Hi Dave:
I looked up the peace thread. Well, there was one, pro-republican, though I would not have put things the way he did... You'll notice that when I wrote of Irish law, as to the North being part of Ireland, I was writing about the time that Sands was arrested. I delivered a paper in Ireland about Irish American Travellers (Pavees - "Gypsies") at Trinity Law School, (The Racialization of American Irish Travellers as Gypsie) a few years ago, and found, as I had heard, Ireland to have changed dramatically in the past decade. What effect this will have on potential for reunification, we will see. It is a different Europe today, and even though Britain holds on to the Pound while Ireland has abandoned the Punt, it is a different Britain as well. In point of fact, in the past ten years, I spent much more time in England than in Ireland, and have seen the differing attitudes towards Ireland as the peace process evolves. Even so, I don't feel called on to write about the peace process ... other than to say, I don't feel as some who commented from the States, that religion played a big part on the republican side, most Republican volunteers I met, were not very devout in their faith, though some were. All accepted me, as a Quaker with family Protestant roots, for myself without any thought to my religion (as did my Irish American Catholic wife ).

So, there it is... I have great hopes for peace, but I have little in the way of expectation of how that peace will look.

All the best
slan
lor