Allow the Queen at 1916 event

The planned attendance of members of the British Royal family at the centenary commemorations of the 1916 Rising has excited comment and opposition, not least from Fergus Finlay (Opinion, April 15).

It is an emotive issue and many Irish people understandably have an ambivalent attitude to Royal attendance.

We have endured a long colonial relationship. We suffered Oliver Cromwell, the Penal Laws, plantation and dispossession, the 1798 slaughters, the Great Famine and the exodus of our people. We experienced centuries of racism and condescension. When we sought our freedom, elements of the British media depicted us as pigs and monkeys, unfit for self-government.