LETTERS Putting up
Sir: I was interested to read Charles Moore's Diary piece (12 November) rela- ting to the application by North Down Model Conservative Association to affiliate to the National Union of the Party. That application has, since Mr Moore wrote, been rejected.
Mr Moore, not Mr Peter Brooke the Conservative Party chairman whom he castigates for his remarks about the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is the one with the Irish logic. Were Con- servative candidates to stand throughout Northern Ireland the effect would certainly be to improve the chances of Sinn Fein and SDLP candidates. There is very little evi- dence indeed that Conservative candidates would attract substantial Catholic support: so our intervention would do nothing to change what Mr Moore describes as the `sectarian' nature of politics in Ulster. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that our candidates would be successful. Why Mr Moore should object to the party chair- man's pointing out these facts is beyond me.
Mr Moore has, I think and indeed hope, sympathies with the Conservative view- point. Conservatives generally understand that politics inevitably reflects the culture and history of a country — or a province and that these cannot be re-created over- night in the more liberal image which some would like simply because that seems attractive. It is because the parties on the mainland have long understood that the central issues in Northern Ireland's politics are fundamentally different from those dominant in the rest of the United King- dom, that they do not put up candidates in the province.
Peter Morrison
Deputy Chairman, Conservative Central Office, 32 Smith Square, London SW1
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