By Paddy Clancy

A U.S. ARMY veteran who has also written a biography of 1916 heroine Countess Constance Markievicz has accused her main critic, Dublin-born historian and writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, of hankering after the days of the rule of the British empire.

Joe McGowan, who served with the American forces between 1962 and 1967 at Fort Belvoir, Virginia and Evrux airbase near Paris, condemned Dudley Edwards’ portrayal of Markievicz as a “blood-thirsty show-off” with a phony aristocratic title who brainwashed children into believing they must die for Ireland.

The attack by Dudley Edwards, reported in the Irish Voice last week, was broadcast this week by RTE in a radio documentary series called Speaking Ill of the Dead.

McGowan, who lives in Co. Sligo near Mark-ievicz’s ancestral home, Lissadell, and who spearheaded a committee that erected a monument to her two years ago, fumed when Dudley Edwards admitted she enjoyed “putting the knife in” to Markievicz.

“I don’t like her and it was quite pleasant to get the knife out, and really the more I read about her the more I dislike her,” Dudley Edwards said.

But McGowan, whose biography is called The People’s Countess, hit back in her defense.

“Countess Markievicz was born into a so-called aristocratic family and turned her back on all that,” he said.

“She could have lived the life of a lady. Instead, she championed the poor and gave everything she had to them. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to compare her with Mother Teresa who also spent her life among the poor.”

He accused Dudley Edwards of espousing the views of a lunatic fringe that still “hunger after empire in the days when Irish people knew their place.”

He added in a flare-up between the two historians, “Some people say decolonization of the mind can take centuries. Some like Ruth may never recover.”

Dudley Edwards, who referred to “Mrs. Mark-ievicz,” said, “It is quite true that she gave up a life of material comfort when she embraced the revolution and if I were making a case for the defense I would make more of that.

“But I do think she was a great person for the crowd-pleasing gesture. She loved strutting about in her uniform, posing. She even had a picture taken of herself in a studio before the 1916 Rising so there would be a very good record of how magnificent she looked in uniform.”