Liz Windsor, Britain’s hereditary head of state and head of the Church of England, has called of a visit to Ireland after Irish president Mary McAleese claimed that Protestant children in Northern Ireland had in the past been taught to hate Catholics. According to the Daily Mirror Ms. Windsor considered president McAlesse’s comparison of Protestant treatment of the minority Catholic population of Northern Ireland with race hatred as a “slap in the face” for what were described as her Protestant “subjects” in Northern Ireland.
In 1933 Basil Brooke, later to be Northern Ireland Prime Minister from 1943 to1963, told a Protestant rally that “There was a great number of Protestants and Orangemen who employed Roman Catholics. He felt he could speak freely on this subject as he had not a Roman Catholic about his own place (Cheers). He appreciated the great difficulty experienced by some of them in procuring suitable Protestant labour, but he would point out that the Roman Catholics were endeavouring to get in everywhere and were out with all their force and might to destroy the power and constitution of Ulster. . . . He would appeal to loyalists, therefore, wherever possible to employ good Protestant lads and lassies.”
The visit would have been Windsor’s first to the twenty six counties of Ireland that are free of monarchy.