Madam, - Irish patriots North and South will have welcomed the comments of Matt Doyle of the National Graves Association (July 5th) about the need to cherish and respect our national flag.
Mr Doyle rightly chides those who have reduced our national flag to a symbol of greed and commercialism. The National Graves Association should also condemn political groups and parties which show a total lack of respect for the Tricolour. I am deeply offended when I drive through some republican areas of the North and see how the flag is abused.
Too often, it is flown from every other lamp post as a way of marking out territory. Worst of all, these flags are often left to rot away. This shows a complete lack of respect for our national flag and is no different from the actions of loyalists who provocatively put up Union Jacks in mixed areas.
I get angry when I see pictures of Sinn Féin representatives on election days, in count centres such as the RDS, waving the Tricolour as it if it belonged to themselves alone.
It does not. It belongs to the people of Ireland. The Tricolour should not be used not a political weapon but should be cherished by both traditions on this island. Charles Stewart Parnell said Ireland could never be united until the differences among our own people were confronted and accommodated. The Tricolour represents this historic accommodation.
This point was made even more powerfully by John Hume in 1984: "Ireland must be the most remarkable country on earth: our flag is a symbol, not of military heroics or of another ancient sources of pride, but of our most fundamental problem and the dynamics of its solution.
"The 'Orange', surely an alien element in the traditional national concept, is given equal place with the 'Green', and they are held together, not in tension nor in war but in the harmony of peace. It is the flag of a creative and peaceful future; whether we like it or not, it is as much the property of the Orangeman as it is of the nationalist. The flag stands for the accommodation in harmony of both the Green and the Orange."
It appears that some republicans remain colour-blind to these sentiments. - Yours, etc.,
TIM ATTWOOD, Andersonstown Road, Belfast 11.