Sir, – Congratulations on your editorial "Sinn Féin's view of history: partial, wrong and self-serving" (December 9th).
With reference to your assertion therein that the campaign of the Provisional IRA was rejected by large majorities, it is possible to put some tentative numbers on that.
There was a survey in the 1970s which specifically addressed the question of IRA support. Conducted by Earl Davis and Richard Sinnott, and published by the Economic and Social Research Institute in 1979, it found that no more than 20 per cent of the Republic’s population was to any degree in support of IRA activities – with only 8 per cent moderately or strongly in support, leaving about 12 per cent in the category of “sneaking regarders”.
No comparable statistics are, of course, available for the War of Independence of 1919 to 1921.
The significant difference between the violence of that period and the later IRA violence during the Troubles is, however, that the War of Independence was prosecuted under the nominal authority of the first and second Dáil, both constituted with an electoral mandate.
That authority was, and remains, its claim to legitimacy. There was no such authority for IRA violence during the Troubles. – Yours, etc,
FELIX
M LARKIN,
Cabinteely,
Dublin 18.