This letter of mine was copied with implied endorsement in THE IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW in January 2011, which I just found in my attic. I’m quite proud of it.
By coincidence, a couple of days ago I saw the rescreening of the attempt made by the unspeakable Late Late Show Presenter, Ryan Tubridy, to force the admirable Martin McGuinness into declaring that Gerry Adams was a member of the IRA. Come to think of it, I can now remember Tubridy coming
second in a contest with Adams himself, on another episode of the show.
“I was completely underwhelmed by Matt Cooper’s piece on December 11.
Neither all the Queen’s horses nor all the Queen’s men, exhausting what
Gladstone called ‘the resources of civilisation’ could prove Gerry Adams’s
membership of the IRA.
So who am I, or Mr Cooper, to doubt his word? I don’t think it matters now,
nor ever has, to those who vote Sinn Fein.
It’s not as if Sinn Fein is particularly irregular. From 1912 onwards various
Unionist parties had their own Ulster Freikorps.
And Garret Fitzgerald, as a Senator, could serve on the Fine Gael Front
Bench without joining the party. But if that was a misfortune, consider the
carelessness of John A. Costello, who remarked to Garret: ‘Forty years in
politics, twice Taoiseach, never joined Fine Gael.’
If Gerry Adams’s remarks on the IRA scandalise your polite readers, they
should look away now before considering those of Mr Costello in the Dail in 1934: ‘The Blackshirts were victorious in Italy, the Hitler Shirts were victorious in Germany…..as assuredly the Blueshirts will be victorious in the Irish Free State.’
Nior thainig a la afach for 14 years, and then only with the ‘Kiss of Life’
from Sean Macbride, an IRA man when Costello made that speech.
It would be a shame if future leaders were so oblivious of the past that they
couldn’t laugh at Mr Cooper’s fastidious pretensions.”
Donal Kennedy
London
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