14 MAY 1977, Page 17

God save Ulster

Sir: Your Editorial, A New Policy for Ulster, asks for the necessary steps required to extirpate terrorism, in other words, for a full military campaign against the IRA. But this is what the Loyalist population have been asking for, pleading for, for the past seven years and more, so in a sense, it is nothing new. But I am afraid the will is not there, or rather, not here in Britain, to carry out any such policy. And that, precisely, is why Mr Paisley called for a general strike in Ulster, in order that seven further years of violence, and the war-weary collapse of the province, may be avoided. The British Government would not even close the border, on the specious grounds that it would be too difficult to do so. Everything is too difficult, there is simply a general slide into – as you hope – oblivion. Or that somehow Ulster will go away.

And the other demand of Mr Paisley? The setting up of Stormont again? Majority rule? Oh fine, in Rhodesia. We're all for it, aren't we? You have Dr Owen sitting down with Russians and Chinese to step up the black war against the white Rhodesians. Splendid. But majority rule for Ulster? Oh fie, fie! No such thing is in your minds, hardly! Or in the minds of the Americans, of Mr Carter and company, either! The fact is that a 'united Ireland', united by force and the death of ten thousand Protestants, is the Foreign Office's aim, which it hugs dearly to its hot little heart! No 'two nations' for them, any more than there is in Dublin . . . What shall we do with those million or so Protestants? Break 'em up? Exhaust them by bombing? The IRA is simply acting as a "spearhead" for both London and Dublin in this matter, so why mount a military

campaign against them? Just `contain' them. (And let them show that they are not contained.) All this is so disgusting that it is almost impossible to write of the betrayal by Britain of the North of Ireland without vomiting. Weak, seedy, down-at-heel, shabby old Britain –what could you expect of a pig but a grunt! Faugh, my gorge rises at it! You are really sick-making. You, and in Dublin Fianna Gael, Fianna Fail, and the rest of them, all busily working to bring down the Ulstermen. Well, God save Ulster, and the Protestants thereof, is what I say.

Ewart MiThe 46 De Parys Avenue Bedford