Madam, - Martin Mansergh's accusation (May 3rd) that certain writings of Brendan Clifford and Jack Lane represent "an incorrigible form of cultural hatred" cannot be allowed to go unanswered.
Brendan Clifford, Jack Lane and others who contributed to the Athol Books publishing group propagated the "two nations theory" in the early 1970s. By publishing historical material they showed that Ulster Protestant society constituted a distinct national community.
They argued their case in opposition to all and sundry and sustained it through the entire period of political violence. Let others be the judge of what influence those ideas had on the conflict.
They were also responsible for founding and developing a magazine called Church and State. Historical and analytical work produced in Church and State laid the basis for the successful agitations of the Campaign to Separate Church and State in the 1990s. These matters are well known and documented.
That they should have engaged in these projects while harbouring a bigoted view of Protestants is impossible. As hundreds of people who passed through Athol Books know, it is a space where people from diverse backgrounds discuss ideas in a spirit of robust humour.
Martin Mansergh sees Brendan Clifford's description of the demolition of Bowenscourt by a farmer who owned it as "gloating". I do not. I see it as a writer describing a historical process in plain language.
The people charged with giving leadership to the society, the Anglo-Irish landlords, failed to make provision for the social development of the people, and when the people eventually attained a measure of social power they quickly forgot about their former landlords. Describing historical processes in plain language is conducive to coherent thought about those processes. The converse, I believe, is also true.
Martin Mansergh concludes his long letter with a reference to the "aggressive ideological dogmatism that was prevalent in a less confident Ireland of 50 or 60 years ago". The implication is that materials written by Jack Lane and Brendan Clifford for the Aubane Historical Society are a throwback to such dogmatism.
He really has got the wrong end of the stick here. There is an overlap of membership between Athol Books and the Aubane Historical Society. Much of the material published by the Aubane Historical Society is produced for a twofold political purpose: to prevent the Irish national tradition from being maligned, and to emphasise the part of that tradition that is rooted in cultural diversity and tolerance.
The challenge for political writers in contemporary Ireland is to address the vacuum created by the decline of Catholic nationalism. When Kevin Myers, Martin Mansergh and others designate the novels of Elizabeth Bowen as a part of Irish literature, consciously or not, they are treating Ireland as if it was West Britain. There is no surer way of undermining what is unique about Irish culture.
Clearly the issues raised in this exchange are too large to be properly aired in the letters page of The Irish Times. Information about Athol Books and the Aubane Historical Society can be had at www.atholbooks.org. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID ALVEY, Publisher, Irish Political Review, Dalkey, Co Dublin.