Why salute one generation of rebels and condemn another?

THE noted critic of militant republicanism, Tom Carew, would have us believe that the almost 30 years of strife in the North was just one very long crime wave — “organised serial mass murder”, he calls it (Irish Examiner letters, May 11).

He denounces the people on one side of this tragic conflict as terrorists, murderers and revolutionary gangsters, while hailing the North’s security forces as heroic upholders of law and order.

If only it were that simple. The truth is that, for many, one side dominated, bullied and oppressed the other, trampling all over the rights of the nationalist population.