Letter: Mr Blair - my father and uncle weren’t in the wrong place when they were murdered by the IRA

Tony Blair’s comments as reported in Wednesday’s News Letter, (‘Prisoner release horrible but necessary,’ April 19) revealed a more disturbing fact. In that he said: “Many of those people were killed just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it wasn’t that they were targets.”

In other words, Mr Blair in the use of such words has condoned the actions of terrorists. He has undoubtedly come to believe, as many have done, that the 1998 Belfast Agreement not only placated terrorists but gave legitimacy to terrorism, of which it appears he is content to give justification to such actions. Is this his explanation for the On The Run letters, royal prerogatives of mercy?

My father was at work when he was murdered, my uncle on the way to work when murdered. Those in Enniskillen paying their respects to the dead in World Wars, and many more, when murdered. Should they not have been there? The release of prisoners could have happened, but not as an automatic demand, and neither should the maximum two-year sentencing provision for a pre-1998 offence provided for through the agreement have occurred. Prisoners could have had their sentences cut if agreeable to enter a programme of rehabilitation that would have seen them denouncing terrorism and violent acts, and committing to not engage in the future eulogising of terrorism through a revisionist narrative.

Mr Blair and others, those innocents murdered weren’t in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’. Mr Blair, innocents murdered were where they had every right to be, the terrorists on the other have never had a right to be where they were or to do what they did.

Tony Blair speaks of compromise. What a compromise, in placating terrorism, that its apologists and others now tell us of the lives that were saved because of the ‘peace deal’. Are we to be thankful to those who murdered and maimed, destroyed businesses, for stopping the murders? Saluting the unrepentant terrorists for their generosity?

There was never any justification for murder either pre-1998 or since. Is that the message being promoted as a viable peace process, compromise with the oppressor, and then live under fear and the threat of a return to violence thereafter?

We could have lived in a peaceable and profitable society. The murders should never have happened, putrid hate-filled ideologies only cause untold pain and loss for everyone, regardless of class or creed. Sadly, narrow mindedness, and tunnel vision only sees one aim. Anyone or anything that could help further its cause is enacted without one shred of consideration for what is left behind. The terrorism pre-1998 is no different to that witnessed since. Will we witness the same compromises made to those who have carried out this violence and be told it was horrible but necessary? The precedent has been set; it will be difficult not to.

This is Tony Blair's true legacy in the context of victims and survivors and the pillar of justice, which has been beaten away to dust.

Canon Alan Irwin, (His father Thomas and Uncle Frederick were both part time members of the UDR, both murdered by PIRA and no-one as of yet held accountable), Co Fermanagh