Introduction The Provisional IRA breakaway movement was sprung from the largely Marxist-leaning IRA in 1969 which had reassessed Northern Ireland after the failed 1956-62 IRA “Border Campaign” and decided that class war and non-sectarian agitation might work better than armed activities which had so recently failed. [The Official IRA’s position dramatically changed when it had to compete with the Provisional IRA for young volunteers and … Continue reading Paradoxes of the IRA’s ‘Armed Struggle’

According to Brian Rowan, (promoted by Eamon Mallie), the citizens of Northern Ireland should be so deeply grateful that paramilitaries have stopped murdering and bombing, abducting, torturing and disappearing people (whose Civil and Human Rights they decided to deny) that they should be willing to be governed by them without any repentance or change of heart or admission of wrongs done on the part of … Continue reading Brian Rowan – the Paramilitaries’ Friend

It is to be expected that someone like Alex Maskey – carrier of the SFIRA bigotry virus – might refer in a Tweet to Northern Ireland as a “a putrid little state”, but a little more puzzling that a formerly respected commentator and SDLP veteran such as Brian Feeney would describe Northern Ireland as a “stinking political slum”. “Are these descriptions fair?” I asked myself. … Continue reading Northern Ireland – a “putrid little state”?

The IRA introduced into Northern Ireland the murders of members of the legal fraternity by shooting dead Resident Magistrate William Staunton, a Catholic, on the 11th of October 1972 as he drove his daughter, Sally-Ann, to St. Dominic’s convent grammar school on the Falls Road. Judge Staunton was shot in his car in front of his daughter, Sally-Ann, and her school friends. Visiting such trauma … Continue reading IRA Murders of Human Rights Lawyers & Judges

While the IRA abducted, tortured, murdered and ‘disappeared’ many civilians in the course of its unnecessary murder campaign, its youngest torture victim was 15 year old Bernard Teggart from New Barnsley Crescent in West Belfast. The lives of Bernard and his identical twin Gerry had been disrupted two years earlier when their father, Daniel, had been shot dead by paratroopers in Ballymurphy in disputed circumstances. … Continue reading The IRA’s Youngest Torture Victim

Indeed ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’, Harold, but deception is never blessed. Which voters in the referendum on the Belfast Agreement in May 1998 knew that there were secret deals with the IRA about OTR letters? Who knew about secret deals with the IRA about freedom to ‘house clean’ – that is, murder anyone the IRA felt was a threat to the peace deal? Who knew … Continue reading An Open Letter Response to Harold Good

Martina Fitzgerald, RTE’s political correspondent, last Sunday published an analysis piece stating that Mary Lou McDonald “is a strong media performer and has no links to the IRA”. Who ever imagined that 20 years after the signing of The Belfast Agreement the IRA Army Council would still be drawing commentary?! Is it credible to declare that Mary Lou McDonald has “no links to the IRA”? … Continue reading Mary Lou McDonald – No Links to the IRA?

  Brian Feeney is dead. What happens to sour former members of John Hume’s Social Democratic and Labour Party when they die? It appears they slowly decompose into the bigotry and insult of Alex Maskey, that jocular Tweeter who gave us the heart-warming description of Northern Ireland as “that putrid little statelet”. The departed Brian Feeney went further in an embittered “Irish News” article on … Continue reading Brian Feeney Is Dead & Coffee with the IRA

(Legacy, the IRA and Victims – Part I is here.) There is another aspect of so-called ‘legacy’ in Northern Ireland that all the ‘agreed legacy institutions’ will never address and that is the widespread help given to IRA murderers and bombers by the ordinary members of the nationalist/Catholic community – and for which there hasn’t been any admission or act of repentance, real or symbolic. … Continue reading Legacy, the IRA and Victims Part II & Quiz

You have to hand it to members of the IRA’s Army Council – they got away with murder, mass murder, mass-casualty anti-civilian bombings, institutionalized torture and murders, executions and disappearances of civilians – you name it, they got away with it. The IRA’s Human Rights’ atrocities have been quietly forgotten and the IRA’s leadership has stepped sideways into the Sinn Féin cash cow still holding … Continue reading Legacy, the IRA and Victims