Sir, - The turgid ramblings of Tim Pat Coogan are a wonderful example of a diaspora in motion. In the extract from his recently published book (Weekend, September 2nd), he rambles happily across history, trampling truth and objectivity equally in the hope of reaching the promised land of Nil Responsibility. I shall ignore the galaxy of exhausted and ravaged metaphors which litter this green and unpleasant mess and briefly offer an alternative view to the hackneyed nationalism which underlies this extract.
In brief historical terms, England certainly was a colonising power from the 16th century onwards in competition with France, Spain and Portugal. The essential difference with Ireland was that the dispossessions, confiscations and subsequent "Wild Geese" emigrants mainly concerned the Irish and (Norman-Irish) land-owning classes, while the ordinary man or woman in the field continued to pull turnips regardless of who owned the land. The countries which offered such a welcoming home to Irish exiles were often far more brutal and thorough in their colonising exploits.
Mass emigration, rather than being a Europe-wide phenomenon, becomes in the hands of Tim Pat Coogan another example of Albion's wickedness. Yet over 40 million people from every country of old monarchist Europe emigrated to the United States as the feudal/religious system of social control collapsed with the advent of print-capitalism and industrialisation. In common with their Polish, German and Italian neighbours, the rural Irish of the 18th and 19th centuries emigrated for reasons of domestic poverty and overseas opportunity.
Britain at least made some recompense for her mismanagement of Irish land affairs by grant-aiding the tenantry of Ireland from 1875 onwards to acquire the freehold of their farms, something that did not happen to tenants in England or Continental Europe. By 1911, 82 years after Catholic Emancipation, the majority of Irish land was again owned by Irish people in general, as opposed to a small and perhaps unrepresentative elite. In 1922, the country that Coogan describes a "little more than Guinness's Brewery and a large farm" was far ahead of many countries of similar size in terms of both domestic output and machinery engaged in agriculture. The towns of rural Ireland are a witness to the prosperity of the late 19th century as much as the cities are to that of the 18th.
The economic situation in Ireland declined drastically after Independence as romantic nationalism attempted to re-create an imaginary Ireland of self-sufficiency and frugal comfort without a coherent economic or social policy capable of creating such conditions. Whoever nationalists can blame for emigration prior to Independence, Britain left an Irish civil service, an infrastructure, and a free-holding farming sector. Emigration after 1922 was our own responsibility.
Today, if we choose, we can see that the fraught relationship between these islands has made us what we are. The total numbers who have emigrated to Britain comfortably exceed any "invaders" to Ireland by many millions. Adversity, whether in the life of an individual or a nation, creates the character, the personality and the ability to respond to circumstance with a depth of experience and understanding. It provides the "iron in the soul". How we respond to history and emigration is not a given, and we can choose to be its victims, forever the oppressed peasant, or - like the Irish in America and worldwide - we can be emancipated and emboldened by the experience. The choice is ours. - Yours, etc.,
Robert Vance, St David's Terrace, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.