LETTERS Party gap
Sir: Lord Monson (Letters, 5 September) defines 'integration' for Ulster as the har- monisation of its laws, administration, institutions and customs with our own. Now, it may or may not be desirable that there should be legislative and administra- tive uniformity throughout the four parts of the UK; but there is one area in which the current lack of institutional harmonisa- tion means that, pace Lord Monson, the province is not a wholly integral part of the UK.
That area concerns political parties and the party conflict. The insistence by the Labour and Conservative parties on sub- stantially separate electoral systems — the one based soundly on the governing par- ties, the other on Ulster's futile communal parties — means that the province is fatally disconnected from the democratic politics of the country of which it is supposed to be a full part.
This is surely the central issue in the `integration' debate. Should the political rights and opportunities which most of us think of as 'democracy' apply to the UK as a whole, or merely to the UK minus Ulster? Lord Monson is right to point out that were the 17 Northern Ireland MPs to be elected as representatives of the Con- sertative, Labour or SDP/Liberal parties it would lead to greater mutual understand- ing and cross-fertilisation. But this cannot happen unless those parties end their present electoral boycott of the province. They must allow residents of Ulster to join their parties, and must field and encourage Labour and Conservative candidates at the polls.
The recent Coopers & Lybrand opinion survey (commissioned by Channel Four shortly before the election) found that integration — whatever it means — scored higher than any of the other options offered (devolution, independence, united Ireland, etc). But, more Protestants want the national parties to organise in North- ern Ireland.
Andrew Bryson
Press Office, Campaign for Equal Citizenship for Northern Ireland, 114 Lordship Road, London N16
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