High Irish principle
From Mr Barry Cusack Sir: Mr Andrew Roberts (Letters, 7 Octo- ber) makes a ringing defence of Salisbury's stance on Irish Home Rule, but in doing so perpetrates, partly by innuendo, a shameful calumny on the Irish people.
Three theses are advanced: the first one (of marginal interest to me) is that Salis- bury's refusal to go along with Gladstone's Home Rule proposals was justified because it led to a split in the Liberal party, which was followed by the Conservatives being in power for 17 of the next 20 years. This is assumed to be 'a good thing', but it is for British people to be the judge of that. However, we Irish well know that at that time the Tories cynically and successfully played 'the Orange card' for pure party advantage. 'High Tory principle' indeed!
Second, Salisbury was 'proved right' on the issue of war because Ireland subse- quently declined 'to take its place in civilisa- tion's vanguard against Hitlerism'. But was it so blindingly obvious, in September 1939, that a crusade for civilisation was at stake? Ireland's refusal to get involved with Britain's war was no more an 'untrustwor- thy' policy than that pursued by Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal; probably, also, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark, had they had the choice.
Third (and here is where we find the par- ticularly unpleasant innuendo), Salisbury, it appears, was also right 'that an indepen- dent Ireland would be disastrous, as the exodus of 34 per cent of the southern Protestant population in 1922 proved'. This links up with Mr Roberts's invitation to your readers to shed tears for the burning of stately homes.
`Disastrous'? Innuendo, because here he is willing to wound but afraid to strike. Ire- land of the 1920s was not 1930s Germany, 1940s Palestine or 1990s Yugoslavia; there never was anything remotely approaching a pogrom, Kristallnacht, ethnic or any other sort of cleansing. The admitted decrease in southern Ireland's Protestant population in the years following 1922 proves nothing. Otherwise the increase, in the same period, in Northern Ireland's Catholic population would 'prove' that they enjoyed superior status there.
Barry Cusack
Belgium
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