Madam, - Danny Morrison's letter in Wednesday's edition is yet another example of Sinn Féin's unique slant on Irish affairs.
Strikingly, Mr Morrison appears to suggest that the Supreme Court in some way sanctioned the release of Garda McCabe's vicious killers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When rejecting the appeal by Michael O'Neill and John Quinn, Chief Justice Keane said he was satisfied that the Government's decision to refuse early release to those jailed in connection with the killing of Garda McCabe "was a policy choice which it was entirely within the discretion of the Executive to make and could not be characterised as capricious, arbitrary or irrational".
It should be recalled that at the time of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the killers of Garda McCabe had only been charged and the Government made it clear that the early release scheme would not be applicable to these men. That same Government has since received a fresh mandate from the Irish people and the policy stance with regards to Garda McCabe's killers has remained consistent throughout.
Given the oft-pronounced view of the Government on this issue and the clear judgment of the Supreme Court, Sinn Féin's continued agitation for the release of these men is nothing short of an affront to the Irish people.
Mr Morrison would do well to accept that bank robbery is not, in any sense, a political crime. Neither is the shooting dead in cold blood of a member of An Garda Síochána.
It is important that the Government stands firm on this issue and makes it abundantly clear to Sinn Féin that there can be no seizing power in this State with a "ballot box in one hand and an Armalite in the other".
Mr Morrison also seeks to equate the actions of the men involved in the War of Independence (the "Tan War", as he calls it), who enjoyed the active support of a clearly expressed majority of the people of Ireland, with those of the latter-day Provos, whose "military" honours include Enniskillen and Warrington.
We must hope that history will not be written according to Sinn Féin's foclóir, as such a history would seem alien to the vast majority of the people of Ireland. - Yours, etc,
GERARD KELLY, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
