Madam, - I agree heartily with Darragh M Higgins (August 21st) in welcoming the long overdue apology from Denmark for Viking invasions. I also agree with his calling for an apology from a "certain other" invading nation and feel that the Polish government should be brought to book now rather than letting ill feeling drag on for, say, 800 years. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL MAHONY, Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo.
Madam, - Desmond Fitzgerald (Letters, August 22nd) makes the valid point that the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland was at the behest of the then King of Leinster, Diarmuid MacMurrough. However, this does not make it any less an invasion. After all, the definition of an invasion according to the Oxford English Dictionaryis: "The action of invading a country or territory as an enemy; an entrance or incursion with armed force; a hostile inroad". The Normans were without doubt an enemy to a majority of the population until their eventual integration, becoming more Irish than the Irish themselves.
Where Mr Fitzgerald has most misunderstood my sentiments and taken my comments out of context is in assuming that it is the Anglo-Norman invasion to which I refer in the first instance. Invasions come in all shapes and sizes, not least in the form of plantation. The Anglo-Norman invasion was just one of many invasions to befall the Irish people. I do not, however, wish to run through a history of Ireland which is well-known to most and which has been thrashed out on these pages many times before.
It is widely agreed that the general behaviour of the British authorities, both civic and military, in Ireland since the Anglo-Norman invasion right up until certain recent events has not been beyond reproach. This is what requires an apology.
After all, if someone invites me to their home and promises me a position in the family, as happened with Strongbow, I certainly shouldn't attack him, displace his family from their beds and raid his fridge and nor should my descendants. That would surely warrant an apology, would it not? - Yours, etc,
DARRAGH HIGGINS, O'Daly Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9.
Madam, - Dermot MacMurrough did not bring the English to Ireland, as your Geraldine correspondent (Desmond Fitzgerald) writing from London avers in today's Irish Times. Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, was a Norman and was accompanied to Ireland by Normans, Bretons, and Welsh. In 1169 the English were a subject race (as, to some extent, they still are).
The English can take little of the credit or blame for the successive invasions of Ireland. Elizabeth I (granddaughter of the Tudor usurper, Henry VII) was Welsh. The Ulster plantation in 1607 is Scottish. The disastrous history after 1707 is British. It was the Scottish Tories who opposed Home Rule in 1914, not the English Liberals, and the Welsh (Lloyd George) and Scots (Bonar Law) who sent the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries to Ireland in 1921. We shall never have harmonised relations between England and Ireland as long as we remain so ignorant of our respective histories. - Yours, etc,
GERALD MORGAN (English Parliamentary Party), Trinity College, Dublin 2.