Foster’s idea of a ‘United Kingdom’ no longer exists as devolution has created four individual

ALEX Kane’s article (Comment, May 30) looks at the historic relationship between Northern Ireland and Great Britain and notes that, historically, Northern Ireland has been “a place apart”. This has been true from day one of the so-called “United Kingdom”.

If the kingdom had been defined as the United Kingdom of the British Isles in 1801, it would have been well and truly defined as united. But that wasn’t done.

Such a definition would have been rejected by Grattan and his patriots, so the compromise definition of “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” was arrived at.

But the “... and Ireland” fractured the kingdom into two parts: Great Britain and Ireland. Had a confederacy for these islands been accepted by the English in the 19th century, much violence and bloodshed would have been unnecessary in Ireland in the 20th century.

In the Scottish movement for independence, federalism should once more be at the forefront. Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Politics at Oxford and an authority on the British constitution, notes that, where once the kingdom was the home of a single British people, with devolution it is now made up of four nations: English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish. Such an arrangement is no longer united, but is now quasi-federal.

If Arlene Foster wishes Northern Ireland to be inclusive, she must tread the pathway of all-inclusive federalism, by changing the definition of the kingdom.

MICHAEL GILLESPIE Londonderry