Sir, - We are British citizens holidaying in West Cork - a part of the world we love - and are writing to correct a misleading impression about what constitutes "British cultural identity" as described by loyalists in the North and quoted in your newspaper.
Twice in the last month, we and our fellow-citizens have been shamed before the world by people claiming to be loyal supporters of our country. The first occasion was the violence in Marseille during the World Cup. The second - and worse - was last week at Drumcree and Ballymoney. In the first case, the majority of law-abiding English fans peacably accepted the draconian restrictions on their movements, imposed for the sake of public order, and went quietly home after the matches. How sad that their compatriots in Portadown did now follow their example.
It is insulting to compare the British people who protested against the poll-tax, or in support of the miners, with events in Portadown. The poll-tax protesters did not beseige or burn their neighbours, not did they claim an historic "right" to express superiority over them - quite the contrary. The comparison with Greenham Common is even more grotesquely inappropriate. The protesters at Greenham were women (a group conspicuously absent from the ranks of Orange spokespersons), who were demonstrating against macho militarism in order to save children's lives, not end them.
In the recent referendum, 71 per cent of the citizens of Northern Ireland voted to ally themselves with the mainstream values of "British cultural identity" - the values of a society which, though far from perfect, is pluralist, multi-cultural, committed to (if not always practicing) equality, and even (since the death of Diana) beginning to discuss the possibility of republicanism.
If members of the Orange Order force their way down the Garvaghy Road, and bring down the Assembly (which seems to be a barely-hidden agenda), they will cut themselves off permanently from "British cultural identity" as we and our fellow-citizens know it. -Yours, etc., Maire and John Davies,
London €4 6QR.