Sir, - The forthcoming referendum to delete Articles Two and Three is the biggest sell-out in Irish history. We may as well suggest going to Glasnevin and spitting on the graves of Pearse and Connolly and all those who gave their life's blood for the independence and freedom of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, and it also means that Robert Emmet's epitaph will never be written.
For the first time, even the nationalists are being asked to accept the legitimacy of the six county statelet as a political entity. We can no longer say the six counties are Irish, but English people who do not live here will claim them as British through the Act of Union (1800) and the Northern Ireland Constitutional Powers Act 1973.
The coupling of Yes with peace is blackmail. I believe in peace too, but peace with justice. The last time there was a peace treaty a civil war ensued and I believe the same could happen again; indeed if trouble were to erupt and Northern nationalists were being victimised and discriminated against, if the Yes vote wins we could say nothing because we would have excluded ourselves from so doing. The Irish Government could not even bring it up at the UN or the EU courts.
There will be no peace without justice. It is not justice to ask the Irish people to give away part of their own country. - Yours, etc., Maria Buckley,
Athlone, Co Westmeath.