British Plan for Ireland
The “Anglo-Irish Agreement” is indeed aptly named. It is an agreement between the English and the Irish to redirect Ulster’s future, without the approval of the Ulster people.
Not one Ulster citizen was consulted during its development. Nor one Ulster politician. The agreement sounds suspiciously like the Anglo-Chinese Accord, where the last thing either side wanted to hear about was the views of the Hong Kong people in regard to their own destiny.
If the Anglo-Irish Agreement was such a giant step forward for international cooperation, then it would include a provision for Ulster people to participate in the affairs of the Republic of Ireland, in order to protect their Protestant (and Jewish, Islamic and atheist) minority from Eire’s theocratic laws. However, the agreement includes no such aspect.
The agreement is a deliberate sellout of Ulster by Margaret Thatcher. It is a cynical betrayal of all of her previous pledges to guarantee Ulster’s sovereignty. How would it be if the U.S. government allowed the Mexican government to unilaterally intervene in the affairs of California or Texas?
DAVID McCALDEN
Manhattan Beach
McCalden is director of the Ulster-American Heritage Foundation.
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