Madam, - Kevin Myers is right to highlight the numbers of Irish citizens killed by the 1916 rebels (An Irishman's Diary, January 31st). However, his article lacks historical perspective. It can be argued that the Rising would not have happened at all if Bonar Law had not scuppered the Home Rule bill by backing Ulster Unionist threats of civil war against an act of the imperial parliament. Not only that, but Home Rule itself might not have been demanded if the people in power in London had made any attempt to govern Ireland fairly.
Edmund Burke, no rabid Irish nationalist, called the penal laws imposed on the majority of Irish people in the 18th century "that unparalleled code of oppression". These laws he proclaimed to be "manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people".
In the middle of the 19th century a million citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, who happened to live on this island, were allowed to die of starvation as a deliberate act of realpolitik while in the same era they were being held up to contempt and racist ridicule in the fashionable pages of Punch magazine.
Surely these facts have some relevance to the debate on 1916. That rebellion did not happen in a historical vacuum. The impact of what was perceived to be the martyrdom of its leaders arose from the outrageous and long-term irresponsibility of the government in London towards its citizens in Ireland. - Yours, etc,
A. LEAVY,
Shielmartin Drive,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.
****
Madam, - I am disappointed to see President McAleese join the throng of political opportunists flocking to make capital by commemorating the 1916 Rising as the basis of Irish freedom. She is playing with fire. These commemorations reinforce distorted views of the past, making reconciliation harder.
On the republican side, they perpetuate the myth of the Irish people as victims of British imperialism, ignoring the important part they played in winning and running the British Empire, and the benefits Ireland gained as a result of its long association with Britain. On the unionist side, they again stimulate fears that the Irish State wants to absorb (or as she puts it "include") them.
If President McAleese - herself a child of the British state and a beneficiary of its education and welfare systems - is serious about reconciliation, she could start by acknowledging that the 1916 Rising set back the cause of reconciliation - a prerequisite for unification - by decades. The lasting impact of the Rising and its death cult has been to reinforce divisions.
The 50th anniversary commemorations stoked the fires which ignited as the Troubles. Provocative triumphalism, however veiled in the rhetoric of peace and equality, can only drive the two communities in the North further apart. The President of part of Ireland should ask herself why it is that to this day unionists remain unpersuaded by Pearse's promise to "cherish all the children of the nation equally". - Yours, etc,
BILL SMITH,
Belfast 15.
****
Madam, - Kevin Myers's ill-mannered response to the sentiments expressed by the President on the subject of the Easter Rising was a demonstration of the capacity of the English language to accommodate such one-sided opinion and still appear reasonable.
To bolster his view, Mr Myers asks a number of questions. But he fails to ask the most pertinent one in the context of the discussion - and perhaps he will have a go at it. How many places did the British imperialists leave following a polite request from the locals? - Yours, etc,
JIM O'SULLIVAN,
Rathedmond,
Sligo.
****
Madam, - Kevin Myers makes much of the horrendous suffering experienced by innocent civilians and members of the security forces during the 1916 Easter Rising. In these more peaceful and democratic times it is a fair point to make.
Could he not, however, condemn the bloody, ugly and ultimately counter-productive premeditated murder of the leaders of the Rising, no matter how misguided he believes those men to have been?
This Irish Republic deserves far more than the distorted critique of our State's founding far too often uttered by Mr Myers in his much more justified work of opposing the enemies of our State - Sinn Féin/IRA. - Yours, etc,
Cllr DERMOT LACEY,
Beech Hill Drive,
Dublin 4.
****
Madam, - It is sad that, not for the first time, the President has allowed her thoughts to wing her on the wind of emotional attachment to an Ireland of idealistic folklore. In what sounded like a Sinn Féin manifesto preamble she says: "With each passing year, post-Rising Ireland reveals itself, and we who are of this strong independent and high-achieving Ireland would do well to ponder the extent to which today's freedoms, values, ambitions and success rest on that perilous and militarily doomed undertaking of nine decades ago, and on the words of that proclamation". What utter nonsense! Our present status owes absolutely nothing to the events of 1916. Independence could have been achieved without bloodshed.
Ireland was in a state of stagnant paralysis for over 40 years after the "Rising". The real patriots were far-sighted people with the ability to create an infrastructure that would support small indigenous business projects, and those who stood up to the dead hand of political interference from the dogmatic princes of the Catholic church.
It is not that long since a large part of our social legislation required the blessing of Rome before it could become law, a situation of which Padraig Pearse would undoubtedly have approved. The bald facts are indeed well known, and should be a lesson for modern Ireland on what can happen when small groups of armed anarchists can appear to the young to be latter-day freedom fighters. - Yours, etc,
NIALL GINTY,
Killester,
Dublin 5.