Sir, - Dr Martin Mansergh, Special Adviser to the Taoiseach, in his rambling treatise on Patrick Pearse and his place in Irish history (August 7th) expects us to accept as democracy that a group of armed men, members of a clandestine organisation, who never stood for election and hold a mandate from no one but themselves, can march down the main street of the capital city, seize and barricade a public building and start shooting policemen and any other "legitimate targets" they can find. During a lull, they come out onto the street and their leader proceeds to read a document, a "proclamation" they have put together, to a bemused and confused group of passers-by, who do nor know what's going on. This "proclamation" has no legal status whatsoever - good, bad or indifferent.
That is not democracy - it is anarchy and it will be seen as an extremely dangerous door to open by anybody who has any familiarity with events on this island of the past 30 years. It is a most precarious position for Dr Mansergh and his client to adopt and is one from which they should distance themselves - at the double.
It gets worse. By claiming that Pearse and his comrades founded "an independent democratic Irish state" in 1916, Dr Mansergh is adopting the position held by dissidents (the so-called republican movement) down the years - that a 32-county republic had been established in 1916 and had been subsequently betrayed by all those who had later settled for less.
Since this position is being enunciated by the Taoiseach's Special Adviser, it is not unreasonable to assume it is the official policy line of the Fianna Fail Party. That, in effect, means that the party has regressed to its roots, when its founder members voted against the Anglo-Irish Treaty on January 7th, 1922. This treaty was subsequently ratified by the electorate in June 1922 and the Irish Free State came into being, while its opponents embarked on a bloody carnage against their fellow countrymen. The State voted to become a Republic in 1948 - a 32-county Republic never existed.
Dr Mansergh had to include the standard whinge about partition. Partition was not imposed - it was a pragmatic negotiated compromise to accommodate those Irish who wished to secede from the Empire and those who did not. (The unstoppable force versus the immovable object?) It was self-determination before the term was invented.
There is a reason for this latest U-turn by Fianna Fail. It is the first outward manifestation of a nasty little struggle between it and the upstarts from the new Sinn Fein for dominance in the extremist nationalist "constituency" in this state, which Fianna Fail always regarded as its very own inheritance. In such a turfwar, what matters truth and historical accuracy?
If my interpretation is correct, the least the electorate will expect is a full statement giving the whys and the wherefores from our Taoiseach and/or Fianna Fail HQ. If I am wrong, then Bertie Ahern most certainly needs a new Special Adviser, this time one with a sense of responsibility. - Yours, etc.,
John Newman, Dublin 11.