‘800-year men’ need to take a history lesson

THE extraordinary outburst by Fr Alex Reid has perhaps served to expose just how distorted and exaggerated is the sense of grievance felt by some nationalists.

For the ‘800-year men’ among us, there can never have been any greater injustice in human history than that inflicted on us by the perfidious Brits.

Never mind centuries of religious and territorial warfare in Europe. Never mind the often brutal colonisation of entire continents, destruction of native populations, slavery, etc.

Never mind more recent horrors such as the Holocaust, two world wars, Rwanda, Srebrenica, etc, nothing compares with our suffering at the hands of those terrible Brits.

The reality is that our historical grievance is the pimple on the backside of the elephant of man’s inhumanity to man.

It’s high time we all challenged the Fr Reids among us when they start to spout this grossly over-the-top nonsense.

Peter Molloy

9 Haddington Park

Glenageary

Co Dublin