Twenty years ago, the name Bobby Sands and the fasting to death of 10 republican prisoners fighting for political status rang bells across the world and throughout Ireland. One of the most tragic yet uplifting chapters in Irish history was enacted in 1981, but for The Irish Times, the "Ballsbridge riot was a watershed in Irish history", as headlined in Gregory Allen's article on July 17th.
The Dublin 1981 Committee does not want to encourage this effort to rewrite history and change the agenda on what is the 20th anniversary of 10 men dying on hunger strike - not the 20th anniversary of a riot. Suffice to say that one of the most measured commentaries on the riot that day went as follows:
"What is not acceptable from some gardai is the systematic beating and kicking of people after the back of the riot had been broken. Nor is it acceptable that reporters and photographers, carrying a card which is supposedly recognised by the gardai, should be batoned - not in the heat of the first charge - but in the mopping-up operation after rioters had been effectively dispersed. These things happened.
"Nor is it acceptable that any garda should seize a reporter's notes or smash a photographer's lens while simultaneously shouting obscenities about the media. These things happened."
The above quotation is from an editorial in the Sunday Tribune on July 26th, 1981; it was written by the author of a book on the history of the Garda, a former editor of Garda Review and current editor of The Irish Times, Conor Brady.
The Sunday Tribune also reported that "Gardai with their numbers removed batoned fleeing women and elderly people who had taken part in the 15,000 strong march from Stephen's Green". Enough said.
However, it is the selection of such an event - regardless of the detail - as being worthy of a 20th anniversary tribute that really offends. The grotesque parody of history and the extraordinary scale of values exemplified by Gregory Allen's article was underlined by the casual aside in his final sentence. There, in an insulting postscript, it was noted that "Ten prisoners died." How gratifying to see that this trivial detail was not entirely ignored.
The protesters marched to the British embassy which represented a government led by the now universally reviled Margaret Thatcher, at a time when six men had already died on hunger strike.
To publish an article about the "thin blue line" while completely ignoring the human and political context of those times is like writing about the difficulties facing Roman centurions in Jerusalem without mentioning the crucifixion.
Hopefully, readers - and The Irish Times - will forgive the angry tone of this response.
The Dublin 81 Committee expected that many people would argue with and debate the issues connected to the hunger strike; we expected critical debate from some quarters and a refusal by others to honour the 10 hunger strikers.
We did not expect the hunger strike to be airbrushed out of history by a newspaper which marks eagerly every possible anniversary - from first World War adventures and ecumenical events to minor celebrities' deaths.
Nor did we expect commemorative events and public meetings which have attracted huge interest and thousands of Dublin people to be similarly ignored by RTE, The Irish Times and other media.
These events have involved such as the Taoiseach's Northern adviser, Dr Martin Mansergh, and various elected representatives, yet The Irish Times has published just one article commemorating the 1981 hunger strike, followed by a critical riposte and now an article which relegates the death of 10 men from hunger strike to a level beneath that of a street riot.
We had imagined, perhaps naively, that the conspiracy which kept southerners ignorant of events in the North had evaporated, along with one or two exotically named political parties and Section 31. Were we wrong?
Yes, there were anger and emotion in Ireland 20 years ago. The Dublin Government was regarded as being at best ineffectual and at worst complicit with Thatcher's determination to crush the prisoners and allow 10 men - or as many as it took - to fast to the death.
Into this political vacuum rushed many young men and women, as well as a lot of older ones, who felt genuine anguish at the prisoners' plight. They also felt, as did the prisoners' families, that the Irish Government had let them down.
Bobby Sands had been elected MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone. When he died there were spontaneous strikes throughout Ireland with black flags everywhere.
The international reaction ran through five continents with members of the Opposition in the Indian and Portuguese parliaments standing in silence; in Poland Lech Walesa paid tribute; in the United States there were industrial, media and political protests; in Chile and Palestine, political prisoners stood in silence; protests swept the world from Auckland to Antwerp to Lagos to Oslo.
The Dublin demonstration was partly a product of Thatcher's, Charles Haughey's and Garret FitzGerald's careful choreography - Thatcher, red in tooth and claw, intent on the prisoners' destruction, while Haughey and FitzGerald wrung their hands.
History has already delivered its verdict on Thatcher, but the hunger strikers, meanwhile, have become icons in their communities and stand on a par with the 1916 leaders. Internationally, Bobby Sands and his comrades are regarded as belonging to the same pantheon of heroes as Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela and Ho Chi Minh.
The Dublin 81 Committee, which is organising a series of events to commemorate the 10 who died, has found that there is an enormous appetite among younger people for details of the 1981 hunger strike and huge respect among people of all ages for their awesome sacrifice.
The 10 died for political status, something they secured - posthumously. But the movement they triggered developed into a broader form of republican politics that contributed significantly to the peace process. This is part of their legacy and we should be grateful to them for that - at the very least.
Joan Byrne is secretary of the Dublin 81 Committee. She may be contacted at: (086) 826 6410 or byrnejoan@eircom.net