A chara, - Journalists who cover Northern Ireland for a long time tend to grow cynical. Mary Holland never did. She refused to surrender to the Reginald Maudling view of an "acceptable level of violence" in what the former Secretary of State once described as a "bloody awful country". If the combatants in Northern Ireland dehumanised each other, Mary Holland's journalism did just the opposite, stressing always that when you stripped away the badges of convenience - unionist, nationalist, loyalist, republican - these were real, living, breathing people who were fighting and dying for far too long.
As one of the few American journalists who covered the Troubles for any sustained period, what struck me most about Mary Holland was her enthusiasm for reporting. She did not view her column as a licence to stop reporting and to stop learning. Long after earning the right to sit back and pontificate about a conflict she understood so well, she was on the street, interviewing ordinary people as well as the politicians. Her reasoned, nuanced and, most tellingly, balanced opinions stood in such stark contrast to so much of the narrow, often shrill views that passed for commentary from both sides of the Irish Sea, much of it coming from people whose opinions reflected those of the chattering classes more than the people whose very lives were at stake. Her work reflected a respect for all people and all opinions in the North. Long before the phrase became popular, there was a parity of esteem to her journalism.
Years ago, I drove Mary to her hotel in Belfast after a particularly long night at Stormont. She was tired, but she was already talking about getting up early so she could talk to some loyalists in Sandy Row before heading over to Andersonstown to sample the republican buzz on the street there.
She was a great journalist and a better person. - Is mise,
KEVIN CULLEN,
The Boston Globe,
Boston,
USA.
******
Madam, - In the early 1990s, when President Robinson invited members of the lesbian and gay community into Áras an Uachtaráin, Mary Holland described the President as being "effortlessly and generously subversive of entrenched prejudice". The same could be said of Mary Holland herself who, through her writing and activism, encouraged and supported the lesbian and gay community in its long campaign for legal equality.
She really did have a commitment to human rights in the widest possible sense and her passing leaves us all a little poorer. - Yours, etc.,
EOIN COLLINS,
KIERAN ROSE,
Gay and Lesbian
Equality Network,
Fumbally Court,
Dublin 8.