Sunday, November 11, 2007
“They kept faith with the republican past..”
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams speaking at his party’s commemoration of five men who died when a bomb they had been preparing exploded prematurely at a farm house at Edentubber in 1957 during the IRA’s Border campaign.
“They kept faith with the republican past and they ensured the future of our struggle.”
Ah, but did they have popular support and a “strategy to achieve a united Ireland”? And, btw, weren’t you always “of the view that no military solution was possible”? Just checking.. Or rather, checking..
Pete Baker @ 08:07 PM
“So, Adams was sort of like a trainer who tamed a pack of bloodthirty animals intent of killing all and sundry? How does that fit in with the mythology of Provisionals being learned scholars amd nobel martyrs?”
Oh FFS. The vast majority of nationalists never supported the armed campaign. There were certainly ones that didn’t, though, and more who were ambivalent, given the history and the loyalist paramilitaries. Republicanism is hardly a movement immune from splits, and if the SF leadership had have adopted some kind of shock therapy strategy there would have been other voices crying war and denouncing them for abandoning the true faith. That have pulled people in, maybe not everyone, but enough. And that’s all it takes. And let’s not forget the big Republican constituency in jail at the time. As it is the whole movement has stayed remarkably intact.
So, no, that is not a good comparison, any more than caricaturing any electorate or populace is a particuarly good idea.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 12:16 AMShould be “ones that did”, obv.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 12:17 AMWhen I read many of the comments on Slugger its clear to me and others that the Republican movement and its allies would not think twice about a return to bloodshed if it meant imposing their warped views on others.
Things within the political world seem to be calm at this moment but its always at these times Unionists should be on their guard, the ira certainly has not gone away.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 12:19 AMLets have some honesty in this, provisionals “commemorating” Republican dead amounts to nothing less than desecration,. One would hope that the provisionals would have some sense of decency but no, that would be asking too much. In contrast to todays mockery at Edentubber, the Republican Movement truly commemorated these men earlier this month, and unlike the provos they remain committed the Republican ideals for which these men and other men and women died. Leave Republican dead to their own please.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 02:15 AM“The vast majority of nationalists never supported the armed campaign.” - kensei
I didn’t say that they did: I implied they are now in a position, having voted for those who supported sectarian violence, whereby they have to share in the Shinner’s counter-revisionism because to do otherwise puts them in the awkward position of supporting people who are simply sociopathic self-serving fascists. It’s much easier if their voters can see them as ‘misguided but noble of purpose’ and think that they are voting for them ‘to keep them on the right path’ rather than, say, have a Truth Commission that may serve to reveal that unwanted entity called ‘truth’ and show them to have used violence for a far less ‘noble’ purpose and shouldn’t be rewarded in the manner than they been.
After all, bombing Enniskillen and other sectarian acts were done for the specific purpose of ensuring that Catholics would be murdered in retaliation by loyalists, thereby causing the Catholics to believe that they needed PSF/PIRA to defend them. Essentially, Adams and co were setting their own community up to be murdered for no purpose other than serving their own selfish strategic interests. That’s not a truth that those voters would like to face, is it? They can forgive them for murdering the other tribe without an apparent bother, but might conclude that such methods didn’t deserve reward if they were aware of how cynically they were used against them.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 06:22 AM“I didn’t say that they did: I implied they are now in a position, having voted for those who supported sectarian violence, whereby they have to share in the Shinner’s counter-revisionism because to do otherwise puts them in the awkward position of supporting people who are simply sociopathic self-serving fascists”
Er, no, Dubliner. Electorates tend not to get embarrassment like that. If they decide a party is bad, they’ll wipe them out. I don’t know why you think Northern Nationalists are somehow different form everyone else.They just don’t believe that Sinn Fein are “sociopathic self-serving facists”, and while there are some that feel “misguided but noble”, plenty of others just feel “misguided”. But electorates are ultimately more worried about the present than the past, and an SF that has dumped the armed campaign is more appealing than an SDLP who are dying on their feet. I note FF is still talking rather than actually organising here.
The rest doesn’t even deserve comment.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 08:17 AMSince this is the only thread open, it seems, for discussing the brutal Paul Quinn murder - AND I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY RELEVANT ONES ABOUT ALMOST ANY REALLY CONTROVERSIAL EVENT ARE CLOSED SO QUICKLY - I want to denounce Lord Laird’s unprincipled way to allegedly helping convict his killers - i. e, using parliamentary privilege in outing them, what helped lead to the murder by parties still unknown of Denis Donaldson.
If Laird is so convinced that he has gotten to the bottom of their crimes, he should just speak out to reporters, and take the risks if he turns out to be wrong by facing´possible libel actions by those abused.
His way he has it both ways - leading the police to the killers, or being protected from prosecution if he is simply wrong. And if those he names unfairly are murdered in the process, he solves,it seems, the crimes for those who really did it.
Parliamentary privilege was never intended for this kind of use, and he should simply keep his mouth shut, unless he chooses to act like normal people in the pursuit of criminal justice.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 08:32 AMIf people are calling into question Republicans remembering dead Republicans on the weekend of REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY i can only assume they are having a laugh.
Because the millions who died in WW1 obviously succeeded in the war to end all wars, didn’t they? Because there obviously wasn’t any wars after that one.
There may well be complications and inconsistencies involved in modern Republicans remembering Edentubber. These exist in all contemporary commemorations of past conflicts. How easy, I wonder, did the liberators of Belsen feel standing beside the overseers of the Gulags? Or the champions of freedom against tyranny standing alongside, or being, the masters of empires?
Life ain’t simple, although it never ceases to amaze me how many people are.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 09:45 AMPeter Baker
Do you agree with me that posts like those from KISDO should be removed by Slugger they are bordering on incitement to hatred I am really getting concerned and disappointed about the type of posts that are being allowed on SluggerPosted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 09:50 AM“Electorates tend not to get embarrassment like that.”
You’re basing that on the premise that the political system in NI is ‘normal’ and that it is therefore safe to generalise about NI on the basis of what other electorates tend to do. NI is abnormal - folks vote along sectarian lines, have a Faustian pack with an organised murder gang, and tend to vote classic sociopaths.
“...plenty of others just feel “misguided”.”Yeah… ‘misguided’ to think that people who organise a murder campaign without either a viable military strategy or an endgame against the wishes of the people, in violation of every law and convention, with no moral regard for human rights or the right to life, using violence as a first resort when there a political alternative and when they had no right to use violence at all, are fit and proper people to hold public office.
“I note FF is still talking rather than actually organising here.”They said they won’t rush into it. It won’t be for a year, at least. I doubt that they really understand how things work up there. It’ll be a culture shock. But they don’t have an option now, because if they don’t organise up there then they’ll look like a bunch of oafs for floating the idea sans due diligence.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 10:18 AMI’m enjoying the usual Republican fantasists cropping up on this thread with their pained, schoolgirl-like disbelief that Gezza could ever have fibbed about anything, ever. Tell us more then - just how exactly was (your seemingly essential ‘moral’ precondition of a possible) ‘military defeat’ of the British feasible in the 50s?
As for Sammy Morse and his absurd posturing - admiringly self-loathing and self-serving in equal measure - if you can’t even now drop APNI moral equivalence crap, and see and speak to the difference between remembering regrettable, unsought but lawful violence discharged by good and honourable men, and, terrorism, carried out by terrorists, God help you. No one else will, as the vast majority of us seemingly can make the distinction between soliders and terrorists.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 10:31 AMNevin
“How are the ‘micro groups’ of today different from the ‘micro groups’ of 1957?”
The micro-groups of 1957 are fifty years ago.Duh.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 11:52 AMDubliner
“Adams can’t tell the truth to the nationalists of the Provos were really all about because that would put the nationalists who voted for them as well as his party cohorts into a very embarrassing position, wouldn’t it? Instead, Adams keep his mushrooms in the dark and feeds them bullshit - they all like it that way.”Wow. What an enlightened, progressive view of northern nationalists you have! Fair play to you!
With anti-northern-nationalist bigotry like yours, a career in the Dublin media surely awaits…
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 11:55 AMKensei
“I note FF is still talking rather than actually organising here.”
In fairness, it’s only a few weeks since Bertie’s announcement. Didn’t he say they’d ask for internal and external submissions until Easter and then study the feedback they get?Why don’t you make a submission? You can do so on fiannafail.ie
Because if you think SF is the future, then frankly you’re thinking like a northern nationalist, not like an Irish republican.
Dunno about you, but I don’t want to be a “northern nationalist” all my life.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 12:05 PMTrowbridge H. Ford, You are right. Lord Laird is a self-publicist and a clown whose antics will actually make it more difficult to convict those responsible for Paul Quinn’s murder. Those who are impressed by Adams’s ‘forthright condemnation’ of the murder in his Edentubber speech must have heard a different speech from me. What we got was the standard policing speech plus a rant against an imagined alliance of unionists, SDLP, criminal elements, former republican activists and politically motivated journalists. Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy. What we have is the considered opinion of the Quinn family that Provos killed him, plus a small mountain of reliable circumstancial evidence. But look at that ‘criminal elements’ bit- that is the one that is really hurting his parents. Sinn Fein is still trying to peddle the evil fairy story that Paul was a big-time diesel operator who fell out with with criminal associates. He was a £50 a day jobbing lorry driver for God’s sake, and when he got work he probably didn’t ask too many questions. When he got the message to go to Tullycoran, this supposed diesel bigshot had to siphon a couple of pints out of a tractor to put into his old Toyota Carina to get there. This criminal elements stuff is sick, really sick. It wasn’t ODCs who tried to exile him, or who mounted the 20-man boiler-suited, forensically aware operation to kill him.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 12:37 PMBilly
“Because if you think SF is the future, then frankly you’re thinking like a northern nationalist, not like an Irish republican.
Dunno about you, but I don’t want to be a “northern nationalist” all my life. “
I think SF could be part of the future rather than anything else. I’d like to see FF move North, but until they do there aren’t many other options. I’d prefer to see a strong SF and a strong FF to be honest, in absence of any of the other parties moving North.
Red Diesel
“What we have is the considered opinion of the Quinn family that Provos killed him, plus a small mountain of reliable circumstancial evidence”
Who are “the Provos” these days?
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 01:02 PMRed Diesel
You are of course right.
And let’s not miss another vital point in the movable feast that passes here for morality, even if this young fella had been up to his arse in fuel smuggling, diesel laundering and whatever else, no one had the right to kill him - period.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 01:05 PM“see and speak to the difference between remembering regrettable, unsought but lawful violence discharged by good and honourable men, and, terrorism, carried out by terrorists, God help you. No one else will, as the vast majority of us seemingly can make the distinction between soliders and terrorists.”
Indeed. Everyone can be thankful that these good and honourable men are now discharging their lawful violence in Iraq and that over one million terrorists have been killed as a result of the conflict.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 01:30 PMKensei
You sound uncharacteristically passive. I know you from your posts to be interested, engaged and active in political debate here, yet you speak about FF “moving north”, as though there’s nothing that ordinary people like you or I can do but wait and see what happens.You know that if you’re a student at Queen’s or the University of Ulster you can actually join an official Ógra FF cumann? Or in the real world, northern residents can join Fianna Fáil? As far as I know Dermot Ahern’s Northern Strategy Committee is crying out for submissions from “all interested parties”, and of course northern members are perhaps the most “interested” of all. It stands to reason that the more northerners who sign up and who contribute to their investigation, the more likely it’ll be that FF will “come north”.
(Though of course that won’t be the way it’ll work - it’ll be a question of whether FF HAPPENS in the north.)
Have you done your bit yet? Because it seems to me that FF organising in the north is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for northern nationalism to a) make serious progress towards our long-term goals, and b) to be something more than “northern nationalists”, to instead be Irish republicans with a role in the life of this island more meaningful than simply always being the principal victims of partition.
It’d be crazy for us to retreat to a quasi-partitionist “northern nationalist” trench and be all protective of SF. FF’s ideas of organising here creates enormous opportunities that neither SF nor the SDLP could match in a thousand years.
You made your submission yet? You signed up yet?
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 01:36 PMThere are two large rightwing groups of voters in the North and I suspect that Fianna Fail’s move to supplant the SDLP is as much to do with forcing Fine Gael into wooing the post-unionist vote as it has to do with any remaining fear of Sinn Fein.
After the long delays of the last decade we are starting to see real change at last.
I still think that Sinn Fein has a chance of being the largest party at Stormont but that’s always going to be a consolation prize.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 01:45 PMI am really getting concerned and disappointed about the type of posts that are being allowed on Slugger
Posted by mchinadog on Nov 12, 2007 @ 10:50 AM
on Nov 12, 2007 @ 10:50 AMSo am I, “mchinadog “. Any chance you might give it up?
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 02:49 PMBilly P,
as someone from a unionist background, I totally agree with your analysis of the opportunity that a FF move north opens up for nationalism. I for one welcome the move in the full realisation that it has a potential to move the centre of gravity toward a unified island.
The key for me is that it will happen by slow persuasion and not at the point of a gun.
There are many scenarios where I would accept unity. Certainly I would want my British identity protected and respected. I don’t see that as even close to a contensious issue for FF and most of nationalist Ireland.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 03:00 PMBilly Pilgrim: Wow. What an enlightened, progressive view of northern nationalists you have!
Do you believe everything Gerry says, or is some of it Bullshit? And if some is Bullshit, who is it meant for?
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 03:00 PMAs for Sammy Morse and his absurd posturing - admiringly self-loathing and self-serving in equal measure
Self loathing? Where did you get that from? In what way do I loathe myself? Leave the psychoanalysis to the shrinks.
if you can’t even now drop APNI moral equivalence crap, and see and speak to the difference between remembering regrettable, unsought but lawful violence discharged by good and honourable men, and, terrorism, carried out by terrorists, God help you.
Nothing that I said argued for or implied moral equivalence between soldiers and terrorists. This is a construct of your imagination; indeed, if I were foolish enough to try and counter-shrink you, I might argue that you had a deep psychological need to be offended. Oh, and by the way, you clearly know sweet FA about the Alliance Party and its members.
There are various ways that Remembrance Sunday can be handled; at its worst it can descend into sub-imperialist jingoism. At its best it is obviously something much more profound and worthwhile. What I witnessed yesterday came pretty close to jingoism. Not that I said that there (other than having a good whinge with a fellow traveller afterwards) because it wasn’t the time and the place; the time and place where people are remembering their dead generally isn’t.
And that’s why it’s futile to expect too much sense out of Gerry Adams at a Republican commemoration. That isn’t to imply any sort of moral equivalence (although there are all sorts of other inconsistencies with your argument that I won’t bother getting into here), it is simply yo state a fact.
I think Malachi O’Doherty pretty much speaks for me as far as this whole issue goes. But maybe you think Malachi is a closet Provo fellow-traveller too?
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 03:57 PMLib
I think it’s misleading to say FF are “rightwing” - indeed I think it’s misleading generally to discuss Irish politics in terms of right and left. Seems like taking a British metric and applying it to Ireland. You’ll have noticed that most parties here have a mish-mash of policies that tack left and right like nobody’s business, and though it confuses political scientists, somehow the plain people of Ireland seem to understand. Fianna Fáil are nothing if not a party political manifestation of the plain people of Ireland.“...I suspect that Fianna Fail’s move to supplant the SDLP is as much to do with forcing Fine Gael into wooing the post-unionist vote as it has to do with any remaining fear of Sinn Fein.”
Seems like a staggeringly long-term strategy. Besides, I doubt FF would write off all those presently-unionist votes and happily hand them over to FG - more likely they’ll compete for votes in east just as much as west Belfast. And they’ll have the advantage of a clean slate in these areas (unlike SF). It may be that there are people in apparently unlikely areas who actually don’t mind the message, they just hate the messenger. (ie SF) If we’re truly interested in getting the message across, then we should at least try a new messenger, I guess.
“I still think that Sinn Fein has a chance of being the largest party at Stormont but that’s always going to be a consolation prize.”
I’d much rather see Fianna Fáil as the largest party in the north, to be honest. I think we (ie northern nationalists) need to stop shrilly declaiming that we are “Irish republicans” while we act like (and vote for) provincial nationalists with a tendency towards political sectarianism (or indeed for their main rivals - “respectable” Castle Catholics) and need to start ACTING LIKE IRISH REPUBLICANS. That means we have to lose the chips on our northern shoulders, stop acting like people in the 26 owe us an apology, and start reconciling ourselves with the mainstream of Irish political life.I honestly can’t think of a more immediately productive way to do that than for we “northern nationalists” to seize the opportunity to make sure Ireland’s largest political party happens here. SF are a busted flush in most of the country outside the wee six, so those of us up here who call ourselves republicans have to respond to that reality. If Mohammed can’t come to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Mohammed.
Posted by on Nov 12, 2007 @ 04:25 PM
