Sir, - As always, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn gives us plenty of food for thought in her piece (May 30th) on decommissioning. There is one point, however, on which I would take issue with her: her fundamental premise is that "It's not just this island's northeast corner that has changed. North and South people have taken their prejudices and put them to one side."
Oh, really?
As an Irish Protestant I feel bound to broach the issue of prejudice with the greatest possible humility, given our poor record through succeeding generations. But I trust that I am not therefore precluded from offering any opinion on the big issues that currently face the citizens of these islands.
It seems to me that there is one central tenet in nationalist thinking that has yet to be tackled openly and with complete honesty, namely the "Non-Britishness" of the Irish people. While I sympathise fully with the nationalist assertion of the right of self-determination, while I support unreservedly the impulse to shake off domination by a more powerful neighbour, I nevertheless hold that it is simply untrue to claim that the Irish people are not at all British.
What they are certainly not is supporters of the monarchy (fine by me), loyalists to the Union flag (nor am I), Westminster electors (No problem). But if one is prepared to take a dispassionate look at such formative things as our legal system, our Civil Service, our diet - not forgetting our highway code, the television we watch, our pubs (with their whiskey and beer), the list could go on - it seems difficult to argue that we are not part of a broader "British" kaleidoscope.
I put the designation in inverted commas because I concede that the combined efforts of ideologically-driven Irish nationalists, hyper-sensitive Ulster unionists and a stuffy UK establishment have contributed to a radical narrowing down of its connotations. What we really need in these exciting times of change, with a "Council of the Isles" in the offing, is a serious attempt to find a suitably non-threatening, all-embracing name for our archipelago and its inhabitants. The Anglo-Celtic Isles? Inhabited by Anglo-Celts?
How would prejudices (on both sides of the Irish Sea) cope with that sort of appellation? - Yours, etc., Ivan Crampton,
1950 Kraainem, Belgium.