It's a view into the Short Strand or other nationalist areas of the North you don't see much of in the South - the idea that Sinn Fein and the IRA are seen increasingly by some nationalists to have become the oppressors, replacing the Loyalist thugs and the RUC with a reign of terror of their own. Longstanding republicans and those of the "old" (pre-1994) PIRA looking in horror on the goings-on these days, feeling powerless to stop a movement/organisation of which they were once proud now devolved into pimps, loan sharks, racketeers and mindless thugs.
Before she begins her interview with the McCartneys, Sheridan quotes at length a letter circulated by Josephine Milnes, a mother living in the Ardoyne in Belfast, whose son, she suspects, was killed by republicans, just weeks after his father had died. After postering her area with 'murder', she wrote a letter to her neighbours in defiance of local Sinn Fein chiefs. It read in part:
"Nobody could break us and, by God, we have been sorely tried throughout the years, from the B Specials, to the H Blocks, to the hunger strikes, to the so-called peace process. We have held our heads high and stood shoulder to shoulder through it all."
Her kids "could lean on me because I could lean on my wider family, my community. Like each one of you, my sense of belonging, my sense of strong community has enabled me to overcome all the obstacles. Never, in my life, did I have to ask my community for support. Today, unfortunately, I have no other choice but to ask, to beg, to plead, to make a direct appeal for your help."
"When did it happen? When did we hand over our right to run our own community? When did we sell our birthright and allow others to deal with our problems? And why can't these others stop the thugs who roam our streets and terrorise us? Why can't they stop the joyriders, the drug dealers and the hoods? I think we all know the answer to that one. Shame on them."
"They have left us without protection and without justice. They only respond to our needs when they want our vote in the ballot box to keep them in charge. But in charge of what? A broken, beaten and shattered people, wearied by years of nonaction against the thugs who are destroying what was once a proud and safe place to live? I do not appeal to these others. I will never put my name on their ballot paper.
"I will never again allow them to be in charge of my life or the life of any ordinary, decent kid who can be mowed down and killed as he mourns his father."
Gerry Adams likes to think of himself as an Irish Nelson Mandela. A few more months like this and 95 Theses-esque missives like Ms Milnes' and Adams will be remembered as more Mugabe than Mandela.
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