It was British terror that had no mandate

This post-colonial hangover which appears to afflict Mr Martin reflects the ultimate success of the British colonisation of Ireland in that the colonised, in the form of Mr Martin, not alone defends the coloniser but denigrates the colonised, despite the centuries of brutal oppression, starvation, penal laws, penal colonies, the suppression of the Catholic religion, the Irish language, the Black and Tans and the attempted genocide of the peasant Irish during the Famine.

Patrick Pearse and James Connolly would never have taken up arms if Britain had recognised the democratic wishes of the Irish people and implemented Home Rule, a wish that was overwhelmingly expressed in every election since 1870, or repealed the Act of Union which was expressed either in the form of monster meetings or votes for pro-Independence parties (O’Connell) since the 1840’s. Before that the vast Catholic majority of the population were denied the vote. As soon as they got the vote they voted to leave the United Kingdom.

Mr Martin, in what appears to be the dying-sting of an old colonialist, implied that the proponents of the 1916 Rising had no mandate.

May I remind Mr Martin that it was British terror in Ireland that had no mandate. Revolutionaries by definition act first then seek a retrospective mandate, which is what was given in the 1918 general election when Sinn Fein received a massive electoral endorsement winning 75 of the 103 seats.

Isn’t it about time he stopped trying to reverse the legitimacy of that election?.

Either way, British rule in Ireland had no mandate. It was a product of conquest and subjugation. Mr Martin has remained consistent to a singular viewpoint, that of support for the political position of unionists in a squalid sectarian state.

He has for many years promoted a false sectarian narrative about the Easter Rising and War of Independence.

Mr Martin has reserved his bitter invective almost exclusively for the victims of British malignant and malevolent colonialism. Not content with subverting Irish nationalist aspirations in favour of a British imperial agenda, Mr Martin has for decades supported a unionist monolith which indulged in sectarian patronage in jobs and housing, engaged in the gerrymandering of electoral wards and endorsed the rotten parliament at Stormont and the sectarian RUC.

Mr Martin makes reference to the “hundreds of deaths of innocent civilians” during the Easter Rising yet ignores the fact that General Maxwell, who ordered the executions of the 1916 leaders, was responsible for the deaths of 20,000 people in Omdurman in one day, which is more than all political deaths in Ireland in over a century.

Tom Cooper, Dublin