The Brits Out slogan just describes Sinn Fein’s political and military strategy over the last forty years

The outrage of unionists ‘Brits out’ poster at Sinn Fein stand at Queen’s University Belfast Student Union Freshers’ Fair is disingenuous and amounts to a public show of posturing.
Letter to the editorLetter to the editor
Letter to the editor

For over two years and in hundreds of emails I have provided the unionist political community with facts and information about the marginalisation of unionists within the Northern Ireland university sector.

The response of the unionist political community has been extremely disappointing.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In January 2019, Doug Beattie confirmed that my research efforts were worthy of some response from the Ulster Unionist Party’s NI education spokesperson. So far, I am still awaiting a response.

To my knowledge the DUP MP for South Belfast has never expressed her exasperation at the degree of marginalisation or discrimination that faces unionists at all levels within the NI university sector.

Within my extensive correspondence I have communicated with political and civic unionists about unionist discrimination within certain sectors of the NI university sector.

The response from the unionist student associations at QUB and UU was particularly disappointing.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The fact is that nationalist community in the 1960s and 1970s committed itself to betterment and advancement through higher education.

It is now reaping the rewards of decades of academic engagement at QUB/UU. By contrast, the NI unionist population has increasingly rejected QUB and UU as being hospitable places to advance their education.

The symbols of Irish and Gaelic culture abound within the universities and in the campuses adjacent to the universities. The UU still refuses after a year to provide FOI Act information about the respective number of Protestant and Catholic students living within the Holyland.

Paradoxically, the hard-pressed Catholic residents (owner occupiers and social tenants) of the Holyland are threatened by the nationalist students with the ‘RA’ should the residents complain of anti-social behaviour to the PSNI.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Unionist outrage about a sign that fully describes Sinn Fein’s political and military strategy over the last forty years must be considered in terms of its muted concerns to the marginalisation of unionist students, academics and researchers at QUB and UU.

If the unionist (DUP, UUP, TUV and PUP) higher education strategy was to stay silent about the increasing disengagement of unionists at QUB and UU for fear of increasing the rate of disengagement, that strategy has been a failure.

The diminution in numbers and power of unionist students at QUB and UU today is the responsibility of the unionist political community of old.

The failure of the DUP to maximise publicity of this important issue and its inability to ensure policy change within any discussions aimed at bringing back a devolved government to Northern Ireland, means that these occasional vents of unionist angst will continue in the future without effect.

Dr Edward Cooke, Newtownabbey