Working-class Protestants should have taken a stand over their treatment at hands of ‘Big House’ unionists

LINDY McDowell (Life, August 22) makes the point that, as a Protestant from a background of deprivation similar to Bernadette McAliskey, her family experienced no preferment from ‘Big House’ unionists in the Sixties. No unionist gave her family a leg-up. Before “one man one vote”, her parents had no vote in council elections, like working-class Catholics.

I went to school with Lindy. I knew the village well that she grew up in. I know she is right in what she says here. Over the years, I’ve heard many Protestants talk like this and would have agreed with them.

Now, this kind of talk from Protestants just makes me angry. While many Catholics protested at their treatment, most Protestants didn’t. They didn’t want to be seen as siding with the “rebels”. They wore their poverty with stoicism, almost as a badge of honour.

Most Protestants continued to give their allegiance to the middle and upper-class unionists, who had led them to die at The Somme; who gave them some of the worst housing and healthcare in the UK.

Why was there no Protestant equivalent of Bernadette Devlin, or Eamonn McCann, to champion Protestant social grievances? While a small number of progressive Protestants joined the early civil rights marches, they were quickly branded “Lundies” and left.

Why did the vast majority of Protestants not join with their Catholic neighbours to get justice? If they had, there might not have been 30 years of violence and a large section of the Protestant working class would not feel so badly alienated today.

And why do so many working-class Protestants still support wealthy unionists, like Ian Paisley MP, who jets around the world to lobby on behalf of corrupt foreign governments while already well paid by public taxes to lobby for them at home? These are uncomfortable questions for Protestants. Until they are faced, most Protestants will continue to be delusional, believing unionist politicians serve their interests.

WILLIE METHVEN By email