So. After forty years are so, two British soldiers are to be prosecuted for the killing of an IRA and a civilian. Since Britain is demonstrably proud of the fighting abilities of its armed forces, you’d think they’d welcome this effort to make sure that its military act at all times in a lawful manner. There’d be no point in being proud of your soldiers if they were a shower of murdering bastards, as some would say, or there were so many rotten apples in the barrel, it put at the reputation of all. But not so, it seems. Fellow-veterans of the accused soldiers are going to march to Downing Street this Saturday to protest at prosecuting ex-servicemen. You got that, I suppose. Ex-servicemen. Not innocent or non-law-breaking ex-servicemen. Ex-servicemen, full stop.
And surprise, surprise. The DUP’s Nigel Dodds has asked the British Prime Minister to stop the “one-sided legal persecution of police officers and soldiers”. She has agreed with him, pointing out that the majority of killings were through “terrorist activity”. Then, like Donald Trump, she does a swivelling, apparently self-contradicting verbal pirouette: her manikin James Brokenshire “is looking at this legacy question and how that issue of investigations on all sides can take place in the future”.
So are British army ex-soldiers being focused on exclusively or even unnecessarily? Not according to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McCrory. He says investigations of alleged crimes by British soldiers form a miniscule part of the work done by his department. It doesn’t matter. Following the lead of another Tory MP, Douglas Hogg, many years ago, Sir Henry Bellingham, Conservative MP for North West Norfolk has declared: ““This [Barra McGrory] is the person who is prepared to move away from credible evidence to political decision-making, which I find very worrying. It has to be stopped. There are potentially 278 more cases involving the security forces.” In other words, the two ex-soldiers being prosecuted is only the tip of the military iceberg.
The fact that British soldiers are being prosecuted suggests that members of another party in the conflict, the IRA, are not or have not been prosecuted. Not so. Tens of thousands of republican paramilitaries were imprisoned and prosecuted, and even in the peace process period, both republican and loyalist paramilitaries had to serve a further two years in prison.
What annoys Nigel Dodds and his friend Sir Henry is the notion that British soldiers should be tried at all. They both believe, I expect, in British justice, but the notion that the two present cases involving soldiers and the cohort of cases behind them – the notion that their total innocence should be even questioned, opens up an appalling vista: that the British army engaged in systematic and lethal law-breaking throughout the Troubles. What’s the good in a vista like that? Follow that through and you won’t be able to sustain the comforting myth that it was the IRA wot dun it. All of it.
Two soldiers, both in their 60s, are being prosecuted for the murder of an Official IRA gunman in Belfast in 1972 while another veteran, Dennis Hutchings, 75, has been charged with attempted murder over the fatal shooting of a man 42 years ago.
Veterans will march on Downing Street on Saturday in protest at the prosecutions of ex-servicemen.
Nigel Dodds, the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, asked Mrs May at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday if she would stop the “one-sided legal persecution of police officers and soldiers” in Northern Ireland.
Mrs May replied: “It is absolutely right that we recognise that the majority of people who lost their lives, lost their lives as a result of terrorist activity and it is important that that terrorist activity is looked into.”
She added that James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland Secretary, “is looking at this legacy question and how that issue of investigations on all sides can take place in the future”.
An NIO spokesman said a potential Historical Investigation Unit would “investigate Troubles related deaths in ways that are fair, balanced and proportionate, recognising that 90 per cent of deaths were at the hands of terrorists”.
Great stuff jude
One could not help thinking of a Coward, Esteemed Blogmeister, while reading today’s text.
No, not the Cowards of the PIRA (Yune-speak, North and South) but rather one specific Coward, the one with a Noel. The one indeed with the only Noel in the English-speaking world (of which the Free Southern Stateen is a kindly light amidst the encircling gloom) with two ditzy dots over the o.
(Sadly, loyal reader will have to imagine same while one’s laptop,erm, re-imagines itself).
Noel Coward (for it is almost he!) has written some of the most sparkliing of champagne comedies in the German Queen’s English and he managed to do this when he wasn’t dyeing his hair many times before his death.
Specifically one recalled the classic exchange which takes place in his celebrated drama ‘Private Lives’ which he wrote in his monogrammed silk dressing gown in one week flat towards the rear end of the Roaring Twenties.
.
Well, actually, on the flat of his back while sniffling with the Asian flu in his top floor suite in the Cathay Hotel on Nanking Street, the Grafton Street of Shangers, aka, Shanghai.
And which is now called the ghastly (gasp) Peace Hotel. Which renaming may well have been a contributory factor in the dramatist’s untimely death. Curiously enough, the play is set in a hotel, mainly.
Amanda: What have you been doing lately?
Elyot: Traveling about – I went around the world, you know.
Amanda: Yes, I know. How was it?
Elyot: The world?
Amanda: Yes.
Elyot: Highly enjoyable.
Amanda: China must be very interesting?
Elyot: Very big, China.
Amanda: And Japan?
Elyot: Very small.
Amanda: Have you known her long?
Elyot: About four months, we met in a house party in Norfolk.
Amanda: Very flat, Norfolk.
It was the specific reference to Norfolk in today’s blog, EB, which caught the eye. Not only that but the MP fellow’s Sir name: Sir Henry Bellingham, MP for North Western Norfolk.
Bellingham?
Hmmm.
One should know this for sure , of course, as a resident (long term) of Warbeck Towers but one hesitates to say, for certain, whether this fine fellow is actually originally one of those Castle P turned C chappies of Castlebellingham, Country Louth.
Hmmm.
-County Louth, must be very interesting.
-Very small, Louth.
Or, to translate it into Hiberno-English (today being the aniversary of the Riots at the Abbey Theatre, when the Playboy of Eastern Ireland had his civil rights interrupted):
-County Louth, must be very interesting.
-Very wee, Louth.
But, at the very north of the same small/ wee county there are of, course, hills which are not at all wee but are extremely tall, even unto their entitled to being called ‘mountains’ , e.g. the Cooley Mountains.
Hmmm.
-Cooley Mountains, must be very tall.
-Very tall, Cooley Mountains.
-Cooley Mountains, must be very Chinese.
-Very Irish, Cooley Mountains.
-M.P. for Cooley Mountains, must be very tall.
-T.D. for Cooley Mountains, very tall.
-T.D. for Cooley Mountains, must be very Irish?
-Very Irish, Gerry Adams, TD.
-Gerry Adams, TD, must be very Irish and very tall?
-Gerry Adams, TD, very Irish, very tall and very unafraid.
-TD for Cooley Mountains, must be very unfraid of …?
-Gerry Adams, very Irish, very tall and very unafraid of Viirginia.
-He, the TD, very unafraid of Virginia, County Cavan?
-He, the TD, very unfraid of Virginia Wolfe Tone.
Which is one possible reason why the Dublin monochrome media this morning failed to focus on this Saturday’s march in which the Ex-Servicemen aka Dodds jackboot-shod plodders, will exercise their legacy issues , oops, their legs as they tramp, tramp, tramp along the highways, byeways and boreens of the Borough of Westminster.
The Dublin monochrome media being still obsessed with the Washroomington March aka Streepachas Walk of last Saturday.
There being no mountains to block the view of DC, d’ye see from the West Coast of West Britannia.
Or, as Noel (two dots over the o) Coward might have phrased it:
-Don’t let’s be beastly to the Brits.
NIO spokesman said a potential Historical Investigation Unit would “investigate Troubles related deaths in ways that are fair, balanced and proportionate, recognising that 90 per cent of deaths were at the hands of terrorists”.
and who where the real terrorist in the north , are the murders of innocent Catholics /nationalist /republicans at the hands off General Kitson’s murder gangs , built within the loyalist para military OR THE MRF gang as exposed as a unit of the British army , or the Glenanne gang and Capt Naric also a unit within the UDR /RUC ( MAIMI SHOWBAND DUBLIN /MONAGHAN BOMBS, AND COUNTLESS OTHER MURDERS) or the many murder gangs in north Belfast / mid ulster to be ignored
The British government ran a brutal and dirty war in Ireland just as they did in Kenya, Palestine, and Cyprus where they deliberately carried out acts of total community punishment across the north against nationalist , all of which was if not ordered from 10, Downing street it was definitely condoned by them
THIS IS THE TERRIBLE VISTA THE THE BRITISH DON’T WANT EXPOSED
And don’t forget the hundreds of innocent Catholics who were killed by the UDA and UVF as a result of collusion by the army, UDR and RUC, who supplied montages of people they thought were expendable!
From the words of Theresa May and her little helper James Brokenshire, do I smell a British government attempt to push Barra McGrory into the background, and have their own nominee deciding which soldiers should be prosecuted (which in effect means ‘none’)?
The Brits and the DUP constantly lecture us about law and order.
But when its their own people who have been committing murder with impunity over the years, then their law and order values go out the window.
Their theory is that all murders should be prosecuted – except when carried out by their own mercenaries – law and order my ass!
In the first Jude, agus tranona duit, one, or one’s, have the right to protest, unless one is Irish living in north west Ireland,, a debate for another day but, I do hope it pours on them, should dampen their enthusiasm.
Secondly however, these ex brit’s are, ’til proven guilty, hopefully in a Diplock court, innocent’til proven otherwise.
As you allude, the brit’s must have faith in their control of their own army, to at least not murder their fellow countrymen/women.
I recall working with ex brit’s who told me, prior to deployment daily, NCO’s would scream at them about the dangers presented by the fenians, perhaps if my old associate, Barra, is doing his job correctly, he might advise families to look at a civil suit against the brit army in general for the hatred their officer corps instilled in young working class men to stir them to murder their fellow citizens, well, thats how they see it.
On a related pojnt, Barra must be doing his job right when brit’s and Republicans all accuse him of bias.
British Justice , that eternal oxymoron…..innocent until proven guilty-ha ha ! ,the right to a free trial -ha ha ! ,the right to remain silent -ha ha ! , the right to free assembly -ha ha ! I could go on into infinity but it’s pointless. Nigel Bulldodds should be careful of the company he keeps because when the time comes ,as it surely will , he and his other Unionist cronies will be thrown to the wolves…they are every bit as expendable as any other ” Paddy “. England’s perfidy , treachery and deceit is boundless -1000 years of history taught us that ,but the world is changing fast..Scotland is becoming restless again , the North of England is seething with inequality , the NHS is at breaking point and when they all become aware of the money “squandered ” here there may be sedition across the Irish sea
British Justice is just like British Democracy- it only applies to the few, not to all. Which basically means its not Justice or Democracy to begin with lol
What we have here is MP’s and the British Government openly, OPENLY, trying to obstruct Justice for people who were murdered here by British soldiers. What other country in the world would you hear of that? As I said previously on this topic, if there is a stopping of prosecutions of British Soldiers then I don’t see Stormont returning at all and rightly so. If the British Government wants a return to violence here at a scale that hasn’t been seen since the Troubles then they are going the right way about it, they really are. They are refusing to implement agreements, they are clearly not being impartial and they are openly obstructing Justice. There was an article in the Belfast Telegraph a few weeks ago saying exactly the same thing, the British Government are doing all the things they shouldn’t do.
Sinn Fein should never agree to restore Stormont unless these issues are sorted and, most importantly, actually implemented. But I do get the feeling that something has changed with Republicanism, the gloves have come off……its about time….
“Sinn Fein should never agree to restore Stormont unless these issues are sorted and, most importantly, actually implemented. ”
I think it is a hell of a lot more cast iron than a should Ryan.
They have publically promised to the electorate (I watched Michelle O’Neills lips) that there will be NO RETURN to the status quo.
Unless ALL of these outstanding issues are resolved, Stormont and its institutions will not be returning.
That is why I am voting for Sinn Fein, indeed the only reason I am voting at all, not for a return of Stormont, but to finally have all legacy issues sorted, including an end of the national security veto on british state actions.
This is going all the way to mass street protests all over Ireland starting in Dublin to absolutely demand respect and equality from the british AND Irish governments. The days of turning a blind eye to british state terrorism including the Dublin Monaghan bombings is over. The truth MUST come out.
Until it does, people like MT will simply call us terrorists, just as the southern establishment do for political gain, and the southern media do to turn people against us.
If Sinn Fein don’t stick to their word on this, it will be an unprecedented betrayal to all of the Irish people.
This election is not about Stormont, it is about the survival of the GFA and the very peace process itself as failure will be used by opponents of Sinn Fein.
The british PM is still calling us terrorists at the behest of Nigel Dodds who clearly begged her to use this word.. The last chance for the DUP now is to inflame a return of the conflict.
Expect to here the word terrorist used a lot over the coming weeks.
They have to leave Ireland, nothing less will be acceptable now.
Everybody, put your faith in Sinn Féin in this election – one last time.
I notice a big overlap between Brexiters and supporters of Blackman, a guy so stupid he recorded himself conspiring to murder an Afghani on his own bodycam.