Protestant supremacists who hate Catholics? Try the Ku Klux Klan
The hatred which the Third Reich displayed towards Jews, homosexuals and others is not dissimilar to the hatred displayed by elements of unionism towards Catholics.
Perhaps a more relevant comparison could be drawn between unionism and the Ku Klux Klan. Both groups are Protestant supremacists and virulently anti-Catholic and racist.
They differ in their method of terrorising their respective victims, the KKK preferring the rope from the nearest magnolia tree, while the method favoured by some elements of unionism was the petrol bomb lobbed into the homes of sleeping Catholic families.
The Quinn children from Ballymoney were victims of the Orange ayatollahs’ thought police as retribution for the banning of a march down Garvaghy Road.
Whenever the nationalist community demanded to be treated as equals, the North’s equivalent of the Gestapo, the ‘B’ Specials and the RUC, were unleashed by the unionist state to beat them into subjugation. Subsequently, when nationalists sought redress through the law for these murderous pogroms, loyalist death squads, in collusion with the so-called forces of law and order, quickly dispatched their legal representatives from this world, as both Rosemary Nelson and Pat Finnucane found to their cost.
Not even the press were exempt. In an attempt to silence free speech, journalist Martin O’Hagan was murdered when he threatened to expose these vile creatures. Whenever unionist oligarchy was threatened, discrete strands of unionism bludgeoned the Catholic community into submission.
What kind of society would tolerate the sight of politicians and clergymen mingling with the likes of Johnny Adair, Billy Wright, Davy Payne, John White and Tommy Lyttle? Yet this is precisely what happened when sectarian bigots in the Orange Order laid siege to Catholic areas every summer.
Notwithstanding the fact that the IRA were responsible for many civilian deaths, they primarily fought a political war whereas loyalists fought a nakedly sectarian one. Fr Reid was right; the unionist community should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Tom Cooper
23 Delaford Lawn
Knocklyon
Dublin 16
