Sir, - Northern Ireland was "born out of violence by the British and their unionist hencemen," Finian Cunningham (June 18th), would have us believe. When did this violence occur? What form did it take? Both nationalists and unionists were armed between 1911 and the Statute of Ireland Act of 1920 but they never clashed.
Unionists were not the puppets of British politicians in 1886, 1904 or 1910-1914. The movement never tried to thwart Irish nationalism simply because it was distasteful to Britain; self interest was always unionism's driving force.
With regard to the RUC he believes "Catholics did not get a stake in its inception". This is untrue. The first Northern prime minister, William Craig, reserved one third of the places in the RUC for Catholics; they refused to join.
Similar senseless recalcitrance was displayed by Catholics when invited to contribute to the Lynn Commission, an inquiry body into the state of education established by the Minister for Education, Lord Londonderry, in 1925. Again they refused. Thus Northern Catholics opted themselves out of the state's vital institutions in the 1920s. Finian Cunningham should concern himself with historical fact rather than disingenuous distortions. - Yours, etc.,
Anthony Thuillier, Drumcondra, Dublin 9.