Sir, - I have seen the response by Bryan Dobson and Colm Magee (The Irish Times, January 27th) to my article of January 22nd on the RTE documentary The Madness Within. While their defensiveness was perhaps predictable, my article did not criticise them directly, but RTE, which in my view failed in its duty to exercise adequate editorial or management discretion over an important subject inappropriately dealt with. That is where the real blame lies.
So far as the protests of Messrs Dobson and Magee are concerned, what can one really say? Much of their article was taken up with telling us how good their own production was. It seems to me regrettable that, rather than give serious consideration to the valid points I raised, they preferred to rush into print and to personalise matters in a riposte bearing some of the inept hallmarks of the programme.
Given the litany of errors of elementary fact I pointed out (which they ignored), it is not surprising that they missed the one genuine error in my article - when I inadvertently stated that the Civil War began on June 28th, 1921 instead of 1922. They might have made a meal of that had they noticed it.
They also proclaimed: "Eoin Neeson would have us engage in turgid and labyrinthine considerations of . . . the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein in the early part of the century . . . As a prescription for a TV programme attempting to put some shape and sense on the sprawling confusion of Ireland's Civil War, it would be wholly inappropriate."
Out of their own mouths! If they weren't able to do it, why try? Presenting a so-called documentary on the Civil War without explaining the respective roles of Sinn Fein and the IRB (especially in relation to Collins) might be compared to trying to make a Christmas pudding without raisins or candied peel - and I am aware of the limitations involved in making documentaries.
They also seem to lay claim to paranormal powers, namely to be able to read my mind: "What brings Eoin Neeson to write in response to this programme is not fundamentally a series of what he calls `factual mistakes' [which is what they were]. Rather it is the continuing reassessment of the role of Eamon de Valera in Irish history which he really wishes to object to."
Here is precisely what was most objectionable about this programme; the attributing of false or improper motives to others.
As for me, I have never objected to reassessment of de Valera or anyone else in Irish history, recent or otherwise. What I do object to is unfounded and invalid distortion of any historical figure or his/ her motives, as has happened in the case of de Valera among others. It is a poor researcher who swallows holus-bolus the pabulum fed by partisan spoons.
For instance, when Messrs Dobson and Magee make the generous assertion that "the vast bulk of contemporary historical opinion would not regard de Valera as a voice for peace and dialogue in the critical first half of 1922 when this pointless war could still have been avoided", I refer them to the Collins/de Valera Pact (which the programme informed us was "cobbled" together), and which was broken first by Collins and by persistent refusals to summon the agreed coalition Dail.
Resipse loquitur. If I may be allowed: Ernest Blythe, in the course of an 8,000-word review of my book (The Civil War 1922-23) in The Irish Times (two columns a day over four days), said: "It is astonishingly objective and impartial." In the book itself I wrote: "This book is concerned, not with justifying or condemning either side, but with describing as accurately as possible what really happened . . . How those, who had just spent four years as comrades in arms . . . came to turn their guns on each other, succeeding generations are entitled to ask and to be told, that they may understand . . . that, avoiding bitterness themselves, they may give to the country the same united effort of their fathers in Sinn Fein and yet understand and sympathise with the tragedy that overtook those earnest men."
Elsewhere in the book it says: "A certain romantic sympathy with the anti-Treaty party - very evident nowadays [that was 1966; how things change!], though conspicuously absent in the bulk of the population during the war - had to be guarded against, as had a tendency to accept the successes - and popularity - of the proTreaty party as demonstrable evidence of being right."
It is a statement with which, perhaps, Messrs Dobson and Magee, are unfamiliar. But the point is as valid today as it was then. - Yours, etc., Eoin Neeson,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.