Sirs, - When the Portadown "Brethren" first marched towards the barricades last week, I was filled with a sense of inevitability about what was to come. Who would have guessed that the inevitable was three children being burned in their beds ? What makes the sane majority on this island scream with frustration is not just tragedies like this, but the shocked and enraged reactions from those people who are responsible for creating the climate in which they occur. Ian Paisley shows up on their doorstep and denounces the killers and yet for years he has been promoting hatred of all things Catholic, all things Irish. His rhetoric is the very environment where the violence festers. He is a man who claims to hate violence, and yet violence resonates throughout his words.
Equally, how can the Orange Order try to distant themselves from this ? They may have wanted a peaceful and dignified protest but they must surely have known that other elements would use that very protest for other means. They stay at Drumcree because they are afraid to lose face. Their principles continue to override any sense of decency, maturity, sanity or humanity they may once have had. We see that even in the event of a tragedy like this, their intransigence remains constant. A democratic society, which the North strives to be, is entitled to uphold its laws. Surely, now it is time. Send in the troops. Show these people that the world no longer needs their idiotic beliefs, that no society can afford to have its children burnt in their beds because of a march. Yours, etc., Michael Kelly,
Milltown, Dublin 6