‘Greenface’ Linda Ervine

Recently, one of a number of “Irish language ACTIVISTS” was enjoying a Glór na Móna celebratory gig in Belfast City Hall and – while guests of that supposedly shared space – thought there was nothing whatever wrong with tearing down a portrait of a former Protestant Unionist Mayor after which the downed portrait was damaged – or, if you prefer to use Glór na Móna’s lingo , ‘decolonised’.

The Glór na Móna gig, by the way, was to celebrate a number of years of Irish Language Activism, but in reality it was also to celebrate a £500,000 grant from Belfast City Council – that coming after a near bankruptcy just a few short years earlier – and of course no such gig was any kind of gig without the grinning attendance of that great IRA leader Gerry Adams who can hardly utter any confident few focals [words] of Irish – but can you really have any celebratory Irish Language gig without Gerry Adams present?

I mean the IRA’s view has always been that the Irish Language and the IRA go together like sticks and stones!

But back to the Portrait!

I mean – a Non Indigenous wall was Decolonised of a Non Indigenous portrait of a Non Indigenous Oppressor – entirely in line with the Glór na Móna philosophy crassly grabbed from the New Zealand Maori activist Tuhawai Smith.

Apparently, in Glór na Móna’s view, the Non Indigenous must be the Protestant English and Scottish Planters/Colonists who – FOUR CENTURIES ON – are THEM while we are US – at least according to Glór na Móna’s twice-university-educated Naoise Ó Cuilín in his since-deleted Tweet: [Why Delete it, Naoise?]

NI was fuelled on pure hatred of the indigenous Irish, ie us.

Before that, the indigenous Irish were hated all over Ireland.

That’s British Colonialism, inferior races and all that.

[Naoise Ó Cuilín, Twitter]

I have looked at the philosophy which is stated to partially underpin Glór na Móna – as stated on its Web site – and it strikes me that the degree of “activism” promoted by that organisation could only lead to – and did lead to – what the Police Service of Northern Ireland has since described as A Hate Crime, and it was an anti-Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist Hate Crime.

There is clearly something WRONG with many of those who identify as Irish language ACTIVISTS – maybe time that the Irish language was FREED from the yoke and burden of supporters of IRA terrorism, worshippers of IRA terrorism, even of people who dress up as members of the IRA, but equally importantly FREED from the yoke of EXTREMISM of any kind.

It is hardly going to promote the Irish language to secretly view it as a battering ram tipped with a population-dividing Decolonisation/Indigenous/Non Indigenous warhead.

The Irish language has never been served by Zealotry – indeed, for many decades past, Nationalists from Northern Ireland have protested the discrimination in jobs and advancement they face in the Republic of Ireland when they have every other qualification for jobs but not an Irish language component which – in many cases – hasn’t even had a role in the jobs they cannot get or hold.

For those many decades, the terrorist IRA has expressed a distant love for and arms-length promotion of the Irish language – but that insincere love did not interfere with its core activity of wholesale murdering of the population, Catholic and Protestant, Irish and British, with guns and bombs, torture and disappearance of corpses – you name it, the IRA did it with one exception – it did all the blood spattering for Ireland while its membership largely never studied or spoke any Irish at all.

In fact, the inheritors of the campaign of IRA terrorism – the lately appointed leaders of the IRA’s political front, Sinn Féin – have shared with the greatest number of IRA volunteers a total inability to speak any Irish whatsoever while actively protesting on the streets for an Irish Language Act – the outstanding hypocrisy is not shocking at all – this is normal behaviour for the recent terrorist movement.

And clearly sprinkled among the Irish Language ACTIVISTS photographed at many of the ‘Acht na Gaeilge Anois’ protests are the mostly NON-IRISH-SPEAKING leaders of the IRA’s political front, Sinn Féin, and also some well-known convicted IRA terrorists – this recently murderous movement threw all of its weight behind the language most of its members never spoke, don’t speak and never will speak – why? – because it’s One in the Eye for Prods, One in the Eye for Loyalists – One in the Eye for the Lost “War” recently surrendered – apart from that really helpful view once expressed:

Every word of Irish spoken is like another bullet being fired in the struggle for Irish freedom.

Or, to quote Irish Language Gig Attender Gerry Adams, to “break the bastards“.

The late terrorist movement’s concentration on Irish and Irish language street signs is one of the IRA Army Council’s Fig Leaves for the Lost War going forward and serves to keep its younger Activists in a constant state of Language Combat – a necessary Soother for the lack of the earlier drug of murder and bombing – a kind of verbal Methadone for a formerly violence-addicted movement.

“The War” – as the late Provos described it – must now be fought in Words of a language that most of the Republican movement can’t even speak.

The Exploitation of ‘Greenface’ Linda Ervine

Into this War of Words landed Linda Ervine, the undisputed darling of tumescent Irish nationalism, publicly lauded by the IRA’s political front, Sinn Féin – yes, that political front that still praises and glorifies the IRA’s entire record of murders and bombings as heroic, sacrificial, beneficial and as the bricklayers [nay, gravediggers] of Sinn Féin’s electoral success subsequent to the IRA’s Armed Struggle surrender.

Here is the [now former] Sinn Féin Senator and Irish language ACTIVIST Niall Ó Donnghaile – recently dumped by Sinn Féin following his inappropriate messages [in Irish?] to a young male – heaping praise on Greenface Linda Ervine in the Irish Senate:

Niall – for all of his other sins – was a glorifier of the Provisional IRA – on his Facebook Irish Senate page along with a lot of other videos he posted the IRA’s “Roll of Honour” video listing all the names of the Provisional IRA’s dead Volunteers – among them Thomas Begley, one of the Shankill Bombers.

Why would any self-respecting Unionist or Ulster Protestant want to give Niall Ó Donnghaile any recognition or credibility when his overarching aim was to glorify the IRA’s terrorist deeds and further most of all the IRA’s overarching aim – a United Ireland – most recently prodded along by a campaign of murders and bombings that greatly affected Ulster Protestants?

Why allow an IRA terrorist glorifier to have any reputable association with the Irish language or with any Irish language project you are endeavouring to promote in a Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist area?

Why not let IRA glorifiers do their own Pro-IRA Irish Language thing as far away from you as possible?

Why is it that Nationalists and Republicans have only praise for Linda Ervine – those who either glorify the IRA’s terrorist campaign or else prevaricate when asked if the IRA’s ‘armed struggle’ was justified?

Why would anyone in the PUL community want any association with Queens University’s controversial Professor Colin Harvey, who – when asked by colleague Professor Liam Kennedy in December 2021 if the IRA’s armed struggle was justified – could only give the following answer:

Why would any Protestant Irish Language activist want to receive the poisoned praise of the likes of republican ‘campaigner’ Colin Harvey?

In November 2022, Professor Liam Kennedy wrote a letter to the Belfast News Letter about Colin Harvey:

Frances Black at the Ireland’s Future event in the Ulster Hall last week told us that she believes in ‘the imperative of conversation’. I don’t mind a good conversation myself

One of her leading futurist colleagues is Colin Harvey. More than a year ago I invited him for a cup of coffee and conversation. No reply.

At a seminar on constitutional change in Ireland, held at Queen’s University Belfast in December of last year, I twice asked Professor Harvey the question: Was the IRA’s armed struggle justified?

No direct answer was forthcoming.

I didn’t want to burden unduly a busy colleague, and a professor of human rights law to boot, so I let it lie.

Almost a year elapsed and I broached the question again, by email. Still no reply.

I then suggested we discuss over a cup of coffee.

Borrowing a phrase from the vocabulary of Ireland’s Future, I indicated it would be a ‘respectful conversation’ and helpfully noted our offices were less than a hundred metres apart.

But no reply. Not even a shout across the street.

Left me wondering what a ‘conversation’ might mean in the world of the futurists and indeed what the answer to my question might be.

Liam Kennedy, Emeritus Professor of History Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast

Published 29th Nov. 2022, Belfast News Letter

Maybe Colin Harvery’s inability or unwillingness to answer a simple question about the IRA’s armed struggle is owing to the company he generally keeps?

Why would anyone in the PUL community want any association with the National Chairperson of IRA-glorifying Sinn Féin, Declan Kearney, whose Tweet below not only congratulates Linda Ervine but promises her funding £££ from An Ciste Infheistíochta Gaeilge – the Irish Language Community Investment Fund with the obvious potential of more dosh to follow later:

Dekkie’s congratulatory Tweet translates as:

Proud to be with @ErvineLinda this morning, and on behalf of Ciste, to provide funding for their education centre @CarideTuras – Well done, great crew learning Irish @newbelfast

So why is the IRA’s political front – Sinn Féin – all over Linda Ervine?

And eagerly announcing capital grant funding for her?

Why would Linda Ervine want to be associated with the IRA terrorist-glorifying Sinn Féin party at all?

I mean – apart from the obvious CAPITAL GRANT CASH BENEFITS that Sinn Féin can pipe her way…

Let’s cut to the chase – why describe Linda Ervine as Greenface?

Well, Ervine’s Greenface philosophy was best expressed by Ervine herself in October 2024 as she spun a yarn for the Republic of Ireland government’s Shared Futures video series – Linda is not only the favourite of Sinn Féin, she is the darling of Irish governments of any hue for the following reason:

Let’s read that more slowly because it encapsulates the core of Ervine’s Greenface philosophy:

My Irishness comes first.

I find it strange but there are a lot of people within the Protestant community who reject their Irishness and I feel if they’re born in this island course we’re Irish and to say anything different says that we’re a usurper and I’m not a usurper you know I’m a – I’m a native of this island.

In this interview, for the Irish government’s Merrion Street propaganda series, Ervine emphatically dumps her oft-claimed joint British-Irish identity – now she’s most definitely Irish and native Irish… – INDIGENOUS IRISH?

If Linda Ervine had not been repeatedly granted an exaggerated prominence by the propagandist organs of Irish Nationalist and Republican interests, her extremist position – that all Ulster Protestants born “on this island” must “of course” be Irish first and if they reject this view they must then be “Usurpers” – would never even have been reported or recorded.

Ervine candidly admits (see further on) that she owes her prominence to her marriage into the Ervine clan.

To declare that all Ulster Protestants who do not share her view must then be ‘Usurpers’ is the dangerous fantasy of a nut job (and obviously contradicts Ervine’s view expressed elsewhere that under the auspices of the Belfast Agreement, people in Northern Ireland may choose to be either British or Irish or even both):

A usurper is an illegitimate or controversial claimant to power, often but not always in a monarchy.

In other words, one who takes the power of a country, city, or established region for oneself, without any formal or legal right to claim it as one’s own.

So Ervine’s late view is that – even after 400 years of being born, living, working, farming and dying [and more recently, being bombed and murdered by the IRA] in mostly Ulster – Ulster Protestants must ape her Greenface in order to be legitimate on the island of Ireland – must learn and speak Irish, play GAA sports and surrender all to Irish governments and to the IRA’s political front, Sinn Féin, and the gaggle of extremist Irish language ACTIVIST organisations that routinely praise and honour IRA terrorism and terrorists…

No wonder she’s the darling of Sinn Féin and every Irish government!

The saddest part of this tragicomedy is that Irish governments and the Republican Movement’s Sinn Féin front delightedly and ruthlessly exploit this woman without any regard for the obvious risks flowing from her unwise expression of such an extreme view against Ulster Protestants.

Ervine does not shy away from being lionised by the Republican Movement’s Sinn Féin front – willingly making an unctious video confession to old Provie Sinn Féin propagandist Joe Austin – he who bragged that he was CHOSEN to go to Gibraltar to recover the corpses of the IRA’s most cowardly and intending no-warning Gibraltar bombers of tourists and British soldiers – had they succeeded – cowards he called his “three comrades”.

Sinn Féin made a film about Joe Austin’s accompaniment of the IRA trio’s corpses from Gibraltar to Belfast entitled “The Journey Home“.

Austin described how the IRA leadership [“I was visited by a Senior Republican” 2:49] reacted to the news of the IRA Active Service Unit’s failure to execute the IRA’s plan to bomb not only British soldiers on Gibraltar, but all of the international tourists who would normally stand close by to watch events.

Joe Austin had – over the years – justified the IRA’s campaign of murders and bombings, including the murders of Protestants who had opinions unacceptable to the IRA murder machine.

The same Joe Austin who scoffed at and justified the IRA’s sectarian murder in Queen’s University of law lecturer Edgar Graham.

Provie Shinner Joe Austin on the IRA murder of Queen’s University law lecturer Edgar Graham:

[Joe Austin] defended the recent killing of Ulster politician Edgar Graham. Mr Graham was shot in an ambush, and his death aroused intense Protestant anger.

Austin dismissed it tersely. “Graham had openly called on the British to shoot IRA forces to kill,” he said. “Also, two unarmed IRA men had been shot by the British SAS forces just before. At least Graham was carrying a gun when he was shot…”

Provie Shinner Joe has gossiped for years about his old [and fleeting] 1979 relation with Unites States journalist and JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger but fails to tell that Salinger recorded him – Austin – as a self-confessed IRA terrorist when he took his film back to the United States.

Pierre Salinger’s record of Joe Austin:

Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) member Joe Austin reported admitting ties with international terrorist groups…

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Linda Ervine – about to star in one of Propaganda Joe’s ‘Scéalta’ [‘Stories’] video series – would take the opportunity to challenge Propaganda Joe about the IRA’s heinous Human Rights record of terrorist atrocities that killed both Catholics and Protestants, men, women and children – all the while that the IRA pretended a love for the language it couldn’t and wouldn’t speak – the Irish one.

Did alleged Unionist Ervine take that opportunity to challenge Propaganda Joe about the IRA’s many murders of innocent Protestants?

Not one bit.

Instead of claiming to be a Unionist of any hue and confronting the Republican Movement’s atrocious Human Rights atrocities perpetrated on Ulster Protestants – Ervine laid out for salivating Joe a tale of a Red Hot Communist upbringing – USSR, Lenin portraits – the Ireland-Soviet Friendly Society – nothing at all like the simple wee stories she tells to other audiences of just falling in love with wee Irish placenames!

Have a listen to sycophantic, ingratiating Ervine laying it on Red-Hot-Commie-heavy for panting would-be Socialist Propaganda Joe:

Well riddle me pinko – or red – but this smacks not of an Ulster Unionist upbringing at all, but of a Communist Party upbringing no less!

Wee Linda Ervine has a different wee story for everyone in every wee audience!

Propaganda Joe – all these years allied to the Republican Movement’s Dictators of yesteryear – Colonel Muammar Gadaffi and Dictator Fidel Castro – is by this time panting in vicarious imagination of a Communist upbringing, which was sanitised by the Republican Belfast Media entity/Robin Livingstone rag as a Socialist upbringing – don’t want to upset the Catholic Far Right in the Provos by mentioning COMMUNISTS:

The word “SOCIALIST” wasn’t mentioned by Ervine, but the various branches of the revolutionary [?] Republican Movement can’t bring themselves to utter the word “COMMUNIST”!

Propaganda Joe graciously but ponderously accepted Ervine’s offering of an entirely non-Unionist and fully Communist-smelling I.D. card and generously allowed her to be a creature of The Left, if not actually a “comrad”:

Both parties to this conversation had now agreed a common platform where the terms “UNIONIST” and “LOYALIST” and “PROTESTANT” had been entirely avoided…

Linda Ervine here chooses to promote a Communist background for old Provie Shinner Joe – undoubtedly a form of political coitus to assure Ervine of what she most seeks in life – ACCEPTANCE in a tribe.

Maybe add to that the assurance of funding for Irish language organisations effectively controlled by Sinn Féin?

What could possibly have driven this person to desperately seek to BELONG to a tribe, and to this particular tribe?

This is the question that drove me to research Linda Ervine and Ervine supplies the answers.

Ervine tells a tale of a very broken family background, laced with parental divorce, (at 7yrs of age), various moves around family members who didn’t want her, her father being suddenly seen as ‘the enemy’, school expulsions, rebellious behaviour, teen pregnancy at 15 and birth of a daughter at16, single parenthood and mental health issues and suicide attempts – and hating her grandmother and her grandmother’s unwelcoming home so much that she hoped her grannie’s house had burned down at one point:

All this tale of woe – only summarised in the above video – is offered in a Great Sacramental Act of Confession to an Old IRA-Glorifying Provie Shinner Joe Austin who boasts an unrepented support for and glorification of the IRA’s entire terrorist campaign.

The problem of Linda Ervine’s extremely deep obeisance to Sinn Féin – and effectively to its ovearching IRA background if not to its current overarching Army Council – is deeply troubling.

It is a kind of Voluntary Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids…

But Ervine’s tale of 1969 and the breakup of her parents’ marriage is not wholly true – and she must know that.

She has claimed in various interviews that her father Terry Bruton and her uncle Barry Bruton “were members of the NICRA” and “wanted to change things in NI for the better”.

This has led to newspaper spin that her family was dedicated to working against sectarianism in Northern Ireland.

But the truth is very different – Linda Ervine’s uncle Barry Bruton was arrested in England in possession of a stolen 7.62 rifle after collecting it from a soldier friend serving in the Irish Guards at Windsor – a friend whom he had influenced to steal the rifle on his behalf.

Caught ‘bang to rights’, Barry was sentenced to 4 years in prison.

Barry Bruton was not only a member of the Communist Party, but claimed in mitigation in court that he needed the rifle after having received threats from the Ulster Volunteer Force.

In fact, Barry Bruton wanted the rifle for the IRA, with whom he was in entire sympathy – and this occured before the December 1969 split in the IRA after which there were two flavours on offer – the effectively revolutionary communist Official IRA and the reactionary nationalist Catholic Provisional IRA just waiting for the opportunity to – among many other things – shoot innocent Protestants.

By 1971, Barry was being claimed by the Official IRA branch of Sinn Féin.

This better explains her father Terry’s leaving home suddenly in 1969 and move to republican Twinbrook, but Linda Ervine fails to mention Barry’s arrest, criminal conviction, prison sentence, theft of a rifle and the Official IRA connections – preferring instead to refer to childhood confusion about her parents’ inexplicable marriage breakup for which she later claimed to feel blame.

BS.

As a result of Linda Ervine’s dishonesty about her family background in 1969, it is difficult to have confidence in any of her “wee tales”.

Ervine is a demonstrably untrustworthy witness.

Linda Ervine’s grant of an amnesty to Sinn Féin – an amnesty guaranteeing no criticism whatsoever of the IRA movement’s Human Rights atrocities perpetrated on the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist community – no criticism whatsoever of the IRA movement’s cancerous association with the Irish Language during 30 years of murder and bombings – this grant of amnesty to Sinn Féin is also deeply troubling.

In fact, Ervine goes even further with Provie Shinner Joe Austin – totally repudiating any influence by or linkage to Ulster Loyalism:

By repudiating Ulster Loyalism in this manner – directly to an IRA glorifier such as Joe Austin – whom Pierre Salinger reported as a Volunteer of the terrorist IRA – and by refusing to ever criticise the IRA movement’s horrific abuse of Ulster Protestants and its cancerous exploitation of the Irish language – Linda Ervine permanently situates Ulster Loyalists as THE ONLY BADDIES AROUND…

With no possible criticism of Irish Republicans, many of whom constantly utter objections to the English language, many of whom regularly situate the Irish language as only the property of the so-called “indigenous” Irish – Ulster Loyalists who oppose the Irish Language are mindless thugs, sectarian thugs, creatures who oppose education, people who oppose schools and the education of children…

While the IRA movement’s hands on the Irish language are still bloodstained with the murdered and bombed blood of Ulster Protestants for whom there was “no alternative” but to be murdered and bombed – Ervine’s unctious deference to the IRA movement is utterly sickening.

Worse, Ervine has permanently cast Ulster Loyalists who don’t want an Irish language school or GAA sports in their specific area as mindless sectarian thugs – these objectors who have murdered no-one, bombed no-one – they cannot be respected as opposing IRA-influenced and IRA-promoted activities while the IRA movement – still unrepentant about 1,700 murders and tens of thousands of maimings – may constantly oppose the English language as a reasonable act of decolonisation – while tearing down and damaging a Protestant Unionist Mayor’s portrait…

Ervine even lacks the courage to challenge the Gaelic Athletic Association for its shameful promotion and glorification of IRA terrorists and IRA terrorism.

Ervine is struck dumb about the Provie Side.

Having listened to old Provie Shinner Joe Austin slabber about his alleged regard for “people of The Left”, Ervine deliberately feeds this ideology back to him when describing how proud she is that she has influenced her children – and one grandchild – to be “left wing” – not Protestant, not Presbyterian, not Unionist, definitely not Loyalist – her pride is that these children are “left wing”:

Of course this is all about impressing senior Republican and Sinn Féiner Joe Austin [and Sinn Féin generally] that she is of the right stuff – particularly the right stuff to perhaps also qualify for a whopping grant similar to that which Glór na Móna received just in time to stave off bankruptcy – a whopping £500,000 just like that!

In July 2024, Ervine and fellow directors incorporated the Irish language school Scoil na Seolta – not a time to criticise anything Shinner or Irish Republican or IRA-movement related – I mean, Capital Grants are a necessity nowadays and the Irish language is rich rich rich…

With the Ulster Loyalist community permanently fixed in the public mind as Sectarian Thugs Opposed to Schools/Education/Learning/Irish Language/GAA/Sports/Catholics, Linda Ervine may romp forward surrounded by the uncriticised inheritors of the IRA’s recent campaign of murders and bombings, those who still glorify the murderers and bombers – those who still teach children that there was No Alternative to murders and bombings even while they now sit in the very alternatives that were held out to them for 30 years by the Nationalist Party and later by the Social Democratic and Labour Party – the alternatives were Stormont [forget the IRA SMASH STORMONT days] and partitionist Dáil Éireann – the Irish parliament the IRA always opposed…

If Linda Ervine has achieved one thing, she has disenfranchised Ulster Loyalists of the democratic right to oppose the tainted Irish language and the tainted Gaelic Athletic Association in the same manner that uncriticised Irish Republicans oppose the English language and for decades opposed English games.

Often happily surrounded by the inheritors of the IRA’s late terrorist campaign, Linda Ervine meanwhile repudiates the Ulster Loyalists who made the Ervine name what it is – the name she admits exploiting to gain prominence.

There is but one small bridge remaining for Linda Ervine to cross – come on, it’s obvious – she must surely be moved to join that uncriticised “party of the left” [HoHoHo] – Sinn Féin – the fount of all Capital Grants going forward – to finally BE£ONG…