Part of any unreasonableness is clearly traceable back to the system which London first set up and then forgot. It took half a century for the troubles to erupt, but the lethal energy with which they did is testimony to the lack of outside supervision for so long. A critic of Britain would lay at London’s door a chapter of political and security misjudgements and mistakes, in which internment and Bloody Sunday would figure prominently. The model of the troubles as a clash between two unreasonable warring tribes is thus a misleading or at least an incomplete picture.
