Madam, - Contrary to what we are being told by most branches of the media, the IRA has not said its "war" is over. It has not said its "armed struggle" has been abandoned.
It has merely said that its recent and prolonged "campaign" has ended, as it did in 1962 - only to re-emerge a few years later bloodier and more nihilistic than before.
We can only pray we are not being bamboozled by the duplicitous TUAS - Tactical Use of Armed Struggle - which can be marketed to outsiders as Totally UnArmed Strategy. Should the Provos fail to attain their stated objective of a 32-county socialist republic by 2016, can we expect the pike to come down from the thatch and the murder and mayhem to resume? - Yours, etc,
SEAN WARD,
Sutton Park,
Dublin 13.
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Madam, - Nigel Cooke (July 30th) observes that the IRA grew out of the circumstances surrounding the Civil Rights campaign and says it is now time "once and for all" to be tough on the "reasons" for the IRA.
The IRA's 30-year campaign of violence was not justified even by the pogroms of 1969-1970 period and the reprehensible attempts of the Unionist governments of the time to suppress the Civil Rights campaign. All the injustices of the times were addressed by British governments, perhaps embarrassed by world opinion.
Mr Cooke would do well to read Prof Richard English's dispassionate assessment of the IRA in his book Armed Struggle. In the last chapter he quotes TK Whitaker, one of Jack Lynch's advisers in 1968, saying: "The most forceful argument in favour of the patient good-neighbour policy aimed at ultimate agreement between Irishmen is that no other policy has any prospect of success. Force will get us nowhere; it will only strengthen the fears, antagonisms and divisions that keep north and south apart."
How right he was: we are further from a united Ireland now than in 1968; and the opportunity brought about by the virtual removal of some of 20th-century unionism's main objections to a united Ireland - the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church and the weakness of the southern economy - has been wasted. I aspire to a united Ireland, but one brought about by peaceful persuasion, not murder and attempts at ethnic cleansing. I believe it is time for people in the Irish Republic to be tough on the distorted thinking of some physical-force republicans, which regrettably won't have "gone away" just because the Provisional movement has at last ended its campaign. - Yours, etc,
NOEL McCUNE,
Ardfreelin,
Newry,
Co Down.
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Madam, - If Cllr Tim Atwood is going to quote Archbishop Tutu in his bitter letter of July 29th, he would do well to consider that while the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission may have given rise to an "acknowledgement of what was done wrong", it did not necessarily bring about "forgiveness".
In any case, long before anyone was talking about truth or reconciliation in South Africa, people were full of hope for a new future, in spite of their very bitter past. Would it be too much to ask of any citizen of the six counties to enjoy a moment like this, instead of raking up the past?
The past will inevitably be raked up, holes will be poked in the IRA statement - not least by Unionist politicians - but I strongly regret that an SDLP representative should feel it necessary to do this, without for one moment savouring what could be positive in the IRA's statement.
Mr Atwood's comments are reminiscent of Afrikaner discourse in the dialogues leading up to South Africa'a first free elections in 1994 - the clutching at straws of a political party that is on its way out. - Yours, etc,
FIONA McCANN,
La Queue en Brie,
France.
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Madam, - Is this the real thing or more Gerry-mandering? - Yours, etc,
JIM YATES,
Old Bawn,
Dublin 24.
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Madam, - If it be true that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, how long can it be before we see the Sinn Féin hospitality tent at the Galway races? - Yours, etc,
FRANK E. BANNISTER,
Morehampton Terrace,
Dublin 4.