Sir, - I am sure that many Irish people will have felt some satisfaction that their fellow Celts in Scotland voted in favour of the devolution proposals in the recent referendum. How many, though, saw the irony in the fact that in the very week that the issue was decided by a vote in Scotland alone, rather than in a referendum held in the whole island of Britain, the IRA repeated yet again its insistence that the future of the Six Counties can be decided only by an all-Ireland election? Home Rule in Scotland may yet lead to full independence and the partition of Britain, yet only some of the island's inhabitants were consulted; ought not the same logic be applied to Ireland?
Of course, the IRA would reply that Scotland is a nation whereas Northern Ireland is not. But surely the Ulster Protestants - the Ulster Scots - are an ethnic group with an identity distinct from the Gaelic Catholic tradition of the rest of the island, and to try to coerce them into the Irish State by a gerrymandered vote is as much an imperialistic denial of their rights as Britain's past colonial policies in Ireland.
Like many of my fellow Britons, I think Britain's gradual withdrawal from Northern Ireland is likely and desirable. However, I do feel too that Irish nationalists need to think more seriously about what the orange bar in the Tricolour actually symbolises and abandon the rhetoric that effectively brands Britain as an occupying power and the unionists as collaborators.
They might learn lessons from the devolution issue in Britain. Most of us over here are fairly relaxed about devolution and would probably not object to the partition implied by a totally independent Scotland.
If the Blair government is willing to devolve power to Edinburgh, does this not suggest that likewise it would be quite happy to relinquish as much of its power over Northern Ireland as is necessary to secure a happy future for it? And cannot the Irish contemplate a constitution for a united Ireland in which Belfast has a parliament with powers subordinate to the Dublin government, having authority over the nine counties of Ulster where Protestants and Catholics would have greater parity of numbers? Then perhaps the unionists might feel happier about seeing the St Patrick's cross being removed from the Union Jack. - Yours, etc.,
From M. Ghirelli
Hillesden, Buckingham, England.