It was one of the best kept secrets of Irish 20th century
history - the expulsion of a large section of the Protestant
population of the 26 counties in the years following Partition.
In more recent times Southern apologists have either tended
to ignore the subject altogether or explain the decline of
two-thirds of the Protestant population of the Irish Free
State to the withdrawal of the British Army and civil service.
That doesn't begin to explain the exodus of some 220,000
Protestants between the years 1911 and 1926 when the first
post-partition census was taken.
Trouble was there were few international observers in those
days, no television crew showing boat loads and train loads
of Protestants fleeing from Cork and other parts of the South.
And few journalists even showed an interest in interviewing
Protestant refugees in England, Canada or anywhere else.
Only in Northern Ireland was there any real concern for the
large number of Southern Protestants who fled to the sanctuary
of the only part of Ireland to remain under British rule.
Here in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland tens
of thousands of Southern Protestants settled and raised their
families. They didn't leave Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal, or
more southern counties like Wicklow, Wexford and Cork by choice.
They left because they were intimidated and burned out, and
their treatment was one of the most shameful stories of the
British Empire.
In a recent News Letter article Dr. Garret FitzGerald, former
Southern Prime Minister, set out at great length to analyse
the reason for the dramatic decline. The writer heard Dr.
FitzGerald put up much the same argument some 10 years ago
when he addressed a meeting Portadown Town Hall.
He received a fair hearing from the predominately Protestant
audience, but many of them disagreed vehemently with him as
he sought to explain much of the decline on the mixed marriage
syndrome in which Protestants were invariably the losers when
it came to the choice of religion for the children of such
marriages.
Dr. FitzGerald, in his reasoned article in the News Letter,
also made the valid point that the Protestants who remained
in the Irish Free State, now the Irish Republic, had maintained
favourable socio-economic position. In other words, there
are many Protestants who have prospered materially and occupy
positions of importance well beyond their five per cent of
the population.
Quite true, but Dr. FitzGerald does not deal at any length
with the turmoil which existed in 1920-22 - the raw naked
intimidation which physically forced so many Protestants off
their land and out of their houses.
A great silence has existed in the 26 counties over the fate
of the 200,000-plus Protestants who were forced to leave their
homeland. Indeed, as a recent book on the I.R.A. in Cork revealed,
no-one took the blame for the murder of a dozen innocent defenceless
Protestants in the Bandon area of West Cork in 1922.
Everyone knew it was the I.R.A. who committed this crime,
also the appalling atrocities like the blinding and then slaughter
of a young Protestant who had served with distinction in the
Great War - murdered because he resisted the gunmen who broke
into his uncle's house to steal a licensed gun.
The records at the time show that there wasn't a spare place
on any of the boats leaving Cork for a month after the British
left - the boats were packed with Protestants fleeing for
their lives.
A fund for Distressed Southern Irish Protestants was set
up by Carson, Craig and Southern Unionists, and it did help
many of the homeless and destitute Protestants in London at
that time.
Dr. FitzGerald picked a bad place to try and give a rational
explanation for the exodus when he delivered his speech in
Portadown Town Hall.
Portadown was one of the main towns where Protestants from
Monaghan and Cavan settled in the aftermath of the pogrom
carried out against them. The Orange Order set up a fund in
Portadown in the early 1920s to help Southern Protestant refugees,
and a significant number were re-housed in the town and district.
A few years ago, shortly before her death, one of the most
noted of these Southern Protestant refugees living in Portadown,
Mrs. Martha Jackson was interviewed by the writer and described
in great deail how her family was forced out at gun point
from Cavan in 1921 because her brother was serving with the
British Army.
The 'Orange Standard' has interviewed others, or their children
down the years. They included the son of a large businessman
in County Wicklow who had to flee with his family because
he served British officers - they settled in the Banbridge
area - a Christian lady who moved from Cavan to Portadown
along with her family who were ordered out by an I.R.A. gang
led by a young man her mother raised as one of her own, and
another Christian lady from Cavan who also moved to Portadown.
Many settled in Belfast, like a family of seven from Cavan
who stayed for a few months in Portadown before moving on
to the city. They were an Orange family and had only the clothes
they were wearing when forced out.
All these people like the tens of thousands of others, contributed
greatly to Northern Ireland society during the past 80 years,
and their children and grandchildren have carried on the good
work.
But their expulsion from the South was a disgrace, and a
stain on the history of their country. But they held their
heads high and in most cases there was little bitterness.
But, almost without exception, their message for Ulster was
the same - "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".
A minister told the writer many years ago, "Northern
Ireland Protestants are lucky, they have the Orange Order
to speak up for them. We didn't in the part of the South my
family lived in, and we had no voice to put our grievances."
As for the Orange Order in the Republic, those who have flown
the Orange flag during the past 80 years deserve the utmost
praise and commendation. The Orange Order before partition
existed in most counties in Ireland and its headquarters were
in Dublin.
Republican hatred and intimidation in the 1920s was most
directed at Orange families. The Orange hall in Bandon where
seven lodges once existed was burned, and many Orange people
forced out. The Fowler hall in Dublin was taken over by I.R.A.
irregulars and priceless records destroyed.
After 1922 the Order was restricted to border counties in
the South and the Dublin and Wicklow areas, even today, 80
years later, there is still a refusal to acknowledge the right
of the Orange Order to hold even a modest historic ceremony
in Dublin as events two years ago proved.
Northern Ireland Secretary of State Dr. John Reid has warned
that Northern Ireland could become a cold place for Protestants.
The temperature would have to fall a great deal before Northern
Ireland became as inhospitable and unwelcoming for Protestants
as the Republic has been for 80 years.
But the real lesson from all this is the need for Protestants,
Orangemen and Unionists to become united and to strive to
prevent Northern Ireland becoming a part of a united Ireland
where people with a British and Reformed tradition would really
feel frozen out, as those in the South who harboured such
allegiances have been.
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