Sir, - As part of our reaction to the sheer inhumanity of the scenes in Ardoyne, we in the New Ireland Group suggested (September 8th) that the people of Northern Ireland were entitled to know in precise terms why the Ardoyne loyalists were involving themselves in such a barbaric form of protest. Violence of this degree is unlikely to erupt in a vacuum.
Well, on BBC radio's Good Morning Ulster recently, we did hear from members of the loyalist community who painted a very sad picture of how they had been pressured and targeted by neighbours and others from the nationalist community.
It was sickening to listen to the litany of abuse to which they had been subjected and disappointing, to say the least, that no one had seemed able or willing to express their frustrations and fears clearly and often enough to have them addressed sympathetically long before they erupted in such grotesque fashion.
Their feelings could be summed up in the statement, "No one seems to care about us." Maybe the rest of us have chosen to be deaf; if so, it is time we started to listen.
It is a number of years since Jack Redpath and others published a seminal account of social marginalisation and deprivation in "Protestant" communities. As a public representative, Chris McGimpsey did his best to raise awareness about the conditions described in that report, especially loss of self-esteem, poor social conditions, educational under-achievement and diminishing opportunity of employment in traditional workplaces. PUP and UDP representatives have also tried hard to highlight such issues to a wider audience.
To all of this it must be added that the unionist middle class seems to have lost touch with the less fortunate members of its tribe and the latter have not shared the kind of articulate, skilful and determined leadership given by Sinn FΘin and leading members of the SDLP to the nationalist community.
Perhaps, therefore, it is time for all members of the unionist, loyalist, Protestant middle class, however belatedly, to engage with the people living in the estates. The last thing the latter need or want is to be patronised, but they might benefit if certain important forms of expertise were made more available to them.
Middle-class people keen to have their towns twinned with attractive locations in Europe and North America might consider if, in our particular circumstances, social alienation could not be alleviated through the twinning of communities of plenty and communities of need much nearer to home. - Yours etc.,
John Robb, New Ireland Group, Charlotte Street, Ballymoney, Co Antrim.