholic Church. This includes an account of the closure of six Church of Ireland churches in the centre of Dublin on Easter Day 2016 in order to accommodate parades commemorating the 1916 Rising.

1

The Protestant Exodus

What happened to the Protestant minority in the 26 counties of Ireland during the period of revolutionary violence and civil war between 1919 and 1923? We know one thing that is indisputable. There was a dramatic, unprecedented decrease in their numbers between the censuses of 1911 and 1926. Between 1891 and 1901, the Protestant population had decreased by 7.1 per cent and between 1901 and 1911 by 4.8 per cent. However, there was a 33 per cent collapse in the Protestant population of the 26 counties that became the Irish Free State between 1911 and 1926. In 1911, Protestants in these counties numbered 327,179; 10.4 per cent of the population of 3,139,688.1 By 1926, they made up 7.4 per cent of the population, numbering 220,723, of which 164,215 were members of the Church of Ireland, 32,429 Presbyterians, 10,663 Methodists and 13,416 others. The total decline in Protestant numbers was 106,456.2 During this period, Roman Catholic numbers remained almost static, falling by just 2.2 per cent in the island. In Northern Ireland, the combined number of Protestant denominations rose by 2 per cent.

In effect, the southern Protestant people suffered a very serious decline in numbers from 1919 to 1923. There was exceptional emigration, particularly during the civil war in 1922. ‘Although no reliable figures are available the tendency is clear … unionists of all shapes and sizes were leaving the south of Ireland in 1922 because of the troubles.’3 Also, their ‘political strength and unity evaporated in the south in 1922’4 and ‘the renewed violence of Irish life completed this disintegration. It did so in three ways. It weakened Anglo-Ireland numerically. It shattered the confidence of those who remained in Ireland and undermined their determination to continue distinctive political activity. Lastly, the disorder reacted upon the provisional government’s attitude to southern unionists’ claims for a powerful Senate.’5

Research undertaken by historians has been handicapped by a lack of available data to fully explain the reasons for this sharp decline in numbers. Historians do agree on one thing: the decline was exceptional. According to Patrick Buckland:

Some families died out but part of the decrease must have been the result of emigration. The ordinary rate of emigration must not be forgotten, but it is reasonable to assume that the quality of life for southern unionists before and after the Treaty increased the ordinary rate of emigration and accounts largely for the decline of the Protestant population.6

Peter Hart wrote that this was ‘the only example of the mass displacement of a native ethnic group within the British Isles since the seventeenth century’.7 Hart believes that the widespread attacks on Protestants both before and after the Anglo-Irish truce led to a major exodus and were largely, though not entirely, inspired by sectarian motives, which were ‘embedded in the vocabulary and the syntax of the Irish revolution’.8 There is no doubt that many loyalists left the 26 counties during the violence and turmoil in the period 1920–23. There was a mini refugee crisis in London. The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association was formed in July 1922 and had interviewed 9,400 refugees by 1928, assisting many with clothing, accommodation and loans.9 Many were Catholic members of the RIC, which had been disbanded in 1922. This exodus was at its most dramatic between 1922 and 1923, the time of the civil war.

Kent Fedorowich wrote about this exodus:

Equally important was the plight of the isolated and beleaguered Protestant community in the southern 26 counties whose population declined by 34 per cent between 1911 and 1926. This included 20,000 refugees who fled to the United Kingdom in 1922 to find sanctuary from continuous and sometimes violent nationalist persecution.10

Enda Delaney points out that ‘the decline in [Protestant] numbers was a process initiated before the advent of Irish independence in 1921–22’.11 This is true, as was the decline in the Catholic population. Between 1861 and 1911, the decline in the number of Protestants was 30.2 per cent and Catholic decline 28.5 per cent. The difference was 1.7 per cent, but given the higher growth rate in the Catholic population, it could be argued that Protestant emigration was lower than Catholic. Furthermore, the Protestant percentage of the population was much the same as it was in 1861, so comparative decline, from whatever cause, was small. Not so from 1911 to 1926. The sharp rate of decline of Protestant numbers, particularly between 1921 and 1923, is remarkable compared to previous rates of decline, as Hart points out.12 Delaney does, however, conclude that ‘at the very least over 60,000 Protestants who were not directly connected with the British administration left southern Ireland between 1911 and 1926’.13 I would suggest that the figure is closer to 80,000, considering that the total decrease 1911–1926 was 107,000 and ‘… only about one fourth of this decrease can be attributed to the withdrawal of the British Army and the disbandment of the Police Forces and the emigration of their dependents.’14 In other words, some 27,000 of the decrease of 107,000 were people in the British forces and police.

But how many Protestants left willingly and how many constituted an enforced outflow from the 26 counties? It is impossible to establish the precise number of Protestants who were the subject of an enforced outflow during this period, as statistical information is not available. Nor is it possible to know how many left for ‘normal’ reasons associated with seeking employment and new opportunities, as they had done for a hundred years before 1926. However, we can make a reasonably credible estimate based on the limited available statistics. It seems certain that there was an exceptional major exodus of Protestants who left for reasons associated with intimidation, fear and concern about being unwanted in the new State. Kurt Bowen points out that ‘… the newly dominant culture of the majority created a sense of unease and marginality among the Irish Anglicans …’15

Looking at the available statistical information, we know that the number of Protestants in the British Army, Navy and Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in 1911 in the 26 counties amounted to 21,42216 with at most 8,000 dependents. The figure for dependents is based on the 1926 census estimate that of 100 men in the forces, 37 were dependents based on ‘the known proportion for Dublin city’,17 but we have to consider that outside Dublin and other cities, the number of dependents is likely to have been lower, as numbers of eligible Protestant women were lower than in Dublin. Also, ‘many [British soldiers] were married to Catholic women, with Catholic children’.18 Let us therefore estimate that at most 30 per cent, not 37 per cent, of the 21,422 Protestants in the armed forces were Protestant dependents, namely 6,420. We then arrive at a total of 21,422 plus 6,420, or approximately 28,000 Protestants, who left with the Forces and RIC. We can take it that some civil servants left after the Treaty. There was a total decline in Protestant civil service numbers of about 733 between 1911 and 1926. Of these perhaps 200 were born outside Ireland and returned to their countries post independence, with dependents making a total of 300. But it has to be said this is a tentative figure as no statistical information is available to inform us how many civil servants left the Free State 1922–26.

How many Protestants fell in the First World War? Some 27,400 people from the island fell, according to the Registrar General. However, the figure of about 40,000 has been put forward by Kevin Myers in his recently published book Ireland’s Great War.19 Sexton and O’Leary estimate that ‘about one half of the total was from the counties of the Republic’.20 Deducing that 13,700 fell from the 26 counties and that a third were ‘from the minority religious communities this suggests a war deaths figure of about 5,000’.21 I would argue, however, that this figure errs substantially on the high side. If over a third of those who fell from the 26 counties were Protestants, this is disproportionately high in relation to the 10 per cent of Protestants making up the population of the 26 counties. There is no evidence that Protestants enlisted in much greater numbers than other religious groups except in urban areas. Also, on a pro rata basis, it is likely that there were 7,200 Protestant fatalities from the island out of the 27,400 total (there were 1.16 million Protestants on the island of a total population of 4.4 million) and 66 per cent were 6 county Protestants. A figure of 2,800 southern Protestant fatalities seems realistic, and this may err on the high side. Ian d’Alton has asked in relation to the Protestants who fell: ‘how many of these who served died?22 We don’t know, but applying an average fatality rate to the participation number gives a figure of some 1700.’23 This is much lower than the figure given by Sexton and O’Leary but is probably too low in relation to the national average. Let us take a figure of 2,800.

Some 28,000 Protestants left with the British forces and administration, and at most 2,800 fell in the Great War, leaving approximately 75,000. Of this 75,000, we need to know how many were voluntary emigrants, but these statistics are not available. We know that Protestants emigrated voluntarily from 1901 to 1911, as they had done during the previous decade. There was a decrease in Church of Ireland Protestants of 7.9 per cent from 1891 to 1901 and 5.6 per cent between 1901 and 1911.24 So we can say the Church of Ireland population decreased by an average of 6.7 per cent in these two decades and the average for other religions was similar, namely 5.9 per cent.25 If we apply this 6.7 per cent figure to the total number of Protestants, excluding the British forces and Protestants of the RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police, in 1911, namely 300,000, we get a decrease of 20,100. However, the intercensal period 1911–26 was a fifteen-year one, not the normal ten-year period, so account must be taken of an extra five years. The Great War accounts for four of these years when emigration figures are not available but we can state normal emigration was not possible and of those who enlisted, almost all who did not fall would have returned. Perhaps we can add 4,000 emigrants for the years 1914–18 and this is likely to be on the high side. A figure of 24,100 seems realistic for emigrants from 1911–1926.

The number of Protestants in 1911 was 327,000. Of these, some 28,000 left with the British Forces, 2,800 fell in the First World War and perhaps 300 civil servants born outside Ireland left with dependents after 1921, giving a total of 31,100. Add 24,100 who left as emigrants based on the percentage who emigrated 1891 to 1911 and this gives a total of 55,200.

We do not know how many Protestants died in the influenza epidemic of 1918–19. Based on correspondence with Ida Milne,26 who has recently written a PhD on this subject, a total of perhaps as many as 1,400 Protestants died in this epidemic.27 This must be a rough estimate, as Dr Milne made clear, because the religions of those who died are not given.

Lastly, the question of natural increase has been raised by various historians, most recently – and controversially – by David Fitzpatrick, who argued that ‘if any campaign of “ethnic cleansing” was attempted, its demographic impact was fairly minor’, and ‘the inexorable decline of southern Protestantism was mainly self-inflicted’.28 Fitzpatrick attributes the main cause of the Protestant decrease in numbers (he uses the word ‘malaise’) to ‘low fertility and nuptiality, exacerbated by losses through mixed marriage and conversion’.29 However, the evidence he produces does not seem to substantiate these arguments. The reports of the Irish Registrar General, 1923–27 show the marriage rate for Protestants was higher in 1920 than in 1913 and then fell rapidly.30 His study is based on the Methodists, who were only a small section of the Protestant population. Eugenio Biagini, in his review of Fitzpatrick’s book Descendancy Review: The Decline of Irish Protestantism, questioned the conclusion ‘that Protestant demographic decline had little to do with violence, or the threat of violence or other forms of sectarian behaviour by the Catholic majority. This may work for the Methodists, but Fitzpatrick does not convincingly establish whether their experience was representative of the Protestant community as a whole.’31 Biagini finds Fitzpatrick’s conclusions ‘somewhat startling’ and points out that Brian Walker, when ‘working with evidence from both Anglican and “nonconformist” communities … reach[es] different conclusions.’32 This was also the case with R.B. McDowell,33 Kent Fedorowich (see above), Patrick Buckland and Andrew Bielenberg, who probably underestimated the number of Protestants who were involuntary emigrants, as Biagini points out.

Fitzpatrick gives statistics that need challenging. He quotes a total of 1,953 deaths amongst Methodist members between 1911 and 1926. In the 1911 census, quoted by Fitzpatrick, there were 2,520 Methodists under the age of 9 in the 26 counties in 1911. That translates into some 3,300 to 3,500 Methodists under the age of 16 in 1911. To suggest that 3,300 young Methodists in 1911 were not sufficient on their own to keep natural change neutral or positive is hardly credible. In the words of Don:

His infertility case seems to depend on such a migration occurring if net outward migration is not to be considered the major factor of Methodist decline. But he presents no evidence to quantify how much inward Methodist migration there was and how it might have been distributed between the five triennia. His inward migrant numbers are hidden in his ‘new membership’ totals, but he does not break that total down into the various sources of new membership – e.g. young Methodists graduating to full membership, immigrants, conversions from other faiths.

It is unlikely that many foreign Methodists viewed Ireland as an attractive place to go and live in the 1919–23 period. If there was inward migration of Methodists during 1911–26, it is more likely to have occurred in the 1911–14 period. But such an idea might undermine Fitzpatrick’s argument about emigration then being higher before the First World War than in the violent revolutionary period and with it his argument about the limited effect of violence on migration.

Similarly, we do not know what the balance was between conversions from and defections to other faiths. So, based on his own evidence, or lack of it, his plumping for infertility seems somewhat premature. It seems that most of Fitzpatrick’s extra recruits were from free association with Episcopalians, and this free association does not tally with his multiplier of 20 to estimate all Protestant behaviour from the behaviour of Methodists.

The reality is that from 1920–23, there was an exodus of Church of Ireland members induced by intimidation, fear of both loss of identity and being ostracized in an independent Irish state that was Anglophobic. The United Empire Loyalists in the USA at the end of the eighteenth century were in a similar situation, many leaving to go to Canada and Britain rather than remain in an independent USA. So with many southern Irish Protestants who left for new lives in countries which shared their allegiances. The synods of the Church of Ireland in this period make this clear, as do the protests by various bishops and the Church of Ireland Gazette. Examples of these statements and concern will be given in the next chapter.34

Protestant civilian decline, the sum of emigration and natural decline, was 6.5 per cent between 1901 and 1911. As emigration was not negative in this period, natural decline was in the order of 5 per 1,000 or less. So for natural decline to be the major reason for the decline of Protestants between 1911 and 1926, it would have had to jump from its usual 5 per 1,000 to 14 per 1,000 per annum. From 1936 to 1971, the natural decline was between 5.5 and 3.3 per 1,000. So if fertility was the main issue between 1911 and 1926, birth rates would have had to decrease to around a quarter of their usual level from 12 to 13 to 3 or 4 per 1,000 per annum. This is highly unlikely. Even if they had, this could not have led so quickly to such a large natural decrease. Also, Kurt Bowen points out that the decline in Anglican numbers post-1926 ‘was largely due to emigration’ and that their fertility rate was not low compared to European countries and America’ in 1946, when comparative figures became available.35

In her study of Protestants in Killala and Achonry, Miriam Moffitt concluded that ‘emigration was the principal cause of population decline in the years after 1922’.36 There is no evidence that this was not the case in the rest of the 26 counties. This was followed by a ‘lower or later rate of marriage and secondly a growing prevalence of mixed marriages, where the offspring were generally brought up outside the Church of Ireland.’37 This was ‘the national Protestant norm’ after 1922.38 Before 1922, low fertility was not the major cause of natural decrease.

Andrew Bielenberg argues that marriage rates among Protestants ‘had fully recovered after the First World War, slightly exceeding the levels achieved in 1911–12.’39 He concludes that Protestant marriage rates fell sharply in 1922 in the non-garrison counties due to an increase in Protestant emigration during the ‘period of the nationalist revolution’.40 It seems, therefore, that the exceptional decline in Protestant numbers was caused by emigration rather than the effects of lower nuptuality and fertility, which decreased after 1921. David Fitzpatrick’s Methodist figures show Methodist decline tracking emigration very closely throughout each triennium between 1911 and 1926.

Bielenberg quoted ‘a huge drop in the number of Protestant accountants’ countrywide. This had little to do with economic decline or even political change. In 1911 all sorts of book keepers and other clerical staff described themselves as accountants. In 1926, only Chartered Accountants could describe themselves as accountants. Net result was a huge drop in the number of accountants of all religions. Accountancy was one of the very few, maybe the only profession, where the percentage drop in Catholics was greater than that of Protestants. Furthermore, Bielenberg argues that ‘permanent emigration was not higher than normal between 1911 and 1920’. But what was ‘normal’? It would surely be logical to assume he meant emigration of the immediately preceding years – i.e. 1901–11. But then he estimates ‘normal/economic’ emigration for the entire 1911–26 period as being at the same rate or above 1926–36 rates. That is arguably illogical. To calculate the number who can be accounted for by economic or voluntary emigration, he uses a figure of their emigration in the next period, rather than reflecting what happened in the earlier period, as emigration of Protestants 1926–36 would have been lower as we know Protestant numbers had declined sharply by 1926.

Sexton and O’Leary estimate that the natural decrease of Protestants between 1911 and 1926 was 10,000. But this figure is based on the natural decrease of ‘the minority communities in 1926–36 and 1936–46’.41 There is no data ‘on age structure of the population by religious denomination … until 1926’ and Delaney thinks the estimate of Sexton and O’Leary ‘appears quite high’.42 The natural decrease from 1926 to 1946 is likely to have been quite high compared to that between 1911 and 1926, as Protestants were fewer in numbers and nuptiality was lower. Let us then take a high figure of 8,000 natural decrease instead.

To sum up:

Protestants who left with the British forces and RIC including dependents according to the 1926 census

28,000

Estimate of Protestants who fell in the First World War

2,800

Estimate of decrease in Protestant numbers due to emigration 1911–1926

24,100

Estimate of Protestants who died in the influenza epidemic post First World War

1,400

Estimate of Protestant public servants who left at the end of the union with Britain 1921

300

Estimate of natural decrease in Protestant numbers 1911–26

8,000

Total

64,600

As mentioned, the total decline in Protestant numbers between 1911 and 1926 was 106,456, so subtracting the above total of 64,600 generates a figure of 41,856 Protestants who were exceptional emigrants between 1911 and 1926. As I have indicated, this estimate is based on limited, insufficient figures. Delaney points out, ‘… establishing a direct causal link between sectarian intimidation or harassment and migration is problematic.’43 What we can say is that without doubt there was a sharp and exceptional exodus of Protestants between 1911 and 1926, some of which was caused by intimidation, some by apprehension following the end of the union and some due to Protestants concerned about their future in the new Catholic, Anglophobic Free State.

When the 1926 census is released, it will be possible to formulate a more accurate picture of the identity of the Protestants who left. The subject has become highly controversial, but there seems little doubt that some 20,000 people fled to the United Kingdom after 1921, as stated by Kent Fedorowich, and most of these were southern Protestants, as well as RIC-disbanded men with their families. Church of Ireland records – particularly annual synods held during 1921 and 1923 – unequivocally state that there was a major outflow of Church of Ireland people, as Brian Walker of Queen’s University has researched.44 There are some historians who are not persuaded that there was a major, exceptional involuntary exodus of Protestants between 1911 and 1926, but it does seem that the evidence is sufficiently overwhelming. Dr Bielenberg argues that the flight was largely for economic reasons, but does not take into account the lack of a corresponding exodus among Catholics for economic reasons.45 There certainly was Catholic emigration in this period, turning a substantial natural increase into a decline. But the various professions that Dr Bielenberg quotes for Protestant decline nearly all show an increase in Catholic numbers. In the words of Don Wood, ‘Between 1911 and 1926 Catholic emigration was at an historic low and Protestant emigration was at an historic high. How might economic factors drive out Protestants rather than Catholics, particularly when Protestants were in general better equipped to ride out a harsh economy.’46

In Dublin city and suburbs, the Protestant population fell by 31.3 per cent in 1911–26, by 50 per cent in Cork city, by 50 per cent in Limerick and 45 per cent in Waterford. In 62 towns with populations of between 1,500 and 5,000 inhabitants, there was a decrease of 47 per cent.47 Some of these decreases were, however, largely accounted for by the departure of the armed forces, particularly in Dublin and Cork and to a lesser extent in Limerick and Waterford. In many other counties where there was no British Army presence, though, there was still a significant drop in the Protestant population.

It is unclear where these Protestants went. In the new border counties of Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, there was an expectation that a significant number of Protestants would go to Northern Ireland. The Rt Revd Dr Moore, Bishop of Kilmore diocese, in his address to the Diocesan Synod in July 1923, referred to the previous twelve months, when ‘one of the saddest features of the situation is that so many of our communion have been driven from the country’.48 Moore did not say where they had gone. His Cavan/Roscommon diocese bordered on Co. Fermanagh, yet the Church of Ireland population also declined slightly between 1911 and 1926 in the latter county.49 In the border counties of Tyrone and Derry, the Protestant population also declined.50 However, Protestant farmers from the south did buy up land in Fermanagh between 1920 and 1925.51 In Northern Ireland as a whole, the 1926 census ‘estimated that roughly 24,000 immigrants from the Irish Free State had taken up residence in the preceding fifteen years’.52 The majority of these immigrants were registered as members of the Church of Ireland, ‘with east Ulster accounting for the largest share of the settlement.’53 Most went to Belfast where employment opportunities were reasonable. It seems that of the others, most went to England.

This exodus took place sometime after ‘Westminster statutes knocked Protestants off their public pedestals’, in the colourful words of David Fitzpatrick.54 However, it should be noted that most rural Protestants lived simple lives, owning small farms, while in urban areas they were shopkeepers, solicitors, bank officials and clerks. By 1920, Protestant landlords had sold most of their lands to their tenants under the 1903 Wyndham Land Act. The Reform Act of 1884 had ‘placed electoral power in most constituencies in the hands of the small farmers and labourers … In 1898 the gentry lost control of county government. The Local Government Act of that year … transferred local administration from grand juries, landed oligarchies to elected county, urban and rural councils’.55 Protestants had, in effect, lost political power and the economic power that goes with the ownership of large estates, though they remained strong in the financial, business, industrial and legal sectors. As an editorial in The Irish Times put it when the 1926 census was published:

Although the Protestant population of the Free State constitutes only seven and a half percent of the whole, its social and economic status is most important … they form 38 per cent of the barristers, 37 per cent of the solicitors … of the higher bank officials, 53 per cent are Protestants. They are represented strongly also in insurance, brewing, shipping and virtually all the commercial trades.56

Fergus Campbell has made it clear that there was no major greening at the top levels of the civil service before 1922. He notes that over a third of ‘the senior membership’ was Catholic in 1911 and that no ‘systematic “greening” process was underway’.57 In the RIC, only 9 per cent of ‘the senior police officers’58 were Catholics in 1911.

It was a period of guerrilla warfare, followed by civil war characterised by ‘ethnic violence’ and ‘terrorism, communal conflict, displaced people, assassins, gunmen, and gun-runners’.59 It was a period of change and turmoil in which the small Protestant community in southern Ireland, largely supportive of the British connection, found itself increasingly isolated and undefended. It was a crisis; a fundamental turning point at which those who chose to stay on tended to withdraw into the comforts of their own world, mindful of earning the goodwill of their huge Catholic majority neighbours.

Many Protestants went because they felt unwanted and estranged in the new Ireland. Lloyd George wrote to Andrew Bonar Law about the position in which Protestants found themselves in 1918: ‘the little Protestant community of the south, isolated in a turbulent sea of Sinn Féinism and popery’.60 While there was no policy of ethnic cleansing by the Free State government, Peter Hart and Gerard Murphy have concluded that, at least in Co. Cork, a substantial number of Protestants were targeted and murdered by the IRA in what can only be considered sectarian murders. Hart has written at length about a mini pogrom of small farmers, ordinary businessmen and a Church of Ireland clergyman, who were targeted in the Bandon Valley in April 1922.61 He is clear about the motivation:

The atmosphere of fear and polarization provided the communal context of the massacre. One could not have taken place without the other. Protestants had become ‘fair game’ because they were seen as outsiders and enemies. Not just by the IRA but by a large segment of the Catholic population as well … Their [Protestants’] status was codified in the political language – or mythology – of the day in terms such as landlord, land grabber, loyalist, imperialist, Orangeman, Freemason, Free Stater, spy, and informer.62

Southern Protestants were almost all loyalists, opposed to separation and anxious to be part of the multi-national, multi-racial two islands with representative government based in London. But they were a tiny minority. When religion was part of social status, land holdings and a willingness to serve in the British forces, this encouraged ethnically directed violence, particularly after the Treaty and during the civil war, leading to an exodus.

Sexton and O’Leary point out in Building Trust in Ireland that: ‘There can be little doubt that the main causation underlying this exodus was a sense of apprehension in certain of these communities associated with the transition to national independence in 1922 and the upheavals which attended the event.’63

Diarmaid Ferriter goes on to suggest that sectarianism played an influential role in the behaviour of the IRA:

Sectarianism too played its part and there was no shortage of abusive political language to identify enemies (‘land grabber’, ’loyalist’, ‘imperialist’, ‘Orangeman’, ‘Freemason’) and assert the need for their killing. In the same manner, labeling one an informer could in fact cover a multitude of sins, agrarian and domestic included.64

The editorial in the Church of Ireland Gazette reported on 9 September 1921 that, according to a rector from an urban area in the West, his congregation had been reduced by half. Another clergyman expressed ‘little hope that this exodus will be stopped and less that those who have gone will return’. It was a ‘most grave matter’ for finances and there was a ‘large breakdown in parochial finance in many dioceses, consequent on the exodus of the people.’65

The Gazette reported on 7 October 1921 that the Church of Ireland congregations were ‘vanishing’ and that:

Over a large part of the country the already sparse congregations are being reduced to vanishing point – memories of the “terror” have burnt very deep – anyone who knows Southern Ireland knows also the undercurrent of feeling urging the elimination of Protestantism [my italics]…the fact remains that a migration of younger clergy has begun.

So young clergy, the lifeblood of the Church of Ireland, were protesting with their feet in some dioceses. In 1920, there were 911 clergy in the Church of Ireland in the 26 counties, excluding the diocese of Clogher, which contained parts of Donegal, Monaghan and Louth, but by 1930 the number had reduced by almost a third, to 647.66

The violence directed against the Protestants in some parts of the South between 1919 and the Truce of July 1921 was largely the by-product of the guerrilla war between the IRA and the British Army and the Royal Irish Constabulary, augmented in 1920 by the RIC Special Reserve (RICSR) and the Auxiliary Division RIC (ADRIC). After the Treaty, however, violence against the minority increased following the withdrawal of the Crown forces and the disbandment of the RIC. A breakdown of law and order quickly followed with the outbreak of civil war, leading both Catholics and Protestants to flee.

The situation became so serious that the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Gregg, accompanied by the Bishop of Cashel, Dr Miller, and a leading Protestant businessman, Sir William Goulding, went to see Michael Collins in May 1922, following the murders of thirteen Protestants in the Bandon valley, to ask whether the Protestant minority should stay on. Collins ‘assured them that the government would maintain civil and religious liberty’.67 However, Collins was in no position to protect Protestants and was shortly afterwards killed in an ambush near Bandon. Dr Miller’s dioceses in south Tipperary had suffered by then but in north Tipperary, the Bishop of Killaloe ‘had warned in the summer of 1921 that the Church of Ireland population of his diocese had slumped to 5,876 – down by two-thirds from its Victorian heyday and a decline the Bishop described as “almost staggering”’.68

As far as sectarian motive was a factor in this decline, the historian Richard English has pointed out in Irish Freedom:

If Catholic Ireland defined itself as the nation, then historically the process had also worked the other way, as Protestant Britain had effectively defined itself in exclusive ways too. Thus it was that the 1919–21 IRA (and their enemies) on occasions exhibited an ugly sectarianism of word and deed.69

Apart from sectarianism, land hunger was a powerful motivation for violence and intimidation of Protestant ‘planters’ in the period 1921–23. By 1921, much land had been transferred from landlords to tenants, thanks to legislation from Westminster. Various land acts since 1885 had made it possible for tenants to purchase land, the price being fixed on a number of rental years. In total, almost 2.5 million acres were sold under the land acts from 1881 to 1896, for which landowners received almost £24 million.70 However, ‘it was not until the passage of the Wyndham Land Act of 1903 that a revolutionary transfer of landownership began’.71 Dooley, however, makes it clear that:

While the Land Acts of 1903 and 1909 had made a major contribution to the transfer of land from landlords to tenants they did not end landlordism in Ireland. Prior to the enactment of the 1923 Land Act, there were approximately 114,000 holdings on three million acres that had not been sold.72

Marianne Elliott points out that the safety valve of emigration had been closed during the First World War, leading to young men being landless, and some resorted to burning out Protestant landowners:

Given the land hunger, the resentment of Protestant privilege, and the unusual numbers of impoverished young males in the country because the First World War had closed off emigration, it would have been surprising had sectarianism not been an element in the burning of almost 300 ‘big houses’. Expectations raised by the Land Acts had not been satisfied.73

However, a number of ‘big houses’ were burnt for reasons not in any way associated with land hunger, but instead as retaliation for Black and Tan house burnings, theft of contents and for military reasons to prevent occupation by British forces. A separate chapter will examine the ‘big house’ burnings.

The question of compensation for those who fled, lost property or land and suffered malicious injury soon became a dominant issue. Initially, a voluntary body, the Irish Registration Bureau in London, offered to help refugees with accommodation and with prosecuting claims for compensation. It reported in May 1922 that: ‘the list of the poorer people who have had to fly is very bad, as they have arrived in London without means of subsistence and are dependent on the charity of friends. A number of these refugees have come together and formed a committee.’74

The British Government eventually accepted that it had to come to the rescue of the refugees. The Irish Distress Committee, an official body, was formed in May 1922 to deal with the 20,000 or so people who arrived in London in the spring of 1922, who were given refugee status. These people were largely made up of disbanded members of the RIC, British ex-servicemen and civilians loyal to the British regime in Ireland. Sir Samuel Hoare was the first chairman, followed by Lord Eustace Percy, and in March 1923 it was reconstituted as the Irish Grants Committee (IGC). In the first six months it received 3,349 applications. By November 1922, 598 Protestants and 1,063 Roman Catholics had been helped with loans and grants. By 1923, 4,330 applications were approved for loans and grants and advances ‘amounting to £52,000 on compensation decrees and on arrears of rent’.75 The second interim report of the IGC for 1923 declared that £11 million in grants had been supplied to refugees and £7.8 million loans advanced. The IGC reported that it had ‘in this way resettled a considerable number of refugees in this country and have been able to arrange for the emigration of others to the Dominions’.76

An advocacy body, the Southern Irish Loyalists’ Relief Association (SILRA) helped with information and recommended cases for compensation. This Association was very active from 1922, with Lord Linlithgow as chairman with the support of many conservative MPs. Major White was the secretary, thorough and sympathetic, with a network of informants in Ireland. The files of the Irish Grants Committee make it clear that Major White referred many cases to them for compensation.

Another advocacy body was the London-based Irish Compensation Claims Association (ICCA), representing loyalists who felt that they had been hard done by, and it was quick to point out that much more was needed. Robert Sanders, from the Glen of Aherlow in Co. Tipperary, was chairman and another Tipperary man, Lord Dunalley, whose mansion was burnt in 1922, was an active lobbyist.

Under the heads of working arrangements agreed on 24 January 1922, the British and Provisional governments agreed that each would be responsible for payment of compensation to its own supporters and that awards already given should stand. As for damage to property, ‘in the pre-Truce period each side was to pay for the losses it had inflicted.’77 Awards made by county councils prior to the Truce under the Criminal and Malicious Injuries Acts which had not been paid or defended, were to be suspended, and a new commission was established with three members: one from the Free State, Senator J.C. Dowdall; one from England, C.H.J. Thomas from the Inland Revenue; and Lord Shaw, the chairman, a lawyer from Scotland, agreed by both governments.

The commission was to consider claims for damages from 1 January 1919 to 11 July 1921. However, as time went on, many claims were made for post-Truce compensation for damages to property and for personal injuries. The Free State government enacted the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act in 1923 to deal with such claims. All unpaid awards under undefended decrees between 21 January 1919 and 11 July 1921 were annulled. ‘Injuries committed after the 11th July 1921 on which a decree had been made prior to the passing of the act were to be re-opened and re-heard on the application of the applicant or the minister of Finance.’78

Significantly, compensation did not cover consequential losses, theft of money, jewellery and furniture ‘if it could be proved they had not been taken by the members of an unlawful association’.79 In effect, this referred to the Irregulars in the civil war and, as Terrence Dooley has pointed out, because of ‘the amount of looting that took place by locals who … more often than not belonged to no such association, big house owners were to be hard pressed to prove the legitimacy of their claims.’ Lord Dunalley’s original claim was for £100,000 but his ‘claim for compensation for the loss of contents was dismissed by the county court judge in May 1924’80 because he could not prove that property was stolen by the Irregulars.81 Dunalley’s mansion was situated in Dolla, Co. Tipperary, and his solicitors thought goods were stolen ‘by the “mountainy” people [locals around the Silvermines area] after the burning’ of his mansion in August 1922.82

R.B. McDowell tells us that:

The workings of the Shaw Commission, the land act of 1923 and the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act, 1923, left loyalists in the 26 counties disappointed and with a strong sense they had been badly treated. Acting ‘under the mantle’ of the Shaw Commission the sub-commissioners had reduced the judges’ awards on average by 40 per cent.83

The ICCA objected to the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act as, under its terms, no compensation was allowed for personal injuries.

Compensation for damage to buildings was to be based on full or partial reinstatement. Full reinstatement meant the restoration of the old building as it stood before, while partial reinstatement was awarded for building a smaller house on the same site or anywhere in the Free State. The judge had power to award a further sum to defray architectural and legal expenses. Some owners of big houses, fearing they might be attacked again, chose to build new houses far from their old ones, moving to Dublin and Wicklow. Terrence Dooley took a random sample of 50 big houses throughout the 26 counties and concluded that awards came to only 26 per cent of the claims made.84 There was little or no compensation for the valuable furniture, silver and pictures often stolen and which found their way into small houses in the neighbourhood of the burnt mansions.

In Dublin, the Shaw Commission worked in Ely Place, but when Sir Samuel Hoare visited Dublin in September 1922, he was ‘shocked by how slowly the Commission was working’ and urged that ‘it should immediately revise its methods and increase its staff’.85 Shaw resigned in November and Sir Alexander Wood-Renton, a prominent lawyer, replaced him. The work was soon undertaken with much more effect, two valuators being appointed for each of the 26 counties ‘to assess claims, with claimants having the right to appeal to the commissioners.’86

There was much criticism of the reduced awards made by the ICCA. In July 1924, Edward Carson dramatically said in the House of Lords: ‘Commission’s inspectors … used the most tyrannical methods towards claimants to come to an agreement out of court.’ On the restitution awards it meant:

You, sir, have been driven out of Ireland, your house and your furniture has been burned; you have probably been shot; your wife and family have been in danger, but you must go back and rebuild your house and live among the people who drove you out.87

The Shaw Commission wound up its activities in February 1926, when Wood-Renton wrote to President Cosgrave, advising that he was returning to London and thanking him ‘for the courtesy and assistance that have been extended to us during the whole period of our work by the Free State Government and its officers’.88 Cosgrave acknowledged this letter on 24 March, stating that he ‘was fully sensible of the tact, resource and hard work demanded by your own especially difficult position as Chairman’.89