Sir, - It was right and proper for Radio Eireann (Pat Kenny) to let Sir John Harmon have his say on the publication of his autobiography by enterprising Gill and Macmillan. He came across as a good, honest policeman doing his best according to his lights.
Unfortunately, the lights of his masters were very dim. They turned a deaf ear to Sir Albert Kennedy's perspicacious plea to see the civil rights marches for what they were: they were more about redressing blatant civil wrongs than with securing civil rights. They turned a blind eye to RUC thuggery and Para blackguardism in dealing with them.
According to Sir John, they knew no better: they had no training in controlling such demonstrations. The authorities also pounced with a lockout eagerness to rescind the provision to recruit a fixed Roman Catholic percentage of the RUC, instead of using the occasion to examine their consciences about the alienation of the discriminated-against minority.
Wisdom and understanding were in short supply in the unionist rulers. They had neither the vision not the magnanimity to govern properly, and their task was compounded by saw-doctored, unnecessary, shortsighted Caesarean partition. Poor Sir John! You could not help but like and respect him in his Mission Impossible.
He was a little amnesiac in his recall of the reasons for the low profile of Orange marches during the second World War. This was done to divert attention from the large number of able-bodied Orangemen who had not entered military service.
By the same token, the contribution of "Southern" Ireland to defeating Hitler was as immense as it is untrumped and unsung. There are many mansions. Northern Ireland's main contribution was in providing a base: the Second Front (Normandy) might not have been possible without it. Hitler could have triumphed. It took us all in our different, contrary ways to thwart him. Security is indivisible. Sir John would be well aware of that. - Yours, etc.,
Cedarmount Road, Mount Merrion, Dublin.