Sir, - David Herman (March 31st) lists four "myths" in his contribution to discussion of Articles 2 and 3. These are all his own mythological imaginings and are transparent Aunt Sallies he sets up to demonstrate how Smart-Alec he is in demolishing them. Myth Number 1: Ireland is a natural unit and therefore should be a political unit. Maybe some nationalists have said this, but without the actual quotes to show it to be a widely prevalent view, it cannot be debunked as a mere nationalist "myth". The nationalist argument is not one based on "geopolitical neatness", as David Herman likes to pretend, but on the reality that Ireland as a whole has had a historical development peculiar to itself and so distinct from the experience of the peoples of Britain that it requires an independent legislative administration to correct the economic and political distortions arising from union with a very different social system. His geographical parallels, e.g., Hispaniola, are fatuous and contrived.
Myth Number 2: The Northern Unionists are really part of the Irish nation. Well, again, if some "Southern nationalists", as he calls them - not to mention Northern nationalists in places like Donegal - have claimed to "opt out" of the British state, as he puts it, on racial or religious grounds, no such motivation was ever the main thrust of Irish nationalism, which from the time of Wolfe Tone and through the New Ireland times of John Mitchel and Thomas Davis to the Fenian period, was founded more on the French notion of "jus soli" rather than the German "jus sanguinis". The Catholic, religious element was always vehemently opposed to what David Herman calls the "nationalist extremists", who were secular and very non-racial in their attitudes.
Northern unionists may not consider themselves to be part of the Irish nation, but the northern Protestants are certainly part of the "Irish people", as independent, socio-anthropological studies have well established. The only "difference" they have is that some of them are possessed by an anti-Catholic religious bigotry which varies from mere distaste to savage hatred. Myth Number 3: The Northern unionists have no right to be there. "Rarely expressed," says David Herman. Never expressed, you would say, except in his mythological imaginings.
Myth Number 4: The British unjustifiably divided the country. Here he puts the unionist-British view that the Irish struggle for independence led inevitably to partition. While mocking religious, racial and cultural reasons for nationality, he contradicts his "principles" in this context by according to the northern Protestants rights based on those same ideas.
Instead of being an enlightened bemocker of nationalist nonsense and old shibboleths, David Herman appears to be an old-fashioned, old hat anti-nationalist, who is not averse to trotting out his own shibboleths to put his own prejudices across.
He revives the old unionist canard about Protestants in the South "melting away". No doubt a lot of the upper crust moved out when they found their privileges eroded. But many ordinary Protestants stayed happily where they were.
Where I live, in a largely Catholic parish, there are lots of Protestants around me. They are all Irish and I am one of them.
Jack Bennett
Raheny, Dublin 5.