Sir, - The reaction of the Labour councillor and South Dublin Cathaoirleach Mr Eamonn Walsh (The Irish Times, April 21st) to the photographic exhibition "Drug-Free Zone" says a lot about official Ireland's reaction to the drugs crisis. Mr Walsh claims some pictures "insulted the Garda" and had them removed.
I viewed this remarkable exhibition at a week-long showing in the Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar last October. It is a stark record of 30 years of official Ireland's neglect of, and contempt for, Dublin's working-class communities. Only a small portion of the display related to the uprising of communities to save their children from heroin and the Garda clampdown on anti-drugs activists. Can we take it that Mr Walsh was happy with the other photographs depicting poverty, unemployment, addicts "shooting up", open drug-dealing, derelict flat complexes and destroyed estates? These topics actually comprise the bulk of the exhibition and I find them offensive because of the political neglect they portray.
If independent community activists were being harassed by "political police" and art exhibitions censored in somewhere like Guatemala or Burma we could expect outraged statements from Labour politicians. Perhaps it is all too close to home. - Yours, etc.,
M. Glennon
Morehampton Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.