I wouldn't have compared, or contrasted, the IRA with the KKK, but the tactics section there seemed a little limited. If kneecapping members of your own community (and this can now mean amputation, because the action has been made more severe to counter the surgeons' developing skills), and planting bombs where they can blow up children are included in normal articles of war, then they shouldn't be.

I do try to keep out of this argument. I started on the side of civil rights in Ireland. I don't like what successive British governments have done. I detest the way the Unionists governed the North. I understand what drove resistance. But I don't understand, or condone its ultimate expression in the deaths of countless and in many cases unreported, innocents.

Penny