Sir, - Eddie Holt, your TV critic, had a full fortnight (June, 15th) to figure out what to say about my prophetic Channel 4 polemic against the Provisional's "peace strategy". But, on the morning of the Manchester bombing, he came up with a philistine diatribe against my use of Sean Keating's fine painting of an IRA Fighting Column, Men of the South, to point out the parallels between the IRA incorrigibles then and now.
Sean Keating was a painter of genius, and his artist's eye caught things which have continuity. The men of the column are conscious of their place in history, self consciously stand offish and severe (shades of Gerry Kelly), posing before the eye of the painter (nowadays the camera), have a penchant for silk cravats (Armani suits and ties nowadays), romanticise the revolver (the armalite now) and like all revolutionary elites, seem to be above the mundane lives and morals of the workers whose blood must sometimes be shed for the higher good.
Holt pretends to be pained that I should use a painting for political purposes: "It has no place in an allegedly serious, albeit polemical documentary", he pontificates!
Where was he, one wonders, during the recent exhilarating deconstruction of the restored Holbein painting - The Ambassadors?
He seems to have no sense that there should be a connection between a subject and what is said about it, "At another point in the show, Harris did a `Beal na Blath' - he was wearing a black leather jacket, which subject to his own style of criticism, could be described only as sci fi fashion." No it could not. First, I'm not in the SS. Second, a short black leather jacket is a symbol of the left not of the right.
On the other hand, if I find sectarian fascist symbols in a painting of the IRA, it is because the IRA is a fascist sectarian organisation - as Dr Hendron says it is, I could also analyse Holt's column and draw a common sense conclusion about his politics, from the fact that he hated the programme as much as the critic from An Phoblacht did. But at least the latter did a much better job of dealing with the politics of the programme. - Yours, etc.,
Trafalgar Terrace,
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.