Loyal Ulster
Sir: Before entirely rejecting the loyalty of Ulster as uncalled for and unwanted let us reflect on the following words from Sir Winston Churchill to Mr J. M. Andrews the retiring Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1943. Referring to 1940 the letter says: "We were alone and single handed had to face the full fury of the German attack, raining down death and destruction on our cities, and still more deadly, seeking to strangle our life by cutting off the entry to our ports of the ships which brought us our food and the weapons we so sorely needed. "Only one great channel of entry remained open. That channel remained open because loyal Ulster gave us the full use of the Northern Irish ports and waters and thus ensured the free working of the Clyde and the Mersey.
"But for the loyalty of Northern Ireland and its devotion to what has now become the cause of thirty nations we should have been confronted with slavery and death, and the light which now shines so strongly throughout the world would have been quenched." Has our friendship, really grown so cold that we can look the other way as the life of Belfast and Londonderry is destroyed and indeed justify our indifference by abusing the great majority of the people of Northern Ireland for continuing to resist their tormentors.
Colin Baskett 30 High Oaks Road,
Welwyn Garden City, Herts.
Sir: The leading article 'For a lasting peace, for an Irish democracy' (July 8) is, if interesting in places, inaccurate in others, and irrelevant as a whole.
Firstly, the UDA may not be regarded by non-Unionist unionists like me as an ideal but it has my support and that of the vast majority of Protestants and atheists, who know that the IRA still stands armed in its own areas and ready to re-engage on its campaign. Secondly, it matters little what your small weekly paper or even the Government of Great Britain itself says about the future of NI. Only the protestant people of the province can settle its future, and no amount of blather from ass-sitting pseudo-liberals in London will move us one inch. We are the masters in our land, all the centres of power — in the genuine sense — belong to us. We do not want Civil War, but will fight it and win it for we realise Whitelaw's peace is quite phoney. In my view, the army could now withdraw.
Ben Madigan Belfast, 14
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