Madam, - The Loyal Orange Lodge No 1313 newsletter from which Patsy McGarry quoted in your edition of September 2nd welcomes "moves by the Grand Orange Lodge to promote the Orange tradition, especially that of the Ulster Scots".
I hope the Grand Lodge will be generous enough to acknowledge that there was an earlier and arguably less divisive Ulster-Scots tradition which was opposed to the Orange cause.
William Orr's cry from the scaffold "Countrymen Unite!" (1797) was the kind of dangerous thinking that the Order was established to defeat only two years before.
The newsletter goes on to suggest that the Anglo-Irish tradition should be promoted as well. I can imagine no better person to undertake this task than Mr Julian Ellison. His moving letter of September 5th illustrates perfectly the apparent contradictions which are woven through that tradition, but which largely resolve themselves when prejudice is banished.
I hope that the newly confident LOL1313 agrees. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL DRURY, Avenue Louise, Brussels, Belgium.