Letter: The media has wrong election focus, as it did decades ago, re Ian Paisley and Terence O'Neill
Your correspondent Tom Carew of Dublin (‘The unionist voting bloc is bigger than the provisional republican one,’ May 22, see link below) writes that the media gleefully concentrates on Sinn Fein victories despite unionists getting the largest number of votes. It is not to distract from the present incompetence in unionism to say there is nothing new in this slanting. Terence O’Neill the then Ulster Unionist leader could address meetings in Andersontown, a separatist nationalist stronghold, and win votes for unionism (see pages 120-123 Autobiography of Terence O’Neill Prime Minister of Northern Ireland 1963-1969, Published by Rupert Hart-Davis, Second Impression, 1972).
The media then, however, had no interest in this. The focus was on how soon Dr Ian Paisley could overtake O’Neill and unseat him much as today the focus is on how soon Sinn Fein will overtake unionism. Exceptions to this are in Monday’s News Letter (May 22) by Fr Gerry Lynch on no such thing as historical inevitability (p11, see link below) and Owen Polley (p17, see link below) on what is forgotten about Sinn Fein – he could have added to that SF’s mutation into a pro EU party without question from the media on whether the mutation is tactical or ideological.
WA Miller, Belfast BT13
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