Madam, - You recently published a fine article on James Larkin by Padraig Yeates. Is it not time that the people of our country, in trying to make sense of and gain inspiration from Irish history in the early decades of the 20th century, should look beyond the great if not almost suicidal gallantry of patriotic but small minorities in 1916 and in 1919-21?
It is surely more and more evident that the concession won from Britain by the said minorities, later used to create today's politically independent Ireland, came only because in the previous years, but above all in 1913, Larkin had been able to persuade the average ordinary citizens of Ireland to get off their knees and think where for decades they had not, and speak where hitherto they had not dared.
It was the ordinary people of Ireland who in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s won for Ireland concessions that minorities, however gallant, and because they were so clearly minorities, could never have won. - Yours, etc .,
JOHN de COURCY IRELAND, Dalkey, Co Dublin.