Sir, May I suggest that your editorial of July 12th, Victory for Mob Rule", on the decision to allow the Orange Order march through the Garvaghy Road, misinterpreted what happened and what it means. First, as to what happened, it was a victory, not for mob rule, but for Orange misrule.
The Orange Order conspired, successfully, to bring daily life in Northern Ireland to a standstill, as a demonstration of mass power. This power was then used to force the British Government to back down publicly on its earlier decision to stop its anti Catholic, gloating marches. Not mob rule, then, but Orange Disorder.
Second, as to what it means. The conditions of a peace process were that the Irish Government would bring moral and political pressure to bear on Sinn Fein to engage in real political discussions leading to compromise, while the British Government did the same with the unionists.
What happened on the Garvaghy Road shows that the British Government, and John Major in particular, lack the will to make the unionists behave decently. It also shows yet again the perennial failure of Northern Protestantism to produce leaders of sufficient spiritual stature to recognise for themselves, and to persuade their co-religionists, that Catholic baiting is a tradition more honoured in the breach than the observance.
I, for one, would vote to retain the present Constitutional position regarding Northern Ireland in order to protect Northern Catholics against the social force revealed in the Orange Order's unlawful, virtual take over of the province, a force aptly described by Cardinal Daly as "the ugly sectarianism which persists in the society and which is an affront to our Christian professions." Yours, etc., Willowfield Avenue, Goatstown, Dublin 14.