[If there was ever a time when the…]

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If there was ever a time when the British army needed a hero it is now in the six counties of Shooting a 16-year old unarmed youth in the back in a graveyard-the latest victim of army murderers-is hardly the way to win friends and influence people.

(When the youth had been responsible for telling the army where arms were hidden, then there is bound to be a little adverse comment even in the servile British press).

Opportune moment Robert Nairac's election to the ranks of official hero came therefore at an opportune moment and the army must have been gratified by the response.

He was awarded the George Cross for bravery-the highest award the state can make in "peacetime'.

Had there been a war in Northern Ireland then Nairac would have qualified for the VC.

But since "keeping the peace" in Northern Ireland and since the unfortunate amount of dead Irish people and British soldiers are merely the result of strenuous peace keeping efforts and not the result of war then Nairac must rest content with the George Cross.

He is not actually alive to receive this honour but no doubt there is one hell of a celebration going on wherever dead SAS assassins go. ' The press fell on the award with delight. Nairac was dubbed Captain Courageous: His life and death were generally held up as epitomising all that is right with British character, an example for young men of the right sort.

TV interviews with his parents stressed how humble they were and how proud of their son. The ancestral home of the Nairacs swelled with pride.

Secret Nairac was a product of the English upper classes. He had been a uniformed officer less than six miles from where he died.

He well known the area for his operations against the IRA. He would merge as easily into a republic pub background as one of those 1950's flat foot plain clothes police inspectors would merge into a London East End pub.

That is to say that every fibre of his body, bearing and manner would have proclaimed to the world that he was a secret agent.

Nairac went one better in his undercover work. To complete his disguise he led the singing of Republican songs (no doubt shouting 'Begorrah' between verses).

In this way he cunning y collected information. And in this way he was taken away and shot. (And if ever that favourite verdict of the British inquests "justifiable homicide had a fitting use-this would be it.)

There is little opportunity perhaps for admirers of Nairac's art to put their devotion to the test.

To find the right blend of brutality and stupidity; to give it the opportunity to serve imperialism; to bring it to a suitable tragicomic conclusion. Such stutt are heroes made of.

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Millions on the streets of Tehran: but without a Marxist leadership they could still face the prospect of defeat