Sir,
Mike Nesbitt, a former Ulster Unionist leader, writes to remind Mary Lou McDonald of the “inconvenient truth … that the century of partition on the island represents 100 years of republican failure.” (‘Divisive Border poll is no recipe for unity’, 2 February 2021.)
Might I suggest that his own letter omits more than one inconvenient truth? The fifty years of discrimination, gerrymander and vote denial by his Unionist Party. Brutal attacks by the police on those who marched peacefully in search of civil rights. The ‘peace-keeping’ Parachute Regiment, which killed ten innocent people in Ballymurphy in November 1971, before moving on to Derry’s Bogside, where they shot dead thirteen innocent people on 30 January 1972. The inconvenient list goes on.
Perhaps Mr Nesbitt should re-read his copy of the Good Friday Agreement. There it makes clear that the British secretary of state must call a border poll “if at any time it appears likely to him [sic] that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland.”
Not a two-thirds majority or a big majority, much less a unionist majority. A simple majority. That’s what the GFA says, however inconveniently, and that’s how democracy works. I assume Mr Nesbitt supports both.
Yours etc
Jude Collins
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