Letter: IRA event was antithesis of what Sinn Fein calls reaching out to unionists

The participation of John Finucane MP at the annual commemoration/celebration of the IRA’s South Armagh volunteer dead was highly controversial.

Mr Finucane saw it as a commemoration but it appeared to me to be more a celebration, indeed glorification – given some of the banners, flags and emblems produced by the crowd. He stated in his oration at this event, that all victims of the Troubles had an entitlement to truth and justice. This reference to the truth brings to mind the Jack Nicholson film A Few Good Men. We are all familiar with the classic quotation from Nicholson’s Col. Jessup character: ‘You can’t handle the truth!’

The question is – can the Northern Ireland populace handle the truth?

It certainly isn’t pretty. Yet, all the protagonists in the vicious, sectarian civil war known euphemistically as the Troubles claim to want the truth – but only the sanitised version of the truth which is beneficial to their selective narrative. Unfortunately, this ambivalence is also exemplified by Mr Finucane

He witnessed his father being murdered by a loyalist gang riddled with state informers. The putrid stench of collusion hangs over this execution. He mounted a vigorous and forensic campaign to bring the British government to account for this killing.

The bloodiest atrocity perpetrated by the IRA brigade whose dead he was commemorating / celebrating was the Kingsmill massacre.. It has been attributed, by ballistics tests of the weapons used, to members of the deeply sectarian South Armagh IRA. There were perhaps a dozen Provo gunmen involved in this mass shooting of 10 Protestant civilians – a war crime under the terms of the Geneva Convention. No one has been convicted for this crime.

In contrast to his ample reference to his father’s murder and state collusion, Mr Finucane seemed to me to be reticent in relation to the quest for the truth by the survivors of IRA violence in the killing fields of Armagh. Kingsmill was a completely taboo subject.

It should of course be put in the context of a pattern of tit for tat murders across the province and the activities of the notorious Glenanne gang. But, to my knowledge, there has not been any equivalent loyalist event held in remembrance of this grouping.

It would have been hoped that, given the offensive and divisive nature of this IRA tribute, Mr Finucane could have used his influence with south Armagh republicans to persuade them to finally come clean in relation to the Kingsmill massacre and express some long overdue contrition. Instead he offered nothing but meaningless platitudes and a partisan, one sided speech.

This is the antithesis of what Sinn Fein call ‘reaching out’ to the unionist community.

Meanwhile the truth come dropping slow.

George Workman, Donabate, Co Dublin