A step in the right direction

The UDA has been criticised heavily on some blogs for publishing a pamphlet in which is acknowledges the atrocities it committed were dreadful and suggests the IRA should admit that its campaign of terror "was not the pure and idealistic liberation struggle it was so often portrayed as being".

The UDA, the UVF, the LVF, the INLA and the other terror groups should disarm immediately and support the forces of law and order, and until they do so my enthusiasm for their words and actions will be muted, but even so I welcome the statement and agree with their words on the IRA. Republican paramilitaries murdering fellow Irishmen has always been hard for peace-loving Catholics in NI to swallow, and Republicans would add so much to what they've already done for peace and reconciliation if they were simply to say that, in retrospect, their campaigns of violence were wrong and are regretted.

I think we're five years away from that. The English are going to have to acknowledge their sins in Ireland as well, most of them pre-1922 (with some notable exceptions). But the day will come, and it'll be a Big day.