Madam, - As organisers of the conference "The long revolution: the 1916 Rising in context", to which President McAleese delivered the speech reported in full in your newspaper on Saturday January 28th, we wish to congratulate you most warmly on your decision to publish the complete text of the speech and to use it as your lead story.
We wish also to protest in the strongest possible terms at the language employed by your columnist Kevin Myers in his response to the speech in his Irishman's Diary of January 31st, and to observations regarding the organisation of the conference contained in the Diary of February 1st.
In informal remarks to the conference immediately before the President's address a request was made that all those who wished to participate in the (many and enjoyable) exchanges arising out of the papers that were to be delivered would employ language that would respect both the tenor of the event (which was, lest one forget, an academic conference) and the expression of contrary opinions.
This request was made, not for the purpose of squeezing passion and interest out of the debate, but in order to direct these forces into the most productive channels (that is, the better to "enjoy the rows" anticipated by the President).
We were delighted to note that, after two days' discussion and notwithstanding the large and diverse nature of the audience (many of whom were participating in such an event for the first time), the inherently controversial subject matter, and the thought-provoking nature of all the contributions, this request had been scrupulously observed by all concerned, even where pronounced differences of personal opinion were manifest.
Nowhere was this dignified tone more evident than in the President's address. As such it stands in marked, and superior, contrast to the vitriolic note struck by Mr Myers in his commentary thereon - his use of the term "imbecilic" being particularly objectionable in this regard.
Having facilitated the debate on the topic at this time we are content, indeed keen, to let others contribute in whatever form, or forum, they wish.
For that reason this letter will be our final word on the matter. Suffice it to say we would hope that such contributions will be closer in style to the President's address and far removed from that of Mr Myers's prose.
We also wish to respond to Mr Myers's employment of the term "underlying agenda" in his assessment of the line-up of speakers at the conference.
Given that Mr Myers was, of course, not present to hear a single word of what was said by anyone at the event, his divination of such a hidden purpose is quite remarkable. One would have thought that a roster of speakers that included a professor of history in Queen's University Belfast, a Supreme Court judge and published scholars from Ireland and France, working both within and without the university sector, together with sessional chairs who included a former Taoiseach and current NUI Chancellor (Dr Garret FitzGerald) and one of Ireland's most distinguished historians (Margaret MacCurtain), would indicate conclusively that no such intent existed.
The suggestion that such a line-up would have benefited from the addition of other distinguished academic historians ignores the fact that a number of speakers and members of the audience did indeed make comments critical of aspects of the Rising.
More worryingly, it suggests a mind-set that categorises the work of those who undertake scholarly research on the Rising using simplistic, misleading and mutually exclusive labels such as "pro" and "anti". We leave it to your readers to decide whether this is an intellectually profitable approach. - Yours, etc,
Prof DERMOT KEOGH, GABRIEL DOHERTY, Department of History, University College Cork.
Madam, - In her very thoughtful address in UCC, President McAleese encouraged an honest public debate about the Easter Rising of 1916.
Since 1922, the events of Easter week 1916 have been central to the "official" account of modern Irish history, widely promoted in the State since independence. This included commitments to some fixed axioms, for example, that Irish freedom could not have been achieved except through the use of violent force. This telling of the story has rested on sheer commitment and calculated forgetfulness of the events leading up to 1916 - in particular, the very substantial achievements of John Redmond between 1911 and 1916. After careful, historical analysis, Prof JJ Lee concluded: "No later nationalist managed to improve on Redmond's performance."
Over the years, attitudes of piety and reverence for the leaders of 1916 took the place of historical inquiry. I suspect that few people, apart from Kevin Myers, could have named the Irish policemen, Irish soldiers and innocent civilians killed during Easter week. They had their own identities, their families, their hopes and dreams. The official, nationalist consensus has judged their lives and deaths to be of little moment. What are a few hundred deaths compared with the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and the freedoms which are believed to have followed?
The insurrection of 1916 and the manner of its commemoration by the republican movement, and sometimes by the State, provided endless legitimacy for this sinister moral calculus. People who take it upon themselves to kill other human beings for the sake of worthy goals should not be given heroic status because we think their actions had glorious consequences. We can be sure that the kidnappers and killers of innocent civilians in Iraq are utterly convinced of the rightness of their actions. Like the would-be followers of the men and women of 1916 in Northern Ireland, from 1970 right up to Canary Wharf in 1996, the agents of armed struggle in Iraq act out of a network of moral reasons.
Violence always has its good reasons. For the sake of our humanity and moral clarity, we need to explain to ourselves why we deplore the middle Eastern killers of innocent people on videotape, and why we choose to celebrate the Easter Rising of 1916. - Yours, etc,
BREIFNE WALKER, CSSp, Holy Spirit Community, Whitehall Road, Dublin 12.