A British soldier loads his rifle and, with nervous steps, runs into the streets of an Irish town. Does he question his actions? Has he weighed up the rights and wrongs of using violence?
When discussing morality in the struggle, the British soldier is never cited as someone whose conscience is a desirable place in which to hold a public debate. Britain's right to use force in Ireland is never questioned, and increasingly over the last few years, a barrage of churchmen, politicians, journalists and anyone else whom the media can haul on board has spoken out against the right of Republicans to engage in armed struggle.
It is rich indeed that those who rushed to war in the Middle East and helped drop more explosives on Iraq in 19 days than were detonated by all sides throughout the second world war should lecture Republicans on the morality of violence.
In Ireland, many of our "moral guardians" are happy to contemplate a society which, by its very structure, produces poverty, unemployment, mass emigration and violence, and yet save their venom for those who rebel against it.
Those who join the Republican Movement do so for moral reasons; they want to see an end to oppression and the creation of a better world. Those anti-Republican commentators seldom publicly scratch the surface to examine the reasons why so many people feel it necessary to take up arms.
Why use violent means, they say, when disputes can be settled through "the democratic process"?
The simple answer is that democracy has never existed in the Six Counties. Ireland was partitioned to deny democracy. In Ireland if people wish for a secure life free from the attention of the state's military forces, they must accept the status quo and adapt to the standards of the economic and political system.
Within the Six Counties, Republicans and nationalists have never had any avenues of expression within the so-called democracy. Indeed, Belfast City Hall is a perfect example of how "you can participate in our democracy as long as you are a Unionist". The media are tied into this approach with censorship and bans, removing Republicans from the airwaves — "you can speak only if you do not call for real change". The parameters of debate are set to exclude debate.
The "democratic system" set up in the Six Counties was specifically designed to thwart any attempts to remove partition and British interference — it is guaranteed to prolong oppression within its artificial border.
When a mortar bomb explodes in the back garden of 10 Downing Street and MPs of all shades cry about "this attack on our only put a wry smile on the face of every Republican and democrat who considers it an attack on Britain's imposition of a non-democracy in Ireland.
When the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s called for basic change, the state erupted in violence against it. Peaceful calls for equality were viewed as a challenge to the state's very existence because it was a state founded on the basis of inequality.
It is argued that the conditions of the Nationalist people in the Six Counties do not justify taking up arms against the state. This argument lists the material factors (jobs, housing, etc) whose denial adds to oppression, throws in a measure of inequality and injustice, puts them all together in a sum which, it is then said, does not add up to a large enough pile of oppression to justify the use of violence. In other words, things are bad, but not that bad. This method of analysis assumes that all forms of oppression can be reduced to one another, that there is some scale on which people's condition of existence can be measured against a figure which "allows" them to revolt.
The gauge most often used is the list of demands drawn up by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Those spoke of an end to discrimination in employment, in housing allocation, an end to the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries and an end to giving extra votes to property owners in local elections. All are worthy and worthwhile demands, but they do not add up to a charter for freedom; they simply seek the removal of some of the barriers to equality. Not all the demands have been met, but even if they were it is wrong to say that people would then have full civil rights.
Prison is perhaps an appropriate analogy. Material conditions are important and we constantly campaign for better food, adequate heating and even for a supply of better footballs. But even if we had jacuzzis and cocktail cabinets, it would still not make for a fulfilling life in which our talents and emotions could find full expression. For that, we need freedom.
But how, it is asked, can a cause which has as its objective the creation of a society based on human values justify the taking of human life? It is the question of ends and means. All revolts against tyranny involve the use of violence for noble ends.
That is not to rule out the tactic of non-violence, where appropriate. The often-cited example is the civil rights movement in the USA in the 1960s. For its objective — the removal of certain laws which upheld racism — it was appropriate. But full emancipation of black people in the US would require a much more fundamental challenge to the structure of that society; a challenge which, to be successful, could not forswear the use of violence.
If people are not prepared to suffer indignity and oppression, they will seek the means to bring about change. In the Six Counties politics alone, or non-violent protest, will not be successful. The moral justification for armed struggle comes to nought, however, if that armed struggle is not effective in reaching its objectives. It is not that the campaign has to be guaranteed success, but that it is in principle able to bring about its objectives.
Others say, "you may feel you are morally justified in what you are doing, but violence will get you nowhere". And yet the evidence shows entirely the opposite: the IRA campaign and the rise of Sinn Fein as a political force have been the catalyst for change. Without the IRA campaign, the nationalist people of the Six Counties would be reduced to permanent second-class citizenship, and Britain's presence in Ireland would not be a matter for debate.
If there is morality behind the armed struggle there is also morality in how it is waged. The accidental deaths of civilians during IRA operations have been cynically exploited by the media. Such deaths are tragic, and genuine concern has been raised within the Republican Movement and by its supporters. If it is shown that regular deaths of large numbers of civilians are an inevitable consequence of armed struggle, it would be morally unjustifiable and counter-productive to continue. But armed struggle properly, professionally and politically executed will keep civilian casualties to an absolute minimum. The IRA's responsibility is to prove that in practice.
Of course, British responsibility for the deaths of civilians has always been shirked. Even in Iraq, where many hundreds of civilians have been killed, their response has been a shrug of the shoulders and platitudes about war being a dirty business. The British never apologise.
It must also be emphasised that armed struggle alone will not gain our objectives, if only because of the weight of numbers and force of arms against us. There is a need to organise the mass of Irish people in active work against injustice.
The British soldier on the street can stop, search and detain for hours anyone he meets and, in the final analysis, he can shoot them dead without suffering the consequences. And all to uphold a society which is rotten to the core and which absolutely needs his violence in order to exist. To resist within that oppressive society is an expression of human dignity, an entirely moral act.
[Abridged from Captive Voice, a Republican prisoners' journal.]