Northern Ireland

Press, 1 June 1981, Page 12

Northern Ireland

Sir,-The so-called “benefits of the British social welfare system,” referred to by G. Colquhoun (May 27) have a bitter sourly ironic flavour for the Irish people living under the -British military occupation regime, of which it is an inseparable concomitant. There is no question of their liking being “British subjects.” Their subjection to British rule is a fact of their daily existence only too painfully apparent to the Irish people. For over 800 years successive British governments have tried to turn Irishmen into recycled Englishmen. Failing miserably in this enterprise, -they have, from the seventeenth century onwards tried to turn planted English and Scottish protestant settlers into recycled Irishmen with equally tragic results. Today the six' occupied counties of Ireland’s Ulster province are all that visibly remains of “the empire on. which the sun never sets,” a more appropriate title for which should be the British Rump-ire.—Yours, etc., M. CREEL. May 27, 1981.