Letter: Pulling Rank

As may be inferred from Michael Streeter's report ("IRA hunger strikers fight again on film", 15 December), the soon-to-be-released film Some Mother's Son is the most overt piece of IRA-Sinn Fein propaganda to reach screens in Britain so far, distributed, I regret to say, by the Rank Organisation.

It bends the facts of the Long Kesh hunger strike to fit its thesis - which your article abets - that "Mrs Thatcher's ruthlessness ... allowed the 10 protestors to die". The choice was theirs; and the "strike" collapsed because the families of other strikers were beginning to sign their sons off the danger list. The film ignores the existence of a large indigenous population of Ulster Catholics and Protestants anxious to keep their constitutional liberties and lives, making it appear that only fascistic British civil servants and soldiers held the province in subjection. I wonder if Rank looked at what it was buying from the American company that co-financed the film.

Alexander Walker

London W9