I have, I hope, a great deal of sympathy for the oppressed.

I have, I hope, a great deal of sympathy for those who wish to defend themselves.

I have little sympathy for those who visit themselves upon the innocent. I have little sympathy for the demagogues who ride upon debating tricks. I have been a debater. I have won cups for it.

The link to the findings of the US courts as to whether the IRA was a terrorist organisation are not supplied. If you wish us to evaluate those findings please supply them. If you wish to surf upon the US courts please explain how you adopt them at one turn and reject them at another (Docherty). The link to the RUC affidavit terminated at an early stage and the full affidavit was not to be found.

I use my real name to post (unlike many) and I am of the preliminary view that a terrorist organisation is one using a military or quasi-military structure militarily to attack non-military targets. The IRA attack on Mountbatten - fine! He may have been old and retired, but he did not have to join the army. He could even have chosen to refuse orders (spot the sarcasm). But bombs on London buses - please!

Cromwell conquered Ireland. A historian can supply the date. Constitutional Lawyers (my field is copyright and new technology) can confirm that domain confers jurisdiction and legitimacy after a reasonable period. But we have hundreds of years since then. After the "Rising of the Green" this century England ceded the South. The Northern States (I prefer to coin a new name to avoid old baggage) voted not to secede (choice of word to illuminate Americans).

I should be grateful if those who would prefer to conquer the Northern States of Ireland do not pretend to legitimate attacks on civilians as military action.

I am entirely happy for Southern propagandists to write songs and to perform them. When will they afford the same civility to others?

I am open to rational debate but I am inclined to the view that Bobby Sands was as much a terrorist, criminal and murderer (whatever wrongs had been done him) as Ali la Gioconde. His songs may live on their merit - as do those of Leadbelly, who, if my memory serves me, was convicted of murder (likewise the guitarist Lee from the band Love but not Puff Daddy (yet))- but they do not justify his politics or his acts.

By some kind of aside but also by way of mirror image a Jewish (it is relevant) friend of mine was wrong to refuse to sing "Die Lindenbaum") despite the fact that it was adopted (well after being written) by the Nazis. He should have reclaimed it.

I therefore do not accept that Sands was a political prisoner or that he was entitled to refuse normal orders to prisoners.

I do accept that by choosing to die from his hunger strike he achieved propaganda valuable to his preferred cause aand showed great courage.

I hesitate to salute a brave murderer and terrorist more, even, than I hesitate to salute a brave fighting dog, a brave fighting cock or a brave toreador or foxhunter. What they do is wrong, whether or not they do it bravely. Cromwell's invasion of Ireland may have been wrong (as may the Norman invasion of England) but that does not justify Sands' responses other than his hunger strike, and of course his hunger strike was not about that invasion but rather about things somewhat later in time.

Would a native American planting a bomb in a shopping mall to protest the confinement of native Americans to reservations be a murderer or a political protester entiteld to exoneration?