Sir, - I am writing in response to Ruth Dudley Edwards article on Sinn Fein (June 11th). I found it offensive and bigoted in the extreme, a sadly typical example of the often myopic and one-dimensional view of Ireland adopted by so much of Britain's lesser-grade press.
In the 19th century, Punch magazine portrayed the Irish as apes in shabby clothing, and while such a caricature would hardly pass muster in today's more enlightened times, it seems that portraying us as "increasingly unconcerned about either democracy or morality" or loving "the whiff of cordite" is acceptable. The Irish may no longer be simian, but apparently now we're a nation of gun-toting immoral fascists!
While the supposedly "antidemocratic" nature of Sinn Fein has been highlighted, accentuated, warped and exaggerated by many a writer besides Ms Edwards, and will most likely continue to be so as many times again, it is hypocritical and contradictory not to place the various strands of unionism and the Northern Irish establishment under the same microscope. How democratic was a society that institutionalised bigotry and sectarianism? How moral are parties like the UUP and the DUP that throughout their recent history have tacitly and, on many occasions, explicitly sanctioned the violence of loyalist paramilitaries?
Whether Ms Edwards cares to admit it or not, the truth remains that whatever the crimes of the IRA - and there have been many - the 30-odd years of violence erupted as the bitter reaction of a large section of Northern society against the state-supported apartheid that rendered them second-class citizens in their own country.
Yet if these last seven years of tenuous truce has taught us anything, it is that peace, tolerance and compromise are a far better alternative to the destructive war that preceded them. The vast majority of Irish on both sides of the Border have voted overwhelmingly in favour of peace, and so in favour of democracy and morality, no matter what right-wingers like Ruth Dudley Edwards may think. - Yours, etc.,
Fionn Davenport, Aungier Street, Dublin 2.