A chara, - Three cheers for Kevin Myers for his lucid and considered Irishman's Diary on Ireland and its "sacred cows" (The Irish Times, July 7th). There is no doubt that the preservation of cherished myths has stultified our collective ability to cast a cold eye on our past and left us with a muddled perspective.
The reference to the "heroic flying columns" in the 1919-21 period certainly hits the nail on the head. The Volunteers were not a collection of Che Guevaras, racing through the countryside, basking in the admiration of the people. Indeed, even at the height of their popularity, the Volunteers, like the collective Crown forces, were often regarded with fear and suspicion. A more realistic picture of this time would probably be a quiet country road, with men lying in ditches in the rain, waiting for days for a convoy of RIC/Black and Tans, waiting to kill.
A true reading of history shows that republicans have never garnered universal support from the people per se, but have harnessed the anger of the people. Although republicans will doubtless become queasy at the notion, the republican movement receives its sustenance from the teat of its enemy.
This publication reflected the mood of the time when it called for "condign punishment" for those involved in the 1916 Rising. But was it not General Sir John Maxwell who, by executing the leaders of the Rising, turned the anger of the people away from the Rising and directed it at the British forces? If they had lived, would the 1916 leaders have ended up like their predecessors "skulking in their tents, generals without an army"? We will never know.
From the executions in 1916, to the use of the Black and Tans, right up to Bloody Sunday and the hunger strikes, successive British governments have snatched republicanism from the brink of extinction and made it flourish. If Bobby Sands has been allowed to wear his own clothes, would the Troubles have gone on so long?
As for the possibility that the IRA war in the 1970s would not have happened if a book such as Police Casualties in Ireland 1919- 21 were published in the 1960s instead of today, I'm not so sure. A brutal reading would show that the killing of RIC men led to the shattering of the force's morale, large-scale resignations, and ultimately the de facto end of British rule in the south. Would this not have the opposite effect of galvanising the belief that the deaths of RUC men would lead to the end of British rule in the North?
Brutal, perhaps, but this is the type of thinking that lead to the creation of this State by a minority, a minority that was at the time excommunicated from its church and largely avoided by the masses. To question the legitimacy of the deaths of RIC men is to question the legitimacy of this State, and its moral right to exist. A heavy burden. - Is mise,
Niall O Murchadha, Ferbane, Co Offaly.