Dear Sir
I was quite taken by the Sinead O’Connor article (Kilkenny Observer: Page 8: August 4) by Paul Hopkins.
I think his article hit home the type of person Sinead O’Connor was, more than many of that column inches written in various publications las week. I think Mr Hopkins hit the nail on the proverbial head, and reminded us of the kind of beautiful person Sinead really was. Thanks for that.
I enclose a letter written by Sinead which appeared in The Irish Times (From the letter page, July 30 1996), which you may like to republish.
Is Mise,
Liam Burke
Dunmore,
Co Kilkenny R95T4A8
NORTHERN MAJORITY
SIR—- In Reference to Michael Pursers letter (July 24th) concerning Ireland and its Northern majority exactly what does he mean by “majority”? It makes me ill to hear Patrick Mayhew, and John Major, and God knows who else all talking about this “Northern majority” and its rights.
Everyone knows that in the province of Ulster there are nine counties, not six. And how did Ulster become known as “The Six Counties”? For those like Michael Purser and Mayhew who seem to have forgotten, it was discovered that within the nine counties of Ulster the majority was in fact Catholic, so a false majority was created by simply chopping off three counties, leaving six counties and the loyalist “majority”. Exactly to what or to whom are the loyal? Soon there will be no royal family to be loyal to.
Gerrymandering, I think, is what it’s called. A false majority which was created by liars for liars. The real majority of the people in the province of Ulster are catholic and who ever cared about their “rights”? What about people’s right to be Irish in their own country? What has happened in Drumcree has shown the world once and for all that the real perpetrators of evil in Ireland have not been the Irish themselves. And certainly brought home for me why the IRA was formed in the first place. Which was: to protect a people whom the police could not protect.
If the police cannot protect the catholic people, then who will? Why does the Orange Order want to march through Catholic areas anyway? It is like marching past the house of a family whose daughter you have raped and chanting “Horray, we raped your daughter on this day”.
I am sorry for my language and you can put it in stars. But I know that I am speaking the truest feelings of many, many Irish people, who do not get a chance to speak, when I say again that the lies that I see going on around concerning Ireland as told by the only people who DO get a chance to speak, make me sick in my stomach. So Michael Purser, your Emperor has no clothes.
What about their rights to be Irish in their own country?
Yours etc.
SINEAD O’CONNOR,
London”
