I WAS born a bastard before it became fashionable and that gives me better credentials than most to speak up for unmarried mothers. Once again they are being treated as social lepers.

Such was the stigma of illegitimacy in the hungry Thirties that my guilt-ridden mother would cross the road rather than speak if she saw me playing outside.

Instead, I was seven or eight years old before I discovered that Elsie, one of my foster sisters in Ma Wren's refuge, was in fact my mother.

She had given me a different name - for years I wondered "Who's Jameson?"

There are those among us who would turn back the clock to those cruel times and see today's unmarried mothers bear the same shame and guilt that blighted poor Elsie's life.

Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, is at the forefront of this unrelenting campaign against single mums, territory previously occupied by such Tory luminaries as Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher.

Says Mr Straw: "We need to find ways of presenting adoption as a positive, responsible choice to natural mothers who are not able to care for their babies."

Why won't people understand that first and foremost, for better or worse, a child should be raised by his or her natural mother?

It would help too, if someone told them most unmarried mothers get pregnant because they want a baby, not because some young lad proved too shy to buy a packet of Durex.

Walking along the prom or shopping in the supermarket, I see these young girls with their babies - good mothers, short of money but filled with love.

Okay, I accept that we have a crisis on our hands when nine out of ten babies born to teenage mothers are illegitimate and there's no denying that a small percentage of these children end up in care.

What gets up my nose is the suggestion that the big fall in the number of babies under adoption is somehow the fault of single mothers.

Mr Straw and his supporters obviously are upset by the fact that fewer than 100 newborn babies a year are handed over for adoption.

It's piling more guilt on unmarried mothers. As it is, they're treated as workshy spongers while their children, according to perceived wisdom, are going to do badly at school, will be unemployed in later life and get involved in crime, drugs and prostitution. Codswallop!

Instead of regarding these girls as Public Enemy No 1 we should be looking for ways to change the social climate that made them opt for life as a single mother - about the equivalent of 15 years' hard labour.

VISITING Belfast at the weekend, I had a drink with a friend in my hotel. Nothing strange about that, you might think, but he happens to be a senior officer in the Parachute Regiment.

We would not have been drinking so casually a few months ago - paratroopers are particularly hated by republicans.

Today's more relaxed atmosphere comes with the Good Friday peace agreement. But peace hangs by a thread and the tension remains.

Iwas surprised to learn that much credit for keeping peace hopes alive goes to Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein. Old friends tell me he persuaded the IRA to put its historic Brits Out and United Ireland policies on the back burner and work with Protestant Unionists for a peaceful solution.

What he's been unable to do is persuade the IRA leadership to decommission arms and call off the punishment squads carrying out atrocities on a daily basis - as are their extremist enemies in the loyalist community.

This is where the peace process could collapse because any day now Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland Secretary, will be calling on the Unionist First Minister, David Trimble, to form an all party executive to take over many of Westminster's powers.

Trimble says he will not work with Sinn Fein until the IRA lays down its arms - so there are big problems ahead.

My sources tell me that Catholics in working class areas actually approve of the punishment squads. Their job is to smash anti-social crime, which is why they inflict knee-cappings and the like on drug pushers, joyriders, burglars and sex offenders.

What people in mainland Britain don't realise is that the IRA Provos and Protestant hard men turned their territory into no-go areas for the hated Royal Ulster Constabulary and set up their own rough justice system when opportunists tried to cash in on the absence of police.

Today's IRA leaders are not going to lay down their arms unless the RUC is reformed to become a neutral player in Ulster's holy wars.

Meanwhile, the tension grows. People fear that peace could go up in smoke at any second. I did find one hopeful sign - IRA defectors who oppose Adams and the peace process are now on the run from those punishment squads.

I CAN'T forgive Mike Hollingsworth for the shocking way he is treating his estranged wife Anne Diamond to justify his own disorderly conduct.

Fancy going public with the accusation that they turned off their baby alarm to make love at the time Sebastian, their third son, died a cot death. Anne quite rightly describes his words as "beneath contempt".

Now the cad is weeping and wailing about his love for DJ Harriet Scott. She gave him the black eye that led him to drive to Reading police station seeking help. He was fined £1,250 instead and banned for a year for refusing a breath test.

Both ladies have chucked him out, but how long before one takes him back, I wonder. You know how soft women are when it comes to ne'er do-well - or is that sexist?

WHAT cunning! I've always wondered how John Simpson, the BBC's top foreign correspondent, managed to wander about in Iraq and Argentina while his fellow countrymen were busily engaged fighting a war against the place.

It turns out that Big John travels on an Irish passport, which he obtained by claiming an Irish grandmother.

Now for my secret. "Who's Jameson?" I asked in the comment above. Late in life I discovered that the name comes from an Irish grandmother I never knew.

Obviously I should apply for a passport and get a trial for the Ireland football team.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.