Protestants in the south have faced discrimination too but it’s time for MLAs to put differences aside

NELSON McCausland’s recent article (Comment, August 30) struck a chord with me. Previous generations of my family had direct experience of discrimination against Protestants in the south.

Our family has been in Ireland since the 1600s and I consider myself as much a native of this country as any Catholic. However, following partition, my grandfather’s home was attacked several times and only the intervention of a Catholic neighbour stopped him from being shot during an IRA raid.

Our “crime” was to be Protestant and to have supplied recruits to the British Army — some of whom paid the ultimate sacrifice (along with many Catholic troops from the 16th Irish Division). All of my grandparents’ offspring left the Irish Republic, came north, or emigrated. After 1922, they were unwelcome in their homeland.

Often, discrimination was subtle. Any state jobs required a mandatory proficiency in Irish. Protestants who did not wish their children to be schooled in the Catholic ethos were forced to educate their offspring privately and my mother’s family were all boarders in a Church of Ireland school. This caused significant financial strain to my grandfather.

Nelson is right: some of the things unionists did in Northern Ireland were “unwise” (his words). I would go further: they were not only unwise, but wrong. Genuine social grievances existed. But none of these justified the subsequent criminal, terrorist campaign.

Our MLAs need to act like adults, put their differences aside and learn to prioritise — not squabble over peripherals that are holding the country to ransom and (unlike health and education) are of little concern to most people.