Sir, - Tom Sheridan of the UK Unionists, in his sneering riposte (February 10th) to Robert Ballagh's article of February 4th, claims that Irish nationalism is unsustainable by either "objective" or "subjective" criteria of "national identity", respectively "race, language and religion" or "significant distinct Irish culture or a shared evaluation of the past". This leads him to the conclusion (embodied in a quote from John A. Murphy) that "there is no such political entity as the Irish people".
This, of course, is the ultimate self-justification of the colonialist. The Spaniards and British in the Americas, the white settlers in Australia, the Israelis in Palestine - all have at one time or another proclaimed the sheer non-existence of the displaced and oppressed lesser breeds.
It's quite clear that unionist politicians (as opposed to many Northern Irish Protestants) are unable to envisage any future for Ireland that is not the mirror of the oppressive, sectarian statelet they have created with their Her- renvolk mentality, their identitarian concept of nationhood, and their narrowly majoritarian definition of democracy. Mr Sheridan's pedantic fingerwagging merely confirms the futility of expecting "new and imaginative proposals for a historic compromise" (Ballagh) from such fustian quarters. - Yours, etc.,
From Raymond Deane
Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.