Sir, - I find the outbursts of Patricia McKenna ( Letters, The Irish Times, June ) increasing disturbing. The attitudes to Europe displayed by this MEP remind me of the anti-Europe sentiments I found on the doorsteps in England when I was a member of the British Liberal Party. We spent many years knocking on doors trying to canvass support for greater British commitment to Europe. The paranoia, the xenophobia, the narrow little-Englander nationalism that astonished and dismayed me at that time came back to me in all its dreariness on reading her letter.
Her attitudes, including the cynical manipulation of nationalistic sentiments, reminded me of nothing more strongly than of the wretched rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher against which we had to struggle during the 80s.
I thought, when I returned to Ireland, that I had seen the last of that miserable chauvinism; but apparently I was wrong. I maintained then, and still do, that the biggest losers from Euro-scepticism in Britain were the British people.
The prospect of Ireland's adopting British Thatcherite attitudes to Europe must be of great concern to all who take the country's role in the world, and in Europe in particular, seriously. I can only hope that the Irish people have a better understanding of where their best interests lie than does Miss McKenna.
Where Europe is concerned, Mrs Thatcher failed her people; Miss McKenna appears determined to repeat the trick. - Yours, etc.,
NORMAN STEWART,
Malahide,
Co. Dublin
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Sir, - Loath though I am to agree with any of Patricia McKenna's holier-than-thou pronouncements, her criticism of Romano Prodi is quite justified. His waving of the EU stick at Ireland, a country not noted for easily accepting coercion, may have been a major factor in our rejection of Nice at the first referendum. It looks as if he is about to make the same mistake again. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL DOLAN,
Clonmel,
Co. Tipperary