Sir, - The revelation that British Army snipers picked off civil rights marchers below the walls of Derry during the Bloody Sunday massacre will confirm the view of most Northern nationalists that it was a deliberate massacre to suppress them, and will give added impetus to the nationalist community's demand for a just settlement in Ireland. It is notable that the revelation of Army radio transcripts was not obtained through John Hume's attendance at Westminster. The nationalist community thus has the right to question the emphasis placed on attendance at Westminster by John Hume in his recent response to Sinn Fein.
The need for a ceasefire is obvious, and if a single tactical attendance at Westminster in order to vote exclusively through a settlement was all John Hume had in mind, then, however unlikely, this could probably be discussed. But John Hume appeared to want Sinn Fein to go much further and to get involved at Westminster, thus de facto recognising its sovereignty over the North of Ireland.
All this begs the question of what now is the SDLP's attitude to the border. Is it now a UK party? For John Hume to write in the Sunday Independent of an electorally unfair North, but that there is no issue of principle involved in recognising Westminster, is self contradictory. The logic of his position is that the SDLP would even recognise a Stormont parliament.
The latest revelations about Bloody Sunday, combined with the Westminster direct ruler's referral of the Lee Clegg case so quickly to the Court of Appeal, are the latest vindication of the republican analysis that Irish needs will always be subordinated to British political needs in the Westminster Parliament. We saw the same in John Major's (and, at the time, Tony Blair's) unilateral response to the Mitchell Report, both touting for the Ulster Unionists' votes, and in John Major's unilateral response to the second Hume Adams proposals.
Many nationalists will be dismayed at John Hume's politically sectarian response to Sinn Fein's overtures, but will hope that there may yet be time for politicians both North and South, in the SDLP, the Irish Labour Party and Fianna Fail, to be statesmanlike and put the past and posturing behind them. They could then look to Ireland's future in circumstances where the proximity of general elections, North and South, look like establishing an overwhelming majority of people voting for pro unification parties on the island of Ireland, with a new political situation in post elect ion Britain. - Yours, etc.,
Formerly secretary of the
Campaign for the
Birmingham Six (England), 27 Montague Road,
Birmingham, B21 9DF.