Sir, - In his letter of August 30th Martin Mansergh seems wisely to resile from his original position on the debatable "legacy", when he submitted Pearse as a "co-founder of an independent democratic Irish State". He now contents himself with asserting that the 1916 Rising "became the foundation stone". How does anything actually "become" a foundation stone? Something either is or is not a foundation stone in the real world unless the honorary title is retrospectively awarded for someone's particular purpose.
This extravagant claim might have some validity had the Irish people acted on the famous "proclamation". We would then have had a wide Irish Rising instead of a tiny IRB Rising. On the contrary, two years afterwards, in 1918, the people voted for the robust constitutional action of having their parliamentary representatives withdrawing in protest and making a case at the peace conference. Even three years afterwards, in 1919, the disappointed and frustrated militarists had to murder two respected local policemen at Soloheadbeg in order to provoke a revolutionary war.
This crime was not endorsed by the Dail, no more than the more recent murder of Garda Jerry McCabe. Even then it took two more serious errors on the part of the British before there was some reluctant tolerance on the part of the Irish for the militarists, the futile, long-drawn-out debate on conscription and the decision to keep operations as police action bringing in the "Black and Tans".
Patrick Pearse the man was a gentle naive idealist who did not shoot anybody, despite his macho line of "we may shoot the wrong people". The problem is not the man but the fantasy, a construction of his memory being used as an excuse for atrocities. Politicians of all parties attend at Arbour Hill to confirm for their followers that there is "no change from verbal orders" of April 24th, 1916. Not only politicians, teachers and media men, but a solid phalanx of practising Catholic priests have all contributed to the glorification of militarist Pearsism, which is taken by those who wish to do so as the excuse for murderous Provoism. The essentia of Pearse's political philosophy has been passed down through many stages of morbid deterioration to its final (?) level of degeneracy in the fringe IRA at Omagh.
It comes as a surprise to learn that "1916 marked the reluctant beginning of the move away from the idea of persuading the unionists of north-east Ulster to live under an all-Ireland government and giving priority instead to the complete separation of the rest of Ireland". The objective of the IRB Rising was to prevent the despised constitutional nationalists from doing just that. Has this latest resurrection of Pearse by Fianna Fail politicians any implications for the security of the people of the island of Ireland? - Yours, etc.,
Patrick D. Goggin, Glenageary Woods, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.