Outrageous attack on a man of wisdom

TOM COOPER’S diatribe (Letters, January 5) against the late Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien cannot be allowed to go unanswered.

Mr Cooper seems unmindful of the fact that those who turned a political problem in Northern Ireland into a law and order emergency were redemptive nationalists who resorted to terror and mass murder.

His attachment to the foundational myths of the Irish Republic compels him to portray Dr O’Brien as a tool of gratuitous oppression who revelled in the adoption of measures that would have damaged any other liberal democracy almost beyond repair.