DUP councillor: The need to expose Sinn Fein's blatant untruths on legacy has never been greater

Their latest revisionist spectacular is to claim the government was the ‘main protagonist’ during the course of the terror campaign.

That assertion might play well to the ears of blinkered supporters of republican terrorism, but it doesn’t make it true.

Consider a few simple facts:

It was republican terrorists who were behind almost all bomb attacks here, whilst only British Army soldiers ever risked their lives to defuse them.

Republicans brutalised hundreds from their own community in kangaroo courts in which there were no lawyers or rights of appeal, unlike the justice system they sought to destroy.

The Provos kidnapped, bullied, robbed, stole, extorted and engaged in all forms of criminality to finance their ‘volunteers’ and their violence.

The government they despised spent millions of pounds in attempts to bring jobs and investment to nationalist areas in west Belfast and Londonderry.

When the terrorist gunmen and bombers went out on their murder missions, they weren’t constrained by legal, procedural or moral considerations.

The security forces acted within their rules of engagement to uphold the law and protect innocent life.

The IRA ended the lives of more people during the campaign of violence than any other grouping — more than all other parties combined.

The Army and our local personnel in the UDR, RUC and RUCR showed remarkable discipline in the face of the utmost provocation and constant threat of attack.

The contrasts couldn’t be more obvious.

The need to expose and challenge the blatant untruths that underpin the Sinn Fein narrative has never been greater.

Trevor Clarke, DUP councillor, Coleraine