LETTERS
From Anthony Cowdy, Richard Balfe, Pro- fessor Max Belog, Mary C. McWhirter, Bill Grundy, Yvonne C. R. Brock, Dr Donald M. Bowers, Captain Threadneedle
Unionists under pressure
Sir: In 'Unionists under pressure' (13 June) your Northern Ireland correspondent, Martin Wallace, refers to one of the several so-called 'unity' pacts made by traditional anti-Unionist politicians. He suggests 'it is doubtful' (my italics) 'if this latest move will help to break down the sharp political division between Protestants and Catholics.'
Mr Wallace is widely respected here, both for his acuity and for his rare talent for understatement. But there can be no doubt that such sterile anti-partitionist pacts will, if anything, solidify sectarian divisions.
The particular one referred to, in Lon- donderry, amounted to little more than a piece of temporary blackmail by the openly sectarian and discredited Nationalist party. The manoeuvre has already demonstrated that it cannot unite even Catholics in the area, let alone attract Protestant support.
Yet the matter of alternatives to the Unionist party cannot be dismissed. We in Northern Ireland are faced with the im- minent total collapse of the ineradicably sec- tarian official Unionist machine. It has eroded all confidence in party politics as understood in the rest of the United Kingdom, and has largely exacerbated the divisions upon which it formerly thrived. Only last weekend Major Chichester-Clark tacitly acknowledged the basic fact of life—spelled out by the Alliance party last spring—that there is now a government in Northern Ireland whose reform programme is still moving in a direction almost diametrically opposed to that of the party ostensibly supporting it.
It is now beyond dispute that a section of this un-unifiable party will shortly find its natural home under Mr Paisley's banner, in a united Ultra-Unionist and Protestant party, opposed even to fundamental democratic reforms. The prospect need not be viewed with alarm—far from it. The isolation of this anti-democratic minority will leave the way clear for the success of Northern Ireland's first non-sectarian, con- stitutional, and inherently progressive governing party.
The Alliance party. being concerned above all with installing a viable devolved govern- ment at Stormont, decided to divert none of its resources to the relatively irrelevant, and inevitably sectarian, contest over twelve seats at Westminster. There are fifty-two seats at Stormont, and we need only twenty-seven of them to solve 'the Northern Ireland problem' once and for all. Our electoral support, being made up of both the moderate Protestants and that substantial majority of Northern Irish Catholics who approve of our link with Britain, is a natural majority over Republicanism or even a somewhat ex- panded Paisleyism.
Anthony Cowdy The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, 6 Cromwell Road, Belfast.
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