Editorial: The very least Sinn Fein can do is stay away from commemorations of IRA terror attacks that they won't condemn

Edgar Graham’s murder is one of many almost forgotten Troubles atrocities.

He was slain by brutally sectarian ​Irish republican terrorists 40 years ago yesterday. The IRA silenced a politician, academic and barrister whom they both despised and, politically, feared.

Fifteen or so years ago the anniversary of the murder of Mr Graham was a little mentioned event, but his killing has come into sharper focus. There is a growing understanding in unionism, and indeed beyond, as the comments by the former Alliance Party leader John Cushnahan show, that it this is one of many IRA atrocities that in the interests of truth about the past need to be highlighted and remembered.

In this column yesterday we talked about the outrageous way in which legacy had been utterly distorted to focus on the security forces who prevented civil war, with barely any investigation into republican terrorist murders, which were 60% of the Troubles dead. But to sidestep that point for today, Mr Cushnahan’s intervention is an important one. He grew up on the Falls Road in the years just before the violence erupted, and has always rejected the notion that violence was justified.

That past cannot be changed, but the future can be. Mary Lou McDonald projects herself as a moderate and thoughtful leader. Her history is not one of terrorism. She must know that murders such as that of Mr Graham, a highly educated and civilised and intelligent and forward thinking advocate of the United Kingdom, were dastardly acts.

In her role she might not say that in those words. But she can stop the party being triumphalist about the past and can, as Mr Cushnahan says, distance herself from IRA murder. At the very least she can stop her party rubbing salt in wounds by slyly turning up to commemorations, such as the Coleraine and Bloody Friday massacres, until they condemn those attacks.