Sir: The minority of the population who actively profess the
Christian religion can, it is apparent, no longer agree how religious education should be carried out; but they remain determined that their beliefs shall continue to be taught to children too young to realise they are being indoctrinated.
The only course consistent with religious freedom is to finish the work started by the Toleration Act by the abolition of Christian education and worship in schools maintained at the public expense. The very minimum necessary to make our claim to be free of religious discrimination anything less than ,,a farce is to permit pupils over fourteen to withdraw from religious education without narental consent, to forbid teachers to put pressure on such pupils to stay or to go, and to extend religious education to treat all religions neutrally; there is no need to suggest that one religion is better than another. As for religious assembly, one would hope that the Churches would be happy to see it go; it is hard to believe that extorted prayers are of any value to them. If it must remain then it, too, should be as far as possible secularised and older pupils allowed to withdraw if they so wish.
It sounds drastic, but, when it has been done, to force children to learn about religious beliefs, which are essentially private, or to force them to engage in religious worship (which is even more private) will appear as fantastic as to deny office to those who cannot sign the Thirty-Nine Articles. Andrew Turek Junior Common Room, Hertford College, Oxford rule,' you state that "direct rule is the direct consequence of Stormont misrule." One wonders how you arrived at such a conclusion, nearing in mind that the position in Northern Ireland has c9risiderably worsened since the Stormont Parliament was suspended. The British Government are directly responsible for the misrule since Stormont Parliament was disbanded early last year. The disbanding of the ' B ' men at the end of 1969 was also a great mistake by the Labour Government in their plan to hand Northern Ireland over to the Republic of Ireland.Since 1969 over 700 people, mostly innocent, have Peen foully murdered. Surely nothing is gained by appeasement and parleying with murderers. Mr David Howell, MP, stated a few weeks ago that the Orange ticket is not the one that will be on the table in 1973, as it was in 1912. One wonders what ticket will be on the table, will it be the Lynch one? Or maybe it might be a Senator Kennedy ticket? This letter will hardly see the light of day in your columns seeing your periodical has become very anti-Ulster.
Stanley Amberson 30 Stratford Street, Leeds
Previous page
