Hard to credit for a guy who has danced a fine line for decades now can't seem to avoid embroiling himself in controversy after controversy. In normal circumstances the advice might be - Put away the shovel Gerry. But since this is SF we're talking about such phrasing might be deemed in poor taste.......
Gerry the lightning rod & the curious case of foot in mouth disease
- Thread starter Betsy Og
- Start date
Does anyone else find it distasteful and deeply hypocritical that we are all so outraged about the murder of an Irish prison officer but there's not a word said on what Gerry may know about all the Northern Irish prison officers and police officers murdered by the IRA?
I think the difference is that we know he has specific knowledge he is not disclosing in this case (the identity of the IRA man in the van at a minimum). For all the other stuff he'd probably say you'd have to ask the IRA ...him having never been a member and all that.....
In fairness I think they do want to get this Truth & Reconciliation thing going and divulge some/most/all of these facts - under the cover of immunity of course.
In fairness I think they do want to get this Truth & Reconciliation thing going and divulge some/most/all of these facts - under the cover of immunity of course.
Are you suggesting that he doesn't have the same knowledge about other murder victims of the IRA?
I know he says he doesn't but does anyone believe him?
Even if he does not is it not reasonable to suggest that he could find out?
If a member of a political party which was not linked to a terrorist organisation could find out who the perpetrators of dozens or hundreds of murders were and chose not to do you think he or she would get a free ride from the media and electorate? Do you think they would get elected?
Priests and Bishops who covered up and/or turned a blind eye to child abuse have been rightly castigated by all of us. When members of a political party have done the same thing in relation to murder they get to lead the third biggest political party in the country.
Why do you think that is Purple.
We are a bunch of hypocrites and to some extent we considered the murder of a 19 year old kid from the North of England, who joined the Army to get away from poverty, and knew and cared nothing about the politics of Northern Ireland, as somehow okay but the murder of someone from our country was a terrible crime.
Hold on there guys. You cannot criticise Gerry and SF. You are in danger of bringing down the "peace process" with such comments. Gerry, Martin McGuinness etc have created an "industry" around the peace process and any criticism of Gerry, SF or IRA for murders, kidnapping, cigarette smuggling, bank robberies, drug dealing etc etc is dangerous. We all know that Gerry is entirely honest. He was never in the IRA, he knows nothing about the murder of Jean McConville, he knows nothing about the murder of that prison officer. In fact Gerry knows nothing.
People who know and care nothing about the politics of a place, yet take up a gun and go there at the behest of some politician are responsible for a great deal of trouble in the world. From Vietnam via NI to Iraq. Don't even get me started on Malaysia
So some teenage squaddie who joins the army to get out of some soulless pit in the North of England is a legitimate target because he "took up a gun"? Give me a break.
Every person the IRA killed was murdered. They are not a government and so cannot wage war. They are terrorists and the enemy of this state and everything a democratic republic stands for. The IRA are not republicans as their actions are diametrically opposite to what a republic represents.
You cannot support the IRA and support democracy.
You cannot support the IRA and support the rule of law.
If you consider the murder of a soldier by the IRA in Northern Ireland as legitimate then you support the IRA. There is no in between, no gray area. If the murder of a British soldier is less of a crime than the murder of an Irish Prison Officer then you accept that the IRA were a legitimate organisation.
Duke of Marmalade
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Thought I heard the words "Peace Process" being bandied about in these parts. Nothing winds me up more
Ever notice it is only Nationalists who talk about the PP. It is almost as if it was their gift to us all. And what makes me suspect, especially coming from SF, that this gift is given conditionally. Nothing highlights this more than the conflation of the forthcoming Brexit negotiations with the need to preserve the PP. Politicians in Dublin, London and Brussels alike make almost Pavlovian reference to the PP whenever the issue of Ireland and Brexit comes up for discussion. Such has been SF's propaganda success in linking the two.
I for one never believed the War Process to have been justified in NI, especially after Catholics got everything they could ask for at Sunningdale in 1974. But please, please, tell me how a resumption of the War Process could be justified by anybody no matter how hard a border results? And who would the Surreal IRA bomb this time? Those Unionists who voted Leave? The UK and Irish Governments for signing up to the deal? Or Brussels for playing such hard ball?
Ever notice it is only Nationalists who talk about the PP. It is almost as if it was their gift to us all. And what makes me suspect, especially coming from SF, that this gift is given conditionally. Nothing highlights this more than the conflation of the forthcoming Brexit negotiations with the need to preserve the PP. Politicians in Dublin, London and Brussels alike make almost Pavlovian reference to the PP whenever the issue of Ireland and Brexit comes up for discussion. Such has been SF's propaganda success in linking the two.
I for one never believed the War Process to have been justified in NI, especially after Catholics got everything they could ask for at Sunningdale in 1974. But please, please, tell me how a resumption of the War Process could be justified by anybody no matter how hard a border results? And who would the Surreal IRA bomb this time? Those Unionists who voted Leave? The UK and Irish Governments for signing up to the deal? Or Brussels for playing such hard ball?
Thought I heard the words "Peace Process" being bandied about in these parts. Nothing winds me up more
Peace Process, Peace Process, Peace Process
I think the infiltration by MI6 to the inner circle of the IRA was a big part of the SF call to peace...
Purple - The point I was making was that in this case Gerry put Gerry in the frame - he told us he knows so he cant trot out the usual "ask the IRA" fantasy. I'm sure he knows plenty about other crimes - I think the Jean McConville case is one very much in point.
Re the whole squaddie vs prison officer. I dont think the prison officer was a combatant in any sense. The British Army let loose its colonial thing, under the direction of the Unionist government - you couldnt write it.... so we got Bloody Sunday etc., I think they firmly nailed their colours as combatants - especially Para 1. But I'd be with Duke re Sunningdale - though it didnt actually pass - I think it made clear that "the long war" was pointless and an obstruction, the solutions were already laid down.
Re the whole squaddie vs prison officer. I dont think the prison officer was a combatant in any sense. The British Army let loose its colonial thing, under the direction of the Unionist government - you couldnt write it.... so we got Bloody Sunday etc., I think they firmly nailed their colours as combatants - especially Para 1. But I'd be with Duke re Sunningdale - though it didnt actually pass - I think it made clear that "the long war" was pointless and an obstruction, the solutions were already laid down.
I don't accept that blowing up a band or Horse Guard in London can be justified by the criminal actions of 1st Para in Derry 20 years before hand. I don't accept that their actions made every British soldier or NI police officer or prison officer a "combatant".
The IRA were always enemies of this state. Their stated aim was to overthrow our government.
The British Army was never under the control of the Unionist government. It was the blatant sectarianism of the Unionist Government and their contemptible treatment of the Catholic minority which led to the Civil Rights movement which the IRA hijacked.
Post Anglo-Irish Agreement the IRA were still killing British soldiers and RUC and NI Prison officers. Do the actions of the Para's on Bloody Sunday justify everything the IRA did since? Does it make the killing of every soldier, police officer and prison officer since then legitimate?
The IRA were always enemies of this state. Their stated aim was to overthrow our government.
The British Army was never under the control of the Unionist government. It was the blatant sectarianism of the Unionist Government and their contemptible treatment of the Catholic minority which led to the Civil Rights movement which the IRA hijacked.
Post Anglo-Irish Agreement the IRA were still killing British soldiers and RUC and NI Prison officers. Do the actions of the Para's on Bloody Sunday justify everything the IRA did since? Does it make the killing of every soldier, police officer and prison officer since then legitimate?
Look, there's no easy answers. In an era when it was open season on catholics in the early 70's a reaction was understandable. I've already said that post '74 it was all pointless. I do think the Army was under the control of Stormont until the powers were taken back to London - probably post Bloody Sunday. As regards band, horses and lets throw in pubs too, while admittedly knowing nowt about this whole area ....Garda.... but it strikes me the economic spectaculars on the mainland were more effective in incentivising British urgency for a solution (Canary Wharf - I know 2 died - and Manchester) - I'm not justifying them but they seemed less pointless that blowing up punters in a pub.
Thought I heard the words "Peace Process" being bandied about in these parts. Nothing winds me up more
Ever notice it is only Nationalists who talk about the PP.
Absolutely, I have always thought that many in the the mainstream Unionist parties missed the simplicity of the old days.
I am sure your memory is better than mine, but as far as I remember, no-one got anything from the Sunningdale agreement because in practice it never happened and in law it existed only a matter of months.
Duke of Marmalade
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Betsy, I go along with a lot of that but I have a slightly different take on what finally precipitated the PP. Yes, Bishopsgate and Canary Wharf were a bigger threat to the British establishment compared to losing a tiny few of their professional armed forces. But whilst the campaign against economic targets did concentrate minds, in the end the British gave little more than they had already put on the table 25 years earlier.
The PP is first and last the creation of SF/IRA. They continued the pointless WP in 1974 because at that time they stood to be big, big losers in a successful PP; they had almost no electoral mandate then. But the Hunger Strike changed all that. The likes of Adams and McGuinness saw real personal gains if the power sharing solution they rejected all those years and lives ago was implemented and saw that continuing the WP was going nowhere. The rest is history.
The PP is first and last the creation of SF/IRA. They continued the pointless WP in 1974 because at that time they stood to be big, big losers in a successful PP; they had almost no electoral mandate then. But the Hunger Strike changed all that. The likes of Adams and McGuinness saw real personal gains if the power sharing solution they rejected all those years and lives ago was implemented and saw that continuing the WP was going nowhere. The rest is history.
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Duke of Marmalade
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I was on the spot at the time but, look, I'm not claiming that gives me any special rank in the discussion. I was that young nationalist who had been weaned from primary school on the narrative that we were second class citizens, that Stormont was the seat of a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people (ok some truth in these gripes, but worth 3,000 lives?).
The Unionists blew it in their implementation of internment (in itself just as justifiable as the various internment programs implemented in the South) culminating in the gross error of Bloody Sunday. And it was an unintended error. I could sense the very next day a barely concealed thrill amongst my fellow Catholic friends that here was proof to the world of our martyrdom. The really angry folk that next morning were the Unionist establishment who sensed this could be the beginning of the end. And true enough a few months later Stormont was suspended.
I couldn't believe it; this was political paradise; I was no IRA supporter but I did belong to my tribe. The unbelievable continued to unfold, the Sunningdale Agreement rolled out power sharing and the Council of Ireland and commitments to equality legislation. Surely that's the war over, I thought. I was wrong, so terribly wrong. The power sharing executive was established and met for a few months. But the IRA (Gerry, Martin et al) intensified the bombing campaign. This was not going at all well for them, they saw the wilderness beckoning or at best a career as petty criminals and extortionists. No wonder the Protestant people cried halt. Belfast was plunged in power cuts caused by striking Loyalist workers for about two weeks until Harold Wilson and Brian Faulkner finally accepted the inevitable, the game was up.
J
jjm
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I suspect more could have being done to bring conflict to an end by the politicians still serving in Dail long before Good Friday agreement was reached.Can anyone name Politicians Who were jumping up and down in Dail to change Extradition law to save lives.
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