Ruth Dudley Edwards: As we remember terror victims, we should all keep hounding the unrepentant

Mr Murphy said he does not understand why US presidents and UK prime ministers do not receive the same criticism following the funerals of veterans as IRA leaders do.

That’s logical for anyone morally so twisted they think the IRA was a legitimate force. It reminds us that Sinn Féin are not fit for government, north or south.

To senior Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty, McFarland was a friend who “used his influence within republicans to encourage others to buy into the peace process.”

To Mary Lou McDonald, he was a “great patriot who lived his life for the freedom and unity of Ireland”. He was a ballad singer with “the mind of a revolutionary but the heart of a poet”.

To former Irish justice minister Charlie Flanagan, that was all nauseating, for McFarland was “directly and heavily involved in vicious sectarian crimes”.

I haven’t room here to offer more than a few highlights of McFarland’s career, but Flanagan wasn't exaggerating.

McFarland was 23 when in 1975 with two others he conducted the Bayardo Bar massacre on the Protestant Shankhill Road that killed five and injured dozens: two civilians were machine-gunned to death; three more died in the subsequent explosion.

Jailed for life, he was lucky enough to have been excused being a hunger striker because his grisly record would be an embarrassment, so he became the officer commanding in the H-blocks, and an escapee in 1983 who lived in the Republic.

Since then he has been the chief suspect in the 1983 kidnapping of the businessman Don Tidey and the murder of Private Patrick Kelly and Recruit Garda Gary Sheehan during Tidey’s rescue.

Like so many lawyered-up Provos, he got off on a technicality.

And being a Provo means never having to say you’re sorry.

PR considerations are paramount in Sinn Féin so there clearly were worries about McDonald taking her turn as a coffin-carrier, so she didn’t attend.

Quite apart from anything else, there were rumours circulating in Provo land about their hero’s liking for very young women. An unkind tweet circulated of his coffin being carried by Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris and Gary Glitter.

Máiría Cahill, who knew McFarland well, in an article condemning governments’ legitimising of paramilitaries, pointed out how difficult it is for young people to distinguish between “acceptable and unacceptable actions when our adults both praise and vilify paramilitaries, depending on under whose name they operate”.

And, of course, governments bribe and legitimate them in the name of peace.

It’s no wonder Murphy was baffled by the criticism.

But let’s look at the positive. President Michael D Higgins made a moving speech welcoming victims of terrorism.

And other bereaved and injured had a chance to tell their stories at Stormont where MLAs organised an event on the European Day for Victims of Terrorism.

No wonder Sinn Féin didn’t turn up.

We should all keep hounding the unrepentant.

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l Ruth Dudley Edwards is the author of ‘The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions’ and 'Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice.’