No sympathy for a ‘hierarchy of regret’

BRENDAN CAFFERTY asks (Letters, February 4) why can’t I admit that “some awful things were done to Protestants in our name” during the War of Independence?

He is really asking me to be selective in my concern and compassion for its victims. I cannot oblige.

Compassion for those victims is like mercy and its “quality is not strain’d, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” on all of them.

Mr Cafferty can discriminate in such matters if he wishes and create hierarchies of regret for those who lost their lives. I can’t.

This was an unnecessary war and none of its victims in Ireland caused it. They were all equally innocent and therefore all their deaths are equally regrettable.

The Irish electorate voted overwhelmingly for independence in 1918. A government was formed on the basis of that result andproceeded to govern on its democratic mandate. It was then subjected to military terrorism to prevent it functioning by parties in a government that had not even contested the 1918 election in Ireland.

That election result, and the Irish government that resulted from it, was further endorsed by an even more overwhelming result in the 1921 general election when the then Irish government party, Sinn Féin, won every single elective seat in the State. But the terrorism against it persisted and increased.

In these circumstances I assume it is obvious, even to Mr Cafferty who caused that war in Ireland and who is therefore responsible for all of its victims. It would be more profitable for him therefore to address those responsible and more appropriate to ask them to admit “the awful things that were done” in their name.

Jack Lane

Aubane

Millstreet

Co Cork