Madam, - Fintan O'Toole (Opinion, February 1st) compares the situation in the North of Ireland with South Africa and concludes, via a series of questions and answers, that violence by the ANC was justified while the violence of the IRA was not.
Obviously, he was referring to the modern-day IRA, but exactly the same question is thereby raised about the violence of the old IRA in the War of Independence which led to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921. For, based on his criteria, there can be no doubt that that war was not justified.
After all, conditions for Catholics in all Ireland prior to the 1916 Rising were tolerable, if not good - certainly much better than the conditions endured by Catholics in the North post partition. To make just two of his criteria, the right of Catholics to vote and to a proper place in society had been achieved by Daniel O'Connell almost 100 years before the 1916 Rising. And the number of Catholics who were able not only to join the RIC but also to reach its higher ranks was respectable, indeed huge compared with minuscule number of Catholics who were part of the RUC post partition.
The reality of the War of Independence was that it was motivated, not just by the justification of discrimination against Catholics, but instead by the desire of the majority of Irish people to achieve national independence denied to them by the British government despite the clear expression of their will in the 1918 general election.
Fintan O'Toole's comparison with South Africa is in any event misplaced and unsustainable. In South Africa, black and white alike were and are in agreement about the boundaries of the state they share. What was in issue there was the massive discrimination practised against the majority black population. In Ireland they quarrel between British and Irish, between nationalist/republican and unionist, both before and since partition, has been about the right to territory. For Irish nationalists/republicans, the injustice of the denial of their right to self-determination and freedom is as real and as raw as ever. - Yours, etc.,
PATRICK FAHY, Omagh, Co Tyrone.
Madam, - Fintan O'Toole's demolition of the Sinn Féin assertion that Catholics were the victims of a form of apartheid in Northern Ireland (February 1st) was as comprehensive as it was timely. But inadvertently perhaps, he throws too many sops to those who would rewrite history to suit their own agenda.
Professional and managerial jobs, he says, were filled almost entirely by Protestants. This, like most sweeping assertions, is simply not true, as there were a great many Catholic teachers, doctors and lawyers, and numerous businesses were owned and managed by Catholics. Some local councils were indeed gerrymandered to give unionist majorities, and some unionist councils did discriminate against Catholics in houses and jobs. But then, some nationalist-dominated councils did exactly the same.
Some unionists did abuse their political and economic power, and Catholics were, to a degree, disadvantaged, but the picture of an oppressed minority struggling for equality is a myth fostered by Republicans to lend respectability to a campaign of murder and intimidation. - Yours, etc.,
DENNIS KENNEDY, Belfast 7.