Ben Lowry: Support for dissident republican terrorists could grow if the IRA goes unchallenged on the legacy of the Troubles

​Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly MLA was withering about the attack, and gave no hint that dissidents were justified. SF has strongly condemned dissident violence since 1998. But in recent years much of nationalism, not just republicanism, has echoed dissident grievances. In 2018 there was a clamour about the detention of Tony Taylor, an IRA terrorist who was released under the 1998 Belfast Agreement but later found in possession of a rifle, then held for breaching the terms of his release.

The then Irish deputy prime minister Simon Coveney took Taylor at his word, that he had renounced dissident activity, and said he had seen “in Derry” how Taylor’s detention was “contributing … to community tensions”. Months later Taylor was freed.

Previously Irish politicians such as the Fianna Fail TD Eamon O’Cuiv TD had visited Northern Ireland to allege heavy-handed PSNI treatment of dissident suspects and attended trials to ensure they got fair treatment. Mr O’Cuiv apologised after implying that the 2012 murder of the prison officer David Black was caused by mishandling of dissidents in jail. Yet far from harsh handling, this paper has reported on NI’s ultra lenient bail policy for terror accused, and the soft sentences for those convicted.

Since the 2019 murder of Lyra McKee few Dublin politicians have blamed the PSNI for republican violence, but nationalism is swinging behind a new ominous idea –that the Provisional IRA campaign was justified. A poll found that 70% of nationalists think this (unlike nationalists who lived through it, two thirds of whom rejected SF after the party contested elections in the 1980s, as did 96% in the Republic).

The Provo chant ‘Ooh ah up the Ra’ is sweeping the island. After the Irish women’s football team sang it last year, Mr Coveney welcomed the apology and said it was time to move on, as if a trivial moment.

Support for the earlier IRA is rising in part because unionists neglect history. There is little challenge to the nationalist depiction of early Northern Ireland as an evil state or the Troubles as having been British and unionist-led violence.

Dr Graham Gudgin, the Cambridge University economist, has repeatedly cited work by the US academic Richard Rose to argue that pre 1969 anti Catholic discrimination, such as in housing, is not only “hugely exaggerated,” but believed “even by unionists”. The web version of this article will link to an essay in which he says civil rights groups were right to protest against such abuse but it ended “well before the Provisional IRA” formed (scroll down for link below).

This failure to challenge pre Troubles distortions about Northern Ireland is now being dwarfed by an even worse distortion about what happened after the Provisionals began killing. I have written about it for years and the web version of this article will link to recent essays such as the failure of Protestant churches to speak out about the rehabilitation of terror (scroll down for link below).

UK governments have let the entire apparatus of the state turn against security forces who prevented civil war, while IRA terrorists who killed by far the most people enjoy de facto amnesty on both sides of the border. There are many non criminal inquiries, inquests and civil cases into claims against the state, almost none into IRA. Again and again I suggest sub criminal inquiries into republican terror to balance this disgracefully one sided legacy process, but there have never been plans for such. Young people are fed a story of 50 years of anti Catholic hatred leading to a UK-sponsored murder campaign against Catholics. No wonder they think ‘up the ra’.

Meanwhile, incredibly, London’s legacy bill to shut down the anti security force witch hunt is being amended, not (as some IRA victims might think) to make it more likely that terrorists are investigated but in a way that will enable ‘human rights’ activists to advance their vendetta against UK state forces.

Dr Cillian McGrattan, one of the few academics who speaks out against pro IRA lies, recently wrote in this newspaper (the only paper that is challenging the scandal) that if the IRA campaign can be rehabilitated within living memory of the carnage, imagine what will happen in future decades (scroll down for link to Dr McGrattan’s article).

This week a chorus of voice said the gunmen who attacked DCI Caldwell have no support, nothing to offer, etc. We heard all this as recently as 26 years ago when PIRA was last killing. Dissidents will be satisfied at how fast those condemnations have turned to approval.

• Ben Lowry @BenLowry2 is News Letter editor

• Ben Lowry today: Deal over NI Protocol unlikely to be one unionists can back

• Ben Lowry February 4: The church leaders attack London on legacy yet they are not beyond criticism themselves on the topic

• Graham Gudgin in 2018: Claims of past anti Catholic bias are greatly exagerrated

Cillian McGrattan: If rewriting the past can be done within living memory of IRA crimes in NI, think how easy it will be for SF in Republic