Mr Haughey indicated that I was treated with courtesy at the recent conference. He also intimated that I thanked the organisers for inviting me. In these two respects he is accurate.

On the matter of the actual proceedings I should make a number of points. Mr Haughey says that it is regrettable, and even sad, that I talked about my anger and resentment having never been extinguished at the sequence of events over the period of the violence. There is a very straightforward explanation for this, which I outlined in my speech and am happy to reiterate yet again.

Some in the nationalist community have campaigned for decades regarding what they portrayed as disadvantage among their community. I have sought, over a period of years, to show that disadvantage suffered by unionists was a reality also.

I have also indicated why support from unionists for a Civil Rights campaign with banners proclaiming "Smash the Orange State" was not realistic.

There has been an acceptance of nationalist disadvantage but not of unionist disadvantage, that must be rectified. The fact that nationalist-controlled councils discriminated against unionists is not recognised while the reverse is accepted as obvious.

The most emphatic outcome from the conference for me, however, was when I raised the indignation that many in my community feel when contrasting the distant past (the 1960s) with much more recent events.

Whatever about the disadvantage suffered by both communities despite the distorted picture painted by those at the helm of the Civil Rights movement, the facts now are that young people from my community are specifically disadvantaged in law when they try and join the police.

There never was such disadvantage suffered by Roman Catholics who tried to join the police during or before the Civil Rights period. Indeed, in earlier days, a specific quota of places was reserved for Roman Catholics but wasn't filled.

I have always believed that a person's position should change over a period if it is unreasonable at an earlier time, but the strength of being reasonable at the outset is that it is much easier to maintain the characteristic of consistency as contained in the headline which was used for Mr Haughey's letter, "Campbell's rights views no surprise".

Gregory Campbell, MP, MLA