Friday, March 14, 2008
Unsung hero of the Troubles worth remembering…
YESTERDAY saw the funeral of Gerry McLaverty, the only survivor of the bloodthirsty gang of loyalist serial killers and sectarian psychopaths known as the Shankill Butchers. McLaverty’s courage - in identifying members of the UVF gang who slashed his wrists (pictured), stabbed him, hacked him with an axe, tied a noose round his neck and left him for dead - undoubtedly meant that lives were saved. Members of the gang were eventually convicted of 19 murders, although suspected of up to 11 more, and McLaverty, described as a gentle giant, eventually recovered, although he rarely spoke of his harrowing experience. You can read McLaverty’s statement to the police in this extract from Martin Dillon’s book on the Shankill Butchers (page 196). I think we’ve good reason to be thankful for Gerard McLaverty; perhaps his bravery deserves to be remembered in some way other than newspaper tributes?
Belfast Gonzo @ 06:04 PM
I don’t see what IRA apologists are crowing about. Burning to death the Imperialist shock troops of the Ulster Collie Club is clearly up there with Michael Collins disposing of the Cairo Street gang, but if memory serves they only got to plug Murphy after he was set up by the UVF. Seems some collusion (eg when the head of your internal security team is a state agent) is bad and some is good.
Posted by on Mar 14, 2008 @ 11:59 PMNo CS,
LaMon is probably on a power with any war where innocent civilians are inadvertantly/horrificly slaughterd as inescuseable, unjustifiable and reprehensible as that is( unless you know of some wars your empire conducted where this didn’t happen but Iraq and Dresden wouldn’t be up there.
But driving around in a black taxi at night looking for innocent stray civilians to cut up is in a different class.It’s more Thomas Harris than Bomber Harris.Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 12:26 AMThere is no difference between kidnapping a poor kid off of a street in Belfast and cutting him up because he happens to be Catholic, and shooting 11 men with Ar-18s and SLRs on the side of the road in Armagh because they happen to be Prods. To me thats on the same level.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 12:30 AMMyself I’m sure it’s more to do with the fact that a campaign like that is bound to leave an enormous impact on the community that was targeted, especially in those folk who actually remember it, but I think there is a tendency to collective selective amnesia in our “cultural war”.
The reason the Shankill Butchers stick in peoples mind, particularly in North Belfast where they picked most of their victims up, is that they subjected their victims to prolonged torture and mutilation Or in your speak, ‘quite nasty things’.
Comparing them, as you did, to Mairead Farrell or the volunteers of the Easter Rising - none of whom suspended their victims upside down and skinned them alive as the Butchers did to Tom Madden, or removed their teeth with pliers, the fate that befell Joe Donegan - tells us quite a bit about you but nothing of substance beyond that.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 12:33 AMAccepted Sorley,
But even that as horrible a war crime as it was, wasn’t attempted every weekend just for the craic.Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 12:34 AMDec
Let’s not try and create a hierarchy of murders lest we have to remind you about Patsy Gillespie the man forced to drive a bomb several miles presumably in the knowledge that he was going up with it and the claims that numerous victims kidnapped by Republicans were interrogated presumably means that they were sat in a comfy armchair with a cup of tea and asked some not too direct and not too probing questions. Murder is murder is murder,......
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 12:41 AMSounds like for some of you Lennie is the unsung hero in this post.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 12:55 AM‘Sounds like for some of you Lennie is the unsung hero in this post.’
Not forgetting his big brother William who was given the last rites by a Romish priest.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 12:59 AMAh yes, sneaking into your neighbour’s drive and cold bloodedly attaching a bomb under the driver’s seat of his car knowing that he will be using that car to drive his little girl to school in the morning, that’s so much nicer don’t you think.
Or riddling an eighty year old granny with a machine gun as she stood in her kitchen because you were annoyed you missed her son earlier, now that’s class.
Would you like me to go on?
Republicans, please, spare us the moral indignation, the Butchers were murderous bastards but your lot weren’t too pretty either.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 01:00 AMWhy is it so hard for those who are British on this site to admit that the nation the produced Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Wilburforce, Orwell and even perhaps Churchill should not have been facilitating people like Lennie Murphy
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 01:03 AMImight add in the sadistic Butchering of her own citizens. Again Flash more Bomber Harris than Thomas Harris as morally thin as that distinction might be to the victims and their families.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 01:07 AMLatcheeco, a gang of sadistic thugs who take advantage of societal breakdown to indulge in their psycopathic fantasies does not have any wider ramification for the British nation, Unionists or Protestants.
Many of the Butchers’ victims were protestants, they didn’t give a fuck, they just loved killing. Their counterparts can be found today among the Yardies in the shanties of Kingstown, Jamaica, the drugs gangs of Juarez, Mexico or Medellin, Colombia, they existed in 1920’s Chicago and in the East End of London and Glasgow in Victorian times.
If you want to indict the entire British people for the savagery of this gang of cut throats then would you also blame the Irish because of the horrific racist and sectarian violence of the gangs of New York in the nineteenth century?
Like I say the Butchers were appalling but there is no generalised political lesson to be drawn from the behaviour of a gang of vicious psychopaths.
Systematically and cold bloodedly planning the murder of your next door neighbour’s family because you disagree with their politics, now that’s a different matter.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 01:40 AMSystematically and cold bloodedly planning the murder of your next door neighbour’s family because you disagree with their politics, now that’s a different matter.
Posted by Harry Flashman on Mar 15, 2008 @ 01:40 AM
and having the seeming tacit aproval of the RUC puts it beyond even le mon and before you throw le mon around remember Dublin and Monahan
or are innocent Taigs less valuable than dog lovers
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 02:03 AMFlash its an indictment of the nation if successive govts. of the foresaid nation had its hands in the pie.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 02:14 AMSome of you ‘whataboutery’ merchants should hang your heads in shame - you embarrass me for trying to pay tribute to one man’s courage.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 02:25 AMGonzo and when you used the guys death as a post it didn’t strike that it might lead to em?.....
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 02:34 AMAh, well that’s all right then. I was asking for it really. Like Gerry, I suppose. We shoulda known better.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 03:59 AMWhat remote shred of evidence do you have that the British state were involved in the Butchers’ activities?
Murphy had been previously jailed by the police, his gang operated in the lawless mayhem that prevailed in parts of Belfast in the mid-1970’s, they did so for a couple of years. Despite these circumstances the overwhelmed, undermanned, discredited and demoralised RUC were still able to scoop the entire gang and they were sent down for the longest prison sentences ever handed down by a British court. Hardly much evidence of state collusion there.
When their ringleader got out his own people set him up for execution by the IRA so loathed was he.
Might I remind you that although the Butcher gang was jailed the gangs behind Bloody Friday and La Mons were never imprisoned, this despite the fact that the dogs in the street knew who carried out those attacks, or perhaps you believe the British state colluded in those murders too?
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 04:01 AMGonzo,
I don’t get the analogy between you and the poor man who’s death you dragged up knowing it was going to be contentious and raw and then did Pontius Pilate. Can you explain it? No matter how well intentioned you were what did you think was going to happen on Slugger? Where have you been living, Mars? Jesus right from the first post.Flash
Elements in a government using raw terror conducted by a community loyal to them to intimidate a community from which insurgents against that govt. come? No way, not possible. Why would they?Who could even think of it? It would be as bad as shooting protestors and lawyers or planting bombs in a neighbouring state and we know they’d never do that either. Are you talking about the same police who had no clue their army was running Nelson?And of course they were the only govt. agency operating weren’t they.As I said before Flash I never suggested all the keystones were at fault or endorsed Mr. X.Not so much set up by his own people and loathed(judging by the insertions in the Tele) as by one person who liked cash.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 04:55 AMA lot of things thrown up there, some connected some not, some relevant some not but you still cannot provide one single solitary shred of evidence that the British government or their agents were involved with the Shankill Butchers. Do the decent thing and retract your racist assertion that the British people should be held collectively responsible for the activities of one gang of sadistic thugs.
As for your other assertion that Republicans who planted bombs coolly and casually in the full knowledge that innocent civilians would be immolated or ripped to shreds were somehow morally superior to a bunch of psychopaths, well I’m afraid I don’t inhabit that parallel universe.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 05:04 AMFlash,
Are you suggesting that when allied forces blow up an Iraqi wedding they are in the same boat as Lennie Murphy? I didn’t just single out republicans as you assumed.Nobodies hands are clean. But there is a difference when you actually enjoy it and do it for kicks and giggles.
If you give me evidence of any other team deliberately skinning people alive or removing eyes with tongs i’ll stand corrected.Sorry mucker I wholeheartedly believe the English people and their government bear primary responsibility for what happened in Ireland including the Shankill Butchers and if that hurts their feelings oh well.
Apologies :) What was it that you didn’t think was relevant or connected and i’ll try to explain my thinking?You think these boys were an aborration but comparable to the RA. I think they were a tool used by elements in the state.Does that mean Big Sam knew he was a tool? Not necessarily
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 05:29 AMlatcheeco
I guess the analogy is about opening the door in good faith and being confronted by unwanted sectarianism.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 06:10 AMPicador,
What gives you that impression, from what I read the RUC were quite keen to catch the SCUM.
Cheers
Rob
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 06:56 AMBG, sadly it seems that almost every thread on this site degrades into sectarian warfare. Latcheeco, implying that anyone who comments here thinks that Murphy is a hero is just low, loyalists very rarely post here and to include anyone who happens to be against IRA violence as much as UVF violence amongst the likes of Murphy is wrong.
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 07:00 AMAll,
The thing that annoys me most.
1. Trolls from the good old US of A
2. Americans being Glass Eyed by people who think they are Irish.
3. The shit that Irish Republicans spout to gulable people then those same gullable people regurgitate what they think they know....Its embarrassing for those involved.Cheers
Glenn
Posted by on Mar 15, 2008 @ 07:33 AM
