British Plan for Ireland

Barry White’s article (Opinion, Nov. 17), “A British Plan to End an Agony in Ireland,” although apparently sympathetic, cannot avoid the conclusion that “the signing of the Anglo-Irish agreements can only make a bad situation worse.”

No one likes the plan, and no one is likely to support it. It neither guarantees the Catholics reunification with the republic, nor does it guarantee the Protestants permanent union with Great Britain. It does not offer Ireland sovereignty over Belfast, nor does it offer the Catholics any real hope of equal opportunity. All it does do is provide something new to justify the endless, senseless killing that threatens to turn Northern Ireland into another Lebanon.

Perhaps, as White observes, “doing nothing is also dangerous,” but why not develop a plan that has some hope of success?

We are told that Ulster is comprised of six counties containing 900,000 Protestant unionists and 600,000 Catholic nationalists who can be expected to continue hating and killing each other as long as they are forced to cohabit that arbitrary chunk of the Emerald Isle. Wouldn’t it be logical to just move all the Catholic nationalists to the southern two or three counties and all the Protestant unionists to the northern three or four counties (depending on existing demographics etc.) and re-arbitrate the border with the Irish Republic? Sure there would be disruptions and disgruntlements, but everyone would get what they say they want.

If they won’t buy that, then they already have what they really want. A curse on both their houses, and to hell with them.

ALEXANDER W. FERGUSON

Whittier