Kevin Myers is amusing, courageous and has exposed much hypocrisy

He writes Kevin Myers is ‘one of the best columnists in the British Isles’ and I add Ireland.

He is amusing, courageous, and has exposed much hypocrisy. As has been pointed out many times, he has, more than anyone else, revealed the contribution of Irishmen in the First World War.

But it also is important to remember his writing about Catholic nationalist tribal insurgency from 1916 to 30 years of the so called “troubles’ in Northern Ireland.

He disliked the endless commemorations last year of the 1916 Rising, involving 17 military parades which copper fastened the founding myths of an independent Ireland and encouraged anglophobia.

He criticised the distribution of the 1916 Proclamation to all national schools, a document drawn up by the unmandated men who enacted self-indulgent heroics.

This Proclamation has been brilliantly criticised by the historian, Liam Kennedy, of Queen’s University Belfast.

The belief that seems to have led to Myer’s sacking is that he is anti-Semitic. Yet the first people to come to his defence were the community of Irish Jews.

As for Israel, Myers was perhaps the only Irish journalist who pointed out that the Irish President, Michael D. Higgins did not attend the funeral of Shimon Peres in Jerusalem when he had no prior commitments. Over 70 heads of states world wide went, including Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Yes, we know Myers often goes OTT and antagonizes supporters, as Mr Lowry points out. But that is no reason to fire him.

A few paragraphs seem to have led to his demise, a decision predictably supported by the ever PC columnist Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times.

He, and other detractors of Myers who have got on their PC high horses, might remember he has written millions of words of wisdom and with much humour. And exposed the sometimes brutal treatment of southern Protestants 1919 – 23 as he did a week ago at the West Cork History Festival.

Robin Bury, Toronto, Canada, Arthur of Buried Lives: The Protestants of Southern Ireland