Sir, - In Tim Pat Coogan's interesting extract from his book Wherever Green is Worn (Weekend, September 2nd), he argues that the Irish diaspora is the outworking of two forms of colonialism, those of Mother England and Mother Church. It is comforting to round up the usual suspects, but he ignores the most salient reason for the diaspora in the late 1940s and 1950s, namely our economic policy of protectionism.
In persisting with a policy of self-sufficiency via high tariffs and restrictions on movement of capital when the rest of the democratic post-war countries opened their borders to capital, imports, people and ideas, we ensured that we would be an island of destitution and intellectual implosion in a world of relative plenty. This home-grown ideology drove a million of our best and brightest off to England, where too many were too young and too lacking in formal education to thrive. They became our lost generation, filling Britain's prisons and psychiatric institutions.
And this was all self-inflicted by our political and administrative leadership - not a Roman collar or royal tiara in sight. We may complain of the venality of some of our more recent generations of politicians, but they deserve some credit for avoiding the calamitous policies of their post-war forebears. - Yours, etc.,
Frank J. Convery, Environmental Institute, UCD, Dublin 4.