A chara, - I think many of the correspondents who wrote to your paper suggesting that the parents in Ardoyne should have taken their children by a different route to avoid the protesting loyalists are misguided.
One of these, Olive Travers - who is, of course, entitled to her view (September 8th), condemns the parents who took their children to school by the front door. I would suggest that she is too far removed from the situation to understand the motivation of parents in that community who conscientiously decided to take their children to school along the usual road and through the front door.
As I understand it, their intention was not to subject children to any further fear or trauma but to determine that never again in that part of Belfast, or anywhere else in the North, would children be subjected to second-class citizenship and be told they could not go on a particular road or live in a particular place.
Of course it was traumatic for the children and the parents, but these children have been subjected to trauma from their earliest days-with the constant presence of British helicopters and armed soldiers, not to mention the loyalist pipe-bomb and fire-bomb attacks on their homes.
I see the courage of the parents in doing what they did as heroic, because they are standing up to the bully. It is never good psychology to give in to bullies, because it is well known that they will bully even more. While I respect the decision of parents who took their children through the back door, I have to say that I admire the courage and determination of those who ran the gauntlet. I believe that, by their determination and heroic action, they have taken a stand against the bully and have exposed the way Catholics have been treated for years. They have also shown the need for new protective measures for Catholics in the North to be introduced and implemented by both governments in London and Dublin, supervised by the United Nations and accountable to the European Court. - Is mise,
Father Joe McVeigh, An Garast·n, Co Fermanagh.