SINN Féin could have a influential and decisive say over Brexit if they took their seats and exercised their mandate. However, they will not and are a waste of time voting for. Now more than ever when the stakes are so high, Sinn Féin sit on the margins with banners and posters wanting this and that and yet will not exercise their mandate either in Westminster or Stormont. One can see the sheer futility of Sinn Féin in the most important debate of our history on these islands refusing to get involved, yet remaining in what they call democratic politics. Sinn Féin are not participating in democratic politics – they are not participating at all and wasting everybody’s time with passive resistance which is leaving them out in the cold and the electorate which voted for them. Tight votes in Westminster could be decided by Sinn Féin, but yet they shout and criticise from the wings like lone voices in a howling gale which is Brexit and the enormous consequences ahead for all the people on these islands. Sinn Féin are now recriminating hard and heavy, despite refusing to vote in the most critical debate which will decide the fate of political life on these islands. Sinn Féin should get heavy criticism for leaving themselves and their supporters out in the cold, when they could change everything by omitting their politics of protest. Here they are now going on about the chaos of Brexit and “England get out of Ireland” on the back of it, when they will not give their people a voice and thereby muzzle them in doing so. The passive resistance strategy is not working and is the last thing they should be doing on critical votes on the biggest political issue of our time. Sinn Féin may well get heavy criticism when chaos ensues as the UK leaves the EU country club. Where will they be then? The horse will have bolted and the chance to make a difference will be gone, as Sinn Féin continues the practice of undemocratic politics which is tantamount to the greaestt political nonsense the world has ever seen. One has also got to contrast the hypocritical fact that they take their seats in Dáil Éireann and heavily attend the Irish Parliament on a very large array of issues. Absententionist politics has got a shelve life and it has surely expired with Brexit. Sinn Féin would be better off out of politics altogether north of the border and Westminster because they are simply making not the slightest bit of difference and are a party of sterility. Nothing is changing for them or their voters while big changes are happening around them, which they exercise no control over because of their refusal to say ‘yea or ‘nay’ when motions are being carried. Abstaining at the most critical time since partition is something which Sinn Féin will live to regret.
MAURICE FITZGERALD
Shanbally, Co Cork
SF might listen if Trevor was more even-handed in his criticisms
Trevor Ringland reportedly told his wife there is no place for him in Sinn Fein’s Ireland because a leading member would accept “no lectures” from Trevor (March 26). A former Ulster unionist and now a Conservative (and Unionist) Party representative, Trevor’s capacity for taking offence was previously revealed by Ireland rugby team-mate Donal Lenihan.
In his 2016 memoir Leinihan wrote that in 1985, after winning the Triple Crown, the team broke into a rendition of The Sash on the team bus. When Lenihan once sang Only Our Rivers Run Free after The Sash on a tour of Japan, “Trevor Ringland took umbrage”.
I suggest that Trevor, who lectures nationalists a lot on the letters page, should read The Irish News of March 27.
On page four there is an account of how Northern Ireland soccer supporters from Tyrone sang a song with the refrain, “We hate Catholics, we hate Roman Catholics”. On page five it is reported that the NI Orange Order would not comment on Scottish Brethren deciding to allow members to darken the door of a Catholic Church. Both branches of the order maintain a prohibition on marrying Catholics.
On page 21 there is a historical account from 1969 of Ivan Cooper, a Protestant civil rights supporter, in fear for his life running across fields from 200 unionists.
Whatever their feelings about Catholics, they clearly disapproved of a Protestant seeking equality in Northern Ireland’s sectarian state. Trevor might ask himself how much unionist attitudes have changed in the 50 years since that incident.
Sinn Féin leaders might listen more sympathetically to Trevor if he was even-handed in his criticisms.
He could start by appreciating the finer points of Only Our Rivers Run Free. Unlike The Sash or the chant from the Tyrone soccer supporters, it does not contain a hint of sectarianism.
Trevor’s plea to “make Northern Ireland work” is unrealisable in a statelet that clearly doesn’t.
Maybe, like the Ireland rugby team, an all-Ireland arrangement would be a better bet.
TOM COOPER
Dublin 2
Israelis now in election mode
Not content with killing hundreds and maiming thousands of unarmed Palestinian protesters after Friday prayer by explosive sniper rounds over many months, Israelis are now in “election mode” and Netanyahu has decided that they must “act tough” with the unfortunate population of the prison camp known as the Gaza Strip to placate the inhabitants of Israel.
He is under great pressure from an opposition party, which like his own Likud party, is firmly in favour of apartheid.
Virtually every day now buildings in Gaza are being demolished by ‘smart bombs’ and Netanyahu says “he is prepared to do more” and promises if re-elected he will “annex the settlement blocks” ie most of the West Bank. This from a man facing indictments in three sets of public corruption affairs. What country (other than the US) would consider electing such a person to run their country?
EUGENE F PARTE
Belfast BT9
UUP’s day has come and gone
A paradoxical letter from Lord Empey which appeared recently in the local press waxing lyrical about the Ulster Unionists as an alternative political party must have been written with tongue in cheek. There is nothing amiss in him directing the electorate to look further than the existing political duopoly between the DUP and Sinn Féin, an oligarchy of political activists and zealots who impose their political inactivity by their ability to manipulate a sterile secretary of state and the current democratic machinery.
Lord Empey should accept that the days of the Ulster Unionist Party have come and gone. It is pointless for him to reminisce over the last 20 years. He should remove the rose tinted spectacles and go back to an era when his party reigned supreme, an era of Lord Brookeborough (I wouldn’t have one about the place), of Bill Craig, who thought civil rights was something written on a lavatory wall not to mention the G word, gerrymandering. Had the Ulster Unionist Party, whom Lord Empey lauds for their participation in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, carried out their God-given political duty instead of having to be pulled screaming into the 20th century, no such Agreement would have been required.
To paraphrase WB Yeats, those of us who had nothing in common with the Ulster Unionist Party never received a splash when we dropped a stone.
WILSON BURGESS
Derry City
