Sir, In reply to Joyce McDowell (letters, October 1st), I believe she needs to digest a few home truths. I live and work in London; she does not. My flat is three miles from Hornsey, where police found enough explosives to blow us all to Kingdom Come two weeks ago.
The fact that the city was just hours away from an IRA "spectacular" was chilling, and the news that it had been thwarted was truly a relief for everybody. A bomb is indiscriminate. It does not have the capability to identify an Irish person and keep him or her safe when it explodes in a city populated by more than 120 different ethnic backgrounds.
I shed no tears for Diarmuid O'Neill, who was a few years older than I am now. He nailed his colours to the mast with his sympathies and his likely membership of the IRA. He was about to take part in an act which would surely have claimed lives at random, possibly even Irish, possibly mine.
I agree with your letter writer that the rights of Irish people in Britain are being trampled on; but the trampling is being done by the IRA. I invite her to visit London in the hours after an IRA explosion. I guarantee her it is not a pleasant feeling. -Yours, etc.,
Belsize Park,
London NW3.