Sir, - Mary Holland's assertion (Opinion, June 27th) that bigotry is bred in Northern Ireland schools is to the point. Not enough time is devoted to the problem of segregated education here or to its origins, with the result that few people appreciate the contribution that it makes to the sectarian conflict. Your columnist states:
"The first and last serious attempt to create an integrated education scheme took place in 1923. Secular schools were proposed in which there would be no denominational religious teaching. This was opposed by all the major churches and duly dropped. We are still living with the results today."
No one with the slightest interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland could disagree with this, but it is important to point out that it was the Unionist government of James Craig which introduced the measure, hoping to follow the example of the US and keep the educational system secular in order to avoid the chaos and carnage which we have experienced over the past 30 years. It was unfortunately the one and only major attempt by any Unionist administration to integrate Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter at any level, and they too have paid the price for such such shortsightedness.
Nevertheless, it was the Catholic Church which first opposed the plan proposed by Craig's education minister Lord Londonderry at a time when murder was rife and civil strife was widespread. Londonderry was assisted by Andrew Wyse, a Catholic who had transferred from the Dublin civil service and who was regarded as able and widely experienced and and eventually became permanent secretary of the North's education ministry. Despite this, the Catholic Church in Ireland ordered teachers and clergy not to co-operate with the government's education proposals, and there was no Catholic representation on the "Lynn committee" which produced many of the ideas that inspired the new legislation.
Catholics opposed the reform from the beginning (1921) but the Protestant attack wasn't launched until 1923 when the legislation was to be implemented on October 1st of that year. Before the statute had received the royal assent, however, the Protestant clergy were on the attack and soon the United Education Committee of the Protestant Churches was formed. The Orange Order entered the fray, and Craig, who was hoping for electoral success and victory on the Boundary Commission, was forced to capitulate on the issue of secular education. It is possible that the strategy of the Catholic Church was aimed at bringing about such a collapse of the scheme without actually having to ally itself openly with Protestant opposition to it.
It was a sad end to a courageous effort to bring about fundamental change and but for the bigotry of both churches it would have succeeded. If this had been the case many thousands of lives would have been saved in the decades that followed, and our political system itself would have been eventually transformed. Even today, when the subject is debated, each side blames the other for bringing about its downfall, and so the scheme itself is now a part of our sectarian heritage. - Yours, etc.,
SEÁN KEARNEY,
Glantane Drive,
Belfast 15.