Lenihan at Béal na mBláth: FG senator’s disgraceful attempt to reignite the tragic divisions of civil war

I WAS shocked to read the comments of Senator Liam Twomey in relation to Minister Brian Lenihan’s speech at the annual Béal na mBláth commemoration (Irish Examiner, August 12).

Senator Twomey claims that Brian Lenihan, as a member of Fianna Fáil, is unfit to give this year’s oration on the basis that his party is the political descendant of the anti-Treaty forces who killed Collins.

The civil war was a tragic period in Irish history when men and women who had fought together in the struggle for independence found themselves at war with each other over the best way to fulfill their common desire to achieve Irish freedom.

The war engendered much bitterness and division and both sides were guilty of acts of cruelty and revenge. It was not the least achievement of the survivors of the war and the succeeding political generations that they managed largely to bury the rancour of this period and develop a mature and mutually respectful political discourse afterwards.

For Senator Twomey to try to reignite this tragic division and to claim for one side the sole possession of moral rectitude while dismissing those who sincerely disagreed with them as murderers is simply disgraceful.

How can we call on unionists and nationalists in the North to pursue their differences with respect while one of our own politicians indulges in vicious and immature rhetoric of this kind?

Whatever his differences with Fianna Fáil on policy grounds, Enda Kenny has always shown himself to be above this kind of political partisanship.

The Fine Gael leader should dissociate himself from his colleague’s remarks and reprimand him accordingly.

Brian Cronin

Valentine Villas

The Lough

Cork