C Hughes’s most recent letter (10 July) raises a number of points and I shall try and take each in turn. Firstly, I don’t know the exact details of C Hughes’s personal experience at his school or whether it was integrated or ‘mixed’.
However, his assertion that integrated schools condition children to be royalists is so far from the truth as to be laughable. It was this general assertion about the integrated school environment which I challenged, because, by its very nature, the ethos that governs these schools is one where any sort of conditioning of a political nature would not be tolerated. Secondly, C Hughes states that he has never seen any evidence that NICCE and the Catholic bishops attack the integrated movement.
I refer C Hughes to the article in the Belfast Telegraph November 5 2014 in which NICCE argued that the Department of Education in NI should ‘dispense with its statutory duty to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education’. If that is not a direct attack on the integrated movement, I don’t know what is. This is actually an attack by the Catholic Church on the contents of the Good Friday Agreement itself which reaffirms the statutory duty of DENI to promote integrated education.
I would invite C Hughes to point to any official speech by a member of the integrated movement in which the existence of Catholic maintained schools is attacked.
The integrated movement is founded on the basis of choice – choice for the parent as to what sort of an education they want for their child. Between 2000 and now, the integrated sector has increased its pupil numbers by 50 per cent. In the same period, the Catholic maintained sector has seen its numbers decline by 8 per cent. I, like others in the integrated education movement, want to see a flourishing Catholic maintained sector proportionate to parental demand. But with 70 per cent of parents in favour of integrated education and integrated schools having to turn away hundreds of pupils each year because they are full, DENI needs to raise the intake numbers of integrated schools and allow them to expand. C Hughes’s accusation that the integrated movement want to see the closure of St Mary’s training college is again a fallacy. The integrated education alumni want to see the highest calibre of teachers in Northern Ireland and whether these teachers come from two colleges or one is a matter for the higher education minister. However, I personally want the integrated ethos to permeate all areas of our society.
When students are educated together in an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding, it breeds a more tolerant and understanding population. Only when this happens more broadly will we fully be able to emerge from our troubled past.
CHRISTOPHER MADDEN
Vice-Chair, Integrated Education Alumni Network, Belfast
Put away bombs and guns and honour the dead
When I think of the battle of the Bogside – especially when it took three days for nationalists and republicans who stood shoulder to shoulder with stones and sticks to hold off the police and fight for freedom and civil rights – I think of Independence Day in America.
It is coming near August 12 and the Orangemen will display their bands and banners within the Derry walls and their music will be heard all over the town. They will come from far and wide to join them and that’s their history and their culture and we shouldn’t interfere because we are taking away their freedom. Maybe it’s time for us to make known the Battle of the Bogside and gather up worldwide bands from all over and celebrate the famous three days that men and women in Derry city fought for and established, those famous words ‘Your now entering Free Derry’.
Maybe it’s time to take that big poster that’s standing behind the wall down and print up all those names who died for their independence – nationalists and republicans who stood their ground for freedom and achieved what they have achieved. It is coming and I believe that next year would be the right year as it would be the 100 years celebration of the Easter rising.Let us put away the bombs and the guns and honour the dead. Let us stop our children from attacking the orange culture as our children are losing out by doing this and ruining their futures when they are taken to court and charged with criminal offences.
The war is not over for freedom in Ireland but there is a better way of achieving this and that is through dialogue. So it is time now to celebrate the victory that we have achieved in the Battle of the Bogside. It is time now to display what we achieved in those three days and it is also time that all the families seeking justice for the injustice that was done to get together as a group and challenge this system so that the past can be heard.
DANIEL BRADLEY
Innocence Truth and Justice, Derry City
Is it ever right to laugh at suicide?
My late father used to always quote Daniel O’Connell to whom it was attributed that he said: “You can buy any man if you go to his price.” The decision by the organisers of Feile an Phobail to invite Frankie Boyle as their ‘headline’ act given his verbal attack on individuals with Down’s Syndrome is of an organisation concerned with pound signs. The Festival of the People was never concepted so that an individual could verbally attack the defenceless. There is no debate in bullying those who cannot defend themselves. This is the same comedian who said that whenever Mark Speight of the BBC Children’s Art show ‘Smart’ had taken his own life: “Apparently, his suicide note was amazing. He’d done it all in seashells and glitter.” Given the extremely high rate of suicide in west Belfast, I believe this is horrendous that Feile would invite this man while at the same time promoting help and support for people at risk of suicide. It is time for Feile to stand up for its founding principles.
D JONES
Coleraine, Co Derry
Sectarian point-scoring
Regarding the non - flying of the Republic’s Tricolour at the Orange Order Headquarters (July 18)
does anyone in their right mind really believe that a Tricolour is going to fly in Protestant east Belfast. It is never going to fly no matter who the building belongs to.
At the last World Cup England were one of the competing teams. At the time a lot of pubs and clubs held World Cup theme nights displaying flags from the competing countries.
In certain areas the only flag not on display was the English flag. One of those areas was north Belfast which is represented by Alban Maginness. Alban was very quick to condemn the Orange Order for the non-flying of the Tricolour yet was very silent when English flags were not hoisted in within his own area.
Again does anyone in their right mind expect to see an English flag flying in Catholic north Belfast?
If this country is to move forward into a real shared future we need to move away from sectarian point-scoring over flags.
JIM SANDS
Antrim, Co Antrim
Land grab in west Belfast
The building of 3G pitches on the Falls Park and Glassmullin Green are not investments to benefit the community but a land grab of community assets for private gain. These proposed high fenced and locked from use without payment venues will remove the free open spaces enjoyed by the community. The rehearsed drivel about anti-community behaviour is false and a lame excuse for what is the taking away of free community ground to benefit the private financial gain of a few. Just like the proposed unlawful, unsafe Casement Park stadium which would be for the private financial gain interests of certain groups from the massive profits generated from concerts and all at public cost with no public benefit. So let’s take off those rose tinted glasses and stop believing your own propaganda and call it what it really is and that is ‘free ground for the queen’s pound’.
J QUINN
Belfast BT11
