British agenda

IN his letter (July 9), Anthony C Leeding conveyed the “best wishes of the British people” to Ireland on the occasion of the Lisbon Treaty vote.

After 800 years of colonial rule which included plantations, penal laws, failure to implement Home Rule for Ireland and, in more recent times, blatant partisan intervention by the British prime minister in the 2007 Irish election... this is not a good background to such good wishes. Anyway the sentiment has a not-so-hidden British agenda to use Ireland to scupper an EU initiative. Exhortations from across the Irish Sea to vote No in the Lisbon referendum are, therefore, counter-productive.

Anthony Leavy