ABSTRACT
For ten years now, Ireland has suffered from the violence and counter-violence of a situation in which terrorism has become a terrible reality. In Northern Ireland, but also in the Republic, those ten years have seen thousands of violent deaths, serious injury and maiming, much destruction of property, kidnapping, intimidation, and the deflection of political attention from constructive areas of activity into the unhappy sphere of security and anti-terrorist legislation. The current situation had its roots in the peaceful Northern Ireland Civil Rights campaign of the mid-1960s which met with a repressive and violent response from the authorities in that part of the island. There are, and there remain, great political issues in Ireland which require lasting solutions. The Labour Party condemns utterly the activities of all terrorist groups in Ireland. Their campaigns of assassination and sectarian killing are incapable of justification by any argument, however twisted.
