Sir, – Since the success of democratic governance depends on the ability of the free press to hold those at the head of government to account, Vincent Browne’s critical analysis of both Michael Collins and Enda Kenny is to be applauded (Opinion, August 22nd).
Browne deprecates the fact that our present situation “involves a major surrender of sovereignty” and implies that, if Collins were alive today, he might not have approved.
A lot has happened since Collins’s day, however, and especially in recent years, which had a major impact on our loss of sovereignty.
The major hole in an otherwise penetrating article, therefore, was the lack of reference to the contribution made by the various heads of government between Collins and Kenny to the evolution of our present situation. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Most informed Irish men and women, whatever their views of the 1922 split, rightly honour the memory of Michael Collins as they do those of Harry Boland, and Cathal Brugha who fell to the forces under Collins’s command in 1922. They are honoured because they served Ireland bravely for years against British rule. They split over the best, or the least worst course of obliterating that rule, in the circumstances following the Articles of Agreement signed in London in December 1921.
Ninety years on, Ireland is not well served by throwing mud at the patriots on either side, but the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, by describing Collins’s death as an “assassination” appears to be doing just that.
Collins died in battle, in uniform, holding a rifle he had been firing at an ambush party led by Tom Hales, a patriot as sincere as himself.
Collins’s escort included an armoured car equipped with a Vickers machine gun. It’s not as if Collins was out for a casual stroll, or unarmed or not conducting a war.
It belittles the office of taoiseach to seek to appropriate for his party a hero who belongs to the Irish nation, and to cast, by implication, the reputation of other heroes, such as Tom Hales, into national opprobrium. – Yours, etc,
A chara, – To juxtapose the letters regarding Enda Kenny’s Collins speech and the place where Collins met his untimely death (August 22nd); surely a case of blah, blah, blah? – Is mise,