Unionism cannot allow republicans to succeed with scurrilous attempts to rewrite our history

I CANNOT allow your correspondent Raymond McMahon (Write Back, March 27) to get away with a scurrilous rewriting of history by stating that “more than 40 years of conflict ... was caused by discrimination by unionism/ the British regime ...”.

I would not attempt to deny the presence of discrimination in Northern Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s, any more than I would attempt to deny discrimination against minorities in Britain, or discrimination against the black minority in the United States.

Applying the logic of Mr McMahon’s argument, the United States might have expected to see opposition to that discrimination in the form of a campaign of widespread bombings, ambushes, assassinations and the genocidal extermination of young white men in majority black areas.

None of that happened. Opposition to racial discrimination was largely peaceful, using politics and the power of persuasion.

Perhaps Mr McMahon would explain why far greater discrimination in the United States was not met with an IRAstyle campaign of wholesale slaughter and destruction?

The answer, of course, is that the IRA campaign had little, or nothing, to do with discrimination and everything to do with national identity. Or, rather, a wholly undemocratic attempt by the IRA to deny unionists their Britishness and force unionists against their wishes into a 32-county socialist republic.

The people of Northern Ireland really must not allow history to be rewritten to match the republican narrative.

Perhaps the most worrying part of Mr McMahon’s letter is his suggestion that, if they do not approve of the findings of the independent Boundary Commission on parliamentary constituencies, “... nationalists will have no other option but to take to the streets ...”.

That is the kind of inflammatory rhetoric we could well do without.

ANTI-VIOLENCE Belfast