The balance of terror
From Mr Michael Dommett Sir: I have recently returned from ten months' working in Northern Ireland between Bangor and Belfast. While appreciating that it wasn't a largely nationalist area, it was the UDA and UVF who threatened our managers and our subcontractors, who issued verbal threats, who painted death threats on the toilet-room walls, and who beat up our security guards. It was a member of one of these groups who came into my office after I'd sacked him and told me that I couldn't sack him. It was members of these groups who drove my UK supervisor to catch a flight out the next day after he was threatened. The IRA and other nationalist groups in contrast never caused any problems. Why, then, imply in your leading article (12 October) that the IRA are uniquely bad? Most of the people I worked with said that both nationalists and loyalists had their thugs keeping things boiling because they'd got used to unearned income. Neither group wanted the new police force to be established as it might stop their bullying and intimidation.
The IRA/Sinn Fein are bad, but so are the loyalists. If we had made sure that the nationalists weren't treated as second-class citizens before the IRA started the latest round, then we could have 'drained the sea of water'. But we didn't. We have to work from where we are.
Michael Dommett
Alton, Hampshire
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