LIAM KENNEDY,
A chara, - The PSNI raids on Sinn Féin offices (including the police-state raids on the Stormont offices) were aimed at preventing the exposure of the Unionist Party as the wreckers of the Good Friday Agreement.
British policy has moved from "Save Dave" to "Don't blame Dave" . The existence or otherwise of the IRA is the smokescreen behind which the Executive can collapse on terms seemingly politically positive for unionism, and negative for republicans.
That is the failed hope of those who launched the provocation that has created the latest crisis.
Your Editorial of October 7th gives the impression that, since unionists' support for the agreement was grudging from the start, they are excused responsibility for creating a permanent state of crisis and instability - off which feeds the incoherent rage of a never-ending cycle of loyalist sectarian violence. As for your delusional comment that republicans will "recognise the authority of the \ state", what encouragement do you suppose 200 PSNI officers in their babygrow uniforms tramping around Sinn Féin parliamentary offices give to that particular pipe dream?
The Unionist Party is hypocritical in the extreme about violence. The recent Unionist Council statement did not refer to the current violent loyalist rampage, while mentioning the IRA five times. I go further. The Unionist Party sees loyalist violence as part of the means whereby pressure is kept on nationalists and republicans.
And what of Britain's role? It looks as though Reid and Blair have joined the securocrats and that Hugh Orde's "new beginning" to policing consists of police-state raids on parliamentary offices and buildings. As Fianna Fáil's Senator Martin Mansergh said on RTÉ radio last Monday: "This is the sort of thing you associate more with Turkey, President Mugabe, countries that are sort of semi-democratic." That's the North for you in a nutshell: "semi-democratic". - Is mise,
Cllr NICKY KEHOE, Dublin Corporation, Dublin 2.
... ... * ... * ... * ... ...
Sir, - Sinn Féin should not be pushed out of government in Northern Ireland. True enough, the crimes and alleged crimes of the republican movement have reached mind-bending proportions: the Florida gun-running, the Columbia adventures, the Castlereagh break-in, widespread racketeering, "punishment" beatings and shootings of nationalists, the persecution of the McCloskey family in Derry, the shooting last week of the bus driver Danny McBrearty (also of Derry), and the primeval torture of a student, Raymond Kelly, in South Armagh (according to the Irish News, parts of his "bones and flesh" lay strewn on the verge of the road).
The latest crisis, focusing on information-gathering of value to terrorists, is simply part of a larger pattern of terror, intimidation and Nazi-style street politics.
But surely the point is that Sinn Féin should take responsibility for its appalling current record and voluntarily withdraw from the power-sharing Executive. That is, if its leadership really believes in the Good Friday Agreement and its institutions - a debatable proposition, perhaps.
When Sinn Féin has made the transition from a quasi-militia force to a democratic party, it should be welcomed back with open heart into the power-sharing structures of the Good Friday Agreement. - Yours, etc.,
LIAM KENNEDY, Belfast 7.
... ... * ... * ... * ... ...
Sir, - Thank heavens for Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, October 8th)! Once again he has exposed the malignant cancer in the body politic of Irish democracy, North and South, that is Sinn Féin. Not only that, he has exposed the cretinous behaviour of our Government in rushing to the defence of Sinn Féin every time something unpleasant surfaces, whether it be gun-running, consorting with narco-terrorists, mutilating people who displease them or intelligence-gathering.
Has our Taoiseach nothing to say about his conversations with other leaders being bugged by the Provisionals? Has the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, lost his voice now he has regained his seat? Is there no one in the Government parties who will shout stop and tell these debasers of democracy that - to quote Churchill - up with this we will not put? - Yours, etc.,
EDDIE NAUGHTON, Weaver's Street, Dublin 8.