Northern Ireland

Press, 25 February 1980, Page 16

Northern Ireland

Sir, — Your correspondent D. J. Leahy (February 23) is guilty of the same gross over-simplification of the Northern Ireland situation as his fellow “Paddies” in the United States whose dollars perpetuate the senseless killings and maimings in my home country. I would like to make three points. The “British colonists” have been there for much longer than Europeans have been in New Zealand. Are they so much less Irish than New Zealanders are New Zealanders? Second, most of the “British colonists” came from the west of Scotland, an_ area previously “colonised” in the fifth century by the Scotiae from Northern Ireland. Third, Northern Ireland is British because the majority want it to be. The British soldier does not belong to an invading army, he belongs to our army, that in which thousands of Ulstermen lost their lives during the two world wars. The road to peace is long. We don’t need I.R.A. sympathisers land-mining it. — Yours, etc., DONALD McPHILLIMY. February 23, 1980.

Maruia Declaration Sir, — During the last year the correspondence columns of “The Press” have provided a singular forum, unmatched in other dailies, for expression of the deepfelt concern of a wide spectrum of society at this country’s indigenous forest policy. The words Whirinaki and Maruia will still be a rallying cry to haunt our masters in 1981, and how will the Minister for the En« vironment explain himself in Christchurch before the fif« teenth General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature?. Will he be ashamed of New Zealand’s continuing disgraceful record so starkly portrayed in Peter Hooper’s letter? There surely can be no better way for all those who signed the Maruia Declaration, or now wished they had, to show their contempt for the Minister, their concern for our future heritage and their determination not to give in, than to unite behind Peter Hemsley’s “Salt of the earth.” I have just trebled the value of my monthly mite. — Yours, etc., ERIC BENNETT. February 21, 1980.