ROBERT DUNLOP,
Sir, - Following Gerry Adams's after-dinner speech at the "Tírghrá" gathering eulogising "one of the most effective guerilla armies in the world", I have four questions to put to him.
1. Would it not be more fitting to say there would have been no war if it were not for the IRA, than claiming there would be no peace process without them?
2. Does the leader of Sinn Féin subscribe to the canon of violent republicanism as enunciated by Padraig Pearse: "Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing and the nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood"?
3. How can someone who claims to have moved into political peace-building celebrate, affirm or praise "one of the most effective guerilla armies in the world"?
4. Since when did murder and mayhem become a noble cause?
Given the track record of Mr Adams and his colleagues, I am not expecting straight answers. - Yours, etc.,
ROBERT DUNLOP, Brannockstown, Co Kildare.
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Sir, - Am I the only one who was staggered to read that Gerry Adams said "there would be no peace process if it were not for the IRA" . Surely we would not have needed a peace process at all if the IRA's murderers had not embarked upon their bloody campaign in the first place?
How different our island would be if the SDLP had been allowed to pursue its campaign using peaceful, democratic persuasion without the background of decades of incessant IRA violence. I have no doubt that John Hume and his colleagues, in co-operation with the Irish government, would have achieved full civil rights for the nationalist population of Northern Ireland long before now. Moreover, they would have done so without killing and injuring thousands of innocent people and without fomenting further the sectarian hatred that pervades many parts of Northern Ireland.
Adams's plausibility is probably his most dangerous quality and the Citywest event must be seen for the cynical, pre-election stunt that it was from a slightly democratic party. All that was missing was the Wolfe Tones! - Yours, etc.,
DARA HOGAN, Marley Grange, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
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Sir, - Nowhere is Sinn Féin's moral ambivalence more evident than in its oft-quoted assertion that there is "no hierarchy of victims". The majority of Irish people, North and South, believed that the only way to secure peace was by non-violent means, and rejected outright the morality of Sinn Féin and its loyalist counterparts. More importantly, they proved their adherence to non-violence not only by what they did - e.g., engaging in the democratic process, respecting the institutions of the State, no matter how imperfect - but by what they didn't do: murder, torture, maim. Now Sinn Fein are taking it upon themselves to morally equate the IRA's murderous activities - all of the above, plus bank robbery, drug dealing, punishment beatings, vigilantism, etc. - with the silent, decent majority who rejected violence.
There is no moral equivalence between those who commit violence and those who reject violence, just as there is no moral equivalence between the murderer and the murdered. Sinn Féin's specious reasoning, that there is "no hierarchy of victims", politely elides their responsibility for the majority of victims - loyalist, nationalist and British - in the first place. - Yours, etc.,
DECLAN MANSFIELD, Grange Road, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.