A chara, When I was writing my biography of Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, To Laugh Or To Weep (1994), I was advised that because his logic was so flawless, his premises must be investigated when he arrives at strange conclusions. This is the approach which must be used to consider Dr O'Brien's latest voyage into unionism.
He says he has broken from the nationalist/irredentist project directed at Northern Ireland, both its violent and constitutional forms, which he sees as linked in the Irish peace process. Success in that project, he asserts, would end in countrywide violence. So Dr O'Brien has joined with those unionists who use lawful and democratic means and reject all sectarian associations and tendencies.
I do not accept that the term "irredentism" correctly applies to the Northern Ireland situation. The "South" does not claim that its nationals predominate within "Northern Ireland. The reality is much more complex and the solution nothing like as simplistic. Who wants to "take over" the North?
Dr O'Brien seeks to damn the Irish peace process by associating it with one named person, that of Gerry Adams. This is unacceptable and not in accord with the reality. Many Irish, British, American and European people are involved in that process. He sees the Irish peace process as taking us in the opposite direction of peace and reconciliation. This is a narrow, pessimistic and unyielding view of a process which seeks to deal with the totality of relationships in these islands.
Dr O'Brien mentions that his unionist colleagues stand by lawful, democratic and non sectarian principles. I have no doubt they do, but was not Northern Ireland set up under the threat of arms and on the basis of Ulster unionists jettisoning their Protestant brethren in Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan to have 66 per cent, as opposed to 57 per cent, majority population? Does Dr O'Brien not understand how these terms "lawful, democratic, non sectarian" might be suspect premises for some?
I fully accept Dr O'Brien's assertion that he has not forsaken his own tribe or any group of people, and that he has given sterling service to the Irish people. As I wrote at the end of the introduction to the book mentioned above "Today, were it not for his continuing provocative disposition, he would have attained the stature, of admired elder statesman Instead, he is rightly regarded as still capable of further rejections. In this, I am sure, he is exceedingly content. - Yours, etc.,
Dublin 4.