Sir, - As an immigrant, my first response to David Trimble's comments were emotional and, I think, typical: "How dare he say these things about this country, about my new country?" After all, I am part of that 5 per cent that does not fit the mould, and I have enjoyed nothing but the warmest of welcomes here.
As a historian of migration, and the descendant of European emigrants to the multicultural United States, however, I also have another response to Mr Trimble's provocative remarks. And it is that we cannot yet answer whether he is right or wrong. This is a nation in transition, and so the question we must face is not who we are, but who we will become as we meet the challenge of increased immigration and increased diversity.
While Britain, as Mr Trimble says, is now multicultural, it should not be forgotten that its diversity came about despite tremendous political and legal resistance (one has only to think of Enoch Powell's infamous "rivers of blood" speech, or Britain's ongoing tightening of access to passports for former colonial subjects).
The question for us is not whether we will become multicultural - Ireland, as Micheál Martin so eloquently argued in his recent speech at UCC, has always been a diverse society, and will only become more so over time - but how.
Do we work furiously to close our borders to foreigners? Do we ostracise pregnant black women on the assumption that they are "exploiting a loophole" in our nationality laws, while remaining perfectly happy that millions of the grandchildren of our own emigrants, who presumably have a "racial" tie to Ireland, but who may never have set foot on this island, possess Irish passports? Or do we uphold both the Fajujonu decision and its underlying principles - that it is a basic human right that children have access to the citizenship of the nation in which they are born, regardless of the race or national origin of their parents, and that this should not come at the expense of family unity?
Will we uphold these principles with pride, knowing they set us apart as the most advanced nation in the EU on the issue of citizenship and nationality, and call on our neighbours to follow our example? Will we back up this advanced position with provisions for economic immigration, recognising both that economic migration will benefit us and, more importantly, that the existence of such provisions in the immigrant nations of the world have in the past saved millions of our own citizens from extreme deprivation and even death?
Mr Trimble's comments were provocative, to be sure. The question now is what they provoke us to do. - Yours, etc.,
JOANNE MARIE MANCINI,
Cobh,
Co Cork.
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Sir, - Ruth Dudley Edwards (Opinion, March 14th) is too modest. Not only is she "a friend of David Trimble's", she is also a sympathetic historian of the Orange Order and of the British Foreign Office.
These achievements do not disqualify her from being the author of a defence of David Trimble, but they are probably more relevant to her friendship than her self-proclaimed but distant Dublin "Catholic nationalist" background.
Ms Edwards refers to "Mr and Mrs Ulster Prod" and "dissident southern Protestants". Protestants who disagree with Trimble are the followers of "tame clerics" who admit to being "happy" in the South. The only good Prod, it would appear, is a unionist Prod. This seems slightly monocultural to me.
I also find puzzling the assertion that "Trimble is the first to admit the sectarianism of Northern Ireland". Really? This was not very evident when loyalist thugs were preventing small Catholic children from going to school in Belfast recently. The Orange Order, of which Trimble is a member, and which sends 125 delegates to his party conference, has rules that underpin many years of sectarianism.
Where is Trimble's suggestion that the Order has no place in the Unionist Party or even that it should change its rules? Unionism's concept of sectarianism is that Protestants hate Roman Catholics and vice versa. It is effectively a unionist view of the "natural order". There is no admission on Trimble's part that sectarianism is a product of the anti-popery that is a constituent part of unionism.
There are pluralist voices from both North and South capable of criticising sectarianism in Southern society. They do not require a lecture from the leader of a tradition that shows no sign of casting off its even more deeply rooted sectarian heritage.
The recent referendum was largely voted down by people who are members of a church whose rules that, in thought if not in deed, they disobey (in varying degrees in relation to contraception, divorce and abortion). They show much more sign of being able to act on the basis of individual conscience than most of Mr Trimble's supporters. - Yours, etc.,
NIALL MEEHAN,
Offaly Road,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.