A RED LETTER DAY FOR THE IRISH TIMES? – by Donal Kennedy

Over many decades I have read acres of garbage written by Stephen Collins for the Irish Times and its controlling “Trust” established by British Foreign Office spooks and Harold Wilson’s crooked fixer, Lord Goodman, and not one square millimetre of truth, wisdom or wit.

Today the paper has published a letter demolishing his claim that the IRA was pro-Nazi. Collins was merely parroting the propaganda of scoundrels who also accused even Frank  Ryan, who distinguished himself as an officer, first in the IRA and later in the International Brigade in Spain.

An American, James Yates, who served with the Abraham Lincoln Regiment of  that Brigade testified to Ryan’s leadership.

Yates, a black man, wrote a memoir covering his growing up under tyranny in the Land of the Free, and  the development of his own ideas which took him to Spain  – “FROM MISSISSIPPI
TO MADRID”

He was a founder member of the   “National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People.” Frank Ryan’s unswerving  devotion to Irish democracy  was recognised by Eamon de Valera.

The Irish Times in 1933 editorialised on both Eamon de Valera and Adolf Hitler

In February 1933 it warned about the disaster that would befall Ireland of de Valera returned to office. In March 1933 it enthusiastically welcomed Hitler’s accession to power.

So trusted  was THE IRISH TIMES that de Valera was returned to power in every election until 1948. and again in 1951, but lost in 1954, returned in 1957, retired from government on his election to the first of two consecutive 7-year terms as President of Ireland, Fianna Fail completed its second unbroken 16 years in office in 1973.

I would like to believe that the Irish Times would grow a backbone and publish letters such as that in today’s paper.

And that it adopts the principled standards  of the late Douglas Gageby, who was described as a “white nigger” by British Major Tom McDowell, whose approach to a British Ambassador established the Orwellian label “Trust.”

I may be a Cock-Eyed Optimist. Sed “DUM SPIRO SPERO”