MARTIN MANSERGH,
Sir, - When the Taoiseach, at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, implicitly referred to Sinn Féin as "a former revolutionary party", he was crediting at face value Sinn Féin's recently reiterated acceptance of one Army and one police force, the Garda Siochána, in the State, and the presumed commitment that follows from that to democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law in the Republic.
In a Northern context, even though Sinn Féin has not (as yet) accepted the new Police Service of Northern Ireland, it supports the Good Friday Agreement and has signed up to the Mitchell Principles and the pledge of office, which includes "a commitment to non-violence and exclusively peaceful and democratic means".
To still describe Sinn Féin as "active revolutionaries" (Cristóir Ó Rálaigh, PRO Ógra Sinn Féin, March 18th) is at apparent variance with all this - revolutionaries being generally understood as people committed to the overthrow of the State, and who do not therefore in the meantime consider themselves bound by law, peace agreement or constitution.
Perhaps he would like to acknowledge that in the South, Sinn Féin is at least a "slightly constitutional" revolutionary party, and in the North it is on paper committed to being an exclusively democratic and agreement-bound one.
The Workers' Party, the bulk of whose TDs are now in Labour, also went through a phase in the 1980s of describing itself as a "revolutionary party" (i.e. not bound by "bourgeois legality"). So, pending clarification, an understanding observer would have to presume that Mr Ó Rálaigh is employing a mainly rhetorical flourish of the type that often reflects the uneven transition from paramilitarism to democracy, to project a radical appeal.
But it is probably unwise to expect the electorate to take too much of that on trust. - Yours, etc.,
MARTIN MANSERGH,
(Fianna Fail Candidate,
Tipperary South),
Dublin 2.