Madam, - The President's apologia for 1916 (The Irish Times, January 28th) cannot gainsay the fact that the men who instigated it did so without any mandate from the Irish people to resort to armed force. Moreover, to engineer the uprising they deceived their own colleagues, kidnapped their friends and resorted to forgery to dupe their commander in chief, Eoin MacNeill, into supporting a rising of which they knew he disapproved. They had no more mandate to act for the Irish people than John Redmond had when he committed some 45,000 young Irishmen to die in the so-called war for small nations.
The only person who scrupulously obeyed the basic democratic republican imperative - ie, respect for the will of the people, including, incidentally, that of his fellow Ulster men and women, native and planter stock alike - was Prof Eoin MacNeill, co-founder of the Gaelic League and founder and first commander in chief of the Irish Volunteers, the precursor of the modern Irish Army.
As CP Curran observed, MacNeill's study window was the sally port of modern Irish freedom. Yet this man from the Glens of Antrim remains forgotten and ignored by the President and Government of a country which would have had no sovereign existence without his decisive intervention at critical junctures in its history. It is to be hoped that the Army, at least, will be spared the necessity of participating in the commemoration of an event that involved the disobeying of the express orders of its founder and first commander-in-chief. The Army's celebration should be to parade each year on the anniversary of its founding on November 25th, 1913. - Yours, etc,
MARTIN TIERNEY,
Marlborough Road,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.
****
Madam, - Is it a coincidence that the President chose to speak on the subject of the 1916 Rising at a time when the Taoiseach is planning to introduce a military commemoration? If Mary Robinson had ventured into such terrain during her presidency it would surely have provoked a constitutional crisis. Or is it now permissible for the President to become involved in the political process? - Yours, etc,
MARGARET LEE,
Ahane,
Newport,
Co Tipperary.
****
Madam, - It would be difficult to overstate the importance, even profundity, of the address by President Mary McAleese at UCC last Friday.
The time had arrived for someone from an elevated position to bring some clarity and order to the conflicting and at times confused thinking on the validity of the Easter Rising and what followed.
The President is right. The slow confluence of history, in all its diversity, has made it possible at last to see some flowering of many of the noble political, social and moral precepts set out in the Proclamation of 1916.
We have now arrived a good deal closer to achieving "equal rights and opportunities for all", "religious and civil liberty", "the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation", the "cherishing [of] all the children of the nation equally" and a parliament "representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women". There is still much to be done, but the progress is astonishing, an example of social and political morality for any other nation that wishes to attain the ultimate goal of good governance.
The revisionists also have the right to their views, even if their vision is based on what might have been, rather than on what happened. They also have the right to express themselves with passion.
Passion can be a dangerous thing. But passion inspired by insight, reason and tolerance can be most moving and beautiful. That is what the President has achieved.
Unless my head is wrong, her address will receive an approving response in the hearts of many people of different political views. You were so right to lead your front page with the story and give the full text of her speech inside. - Yours, etc,
RORY O'CONNOR,
Rochestown Avenue
Dún Laoghaire
Co Dublin