Ken Loach's film continues to inflate historical debate

Criticism that The Wind that Shakes the Barley failed to show IRA sectarianism towards Protestants is misplaced, writes Niall Meehan, as records of the time show that they were persecuted not by republicans but by the police

The DVD release of Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Ireland's most successful independent film, has received attention not just from film buffs but from some historians too. Professor Roy Foster criticised "the awful dirge which gives the film its title" in The Dublin Review. He also lamented "the film it might have been". Perhaps the imaginative Foster could script it.

Foster mentioned historian Peter Hart, who claims the War of Independence IRA was sectarian toward Protestants. Foster agreed, citing the "murder" of the Pearsons in Offaly in 1921. The professor is mistaken. The Pearson brothers were combatants.

The Waterford-born Foster dismissed "local" historians who criticise Hart's allegation that the April 1922 west-Cork shootings of loyalists were sectarian. Historians Brian Murphy and Meda Ryan argue that these exceptional killings, though indefensible, were not sectarian. They accuse Hart of bias and distortion.

In the Irish Examiner, researcher Robin Bury said Protestants fled due to republican persecution. Bury also relied on Hart's research. He acknowledged "the assistance" of Dr David Fitzpatrick and referred to "the 3,143 files" submitted to the Irish Distress Committee. Bury quoted from "the Presbyterian journal The Witness". He cited WT Cosgrave in the Dáil in June 1922: "Inoffensive Protestants of all classes are being driven from their homes."

This is part of a regular pattern of criticism of Loach's film. The criticism is misplaced.

Taking Bury's last point, the Cosgrave remark cannot be found in the Dáil's minute book. Robin Bury previously referenced the same remark to the Church of Ireland Gazette.

The Witness was not a publication of the Presbyterian church. It was a private journal published in Belfast. Bury quoted the editorial: "the plight of the Protestants [is] sad in the extreme. They are marked, they are watched, they are raided; some have been dragged out and shot like beasts". This colourful propaganda was based on a report from "the Honourable HM Pollock, DL, MP, the Minister of Finance in the Northern Parliament".

Sinn Féin's non-sectarianism was admitted, though backhandedly: "their vengeance falls upon all who hinder them without regard to creed or class". However, "Protestants are loyal and law-abiding, and feel it as a duty which they owe to God and their own conscience to support the forces of the Crown..." This lengthy diatribe mixed political acuity and sectarian paranoia: "Sinn Féin... is now a diabolic agency out to destroy the British Isles and the British Empire."

Protestants were persecuted, but not by republicans: "The only damage to loyalists' premises has been done by the police. In July they burned the stores of Mr GW Biggs, the principal merchant in Bantry, a man highly respected, a Protestant, and a lifelong Unionist, with a damage of over £25,000, and the estate office of the late Mr Leigh-White, also a Unionist. Subsequently... the police fired into Mr. Biggs's office, while his residence has since been commandeered for police barracks. He has had to send his family to Dublin and to live himself in a hotel. Only two reasons can be assigned for the outrages on Mr Biggs, one that he employed Sinn Féiners... the other a recently published statement of his protesting... against Orange allegations of Catholic intolerance."

This letter was one of three in late 1920 to the Times from J Annan Bryce of Glengarrif, west Cork. Bryce, aged 77, was a former Scottish Liberal MP, Far East colonial functionary and brother of a Chief Secretary to Ireland. Bryce's second letter mentioned his wife Violet, who "opened at Glengarriff the first convalescent home for [British] officers in Ireland": "...as reported in the papers today, my wife was arrested at Holyhead, deported to Kingstown, lodged in Bridewell there, and released without charge after four hours' detention. Such arrests are of daily occurrence in Ireland, where any and every interference with liberty had been legalised by recent legislation, but I am not aware under what authority they have become lawful in Great Britain. My wife had been invited to address a meeting in Wales about reprisals, a subject on which she is a competent witness... She has been able to see the effect of the policy of reprisals, and has suffered from them in her own person. Her garage has been burned... she had been repeatedly threatened... with the burning down of her house, and on one occasion was in imminent danger of death from the rifle of a policeman…"

Bryce was an authentic Protestant voice on behalf of civil and religious liberty.

On the British government's Irish Distress Committee, the evidence thus far does not support the persecution thesis. The first interim report in November 1922 stated: "Of the 1,873 cases approved for emergency relief, about 600 were Protestant and just over 1,000 Catholic." Loss of employment in the British armed forces and in colonial services caused distress. Economic devastation in the aftermath of conflict was a factor. War creates refugees, relatively few in this case.

Emigration was exacerbated by Civil War. UCC's John A Murphy, while sympathetic to Hart's research, said there were many explanations for Protestant population decline, "active persecution being the least plausible". "The notion that tens of thousands of Protestants were compelled to flee their shops and farms is Paisley-ite myth-mongering."

The Irish Distress Committee's main pressure group in the 1920s was the Southern Irish Loyalists' Relief Association. In 1930 they asked the committee to destroy letters seeking money. The Committee dispensed considerable sums, including to absentee landlords. The autumn Church & State magazine commented: "There may be a number of explanations for this, ranging from tax evasion to fraud." Perhaps Robin Bury, "with the assistance of Dr David Fitzpatrick of TCD", can shed some light.

Bury acknowledges, "in many ways IRA members were heroic revolutionaries". However, "to deny that some saw the Protestant community as unwanted in the new Ireland denies historical reality". This may be a case of "some" believing what loyalists reiterated, that a Protestant is also British. Robin Bury speaks on behalf of the Reform Society, founded by Orange Order members from Dublin and Wicklow. Perhaps he is comfortable with this confusion. It is a confusion that should be discouraged, as there was significant Protestant participation in the structures of Dáil Éireann.

Thankfully, this confusion is not present in The Wind that Shakes the Barley.