Sir, – Ronan McGreevy suggests that reconciliation between northern and southern nationalists should begin by asking what the South could have done differently. I suggest that few exercises would be more futile than sterile arguments about alternative histories (“Leo Varadkar thinks we should apologise to northern nationalists for partition. Why?,” Opinion, October 20th).
Instead, southerners could look forward and make a decent start to reconciliation by ending the exclusionary fiction that the 26-county state is “Ireland”, as captured in the now ubiquitous official phrase “Ireland and Northern Ireland”.
Semantically, that phrase includes the North twice, since my native Antrim and five other counties are manifestly both in Ireland and in Northern Ireland. Politically, it suggests that Ireland stops just after Dundalk and just before Derry.
Breaking news from Ireland (North): Ireland doesn’t stop just outside Derry or Dundalk. A State that prides itself on its efforts at equality, diversity and inclusion should know better. – Yours, etc,
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PROF PÓL Ó DOCHARTAIGH,
Bearna,
Co na Gaillimhe.
Sir, – Éamon de Valera gets off too easy in Ronan McGreevy’s account of partition (Opinion, Oct 20th).
Contemporaneous evidence shows that de Valera was obsessed, during the negotiation of the 1921 Treaty, with minutiae such as the form of words comprising the oath to the king.
Even in his alternative to the Treaty – the so-called Document No 2 – de Valera accepted partition as a fait accompli. While it is true that the British parliament had legislated for partition the year before, it is also true that parliaments constantly change laws to bring them into conformity with new treaty obligations.
When Churchill held out the offer, why didn’t de Valera have the gumption to demand a new treaty as the price of Ireland entering the war? Unkind critics might say he didn’t try hard enough. – Yours etc,
DR OWEN CORRIGAN,
Poplar,
London.
