‘The Men Who Dined For Ireland’ by Donal Kennedy

Note: This letter was written in 2010

Myles na gCopaleen should be living at this hour. He once wrote  a story or play “The Man Who Was Born For Ireland.”

Breandan O hEithir, in his “The Begrudger’s Guide to Irish Politics” offered the burgeoning revisionist school its own anthem -“The Gentle Black and Tan.”

Fado, fado, when I lived in Ireland, it was fashionable to honour the patriots who wore trench coats.

Then it became a social faux pas, a solecism and a sin, and we were told to honour only the deluded patriots, not to mention all the anti-Irish men,who fought in the trenches.

Now, by George,we are to raise our glasses to the trenchermen and fine wine-bibbers (or as the Cockneys would have it “Bib and Tuckers”) who negotiated the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. The Cockneys are great ones for rhyming slang.

Sean Donlon (Analysis, IRISH TIMES, today) and Garret on Saturday inspire these comments.

Thatcher’s late biographer, Hugo Young, in “One of Us” devotes at most one paragraph to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which he said was seen by the Brits as giving them the right to say that Ireland’s majority, through Fitgerald’s administration, had ceded to London the right to rule the North.

To this layman it seems that the supply of South African weapons by BOSS to British Intelligence for passing on to the UDA and UVF says little for Dublin’s influence on British behaviour. Surely the influence worked in the other direction?

 When in 1988 the SAS shot the IRA unit in Gibraltar, Peter Barry protested, but in so doing repeated a falsehood uttered by Thatcher for which THE TIMES, DAILY EXPRESS and DAILY STAR  had been rebuked by the British Press Council. A few days later, the weapons supplied by Thatcher’s South African friends were used on mourners in Milltown Cemetery.