The late Brian O’Higgins was not a great poet.
But he was intelligent,and intelligible to the man and woman in the street on a tram or omnibus.
But when trams in Dublin were festooned with the slogan “Fight For Ireland” paid for by the British War Office, he asked the above question, and his answer is as valid today as it was then.
Hardly a day goes by without a letter in the IRISH TIMES, no friend of Ireland today or when O’Higgins was writing, claiming that the Russians are Ireland’s enemies, from whom she is protected by NATO, primarily Britain. There is no record of an Irish trawler sunk by a Russian submarine, nor an Irish Showband being attacked by Russian forces. The Russians have not even responded to Bono’s provocative clowning.
No Russian Generals have been awarded gongs for murdering Irish Civil Rights demonstrators, or torturing inoffensive Irish civilians.
And the Russian Embassy in Dublin never had the management of an Irish-printed newspaper in its pocket.
O’Higgins wrote:-
“Who is Ireland’s enemy?
Not Germany or Spain,
Nor Russia, France nor Austria,
They forged for her no chain….”
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