Jimmy, I think you accept that when Callaghan committed the army in 1969 it was to protect catholics, because the RUC had gone native with their prod brethren. The soldiers were welcomed on that basis, and yet as you indicate, they soon became the enemy. Why?

In no small degree, this was the doing of the IRA, which had been deeply, deeply humiliated by the arrival of the British Army. They had simply not been there when needed -provoking graffiti on some catholic streets which said: IRA = I Ran Away.

Now I'd be the first to say that any standing army is a clumsy instrument to deploy on the streets, whether Brit, Israeli, American, or any other. And there's no defending the response to the IRA campaign. Their strategy, so far as they had one, was to get the IRA out on the the streets so they had a chance of shooting them.

Any time the Provos went quiet, the Army would searh a few hundred catholic homes (that is, trash them at three or four in the morning, ripping out floorboards, bathrooms, pissing on beds etc, while terrified kids and mothers looked on) in the hope of forcing another gunfight. Some of the soldiers and some of the officers were simply thugs, such as armies tend to attract. But even with the army I would hesitate to generalise. I know people in both the Turf Lodge and New Lodge areas who had great respect for some individual officers.

My only point is that the way it all evolved was more complex than Westminster simply selling catholics down the river. That was never the intention, not even of the Tories, and not even with their biggest blunder (which you forgot to mention, Jimmy!) which was giving Faulkner his way on internment.

With Northern Ireland spilling on to the agenda in Westminster at last, the Tories soon regarded their unionist pals as a monumental embarrassment. (Incidentally although it was a Labour government that tried to implement the Sunningdale agreement - wrecked by loyalists - it was drawn up while the Tories were in office.)

Yes, the politicians cocked up and yes, they did listen too much to their own army chiefs. And yes, they were as soft on their criminal squaddies as most nations sadly seem to be. But to condemn a whole nation for these failures - and to condemn fellow Irish who have been welcomed in that nation in their thousands - seems a tad mean-spirited to me.

Especially so in the present climate. Not every government (witness Spain) would allow a political party to play a full part in the democratic process while it still kept at its disposal a private army, under arms.

If you want to see reconciliation, Jimmy, don't waste your time praying for it. Let's start trying to understand other people's points of view, as I believe Martin McGuinness and David Irvine are both trying to do. (If any of us had been born and bred on Sandy Row, there's a good chance we'd be die-hard loyalists now, or a least supporting Rangers.)