Sir, - The full obscenity of the recent wave of sectarian murders in Northern Ireland is that the loyalist killers who carry them out justify their actions as "war", even describing the pre-meditated murder of innocent civilians as a "measured military response". In reality the use of a pseudo-military vocabulary is designed to rationalise their sectarian motivations. For their supposedly "military" campaign is almost beyond belief: schoolgirls, pregnant mothers, pensioners, taxi-drivers, bakers, bricklayers, etc. are all viewed as "legitimate targets" and their killing as "just war". In spite of their political pretensions, these killers are motivated by nothing more sophisticated than a rabid anti-Catholic hatred, whipped into an almost racist frenzy. They even boast of their savagery on gable-walls.
The really appalling thing is that the mind-set of these killers is shared by many in the wider loyalist community. Only a few individuals will hate enough to kill: but the culture which sustains this hate is shared by hundreds, maybe thousands. Where does this hate originate? The short answer is from forces emanating from within popular Protestant culture. The process occurs in three stages.. First, anti-Catholicism of varying degrees is widespread throughout the Protestant community in the North. This is reinforced and magnified by the Orange Order's annual parading of bigotry and triumphalism. The effect of these marches, year in, year out, is to sharpen division and reproduce the conditions for anti-Catholic hatred in each new generation. This distils and concentrates into sections of the Protestant community to produce a sub-culture of raw anti-Catholic hatred, within which all Catholics are routinely dehumanised and demonised, referred to contemptuously as "Fenians" or "Taigs". It's now only a short step from this passive hate into active killing.
These then are the roots of sectarian murder: a shared culture of anti-Catholic hatred centred on the Orange Order and its satellites, and ritualised in over 3,000 annual sectarian marches. Measures must be taken now to break the stranglehold of Orange culture on Northern society. For not even three billion Orange marches would be worth the life of a single Catholic. - Yours, etc., Michael Morgan,
Belfast 11.