'A breath of fresh air': Former RUC men hail book on IRA targeting of Protestants near Irish border
A number of former policemen have hailed the publication of a new history of the IRA's campaign in Northern Ireland's borderlands.
The book – 'The Northern Ireland Conflict on the Margins of History' – was officially launched on Monday at an event at Ulster University Belfast, attended by authors Dr Cillian McGrattan and Dr Ken Funston.
The News Letter spoke to attendees afterwards, who included several veterans of the RUC.
The book gives accounts of attacks against Protestant inhabitants of the border area during the Troubles, which it says amounts to a sectarian "ethnic cleansing" campaign by the IRA.
Raymond White, an RUC officer for 37 years and now a prominent member of the Retired Police Officers' Association, called the book "a breath of fresh air".
"It is to be congratulated for putting real evidence in front of the Northern Ireland populace in relation to what happened," he said.
"I puts it into the real context people can read and understand. I'd hope what they've done here will be followed on by other academics and will trickle down, the actual facts of these incidents.
"I mostly was in mid-Ulster and Belfast [as an officer]. It resonated with me in terms of what was happening because we were seeing it almost on a daily basis. It soon became clear it was systematic.
"It has shades of what happened back in the 1920s when people were driven out in the south."
Davy Crooks, a constable with the RUC for 32 years, agreed with the thrust of the book: "That's all it was – ethnic cleansing. Something like that needs to come out.
"Whether it's read or not, I don't know."
A 67-year-old Belfast man who was with the RUC for 32 years, and would not give his name because he remains under threat, said: "It's just brilliant to get it out. I served in Fermanagh and Tyrone before I came up to Belfast.
"[It was] what it said in the book: it was ethnic cleansing.
"You tried to do your best, with early morning patrols for the soft targets, but you just had such an area to cover.
"But it's good to see it getting into the universities, because that's the breeding ground for a lot of it [historic revisionism].
"If you can't look at history as a whole, it's totally biased. My deep-down belief is that the truth will come out, and with things like this, thankfully it does."
Eric Totten, a former RUC sergeant who was with the force for 33 years, said the launch had been "informative".
"It's a topic that needs discussed in greater detail, and the truth told, warts-and-all, from all sides, on behalf of everybody – no matter how much it's unpalatable," he said.
"It has been sanitised, because that's the easy road out. It has to be warts-and-all."
Another attendee was Neale Jagoe.
His great-grandfather William and great-grandmother Elizabeth Jagoe were among those who fled the Bandon Valley Massacre in Cork in 1922, when republicans murdered 13 Protestants.
Then in 1980 his uncle Robert 'Bob' Crilly, an off-duty police reservist, was shot dead by the IRA in Newtownbutler, Co Fermanagh.
"The message is it's only when you get someone brave enough to tell the truth that opens up the space for dialogue," he said.
"It takes that courage for someone to tell the truth to reach across the divide.
"I think the work Ken and Cillian are doing is tremendous: to give a voice to people who have been marginalised for so long."
For more on the book, click on this link.