Sir, - If there is to be an Orange march in Dublin, may I suggest that it be restricted solely to those lodges whence this offensive suggestion originates - namely, the Dublin and Wicklow branches? There is surely no place in any such procession for imported or bussed-in bigots from Glasgow, Liverpool or Portadown; the locally-grown variety will suffice.
One wonders if they may resemble their counterparts North of the Border, who look like nothing more than time-warped extras from a 1930s Laurel and Hardy film, complete with Toy-town swords, curiously menacing umbrellas and granite-faced bigotry, as they come to waddle down an already-overburdened Dublin thoroughfare, in order to commemorate the vicious ruffian to whom they owe their founding.
Over the coming weeks we may expect a growing clamour for acceptance of this grotesque spectacle, carefully orchestrated by, and coming from, those who would have us believe that by welcoming such an event we demonstrate our new-found maturity and political tolerance. Nothing could be further from the truth: by so doing we merely expose our own feeble-mindedness.
The Orange Order is founded on livid bigotry and sectarianism, nurtured and used by political forces over the centuries for their own purposes of division and suppression. It is certainly no coincidence that this proposed march comes at a time when this very order and its leaders are energetically working to destroy the Good Friday Agreement, just as they aided and encompassed the downfall of O'Neill and Sunningdale. Like the Bourbons of old, they forget nothing, and they learn nothing. - Yours, etc., David Grant,
Mount Pleasant, Waterford.