Dear Michael,
I see you’ve yet another article in The Irish Times this morning. Good man yourself: I expect you’re being paid handsomely for these by the Newspaper of Record. Lucky you: I’ve sent at least half-a-dozen letters in recent months to the IT, no costs involved, and they appear to have grunted and binned them. Can’t think why.
But to your topic this morning, Michael: it is of course Sinn Féin. In it you note SF president Mary Lou McDonald’s apology regarding the death of Lord Mountbatten in 1979, and her regret for all deaths during the Troubles. “It was as far as Provo ideology could let her go”, you say. And you go on to explain that the entire Sinn Féin party, north and south, are but the glove-puppets of the IRA Army Council. You know there’s an IRA Army Council because you were told so by one-time RUC officer Drew Harris, who worked with MI5 during his time working in the North and is now in the position of Garda Commissioner in the South. And you go on to describe Sinn Féin as being “…controlled by a politburo and organised on Leninist principles of democratic centralism.” Crikey. Who knew? Your end-passage is a glum one, with the much-quoted lines from Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” Ah now Michael, come on. Chin up, man. You clearly are full of passionate intensity, but you’re surely not the worst, not one bit of you. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
There’s also an IT editorial this morning, giving the newspaper’s views on violence in the North. It quotes Boris Johnson and Micheál Martin from last night’s B(ritish)BC Spotlight programme, with Boris Johnson assuring viewers that there will be no border poll for “a very, very long time to come” and Micheál Martin seeing a border poll as “divisive and explosive”, but that he’d be confident of big, big changes in 100 years time. So you see – there are two stout allies you have, Michael.
One thing that is alarming: I note you use at one point the phrase “Yawn-making sour grapes”. You’re surely not saying that your periodic anti-Shinner bulletins are beginning to bore people and that their source is sour grapes on your part, having been booted out by the electorate and the party you led dissolved like snow off an Easter ditch?
Take heart, man, take heart. Think of all the people, beyond Boris and Micheál, who support and admire you. Like the good Lord Paul Bew, chairman of the Centenary Historical Advisory panel. I bet he’s a fan. He too gets mention in this morning’s IT, where he makes clear that he thinks secret files from the 1920s and later should be released, so that people can learn the full truth about such things as the murder of the McMahon family. What the good Lord feels about releasing secret files on the Dublin-Monaghan bombings or the death of solicitors Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, to quote a man you doubtless admire, Winston Churchill.
Anyway, Michael, my best wishes for your future mental and physical health. And dare I suggest you take a break from Shinner-bashing? You’ve surely done your bit, and there are lots of others eager to step in and take over where you left off. Oh, and cancel those grapes – they cannot be good for you.
Yours with respect and admiration,
Jude Collins
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