Sir, - I feel sure that many readers will have empathised with Dick Walsh's comments on the first Dail (January 23rd) about which, as he wrote, so little was known four decades later in the 1960s. Presumably for him, along with myself and many others, Irish history in school stopped at 1916, a fact which made me all the more curious to discover what exactly happened after that.
As it happened, on the same page as Dick Walsh's column, Garret FitzGerald was also writing about the first Dail and I was intrigued by his assertion that, despite the efforts made by the then Foreign Affairs Department between 1919 and 1921, "not even the infant Bolshivik Soviet Union" was prepared to give recognition to Irish independence. While I have no doubt that the Soviets did not actually formally do so, I wonder if your distinguished contributor was correct in suggesting that the reason was because they were not prepared to offend the British Empire?
Perhaps he or one of your other readers will correct me if I am wrong in thinking that the Soviet Union did actually show an interest in giving recognition to Irish independence but never got beyond drafting the terms because Eamon de Valera decided Ireland would be better off not having only one positive reaction, and one from a Communist state in particular. - Yours, etc.,
Dermot James, Nutgrove Park, Dublin 14.