Sir, - Mary Holland (July 22nd) writes that Mo Mowlam's huggy-huggy, touchy-feely style blew away years of patronising distant formality in the relationship between government and people in Northern Ireland.
That is true and very welcome. But now we have patronising informality from a Secretary of State who talks about empowerment, while her party refuses membership to people living in Northern Ireland. We are not allowed to vote for the very Labour Party that governs us.
Even Mo's allegedly colourful barrack-room language would be insufficiently developed to adequately describe this outrageous and continuing suppression of our basic democratic rights. - Yours, etc.,
Boyd Black, Secretary, Labour in Northern Ireland, Newtownbreda, Belfast.