Sir, - The dilemma facing "respectable unionists" in their awkward attempts to disavow the actions of "plebeian unionists" in east Ulster has a long history indeed. One unionist historian who recognised this was James Wender Good. Although his book Ireland and Ulster was published in 1919, it clearly still addresses many of the issues behind the unionists' new Battle of the Boyne at Drumcree today.
Good was writing at a time when bitter sectarian warfare was driving many Catholic families from Belfast and from other towns in an around the Lagan valley. His was a voice crying in the wilderness. It speaks volumes to us today. Describing the relationship between respectable unionism and grassroots plebeian Orangeism, Good wrote: "Leaders prefer to regard the Orangeman as an irregular from whose services it is legitimate to profit, but who acts they are free to repudiate. They hold aloof not because they dislike the principles, but simply and solely on grounds of expediency. Orangeism in the past has perhaps been even more a trial to its enemies; and even though its adherents from the unionist point of view are ideal people with whom to go tiger-hunting, the trouble is that they have no other tactics other than those of the tiger hunt".
Quite clearly, the tactics of grassroots Orangemen have changed little since Good's day. If anything, they have become an even greater cause for concern today. It remains to be seen just how much the attitudes of "respectable unionists" to their less law-abiding brethren have really changed. - Yours, etc., Dr Jim Mac Laughlin,
University College, Cork.