Ken Funston: Nationalists forget how Protestant minority was forced away from border

There is almost a complete dearth of written material on the subject within the libraries; it is to the shame of academia that they would rather interview a terrorist than their victims. It is almost as if they find it more stimulating to delve into the mindset of a terrorist than to explore the enduring pain of their victims.

As pointed out by Henry Patterson in the foreword, the likes of the Transitional Justice Institute focus on the state whilst largely ignoring the actions of the terrorist organisations and their innocent victims.

It’s later stated by Cillian in the introduction that there is now a hierarchy that actually works to help facilitate perpetrators while victims are left behind.

The front cover will not be familiar to most; it is the youth parade in the small village of Tullyhommon on Remembrance Sunday in 2022.

It is almost a replica of the scene on November 8, 1987 in that village, when PIRA attempted to murder a generation of Protestant children.

It is something that the Provisional movement would wish us all to forget, like many of their other sectarian attacks, including the Enniskillen bomb on the same day.

The republican mindset, driven by the Provisional leadership, would have us believe that, as highlighted by Henry, in the words of Northern Ireland first minister Michelle O’Neill, “I think at the time there was no alternative.”

Cillian reiterates the fact that many of the republican killings were sectarian and aimed at ‘spreading terror among border Protestants and the entire Protestant tradition’.

They were subject to ‘a campaign of the eradication and cleansing of a tradition that went back generations’.

The book principally relies on primary documentary sources and interview material that are being swamped by the ‘recalibration of nationalist collective memory’.

It has actually got to the stage where many either do not want to know about Protestant experiences, do not care or do not believe they happened.

The revisionist assault on our mindset has now pervaded our local government, academia, schools and the general society.

It is as Hubert Butler pointed out 70 years ago, ‘once one deceit is ignored it becomes easier to ignore others’.

This book recounts the accounts directly from the victims which I have no doubt will be dismissed by those who have closed their minds from what actually took place.

They will ignore the fact that the Protestant minorities have been forced out of many border areas, their businesses repeatedly attacked and destroyed, the direct gun attacks, and the continual intimidation.

One interviewee stated, ‘They knew what they were doing – attack businesses owned by Protestants, force them out of business, and eventually out of the area.’

PIRA didn’t restrict their attacks to shootings and bombings. They also attacked border families by burning them out of their houses and robbing them of their personal possessions.

Tommy and Emily Bullock were murdered in their own home in 1972, an incident that had a ripple effect as the sanctity of the home was desecrated, leaving many isolated families in fear.

Another family were attacked at home and their son was forced to drive a ‘human bomb’ to an army checkpoint. When the son initially refused to drive the bomb, the terrorists stated, ‘If you don’t, we’ll shoot your father and you, but we won’t shoot her (his mother). We’ll leave her to bury the two of you.’

The book recounts the many attacks up to the first ceasefire in 1994, and the 1998 Belfast Agreement was supposed to ‘draw a line in the sand’. Society could re-heal itself and the community could come back together.

The British government has attempted a number of times to cobble together legislation since then to deal with the past.

A continual vein within all that legislation is there is no appetite to prosecute PIRA terrorists; it is much easier to go after the ‘low hanging fruit’ - retired members of the security forces.

It is also becoming more evident that republicanism has no desire to reconcile with unionism as they are an impediment to their desire for a united Ireland.

A recent incident within Fermanagh and Omagh District Council exemplified this. Mark Ovens, a unionist councillor from an area of Fermanagh where the Provisional IRA ethnically cleansed many of the local Protestants, was silenced by Provisional Sinn Fein.

He had the temerity to challenge them for making decisions that were not subject to open debate in the council. This is quite simply a continuation of the policy waged by PIRA in another form and gives an insight into what the unionist population would experience under a Sinn Fein government.

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Ken Funston and Cillian McGrattan will be having book launches on Monday, June 23 in Ulster University, and on Wednesday, June 25 in Lisnaskea, both at 7pm.

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‘The Northern Ireland Conflict on the Margins of History: Protestant Memory on the Border’ is co-authored by Ken Funston & Cillian McGrattan. Cillian has authored numerous books over the years and is a lecturer at Ulster University. This is Ken's first book since passing his PhD in 2020. Ken is originally from the Fermanagh/Donegal border and the inspiration behind the book is the experiences of the interviewees contained therein.