Sir, - I hope you will allow me the rather unusual but nevertheless welcome opportunity of supporting Ruth Dudley-Edwards's explanation of David Trimble's speech in Oslo (Opinion, December 21st).
His recognition that the unionists had built a strong house for themselves but that it was a cold house for Catholics does not, of course, say as clearly as some would wish just how low the temperature has been, or for how long. But that in turn does not alter the fact that his recognition is another good step for Mr Trimble to have taken on his journey. I am glad I have had the opportunity of congratulating him to his face and I commend Ms Dudley-Edwards for making the point.
She does not always get it right. There are no grounds on which it can be argued that the Orangemen have any right, let alone an absolute right, to march down the Garvaghy Road. How Mr Trimble deals with that issue in the future will show how far he has progressed on his journey.
For his supporters, Mr Trimble's speech in Oslo was very good and perhaps even brilliant. I say that as someone who has been anything but a supporter of Mr Trimble and one who would wish to see a civic unionism putting significant emphasis on those aspects of the Belfast Agreement which can and should lead to an enhancement of human, civil and political rights; mutual respect, equality and tolerance; and a form of government and administration in Northern Ireland which has the capacity to be measurably more democratic than the systems now obtaining in either Westminster or Dail Eireann.
But I also have a keen interest in Mr Trimble's standing in his own community. There has never been a leader of unionism, whether before or after partition, who could have made or did in fact make a speech like it. I do not have to agree with all of it to recognise that there are many unionists who were delighted to hear their leader delivering a speech which ably challenges the sectarianism, strategic incompetence, or minimalism of, respectively, Paisley, McCartney and Molyneux.
Nationalist spin-doctors have missed the point. Culminating in Robert Ballagh (December 22nd), they have accused Mr Trimble of hypocrisy, bad manners and patronising his political opponents. The journey is far from over, but the world is changing fast and the nationalist spin-doctors are already falling behind the people. Mr Trimble's enemies, ultimately, are no longer Catholics, nationalists or even republicans. His enemies, and mine, and yours are cultural unionists who still cannot bring themselves to have a Catholic about the place. How wonderful it is to be alive in such interesting times. - Yours, etc., David S. Cook,
Donegall Square South, Belfast 1.