A chara, - Douglas Gageby is described as presiding over The Irish Times "as the paper completed its transformation from the newspaper of the Protestant, unionist minority to the national and independent newspaper of record of today" (The Irish Times, June 28th).
Though I agree that Douglas Gageby was a skilled and loved journalist, administrator, and editor, in my memory the transformation from being the organ of the "Protestant, unionist minority" was well over by his arrival.
Certainly, in the early days of my journalistic association with Irish Times Ltd publications (Times Pictorial, The Pictorial, Sunday Review, the daily), I found little if any trace of Protestant, or unionist, domination. Those under whom I worked, or with whom I became friends, were mature, liberal persons of various political persuasions, but very much Irish: the likes of R.M. Smyllie (a one time Gaelic Leaguer), Alec Newman, Tony and Key Gray, Bruce Williamson, Donal Foley, John Healy, Brian Ó Nualláin, Máirtín Ó Cadhain.
There was nothing narrow or sectarian about them. Some of them were Protestants but the Protestant faith in Ireland for many generations has produced women and men of quality, proudly and constructively Irish, and devoid of any inferiority or superiority complex.
Consider the records of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Royal Dublin Society, Conradh na Gaeilge, the Irish Republican Army, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, the Gaelic Athletic Association, or any of the country's other institutions, politics included.
The paper of the "Protestant, unionist minority" in my memory, was not in Dublin in the late 1940s of the last century, nor in the 1950s. Just consider the advance in liberal attitudes in the paper employing as columnist a former IRA leader, in Máirtín Ó Cadhain, and that man from whom nobody and nothing was sacred, the mirthful Myles ncGopaleen.
Those of us who worked closely under Douglas Gageby in papers of the Press group, the Irish News Agency, and The Irish Times, salute his kindness, his generosity, his greatness. An amhlaidh a bheadh a leithéid arís inár measc? - Is mise,
DEASÚN BREATNACH, Dún Laoghaire, Co Átha Cliath.