Sir, - Ruth Dudley Edwards instances "the widespread terror used against Protestants in many parts of the island and the success of an authoritarian Irish Catholic Gaelic ethos in driving them out or frightening them into silent submission".
This shrill nonsense is the opposite of the truth. In the early 1970s, at the beginning of the Northern ferment, The Irish Times gave prominence to a statement by some 50 Protestant men and women representative of the public service, farming, business, medicine, law, education, the whole range of urban and rural living in the State. The statement, circulated by Basil Goulding and myself, affirmed in good round terms the friendly, harmonious relationships that we Protestants enjoyed with our Catholic neighbours, colleagues and fellow mortals. Happily in this nothing has changed. - Yours, etc., W. H. Walsh,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.