Madam, - I regard Dermot Meleady's suggestion (October 14th) that a statue of John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918, be erected in O'Connell Street, Dublin to be most inappropriate.
Redmond was a zealous admirer of the British House of Commons who sought only limited Irish self-government, considering it undesirable that Britain and Ireland should be separated, as he had no wish to see the dismemberment of the British Empire. Even though he was opposed to physical force, he enthusiastically encouraged young Irishmen to enlist in the British army in 1914, in return for the promise of Home Rule.
He told these young men they were fighting a just war in defence of small nations and oppressed peoples. Redmond was referring to Belgium, which in fact was a ruthless colonial power that practised slavery in Africa. In the course of the Great War, 35,000 Irishmen died fighting for freedoms that were being denied to their own land.
John Redmond's version of Home Rule was no more than being allowed to participate in your own colonisation. It was an exercise in replacing the hated Act of Union with an acceptable version which gave the Irish people the delusion of self-government. In the election of 1918, Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party was swept from power by an electorate which espoused separatism and rejected Home Rule.
A more appropriate site for a memorial statue to John Redmond would be the cenotaph in London, in recognition of his support for king and empire. - Yours, etc,
TOM COOPER, Delaford Lawn, Dublin 16.