Madam, - My statement that the Irish War of Independence was "the 20th century's first war for democracy" (September 12th) has been questioned by Dermot Meleady (September 24th) on a number of grounds.
One issue raised is the right of the Six Counties to refuse incorporation into a United Ireland except by consent. As Dermot Meleady well knows, I spent a quarter of a century of my life publicly campaigning against Articles 2 and 3 so as to gain acceptance of that principle of consent. But this issue is a red herring because Britain's refusal to recognise the 1918 Election results was, in fact, a refusal to countenance a Republic even in the 26 Counties itself, and a determination to uphold and indeed enforce their right to execute as traitors to the King those who sought to give effect to that democratic mandate.
Dermot Meleady is mistaken in asserting that there was no authorisation by the First Dáil for the War of Independence fought by the Irish Republican Army. Full and formal acceptance of such responsibility for the IRA was proclaimed by that Dáil in March 1921 and subsequently endorsed by the 26-county electorate in voting Sinn Féin back into power as the Second Dáil in the 1921 General Elections. Notwithstanding the bitterness of the Treaty Debates of January 1922, both sides continued to endorse the democratic mandate for that War, with Arthur Griffith referring to it as the war fought against "the Black-and-Tan terror for twelve months until Britain was forced to offer terms".
Dermot Meleady is also mistaken when he refers to one such act of terror, the murder of Cork's Lord Mayor, Tomás MacCurtain, as being the unauthorised act of a rogue police squad. General F.P. Crozier, who founded and commanded the British Auxiliary terrorist operations in Ireland from 1920 until his resignation in disgust in 1921, made it his business to find out that the decision to murder MacCurtain had been taken by the Office of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson.
And Crozier had no doubt that what Britain had been waging in Ireland was a war against democracy, as he would later recall in his 1932 memoirs: "The Coalition Government of 1920-21, as dictatorial, and therefore as nearly Fascist, as any British Government is ever likely to be, failed completely in its attempt on Irish democracy, because the army would not comply with the rules of this intolerable Fascism".
Out of the horse's mouth. - Yours, etc.,
MANUS O'RIORDAN, Glasnevin, Dublin 11.