Sir, - I write with reference to Robert Ballagh's letter (September 6th) regarding the airing in public of sectarian sentiments by nationalist or Republican leaders. I cannot in truth say that I ever heard Gerry Adams utter sectarian slogans. But seeing Mr Adams shouldering the coffin of the man who slaughtered Protestant women and children on the Shankill Road some years back spoke volumes, not just to me and others like me who abhor sectarianism, but to the entire Protestant community on the island of Ireland.
Mr Ballagh seems intent on applying his airbrush to the nastier aspects of the so-called struggle in the North. But it won't wash. The Northern Ireland landscape is littered with the graves of innocent Protestant civilians. The memorials are there for anyone with eyes to see. Not casualties of war, but people deliberately murdered by Republican death squads because of their religion.
The killers and their leaders may not have talked the sectarian talk, but they most certainly walked the sectarian walk. - Yours, etc.,
Eddie Naughton, Weavers Street, The Coombe, Dublin 8.