TOM COOPER,
Sir, - Mary Holland (Opinion, July 25th), in encouraging Sinn Féin to change its attitude to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, points out the changes that have been implemented to make the force more acceptable to nationalists.
While I fully recognise and welcome the changes to date, I cannot understand why the PSNI, unionists, and the British Government feel so threatened by the implementation of the Patten Report in its entirety, as it is just a demand for equality under the law and by the law.
Before the signing of the Belfast Agreement in May 1998, we in the South were told that if Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution were deleted, unionism would be magnanimous in its response. We were also told that the politics of consent were the road to political ecumenism.
It seems to me that this constitutional change has been very much undervalued by unionism. The comments made by the North's Policing Board vice-chairman Mr Denis Bradley, when he stated that "police were not doing enough to prevent loyalist attacks in Belfast", coupled with the recent BBC Panorama programme showing collusion by the security forces with Loyalist death squads, would suggest that Sinn Féin may well be justified in remaining outside the North's Policing Board until its demands are addressed. - Yours, etc.,
TOM COOPER, Delaford Lawn, Dublin 16.