18 DECEMBER 1971, Page 18

The Irish mess

Sir: Your readers may be interested to know that I have it on the authority of a famous American pundit who is very close to Edward Kennedy that Mr Heath is preparing to do to Ulster what de Gaulle did to Algeria. Ulsterman will be told, so the pundit says, to go back whence they came (which, he adds, is Scotland) or come to reasonable terms with the Irish. And there'll be no two ways about it.

My informant says that violence, although immoral, always pays, particularly when done to the British.

If it does not pay before the next election, this great American thinker states, it will be Mr Wilson who gives the ultimatum to Northern Ireland. But, he insists, it will happen by, so to speak, hook or by crook.

I thought your readers would like to know this. I am sure it explains a lot, although I am not quite sure what.

John Allan May Amberley, Danes Close, Oxshott, Surrey