PAUL ROWLANDSON,
Sir, - Brian Feeney writes that unionists are upset about the Good Friday Agreement because they are being forced into a position of equality with nationalists (The Irish Times, January 16th).
It depends what you mean by "equality". There is, on the one hand, equality of rights and opportunities; on the other hand, there is "equality of outcome".
The Good Friday Agreement aims to achieve equality of outcomes, and uses preferential treatment (i.e., "affirmative action") on the basis of religion in order to achieve this bogus equality. In areas where the Catholic unemployment rate is higher than the Protestant unemployment rate, the Equality Commission demands that employers give preferential treatment to Catholic applicants until the required quota (euphemistically described as a "target") is achieved. Consequently the Protestant unemployment rate is increasing and the Catholic unemployment rate is decreasing.
This is the sort of bogus "equality" which many people in Northern Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant, find morally repulsive. If it was wrong in the past to discriminate against Catholics on the grounds of religion, it is equally wrong now to discriminate against Protestants on the same grounds.
Dr Feeney's analysis is typical of the sectarian, collectivist mind-set. He sees the North as composed primarily of two "communities", rather than of individuals in many different communities. Unionists, he says, were "nurtured on a supremacist myth. . .which led Prof Joe Lee to call them Herrenvolk". One must have doubts about the bona fides of someone who thinks of unionists as ipso facto Nazis. His attitude goes some way towards explaining why many unionists do now find Northern Ireland a cold place. - Yours, etc.,
PAUL ROWLANDSON,
Hillview Avenue,
Derry.
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Sir, - For the first time since the formation of Northern Ireland there appears to be a willingness to treat all who live there on an equal footing. A section of unionism has responded to this development by complaining that they feel the region is becoming a "cold place".
For many Catholics the problem has been one of a real heat rather than a cold feeling. Particularly over the past four years, Catholics have borne the heat of sectarian arson attacks, pipe-bombs, petrol-bombs, and gun attacks on Catholic-owned homes, schools, churches (10 in one night - July 2nd, 1998), pubs, shops and GAA clubs. Attacks have been most numerous in Ballymena, Ballymoney, Belfast, Carrickfergus, Coleraine, Derry, Larne, Limavady, Lurgan and Portadown.
It would seem that those political representatives of unionism who have had the most to say on the topic of the "cold place", are the same people that had least to say about the daily sectarian attacks on Catholics. - Yours, etc.,
MARTIN MELAUGH,
Coleraine,
Co Derry.