There is no match for Arlene Foster’s generosity of spirit

Does Northern Ireland deserve Arlene Foster, nee Kelly?

I am beginning to doubt it. Who can match the generosity of spirit of this wonderful woman? What did she do to deserve Boris Johnson and the DUP?

There is one lesson that even I have learnt since 1968 as an English blow-in to the World’s Greatest University. And it is that Ireland can only be reunited by consent and that it only deserves to be reunited by consent.

It does not deserve and has never deserved to be united by armed conflict.

I am so old now that I am still with Sir John Pentland Mahaffy in Regent House in 1918.

I do not think that the Easter Rising was wise.

I am against the partition of Ireland, a great nation with a famous history. And I do not think that we should try to force the hand of Ulster against its will.

Are these lessons so hard to learn even in 2021? It seems so.

Dr Gerald Morgan, Fellow Trinity College Dublin

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