Rory Carroll is of course right to highlight Karen Bradley’s shocking ignorance (Divided electorate needed political wizard. It got Karen Bradley, 11 March), but should we be surprised? The Northern Ireland posting has for decades been regarded as a political backwater, or the graveyard of political ambition. Hence Reggie Maudling’s famous relief at leaving such “a bloody awful place” in the 1970s. Yet it is worse than that.
Irish affairs have long been regarded with a mixture of indifference and apathy in England. Polls have shown a general public that did not know that the Republic was not part of the UK. Only in 1980, 12 years after the start of the Troubles, did the BBC air Robert Kee’s excellent television history of Ireland. And so it goes on into the modern era, producing political illiterates like Bradley.
Dr Peter Neville
Cambridge
Every Thursday evening we are invariably reminded by the loudest part of the BBC1 Question Time audience that “the people have spoken”. Meaning the 52% of British voters who demanded leave. Thank you for Susan McKay’s reminder (Northern Irish policing is in crisis. It could threaten peace, 11 March) that the people of Northern Ireland have also spoken; 56% remain, a fact ignored in all English debates at Westminster and on TV and radio.
Mrs May rules in London by permission of the DUP in Belfast. Even though their fanatical insistence on Brexit and an end to the “Irish backstop”, so reasonably negotiated by the Dublin government, is a minority position even in their six north-eastern counties. The performance of Karen Bradley as Tory government minister in Belfast is entirely typical of the British political dismissal of the Irish. Useful only as long as their system allows a prop for a floundering British prime minister. I have no idea how many millions Britain has to feed into Belfast to maintain DUP support. But I guess it would be cheaper to bribe people on John Bull’s other island, who insist that they are more British than Irish, to return across the Irish Sea to live in a couple of British new towns. A peaceful united Ireland, very content to be European, would then follow.
Sean Day-Lewis
Colyton, Devon
Is Mrs Bradley aware that some of the soldiers she spoke of shot and killed children “in a dignified and appropriate way while fulfilling their duties”? I mention only two: Majella O’Hare, aged 12, shot twice in the back when going to church; and Julie Livingstone, aged 14, sent to the local shop for milk, shot dead. These facts need no comment. I am curious as to Mrs Bradley’s qualifications to represent people, since this is the second time in her short tenure that she has caused distress by her stupidity and ignorance. Perhaps she should leave the stage quickly and quietly.
EC MacNamara
Downpatrick, Co Down
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