Dear Editor
Dear Editor Ulster Marvin Overby's article, "Hope on Ulster's Political Fringes" (NL, January 9), is at once inconsistent, unenlightening and outstandingly naive. The classificatory terminology,...
...But while it is true that the di-chotomous political groupings in Northern Ireland maintain positions of intransigence and obscurantism, it is also true that these atavistic attitudes are encouraged in several official documents produced by Westminster, from the Government of Ireland Act to the Downing Street Declaration of 1968...
...These documents, guaranteeing the Loyalist community that their every wish (as regards their constitutional status) is law, are a commitment to the majoritarianism upon which the state was founded and is maintained...
...The disgraceful social conditions in what has been referred to as "John Bull's slum" will only be rectified by political action, not military might...
...Walter Long reported to the British cabinet in 1920: "The people in the inner circles hold the view that the new province should consist of the six counties, the idea being that the inclusion of Donegal, Cavan and Mon-aghan would provide such an access of strength to the Roman Catholic Party that the supremacy of the Unionists would be seriously threatened...
...A viable solution in Northern Ireland must be preceded by a will to circumscribe violence as the only effective political tool, and can only be achieved by the removal of the British guarantee to Loyalist supremacy...
...Given that the border was drawn up with the express purpose of asserting Protestant domination, attempts at substantial reform remove its very raison d'etre and will be violently resisted...
...One is further informed that "Protestant Unionist I Loyalist parties have never budged from the belief that Ulster should remain British," yet in the same column Overby points out that "the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party advocates an independent state in Ulster...
...In his analysis he ignores the fact that the very foundations of the Northern Ireland state were built upon a crude majoritarianism which was to be maintained, despite its inbuilt poverty, providing an oppressed Catholic substrata that would delude the Protestant population into feeling upwardly mobile...
...A statement issued by nine Westminster MPs in 1976 states: "While sectarianism and privilege are protected by Britain, Ulster Unionists do not have to face the reality that their future depends upon finding a political structure that does not depend upon British arms and money to hold it together...
...The classificatory terminology, which is both ambiguous and contradictory, places groups dedicated to the overthrow of the state in the category of "constitutionalists," while the adherents of reform within the system who refer to themselves as "nonpolitical" are described as "activist leaders...
...The search for solutions that will restore some degree of normality in the six counties is inhibited by an obstacle whose importance is reflected in the aphorisms of the Loyalist siege mentality, "Not an inch" and "No surrender...
...This would involve a statement of intent to withdraw the British forces and to disarm the Ulster defense regiment, thereby providing an environment for negotiation...
...Independence has indeed been the espoused aim of the UDA for some time...
...The increase in paramilitary action to which Over-by refers continues despite the number of "hopeful initiatives" by the "reconciliationists," and proves the bankruptcy of reformist solutions within the existent state...
...Victoria, B. C. Martin Boyle Department of Political Science University of Victoria...
...It is in his eulogy of those prepared to work within the system, "to mitigate Ulster's agony," that the author displays his total misunderstanding of the Irish situation...
...As his reference to "the two Irelands" demonstrates, he approaches the situation half way along the causal chain...
...The six counties annexed from the original nine of Ulster constituted the first gerrymander...
...There is not now and never has been any compulsion for the Loyalist ascendancy to negotiate or compromise, for their decisions are backed by the force of the British Army...
...The border issue, which Overby refers to as "the only absolutely intractable problem in Ulster," must be resolved before any attempt at conflict resolution can be made...
Vol. 67 • February 1984 • No. 4
