Letters: Northern Ireland’s future is best served within the UK

Once again, unionism’s most effective advocate on the national stage, Ben Habib, has offered sage advice when he encourages the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson to “get out of the trenches” and take the pro-Union message to the mainland (Habib’s plea on the Union, November 25).

I do hope Sir Jeffrey heeds Mr Habib’s advice. If he does, he should also remind or inform audiences in GB why loyal citizens in NI have no future in a so-called united Ireland.

The track record of the Irish state over its 100-year history is a shameful one with respect to its treatment of its minority population.

The systemic discrimination against pro-British and Protestant citizens by the Irish state resulted in their population declining by over 80% and serves as a prescient warning of what awaits unionists should NI ever leave the Union.

The Irish state has had ample time to demonstrate to unionists in NI that they wish to coexist in peace and in a spirt of friendship. They choose not to do so.

Instead, they used their resources to facilitate the IRA’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against unionists by, for example, illegally importing weapons for distribution to the IRA, allowing IRA “training camps” to operate unimpeded within their state and refusing to extradite wanted IRA murderers and suspects to the UK for questioning.

In more recent times, the lack of sanctions following the disgraceful glorification of the IRA by what should be apolitical national institutions and organisations in the Irish Republic (e.g. the women’s national Irish football team and the GAA), may be reasonably interpreted as tacit endorsement at governmental level of behaviour that would rightly be deemed outrageous and offensive in every other self-respecting country.

That the citizens of the Irish Republic are likely to vote for Sinn Fein in such numbers that they will form their next government shows how at ease Irish society is in electing a party that is subservient to the IRA’s so-called “army council”.

Under SF/IRA rule a “new Ireland” would not just become a “cold house” for unionists, it would become a mortuary for those who resist the pro-IRA, anti-British revisionist rewriting of their sectarian campaigns.

NI’s future is best served within the UK, not under the jackboot of a de facto military junta.

Thomas Smyth, Belfast