Madam, - In reply to David Alvey, editor of the Irish Political Review (April 19th), I freely acknowledge that the Aubane Historical Society and authors Brendan Clifford and Jack Lane do good work in keeping alive the memory of many notable people from north Cork and in publishing valuable historical documents.
What I take issue with is their treatment of some people and institutions, coming from (suspect) cultural minority origins, with any exposed lapse or evidence of dual loyalties being extrapolated to justify blanket condemnation without appeal.
I am frankly incredulous that anyone in 2004 should seek to impugn the Irishness of The Irish Times and treat it as an agent of British influence in Ireland. Certainly, as a successful paper for modern Ireland, it does not reflect the values of de Valera's Ireland any more than it reflects the old values of Anglo-Ireland.
Have the conspiracy theorists overlooked the fact that its editor during most of the Troubles, Douglas Gageby, as a former Irish intelligence officer, was surely a match for any counter-influences? How about asking those who have worked for the paper over the years, or just reading it?
One should not confuse opinion columns, editorials or letters pages with mainstream news coverage. No newspaper these days can afford to be politically aligned. Nor has lack of a party paper kept Fianna Fáil long out of government.
The days are gone when Daniel Corkery could dispute the Irishness of J.M. Synge, or Patrick Kavanagh, subsidised by Archbishop McQuaid, deny the Irishness of Yeats. No self-appointed cultural guardians have any right or authority to strip Elizabeth Bowen of her Irish nationality, background and birthright, or to deny her contribution to Irish as well as English literature. Lane and Clifford have done a service in publishing her actually quite sympathetic confidential wartime reports as a writer and journalist on public opinion in Ireland and its attachment to neutrality. They were sent not to an intelligence service but initially to the junior Minister of Information, Harold Nicolson.
That episode in her life is treated as grist to the mill of Brendan Clifford's view of landed families, resident or not for however many centuries, and regardless of their involvement with Ireland post-independence, as irredeemably and exclusively English. Lane and Clifford's gloating over the destruction of Bowenscourt, and the suggestion that Elizabeth Bowen chose to be buried in Farahy, North Cork, only because she regarded the graveyard as a little piece of England, represents an incorrigible form of cultural hatred that deserves to be repeatedly and vigorously challenged as long as it is maintained.
All of this is set in a context of a bizarre revisionism, as that term is applied to recent German history, that Britain caused the second World War and by extension was responsible for the extermination of the Jews. The view of Rev William Ferris in 1948, frankly not worth republishing -- that "the English are the great war-lords of modern times", who "have played for several centuries the grand Satanic role of mischief-maker to Europe and the world. Around England's name centres practically the whole terrible story of modern warfare" -- is enthusiastically endorsed as a widespread view then and not invalidated today.
While I am not accused of being a spy, my father, who was a British wartime civil servant in the Ministry of Information, which dealt with press and public relations, is so accused, which is the next best thing. To correct other errors by Clifford, Nicholas Mansergh went to school in Ireland, not in England. He was not an imperialist, but an anti-imperialist, as he told this newspaper in 1984, and he wrote with a deeply sympathetic understanding of Irish and Indian nationalism. In his most important lecture in 1947 he told an audience including British Ministers and officials that a mistake had been made in 1921 in ruling out external association. India became a republic in the Commonwealth shortly afterwards. As for his qualities as a historian, I would prefer that to be judged by people who understand his work.
The spirit of Fianna Fáil invoked by Clifford is not infused with political bigotry or virulent anglophobia or a nationalism that excludes a priori any part of a tradition that identifies with Ireland. Nor were such attitudes those of Eamon de Valera. In fact, he recalled Charles Bewley, Irish ambassador to Germany in 1939, for rampant anglophobia and anti-Semitism.
Few people share the desire to see reinstated the sometimes aggressive ideological dogmatism that was more prevalent in a less confident Ireland of 50 or 60 years ago and that has no contribution to make to peace and reconciliation or any greater future unity. - Yours, etc.,
MARTIN MANSERGH,
Seanad Eireann,
Dublin 2.