Party of Impostors

By AM Monday, May 26, 2014

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Guest writer Mark Gallagher with a piece on the difficulties he feels arises from comparisons between the politics of Scotland and Ireland.

• 'English politics is the art of the totally weird' – John Coulter

And politics in Ireland are not weird? As a Scot with Irish ancestry it always makes me sit up when I see comparisons made between Scottish and Irish politics. A relative of mine recently did this for a blog he writes for the (English) Telegraph and it shocked me that he thought Adams, McGuinness and Sinn Fein could serve as a kind of moderating influence for Salmond and the SNP.

My relative was a Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and was author of some fine studies of sectarianism in Scotland over 20 years ago. I don't know how much attention he has paid to the politics of the North of Ireland of late - he has dedicated much of his writing to the Scottish independence debate over the last few years - but he seems to have completely missed the hate campaign against the participants of the Belfast project which Sinn Fein members and supporters have been engaged in when he penned this piece:

In the comments section below the piece he said:

The article was emphasising the CONTRASTS between Sinn Fein and the SNP.

It might even be for the good if SF exercised some influence over the SNP because I suspect it would be of a moderating kind'

I like to think that he would not have made such a comment had he known about the Sinn Fein campaign of intimidation that was underway at the time.

It has been weird to see how the Shinners have conducted their hate campaign in broad daylight and most of the press and the broader media have had nothing to say about it.

How a party of government in a democratic system can get away with this concerted effort to intimidate beggars belief.

But having been accustomed to the weirdness of the politics of Ireland for some time now it does not surprise me so much as make me despair at the supine media in Ireland and the UK for having failed to report what these contemptible people in Sinn Fein have been doing. Sinn Fein uses threat as leverage. And the commentariat across this part of the world in the UK and Ireland have pandered to this mob. You can't have truth and justice, as well as peace, they say. Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian that 'to pursue Adams now for whatever role he played in that past horror is to jeopardise the current tranquillity'. As long as the media continue to pander to the Sinn Fein invocation of a threat to the peace process, Sinn Fein will be able to continue its campaign of intimidation against those who tell inconvenient truths. They should not be allowed to dictate what people can and can't say.

I take my hat off to the likes of Suzanne Breen, Brendan O'Neill and Henry McDonald for shining some light into the Sinn Fein darkness. There should have been much more probing of the Sinn Fein reaction to Adams' arrest and the intimidation campaign against Belfast project participants by Sinn Fein members and supporters.

Whatever we think about the motivations and machinations of PSNI, British government, army and intelligence, we must not let the Sinn Fein liars and lickspittles perpetuate their myths and perpetrate these acts of intimidation unchecked and unreported.

I continue to be puzzled by the weirdness of politics in general, not just the politics of England, Ireland or Scotland. One thing I firmly believe is that the spirit of independent thought, truth-telling and fearless speech is too important for us to just stand by and watch it suppressed, rubbished and trampled on by this party of impostors.