IN HIS letter (May 14) Robert Readman condemns all and sundry from Tony Blair to UK military leaders, to UK government and Irish Republicans, for the recent trials of 1970s serving soldiers.

Certainly it is beyond outrageous that any rank and file soldiers, serving in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, should ever go on trial half a century later for crimes that are rooted in Anglo-Irish violence for decades, and centuries.

If we want to find guilty parties we would surely make far more progress for peace in Ireland taking a long hard look at the history of British imperialism and colonialism, over many centuries.

Soldiers - put on the streets of Northern Ireland by British governments - are not the guilty parties.

And nor are Irish Republicans fighting for their rights - for their indigenous country.

All we have when the sun goes down is human suffering - spanning decades - steeped in terrible atrocities and injustices.

On both sides but then British governments, as the colonising imperial power, has to take the far larger share of responsibility.

Irish people did not ask British colonialists "Come and take our land and our country". British imperialism took their lands.

The only remedy to this legacy - James Joyce's "the living nightmare of history" - has to be peace. Peace in the here and now.

That peace was then achieved.

The Tony Blair led government Good Friday agreement, December 1998.

An enormous step forward for peace. Prosperity and progress for all in Ireland.

And that was, of the highest importance, borderless EU Ireland.

It is then to my mind, with Northern Ireland borders post Brexit thrown into new disputes and turmoil, below all contempt that the huge value of the Good Friday Agreement should be ridiculed by, of all people, arch Brexiteer Robert Readman.

He defends British servicemen but clearly indifferent to the deep divisions that led to these soldiers being put on the streets of Northern Ireland in the first place.

Jeff Williams

Parkstone