Former UK government minister says she is remembering IRA victims, and wonders when they will get justice
A former member of the UK government under Tony Blair has said she is thinking of IRA victims this weekend.
Baroness (Kate) Hoey, who served as Sports Minister in the 1997 to 2010 Labour government, noted that Gerry Adams had won 100,000 Euros in damages from a jury in Dublin in relation to specific claims made in a BBC documentary.
Baroness Hoey, who grew up in Co Antrim, said: “I do not want to dwell on yesterday’s verdict but to look at the wider picture with regard to the legacy of terrorism.
"Gerry Adams has defended IRA violence, which wreaked havoc for 25 years across the United Kingdom.
"I am not referring to yesterday’s verdict in Dublin when I say that our legacy processes, for example here in the UK, seem completely unable to get justice and even truth for these victims of the IRA, the organisation that he has defended to the hilt.
“As someone who was a Labour MP for 30 years in a central London constituency, I think of the IRA attacks in the capital, such as the bombing of Downing Street and the Harrods atrocity.
"I think of how the three people murdered in the Baltic Exchange bomb in 1992, the person murdered at Bishopsgate in the city of London the following year, and of the two people murdered at Canary Wharf in 1996 when the IRA broke its ceasefire because it wasn’t getting its way from the UK government.
“I think of the murders and injuries at Hyde Park in 1982.
"I think of the attempt to blow up the democratically elected government down the road in Brighton in 1984, in which MPs were murdered. I think of the murder of Ian Gow MP in Eastbourne.
"I think of the many people murdered in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, including judges and politicians such as Robert Bradford and Edgar Graham.
“I think of the struggle to get justice for IRA atrocities such as at a remembrance service in Enniskillen, of sectarian massacres of workmen at Kingsmill and Teebane, of the fire bomb at La Mon, the bombing at Claudy, Bloody Friday in Belfast, and pensioners in Coleraine and many many more horrific murders by the republican movement.”
Baroness Hoey continued: “Even in listing some of these atrocities I am mindful of all the other much larger number of murders that I have not mentioned.
“Although the question of Gerry Adams’ involvement in the 2006 Denis Donaldson murder has been answered by the jury, I am thinking today of the questions that have never been answered in relation to the involvement of a range of republican paramilitaries in these other terrible crimes, and seemingly never will be answered.”
Mr Adams successfully sued the BBC over an episode of the Spotlight programme and an accompanying online story, which he said defamed him by alleging he sanctioned the killing of former Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson.
Mr Adams denies any involvement in the murder.