Shoving the SF version of history down our throats

SIR – On RTÉ news in the past few weeks, we saw Gerry Adams giving out yards because he doesn’t feel 2016 will be properly commemorated by the ‘establishment’ powers that be. In effect, he is wooing the descendants of the 1916 leaders to join with his political cult of Sinn Féin in order to have SF’s version of history shoved down our throats.

When I stood with my father and his old comrades and enemies on Bantry’s Wolfe Tone Square in 1966 for the half-century recognition of 1916, there was no mention then of the ‘unfinished business’ Gerry and his cohorts convince themselves was foremost in the minds of the Irish people since the foundation of this Irish State.

After MrAdams and his generation of ‘armed strugglers’ created mayhem all over Ireland, it was another thirty years before they saw the light and eventually surrendered.

Their legacy is one of fear and loathing as so many have been slain, and there will never be a coming together or meeting of minds amongst the warring factions of Northern Ireland. The best anyone can hope for is a continuation of their shaky peace process.

The damage done by Sinn Féin cannot be underestimated and I hope our memories will never become so dulled as to believe they have good things to offer Ireland, north and south.

That Adams and McDonald and McGuinness have it in their heads that SF-IRA are the rightful heirs to the spirit of 1916 is comical, yet also tragic. We’ve had those long ago short wars and the guns were put away in 1924, long before SF-IRA were forced to lay down their own in 1994. Their incarnation of IRA gave us nothing but too many graves and hatred.

I feel sorry that the said descendants of 1916 might be manipulated by Gerry and his acolytes, who still claim their representation of our history is the correct one. They have nothing to offer the island of Ireland and, if we sleepwalk into giving them an overall majority or a minor place in government, we will live to regret it.

Their support of wanton violence was primarily carried out in Northern Ireland and should have no bearing on what took place here in 1916. I was also blind to this for too long.

When Seamus Heaney said just before he died that there ‘will never be a united Ireland’ he was exactly right. We do not need to have another war against over a million unionists who will forever uphold the reality of this being an island of two nations. Any true republican would not try to alter this, but some will never educate themselves to embrace a change of heart.

Robert Sullivan,

Bantry.