Churchill put British interests first

I was slightly bemused when I read Anthony O’Leary’s letter to the editor (Aug 7) entitled “What we really need is another Churchill”.

We have had Parnell and Pearse, Cosgrave and Collins, de Valera and Lemass, but we never had Churchill. Mr Churchill was a member of the British delegation which negotiated the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the Irish delegation in 1922, that British delegation which more or less said accept or else.

He was the one who successfully led the defence of Britain and indeed Europe against fascism, but was, at the same time, a leader of a country which maintained a very large colonial, and therefore undemocratic, empire.

Parts of that empire, for example, India and Pakistan, had a difficult task in obtaining the right to democratic self rule from Britain in the immediate post-war period.

He was the one who, in his victory speech at the end of WW2, did not seem to recognise the democratic right of the Irish people to remain neutral in that conflict.

He had many outstanding traits, but for him not only British democracy but also British interests came first, sometimes at the expense of the democratic rights of others.

Diarmuid P Ó Luasa

Baile an Teampaill

Corcaigh