Madam, - Martin Mansergh claims to expose the "gaping hole in the intellectual credibility of the 'two nations' theory. It can provide no place or satisfactory explanation for even. . .meritorious examples of the Irish Protestant and Anglo-Irish traditions" (June 1st).
I beg to differ. The "two nations theory" deals with nations. The Anglo-Irish never formed or led a nation. They were given every opportunity to do so. The island of Ireland was at their feet, or at their mercy, for centuries and they were too inept to lead it anywhere, certainly not to nationhood. Some heroic individuals tried, to their great credit, to do so. Some paid the ultimate price and nobody can deny them their merits and their heroism.
Their American cousins did create a nation of their island continent and as a result there was no Anglo-America hanging around afterwards finding, like a political cuckoo, a nest in a house built by someone else.
The Ulster Protestants did try to form a separate nation state with the United Irishmen movement and were put down. They created a definite continuous social and political development that became politically unionist a century later and they demonstrated all the characteristics of a nation in the process. They asserted their rights by force in the Home Rule conflict. The other Irish nation copied them and likewise asserted their national rights of separation by force.
Both therefore passed the ultimate test of nationhood and Anglo-Ireland was left high and dry. One may like or dislike one nation or the other - or both of them - but that does not change the reality that these are the forces that matter in determining politics on this island.
The great intellectual credibility gap does not lie with the "two nationists" but with Martin Mansergh and the many others who have accorded national rights to the Ulster Unionists by dropping Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution; but at the same time denied them national status. The one-nationists are intellectually consistent and honest in objecting to the granting of such rights to what is classified as "a tradition", a "culture", a "religion", a "tribe" and everything and anything else but a nation.
If one is concerned with "intellectual credibility" the choice is between the one-nationists and the two-nationists and all else is waffle. - Yours, etc.,
JACK LANE, Aubane, Millstreet, Co Cork.