Letter: What can the IRA hope to achieve?

Sir: Could a spokesman for the IRA explain to me as a working, travelling Londoner what my response should be to bomb threats which close London stations? My first instinct is to curse the IRA and then maybe all the Irish, North and South, but that is neither fair nor helpful.

If the bombs are a punishment for past history someone could argue a justification, but no progress is made to a future solution. Does the IRA (and Sinn Fein) not realise that the obstacle to their wishes is not the British public but a large number of the people of Northern Ireland? I do not say "majority", because I believe and hope that the majority want peace and the possibility to live their lives without disruption.

For nearly 30 years, IRA tactics have been met only with intransigence and retaliation. I do not understand what the current campaign can, or hopes to, achieve.

NICHOLAS HOOTON

London SE8