As Alex Kane says, British leaders have no interest in or sympathy for our unionist cause

I have just read Alex Kane’s masterly exposition of British policy towards Northern Ireland, which sums up British attitudes from partition onwards.

(Alex Kane: Unionists must understand UK priorities to avoid betrayal,’ December 4)

Provided the Province was quiet and largely self governing, they did not care what happened here, apart from the war years when Churchill offered Irish unity to De Valera in return for the use of the Treaty ports and a more active role in the conflict.

Fortunately he refused, probably because the last thing he wanted was a new civil war when a million recalcitrant unionists were forced into a united state.

The British continuing priority is avoiding terrorist campaigns at any cost and developing a closer and closer relationship with Dublin — witness the involvement of the Irish ‘foreign’ minister in the recent discussions to get the assembly up and running a year ago, contrary to the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.

The hope is that unionists will consent to anything even the Irish sea border in order to keep governing the Province and remain in the UK.

They have absolutely no intention of ever returning to direct rule over Northern Ireland ever again — as proved conclusively during the three year collapse of the assembly.

We have got to grin and bear this situation, because there is absolutely nothing that we can do as unionists to change the facts on the ground.

Unionist leaders have been consistently out-manoeuvred by British governments and all the protests in the world have failed to change anything from the prorogation of Stormont in 1972, the Anglo Irish Agreement and many other developments forwards.

We should become as devious and subtle as republicans, because that is the only way to deal with successive British leaders who have absolutely no interest in or sympathy for our cause, and will always put the interests particularly of England first — note the NI protocol was the price of Brexit which was cheerfully paid, because there are no votes for any British party in Northern Ireland and they really have no ‘selfish or strategic’ (or any other) interest in this place (to quote John Major).

Frank McClintock, Belfast BT4

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