Sir, - I would like to thank Jack Bennett (April 27th) for his contribution on the above subject. If Mr Bennett allows, I will not follow him into the puerile pedanticism and personal abuse in which he indulges. Could I, however, refute one of his assertions about me: I do not "like to pretend" anything. Mr Bennett may be surprised to hear that other people have views which they sincerely hold. In addition, viewpoints which differ radically from those generally accepted are not all that easy to express publicly.
One of the points which I was trying to make in my letter of March 31st is that the same arguments which Irish nationalists use (island is a natural unit, with distinctive cultural differences from the other people of the British Isles) are exactly the same arguments which can be used by Northern unionists. You cannot logically use one set of arguments to support your own case and then dismiss them when other peoples use exactly the same set.
To judge from his letter, Mr Bennett must have led a life which makes the Three Wise Monkeys seem like voyeurs. Politicians from Mr Haughey down (or should that be up?) have been heard to declaim that God Himself intended Ireland to be a political unit because it is a natural one. Not so long ago walls everywhere were daubed with the slogan "BRITS OUT". Has Mr Bennett never seen them? Has he never heard of the murderous campaign against Protestants living in the Border areas in Northern Ireland? My claim that some people assert that Northern unionists have no right to be here is a very modest and well-founded one indeed. As for the assertion that Northern Protestants are part of the Irish nation, they certainly don't think so themselves, just as we don't see ourselves as one of the British peoples. Maybe Mr Bennett should try explaining his "independent socio-anthropological studies" to the inhabitants of the Sandy Row.
Lastly, while I am delighted to see Mr Bennett and indeed other Protestants are alive and presumably well and living in Raheny, I must point out to him that the Protestant population of the Republic has decreased from 300,000 to 100,000 (roughly) in less than 80 years (hasn't he heard?). This has been primarily a result of the cruel Ne Temere decree, on which (as in all matters) the State deferred to the Church, but it must also be due to the suffocating Catholic theocracy under which we all lived from 1922 on. It is disgraceful and totally unjustified for Mr Bennett to claim that these Protestants left because they were no longer a privileged class.
I suggest that Mr Bennett get out into the real world and have a look around. This might lead him to shake off the threadbare shibboleths that pass for reasoned arguments in ultra-nationalist Ireland. - Yours, etc., David Herman
Meadow Grove, Dublin 16.