MICHAEL CLARKE,
Madam, - The books pages in your edition of November 30th carried Tom Conachy's picture of Agnes McConville at Templetown Beach, the site of a failed search for the body of her mother, who was murdered in one of Irish terrorism's worst crimes. On the previous Sunday, I happened upon Templetown Beach, wandering that beautiful area with a visitor to Ireland who had a rosy view of Irish people. What we saw stunned and silenced my visitor and greatly embarrassed me, the Irish host.
The new car park is there now, with a fine, fresh-painted toilet block, its flat wall is disfigured by an Irish terrorist slogan that brazenly dwarfs the tiny, home-made family shrine to Jean McConville. It cowers in the weedy grass bank outside the car-park gate.
This slogan of hate, the hate that led to this and so many other hideous human rights abuses by Irish terrorists, seemed the worse because it had been there for a while, seemingly without will or effort to remove it by local people or the public authority. Do they support the hate or are they afraid if it? - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL CLARKE, Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh.