Sir, - Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, July 22nd) wonders what the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and others see in Padraig Pearse. The answer is very simple: a co-founder with James Connolly, Thomas MacDonagh and others of an independent democratic Irish State, the 1916 Proclamation which he largely drafted having an analogous role to the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. Pearse wrote in The Spiritual Nation that "if we accept the definition of Irish Freedom as the `Rights of Man in Ireland', we shall find it difficult to imagine and apostle of Irish Freedom who is not a democrat". He advocated the widest possible franchise including men and women. He also acknowledged his debt to two traditions, "freedom-loving both".
If there was bloodshed in Irish history, it was mostly because Britain refused to apply to Ireland the logic of the principle derived from John Locke and the "Glorious Revolution" of "government by consent". When we talk about constitutional nationalism, the vital question is apt to be forgotten: whose constitution? The "Glorious Constitution" in the penal era was of little use to Irish Catholics or Dissenters.
For more than a century following the Union, British governments tried to restrict Irish rights to what they might be willing to concede. In an official British document as late as 1945, quoted by Deirdre McMahon in a contribution to a new book on Irish Foreign Policy 1919-1966, a civil servant complains that anticipations of the Treaty as a settlement for a very long period "were falsified chiefly by the survival and ultimate predominance of a party unwilling to forget the past or to abandon the political theory that the State of Eire rests, not on agreement between two political entities, but on the natural right of a nation to self-government" - a reference of course to the Republican Party, led with constitutional vigour by Eamon de Valera, of which Pearse's mother and sister and Constance Markievicz were founding members.
Kevin Myers has a better insight into and feeling for the imperial tradition than most. So he will recognise that the warlords who sent people in their millions to the trenches in the First World War, many to die (including two of my family name from Ireland), were in many instances the same people responsible for bloodshed on a much smaller scale in Ireland. Indeed, after courts martial and executions, was not attempted conscription in 1918 the ultimate catalyst for the victory of Sinn Fein, whose goal was to create a purely Irish-based constitutional framework, the operation of which was to be limited by partition to 26 counties? The Black and Tans were the final death-knell of the Union.
That was the past. Fortunately, today we have as a result of the peace process for the first time agreed a balanced constitutional framework governing relations throughout the island that are fully and concurrently endorsed by the people of Ireland North and South, in accordance with the now recognised principle of self-determination, so that repetition of the tragic conflicts of the past can in future be avoided. There are many continuities and divided traditions that have come together in support of the agreement. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Martin Mansergh, Special Adviser to the Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Dublin 2.