GERALD MORGAN, FTCD,
A chara, - Mark Urwin's letter on "Ireland's Anti-Englishness" or, rather, lack of it (April 10th) takes a bewildering course from the "English people" to the "British" and back to "England" to conclude with a final reference to "British government policy". The time has surely come for us to distinguish between the British and the English.
The cause of Irish nationalism was supported by the English people who voted for Home Rule in the General Election of 1910 and by their English leaders such as Herbert Asquith and Winston Churchill. The cause of Home Rule was thwarted by the Conservatives under Arthur Balfour, who was Scottish, and under Andrew Bonar Law, an Ulster Scot, and fatally undermined by a Welshman, David Lloyd George. In my time in Dublin since 1968 I have often been hostile to the policies of the English Government, but not, being English, in any way at all anti-English.
The British government at the present time has a Scottish leader in Tony Blair and is dominated by Scottish ministers, and at the same time the leaders of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are both Scottish. As an Englishman, I deplore the kind of British imperialism that all three parties in one way or another represent, whether in Iraq, or the Balkans, or Afghanistan.
I think that the English people are gradually coming to recognise that they have been short-changed by successive British governments, and in that respect are sympathetic to the historical experience of many Irish men and women. - Is mise,
GERALD MORGAN, FTCD, Trinity College, Dublin 2.