THE importance and influence of the GAA on the lives of those who live on this island was enhanced and, indeed, decorated last weekend when Jack Boothman, the association's president, gave a mouldbreaking speech to the annual dinner of the London County Board. With great courage, he put the GAA firmly and unequivocally on the side of the peace-makers and all who desire and work for peace. In doing so, he made a significant contribution to the history of his association and, indeed, to Ireland.

From its cradle the GAA has espoused the dual aims of Irish sport and Irish identity in a "32-county Ireland". In spite of revisionism and abuse it has held soundly to those aims.

In doing so it has frequently been branded as being favourable to the way of violence, of supporting violence for political ends. From time to time many of those who were influential within the GAA equivocated on this matter.

That was not surprising, given the existence of a rule which forbade members to take part in "foreign games". "Foreign" was code for "British", as only the games of soccer, rugby, cricket and hockey were regarded as being "beyond the Pale".

When, in the early 1970s, the GAA eventually shed this anachronism, their detractors switched their focus to another rule in the Official Guide. This precluded members of the RUC and British security forces from being members. That rule remains.

In this column and elsewhere the GAA has been attacked for this antediluvian, meaningless rule. It had some sense when introduced many decades ago, but has none whatever now. Yet the GAA has frequently sidestepped the issue with more determination than skill.

The rule has given enemies of the GAA ammunition with which to attack it for less than noble reasons. The rule has also caused deep embarrassment and shame to some of the most devoted and loyal GAA supporters.

Now all would seem to be different. Last Saturday night Jack Boothman put the GAA into a clear and totally unambiguous context. Speaking to a gathering of Gaels, many born and reared in London, he described the IRA bombing of Canary Wharf as "wanton, callous carnage".

Those powerful words will echo down the corridors of the GAA. There are some, happily not many, who will beat their breasts and declare Boothman a traitor. Whether they will display the same kind of courage gas he has shown and come out publicly to describe him thus, remains a question to be answered. All genuine GAA supporters, who see the association as a sporting cum cultural body, will rejoice that, finally, the monkey of violence and the pursuit of it for political aims has been removed from the GAA's back.

Boothman came to the presidency of the GAA in quite straightforward fashion. At club, county and provincial level he and his family served the association well.That he is a member of the Church of Ireland was regarded, by some, as something of an oddity. Those who did so know little about the BAA in many rural parishes up and down the country.

For a big, not to say huge, man, Boothman has walked a very tight rope. Some years ago, at the opening of the Gerry Arthurs Stand in Clones, he hinted that the rule forbidding membership of the GAA to members of the RUC and British security forces might, one day, be irrelevant.

He got little credit for that straw in the wind. What happened last Saturday night in London went much farther than that. Boothman spelled out the position of the GAA at an official GAA function not many miles away from where the Canary Wharf bomb went off. His audience gave him a standing ovation.

The GAA, too, has been required at times to tread a thin line. When the Fenian movement and the IRB sought to infiltrate it (and succeeded in many ways), the line, with some difficulty, was held. Similarly during the Parnell split and the Civil War. More recently the 1980s hunger strikes threatened the fabric of the association.

Many attempts were made to draw the GAA away from the playing fields and into the killing fields. Many members of the GAA were set upon by members of the RUC and British forces. GAA premises were vandalised or destroyed, and suspicions about the collusion of the security forces seemed well-founded.

Now there is no longer any reason why the GAA should be under such suspicion and such threat. Jack Boothman has done the association and the entire country proud.