If you’re a Sinn Féin member or supporter, maybe get back into bed and pull the duvet over your head. Because this morning’s Irish Times has several salvoes directed at your party of choice.
First up is the IT’s political sketch-writer, Miriam Lord. She gives considerable space to what she terms “a Shinner sinner”, Brian Stanley TD. The good Lord takes considerable satisfaction from the fact that “following his gloating remark on social media about an IRA massacre in 1979, Stanley bowed to pressure and apologised to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), but this wasn’t enough for many TDs who renewed calls on him to account for his action on the floor of parliament.”
The article also comments critically on Sinn Féin TD Martin Browne, who has said on Tipp FM that his part should stop apologising for the IRA campaign and his party’s approach to remembrance.
Whew. There’s a lot there.
First Miriam: was Stanley gloating? I think not. His statement was that Britain’s elite forces here were defeated on both those occasions but were only learning slowly the price of occupying Ireland. Miriam and others may disagree with that view of the two lethal ambushes, but is Stanley not entitled to hold them? And does anyone think he has changed his views on the two events because he has now apologised? Stanley, like thousands of other Irish people, is entitled to hold the view he does, even if it were inaccurate. The idea that relatives of the dead British soldiers might, over forty years later, be offended by his words, is odd. Should the families of Auxiliaries, maybe Black and Tans be given carefully-worded condolences also, or their violent actions not to be spoken of?
Then there’s Leo’s view, articulated in another IT piece this morning, that the IRA campaign in the north “did not command widespread public support, North or South, and its political wing was rejected again and again at the ballot box.”
Hey Leo. Give us a break. Had the IRA not enjoyed the support, explicit and implicit, of thousands of people in the north, its campaign would have folded like that of the 1950s and early 1960s. Mao Zedong’s statement “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea” is apposite here. Without that support in the north, implicit or explicit, the IRA wouldn’t have lasted a fortnight, let alone forty years. The loyalist murder campaign, which targeted random Catholics, was aimed at drying up that sea of support, and it failed to do so – which says something about the sea’s breadth and depth. As to Sinn Féin being rejected “again and again at the ballot box” – au contraire, Leo. Haven’t you noticed that Sinn Féin’s share of the vote has risen steadily, north and south, and it’s now the biggest political party in Ireland?
Finally, should Sinn Féin stop apologising? Most definitely. Just about all Sinn Féin politicians believe the IRA campaign in the north was legitimate – and that includes Brian Stanley. To press them to apologise is akin to Ian Paisley’s demand that northern Shinners should don sackcloth and ashes. Calling for an apology in this case is aimed at stifling freedom of expression and encourages hypocritical contrition.
It’s unlikely that Leo Varadkar would apologise for the actions of Michael Collins. So enough with the efforts to trip up and gag Sinn Féin TDs over a war that ended a quarter of a century ago, a war in which none of them was old enough to participate.
Comments are closed.