ihm Letters
Belfast Riots Alexander Walker The Freudian Schism A. a. 'Baker The Day of the Dons P. R. Gayton The Movement and the Group Douglas Hill Unfair to Britannia Robert T. Elson Afterthought on Cuckolds S. C. Butler Cheques and Balances H. D. Wilson, H. Whitethread Sanctions and South Africa R. F. biirrey Space for News R. M. C. Nott A Buddha Relic High Commissioner for Ceylon Railway Closures Max Taylor Why Not Scotch? Robert Hartman In the Gorbals Graham Riches Recruits for Nursing Miss Barbara Denton A Question of Rank Kenneth J. Milner The War That Cannot Be Won A. Langford The Future of Steel S. D. A bramoff Keith Douglas John Waller, G. S. Fraser, J. C. Hall Pemberton Billing Michael I. Bird Respect for Wine Kenneth Ames
BELFAST RIOTS
SIR,—It is bitterly regrettable that Mr. Clive Daven- port's indignation over Northern Ireland as a second Cyprus or latter-day Hungary did not take into account the lives lost on the Ulster-Eire border directly due to IRA night raids and daylight am- bushes. Only three years ago, I recall, police barracks—as they still have to be called—were sand- bagged, country lanes made impassable by sharpened stakes. and the sten-gun practices of B-special con- stabulary recruits rattled around the sand spits of Lough Neagh. But the Ulster people did not provoke the acts that made these defensive measures neces- sary. If, after 400 years, they are not as indigenous to their quarter of Ireland as many of the natives of the South, whose Government opted out of the United Kingdom, then when does the idea of nationality begin?
Forbidding the display of an alien and until very recently unfriendly Government's flag is a correct precaution against civil strife—how correct the riots showed. As one who grew up in Ulster, I know of no 'ruling class'—indeed, the country's classlessness is its most pleasing feature.
Protestantism is the religion of the majority: and while I regret that the Unionist Party is so hermeti- cally sealed to this faith that a Labour opposition has not developed, I do not believe it results in the Catholic minority being served only the 'crumbs' of the welfare services and jobs. It is not persecution, but the bigger choice of opportunities available that makes Ulster natives, of both faiths, leave their coun- try for 'across the water.' I know. I am one of them.
ALEXANDER WALKER
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