MICHAEL DRURY,
Madam, - Mr Trimble being an intelligent and cultivated man, we should not dismiss out of hand his comments on the origins of the Irish State. It is not incorrect or insulting to say that, a century ago, the Catholicism of the majority of the Irish people and the consequent disabilities they had endured (rather than the Catholic Church as such, which generally favoured the status quo) were important elements in their wish to be independent. The long frustration of that wish by Britain had given rise to widespread anti-British sentiment, not directed against the plain people of Britain but rather against British rule in Ireland (coercion underpinning privilege and mismanagement) and against the idea that the people of Ireland, or any group among them, were a British people.
It was not until they approved the Belfast Agreement in 1998 that the people of the Republic finally accepted that any of the people of Ireland who wished to do so had the right to choose to be British as well as, or instead of, being Irish. As to the scarcity of Union flags, I wonder if one sees many Soviet flags in the Baltic States!
Although he was addressing American readers, Mr Trimble overlooked a third component of the struggle for Irish independence - an ideal of equality inspired by the American and French revolutions. Ulster Dissenters once supported this ideal, as their cousins in America had done, but during the 19th century they largely abandoned it. Whether this change was caused by or the cause of increasing sectarianism is perhaps a contentious question, but in any case Mr Trimble's analysis can be turned on its head and applied with some justice to Northern Ireland: the anti-Catholic and pro-British sentiments prevalent in that area led a majority of its famously self-reliant people to strive for dependent rather than independent status! - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL DRURY, Avenue Louise, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium.