Irish unity is on the way after Sinn Féin’s big victory in North

THE image of Ian Paisley Sr shouting remains ingrained in the memories of many people of a certain age who had to suffer in dignified silence to his sectarian outbursts.

Paisley was often described as a sectarian bigot ,which was justified, but he mellowed with age and possibly a sense of foresight as he recognised the writing was on the wall as far as maintaining political structures designed to ensure a pro-British dominance of the six-county statelet.

Paisley’s eventual cosying up to Martin McGuinness, resulting in them being called ‘the Chuckle Brothers’, was another milestone on the road to equality for all.

The result of the latest sixcounty elections has put Sinn Féin firmly in the driving seat, and has sent a tremor through the remnants of unionism that cannot see the ‘wood from the trees’. Sinn Féin won 27 seats in the 90-seat assembly while the DUP took 24, so therein lies the story of a society that is evolving for the common good, and the eventual reunification of the country.

Trying to scupper or hold back the evolving tide with a holed bucket are Jeffrey Donaldson, the misguided leader of the DUP, and Jim Allister of the TUV. They are the creators of their own misfortune after being sucked along in the tailwind of the UK’s bumbling prime minister Boris Johnson in his quest to extricate Britain from the pre-conceived notion of EU wickedness. Brexit was born, which ended up with the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol to protect the workings of the Good Friday Agreement. A trade barrier down the Irish Sea may not have been on unionism’s wish list, but it’s there to stay despite their tantrums.

Having watched the unfolding results of these elections partly on RTÉ, I switched over to BBC, who gave a better airing of what it meant for nationalists who were denied such an opportunity since the undemocratic creation of the six-county statelet in 1921.

The reason for the BBC’s generous airing is that they have nothing to fear from Sinn Féin’s electoral success in the North, but in Dublin’s salubrious surroundings, it creates nervous twitchings, amid fears over what the replication of that electoral success would mean down south.

No doubt Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar will be clutching at straws and sharpening daggers in their ongoing attempts to prevent Mary Lou McDonald becoming the first female Taoiseach.

JAMES WOODS, by email.

... SINN Féin, the political surrogate of the IRA, is Northern Ireland’s largest party, but not yet in the majority over unionists.

As a former unionist MLA at Stormont, I would like to ask Boris Johnson if he is going to continue with his Brexit betrayal through debasing my Britishness by way of the Northern Protocol.

Is it impolite to ask what provisions the UK government will make to accommodate more than one million unionists crossing the Irish Sea because they can’t live in

Northern Ireland under the ‘Brits out’ Sinn Féin enabled by Dublin and Brussels rule? Answers please to the abandoned British citizens of Northern Ireland.

DAVID McNARRY, Ballygowan, Co. Down.

Punish war criminals

I WAS delighted to hear that UK defence secretary Ben Wallace advocated that war criminals be tried by court martial. I did suggest this some months ago at the start of the Ukraine invasion.

The invasion of a sovereign country, the rape and murder of that country’s citizens and the murder of its soldiers is not a civil matter; military crimes must be tried in military courts.

Those to be tried must include the officers and soldiers who committed war crimes, and also their commander-in-chief, in this case Putin. It’s time we brought the Geneva Convention up to date on the treatment of war criminals.

JOHN FAIR, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.