‘The Northern Ireland Conflict on the Margins of History' Ken Funston and Cillian McGrattan launch book on how motivation for border ethnic cleansing still informs legacy today
The ethnic cleansing of Protestants from the border during the Troubles has all but been erased from public discourse - and this explains why legacy investigations carefully avoid those responsible, according to a landmark book being launched today.
The volume is the result of a Phd by former victims campaigner Ken Funston, whose own brother was shot dead while driving a tractor on their family farm in Co Fermanagh.
‘The Northern Ireland Conflict on the Margins of History: Protestant Memory on the Border’ is a collaboration with academic Dr Cillian McGrattan.
Mr Funston said recently in the News Letter: "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.’
The front cover of the book (pictured) will not be familiar to most; it is the youth parade in the small village of Tullyhommon on Remembrance Sunday in 2022, he says.
"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."
The bomb failed to detonate.
Ken Funston and Cillian McGrattan will be having book launches on Monday, June 23 in Ulster University, and on Wednesday, June 25 in Archdale Hall, Lisnaskea, both at 7pm.
Tickets for tonight’s event have been sold out but Wednesday’s event is open to the public.