Sir, - I was dismayed by Frank Millar's Opinion page pieces of January 20th and 21st. Received opinion in Dublin and London seems to be that unionists were naive not to foresee that the Good Friday Agreement would lead inevitably to the sort of RUC reforms announced last week. The same received opinion fails to appreciate how fundamentally this issue has shaken unionist faith in the agreement as a basis for reconciliation and political progress.
Among unionists, those of us who voted for the agreement believed that we ought to include former terrorists in government and embrace cross-border institutions for three main reasons:
that it would permanently stop republican violence;
that it would lead to a pluralist and tolerant society in Northern Ireland;
that it ensured that the principle of consent was accepted by the British government, the Irish Government and republicans.
However, we unionists now fear that we were duped, not least because republicans are rapidly eroding our confidence in each of these three points.
Take violence first. Frank Millar writes about decommissioning (January 20th January) as if it were simply a bargaining chip. Memories of republican violence are perhaps fading in the Republic and Britain, but those of us living in Northern Ireland can recall bombings, ambushes and doorstep murders all too clearly. We also recognise that nationalists have suffered badly from loyalist violence and rightly fear it. Hence, with the objective of making everyone in our society feel safe, unionists are insisting on disarmament. ive, particularly since republicans do not seem exclusively committed to non-violent means of pursuing their objectives? On the very day that RUC reform was being debated in the Commons, Gerry Adams was carrying the coffin of an IRA man who had murdered an RUC officer.
Our confidence in the Good Friady Agreement as the precursor of a pluralist and tolerant society has also been shaken by other recent republican actions. In fact, unionists are now the community which feels least esteemed; for republicans, "parity of esteem" seems to mean "humiliation of unionists". The hounding of Father Faul in Carrickmore for daring to convene a community meeting with the police and the forced cancellation of the Duchess of Abercorn's visit to a Catholic primary school are just two instances of Sinn Fein's persistent anti-unionist agitation.
Sinn Fein continually traduces unionists and represents our traditions - the wearing of poppies, the flying of the union flag on public buildings - as oppressive symbols. This is why the RUC's name and cap-badge are such potent issues: we see Sinn Fein opposition to them as confirmation that republicans are not committed to pluralism or tolerance. We think of these not as sectarian symbols, but as a simple consequence of Northern Ireland's constitutional status as part of the UK. In our darkest moments, we even fear that Sinn Fein's advocacy of RUC reform has the objective of leaving unionists defenceless, should republicans decide that "tactical use of armed strategy" is expedient at some point in the future.
This is why the master of spin, Mr Mandelson, may have made a monumental error in the timing of his announcement of RUC reform. It may well be that, to those outside Northern Ireland - such as British or Irish Government Ministers and Irish Times journalists - a "blind man on a galloping horse" could have seen this coming. What Mr Mandelson doesn't see coming is the consequence of Mr Trimble's possible defeat in the UUC vote on February 12th. His comment, as quoted by Mr Millar on February 21st, today sounds extraordinarily complacent:
"[The de Chastelain report] makes the meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council relatively unimportant. I don't regard that as a great staging post."
So much for parity of esteem. I remember another occasion when a British minister was similarly, though not so subtly, contemptuous of unionist opinion. It was Harold Wilson in 1974: "Who do these people think they are, sponging off the British government ?" The Sunningdale Executive fell within a week. - Yours, etc.,
David Boal, University Street, Belfast 7.