Dear Gerry Adams, I know you and I haven't seen eye to eye in quite everything over the years, but let bygones be bygones; for this is my application join the great family that is Sinn Féin-IRA.
Yes, sir, I've seen the light. I'm joining up, enlisting in the mighty cause, to purge Ireland of all the rottenness and filth that 800 years of British oppression have brought us.
My military skills, I should tell you, are marginal. At my boarding school in Leicestershire, we were given the choice of joining the Combined Cadet Force or the Scouts. I chose the Scouts, so if Sinn Féin-IRA need anyone to teach their gallant young volunteers how to clove a hitch or shank a sheep, by Jove, I'm your man. But as for all the other stuff you people go in for, I'm afraid you'll find me a bit of a wimp.
The reason why I'm joining your crowd is actually quite simple. I no longer trust the institutions of the Irish State. I believe we are a filthy, corrupt, third-rate country, run by third-rate people, and I believe there is as much chance of bringing corruption to the bar of justice here by "democratic" means as there is of our putting a giraffe on Mars.
We have introduced a new concept into Western democracy: the intentionally pointless investigation into crime, the most spectacular example of which has been provided by the Charles Haughey saga. At this point you might think that I have an obsession with Charles Haughey; and you would be right. For anyone who hasn't got an obsession with Charles Haughey must recently have visited Madame Guillotine.
When Charles Haughey became Taoiseach in 1979, he owed AIB £1.2 million. AIB agreed to write off £550,000 of the debt. But banks don't lend "their" money. They lend their customers' money to other customers. I was a customer of AIB then. Essentially, when my bank wrote off Haughey's debt, they did so with my money. (I know you in the republican movement have somewhat different ways of getting money from banks: and I greatly look forward to lessons on the subject. (Should I bring my own tights, or will you provide them?) But of course, £550,000 then wasn't what it is now. The debt that was written off was the equivalent of €8.3 million today. My money, Sir, my money: and the money of thousands of workaday dupes like me. (We workaday dupes - naturally - were not introduced by AIB to any of its bogus offshore accounts; but later we did find ourselves proudly bailing out AIB, this time as taxpayers, when the bank got out of its depth playing the US insurance market.)
Haughey never paid tax on this write-off. It stood therefore as €8.3 million in untaxed income. Moreover, in 1979, Haughey received £885,710 in gifts from various businessmen led by the well-known criminal Patrick Gallagher - the equivalent of about €10 million today. All to the then prime minister of Ireland, mark you, in just one year; though some tax on this was finally extracted from Haughey, decades later.
Remarkably, not merely did he lie about his AIB mortgage to the McCracken tribunal, thereby perjuring himself, and prolonging the tribunal, and costing taxpayers (me again) further fortunes; but the courts then ruled he should not be tried on charges of obstructing McCracken because of the publicity which had already surrounded the case. But it was, of course, he who had generated the publicity. So the logic of that grotesque fatuity is that those who choose to be famous must by that process be immune to the consequences of breaking the law.
Last week, he realised the cash value of the generosity of strangers - namely me and other citizens - when he sold Abbeville, the property on which he had such interesting though not always memorable mortgage arrangements, for €45 million. Being a law-abiding citizen yourself, you might have thought this large sum of money would be of interest to the Criminal Assets Bureau; but apparently not. The CAB seems to be more interested in proletarian thieves without connections.
So why does that make me want to join the happy Shinner family? Well, two reasons. One is, I want see your archives. I want to know the real secrets of the Arms Trial. Did the IRA try to get at the jury? What government ministers met IRA leaders, and what did they propose? Just who in Fianna Fáil sponsored the formation of the Provisional IRA?
The second is this. Contrary to what people - especially foreigners - think, we Irish are not a brave people. We seek refuge in conformity, in not putting our heads above the parapet. Nobody can say that about your crowd. It takes real guts to slug it out with the SAS in South Armagh and Tyrone.
Yes, yes, yes, I know that it now appears that much of the IRA campaign for the past 20 years was actually run by the British - as indeed was the loyalist campaign. But at least you were all prepared to put your head over the parapet, those gallant - and some not so gallant - informers most of all. In short, I think I prefer the company of you banditti - and your counter-banditti brethren - to that of the crooked, time-serving lawyers, bankers and politicians who have been helping themselves to my money over the years in order to build their lavish holiday homes. Hence, Sir, my application.
What? You've got a lavish holiday home also? Ah. Application withdrawn.