Did you ever watch a game where you regretted both teams couldn’t lose? Well, check out yesterday’s Irish Times. You’ll find the next best thing.
Peter Robinson and Micheál Martin are squaring up to each other about the events of 1969-70. The Fianna Fáil leader Martin says it was repressive unionism that created conditions for the emergence of the IRA. The DUP leader says it was rather a time when the Irish state was funding guns for the IRA and preparing to invade the north.
Well I mean, you have to laugh, don’t you? So nice Micheál has discovered that repressive unionism was what led to the emergence of the IRA in the late 1960s. Psst, Micheál. It wasn’t just in the late 1960s. It was from the foundation of the state. During which period of time Fianna Fáil was in power in the south, with one or two short breaks. And your party, Fianna Fáil, did what about this repression? That’s right. Nought. Nothing. Nada. Rien. So in that sense, anti-Ian Peter is right when he says the southern government were a negative factor in northern affairs. You betcha. They just let that little cesspool go on cessing, decade after decade.
As for Peter’s claim that the Irish state was preparing to invade the north: oh, hold my sides, somebody. And somebody else look after the cat, it’s going mad altogether. War-like Jack Lynch did indeed come on the TV to tell us all how his part of the island couldn’t just see northern nationalists beaten off the streets. He could not stand idly by (I know those weren’t his exact words, Virginia, but they were as near as dammit). Big on words, empty of actions. Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Peter – the chances of Lynch and Fianna Fáil mounting a northern offensive were as likely as you and Nigel getting an afternoon tea invitation from Eileen Paisley.
So Micheál old chap, don’t be coming the filled-with-righteous anger for northern nationalists. You’re anywhere from forty to a hundred years late. And don’t you go fretting about the south invading our great wee country here in the north, Peter. Contributing to northern violence was the last thing the southern parties had in mind: what they wanted was to keep it ‘up there’. Which is what they’ve been straining every fibre to continue from that day to this.
So true Jude.
Sums up my opinion of both men. Martin waves the Tricolor ( but not too vigourously) when it suits him. His party has done ZERO for nothern nationalist. I could never understand why FF and FG have so much vitriol for republicans while the largest mass murder in the history of the free state remains unsolved. Where is Martins call for a look into Dublin/Monaghan? Maybe that would be a bit too inconvenient. And Michael, the northern state was founded on violence and oppression from the very start. You only have to look at the fact that they lopped off three counties from Ulster during partition to insure their supremacy. Start fresh today Michael and start calling for inquiries into Collusion,,true justice for the victims of Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, Pearse Jordan and the list goes on.
As for the First Minister, it is truly a howl that he thinks civil rights marchers presented a threat so great that they had to be put down. This from the man who was a supporter of paiselys Third Force, Ulster Resistance and the “invasion” of Clontibret. Hey Peter just put the sash on and get on with it. Your party is stuck in the 1920’s. Thos e days are gone. Instead of “no no no” come up with one new idea on your own that you haven’t run by Willie and jamie first.
Thank you for this column, one of the best
grma, Paul. I can take praise for hours as long as the quality is kept up……
Poor Robbo, he can’t be looking forward much to the debates on Scots independence that will saturate the media from this summer to the actual ref date, as he knows it will be made chillingly clear by English |Scots and Welsh contributers to Question Time et al, that they don’t see this place as having anything to do with them. The cold blast that will come this way from the other island will make it plainer than plain that we’re just not wanted in the Union. Hard to feel much sympathy frankly.
Jude ..talk about re-writing history or as one ex-president might have it , “mis-remembering”…you really need an irony gland to live here.
I was a teenage schoolboy in 1968 , just in time to see Paisley in his full-blown paranoid pomp. I can still remember how the whole business grew and we have all the television archives and books to jog our memories .A few classmates went on take up arms as republicans and are now buried long ago .One other worked for Pacemaker press and photographed many of the incidents that followed for the newspapers. As an art student in England four years later, I saw one of our protestant friend’s death reported on national television. He left his boring job in the D.O.E. and joined the R.U.C. He was a six o’ clock news story…one of the first RUC deaths.Before all this we were all friends.
A good friend of mine , slightly younger, witnessed the first death in the Troubles .in our town when a car full of B specials jumped out ,fired up the street and killed a guy coming back from the direction of a demonstration. He was yards away and can still describe the firework sound of the guns popping.They then jumped back into their car and were never heard about again . The murder was simply disregarded.Nobody was ever charged.
As Paisley said recently.; he got it wrong about civil rights. There was no iRA …, just a bunch of idealists trying to cross the divide with their mixed bunch of friends and trying something new like the youngsters were trying to do with the Freedom Rides in the American south.
If Peter Robinson and the rest could really stop and think why the whole thing boiled over and stopped blaming shadows and ghosts, we might get somewhere.There was no IRA worth a damn. That may have happened a few years later when opportunists seized the situation that Paisley and his followers set in motion.Supporters of force were by then well- primed. That apparently happened mostly i n Belfast as a result of people being burnt out of their homes.
Once the doors opened , though, opportunists and a variety of socio-paths and criminally minded people at both extremes began to set the agenda.
Prior to all that, people simply wanted change , just as change was sweeping everywhere in the world in the 1960s. We saw the opposition not as enemies but as dolts who were holding back common sense and a much fairer future.People like Paisley and his followers feared any kind of change and as we can see today that much has not changed.
People in Northern Ireland should be made to watch the recent film “The Act of Killing”. It is very instructive.
Can`t really disagree with anything said by any of the contributors Jude, your piece says it all as well. Incidentally, why aren`t you on the tv more often? No disrespect to the likes of Alex Kane and Liam Clarke but a slightly less partitionist and anti Nationalist perspective would be nice now and again.
Don’t encourage him.
Jude has a great face for radio. And he’s never off the bloody thing.
My lawyer will be in touch with you VERY SOON, Gio….
Jude
I withdraw my earlier remarks.
You are actually very like Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the Starship Enterprise.
After a transporter malfunction.
I’ll be calling for the death-penalty – sadly but firmly…
I think it’s because I’m bald – too expensive powdering down the shine…
Jude …..How much could Johnson’s Baby Powder stretch the budget?..Ihat stuff lasts for ages….and you could bring your own!
I’m on Nolan tonight – audience, hoping to speak – already stocking up from my cupboard. Talking about – hahahaa – Orangeism. Will I say my stadium source is Deepthroat or Paddykool??
Good one Jude! What about “Penknife” ?….. It cuts to the quick. Your presence might make it worth watching Nolan instead of re-runs of “MASH” …..