Sir, - Following the latest IRA atrocity, the utterances of the Sinn Fein leaders are frustratingly predictable - they seem obsessed with the British Government. In their eyes, it is the British Government which holds the key to the solution of the problems of Northern Ireland, and which bears the ultimate responsibility for the "failure" of the peace process.
The British Government does not hold the key - it has, of course, a major and crucial part to play. But it is the ordinary people, unionist and nationalist North and South, who hold the key, and it is about time Sinn Fein recognised this fact.
During the ceasefire period many important developments took place on the ground in Northern Ireland. Mistakes were made, but not only by the British Government. Mistakes have been made by others too - by the Irish Government, by the political parties, by the media, by the Churches, and by us, the ordinary people, who have so often failed to play our part and by our silence and inactivity have allowed extremists and fundamentalists to thrive and prosper.
But the most serious and dangerous mistakes have been made by the IRA, and by many in Sinn Fein - during a "peace process which, we are repeatedly told was their initiative. What sort of a peace process was it when virtually all we got from the "republican" leadership was threats and warnings?
Where was the "trust-building" so necessary after so many years of violence and political vacuum? Where were the leadership, the vision, the development of new political thought? All we got was the old rhetoric - the mantras that have virtually unchanged since the 1920s, and then the inevitable street protests, the manipulation of the parades issue - the exploitation of genuine grievances for selfish party interests.
Contrast this with the behaviour of the loyalist leaders. Their parties have received very little material gain from two years of a ceasefire, they received none of the blind adulation given to Sinn Fein, they have been ridiculed and marginalised by the mainstream unionist parties, yet their leadership, their political development, their restraint, has gained them respect from the most unlikely quarters. Time after time, we have heard the loyalist leaders exhort the shard men" not to go back to violence. Have we ever heard such statements from Sinn Fein leadership?
It is not too late for mistakes to be corrected now, and the overwhelming demand of the people is for a peaceful and just accommodation. But Sinn Fein must also start to work. It must endeavour to carry out seriously the mandate entrusted to it - to analyse critically its own positions, to engage in honest and frank dialogue, to stand up to those within its own movement who seek only to destroy, to lead its people into "meaningful" negotiations, and to renounce forever the meaningless violence that has enslaved it for so long. - Yours, etc.,
Parsonstown, Batterstown, Co Meath.