Madam, - I arrived back in Ireland, from which my parents set forth early in the 20th century, in the autumn of 1996, a recent graduate of Boston's Episcopal Divinity School, ordained a deacon in the US Episcopal Church, with the promise of a curacy in the second largest Church of Ireland parish, Seapatrick, Co Down, and ordination to the priesthood after proper preparation in 1997.
From my seminary studies and field work in Down and Mayo, I heard critics outside the beleaguered church characterise it as "the Unionist politicians at prayer". I took this as light-hearted banter until I read the editorial by Canon I.M. Ellis in the January 4th Church of Ireland Gazette, condemning as unnecessary efforts long under way to codify a Bill of Rights protecting minorities in the North from discrimination.
As a subscriber and book reviewer for the Gazette, I am aware that this editorial set off a vigorous debate.
Significantly it was lauded by the most intrangient of loyalists, including MEP Jim Allister. Others pointed out inconsistencies in Ellis's reasoning but few went to the heart of the matter: Canon Ellis's ready assumption that citizens here in the North need no assurances of their rights other than their secure position as British subjects. Here in Newcastle, where he and I both live, there are neighbours and friends of nationalist inclinations who in the course of asserting rights of speech and assembly were interned and given trials without juries, indignities from which English people are protected.
David Trimble, in accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, acknowledged that this province was a "cold house for nationalists". The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and the Belfast Agreement of 1998 are both solemn treaties between the UK and the Republic of Ireland with the effect of law in both this province and the Republic of Ireland. While the 1985 treaty gave the Republic a consultative role in the governing of the North, the 1998 Agreement established a Ministerial Council here in the North, particularly charged with co-ordinating policy on policing and human rights.
Canon Ellis seems still to hold to Margaret Thatcher's slogan of the early 1980s that Northern Ireland is "as British as Finchley", while correctly stating that the Agreement does not literally compel the North or adopt a Bill of Rights. Indeed it does not call for IRA decommissioning either, but the Church of Ireland Gazette regularly held editorially that this was a signal obligation of republicans. Now that the Republic and the Northern nationalist community have performed, Ellis seems to say that loopholes should now be utilised to excuse unionists from delivering on their share of the agreement.
Canon Ellis, particularly in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, has chosen to raise an issue divisive to our communities. He well knows that we as a people are plagued with a history of a sectarian Protestant government for a Protestant people and that the rights of our Catholic minority was for years run over roughshod by a gerrymandered parliament and district councils in terms of employment and housing. In some ways, a reverse discrimination now happens by nationalist/Catholic regional dominance.
A Bill of Rights sets necessary limits on democratic government. Majority generally should rule but majorities all too often oppress. While the Gazette is only an unofficial voice of Irish Anglicanism, this editorial has put it on the side of those who would begrudge basic rights to a minority here in the North who have experienced discrimination over many years. Of course Jim Allister is pleased, but we had higher hopes from an editor who is a canon of Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral. - Yours, etc,
Rev Dr GORDON GRAHAM,
Newcastle,
Co Down.