Madam, - Frank Meehan (May 11th) powerfully answers those who take me to task, but may I add to his observations? Shane Holden (April 30th) thinks that Patrick Pearse was not a psychopath. My dictionary defines psychosis as "a major mental disorder".
Pearse ecstatically welcomed the death of millions of soldiers in the Great War in the belief that this was an energising force and the earth needed to be "warmed" by their red blood. This surely shows "a major mental disorder", bordering on lunacy.
The historian Francis Shaw SJ condemned Pearse's sacrificial politics as blasphemous. In 1972 he wrote that Pearse thought the Irish were degenerate and "only the Fenians and the separatists had the good of their country at heart. . .it tells a story which is false and without foundation".
None of your letter writers mention the glaring fact that Home Rule was on the statute books in 1914 thanks to John Redmond. That is where Mr Padraig Ó Cuanacháin's analogy with George Washington (May 7th) is nonsense. The Irish Parliamentary Party had within its hold as much as was obtainable after so much bloodshed from 1916-1921, perhaps even better prospects of prosperity with a devolved government in the UK. Furthermore, Pearse and the IRB unbelievably violated the IRB constitution which forbade a resort to arms unless the majority of the Irish people supported an insurrection. They did not.
So Redmond declared war on Germany and Austria/Hungary? Just as did Scotland? It was Britain and France that declared war. And Redmond always opposed conscription, saying in 1916: "For my part I remain anchored in my hostility to a system of compulsion". Unlike Redmond, Pearse wanted a Gaelic-speaking, self-sufficient, 32-county republic with a population of 30 million built on anglophobia. What we got was very different: partition; emigration, mainly of poorly educated people (and mostly to the country he disliked); fewer than 1 per cent speaking Irish as their first language after 80 years of force-feeding; and an open economy largely in the hands of transnationals.
We have much to be proud of today, but in the words of Tom Quinn, writing in An Irishman's Diary in May 2002, "The end of British rule may have given the most squalid elements in the Irish soul free rein to wreak havoc at every level of society" in a country where there has been "an almost ritual process of degradation". - Yours, etc.,
ROBIN BURY, The Reform Movement, Killiney, Co Dublin.
Madam, - The recent letter from Pádraig Ó Cuanacháin in defence of Pádraig Pearse and the other leaders of 1916 was most appropriate. We must not allow the current cult of Anglicisation and revisionism to obscure the vital and unselfish role that these leaders played in the realisation of our nationhood and hence, today's "Celtic Tiger".
It is very welcome and refreshing to see a positive view in contrast to Kevin Myers's continual denunciation of our national heritage and culture. - Yours, etc.,
JOSEPH CAREY, Marlboro Street, Cork.