Irish Civil War Centenary: Church of Ireland remembers disproportionate impact on Protestants – with numbers dropping by 34%
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The Irish Civil War from 1922–23 saw the Provisional Government of Ireland and the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army fighting over the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which facilitated the creation of Northern Ireland as a distinct entity from the southern state.
Resources circulated to Church of Ireland congregations in the Republic this month remind members that such were the level of assaults on southern Protestants and their property in the period 1911-1926, that their numbers dropped by 34% in the new southern state.
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Hide AdAs a result, the Church of Ireland resources looking back at the period place a strong emphasis on praying for healing and reconciliation between communites.
Professor Marie Coleman, Professor of Twentieth Century Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast, prepared the historical aspect of the resources.
"The eleven-month Irish Civil War ended on 24 May 1923," she says in the document. "As few Protestants had been involved in the conflict as combatants the biggest impact of the conflict on members of the Church of Ireland concerned assaults on their persons and property.
"Compensation claims submitted subsequently to the Free State and British governments showed that the number of Protestants among victims in these categories was disproportionately higher."
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Hide AdThe toll taken by the years on conflict became clear, she added, when the results of the 1926 Irish Free State census were published; they showed a decline of 34% in the ‘Protestant Episcopalian’ (largely Church of Ireland) population since 1911.
QUB historian, Professor Emeritus Brian M. Walker welcomed the resources.
"I think this is very appropriate," he told the News Letter. "It acknowledges the suffering of many members of the Protestant community at the time.
"After the civil war was over, members of that community, like other communities in the civil war, sought to draw a curtain over these events. Now there is a better appreciation of what happened. The message was 'forgive and forget'. Now people are willing to remember and also to look to the future in a positive way."