Sir, – Irish republicans are offended by the Taoiseach’s wearing of the poppy and it is true that it not only commemorates the soldiers who died in the first World War, as initially intended, but also now includes the Black and Tans and the parachute regiment, etc, who were responsible for many atrocities in Ireland.
The wearing of the Easter lily was also, initially, meant to commemorate those who died in the 1916 Rising and the Civil War but went on to include the deaths of republicans who were equally involved in atrocities such as Enniskillen, Sligo, Kingsmill and Bloody Friday.
Humans like to memorialise and romanticise their past in order to deal with guilt and for political gain. In reality the only entities to be entitled to be offended by the wearing of the poppy or the Easter lily at such hypocritical occasions are the plants themselves. – Yours, etc,
EUGENE TANNAM, Firhouse, Dublin 24.
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Sir, – Bobby O'Neill (Letters, November 17th) enumerates a list of negatives which in his opinion the poppy symbolises.
What a conveniently myopic view of the world Mr O’Neill lives with. Had he bothered to watch the cenotaph commemoration he would have seen the political and ethnic reach embraced by that event. And he might have included the defeat of Hitler in his litany of deprecation.
As to the union of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, until Sinn Féin is included in that fusion, Ireland will continue to have wounds to lick. – Yours, etc,
PADDY McEVOY
Cambridgeshire, UK.