Boris Johnson condemns Roy Greenslade for IRA suppport, editor also resigns from position as professor after outcry from victims

Today Mr Greenslade has also resigned from his position as honorary visiting professor of journalism at City, University of London, following an outcry from the families of IRA victims.

The former Fleet Street editor had come into the open to explain why he supported the IRA’s terror campaigns, even going so far as guaranteeing bail for John Downey, the IRA man responsible for the 1982 Hyde Park bombing.

Mr Greenslade, a former editor of the Daily Mirror and an emeritus professor of journalism at City University, London, offered no apology for his views, saying he was “in complete agreement about the right of the Irish people to engage in armed struggle”.

In the March issue of the British Journalism Review, he wrote: “I came to accept that the fight between the forces of the state and a group of insurgents was unequal and therefore could not be fought on conventional terms. In other words I supported the use of physical force.”

In his article he explains that as he rose through Fleet Street’s ranks, he married an Irish journalist, Noreen Taylor, and bought a home in Donegal.

One of his neighbours was Patrick Doherty, a prominent Sinn Fein activist once named as a member of the IRA army council. They became close friends, but Greenslade decided back in England to keep his views on Ireland to himself.

He wrote: “I needed a wage because I was on the verge of taking a mortgage. Better, then, to button my lip and carry on ... to own up to supporting Irish republicans would result in my losing my job. However much I believed [the IRA’s] tactics to be valid, I could not hope to convince colleagues that the killing of civilians, albeit by accident, was justifiable.”

When he became editor of the Daily Mirror in 1990, he did not feel compromised “because it was the only mainstream newspaper to have consistently urged the removal of British troops from the north of Ireland”.

However now the Prime Minister has condemned the journalist for his comments and actions.

The PM’s official spokesman said: “All I can say is the simple fact that the PM outright condemns his comments, as I have said specifically those about the killing of civilians.”

The former Guardian columnist retired from a full-time post at City University, where he lectured in ethics, in 2018, but he has ‘occasionally’ returned as a guest speaker.

However Mr Greenslade told the Daily Mail today that his decision to resign his university position was “Purely mine. No pressure. Just the reverse.”

The IRA killed hundreds of civilians during its campaign of violence, including children.

The Daily Mail contacted the Guardian for comment but had not received a reply.  

Solicitor Matthew Jury, whose firm McCue & Partners has represented hundreds of families affected by IRA attacks, said: “People have become far too tolerant toward IRA terrorism.

“If Professor Greenslade openly supported Al Qaeda or Isis [Islamic State] his university position would undoubtedly be untenable. Why should it be different supporting IRA violence?’

Kenny Donaldson, of the South East Fermanagh Foundation victims’ association, which helps about 2,000 families whose relatives were killed in terrorist attacks, said: ‘As a group that supports victims of terrorist attacks, we are bemused by his comments... Those with pens can be equally as dangerous as those who pull the trigger and detonate bombs.”

Mr Greenslade’s former editor at The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, said: “So while trying to attract readers as editor of the Daily Mirror, Roy Greenslade didn’t care that the IRA would kill a few.’

Meanwhile Lord Tebbit, whose wife Margaret was left permanently disabled by an IRA bomb at the Conservative Party’s 1984 conference in Brighton, told the Sunday Times: ‘I presume that the extension of his argument is that those who disagree with him are entitled to kill him.’

The Financial Times’ Whitehall Editor Sebastian Payne said: ‘As a former student of Roy Greenslade, this makes me feel deeply sick.’

Alan Sked, emeritus professor of international history at LSE, called Greenslade a “contemptible hypocrite”.   

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