Your editorial on the dysfunction in Northern Ireland politics (15 October) does not mention the main cause: the denial of basic democratic rights to the people by the Labour party.
The party national executive committee refuses to run Labour candidates in any Northern Ireland election, whether to district councils, the Stormont assembly or the Westminster parliament.
This means people here, including affiliated trade unionists, are denied the basic democratic right to vote for our Labour government, which is setting our taxes and winding us up for war.
This undemocratic stance by Labour is not an act without consequences. By suppressing cross-community Labour party electoral politics, it forces the electorate into their ethnonational blocs and incentivises the sort of communal sectarian politics and stalemate that we are well used to.
Boyd Black
Secretary, the Labour party in Northern Ireland
It is undoubtedly true, as your editorial says that “Northern Ireland’s voters currently do not have the politics they deserve”. However, there are problems with your assertion that the current model of power-sharing “designed to reassure nationalist and unionist communities remains indispensable”. In fact, it plays a part in maintaining the current “cycle of dysfunction”.
I have family in Northern Ireland who would prefer to vote for parties that do not fit into this category, but doing so under the current rules would be pointless. They are part of a growing number of voters who do not primarily identify as being part of either “community”.
However, even if parties such as the Alliance, the Greens, People Before Profit were to win a majority at Stormont, they would under the current rules not be allowed to form an administration. In fact the current system reinforces sectarian division by stipulating that only those parties self-identifying as nationalist or unionist can “power-share”. Ireland needs real change. The current system cannot deliver it.
Declan O’Neill
Oldham, Greater Manchester
