[Bulletin of the Oxford Irish Delegation Committee Second…]

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Bulletin of the Oxford Irish Delegation Committee Second issue includes articles on raising Ireland in the labour movement and women in Ireland.

Available, price 25p (including postage) from Socialist Press, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, the republican movement maintains a'mass base of political support in the South, as it also does in the tion between that compassion which retrospectively makes allowances for such acts and the kind of prior moral judgement which specifically condones them."

This was-in longer wordssaying the same thing as the almost unbelievably revolting Sun.

«Today there is rightly greater tolerance and more understanding towards homosexuals.

"BUT HOMOSEXUAL VICARS?

"Will not the idea alarm all parents whose children take part in church activities?"

(The implied warning is of course that all homosexuals are child molesters).

The report, in trying to face all ways at once, produced some proposals which almost defy reason. The Sunday Telegraph summed these up quite neatly.

"Homosexual acts, it declares, are not in themselves sinful; if performed promiscuously, however, they were; yet, it adds, for the Church to allow homosexuals to 'marry' each other would be going too far. As to priests it is all right to ordain homosexuals, but if, when ordained, they decide to make public what they are up to, they should offer their resignations to the bishop who should accept or reject them as the case may WAR WHAT WAR?

London NW5 1HR be".

There are obviously more complexities in theology meet the eye.

Princess Margaret's low view of the Irish, as expressed to Mrs Jane Byrne, Chicago's IrishAmerican Mayor, would have caused little impact had it occured out of earshot of an American columnist.

The British press, overhearing Princess Margaret refer to the Irish as pigs would have turned a deaf ear.

But the Americans' ambivalent attitude towards the British monarchy helped ensure that her remarks were widely repeated.

What was surprising in the British press was not that denials were quickly given prominence, but that the story was blown so big in the first place.

It could be that the initial response of Fleet Street was an unthinking reflex response to a controversy.

Or could it be more likely that in spreading her remarks across the front pages of their papers, the editors of Fleet Street, were expressing their agreement with the Queen's sister's sentiments?