Sir, - I attended the funerals of the 10 IRA martyrs on October 14th and was impressed by the dignity of the occasion. I was not, however, impressed by the attempts, fortunately unsuccessful, to sever the connection between the 10 men and those who came after them in the service of the republican cause.
The legitimising of these 10 men by referring to the mandate given by the 1918 election is fair enough; but where does that leave Padraig Pearse, Tom Clarke, James Connolly and their friends? What about O'Donovan Rossa? What mandate had Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken and Lord Edward Fitzgerald?
I would like to point out that all of these got their justification from later generations and are rightly venerated in the Ireland of today.
Now Bobby Sands, Ciaran Doherty, Raymond McCreesh and the other hunger-strikers of 20 years ago secured their electoral mandates more quickly than most of the others and who is to say that they will not be further acclaimed by future generations?
A particular low was reached in your newspaper on October 13th when the Professor of Contemporary Irish History in Trinity College, Eunan O'Halpin, in his anxiety to cut off all republicanism at 1921, referred to the Hunger Strike Commemoration on the previous Saturday as "Mosleyite Street Politics".
Now I can forgive the wanderings of politicians, clerics and misguided journalists such as Mr Myers, but I must draw the line at historians. Surely this person should know well that the friends of Mosley were not on the republican side in the 1930s? The people who fought against the fascists were in Sinn FΘin.
No amount of dancing on the head of an historical pen can fool the people of Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
Kevin Murphy, Carricknagavna, Belleeks, Newry.