The North’s middle classes are too comfortable to drive real reform

“Deep frustration and scepticism” (Irish Examiner Editorial, Sept 30) is the hubris-hybrid that has haunted the Stormont ‘enterprise’ since its inception. The innate sectarian ‘pyrite’ which riddles so much of the societal machination in the six northern counties is a greedy malignancy of ‘me-féinism’.

Mostly we think of the main ‘intransigent’ political players, flag-waving loyalists or banner-brandishing Orangemen as the main villans of the peace. But there is a vein of caution which weaves its thread of discord and dysfunction through so many ‘comfortable’ strands of society’s middle and upper classes. ‘We’re doing alright, thank you very much’ might be the self-satisfied professional’s mantra in leafy suburbia. ‘Why rock the boat, if business is good and the filthy lucre forthcoming apace ? Let them fight the bit out between them, as long as we continue to prosper’.

Not that it’s an easy station, to embark on protracted, wholesome change of ingrained attitude in the round. Too much at stake it would seem for the faint-hearted moderate,.

It is with this tranche of ‘citizenry’ that a bulk of expectation and responsibility lies, or should lie. The moderate ‘middle-class’ parties are essentially emasculated by soporific asphyxiation and self-inflicted ennui.The politics of need and nourish don’t apply.

And so the DUP and Sinn Fein take up the slack.

Jim Cosgrove

Chapel Street

Lismore

Co.Waterford.