Sir, - Imagination is a commendable quality in any writer, though with political columnists it is supposed to be balanced by some appreciation of objective facts. Ms Dudley Edwards writing on Drumcree (July 7th) doesn't so much abandon reality as invert it.
The Drumcree Orange marchers, she assures us, are tolerant people besieged by fanatical nationalists; all that's needed for tensions to be resolved is for the nationalist siege to be lifted.
In fact, Portadown has only 6,000 nationalists out of a population of 20,000. It is nationalists who have been subjected to decades of intimidation and terror. Six Catholics have been murdered in the town centre of Portadown and dozens more attacked as they went about their normal business.
Regular readers of The Irish Times will be aware that Portadown loyalism is the most intransigent stream in the whole of unionism and some of its members have been responsible for dozens of killings throughout the mid-Ulster region (as well as being involved in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings).
Ms Dudley Edwards would have us believe that these loyalists killers have no connection with the Orange marchers at Drumcree. The prominent role played by the LVF leader, Billy Wright at Drumcree in 1996 suggests otherwise. According to Jim Cusack, your security correspondent, there is also a loyalist paramilitary presence at Drumcree this year (The Irish Times July 6th).
If Ms Dudley Edwards is serious in her attempts to understand the background to the Drumcree stand-off, she should perhaps consider the issue from the perspective of the town's nationalist residents. She might try speaking to the family of Robert Hamill who was beaten to death by a loyalist mob in the town centre. After she hears their story she might reconsider whether she should be encouraging her Orange friends at Drumcree or whether she would be better advising them to go home and leave their neighbours in peace. - Yours, etc., Maurice Coakley,
The Cloisters, Dublin 6W.