Irish disgrace
The handling of the IRA's Christmas truce, and all that followed it, has been marked bY exceptional ineptitude, both on the part of those busybody clerics who bustled to and fro between the killers and the authorities, and by Mr Rees and his department, as well as, by extension, the Government as a whole. For, just at a moment when it was perfectly clear that the terroristS had lost ground and standing among the Catholic population of the island, and when the army was apprised of its weakness and, in solve places, near exhaustion in a military sense, Mr Rees has chosen to dignify the thugs by opening negotiations with them. Indeed, throughout the last few weeks only the Dublin government -a body of men often before criticised in these columns for lack of will in this respect — has, kept its head and even stepped up its pursuit 01 the IRA. It cannot be repeated too often that the IRA is on no sense a political movement, even a militarist one, which represents or summarises the aspirations in politics of a people: it is a gall, of murderers, united in the pathology of their criminality, and determined to impose a fasciSt regime on the whole of the island. Even were the _ British planning to withdraw altogether frail" Ulster — and there are arguments to be made for such a course — there would be no case for dealing with the IRA. As it is, Mr Rees's folly h85 become criminal, and his ignorance unforgive' able.
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