Sir, - Provided that the agreement is put to a referendum completely on its own I believe it will be carried by a massive majority. We are all in favour of peace. We will all wish to give it a chance to succeed. The full terms of the agreement should be posted to every household as soon as possible.
But if it is held in conjunction with the proposed changed to Articles 2 and 3 there will be massive dissent. There is already a formidable coalition of ordinary people against any changes to these articles which will quickly spread across all party political boundaries.
The proposal will be seen for what it would be - political blackmail - and will have the potential to be hugely divisive. The ordinary citizen who wants to give a peace settlement a chance but does not wish to give up his democratic rights to his own country will be maliciously labelled as anti-peace. This is something we can do without.
To give away our democratic claim to our own country under these articles in advance of the whole agreement coming into force would be crass stupidity. The British claim is based on centuries of genocide and imperial force maintained to this day, and has no legitimacy. The referendum on these articles should be deferred until the agreement has fully come into force and be seen to have delivered total equality.
If we declare in advance the occupied six counties to be British territory, both in national and international law, how do we propose to intervene in the internal affairs of Britain, a foreign country, to ensure full compliance with the agreement? - Yours, etc.,
Hugo V. Flinn
Woodstock House, Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow.