Madam, – Society in the South is both convulsed and repulsed by the abuse suffered by children at the hands of clergy who were given their opportunity by a State that washed its hands and closed its eyes, because the children were poor and therefore of little account.
In the North during the Troubles young Catholic men were more likely than any other group to be victims of sectarian killing. Since the IRA ceasefire in 1994, the same group are more likely than any other to be killed in sectarian attacks. The only thing exceptional about the killing of Kevin McDaid in Coleraine last week was that he was an older Catholic male.
Another Catholic man is in a critical condition in hospital, while Mr McDaid’s Protestant wife was severely beaten.
A lot of the commentary afterwards, particularly from unionist spokespersons, indicated that sectarianism is a shared problem.
It is in the sense that deeply affected unionists share it with the use of baseball bats and other implements. Generally, however, nationalists are not insecure about their identity, don’t obsess about their religion and don’t feel the need to share it with people who do not appreciate it. The local Sinn Féin representative, Billy Leonard, is a Protestant. Unionists, on the other hand, feel their identity to be permanently under threat.
They are right, it is, from the irrationality that conjoins Britishness with Protestantism. To prevent such medieval nonsense dying a natural death, it becomes necessary every year during the summer to impress it endlessly on the highways and byways of the North. During this period a Catholic or two may die, while others will merely be badly beaten. Last year, in a further twist, the sectarian killing of Michael McIlveen was celebrated publicly during Twelfth of July Orange Order bonfire celebrations.
Hopefully, the nightmare mainly affecting poor children in the South has ended. In the North, the nationalists' nightmare continues. A constant media spotlight and relentless unionist condemnation might help end it. The fact that "No senior elected unionists attended the funeral" of Kevin McDaid is a bad sign, though The Irish Timesreporting it (June 2nd) may help stimulate the pressure necessary to affect a change of attitude. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Why is it that those contributors to your Letters page who regularly act as the self-appointed spokespersons for the “persecuted” southern Protestant minority and who operate a production line of spurious grievances, are never to be seen, heard or read when loyalist bigots randomly and casually murder innocent Catholics?
The killing of cross-community worker Kevin McDaid in Coleraine recently, follows the sectarian murders of Robert Hamill in Portadown, schoolboys Michael McIlveen in Ballymena and Thomas Devlin in Belfast.
It is clear that an anti-Catholic jihad has been operating in parts of the North, and in some instances at least, in full view of the police authorities. The moral outrage expressed by those letter writers, in tandem with organisations who propagate British Commonwealth re-entry for Ireland, at the recent killings of two British soldiers and a police officer in the North, was not very evident when Catholics were being casually murdered by loyalists.They show blatantly hypocritical double standards.
This claim of an anti-Catholic jihad is not based on conspiracy theories or anti-British bias, but on in-depth investigations which led to the Stevens report, the Stalker/Sampson report, joint Oireachtas committees on justice, commissions of investigation, and findings by many reputable lawyers and human rights groups. All have concluded that countless innocent people have been randomly murdered by loyalists for no reason other than being Catholic.
Following the ending of the second World War in Germany, an extensive body of legislation was put in place to outlaw all remaining elements of anti-Jewish culture that had grown up around the Nazi party. Likewise in Britain when the black schoolboy Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death by white racists in London in 1993, the British government set up an inquiry headed by Sir William MacPherson who concluded that not just the killing of Stephen Lawrence was racist, but the London Metropolitan Police investigation was also racist.
Does the sectarian killing of a Catholic in one part of the UK not merit the same official government response as the racist killing of a black schoolboy in a different part of the UK? Furthermore, is it not imperative that measures be introduced in the North to deal with the endemic anti-Catholicism so prevalent in large parts of the unionist political facade? – Yours, etc,