Madam, - Enda O'Doherty's article commemorating Jim Kemmy (September 25th) was very apt in showing how far Labour has moved rightwards since the 1970s.
Jim Kemmy was, indeed, a charismatic figure, as well as being one of the best mayors Limerick ever had.
However, Mr O'Doherty protests too much in asserting that the Democratic Socialist Party was "ahead of its time". Support for contraception and divorce, as well as the removal of the constitutional claim to the six counties, were planks in Garret FitzGerald's constitutional crusade before the founding of the DSP, and a woman's right to choose had been a policy of Matt Merrigan's Socialist Labour Party. (Incidentally, though less charismatic than Kemmy, Merrigan was another whose "life and political struggles could be a source of renewed inspiration" for Labour.)
As far as the North is concerned, it must be said that Kemmy's position was rather different from the present agreed consensus. It was based on a skewed reading of history and a large helping of moralism, and ignored the ascendancy ideal that underlies the unionist ideology. Accordingly, it offered a resolution of the conflict far less satisfactory for the Northern minority that the present one and had less effect on the armed struggle than the more sophisticated approach of such unrepentant capitalist politicians as John Hume, Charles Haughey and Albert Reynolds.
It appears, too, from your own Assembly report (The Irish Times,September 26th) that even the present peace process is in danger from precisely the ascendancy unionist principles that Kemmy ignored.
Finally, it must be said that it is disappointing that Mr O'Doherty ignores Kemmy's strongest point: his ardent belief in the control of the productive forces by the workers therein. Of course, in this era of divine right of CEOs and company directors, that cannot be said to be ahead of its time. Nonetheless, it may prove to be further ahead than the other causes Mr O'Doherty lists. - Yours, etc,
D.R. O'CONNOR LYSAGHT, Killester Avenue, Dublin 5.