Sir, - I was surprised to read in Monika Unsworth's report on Sinn Fein's programme for government in the North (December 13th) a reference to "unionist emblems such as the crown and the Red Hand of Ulster" which the report says are proposed by SF for removal from administrative buildings.
The Red Hand of Ulster may have been appropriated in recent times by certain extreme elements of unionism but it has been for many centuries the emblem of the O'Neills of Ulster and has been included as such in the insignia of county and district councils in Tyrone, the home of the O'Neills, and in numerous other contexts. It is derived of course from the dextra Dei, the right hand of God - a symbol of power and protection which is so depicted on the ancient high crosses of Monasterboice and Clonmacnois. In modern times the same symbol occurs, usually with a nimbus or halo of light, in missals and Mass booklets.
The transmutation of the dextra Dei into a red hand or a bloody red hand (which is also a left hand) may be ascribed, perhaps, to such works as Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, where the story of the bloody hand rightly belongs - in the sphere of mythology.
Far from being a unionist emblem (except through conquest or misappropriation) the Red Hand has a long history in Irish nationalism from its first recorded armorial appearance on the seal of Aodh Ramhar O Neill, "Rex Hibernicorum Ultonie", in the 14th century. When the Young Irelander Thomas Francis Meagher brought a silken flag of green, white and orange from Paris to Dublin in 1848, he is reported as having suggested that the red hand of Ulster be included on the white centre, so that "beneath its folds the hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood".
Might I suggest in the current debate about the appropriate emblems to be displayed by a reformed RUC that the Red Hand of Ulster would suffice? After all, it is worn proudly and with no evident antipathy by both Tyrone Gaelic footballers and Ulster rugby teams. Those who would be reluctant to recognise it as a symbol of the O'Neills could surely see the dextra Dei as standing very appropriately "for God and Ulster". - Is mise, Proinsias O Conluain,
Cluain Tarbh, Baile Atha Cliath 3.