Sir, - I am touched beyond measure by Cllr Tom Campbell's love of inclusivity and my heart soars at his assertion in your paper that the Alliance Party will only support events that are organised on a cross-community basis.
Cross-community inclusivity was, needless to say, the watchword of the William and Mary Tercentenary celebrations in Belfast in 1990 - a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne by that great upholder of inclusivity and cross-community harmony, the Orange Order.
A proposal that Belfast City Council fund a number of Orange events, culminating in a lavish City Hall dinner, was adopted unanimously by the council's general purposes and finance committee on March 16th, 1989. On that committee, according to the minutes here in front of me, sat a Cllr Mervyn Jones, current leader of the Alliance Party group on Belfast City Council. This is the same Cllr Jones who, along with his colleague Cllr Campbell, voted against funding the St Patrick's Day parade because it didn't meet their criterion of being "non-sectarian and inclusive" - a criterion which the Alliance party deemed the Orange Order celebrations to have fulfilled.
The exact amount of money that the council spent on the tercentenary Orange knees-up has not been made immediately available to me, although I hope to have an answer soon. What I do know, though, is how many nationalists/Catholics were on the committee that voted the money through: none. I do know also how many nationalists/Catholics took part in the council-funded celebrations: none. I know too how many nationalists/ Catholics got their feet under the table at the City Hall celebration dinner: none. Cllr Campbell is correct when he says that the Andersonstown News has been a vocal supporter of the St Patrick's Day parade, but I must confess to a degree of confusion at his assertion that our claim that "Irish people are not going to stop flying the Tricolour on their special day" is indicative of a "them and us" attitude.
We are Irish people celebrating our national day in our own city centre - a place from which we were banned for many years. People of all nationalities, of all religions and none, are as welcome as the spring daffodils that line our route. As he looks out at us through the Union Jacks on the stained glass city hall windows paying tribute to the B-Specials and the UDR, Cllr Campbell is clearly uncomfortable with that fact. That is his problem, it is not ours. - Yours, etc.,
Robin Livingstone, Editor, Andersonstown News, Glen Road, Belfast 11.