Sir, - Sinn Fein is now jettisoning virtually every republican principle it ever held to enter a partitionist settlement because the IRA has lost the war or at least has seen that the war was unwinnable. However a war that was unwinnable before a settlement, will become even more unwinnable after it, especially as the settlement will have the support of all 32 counties of Ireland.
A return to that war would only be possible if the No campaign of Dr O'Brien, Dr Paisley and Mr McCartney triumphs in the North. . As Dr O'Brien rightly says, the British will be so appalled by such an outcome there will be strong and dangerous voices raised for withdrawal. Unionists will be universally blamed for the failure and future policies decided in an atmosphere of despair.
There would be other consequences. The SDLP would be finished as a political force. Why should even a moderate nationalist support a party which has tried twice to make a deal with unionists only to find that unionists can't or won't deliver? The marching season would then be conducted with extra bitterness and violence by both sides. The IRA could and would go back to war in defence of the nationalist people. The Taoiseach would find his party dragging him back into the republican rhetoric of old.
The civil war which Dr O'Brien has so often predicted could actually begin and the Union would be under its greatest, and possibly final, threat. But then the intransigent, bigoted, sectarian unionism of Dr Paisley, which is the main driving force of the No campaign, has always been the biggest danger to the Union and the biggest asset to the IRA. That is the campaign that Dr O'Brien, without embarrassment, tells us he has now joined. - Yours, etc., Robin Glendinning,
Comber, Co Down.
