Sir, - In a recent article (March 12th) Gerry Adams informed your readers that "the six-county state" is "an undemocratic, illegitimate and failed political entity". Now that he has espoused democracy and "the democratic mandate", I feel it is only fair to ask what he understands by the word "democracy".
According to my dictionary, democracy is "government by the people or its elected representatives". Not only has Mr Adams been elected to the parliament of the state in which he lives, but since the establishment of the Northern Ireland state there have been nationalists elected, although like Mr Adams most of them refused to take their seats. As for local government, I am well aware that gerrymandering the limitation of votes to property owners led to gross inequality; the fact remains that where I now live the local council has been dominated by Nationalists for decades.
Looking back through history, one may ask was the United Kingdom not a democracy until women got the votes, and was the United States not a democracy until after the civil rights movement succeeded. And indeed one is tempted to doubt the sincerity of Mr Adams in some of his statements about democracy in view of the events of the last decades.
Abraham Lincoln once said: "If you forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you can fool some of the people all the time; you can even fool all of the people some of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." But in reference to these words a later politician declared: "You can fool some of the people all the time; you can even fool all the people some of the time - and that's enough to be going on with!" One feels inclined to think that Adams and co. would agree.
However, perhaps it is wrong to accuse Mr Adams and his colleagues of hypocrisy or insincerity. Having always been keenly interested in both religion and politics, I have come to the conclusion that that in both spheres a fanatical ideology, whether adopted or inherited, can make people singularly blind in some ways, so that while one must condemn the behaviour of both violent loyalists and "physical force" republicans, one must try to resist the temptation to condemn utterly those who are addicted to their ideologies. - Yours, etc., Rev Dr G. B. McConnell,
Warrenpoint, Co Down.