Madam, - John Bruton is quoted as saying in his speech to the Reform Movement at their Mansion House conference in Dublin last Saturday that people "should be encouraged to celebrate their different identities here in Ireland - whether that be an African identity, a Lithuanian one or an Orange identity" (The Irish Times, September 20th).
It is not clear from the report whether Mr Bruton's phrase "here in Ireland" referred to the whole island or merely the 26 counties of which he was once prime minister.
His words were poignant, however, for those of us living in South Belfast. Here it is very easy to celebrate your Orange identity, and not only on the Twelfth of July. In the area where I live, beside the "Village", celebrating your African, Asian, Chinese or Lithuanian identity is much more problematical. Having "black" or "yellow" skin is quite sufficient to get you insulted, spat at, beaten up, or burnt out of your house. A Lithuanian man was recently put in hospital as a result of such a racist attack. He was, like almost all such victims, a legal and hard-working immigrant to the United Kingdom.
Mr Bruton went on to deplore the decision by a Church of Ireland rector in Dublin, backed unanimously by his select vestry, to forbid the use of his church to the Orange Order. "An Orange parade," Mr Bruton said, "would have made a useful point in an entirely non-threatening way".
If so, it would have been the first Orange parade in history to do so. What point would it have made? That Orangemen could - like Trimble and Paisley joining hands for the cameras in their jig - walk down any street they wanted, irrespective of the feelings or wishes of non-Orange inhabitants? What else was Drumcree about? And how many armed RUC/PSNI/Garda Síochána members does it take to protect a "non-threatening" parade? What has the Orange Order to celebrate other than Protestant ascendancy? And since that has gone, both North and South, what can it celebrate other than its hatred of anybody different (black and yellow Taigs are easier to spot)?
And what right has Mr Bruton to interfere in the internal affairs of the Church of Ireland? As a member of that Church, I rejoiced at the decision by the rector of St Anne's to refuse the use of the church to an organisation perceived by many as vicious, bigoted, sectarian, homicidal and hypocritical. I know many Orangemen to whom not one of those adjectives applies. But the principle remains: Mr Bruton has no business telling the Church of Ireland what to do.
I applaud his anti-racism, but his absurd naïveté regarding the Orange Institution betrays him into imagining that it is not what it is: a profoundly racist institution. Worse still, the Church to which I belong is tarred by the same brush. Let me say proudly, then, that in spite of the so-called Reform Movement, the Church of Ireland is not racist, it is not supremacist, it is not West British, it is not unionist. It is not - to their chagrin - in anyone's pocket. - Yours, etc.,
NIALL CUSACK, Ashley Avenue, Belfast 9.
Madam, - John Bruton's contention that Ireland "could have achieved independence without 1916" could be rephrased to say that Ireland should have achieved independence without 1916. The reason it did not was due to the actions of a small number of politicians who controlled power in the British Empire, as it then was, in 1912. In that year nearly half-a-million Ulster Unionists signed a covenant to use "all means. . .necessary", including civil war, to resist an act of parliament giving limited home rule to Ireland. This threat was explicitly backed by Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative opposition in parliament.
Bonar Law showed his contempt for the democratic institutions he was elected to uphold by declaring that "there are things stronger than parliamentary majorities". He also said that Unionists would be "justified in resisting by all means in their power including force" and that he could "imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I will not be ready to support them".
In response to this the Liberal government failed to defend its own act of parliament. One of its own backbenchers declared in exasperation at the time that he could not understand "how a government could look on at the organised and open preparations for civil war [by Ulster Unionists\] without making an attempt to put them down".
After that many nationalists came to the conclusion that force and threats of force were more effective than constitutional means in achieving results. The price of Bonar Law's indefensible and unconstitutional recklessness in backing civil war and Asquith's failure to defend an act of parliament has been paid by everyone on this island ever since and is still being paid today.
The failure of the Home Rule project to evolve into a united and independent Ireland was due not (as John Bruton implies) to Irish political failure but to the failure of some of the most powerful politicians in the world at the head of the British Empire in 1912. - Yours, etc.,
A. LEAVY, Shielmartin Drive, Dublin 13.