Ulster in its place
Sir: It is good to find the Spectator and its able contributor Ferdinand Mount taking Ireland seriously (13 December) and asking the rest of us on the British mainland to do the same. It is even more encouraging to note that you perceive the problems of Ireland in the greater perspective of the whole British Isles, which do after all form a gee-historical and political entity. Not for nothing did Shaw call his play John Bull's Other Island.
So it may seem churlish to cavil at one particular inaccuracy which nevertheless is common to nearly all commentators on recent Irish affairs. Ulster is, in fact, not a part of the United Kingdom; the historical province being itself divided by the boundary line of the 1921 Treaty. The artificially created administrative area known as Northern Ireland, containing within itself two counties and half of one (Fermanagh, Tyrone and South Armagh) with predominantly Republican sympathies, owes its existence to the playing of the 'Orange Card' by those able politicians Carson and Bonar Law, whose fanatical Unionism led them to prefer even the rump solution of retaining six Irish counties under British rule rather than surrender totally to the forces of nationalism.
Today there is little stomach for the Orange cause in modern mainland Britain. the old Unionism is a dead letter. Surely it is right that Mrs Thatcher's government should give high priority to the negotiation of a better long-term arrangement for maintaining the peace in Ireland than the maintenance of an artificial border.
G.C. Fitzgerald The Elm House, Brenchley, Tonbridge, Kent
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