Ben Lowry: New statue in Belfast is a sneaky attempt to get memorials to terrorists

​It all seems to have been done in a sneaky fashion, as is often the way in the sanitising of terrorism.

On page 15 (of the print edition, click here to read it online) Adam Kula reports on how a statue to Winifred Carney that has been placed in Belfast City Hall appears to show the trade unionist holding a gun. We have not found it easy to confirm whether or not it is a gun and no-one is talking about that aspect to the statue, but almost everyone who looks closely at the structure thinks it is a revolver, perhaps within a holster.

Carney, who was born to a half Catholic, half Protestant family in Bangor, was armed with a revolver in the Easter Rising, making it very likely that it is indeed a gun. You will see that Adam has found it hard to establish the exact process by which the statue was agreed, and how non republican councillors including unionists voted on the idea.

I am not surprised if a gun has been quietly inserted into the statue plans because efforts to sanitise terrorism are relentless, and will gradually win support outside of republican communities.

Much has been made of the fact that Carney and the statue to Mary Ann McCracken are the first non royal women to be placed in the grounds of city hall, but that is not the main consequence of these installations. Carney has supposedly been chosen as a suffragette and advocate for workers’ rights but I think she has been chosen as a palatable face of violent republicanism, opening the gateway to what will ultimately be a statue of a Provisional IRA terrorist alongside that of Edward Carson in Stormont. McCracken has supposedly been chosen for her heroic work against slavery, but republicans will use it to highlight her brother, grandson of the News Letter founder Francis Joy, who was hanged as a United Irishman, in a way to link Protestant ‘dissenters’ to the sectarian provisional campaign almost 200 years later.

Parity in statues will come to mean that every monument to a historical figure who is seen to represent the unionist community will be counterbalanced by one seen to represent the nationalist community which will, in time, mean IRA. Many young people will see the key people in that paramilitary group as having been brave resistance leaders and thus the key nationalist figures. There is little pushback from the SDLP against this trend and already we have poll findings which suggest that 70% of nationalists agree with Michelle O’Neill that IRA violence was justified. There is little pushback from the Alliance, and even from unionists. Why? All these sets of politicians fear being seen as ‘negative’ if they are overly critical of republicans.

The elevation of Ms O’Neill as the first minister of Northern Ireland, symbolic leader of the province, was reported mostly as if it was merely the triumph of a Catholic woman (with a subtext that she was overcoming unionist bigotry) rather than the rise of someone who justifies past terror. Whole broadcast discussions around the time Stormont was restored had barely a person who mentioned this sad milestone.

This is all happening when swathes of the population still remember the Troubles. Last week I wrote about how my own generation, people aged around 50, is the last to have a meaningful memory of the violent years, when 90% of NI voters rejected Sinn Fein in elections, and 97% of voters in the Republic (Ben Lowry: We heard little yesterday in the reaction to Kenova about how hard it is to run an agent in a brutal terror group like the IRA).

I understand why unionists are hesitant about speaking out. I was at an Ulster Unionist conference before lockdown when a UUP councillor berated me for talking about legacy. We need to be positive and look to the future he said. Ideally I would agree, but the problem is that if we fail to challenge the IRA narrative it will become even more embedded. (click here to read the late John Bruton, one-time Taoiseach, rejecting the notion that the Easter Rising was justified)

Other examples of the sneakiness to which I refer are the way in which Sinn Fein politicians now have the nerve to turn up to commemorations of IRA atrocities that they will not condemn, such as the Coleraine massacre of six Protestant pensioners in 1972, or the Bloody Friday anniversary. I will link to a whole column I wrote on this grisly trend, in which dignified victims of IRA terror are too polite to complain that those who defend the IRA attend such memorials, hiding behind sneaky comments such as regretting all deaths (Ben Lowry: Another week in which the IRA has been allowed to advance on legacy).

Think also of how an ex IRA bomber was on the victims’ commission alongside a man who lost his son to an IRA bomb, who quit in disgust when he found out, and the victims’ commissioner, Judith Thompson, did not defend this real victim, a man who never turned to terror (‘An IRA bomb killed my son yet it was me who had to quit the victims forum while a boastful bomber stayed,' October 2018).

Ms Thompson sat beside Jon Boutcher as he unveiled his recent report which, in effect, found state and terrorist equally to blame over Stakeknife

Read Rev Norman Hamilton opposite (in the print edition) in his excellent letter calling out republican cant (click here to read it), and criticising BBC NI for a report that accepted Ms O’Neill’s non-apology as an apology. If only more people of influence spoke out in this way.

Click here for Ben Lowry’s column on how he wanted to buy one of the flawed apartments in Belfast

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor