Letter: Imaginative myth of IRA-Dublin pact
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Conor Cruise O'Brien's views on the dangers of negotiation with the IRA are perfectly legitimate ('Partners under the camouflage', 25 March). The question as to whether one should sup with the IRA at all, or the length of the spoon required, is a valid one.
What is not legitimate is to infer from current events 'a partnership between the present Dublin government and Sinn Fein-IRA' and a risk to a firm security policy. In conceding that a good working relationship existed between the RUC and the Gardai, apart from 'one partial exception' in 1970 and its immediate aftermath, he now suggests that 'individual Gardai . . . may well feel, as many of them did in the early Seventies, that the safest course . . . is to leave the IRA alone'. That assertion is not, in fact, correct for the early 1970s; moreover, in the height of the arms crises in 1970, events were exposed precisely because of the loyalty of the state's servants.
Dr O'Brien is prey to the conspiracy theory of history (as he showed recently in his heated views as to how English historians treated a fellow Irishman, Edmund Burke). As a result, his imagination leads him into multiplying the dangers that crowd in upon a profound and complex tragedy.
Whatever the way forward in a saga marked by the real fears of nationalists and Unionists alike, frequently simplistic assumptions in the Republic, disturbing judicial and policing issues, and wavering and inconsistent policies in London, we could do with less of this sort of emotive vision, tailored to the argument of the hour.
Yours sincerely,
L. M. CULLEN
Trinity College
Dublin
25 March
The writer is professor of Modern Irish History at the University of Dublin.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments