“It was, and is, a dead end.”

Mick’s collection of quotes at Brassneck should provide food for thought for some. While Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams is placing the “onus on the British government and the PSNI to resist any temptation or any demands for a return to the bad practices of the past”, WorldbyStorm has a select choice of what has been said in the Irish Seanad. Meanwhile Gardaí are reported to be increasing policing along the border and “intensifying intelligence-gathering operations against known and suspect dissidents”. Then there’s Sinn Féin Councillor Killian Forde’s suggestion, after claiming the murder of Police Constable Stephen Carrol was “quite different from the killing of the British soldiers”, that “They [the British Government] also need to remove all British army personnel, including those garrisoned in the six counties, back to Britain.” Hmm.. Speaking of legacy issues for Sinn Féin, as I had been in this previous post, Deaglán De Breaduin’s comment that “We may well be in for a re-run of the IRA campaign of the 1950s..” is notable because we already know what Gerry Adams thinks has said of that particular episode – “They kept faith with the republican past and they ensured the future of our struggle..”Worth another link to yesterday’s Irish Times editorial

Above all, though, there is the challenge of ridding Irish culture of the last vestiges of the sneaking regard for their crude ideology and the murderous methods that flow from it. A part of the price that has been paid for the peace process, and for bringing paramilitary killers in from the cold, has been a reluctance to challenge too strongly the notion that violence was ultimately vindicated. We must acknowledge that paramilitarism achieved nothing for the Irish people over 30 years except blood and tears. It was, and is, a dead end. Those who would revive it must be treated by everyone, of every political persuasion, for what they are: the enemies of democracy, decency and Ireland.

As I said, legacy issues..

Pete Baker