Gerry the lightning rod & the curious case of foot in mouth disease

[Duke of Marmalade]

The Unionist establishment were the main reason Sunningdale failed.
They have plenty of blood on their hands too.
It wasn't called the Dirty War for nothing.

Maybe. The Duke has been reminiscing and I thought I would bore AAM with some of my musings - you have been warned. At the age of 5 and 6 I remember the class being taught to sing Kevin Barry, and we even sung it in harmony, you know where one row starts off earlier than the next row and then the next row, good fun actually. And then there was Faith of Our Fathers. How we belted out with gusto that line "in spite of dungeon fire and sword". Boy did we wallow in our sense of persecution. We were taught to detest the State we lived in whilst guzzling the free milk. And then we complained when Catholics ended not to reach the top civil service posts. No problem though, the bookies and publicans were exclusively RC.

Then came 1966, the 50th anniversary of a little terrorist spat in Dublin. Where I lived was a sea of flags of a foreign state, which at the time was the basket case of Western Europe. Yes Purple the faults were not all on one side by any means.

 

[Betsy Og]

Far from boring Duke.

I know we had a big debate about this before but Gerry's currently difficulty (not that that particularly bothers me), and more importantly the greater good, might be served by this Truth & Reconciliation notion (a la South Africa). While it is embarassing for SF their voters are seemingly Trump-like in their dismissal of facts/reminders, so I think I'd forego these occasional media frenzies (since there's no lasting benefit out of them) for a clear out of the closet from all sides re NI. I know families deserve justice but unfortunately the chances are dwindling, so maybe settling for knowledge and truth would be something better than nothing.

 

[jjm]

Betsy
The Closet Needs to be cleared out on all sides in the Dail not NI .The problem is People Remember and are reminded how Deputies and Senators behaved the looked the other way when it suited them on all sides of the house .The few who spoke up are no longer in the Dail/Senate .The ones still in the Dail/Senate kept there head down and there mouth shut .
It bothers me and lots of people to hear them now speaking out of both sides of there mouth .I have no respect for Gerry or the Deputies /leaders they looked the other way for two long.

 

[Purple]

Then came 1966, the 50th anniversary of a little terrorist spat in Dublin. Where I lived was a sea of flags of a foreign state, which at the time was the basket case of Western Europe. Yes Purple the faults were not all on one side by any means.

That's a rather emotive way of describing the Rising.
It's also deeply ironic that Unionists celebrate with marches bonfires and sickening sectarian bigotry a battle fought in a foreign country by two foreign kings.

At the age of 5 and 6 I remember the class being taught to sing Kevin Barry, and we even sung it in harmony, you know where one row starts off earlier than the next row and then the next row, good fun actually. And then there was Faith of Our Fathers. How we belted out with gusto that line "in spite of dungeon fire and sword". Boy did we wallow in our sense of persecution. We were taught to detest the State we lived in whilst guzzling the free milk. And then we complained when Catholics ended not to reach the top civil service posts. No problem though, the bookies and publicans were exclusively RC.

There's no doubt that the victim badge was worn and worn out by many so called Republicans in Northern Ireland and that it served the purposes of the extremists to keep people feeling like foreigners in their own country but please don't pretend that if only the Catholics had not been so difficult they would have been met with open arms by their Unionist brothers.
While you were being indoctrinated in your school the kids from the other side were being poisoned by their elders.
There weren't any Catholics working for Harland and Wolff or Short Brothers in the 60's or 70's, before the IRA started murdering people.

 

[Betsy Og]

Sure "it was worn in Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne", plenty of local fare to cheer on. At the time the 26 (to whatever extent they existed) were not in a "foreign jurisdiction" (as Ian might say). Dum-duma-dum-dum (that'd be the lambeg ).

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

Purple I have already agreed with you that there were faults on both sides. Are you arguing that there was more fault on one side? I don't think we should go there.

Getting back a bit more on topic, I can't understand Gerry's obsession with a "Truth Recovery" process. He is fond of making "statesmanlike" concessions about fault on all sides but does he expect a TR to distribute Parity of Opprobrium? It is far too simplistic to assert there was equal fault on all sides (I mean in the Troubles themselves rather than in what caused them).

Let the Duke give a very quick TR. Top of the opprobrium list by a country mile comes the Loyalist Murder Gangs. They killed innocent Catholics for fun, even torturing them for the titillation of the locals in romper rooms. One of the surprises of the PP is that once the IRA stopped, the LMG lay off innocent Catholics and reverted to providing an extortion and drug dealing service to their local community - remember the PP gave them no electoral dividend unlike their IRA counterparts.

On those grounds alone, that the IRA held the key to stopping the whole thing but instead prolonged it well past its "they have a point date", must give them a very high opprobrium score.

What about the British Army? Yes there were excesses (especially by locally recruited UDR members), of course most exemplified by Bloody Sunday. But that can now be seen very much as an outlier and has already been subject to a massively expensive and comprehensive TR. But in the broader picture the BA prevented NI or even the whole island descending into a civil war of Syrian proportions, keeping civilian casualties far below the level inflicted by road traffic accidents.

This island owes the BA an enormous debt of gratitude. I accept it is too much to expect this from the Nationalist side, but the response from Unionists is equally muted. It's as if they saw this delivery as their entitlement. Maybe it was that but even so a bit more formal gratitude, even an annual day's holiday in thanksgiving, wouldn't go amiss.

 

[Gerry Canning]

Having been schooled in Derry up to 1971 , I didn,t know a Protestant from a Leprechaun .
Once you don,t know your neighbours (fear of strangers) leaves it open to demagogues from both sides to tribalise everything , and boy did Paisley and his ilk , and Adams and his ilk ,really sucker us in !

We still in N Ire have Catholic Ethos and Protestant Ethos schools , do we not learn !
Very much with Dukes thinking.

 

[cremeegg]

Betsy
The Closet Needs to be cleared out on all sides in the Dail not NI .The problem is People Remember and are reminded how Deputies and Senators behaved the looked the other way when it suited them on all sides of the house .The few who spoke up are no longer in the Dail/Senate .The ones still in the Dail/Senate kept there head down and there mouth shut .
It bothers me and lots of people to hear them now speaking out of both sides of there mouth .I have no respect for Gerry or the Deputies /leaders they looked the other way for two long.

Could you post this again in English.

 

[cremeegg]

What about the British Army? Yes there were excesses (especially by locally recruited UDR members), of course most exemplified by Bloody Sunday. But that can now be seen very much as an outlier and has already been subject to a massively expensive and comprehensive TR.

The British army were the armed forces of a sovereign state, with wages and pensions. In any truth and reconciliation process their behaviour cannot be held to the same standard as other actors. The loyalist murder gangs didn't act on behalf of anybody else , the British army acted on behalf of the British people.

Bloody Sunday, an outlier ? From memory and without googling, may I suggest Ballymurphy and Julie Livingstone, and thats where the British Army acted directly, without going to incidents where they acted via proxies. I think that the suggestion that Bloody Sunday was an outlier is unjustified.

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

cremeegg

BA outrages: 1st Bloody Sunday, 2nd Ballymurphy (?), 3rd Julie Livingstone (?); I think that proves my point, outlier but, no, I didn't say the only.

By contrast I did Google to find the scale of outrages from republican terrorists of various hues. Lots and lots so I will confine myself to double digit fatalities:

Birmingham 21
Warrenpoint 18
Droppin Well 17
La Mon 12
M62 12
Hyde Park 11
Enniskillen 11
Deal 11
Shankill Road 10
Kingsmill 10

I haven't Googled LMG outrages but I think they will be trotting behind "our side". We definitely won that contest.

An interesting question is to ask yourself what would have happened if various parties had "gone away you know" in say 1974.

The IRA: I think it is fairly clear that the Troubles would have finished then.
The LMGs: Many innocent Catholics would have been spared but it would not have mattered one jot to the IRA who would have continued their campaign.
The BA: NI would have been plunged into a civil war on a far greater scale than was actually visited on the province and it most likely would have spilled over down here. As I said before - where is the gratitude that we all owe to the British and their army for in the main saving us from ourselves?

 

[Conan]

Going back to the start of this debate, is it reasonable for Gerry to refuse to name the IRA leader that he brought the Stack brothers to meet?
Whatever about the refusal to cooperate with British authorities over the killing of British Army or PSNI officers ( questionable), what is the reason for the SF failure to cooperate with authorities in the Republic. As far as I can remember the IRA were never "at war" with the Republic. So what justification is there for the murder of Brian Stack or Sgt. Gerry McCabe?
It is utterly bizzare for Gerry to claim some "confidentiality" agreement as a basis for refusing to name the IRA commander who Gerry claims knows who killed Brian Stack. So some confidential agreement now trumps the law of the land? Gerry will only reveal the name as some part of a Truth and Reconciliation process. That may be relevant in the North (maybe?) but how is that relevant for crimes committed in the Republic?
And then Martin Ferris ( a convicted criminal) in his book about his time in Portloaise compares the prison management (which included Brian Stack) to the Nazis because the prison management wanted to control how the prison operated whereas the IRA convicts wanted to be in charge.
As an elected politician in the Republic, Gerry has an obligation to abide by the laws of this State. Withholding information in relation to a criminal investigation is not acceptable and certainly not for a member of the Dail. No amount of smoke thrown up by Gerry or his fellow travelers can get away from the fact that he has not cooperated with the Gardai to the extent that he can. He wants to cooperate but only a little.
And the Irish media still fail utterly to pursue Gerry. RTE focus on the "naming" of two SF/IRA members in the Dail - big deal- as if this is as big a story as Gerry Adams failure to fully cooperate with the Gardai over the murder of an Irish prison officer. This murder, as with Sgt. McCabe, was never ever justified but yet Gerry and SF/IRA continue to equivocate over these events. The suggestion that such murders were never "authorised" is still used as an excuse for failing to cooperate with authorities in the Republic. Utterly shameful.

 

[Purple]

As far as I can remember the IRA were never "at war" with the Republic.

No, they were at war with us as well. They didn't recognise this State and had the aim of overthrowing our government and replacing it with an all Ireland socialist republic. In that context Irish police, prison officers and soldiers were legitimate targets.

 

[Seagull]

I can't realistically imagine anyone arresting Gerry Adams right now for withholding information in a murder investigation, but I'd like to see it happen. It would be a stretch to charge him as an accessory, but he has admitted he knows who knows who the killer is.