Willie Frazer is living in cloud cuckoo land. He has nothing to offer anyone who wants peace so therefore should do us all a favour and leave.
As for going back to the B Specials and sectarianism in every rant he comes out with he embarrasses the people he is supposed to belong to. People have suffered too much to go back to the good old days for him and his ilk and the bad old days for those suppressed by sectarianism.
Loyalist victims campaigners would do well to show him the road and send him on his way, since he makes up stories with his own agenda and expects people to believe his spins.
Let me tell Willie Frazer he is fooling no-one except himself. I live on the border and intend to live here and stay in my own country, which is Ireland.
If he wants to be British he can go and give us all peace as everyone is sick listening to his irrational rants.
I am quite sure the people who inhabit this six counties will be glad to see the back of him and allow people here to get on with their lives .
Why does the media give him publicity to spout his rants of hatred and sectarianism?
KATHLEEN McCABE
Silverbridge, Co Armagh
SF has delivered nothing in moving us closer to united Ireland
Anne Quinn (June 15) accuses me of a habit of engaging in anti-Sinn Féin rants. As a republican, I am hardly likely to avoid criticising those engaged in anti-republicanism – Sinn Féin.
The Sinn Féin leadership told us that war was necessary to achieve a united Ireland. Martin McGuinness told us that it didn’t matter how many votes that Sinn Féin got but that it was the cutting edge of the IRA that would achieve victory. Now they are telling us that because the Government of Ireland Act has been repealed that suddenly there is a peaceful route to a united Ireland. Who are they kidding?
The guarantees given to unionism under the Government of Ireland Act are simply replaced in the GFA, that is that there can be no change in the constitutional status of the six counties unless a majority of those living there agree to it – that is despite the agreement recognising that a majority of people living on the island were in favour of a united Ireland.
It gives, therefore, from the perspective of those who feel that Britain’s occupation of the six counties is illegitimate, which includes Sinn Féin ostensibly, a greater right to the people of the six counties in determining the future of the island than the vast majority of the remainder of the population.
Sinn Féin in its surrender has tried to convince people that it is possible now to achieve a united Ireland peacefully while its unionist counterparts in the British administration that Sinn Féin supports boast that the union has never been stronger. Both can’t be right. As I have rightfully pointed out, since the signing of the GFA, Sinn Féin has not moved one iota closer to convincing people in the six counties to agree to a united Ireland. Its focus has instead moved to electoral success in the Republic. But what its followers seem to be blind to is that any growth in the south is irrelevant regarding a united Ireland since it has given a veto to any support for a united Ireland to a majority in the six counties.
Anne seems to be blind to that and puts, as does Sinn Féin now, the absence of conflict before political, constitutional and social justice.
That in effect relegates Irish citizens in the north to second class citizenship.
The truth of the matter is that those at the helm of Sinn Féin have from the early 1970s promised much but delivered nothing in moving us closer to a united Ireland. We are no closer now that we were then but there were times when the prospect was closer but was dashed after they signed up to the GFA.
The movement towards a united Ireland will come again but Sinn Fein is unlikely to be a part of that.
SEAN O'FIACH
Belfast BT11
Brexit is horrendous backward step to dark ages
There was a period in the history of the north when people with vision – people like John Hume – saw our future as part of the wider European family of nations and for most of his life he worked day and night to encourage us to see beyond our very restricted paradigms.
John’s hard work appeared to be working as an overwhelming number of people north and south endorsed the Good Friday Agreement and our focus was firmly on Europe.
Massive funding came our way to rebuild what others destroyed, big money was available to help redress the impact of partition and there was money to help former combatants adjust to normal life. All was going well or so I thought.
Then came a period when unionists decided to claw back their territorial supremacy and so they began to dig up the solid foundation of progress that had been achieved by John Hume and others willing to work with him. A parallel might be the British digging up the Roman Roads during the period commonly referred to as the dark ages.
Today we see the dismantling of everything that John Hume and others dreamed of.
In common with our apprehension we see the worry, the anxiety and uncertainty on the faces of those Europeans who came here to help us rebuild, to broaden our outlook and make us a truly multicultural society.
They are planning to leave they tell me, to the find a new home in another
European country where they will be welcome with open arms for their skills, their intellect and their influence on changing attitudes and outlooks.
Our First Minister can’t conceal her satisfaction at the outcome of the Brexit vote apparently oblivious to the collapse in the money and stock markets, unaware of the horrendous backward step this will be to what we call the peace process, going back I repeat to the dark ages.
JOHN DALLAT
Kilrea, Co Derry
Knuckle down to facts of life
P Nugent (June 17) writes: ‘The six counties remain locked into the UK through the Acts of Union of1800 and nothing in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 threatens to disturb that position.’
I come to the view that Mr Nugent, like some others, believes that some republican tsunami will sweep in and cleanse this island of those who do not have “the vision”.
The unbroken will reign.
Now there is as I see it a very comfortable comfort zone in Mr Nugent’s thinking. Just hold with the self-confidence that you are right – and why bother? The fly in the ointment is that there are loyalists who think the same but have different ideas about outcomes; that the large majority of the Irish people accept the GFA and that Mr Nugent and others have not given any coherent alternative to the present day Irish condition.
I say to Mr Nugent stop playing games and knuckle down to the facts of life her. There is a diversity throughout Ireland, here we have Irish people who see themselves as British.
Yet if one take an Ireland wide perspective and as republicans do today we see a complex environment that presents challenges that will not be successfully addressed by single stroke solutions.
The unity of Protestant Catholic and dissidenters is the republican challenge and the risks that go with it.
If there is another way let me know.
MANUS McDAID
Derry city
Independent alternatives
Harry Stephenson’s letter (July 5) regarding the word independence – he must have retained his primary school dictionary. My current Collins edition lists eight usage alternatives – inter alia is “not dependant on anything else for function or validity”. This is Scotland 2016.
The obvious Brexit ‘empire’ mentality has delivered to the Scottish voters a great opportunity to cleave (split apart) the infamous 1800 act of union.
BRIAN WILSON
Craigavon, Co Armagh
