Anger or argument
Sir: Though your leading article ('React in anger', 14 November) is nominally pegged to our recent joint publication with Friends of the Union Two Years of Peace, Stability & Reconciliation by Sir Charles Carter, you devote almost no space to the actual policy-proposals discussed in the paper.
Sir Charles, a distinguished English academic with experience in public affairs on both sides of the Irish Sea, is free from the understandable and predictable but counter-productive negativism which has marred the Unionist reaction. He begins from the thesis that the Hillsborough Agreement has proved a counter- productive failure in terms of its own avowed desiderated objectives. But since the balance of forces which favoured the Agreement from whatever motives remain strong enough to prevent its abrogation, mere negativism will not avail the Ulster loyalists or their sympathisers. It follows that the Agreement's critics must find a way forward within and con- sonant with the letter of the Agreement, which would be acceptable to the Unionist majority and the British Government and which the Irish government would have no overt cause to reject. Sir Charles argues for the following steps.
Find ways of associating representatives of the majority and minority in Anglo-Irish discussions, e.g. border security. Imple- ment and further article two, which takes devolved matters out of the purview of the agreement. In this way, the Agreement would become self-liquidating in those clauses which most stick in Unionist gul- lets. Make the agreement symmetrical by permitting the UK Government to com- ment on Irish affairs.
The evolution in Unionist thinking away from sheer negativism was exemplified by Friends of the Union co-sponsorship and the association of several leading main- stream Unionists including James Molyneaux, their parliamentary leader. This rather than reacting in anger is our message. Readers should be made aware of it; then argue against it if you will. Alfred Sherman
Chairman, Policy-Search, 14 Tufton Street, London SW1
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