Sir: As well employ sanity and logic to penetrate the
bovine incomprehension of a wounded Bull. Your editorial ' " For war it is ", it it?' (November 20) illuminates the darkness with such brilliance that perhaps it cannot fail to influence events. But can even The Spectator hope to goad Mr Maudling? "It ain't that I wouldn't. It ain't that I couldn't. It's just that I'm the laziest man in town."
Your article has aroused me sufficiently to ask for space for the viewpoint, at least tolerably representative of one small section. of East Anglia, of the Protestant Englishman of one Catholic and Apostolic Church who has never set foot in Northern Ireland, so can view with detached objectivity a scene into which he has been projected so vividly whether on the grounds of moral obligation or undefined guilt.
Initially, despite misgivings, I accepted the role of the British army in Ulster. But the introduction of internment without direct rule under a divisive, partisan government has inevitably led the oppressed minority" to dress up their terrorist campaign as a national war of liberation.
The appalling dilemma of the army, who have acquitted themselves so magnificently in Ulster, appears to have induced a form of incipient paranoia in some of her leaders or at any rate spokesmen. As a tranquil citizen of the UK I am rendered speechless by the mirage of explosive terrorism hovering on our horizon as it encroaches into Britain itself, unless it is I who have taken leave of my senses by ignoring the burnt-out fuse of the Angry Brigade echoing the siege of Sidney Street. IRA bombings in England are of course another matter.
The rights of self-determination by the Protestant majority fiftyseven years after Ulster raised an army for the right to remain British invalidate any comparison with Algeria. Yet, if I were in the army, I would seriously consider resigning my commission rather than be compelled to serve, for all intents and purposes, under a timocracy, the Prime Minister of which was seen to strut down the streets of a Catholic town sneering at the ' natives ' whose forebears had been vanquished by Dutch and Danish troops under a Dutch commander nearly 300 years previously.
With the umbrella of the army clamped over Stormont, the Protestant extremists have nothing to gain by interference with the army engaged in perpetuating their autonomy by crushing the insurgent IRA. Outrage at the treacherous slaughter of our troops has further blinded the English to the vicious anachronism of discrimination against and oppression of those who genuflect by those who evangelise as a major issue that has driven thousands of Ulster Catholics to Britain and the USA.
Every historical precedent would seem to indicate the inevitability of eventual direct rule from White
hall with the implementation of a Fair Housing and Fair Employment Act, followed by an election with proportional representation. Only with the establishment of equal opportunity and the end of religious descrimination under a mantle of obsolete colonialism can the climate be created to end the apparent farce of partition. Jack Barker Hillside Cottage, Scotland Street, Stoke-by-Nayland, Colchester
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