The brutal murders of two young soldiers and a police officer in Northern Ireland as well as the wounding of four other people were appalling.
Let’s hope that the police find the murderers quickly and that there will be no more grieving families.
This requires that people co-operate with the police, which hasn’t always been the case for some. Thankfully, things are changing.
The rapid reaction to these murders revealed that most people want to repudiate renegade republicans.
This is mainly done in Northern Ireland but people in Great Britain can help too.
My researcher, Gary Kent, has long worked with peace groups in Northern Ireland and organised regular vigils after bombs in London in the 1990s. He talked to a union official in Belfast on the Sunday.
The unions had decided to organise silent rallies in several cities with business groups and churches on the Wednesday.
I agreed to mobilise MPs for a small vigil at the Commons to show our symbolic support.
Theirs was a huge feat and succeeded in uniting many thousands of people at short notice.
The event in London attracted MPs from many parties including two former Secretaries of State, John Reid and Peter Hain as well as the current Cabinet Minister Shaun Woodward and his Conservative counterpart, Owen Paterson.
I hope that all these rallies will underline the need for all parties to stand together and back the police.
I would add one more thing. There has been peace for many years in Northern Ireland but there are still deep differences and suspicions between Catholics and Protestants.
There are no magical solutions that can change this overnight. New generations will, I hope, be less hidebound by history and more forgiving.
But I do note that only 6% of children go to integrated schools and many Catholics and Protestants live almost entirely separate lives from the cradle to the grave.
That has to change too. One of the reasons why I am a strong supporter of the trade unions is that they tend to bring working people together whatever their religious beliefs.
The unions have played a fantastic role in standing up to the gunmen. We all hope that we won’t need to hold more peace rallies but we will if we have to.
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