Letter: London’s concern is not with Northern Ireland alone but with the wider political stability within these islands

Former US Senator George Mitchell declared (April 18) that the people of Northern Ireland changed history with the Good Friday Agreement. It, indeed, changed history when the Dublin administration, and republicans, at long last after years of denial and shooting and killing, acknowledged the legitimacy of unionism (the political union of the archipelago) as a political option for Irish people.

It could not have passed unnoticed at the Foreign Office (as Ruth Dudley Edwards, April 18, might be read as implying, see link below) in that London’s concern is not with Northern Ireland alone but with the wider political stability within these islands. The establishment in the Good Friday Agreement of a Council for the archipelago to be known, as originally proposed as the Council of the Isles, is indicative of that concern for political stability, as also the non-alien status given to citizens of the Republic of Ireland enabling them, amongst other matters, to enter the civil service

It was unfortunate, therefore, that unionists did not refuse to accept the change from The Council of the Isles to that of The British and Irish Council (with the implication that British and Irish are exclusives) that was put forward by Dublin and was accepted and of which we now hear little about. It is doubly unfortunate that despite the publication of ‘The Idea of the Union’, a collection of essays, some of which were published in the News Letter, there is so little strategic thinking in political unionism.

WA Miller, Belfast BT13

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Without David Trimble's courage and brains, NI would have ended up with joint authority