Sir, - It is most encouraging to read Robert Martin arguing the case for the Republic to rejoin an entirely changed Commonwealth (Opinion, November 23rd). For three years the Reform Movement has been lobbying political parties, particularly Fianna Fβil, for this country to join an association of nations deeply influenced by the Irish of both traditions on this island.
It is interesting that Mr Martin writes from a Canadian perspective as it was in Ottawa that John A. Costello announced he intended to take ╔ire out of the Commonwealth. Furthermore, over a million people from Ireland emigrated to Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries (more than to the US) and economic opportunity and social progress was a strong motive for loyalty to the old Empire and for membership of today's Commonwealth.
Apart from all the excellent reasons Mr Martin gives for correcting past mistakes, it is worth repeating the view of Dr H.V. Evatt, the Australian deputy prime minister, in 1948. He strongly believed in the then British Commonwealth as a vehicle for the preservation of peace and the democratic way of life in the world - especially as ╔ire was as much a mother country as Britain, many Commonwealth countries having been built and educationally developed by the Irish, from Australia to Nigeria. We can be proud of our record here.
And if 32 republics, including the Cameroons and Mozambique (whose histories are entirely separate from the UK), are members for cultural, legal and sporting reasons, why can't we rejoin? As unionists are unlikely to be influenced much one way or another by our rejoining, surely the motivation should be friendly co-operation and a certain amount of healthy self-interest as an ex-"mother country"?
The question is not why we should go in, but why do we stay out? - Yours, etc.,
Robin Bury, Chairman, The Reform Movement, Military Road, Killiney, Co Dublin.