I’ve just finished listening to part of a discussion between Danny Morrison of Sinn Féin and Malachi O’Doherty the journalist. I know both men and I like both of them, although I often find myself on the other side of the argument from the latter.
That’s the case this morning. Malachi has written a piece for the Belfast Telegraph, where he draws a comparison between suicide bombers and the hunger strikers. He does this on the grounds that both groups have formed bonds between themselves and their comrades that is stronger than the bond between them and their family.
Now, Malachi may be motivated by a concern with pure research into such groups. However, I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that he is also motivated by an old advertising technique: tie the product you are selling to something that has nothing to do with it. The classic case of this is the selling of a luxury car with a blonde model draped across it. The blonde has nothing to do with the car but the viewer’s mind links the two – me like blonde, me like car – and so it’s hoped the sale will go through.
Malachi is intent on highlighting the link between suicide bombers and the hunger strikers. Most of us have a fairly dim view of suicide bombers: they make their way into crowded market-places, into mosques, and they blow innocent men and women to unrecognisable bits, along with themselves. So if the suicide bomber can be linked with the hunger striker, the objective has been achieved. Me detest cruel suicide bomber, me detest hunger striker.
The obvious missing factor in Malachi’ s equations is that the hunger-strikers didn’t bring about the death of a dozen or two people, nor was that the result of their actions. They died alone. If they did violence, it was to themselves. So the thing we disapprove of about the suicide bomber is the one factor that’s missing in the comparison with the hunger striker. So the comparison falls down.
Why does Malachi draw the comparison, then? Because the hunger strikers of 1981 were a group of men who did what no other group did during the Troubles: they sacrificed their lives in a slow lingering death because they believed their motivation was political. The purity and self-sacrifice of this action is very frustrating for those who are opposed to republicans. They will exert every fibre to discredit these men. The most recent attack line was that Sinn Féin had lied to them and that many of them died needlessly. Now the line of attack is to link them with suicide bombers in the Middle East. The first didn’t work. This one won’t either. Sorry, Malachi – assuming, of course, that you’re not simply committed to pure research, devoid of bias.
Great article as always Jude.
The hunger strikers will always be held in the highest esteem by committed Nationalists as well as Republicans who lived through that era.
Grma, Pat
Malachi isn’t a neutral observer, having tied his horse to the Unionist Party under Trimble. This, therefore, could be seen as part of election campaign on behalf of Mike Nesbitt. I think Danny was more than able for him.
I doubt if Malachi ever wrote anything purely for research purposes.
Your blog is entirely correct as usual
Hunger striking is an ancient Irish tradition dating back to the pre-Christian era.
It was used in disputes as the final weapon to bring a stubborn adversary to a settlement. Under Brehon Law the claimant went to the property of their adversary & sat on hunger strike until there was resolution or they expired.
Invariably it worked apparently. The adversary was shamed into conceding. I think, but I’m not sure, that under Brehon Law the hunger striker was due a greater settlement than if it had been settled without recourse to this extreme measure.
Therefore the traditional object of hunger striking in Ireland is to achieve a concession from your adversary eg political status in the case of Bobby sands et al. I can’t see how it is similar to suicide bombing where the aim is to kill others while killing yourself. This is not part of a negotiating strategy.
Malachi has a history of trying to out do the unionist journalists, maybe its the fact that he was brought up in west Belfast and feels that he has to prove himself to the establishment. The chip on his shoulder regarding his upbringing has led him to say some silly things and the established media never fail to wheel him out when theyre looking the ‘token taig’ to have a go at the shinners. Its quite sad in a way because I suspect theres alot more to the guy than the sort of nonsense he writes. All in all the hungerstrikers are reveered around the world as heroes who died for their political cause. There are streets named after them, political lectures and they have been the inspiration for many oppressed nations including a certain Mr Mandella once branded a terrorist by the West. Malachi however…will be remembered for the chip on his shoulder.
Jude, you are being overly kind to Malachi if you think his article was a piece of research and nothing more.
He works for the Independent group of newspapers who, as you are aware, for the past number of years have been running a daily smear campaign against Sinn Fein, in the process using and abusing all sorts of victims all over again, just to boost their campaign.
So when you work for the gutter press you cannot expect anyone to accept there is any moral value to your work.
Malachi is just doing the bidding of his boss Denis O’Brien.
Malachi was once described to me, as a pseudo intellectual. This article does little to change my mind. He strives to make himself relevant, and combined with his distaste off Republicans, fits in well with the Unionist Belfast Telegraph. Republicans/Nationalists would be better putting Malachi on the ignore list. Though given Malachi’s penchant for shock/controversy, in his hunger for fame, its hard to let his off the wall comments go unchallenged. Some researchers seeking recognition can skew their own research, in favour off those signing their pay cheque.
I heard the interview, Jude and was muttering your precise argument under my breath at the time. The hollowness of the comparison was so obvious that I truly believe Malachi has tarnished his reputation as a thoughtful, provocative contributor. The hunger strikers, like them or not, gave up their lives in desolate isolation. No one else was harmed. Whereas the very reason behind suicide bombers is to kill and hurt innocents. It was a non argument and well he knew it. But of course, the intellectual pigmy that is Nolan, was all over it. Listening to him is like reading the Sun newspaper. He’s pretty pathetic.
The age old problem is that, a large section of the six county population would love to portray the hunger strikers as terrorists. But it doesn’t stand up to even the mildest scrutiny. The bottom line is that terrorists or criminals don’t give up their lives in isolation, for a cause. The suicide bomber is primarily interested in killing others. His is an act of absolute selfishness in contrast to the hunger strikers absolute selflessness.
Interesting stuff, Mr Collins. I’m not familiar with Malachi O’Doherty, so what you consider to be his motivation for positing such a comparison? Personal beliefs? Or just toeing the BelTel editorial line?
I’m sure I wouldn’t presume to judge definitively, RJC (that’s Dr by the way..Ony jokin). Malachi has for a long time been strongly anti-republican so that might be linked to his motivation. But I’m sure I can’t say…
Mea culpa, a Dhoctúir. Having just read the wikipedia entry for the bould Malachi, I wonder what could have happened in his life to make him so opposed to the Republican movement? To the point where he feels the need to write glib and specious articles about the hunger strikers in the gutter press. We’ve all got mortgages to pay, I suppose…
And while we’re on the subject of media bias, this raised a chuckle –
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ff-considering-complaint-over-its-treatment-on-rté-show-1.2184246
There’s nothing funnier than Irish political parties whining about RTÉ being too mean to them. I wonder how FF would fare if they were subject to the level of questioning SF regularly receive?
Something of a brain fart, from, Malachi (not for the first time). This comes hotly on the heels of the IRA being compared to ISIS. These boats won’t sail.
Malachi comes from a long line of hurlers on the ditch. He says what he is paid to say. If he veers from the educated, liberal, man of the world line (in his opinion) the pay will cease. What sacrifice did he ever make for anything? I think he is a wannabe Eoghan Harris all the while flaunting his Belfast ‘nationalist’ credentials. I have to pick on the man because Danny Morrison has obliterated his BT urge to soil himself with another pathetic piece of pseudo journalism.
The obvious missing factor in Malachi’ s equations is that the hunger-strikers didn’t bring about the death of a dozen or two people, nor was that the result of their actions. They died alone. If they did violence, it was to themselves. So the thing we disapprove of about the suicide bomber is the one factor that’s missing in the comparison with the hunger striker. So the comparison falls down.
Sorry there is a large elephant in the room here they were in prison because guess what they committed murder and bombed businesses and people I know you will wish to downplay this but that is why they were in prison once again if your community thinks that they were fine people that says a lot about your community
I take your point, Neill. However, the focus is the hunger strike and who it affected. And undeniably the hunger-strikers confined their violence to themselves, certainly at that point. You might also bear in mind that most if not all of them were there as a result of trial through Diplock courts. Mmm.
When one considers the false convictions of The Birmingham Six, Guilford Four and the Maguire family among others, being imprisoned by hms government does not automatically qualify as guilt. the Hunger Strikers(including Ms Farrell, Doyle and Nugent) were willing to sacrifice their lives rather than be called criminals. The deaths that resulted from their sacrifice were due to security forces and those associated with them( plastic bullet deaths/disfigurements, sectarian murder of nationalists). As someone stated they will be remebered long after you and I are gone( that so called journalist O Doherty as well
Sure The Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and Maguire family convictions was a “Miscarriage of Justice”, even though police deliberately lied, beat and tortured them into signing confessions, manipulated evidence, etc. The British Government try to portray it as an “accident”. It was no accident.
Wonder how many other people were beaten and tortured and evidence manipulated by the British Government in order to get people “convicted” and put behind bars? Well we know for certain that they destroyed evidence in order to keep Loyalist terrorists out of prison…..
“Sorry there is a large elephant in the room here they were in prison because guess what they committed murder”
Ok, Neill, I’ll bite. Name the Hunger Strikers who “committed murder”.
Thomas Mcelwee killed a protestant female business owner in her store bet you regret biting now!
Not so fast, Neill. His charge was manslaughter – not murder because he wasn’t the one who planted the firebombs.
So Thomas didn’t kill a female business owner. And the law agreed.
Following his arrest, he was charged and sentenced to 20 years prison for possession of explosives and the murder of 26-year-old Ulster Protestant Yvonne Dunlop, who was burnt alive when one of the firebombs destroyed her clothes shop, Alley Katz His murder charge was reduced to manslaughter on appeal, although the original jail term stood.
I think you will find that he did!
Ever hear of internment Neill? That’s when innocent Catholics and only Catholics ( even though loyalists were murdering and bombing) were interned without trial. And of course we had diplock courts.
So your assumption that everyone who went to prison was guilty in that period of the troubles is ridiculous and, as usual, biased and one sided. Its pretty much the “Didn’t get it for nothing” attitude that Unionists had when Loyalist paramilitaries were murdering innocent Catholics.
Using you logic every Republican who went to jail was innocent but since you are biased you would believe that!
Speaking of suicide as a weapon of war, Esteemed Blogmeister, down here in the Free Southern Stateen the two wings of RTE, wireless and telly,have been coincidentally cramming the eyes and ears of their licence-paying customers who only love to lap this sort of stuff up, uncomplainingly, with images and sounds of a specific form of military suicide.
It might even be called seaside-suicide.
One, of course, is referring to the grainy reels in vivid black and white and grey showing the Gallipoli landings (for it is they !) whose centenary occurs this week. The Munster Fusiliers and their Royal Dublin Fusilier comrades in arms were so decimated in this heroic attack of Homeric proportions that their khaki-clad overlord, Brigadier General Sir Galahad Ironclad-Jihad, KG, GCB, DSO, PC was sadly compelled to merge what was left of the gallant gung-hos.
They were hitherto known as ‘The Dubsters’. Fact.
Although only 11 of the 1,012 Royal Dublin Fusiliers who landed at Beach X (or maybe it was Y) survived unscathed even as they rushed headlong if not pell mell itself into a fusillade of withering, erm, Victoria Cross-fire from the machine gun nests to the delight of the Turkish defenders, the s-word was still strikingly absent.from the sonorously solemn RTE commentary.
That would be s for suicide.
That is because this was a crucial turning point in the Great Donkey Derby 14-18 which is, like, Julius Caesar’s second wife, above and beyond all criticism down here in the FSS.. (If things go according to plan in the upcoming neverending referendum, old Julie’s wife will be unveiled as, erm, Julian).
And, let there be no beating about the tush-push,for s for suicide it was. Albeit for the most alluring of motives.
Think you for one moment in time, going forward, did Joxer and Whacker (JaW) of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the Turkish surf, along with all those turf-digging Murph fellows from Munster, opt for felo de se while armed only with the military equivalent of (gulp) the JaW bones of an ass?
Un-likely, highly.
Rather (according to soon to be released documents from the dark and dusty National Military Archives) were they doing so on a wing, a prayer and a promise. That on the other side of Paradise would be waiting for them with open purses on Cloud 9 a whole crowd of trumpet-blowing strumpets, ranging (l to r) from Burlington Bertie, Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill to tuba-playing trollopians like Nell Gwyne,, Sweaty Betty, Shady Sadie and even Lizzy Stride herself,one of the five victims (alleged) of one, J. the Ripper.
The way RTE is spin-doctoring the factoids of the story, one could easily, if one were of the slow-learning cohort, swallow the historical panacea that these gallant Dubsters were actually the Galloping Hogans of Gallipoli.
They weren’t of course. They were, in fact, the Galloping Hogarths of Gallipoli. Hogarth, aka, Je Suis Willie, the distinguished satirical lampoonist and forerunner of the Goons, was a fully paid up member of the Rose and Crown Club. As were – agus ni thugann se puinn solais do chomhbhronai inmheanach Pherkie e seo a dhearbhu / and it gives Perkie’s inner sympathetic empathiser no joy at all to assert this – the Dubsters.
It being a kernel of military culture: youse take the shilling, goys, youse willingly become one of the King’s boot boys.
Which makes it all the more passing strange that Uachtaran na hEireann will be in Gallipoli to honour these seaside-suicides. Coming as he does from the very five-line city which made Galloping Hogan famous: Limerick.
Now, the same Michael D. (for it is he !) has many estimable qualities (perhaps the most major league of which, he is neither of his two predecessors) but an ability to distinguish the what-o’s from the chaff is not one of them.
Perhaps the number of Royal Dublin Fusiliers who survived intacta from surfing the Gallipoli inter-net gives a clue: 11.
Same number of players who line out for Galway FC (hard to get away from the Gals) in the minor League of Ireland every week. While Michael D. may well be President for Seven Years of the Free Southern Stateen he is President for Life of Galway FC. (Seven-league boots being compulsory for the latter).
This may well lead him to such gaffes as the sending of his Aide-de-Camp to attend the recent obsequies of the soccer scribe from the Irish Dependent whose main claim to infamy was the coining of the friendly phrase ‘bogball’.
Now, in fairness, there are many African teams playing in the junior soccer leagues of the FSS at this moment in time,at the end of the day, going forward. If The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Chelsea County (as the deceased was affectionately known and widely) had chosen to describe these leagues by substituting w for the b in bogball would an A de C have been in respectful attendance at his funeral?
But then, Michael D belongs to a party whose towering tintellecual was once an expert on African affairs and whose most renowned coinage was, coincidentally, ‘the bogoak monolith’ to describe those of a Shinner disability.
One can only speculate if Dr. Congo Crisis O’Brain (for it was he !) was ever minded to substitute w for the b in that phrase during his distinguished term of office on UN duty in the Heart of Darkness?
One indeed can only also speculate as to the reasons why Michael D. Higgins, Labour TD for Galway, chose to keep mum in the manner queenly during those years on matters to do with Garvaghy and preferred to busy himself with Guatemala.
Perhaps, amigo, it might have been political (gulp) suicide to do otherwise, .
Perkie m’man – ain’t nobody does it better – a bitter truth with your final zinger: “One indeed can only also speculate as to the reasons why Michael D. Higgins, Labour TD for Galway, chose to keep mum in the manner queenly during those years on matters to do with Garvaghy and preferred to busy himself with Guatemala.
Perhaps, amigo, it might have been political (gulp) suicide to do otherwise.”
GRMA, EB.
Btw, one wonders what Dean Swift who gave us the legendary marketing ploy ‘Burn everything British bar their bituminous coal’ would call this celebration of this Gallipoli thingy: ‘ Gullibles’ Travails’?
Le tógáil ar céalacan/To be taken fasting
The significance of the discussion today, 22 April 2015, is the fact that the sacrifices made by the hunger strikers remain fertile sites for discussion, debate and research. The hunger strikers paid the ultimate price in order to expose injustice in the north of Ireland.
Fasting has been used as a method of protesting injustice dating back thousands of years in Ireland and in other international locations. The fast was often carried out on the doorstep of the home of an offender due to the high importance the culture placed on hospitality. Allowing a person to die at one’s doorstep was considered a great dishonour, a sentiment lost on many of the right ‘honourable’ members for the shires.
We should not forget some honourable worthies in Dublin 4 and in other parishes who were also extremely busy during the hunger strikes, in activities which have kept a plethora of tribunals busy for decades.
The hunger strikers will be remembered long after Malachi O’Doherty is gone. Meanwhile, the campaign to vilify and demonise republicans carries on.
the campaign to vilify anyone who wants to step outside the union (whatever union) is relentless.
look at what Scotland is going through at the moment
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/leaving-the-union-a-malevolent-aim/
on another note Jude – any chance of an audio or U-tube link to the interview – so that the diaspora can see/ hear it?
Ben – I’ll try to do same. Remember techy-wise, I am still in my swaddling clothes…
thanks for whatever you can manage – I have no idea how to do it – hence the request!!!
I bin gone dun it, ben…
Tony Blair’s Wife Cherri, stepped on a political landmine, when she said a couple of years back, that she understood the motives of Suicide Bombers in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the desperation that drove them to such extremity when all else seemed impotent. When it comes to the apartheid state in Israel/Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian populations and the abysmal way they are treated on many levels, collectively galls most of the peoples of the world….
Saying that, I believe, like many other rational and humanitarian people, that the deliberate targeting of any non-combatants, that this is plainly a War Crime, as Civilian populations are by their very nature, adversaries. The UN agrees, and has this unambiguously written into its charter.
Deliberately target civilians, and if you cite War, however desperate and impotently other means seem, then this, and they are War criminals.
Most suicide bombers now in the skeletal fractured oil pumping State of Iraq, divided along fostered sectarian lines, which the Occupying forces thought it expedient to promote to take the sting out of the insurgency. This sectarian quagmire has spiralled brutally towards ever bloodier depths, and its Nadir, has not yet been reached perhaps.
Malachi, absence impartiality on this matter, might have found a much more cogent and obvious equivalence with Suicide Bombers in the conflict or War here, by looking at the large Elephant in the room undeclared, in the garbs of the Loyalist Paramilitaries who wreaked havoc among non combatants by their targeting of Non-combatants as their modus operandi. The sight of this Elephant in this living room, Malachi clearly misses, in a perhaps willing zeal to witheringly blame Republicans for most of the extant legacy of the conflict. I agree strongly with the flavour of your above argument Jude regarding the Hunger strikers, and the selfless, and “lonely” nature of their sacrifice. If Malachi would refocus on this large Elephant, he need not have recourse to switch on the discovery channel, the Elephant, like the denuded Emperor is in plain view, and his pairing of the Hunger Strikers with Suicide Bombers is not merely tenuous, but Simply Absurd.
Jude, another weakness in Malachi’s comparison (and your response) is that it overlooks the fact that women were hunger strikers and are also suicide bombers. This isn’t a male story. Are there differences in what motivates women and men? I suspect so. We can’t know the full story if we don’t consider the dimension of gender and include women in the analysis.
Malachi discusses both the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes. Three republican women took part in the first hunger strike from the Armagh Gaol, and they deserve to be included in the larger story of what happened and why. Women activists, most notably the suffregists, were the among the fiirst to use hunger strikes as a method of political protest while in prison.
Women are increasingly carrying suicide bombs, although the numbers remain small in comparison to the overall number of these attacks. There are important lessons in these differences and similarities. Women and their diverse roles in conflict and peace shouild not be overlooked.
Thanks for thoughts, Barbara. I’d be the last to try to airbrush out women and their role. I guess I heard only part of Malachi’s discussion – he may have talked about women, I’m not sure. However, I think the men are highlighted because they died on hunger strike. As I’m sure you know, in addition to women hunger strikers, there were quite a few instances of male hunger strikers who didn’t die. I think the focus was on those who died so that Malachi could draw his parallel – a parallel as you know that I resist.
Well said Barbara.
Certain individuals have been trying to demonize those brave men who went on Hunger Strike and died for their beliefs for decades and they have always failed to do so and will continue to fail.
Malachi and Ruth Dudley Edwards should get along very well…..
Well there is a tremendous amount of man playing around here for poor old Malachi daring to express an opinion.
Surely when journalists write opinion pieces they are expressing opinions,just as Jude is hardly impartial when he writes for the Andytown News.
Firstly,I don’t know if I would agree that the idea of the leadership lying to the hunger strikers has been discredited at all; that debate is still ongoing.
Second, while it is true the hunger strikers showed great courage in sacrificing themselves it has to be remembered as Neill has pointed out that they were not innocent martyrs but were convicted of,in some cases, quite appalling crimes.
For example, Yvonne Dunlop a shop owner burned to death by a firebomb left by Thomas McElwee.
Finally, I can’t help thinking if only the rest of the IRA had adopted this method of protest as their modus operandi they might have achieved at least as much with the loss of no lives but their own.
Sadly they courageously chose to sacrifice the lives of others instead.
I can go along with you on the first bit, gio – everybody comes at things from a particular angle. That said, sometimes people come at things from a particular angle for other reasons than those they state. But as to the rest of your comments – I think maybe you are underestimating the closeness (which Malachi also attested to this morning) between the prisoners. The idea that they’d be fooled into dying for nothing just doesn’t ring true. On the other hand, the idea of starting a hare that might discredit the whole hunger strike does ring, alas, true. You may be right about that firebomb and Thomas McElwee – I frankly don’t know. But I’d check my sources carefully before I’d state that such a thing happened. As to the IRA sacrificing the lives of others (with the implication that they saved their own skins): simply not true. IRA recruits were told when they joined that there was a high possibility they’d either be killed or end in prison. And many did.
How does it go…if it doesn’t kill you it’ll make you stronger. I shouldn’t think Sinn Fein worry too much about Malachi or what he thinks or writes. If they do , they are very insecure.What’s the big deal anyway? Malachi is simply expressing a point of view .Maybe he is asked to write something and he just fired off a wee salvo to see how it would sit on the page.He probably had a few other ideas rumbling about in his mind , but this probably seemed to make sense and was worth a punt. Let’s face it, Malachi can conduct himself in a debate with any reasonable conversationalist ,such as fellow writer Danny Morrison without it all becoming a knife fight.
Sometimes he has a valid point of view and brings some fresh thinking to play. Sometimes, like everyone else, he gets it wrong . We’re all like that. If you’ve read Malachi’s book “the Telling Year” about his early life during the early 1970’s in Belfast , you’ll soon realise , he had a bird’s eye view of the situation that many have not experienced. He worked on a local newspaper as a junior reporter and saw and knew many of the players on the streets.He saw some of the blood and bones violence and lived alongside many of the players. I would say he might have a less- heroic take on the conflict because of this perspective. He knows that all those heroes have feet of clay.They were just young men like himself , in an entirely new situation . He is honest enough to write that it scared the hell out of him and was instrumental in his leaving Belfast for a time. Some of us have also been through that. I got out that same year, myself. Anyone who had the opportunity to get away from the madness for a while, did so.Many didn’t bother coming back. Many lived far away from any of it and fought a war from their armchairs.
Committing suicide for an ideal can be thought of either as an heroic act or equally as a foolish waste of life .Yes, it is a form of emotional blackmail in some ways but it is also a form of induced madness too. Many people kill themselves for what others might find trite ideals or because they are otherwise helpless and see their lives reduced to a small cell.If you looked at it in a certain light , you could see Jesus Christ as a suicide , every bit as much as Judas Iscariot. Was he a crazy man with a mad idea ?Many find this “sacrificing ” of life for an ideal as somehow heroic.The guys who flew their planes into the Twin Towers were seen equally as murderous mad buggers and as heroes to a whole movement who imagined them already in some paradise.When you get down to it these are all only personal points of view .
Thanks, Paddykool.
I can’t deal with people who seek to attribute devious motives or plans of attack to me. The point of setting out ideas is to promote thought and discussion but Shinners tend to prefer to try to undermine the person making a point and thereby to excuse themselves the effort of thinking.
Malachi – alas, again I must disagree. You have a long track-record (haven’t we all?) of being opposed to things republican. Fair enough. But when you then link the hunger-strikers with suicide bombers, I see the parallel as damaging to SF as well as inaccurate. I don’t think that’s opting out of discussion. And it does fit into a series of attempts over the past 30 years or so by various people to undermine the sacrifice the hunger-strikers made. Nothing personal, Malachi. As I said in the blog I do like you; it’s just your comparison I don’t like.
Thomas McElwee was convicted of manslaughter .Even the British courts accepted that the target was a commercial target and that there was no intention to kill anybody.Also it would be worthwhile for his detractors to read some of the letters he sent out while facing death and the totally anti sectarian message contained within them.I am probably the only person on here who actually knew Thomas and will not allow his memory to be besmirched by the Neils of this world.
But he did kill and he was a murderer and you know what I love besmirching his character because he was nothing more than a common criminal.
If you think he is a hero once again that says a lot more about you than me
michael
Well as long as those firebombs weren’t intended to kill anyone! I’m sure that is a great comfort to the family of Yvonne Dunlop.
I have no doubt Thomas McElwee thought he was doing the right thing. In his letters did he acknowledge that he was wrong in his actions when they resulted in her death?
Or maybe he thought her sacrifice was worth it.
If you have banked your whole future on cozying up to the establishment regime by spending most of your career criticising the Republican movement at every opportunity then watching them make spectacular progress election after election could leave you feeling very bitter indeed!
I listened to part of the interview this morning.
Apart from the headline contrived comparison, I was struck by a particular line of reasoning expressed by Mr O’Doherty. He suggested that certain characteristics, such as an absolute faith in ideology and a total, almost religious, belief in the Proclamation on the part of republicans and the Koran by Islamic fundamentalists was evidence of a similarity between the two.
He failed to comment on American devotion to the Declaration of Independence and belief in capitalist ideology.
I was waiting for Danny to raise this, but Nolan shut the interview down shortly afterward.
I cannot believe that Mr O’Doherty actually thinks that this article has merit and wonder why he didn’t include other dangerous “fundamentalists” such as Thomas Ashe and Terence McSweeney, who also died on hunger strike.
I imagine including War of Independence participants would defeat the purpose.
Malachi is the living embodiment of a self hating Nationalist, he tells the story of a woman who, on hearing his name, told him he`d be `better off with a number`, he also tells the tale of how he felt obliged to join in the bin bashing protests of the early seventies, by banging his bin lid indoors. That didn`t stop the Brits from going in and bashing HIM about. I don`t really see what people are trying to achieve by printing the rubbish he spews, I gave up reading his nonsense years ago
As far as the hunger strikers are concerned, they are Irish patriots who gave their lives for their comrades and indirectly for all the Nationalist people. Why don`t Unionists just accept that? They have their own heroes, Lord This and Sir That or whatever.
Jude Collins and Danny Morrison most often on the same side of the argument!Who’d have thought it?!Pope still Catholic etc!!
What a witty fellow you are, Argenta!
Perhaps they are the same person the jude side to the character must be the angry side though….!
Sometimes I wish I knew what you were talking about, neill. Other times…