Madam, - Is it not truly amazing to read of Gerry Adams declaring at his party's ardfheis last weekend that "our engagement with unionism must deepen and broaden in the time ahead" and that "this is a major challenge for this party and I would urge every activist to take up this challenge personally"?
I agree with him completely (a rare event), but I wonder if there is any chance that Mr Adams and his colleagues might ask themselves what might have happened if they had taken this line 35 or so years ago. Could it be that nearly 4,000 lives might not have been ended violently and abruptly, that possibly billions in material damage might have been avoided and, especially, that maybe as many as 50,000 lives might not have been ruined through psychological and physical damage?
When they recover from that reflection, it could then occur to them that their much-proclaimed objective of a united Ireland cannot ever be achieved until their relationship with their fellow-citizen "unionists" reaches a standard of modern, civilised, human behaviour and they all have a chance of achieving what they were put in this world for.
In other words, without a united Northern Ireland, there can never be a united Ireland - we in this part of the island are not complete fools and we won't buy that kind of trouble. Maybe the IMC should ease off on the matter of "intelligence gathering" - there's a bit more required! - Yours, etc,
JOHN NEWMAN, Glasnevin Avenue, Dublin 11.