Sir, - Fintan O'Toole's commentary on the UDA killing of the Catholic postal worker Daniel McColgan blurs the line of condemnation.
He implicates the Good Friday Agreement in the killing: "the Belfast Agreement. . .institutionalises sectarianism" and is "being exposed on the streets of Belfast" (Opinion, January 15).
It is Partition and the explicit identity of unionism with Protestantism that institutionalises religious sectarianism. It forms the ideological basis for loyalist politics and loyalist violence against the nearest available Roman Catholic target. Since the Northern state was founded, unionist policy drove nationalists or Catholics (the terms more or less synonymous) out of civil society. This policy was carried out through political and violent means.
The evidence is easily available and well known. Ordinary Catholics have been targeted by loyalists since Partition. Attacks increased when nationalists were perceived to be rising above their designated station in life or when Partition was seen to be under threat (these also seen as synonymous).
That is why I take issue with Fintan O'Toole's clever but intellectually disingenuous stance. Commentators like him attempt to stand above the conflict and to place the blame on "both sides". It is a fact that the vast majority of attacks are by loyalists against Catholics. There is no question of nationalists objecting to Protestant people or people of no religion working with them or on their behalf (the historical record, speaks for itself). Organisations which make an issue of religion or which have a record of attacking people on the basis of their religion are the DUP, the Orange Order and the UDA. The only fear in this regard is experienced by people living in unionist areas who cannot speak out because they fear for their lives. Irish unionism cannot come to terms with the end of the Partition project. At one end of the spectrum attacks on Catholics of all ages (from school children of 4 years and up) intensify. At the other end the middle class opts out.
"Normal" politics, or "majority rule" in the Six Counties is sectarian politics. The Good Friday Agreement began a process which undermines the ghetto state of Northern Ireland and begins the creation of structures on an all-island basis. If anything, it is a last-chance saloon for unionism. If Fintan O'Toole wants to abolish the institutionalisation of sectarianism then he should argue for an end to Partition itself. Arguing against the Good Friday Agreement is to side with the UDA and rejectionist unionism. Fintan O'Toole may not like such bedfellows but (to borrow his phrase) he has "politically corralled" himself. - Yours, etc.,
Cllr NICKY KEHOE,
(Sinn Féin),
Faussagh Avenue,
Dublin 7.