It was on the front page of that venerable organ The Irish News this morning, it is at this moment of typing on Talkback, and if you think you haven’t got enough, you should tune in to Darragh McIntyr’s A History of the Troubles on BBC tonight. Of what do I speak? Brace yourself: was Gerry Adams in the IRA?
This particular old nag has been whipped round the racecourse so often I hesitate to even mention it again, but I’ll try to be brief.
Gerry Adams says he wasn’t in the IRA. He invariably adds words to the effect that he was in full support of the IRA. Even the people around the Talkback table (before I threw the radio out the window) were conceding that Adams wasn’t going to admit to something that could get him a term in prison. But since Gerry Adams makes it repeatedly clear that he supported the IRA, what in the name of God is the feverish concern to say he was in the IRA rather than a key ally of the IRA? If you’re Doug Beattie, you’ll say if Adams is lying about being in the IRA, you can’t trust the truth of anything he says. To flip that, presumably if Gerry had said he was in the IRA, Doug would then accept his word on everything else? As I say, this poor creaking-bones nag has been forced round the track so often, it’s a dead horse cantering.
Maybe this is the season for republican-bashing. You probably heard the shock-horror that there was film of Martin McGuinness handling a revolver while watched by children, and further evidence of McGuinnness assembling a bomb.
Crikey. McGuinness is generally acknowledged as having been, if not the head of the IRA, as near it as made no difference. The IRA was involved in armed conflict. In armed conflicts people destroy property, attack and kill or try to kill other people. That’s how it works. So are the people who are making the film of McGuinness handling a gun or a bomb – do they live in some la-la place, where people are acknowledged as having been combatants in the Troubles, yet shock-horror, look at this, here’s one of them with a gun! And a bomb! I sometimes wonder if there are unfortunate people running around whose brains have been medically scrambled and who thus find the most basic steps of logic impossible to take. Or – worse still – they choose not to take.
Footnote. I once was approached by Darragh McIntyre to appear in a documentary he was making about the Christian Brothers, given that as a lad I spent five years at Omagh Christian Brothers school. In the preliminary talk with McIntyre, I told him that my experience was that some Christian Brothers were right brutes, heavily into physical punishment, but other Christian Brothers were intelligent and gifted teachers to whom I was and am grateful. Darragh didn’t say he’d come back to me, which was just as well, as he didn’t. With documentaries, it’s so much easier if we have things in bog standard black and white.
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