CHARLIE WALSH,
Sir, - Gerry Adams MP, President of Sinn Féin, has said that terrorism is ethically indefensible". He was referring, of course, to the attacks in America on September 11th and not to the many acts of state terrorism carried out by America, Britain, Russia, China and Turkey, to name but a few countries.
Was his pronouncement some kind of Pauline conversion to bourgeois morality, or hypocritical words in search of acceptance from imperialism? Or have the attacks of September 11th brought out the true political colours of Adams and Sinn Féin, that of full support for and complete subservience to American imperialism - with perhaps still a little sympathy for the discredited politics of Stalinism (c/f Adams's visit to Uncle Fidel in Cuba)?
Adams and Sinn Féin have ridden to political prominence on the back of 30 years of IRA violence (bombings and armed combat, not to mention kneecappings, baseball bat beatings and executions of those involved in anti-social and criminal activities).
If his statement is genuine and sincere, then he and Sinn Féin must now repudiate and condemn retrospectively all the actions of their IRA comrades down the years.
All of this, coupled with Sinn Féin's slavish campaign for office space at Westminster, shows the truly reactionary and counter-revolutionary nature of this petty bourgeois movement.
One thing above all else is crystal clear: not only is this movement anti-socialist; it has now accepted the political, ideological and moral arguments of imperialism. Such a movement can never bring about a new Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
CHARLIE WALSH,
Pimlico,
London SWI.