Irish Civil War Centenary: Church of Ireland remembers disproportionate impact on Protestants – with numbers dropping by 34%

The Church of Ireland is marking the centenary of the Irish Civil War - which it notes had a disproportionately high impact on Protestant victims.
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By Philip Bradfield
Published 9th May 2023, 16:10 BST
Updated 9th May 2023, 16:27 BST

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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As a result, the Church of Ireland resources looking back at the period place a strong emphasis on praying for healing and reconciliation between communites.

The seven signatories to the 7 December 1921 Anglo Irish treaty. Clockwise from top left, David Lloyd George Austen Chamberlain, F.E.Smith, (Lord Birkenhead), Winston Churchill, Robert Barton, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. The subsequent Irish Civil War over the content of the treaty saw Protestants disproportionately victimised, the Church of Ireland has said in a new resource.The seven signatories to the 7 December 1921 Anglo Irish treaty. Clockwise from top left, David Lloyd George Austen Chamberlain, F.E.Smith, (Lord Birkenhead), Winston Churchill, Robert Barton, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. The subsequent Irish Civil War over the content of the treaty saw Protestants disproportionately victimised, the Church of Ireland has said in a new resource.
The seven signatories to the 7 December 1921 Anglo Irish treaty. Clockwise from top left, David Lloyd George Austen Chamberlain, F.E.Smith, (Lord Birkenhead), Winston Churchill, Robert Barton, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. The subsequent Irish Civil War over the content of the treaty saw Protestants disproportionately victimised, the Church of Ireland has said in a new resource.

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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The 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."

In a letter to the Irish Times this week, he offered feedback on its recent special historical supplement ‘1923: Birth of a Nation’ published on 2 May.

"Little attention was paid to how it affected members of the Protestant community,” he wrote to the paper, adding: "The violence of this period forced many members of the protestant community to leave the country. Their departure would be an important factor in the fall in their numbers from 1911 to 1926."

Related topics:Northern Ireland