Sir, – I refer to the public commemoration planned for January 17th to mark the service of members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police.
I write as someone whose grandmother was killed (murdered) by the Auxiliary Division of the RIC (AD RIC) on November 20th, 1920. Eileen Quinn was aged 24, had three children (one of whom was my father aged three) and was pregnant with their fourth child. She was sitting on a wall in her garden fronting the Galway/Gort road. As she sat on the wall, she was shot by someone in a truck carrying Auxiliary Division RIC men from Gort to Galway. Afterwards, in a hastily convened military tribunal of inquiry, it was concluded that her death was due to misadventure. So-called “precautionary shots” were deemed necessary by the tribunal (a perversion of a coroner’s inquest) whenever there was a dangerous bend in the road. She was just “unlucky” to have been hit by one of these shots. There is actually no bend in that road. She left three young children and a bereft husband in her wake – not to mention a lot of intergenerational hurt.
Just two days before her agonising death a local RIC man was killed. Her killing was widely seen as a reprisal for his death. Like Eileen, the RIC man (Constable Timothy Horan) also left a widow and three very young children. Their lives were in turmoil too. There is always a very rough symmetry of suffering during conflicts. From the point of view of Eileen Quinn’s or Tim Horan’s family, nobody who is directly involved really ever “wins”.
Recently, I had the privilege to sit down with the grandson of Timothy Horan who agrees with me on the importance of forgiveness. The events of 1920 are very raw and immediate to both of us. But the distance between then and now gives us a fresh chance to see the humanity on all sides and to bemoan all human loss and suffering, no matter whose “side” it is on. A republic that is worthy has to have the heart to allow us to reach out beyond our pain to each other.
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For my part, I commend the holding of this commemoration. – Yours, etc,
Prof GERARD QUINN,
Galway.
Sir, – This controversy is becoming depressingly, but predictably, polarised. Two mistakes were made, one descriptive, one chronological. To insist that the the event is a “commemoration” not a “celebration” is a subtlety that has probably passed over most people’s heads. It would have been less controversial to characterise it as a “remembrance”, a more neutral and encompassing description. The other miscalculation was to offer it at the start of the centenary of the War of Independence. Far more appropriate would have been to remember these forces at the time of their disbandment. Then all sides could have found what they wanted in the histories, and honour would have been much better satisfied. – Yours, etc,
IAN D’ALTON,
Naas,
Co Kildare.
Sir, – The Dublin Metropolitan Police is getting a raw deal from the controversy over the Government’s ham-fisted commemoration. The DMP was a completely separate organisation to the RIC, being unarmed, local and paid for by the ratepayers of Dublin. It was not disbanded in 1922 and, in fact, was never disbanded. About a third of the members, probably of largely unionist persuasion, were pensioned off in 1922 and replaced by mostly Catholic nationalist recruits. Some years later, in 1925, the DMP was amalgamated with An Garda Síochána into a single new police force to be known as An Garda Síochána. The DMP commissioner became the deputy commissioner of An Garda Síochána. The old DMP continued to wear the distinctive helmets and uniform into the 1950s and had the same numbering on their badges. Central taxation rather that Dublin ratepayers paid for Dublin’s policing.
Apart from the issue of efficiency and having one force, the main motivation for the merger in 1925 was to employ the DMP detective units in the fight against crime in the rest of Ireland where the recently formed Garda Síochána had no detective capability at all. TDs of all sides welcomed the amalgamation and nobody in the Dáil debates had anything bad to say about the DMP or its past. That’s not to say that the detectives of G Division did not deserve the vengeance wreaked on them by Michael Collins in 1919 for the part in spotting 1916 leaders. The DMP was left largely unscathed by the IRA.
The fact is today Garda Commissioner Drew Harris presides over the same amalgamated Garda Síochána including the DMP. Truly the Garda is the successor of the DMP in fact and in law. That does not apply to the RIC. – Yours, etc,
CIARAN O’MARA,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Having lived in a country where for the last three years senior politicians have engaged in a wilful misunderstanding of neighbouring nations in order to shore up short-term political advantage, bowing to rather than challenging the deepest-held prejudices of the British public, it has been a relief to witness the measured and sensitive actions of the Irish Government. With a calm head and an open mind, it has meticulously stuck to the principle that it is better to understand and engage with our neighbours, in particular our past foes, rather than to cut ourselves off and wallow in a principled detachment, with us being right and the other always wrong.
So it has been extremely disappointing to witness the gathering objections to the commemoration of the RIC and DMP planned for later this month. This event seemed all the more necessary in the wake of Brexit, reaching out to those parts of our nation who saw themselves as British 100 years ago, or continue to do so now, as a border reappears on our island.
May I say to those refusing to attend, or withdrawing support: you are imitating the worst aspects of what has gone on in the UK in recent years, looking nervously backwards rather than confidently forwards. Please reconsider and set Ireland as a place where open hearts and reconciliation trump narrow nationalism and historical fundamentalism. – Yours, etc,
DAVID CLARKE,
Edinburgh.