Madam, - The dust has settled on the return of the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland, and the men and women who brought this about have shared the plaudits and the accolades. The phrase that keeps ringing in my ears is: "You can't bomb one million Protestants into a United Ireland".
In my memory, the person who said this first and repeated it loudly was Conor Cruise O'Brien during the turmoil of the early 1970s. For that, he has never been forgiven by Republican Ireland. However, this statement is now so much a truism of Irish nationalist politics that it is hard to believe that many decent and sane people once passionately believed and argued that coercing Protestants was not only feasible, but morally right.
Jack Lynch, Liam Cosgrave and Garret FitzGerald all had honourable roles in the 1970s but a lot of credit must go to Dr O'Brien for establishing a simple intellectual Rubicon. Once that Rubicon is crossed, you are soon on the high road to an agreed Ireland and the possibilities of non-violent politics.
No doubt Dr O'Brien takes a jaundiced view of the happenings up North, but there is no denying his own positive influence on the past 30 years. Adapting the French saying, "Failure is an orphan, but success has a thousand fathers", I think there is a place for Conor Cruise O'Brien as a special grandfather of the Northern settlement. - Yours, etc,
TOBY JOYCE, Balreask Manor, Navan, Co Meath.