A chara, - "Crime is crime is crime" was what Margaret Thatcher said about politically motivated violence by republican paramiltaries in the North. Sinn Féin, on the other hand, has always described the same actions as part of a legitimate war to which the forces of the British state were willing and proactive contributors, rather than independent enforcers of law and order.
The Belfast Agreement allowed republican paramiltaries in British jails to benefit from early release and subsequently the Joint Declaration extended similar benefits to those "on the run". However, the legislation proposed by the British government to give effect to these arrangements, extends the amnesty provisions to cover the British security services. This seems to create a moral equivalence between violence carried out by republican paramiltaries and that engaged in by the forces of the British state, either directly or through loyalist paramilitaries as their proxies. Otherwise, surely the British government would be keen to ensure that state agents who had broken the law would be punished, in order to protect the good name of those who had not.
It seems, therefore, that the British government has recognised that the British army and the police services operating in the North over the last 35 years have no good name to protect. Margaret Thatcher might, then, more aptly have said, "War is war is war", accepting the commensurate difficulties in claiming moral superiority over anyone in respect of the violence inflicted by both sides during the conflict. - Is mise,
JOHN HAMILL, Gainsborough Downs, Malahide, Co Dublin.