Letter: Perpetual division at Stormont may suit unionists just as it seems to be favoured by Sinn Fein
A letter from John O’Connell:
Honest to goodness, have you ever heard anything like it? Apparently, Sinn Fein is going to take us to the Republic - a united Ireland - by manipulating the electorate into believing that a single vote in a referendum will be enough to make it happen.
However, that's not the end of their strategy. They also seem to want to achieve this goal, aided and abetted by the DUP, by creating a bad atmosphere in the North for changing anything.
Stormont is coming down with disputes, bad feeling, antagonisms that go totally against the required level of agreement needed to bring about a united country.
What they will achieve is an atmosphere of division and even hostility that will convince unionists that they will be foolish to engage with Sinn Fein, or even the SDLP, in good faith, about the future of their tradition.
To be clear, unionists have a lot of guns and they will use them to protect their people and the Union against any notion of surrender in the context of going into a united Ireland with people who are openly hostile to their tradition.
I accept too that it would be foolhardy for unionists to engage with Sinn Fein in those circumstances. Nevertheless, the DUP may actually believe that this is the best way to ensure that there never will be a united Ireland.
Perpetual division may suit unionists just as it seems to be favoured by Sinn Fein.
So what is the alternative? The alternative is to accept that there will always be differences in this country and then to seek agreement between the two traditions. That is the opposite to what is happening at present.
The Good Friday Agreement is being disingenuously interpreted to allow for bad faith arguments to be used to gut it out. We need to examine why that is happening.
The main reason is that the DUP and Sinn Fein do not have sufficient, level-headed senior figures to enable them to have the confidence to agree with one another, which might involve them in compromise or even just empathetic communication.
Too often it is the warriors who are central to the media campaigns to highlight the way ahead for Stormonts' leading parties. But it needn't be.
Yet the foundations of a new approach require that new thinking is undertaken to enable a referendum to take place that will achieve a united Ireland.
The more the road ahead is paved with empathy, the more likely a favoured outcome will occur.
Division and hostility will suit no party to our politics.
John O'Connell, Londonderry