Sir, - I refer to Frank McGlynn's review of Victoria Glendinning's biography of Jonathan Swift (Books, August 29th) in which he stated "I do not think a wholly English writer could ever truly understand `savage indignation' - Swift's trademark - for the Anglo-Saxon culture depends very heavily on mute acceptance by the many of the privilege of the few and stoical resignation even in cases where purposeful anger could bring about real change".
I am not a writer, but I come from that diverse race, the AngloSaxon. Thirty years ago I became an Irish citizen. After reading an otherwise excellent review, I was full of savage indignation. Has Frank McGlynn never read Dickens? Or that moving, savage book Mary Barton by Mrs Gaskell? Or Charlotte Bronte's Shirley? Has he heard of the Suffragette movement, or the Jarrow march, or the Kinder Scout mass trespass in 1932, when a group of mountain ramblers led by an unemployed mechanic trespassed on landowners' sacred grouse moors to demonstrate their right to walk over open, uncultivated mountain land - a right which became law?
Maybe Mr McGlynn has never seen any Ken Loach films, or Brassed Off or The Full Monty, about the disastrous effects on the individual, family and community of high unemployment. There's no sign here of mute acceptance or stocial resignation. And where was the savage indignation when Noel Browne's Mother and Child Bill was turned down by a government under the thumb of Archbishop McQuaid?
Now that we're at a turning point in the relations between all parts of these islands it is important that we give credit when and where it is due to the power of indignation and purposeful anger against social injustice. - Yours, etc., Janet Ryan,
Ballymun Road,
Dublin 9.