Terror victims hit out at Mary Lou McDonald’s justification of IRA campaign, which ‘insults victims on all sides’

In an interview with the Irish Sunday Independent last weekend, Ms McDonald said of the IRA campaign: “I wish it hadn’t happened, but it was a justified campaign.”

According to reference work Lost Lives, from 1966 to 2003 the IRA claimed 1,781 lives, of which 644 were civilians. It also says all republicans claimed 2,158 lives, loyalists 1,099 and security forces 365 in this period.

“It was inevitable,” Ms McDonald said of the IRA campaign. “It was utterly inevitable and anybody with even a passing sense of Irish history could have predicted it surely as night followed day.”

She affirmed that she would have joined the IRA during the Troubles had she been old enough: “Yeah, I think there’d be every chance, every possibility.”

And she argued the involvement of ex-IRA members in Sinn Fein’s decision-making processes was “evidence of the huge success of the peace process”, but denied they were making decisions for elected representatives.

She also revealed she speaks to Gerry Adams, whom she describes as “very wise”, every week.

The party leader also defended attending events commemorating former IRA members, saying it was “essential to remember”.

The Sunday Independent put it to her that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael believe she is answerable to “shadowy figures” in west Belfast. But she replied: “It’s rubbish, because I am the party leader and I am very much in charge and I am answerable to the people who elect us in the first instance.”

But UUP leader Steve Aiken condemned her comments.

“Mary Lou McDonald’s comments are an insult to all the many innocent victims of terrorism – on all sides in the Troubles,” he said.

“If the last decades have taught us anything it is that violence is not only counter-productive, it creates an immovable reluctance for anyone to engage with or trust those who glamorise or seek to identify with those who perpetrated terrorism.”

She has demonstrated “a complete misunderstanding of the abhorrence we all feel for the Provisional IRA and its campaign of butchery and ethnic cleansing” he added.

During the Troubles, he said, there were “many thousands who felt aggrieved, on all sides” but instead of “resorting to terror”, they sought to achieve change through peaceful and democratic means.

TUV leader Jim Allister said Sinn Fein might like people to think that Mary Lou McDonald is a fresh face for republicanism but that “it doesn’t take much scratching of the surface to reveal the truth”.

He added: “Blindness to the obvious when it comes to history is a prerequisite for being leader of Sinn Fein. She waxes lyrical about furniture shop bomber Bobby Sands but explains Enniskillen and Warrington away with references to historical context.

“In what context does McDonald believe that blowing up those remembering those who died for freedom, and children out getting Mother’s Day presents, would be justified in the future? These are pertinent questions.”

DUP victims’ spokesman Sir Jeffrey Donaldson also rejected her claims.

“People who planted no-warning bombs, systematically targeted border Protestant farmers and shot police officers under the cover of darkness were not justified,” said Mr Donaldson. “They were terrorists hiding behind balaclavas.

“Mary Lou McDonald can try to rewrite history but the PIRA alongside all other paramilitaries were and are unjustifiable. That fact will always remain.”

He added: “I would never try to explain or justify any action of any paramilitary or indeed any police officer or soldier who acted outside the law.

“Mary Lou’s comments send a very confused message to young people looking at dissident republican paramilitaries in 2020.”

Terror victims and their representatives also dismissed her comments.

Kenny Donaldson, director of services with the South East Fermanagh Foundation, said Sunday’s interview showed she did not accept that the IRA murdered their neighbours along the NI border due to “ethnic hatred”.

“Why did they murder 10 Protestant men at Kingsmills, telling the only Roman Catholic on board to walk away?” he asked. “Why did they murder Douglas Deering, the last Protestant shop keeper in Rosslea?”

He also rejected her suggestion that participating in IRA commemoration events is about healing and reconciliation, which he said was “deeply insulting to the innocents”.

And he noted that by 1972 the UK had met all NI civil rights demands, further undermining justification for the decades of IRA bloodshed.

He added: “All criminal violence perpetrated over the course of the Troubles was unnecessary and wrong, whether committed by republicans, loyalists or individual members of the security forces who acted outside the law.”

Mairia Cahill, who was raped by an IRA man and then subjected to a horrific internal IRA investigation, noted that Ms McDonald described her as “very courageous” and accepted that her case was “badly handled”.

But she added: “Until Sinn Fein admits that the IRA investigated my abuse ... this issue will never be over. It seems that this hasn’t yet resonated with the party who is fond of calling for truth and justice from others, but has yet to deal with a plethora of issues in their own back yard.”

Austin Stack, whose Irish prison officer father was shot by the IRA, tweeted: “Her answer that IRA murder was justified begs a question for people like me: how can you treat my dad’s execution so trivially?”