Hi °C | Lo °C We can't afford to get romantic about guerrilla days in Ireland
WHILE audiences in Dublin have been cheering the theatrical celebration of Tom Barry's 'Guerilla Days in Ireland' (mis-spelt, of course), in Belfast a bomb from so-called republican dissidents nearly killed three police officers. The failure to realise the connection between a celebration of 'good' violence in the past and 'bad' violence today has long been a chronic condition in Irish life. Whereas the myth of republican violence takes merely artistic form in some souls, in others it serves as a moral authoriser, like a virus that affects its hosts in different ways. Actual violence is always a consequence of this myth.
