Sir, - Your report (The Irish Times, August 11th) of what I said at the Parnell Summer School was garbled in some respects. The perception of "the Republic as a utopia being subverted by British malignancy and utopian betrayal" should of course have read "Irish betrayal."
With reference to 1798, my point was that the official bicentenary line tends to exaggerate the extent to which the United Irishmen really united Irishmen in the 1790s, and that this in turn encourages a facile underestimation of the obstacles confronting reconciliation today. - Yours, etc.,
John A. Murphy,
University College, Cork.