Marjorie Mowlam

Re the interview with Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, Opinion, Nov. 23:

British politicians are notorious for trying to justify the existence of Northern Ireland by comparing it to supposedly similar situations here in the United States. Mowlam may certainly wonder why Latinos don’t demand that California be returned to Mexico. It may be because government in California was not constituted as a “Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.”

Mowlam lauds the fact that after 70 years all the parties in the Irish conflict are finally at the negotiating table. One can’t help wonder if the carnage of the past 30 years might have been avoided if, in 1922, the British had supported negotiation instead of deciding that partition was to be the final solution to the “Irish problem.”

JERRY BARNES

Granada Hills