Colonial legacy

WOULD it be deemed an antiBritish act if I were to ask where were those people, both within and outside the media, who were so publicly vociferous in denouncing the vandalising of ‘The Haunting Soldier’ in St Stephen’s Green, when the graves of the lord mayors of Cork Tomás MacCurtain, who was murdered in 1920, and Terence MacSwiney, who died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, also in 1920, were desecrated just two days prior to commemorations marking the centenary of the Easter Rising?

Whereas I support the political ecumenism which has been generated following the Good Friday Agreement, I do not subscribe to suggestions that we should commemorate those who died lighting the flame of Irish freedom alongside those who fought to extinguish it. To do so is to defile the memory of our founding fathers.

It appears the legacy of our colonial experience has left us with a warped sense of nationhood.

Tom Cooper, Templeogue, Dublin 6w.