Sir, - Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, March 20th) while giving an outline of what history is and how it should be interpreted so far as the proposed British military exhibition centre for Tipp town is concerned, predictably uses the controversy to attempt to rubbish those who hold pro-Irish opinions.
He questions my condemnation of the British Empire, the Irishmen who served it, in the conquest and subjection of peoples including their own, in many parts of the world. When we consider that an estimated 32 million people perished in the process of establishing and maintaining the British Empire, one must accept the scant respect its leaders had for others' lives, especially the people they held in subjection. No wonder the people of north Kerry rejected the proposal to erect a monument to Kitchener, the man whose concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War probably gave Hitler some of his many evil ideas.
The press release announcing the proposed British War Museum for Tipp town projects "the centre complex as having a look of military splendour and will convey a sense of grandeur of military strength. The main museum hall will be fully carpeted in a rich red colour. Military music and giant TV screens showing World War One footage will create the authentic atmosphere of the period." This suggests a completely different emphasis to the Warsaw and Auschwitz memorials that highlight the barbaric and evil deeds committed by the Nazi regime against the Poles and Jews.
The period 1914 to 1922 in Ireland requires that history is recorded as it was and not interpreted for us by people in the media with their own agendas and outlook. The War of Independence was not a game of tennis, it was guerrilla war fare between the IRA with its scant military supplies and well-equipped British Crown forces. The flying column under Tom Barry at Crossbarry and Kilmichael was not fictional, as British forces of the time testified. Neither was the flying column under Denny Lacy fictional, or similar units of the IRA in many regions. Violence has remained not as an attractive option in today's Ireland, but as a result of constitutional, methods up to the present moment, failing to move the root causes of violence: partition and the British military presence in Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
John J. Hassett
Old Road, Cashel, Co Tipperary.