Do Stormont politics stifle the non-sectarian parties? | Letters

Letters: Responding to an editorial, Boyd Black deplores Labour’s policy of not fielding candidates in Northern Ireland. Plus a letter by Declan O’Neill Responding to an editorial, Boyd Black deplores Labour’s policy of not fielding candidates in Northern Ireland. Plus a letter by Declan O’Neill 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