Madam, - In her illuminating article on Lennox Robinson's The Big House(Arts, August 1st), Sara Keating asserts that, when the Irish Free State "finally came into being. . .it was defined by values which excluded the very people who had driven the cultural revolution". She refers specifically to Yeats and Lady Gregory, but it is not clear, when she writes of exclusion, whether she also has in mind only prominent cultural figures such as Douglas Hyde, George Moore, AE, Hobson, O'Casey, Robinson himself, Ernest Blythe, Lord Longford, etc, or is thinking of the general run of "Anglo-Irish Protestants".
Ms Keating says the culture of The Big Housewas "English Protestantism". This is a misleading simplification which ignores how deep were the roots of Protestantism in Ireland. The problems of Protestantism in Ireland arose, not because it was foreign, but because it was, in pre-democratic times, associated with a minority that was dominant because it owned most of the land. The end of landlordism and the advance of democracy forced this minority into a difficult transition from ascendancy to equality.
Douglas Hyde, like Robinson a son of the rectory, had called for the de-anglicisation of the whole of Irish society and not just of its Big Houses. What was there in the Free State's inchoate efforts in that direction that inflicted "exclusion" on Anglo-Irish Protestants? Did they feel hard done by because their children had to start learning Irish in school? In that respect, they were in just the same boat as the rest of the population. Protestant schools received the same capitation grants as the rest (plus some transport facilities). They continued to attain excellent standards, as did the "Protestant" university. Thus the members of this minority remained strong in the professions.
They had the right to vote in an electoral system that enabled them to have representatives in both Dáil and Senate. If they wished to maintain cultural links with Britain, they were (like everyone else) free to do so, through newspapers, books, films, radio, travel, etc. If they wished, they could hold British passports, or even join the British armed forces, without sacrificing the right to vote. And they had The Irish Timesto ventilate any grievances in!
How then did the Free State's values "exclude" them? Certainly not by keeping the king in the constitution or by staying in (and working to develop) the Commonwealth. Perhaps by signing the Boundary Agreement which, inter alia, sanctified the abandonment by northern of southern unionists.
Conall Morrison raises a good question: why did Robinson bury The Big House? However, his notion that Ireland was formally declared a Catholic state after the Eucharistic Congress (or at any other time) has no basis in fact, so that can't have been the reason why Robinson never re-staged the play. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL DRURY, Avenue Louise, Brussels, Belgium.