Republican Prisoners, 1921

Eoghan Contradictions Harris Plays Both An Orange Protestant Card And A Green Catholic Card: A Story In Four Parts

Extract: "In the Sunday Independent Eoghan Harris played both an Orange Protestant card and a Green Catholic Card in an effort to explain away this historical context, in dealing with one of the last acts of the War of Independence. In so doing he sought to arouse sectarian feeling where there is little if any. It was the Republican side that overtly rejected an association of religion and nationality. The empirical evidence thus far uncovered supports this contention. In their courageous determination to keep politics separate from religion, and to sweep away centuries-old divisions, Republicans of the Protestant faith broke with the historical identification of their community, while Catholic Republicans defied the ultimate sanction of excommunication from their church. But in playing with sectarian fire, Eoghan Harris risks undoing 80 intervening years that have tended towards harmony and reconciliation."

An account of apparently sectarian murders by the IRA in Co. Offaly in 1921 was publicised by Eoghan Harris in the Sunday Independent in October 2005. The allegation of the sectarian murder of the apparently unassuming Protestant Pearson family of Coolacrease was made by William Stanley of Carlow in his "I met Murder on the Way - The Story of the Pearsons of Coolacrease" (2005). This account of events that took place during the Irish War of Independence was then promoted by Eoghan Harris and by the Sunday Independent.

In the course of his analysis Eoghan Harris criticised Protestants in the South for not supporting his analysis and that of the Reform Group: "a group which wants to dig up the buried British and Protestant parts of Irish identity", according to Harris.

This article gives readers the other side of the story, the side ignored by Harris and the Reform Group, and by the Sunday Independent.