Sir, - While Gerry Adams assures his followers that a Yes vote for the Good Friday agreement is a step nearer a united Ireland, David Trimble is equally insistent that voting Yes strengthens the union with Britain. The probability is that neither is correct. The new Assembly will surely become a centre of political power in the province which will gain an increased awareness of its own distinctive self-identity that will be neither British nor Irish.
The rising generation of youth will hopefully turn away from a past of fear, suspicion, and tribal hatred, and commit itself to the success of the new political arrangement. Catholics may well find they have more in common with their Protestant neighbours than with the citizens of the Republic, while as devolution proceeds in Britain, Protestants may be as enthusiastic for freedom from Westminster as the Scots already are.
Furthermore, in a united Ireland, Sinn Fein can be nothing more than a regional faction, but in the Belfast Assembly, they may yet be the largest single political party, and once their representatives and voters have the power to control affairs in the province, they might find it difficult to surrender that power to a distant Dublin government.
Within two or three decades, a Northern Ireland that has enjoyed prosperity, peace, and autonomy, may well be ready to contemplate becoming a sovereign state completely free of both London and Dublin. - Yours, etc., Mike Ghirelli,
Hillesden, Buckingham.