A chara, - One thing Kevin Myers should be given credit for is his persistence in attacking all Irish patriots who took an active part in resisting British misrule in Ireland. In his latest article, John Mitchel is accused of laying down the "moral basis for the murder school", Dia idir sinn agus an tolc!
Let us be clear on one matter. If the advice of Mitchel and James Fintan Lawlor was followed during the Famine, if tenants refused to pay rents and used what food they had to feed their own families, if roads had been blocked and railway lines destroyed to stop the export of food from every port in the country, of course there would have been bloodshed. That would have been deplorable, but it would have prevented an even greater disaster - the deaths of over one million people from starvation and disease.
And before we read further denunciation of Pearse and Connolly and the 1916 Rising, let us remember that their sacrifice made conscription - always a threat since 1915 impossible to enforce in Ireland. The Rising changed people's attitudes and gave them national self confidence. Recruitment to the British Army declined drastically, and when England finally attempted conscription in early 1918 the effort was easily defeated by a united nation. John Redmond the constitutional politician, by his co operation with the British war effort was surely responsible for many more Irish deaths than all the revolutionaries who fought for Irish independence since 1798.
I would like to ask your readers in countries abroad if the revision of history to suit "doctrines fashioned to the changing hour" is purely an Irish phenomenon. Do writers in America now denounce George Washington as a terrorist and a man who resorted to force and treason to disrupt the British Empire? Is Abraham Lincoln now a warmonger? Do Czech writers now deplore as vile murder the assassination of Reich Protector Heydrich in 1942? Is William Tell in Switzerland regarded by some as an irresponsible parent who endangered his own son's life? Even as I write, is there a von Myers in Germany preparing an article denouncing von Stauffenberg as a maniac whose bungled attempt to murder the lawfully elected leader of the German people (Hitler) 50 years ago provoked a retaliation that cost the lives of many thousands of people in Germany?
There is no longer any excuse for slave mindedness in Ireland, and no need to apologise for the actions of any Irish patriots in resisting evil and oppression in this country, by means that they judged correct in the particular circumstances of the time. Le meas
Mayfield.
Cork City.