A mandate of sorts: The republican story
I agree that republicans had a mandate of sorts from the 1918 general election, though it is doubtful if the electorate were fully aware of what they were voting for.
It would have been difficult for republicans to obtain a mandate during the most recent phase of their campaign, since both governments saw fit to ban Sinn Féin.
But now they're legal and have become the major non-unionist party in the North, as well as making considerable inroads down here this amounts to a mandate from those who voted for them since they must have known what they were voting for.
It is ridiculous to suggest that the focus of the IRA campaign post-1922 was not in the North their whole raison d'etre is to end British sovereignty in any part of Ireland. Certainly they have done terrible things, and not all in the North, but their opponents are also guilty of atrocities.
The human race nearly always resorts to violence when important objectives cannot be achieved by peaceful means. We do not have to trawl through history to find examples: the recent Iraq war was a clear example of unjustifiable state violence.
I would suggest that republican violence to end British sovereignty in Ireland is relatively far more justifiable than US/British violence in Iraq, has done far less damage and caused vastly fewer casualties.
David Roberts
'Gloundine'
Castlegrove
Mallow
Co Cork.
