SIR,—As a Protestant clergyman who has lived several years in
Northern Ireland I cannot agree with Mr. Walker's somewhat over-simplification of the political strife in that country, by describing it in terms of a Protestant majority versus a Catholic minority issue. This red herring of religion has been skilfully used for forty years or so to cover up the deeper-living problem of the British colonist and the native, as Mr. Davenport so succinctly put it.
Mr. Walker fails to mention the Orange Lodges, a militant masonic secret society ever active in Northern Ireland with government connivance and whose contempt for the native Irish Catholics is strikingly, similar to that of the Dutch Reformed Church for the native citizens of South Africa.
Just as the white colonists of Africa used to use the colour problem as a second line of defence to hold on to their privileges and possessions, so in Northern Ireland when the appeal to British blood and British traditions wears a little thin, there is always the `get-our on the religious ticket.
But in these days of ecumenism, unfortunately for the Northern Ireland regime, this too is beginning to lose any significance.
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