Ben Lowry: Another week in which the IRA has been allowed to advance on legacy

The direction of travel, of vindicating IRA terror, has been clear for 20+ years, since the first attempt to get an amnesty for on the runs at the 2001 Weston Park summit.

At those talks, unionists foolishly accepted collusion as the prism through which to see past violence. They were trying to defang the republican claim about loyalist collusion having been the key feature of the Troubles by moving some focus on to instances of alleged southern collusion with the IRA, but in fact they just reinforced the far more insistent claims of loyalist collusion.

A number of events this week highlighted other ways in which legacy is being distorted to minimise or divert attention from the central role of republican terrorists in the past violence. Amid the widespread attention given to John Finucane’s speech in honour of the IRA terrorists of South Armagh on Sunday, there was little focus on the refusal of the SDLP – which stood aside in North Belfast to get him elected MP in 2019 – to criticise his presence. This is a party that was the target of venomous republican criticism and at times intimidation when it campaigned bravely against advocates of IRA violence during the bitter political years of the 1980s.

Also last week, amid massive coverage of the PSNI apology to the hooded men as if it was fresh evidence of a security force admission of brutality against Irish nationalists, we were almost the only media outlet to report that one of the hooded men, Joe Clarke, was given an IRA funeral. Two rival daily papers carried photographs of the funeral but did not use any words that explained that the images showed he was being given terrorist honours.

Meanwhile the 50th anniversary memorial to the Coleraine IRA massacre of six pensioners was a further reminder of the IRA’s legacy advance. On the day of the anniversary the BBC Northern Ireland website had as its main story on the event a woman whose aunt was killed and father disfigured, but who forgave the bomber Sean McGlinchey. Such a story is of course one that many people will find fascinating, and uplifting. Victims respond to their grief in their own way and stories of forgiveness and healing catch our imagination as much as ones of feuding and revenge. But in no way do I criticise the relative in that story when I say that it was flagrantly inappropriate for it to be the main BBC NI web story on the half century of the anniversary. Maybe a follow-on story later, or an accompanying story to the main one about that day’s sombre memorial to the massacre. For BBC NI online to report the Coleraine anniversary in that way was so insensitive and wrong that I tweeted out criticism of the decision. This prompted a flood of furious twitter reaction from people who accused me of being bigoted, poisonous, etc. But none of them engaged with my point: that BBC NI would not on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday have made a story of one victim forgiving the Parachute Regiment their main story (and nor should they have done). BBC NI would not have made a single instance of a victim of the Ballymurphy killings forgiving the British Army their main story on that 50th, and they will assuredly not make forgiveness of loyalists the main story of next year’s 50th of the Dublin and Monaghan bombs. The web handling of Coleraine showed editorial double standards yet I was the only person to criticise this bias.

The anniversaries of the 1973 Coleraine bomb are flagging up another grotesque development on legacy, in which Sinn Fein are now attending commemorations of IRA massacres, as if it is a display of their own cross-community generosity of spirit. This trend came to prominence in 2018 when some relatives of victims of the atrocity would not attend when the SF mayor insisted on doing so. Think about that – relatives stay away while a republican who refuses to condemn the IRA insists on being present.

If such a Sinn Fein attendee was prepared to say that the massacre of civilians was wrong, and not merely regrettable (as if an accident), then it would be a different situation. But they do not say that, they refuse to condemn it. Yet once again last week an SF politician sat among those remembering the dead.

Many people give Sinn Fein the benefit of the doubt when it uses the duplicitous language of ‘regret’ about past murders. When a Sinn Fein candidate who was a Queen’s University law lecturer spoke of his regret of the IRA murder of the lawyer, QUB academic and politician Edgar Graham, it was reported as if it was a breakthrough – until we repeatedly asked the inconvenient question of whether he in fact condemned the shooting of Graham in the head. And he repeatedly refused to say if he did, emphasising again and again his regret and ultimately threatening us with legal action for ‘harassment’.

The web version of this story will link to an article I wrote last year (see link below) about the way in which Sinn Fein politicians not only attended the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Friday massacre, but the order of service for the event did not even mention the IRA, which was responsible for those mass murders.

It is horrifying that politicians who won’t condemn such atrocities turn up at commemorations of the dead. Are they not ashamed to sit amidst those whose lives were shattered by the attacks? Just try to imagine a politician or military figure who kept emphasising their ‘regret’ at Bloody Sunday mass killings but repeatedly refused to condemn them turning up at a January 30 memorial and sitting in the thick of the crowd paying its respects to the dead. It is inconceivable that such a thing would happen, and if it did there would be massive media coverage of it, and open revulsion that someone with such views would dare insult the feelings victims and their families by attending.

But if you refuse to condemn the IRA, and yet place yourself right amongst victims of its worst massacres as they remember their loved one, then folk around you will be too polite to mention your indecency.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor

Ben Lowry in 2022: Try to imagine a Bloody Sunday memorial that did not mention the Paras the way the Bloody Friday event did not mention the IRA