Anthony McIntyre considers a UK Supreme Court verdict delivered yesterday in London.

Wednesday morning saw the UK Supreme Court quash convictions dating back to the 1970s in the case of the former Provisional IRA Chief of Staff, Gerry Adams. The convictions in question arose out of two escape attempts Mr Adams was involved in while held in Long Kesh without trial.

Prior to his arrest in the summer of 1973 Adams was the senior element in a triumvirate of IRA figures in Belfast responsible for prosecuting the war against the British, even taking it to the heart of London. Such was the determination of the IRA to have its three key figures in the Northern Capital continue to run the war in the city that successful escapes were pulled off for the other two, although they would later be recaptured in separate British security operations in the Malone Road area of Belfast. The IRA did not lay on escapes for peaceniks.

None of that however was the purview of the Supreme Court. Restricting itself to matters of law, it ruled that because Adams had not been lawfully held, he had not therefore escaped from lawful custody. There was never a question that he tried to escape, just the lawfulness of what it was he was seeking to escape from. The custody was unlawful, and the sequitur is that the escape attempts were lawful.

Because Adams is an eternal flame to perennial unionist touch paper, that type of reasoning infuriates political unionism. Before the head had time to settle on the verdict, its dark stuff was being gulped down by an assembly of the outraged, venting their displeasure at what left a bad taste in their mouths. For them the ruling is tantamount to Sawney Bean being found not guilty of unlawfully eating people after he offered a defence that he only ever lawfully dined on them. Even some liberal unionists are up in arms about it. Chronically incapable of conceding that the state they cherished so routinely behaved with malign intent, they would rather stick to what they are comfortable with: making the case that Adams has literally got away with murder and continues to have some functionary push him around in a wheelchair. There is a grave reluctance by unionism of all hues to acknowledge the scope of systemic injustice practiced on the nationalist community by the British state.

Whatever people might think, the outcome should be roundly welcomed. The issue is much wider than Adams. Flowing from the judgement is a damning indictment of the British state for having flouted due process routinely right across the board. The unlawful flouting of that process is not some fanciful notion rooted in the mists of republican theology but has its founds in British jurisprudence.

For his part Adams might well wonder on what ethical grounds a government led by a man widely believed to have been a raging paedophile and child rapist could claim the right to unlawfully deprive him of his liberty. He is however is unlikely to be interested in the justness of the verdict, justice being something that as often as not can be an impediment to the political career aspirations of a martial politician. The Supreme Court ruling will be a convenient sanitiser with which to disinfect and deodorise the odour of decomposition that has clung to the Adams brand, in anticipation of a power grab at the 2025 Irish presidential election. The fiction will be pushed that he neither directed nor was a practitioner of the political violence of the IRA – that was carried out by people who were convicted for it, people like Bobby Sands and Joe McDonnell. He has no convictions.

Ultimately, in spite of the brouhaha, the difference between this morning and yesterday morning is that today Adams is a former IRA leader who escaped from unlawful custody. Yesterday he was a former IRA leader who escaped from lawful custody. That is a simple historical fact which nothing is ever going to change.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Lawfully Escaping From Unlawful Custody

Anthony McIntyre considers a UK Supreme Court verdict delivered yesterday in London.

Wednesday morning saw the UK Supreme Court quash convictions dating back to the 1970s in the case of the former Provisional IRA Chief of Staff, Gerry Adams. The convictions in question arose out of two escape attempts Mr Adams was involved in while held in Long Kesh without trial.

Prior to his arrest in the summer of 1973 Adams was the senior element in a triumvirate of IRA figures in Belfast responsible for prosecuting the war against the British, even taking it to the heart of London. Such was the determination of the IRA to have its three key figures in the Northern Capital continue to run the war in the city that successful escapes were pulled off for the other two, although they would later be recaptured in separate British security operations in the Malone Road area of Belfast. The IRA did not lay on escapes for peaceniks.

None of that however was the purview of the Supreme Court. Restricting itself to matters of law, it ruled that because Adams had not been lawfully held, he had not therefore escaped from lawful custody. There was never a question that he tried to escape, just the lawfulness of what it was he was seeking to escape from. The custody was unlawful, and the sequitur is that the escape attempts were lawful.

Because Adams is an eternal flame to perennial unionist touch paper, that type of reasoning infuriates political unionism. Before the head had time to settle on the verdict, its dark stuff was being gulped down by an assembly of the outraged, venting their displeasure at what left a bad taste in their mouths. For them the ruling is tantamount to Sawney Bean being found not guilty of unlawfully eating people after he offered a defence that he only ever lawfully dined on them. Even some liberal unionists are up in arms about it. Chronically incapable of conceding that the state they cherished so routinely behaved with malign intent, they would rather stick to what they are comfortable with: making the case that Adams has literally got away with murder and continues to have some functionary push him around in a wheelchair. There is a grave reluctance by unionism of all hues to acknowledge the scope of systemic injustice practiced on the nationalist community by the British state.

Whatever people might think, the outcome should be roundly welcomed. The issue is much wider than Adams. Flowing from the judgement is a damning indictment of the British state for having flouted due process routinely right across the board. The unlawful flouting of that process is not some fanciful notion rooted in the mists of republican theology but has its founds in British jurisprudence.

For his part Adams might well wonder on what ethical grounds a government led by a man widely believed to have been a raging paedophile and child rapist could claim the right to unlawfully deprive him of his liberty. He is however is unlikely to be interested in the justness of the verdict, justice being something that as often as not can be an impediment to the political career aspirations of a martial politician. The Supreme Court ruling will be a convenient sanitiser with which to disinfect and deodorise the odour of decomposition that has clung to the Adams brand, in anticipation of a power grab at the 2025 Irish presidential election. The fiction will be pushed that he neither directed nor was a practitioner of the political violence of the IRA – that was carried out by people who were convicted for it, people like Bobby Sands and Joe McDonnell. He has no convictions.

Ultimately, in spite of the brouhaha, the difference between this morning and yesterday morning is that today Adams is a former IRA leader who escaped from unlawful custody. Yesterday he was a former IRA leader who escaped from lawful custody. That is a simple historical fact which nothing is ever going to change.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

36 comments:

  1. Many times does Mr Adams have to say it? He wasn't in the 'R.A. Some people, can't just take a man's word these days

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  2. Spot on, Anthony.

    Hopefully everyone who was unlawfully detained in that period will also have tneir day in court.

    I was not able to read the Telegraph article on Edward Heath as it was behind a paywall but I am personally sceptical of reports that he was a paedophile and child abuser; to my knowledge he was asexual.

    Anyway that is an aside. It is only a pity that the courts did not strike down internment as illegal at the time.

    Over at the Broken Elbow, Ed Moloney raises the issue of whether Gerry Adams is now eligible to belong to the Irish Republican Felons Club. Any thoughts?

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  3. "For his part Adams might well wonder on what ethical grounds a government led by a man widely believed to have been a raging paedophile and child rapist could claim the right to unlawfully deprive him of his liberty"

    The same government who are the bosses of the police who are now investigating Heath's activites?

    But Adams is just recieving his dues, a clean slate before a tilt at the Presidency. He's even allowing his flowing winter plumaging to be coiffed in readiness!

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  4. 'Even some liberal unionists are up in arms about it' and I am one of those very liberal unionists of which you speak. I have no problem with Adams getting justice, internment, like Bloody Sunday, was wrong, simple. He also needs rewarded for delivering the GFA, nobody else on the planet could have achieved such a complete surrender of arms and principles. So it would be churlish to refuse his request for justice from the supreme court. But what sticks in the craw is that a man who goes on and on about justice and human rights denies those to his victims. The day before the court case on my Twitter feed appeared the reminder of a sectarian murder carried out by the Provos in Rosslea. The man was a shopkeeper called Doug Deering. One of the team (according to 'sources') was a young provo recently eulogised by Adams and also on this very blog, after the SAS caught up with him. This young man was a sectarian murderer armed, inspired and enabled by Adams and his A/C, but Adams is not sorry or contrite or remorseful over Deering's murder, instead he continues to laud his killer, while demanding rights and justice for himself. As I said, it sticks in the craw.

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  5. Thanks everybody for the comments.

    Peter - but you are not one of those liberal unionists who are annoyed because Adams got the proper result. You are annoyed for other reasons but so are we all. Him and Morrison set up six hunger strikers for certain death to suit their own agenda so how do you think we feel? I believe the point was made in the article that he is not in the slightest interested in justice - merely seeing the outcome as propitious to his political career.
    I don't know the case you are talking about but doubt very much we are talking about a sectarian murderer i.e. someone lacking any political motive and who attacked a man solely for his religion.

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  6. AM
    We'll have to agree to disagree. He was shot dead to put fear into the isolated protestant community, part of the wider border strategy and so was completely sectarian i.e. 'carried out on the grounds of membership of a sect, denomination or other group' OED. An evil act of taking an innocent man's life. Why do republican's try to defend these killings and still eulogise the killers? Gerry was as guilty as Seamus but is not one bit interested in justice.

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  7. What wider border strategy? We are not back to the myth of ethnic cleansing again? Existed only in the PR of unionism. The strategy in the border area was to kill members of security forces. Often they messed up, killed people long gone, got the wrong target but that was it. Don't mistake incompetence and a bad targeting policy as strategy. The concerted period of outright sectarianism was 74-76 when events like the Kingsmill war crime took place. And at the back of it all we are forced to wonder about the role of agent handlers and their input into IRA killings. Republicans will always remember their dead. The British wear poppies to remember the war criminals as well as the fighters. There is not much to be surprised at.

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  8. Anthony

    Henry MacDonald has written (cannot remember the title of the book but it was written in 2007-08) that the Northern Commander of PIRA pushed the strategy of killing off-duty and ex-members of the RUC, RUC reserve and UDR in border areas like Fermanagh in order to make any power sharing deal between the SDLP and Ulster Unionists impossible. The desire to grab land may also have been a motive in these killings.

    The journalist Darach MacDonald in his book about the "blood and thunder" Orange bands in Castlederg where up to 30 local security force members were killed has also some sympathy with the view that this was a form of low-level ethnic cleansing.

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  9. Barry - That would have been Gunsmoke And Mirrors. I found Henry's observation facile and certainly not analytical. The Army Council, not just the Northern Commander, pushed for the killing of UDR men throughout the North and not just in border areas. They were killed in Belfast also. They just happened to be more accessible in the border areas. And the deep hostility of the nationalists towards the UDR there made it much less objectionable in the eyes of the Nationalist community. This was a regiment with a reputation for applying systemic sectarian harassment against all nationalists (hence the SDLP dislike of them) and in the minds of many they were regarded as the UVF/UDA in uniform. The Miami killings of course fed into that. The RUC were actually more acceptable to nationalists than the UDR. Kevin Toolis in his book Rebel Hearts made the claim about the conflict driven by localisms such as land grab. Anybody that understood the IRA (and Toolis in mhy view never did) viewed this as nonsense. Where it existed (and nothing is pure - there is always the rreason and then there is the real reason) it was not at the strategic level. 30 local security force members - they were fair game in the IRA view. Ethnic cleansing and intimidation of the unionist community would have been more easily achieved by an outright sectariankilling campaign - for example killing every member of an Orange lodge. I often spoke to border people in the prison about wanton strategically useless (not useful) killings such as Ronnie Funston. The best excuse they could muster (most would simply say a mistake) was that as ex UDR they would gather intelligence as postmen or whatever. Nobody ever said anything about a strategy. Admittedly my focus at the time was on the strategic rather than the ehtical and my probing was shaped by a view that it was counterproductive to kill ex-UDR as it would work against enticing people to leave the regiment if the risks were no different for serving or ex. In all my days of talking to IRA people (and I have talked to quite a few) it was never mentioned. You would imagine if it was a strategy somebody would know. The IRA fought a war

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  10. AM
    So murders like Deering and the dozens of others was just 'incompetence' or 'bad targeting'? They were sectarian murders designed to intimidate a community just like C Coy in the New Lodge, no different.

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  11. Peter - where is the evidence?

    What did C Coy do in the New Lodge that was no different?

    Reiteration is not persuasive but sounds hollow and without substance.

    There were countless acts of bad targeting. Demonstrate to us not your prejudices but your causal links.

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  12. Anthony, Peter.........barry.

    Anthony, putting aside Adams..Does the ruling mean anyone who was interned and who wasn't a paramilitary, are they in for a big pay check for wrongful imprisonment etc...?


    Peter, the ethnic cleansing myth is bollicks and your argument like this rock is flat. All you or anyone has to do is look at election results along the border and you will find they haven't changed much, if at all since 1969..


    Barry..Ted heath was a child rapist. You have no qualms believing and accepting it happens next door (Dr Sarah Goode) but think politicians aren't as evil and sick? Lets not forget one of your poster girls (Hillary Clinton and her fav. henchman Podesta) have covered up for elite sex abusers....Google Acron scandal, Laura Silsby...Anthony Weiner to name a few.

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  13. These debates always have the same theme, establishment violence imperative to law and order, reaction to said violence the actions of thugs and psychos. It's tiring.

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  14. Frankie - I imagine it would if the order was not signed by the SOS of the day. Membership of a "paramilitary" body wouldn't be a determining factor as none of them were convicted. Adams was a leader in the IRA and it had no outcome on his acquittal.

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  15. I have read Prof. Henry Paterson's book 'Ireland's Violent Frontier' in which the accusation of ethnic cleansing is favourably analysed. It seems that nearly all the Professor's examples were members of the security forces. For ethnic cleansing to have taken place it has to be down to ethnic, religious or other factor but the crucial thing about that factor is that it must be something over which you have no control.

    Did the IRA target security force members purely to disguise the fact they wanted to kill innocent Protestants? Why target Catholic members of the security forces if that was the case?

    The IRA killed Catholics in the security forces. They also targeted some innocent Protestants outside border areas. I think the former negates the charge that those in uniform who were killed were killed purely for their religion. The latter point negates the charge that the border was somehow treated differently because of location. But you need a specific area for the ethnic cleansing charge and this is the final part on where the argument falls.

    The murder of non-combatant Protestants purely because they were Protestants undoubtedly took place. It was naked sectarianism and abhorrently wrong in every sense of the word but it was no where near as sustained or on a sufficient scale or as proportionate of total victims as to warrant the charge of "ethnic cleansing".

    The murder of innocent non-combatant Protestants was a hugely significant problem, there were atrocities and they should not be trivialised in any sense, but describing the situation as ethnic cleansing in turn trivialises actual ethnic cleansing.

    There were undoubtedly war crimes/crimes against humanity but ethnic cleansing? On the face of it it sounds like a decent argument to attack Republicans with but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

    Why not stick to the facts? There are plenty of valid arguments to attack Republicanism with: Kingsmills, Le Mon, Bloody Friday, Enniskillen Cenotaph, etc. Torture of suspected informers, infiltration, Knee-capping, Treatment of abuse victims, etc. Why bring baseless arguments into the equation it just undermines other valid criticism.

    The border areas were much more likely to see recruits to the UDR than anywhere else. This is a significant factor when considering the status of victims of Republican violence in the border areas and explains to some degree the focus on UDR members in those areas. It doesn't justify the killings but it helps explain the emptiness of the ethnic cleansing charge.

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    1. Simon - I find the second Henry no more convincing on this matter than I do the first. I know and like both men well but am in fundamental disagreement with them on these matters. I think what prompts a revival of these wide of the mark descriptions is a sense that unionism is losing the argument in terms of what happened in the past. It is not that the IRA is being sanitised but that the state was a much more malign player than unionism has ever been willing to acknowledge. Given Britain's world wide history of war crimes and atrocity against civilians you would imagine the more enlightened unionists should not find this a surprise.

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  16. By taking this through the courts doesn't Adams all but admit he was in the IRA? As you wrote the IRA doesn't jail break peaceniks

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  17. Anthony,

    You’re correct that: “… the (British) state was a much more malign player than unionism has ever been willing to acknowledge”, because they’re into it up to their eyeteeth:

    The Kingsmill massacre was a mass shooting that took place on 5 January 1976. A group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force claimed responsibility. It said the shooting was retaliation for a string of attacks on Catholic civilians in the area by Loyalists, particularly the killing of six Catholics the night before.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsmill_massacre

    The Reavey and O'Dowd killings were two co-ordinated gun attacks on 4 January 1976 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Six Irish Catholic civilians died after members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group, broke into their homes and shot them. The shootings were part of a string of attacks on Catholics and Irish nationalists by the "Glenanne gang"; an alliance of loyalist militants, British soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reavey_and_O%27Dowd_killings

    The Glenanne gang or Glenanne group was a secret informal alliance of Ulster loyalists who carried out shooting and bombing attacks against Catholics and Irish nationalists in the 1970s, during the Troubles. The gang included British soldiers from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), police officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Twenty-five British soldiers and police officers were named as purported members of the gang.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenanne_gang

    Jesus of Nazareth said it best:

    “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

    King James Version of the Bible, Epistle to the Galatians, 6:7.

    Nevertheless, not being a Christian, I do not condone war crimes...

    By anybody! And Kingsmill was a war crime.

    No more justifiable than Dresden was for Nazis bombing Coventry.

    Better to have had more actions like the Warrenpoint ambush:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrenpoint_ambush

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    1. twist it whatever way we might Eoghan but Kingsmill still comes out a war crime. You are wholly unambiguous about that. Well put

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    2. Eoghan,

      I know you are not condoning anything but it pays to be mindful of taking a source in isolation. It's an ever decreasing circle of 'whataboutry'. Literally the previous action to the O'down-Reavey murders is the following on the CAIN website.

      Wednesday 31 December 1975

      Three Protestant civilians were killed in a bomb attack, carried out the People's Republican Army (PRA), a covername used by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), on the Central Bar, Gilford, County Down.

      About 10 mile as the crow flies.

      And I once thought as Peter does but now don't believe in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, it simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Certainly there were sectarian murders though.

      Delete
    3. And does anyone else hate the tiny comment box? Makes it flipping hard to edit my responses. AM- can you make it bigger?

      Delete
  18. Steve R.,

    I take your point.

    But is it really all so much whataboutry as it is…

    Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

    Shankill Butchers 1975-1979

    The gang was notorious for kidnapping, torturing and murdering random Catholic and suspected Catholic civilians; each was beaten ferociously and had his throat hacked with a butcher's knife. Some were also tortured and attacked with a hatchet.

    The judge who oversaw the 1979 trial described their crimes as "a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shankill_Butchers


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    1. Eoghan,

      The butchers were psycopaths, worse than animals. I've often wondered were Murphy born in another part of the planet would he have been a serial killer, and I believe so.

      It is still whataboutry as each side can point to one act percieved as being against it, that happened prior. It loses meaning save in the abstract but provides a source of continuing unjustifible justification for being a cunt to the other side.

      And the love of the Natural World tells me the egg came first, it was laid by a bird that was not a chicken however!

      Delete
  19. Steve R

    The butchers were monstrous, psycopathic human beings not animals. Animals kill for food and to defend territory only. Human beings are the only species that have the capacity to kill for fun.

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    Replies
    1. Read what I said again regarding an analogy between the two.

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  20. Barry,

    Human beings are the only species that have the capacity to kill for fun.

    Did you learn anything in school..life or other? You keep coming up with misconceptions that aren't true... Vicious Animals That Kill Just for Fun
    ....Another thing, we both grew up with walls/peace lines carving up Belfast..oxymoron's as I called them. We both simply circumvented them. Why can't you apply the same logic to digital ones? I do. I'd no problem in reading the Ted Heath article about him being a cunt and child rapist..

    Another misconception you throw about..The Confederate flag, up until 1948 it wasn't seen as racist and was unfurled to commemorate the US civil war. The group who made it racist was the US Democratic party in 1948, when a few split from the party and called themselves the Dixiecrats...Wasn't rockabilly's.. Tennessee Rock & Roll

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  21. Frankie - I think it mora accurate to say humans are the only species to kill for ideas. Self evident I guess. Chimps seem to kill for fun and that is from memory of a documentary.
    I found Barry's comment odd about Heath - given how readily he accepts the case against Corbyn's lot for anti-Semitism. The cops if I remember said Heath would have been arrested for 7 different offences had he still been alive. This is evidence not intelligence led.

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  22. Anthony

    I genuinely stand corrected on Ted Heath if you can link me to that article which gives the evidence. Is it as watertight as the evidence against Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith for example What was uppoer most in my mind was the utter fiasco over the "Nick" affair did led to false accusations with Tom Watson coming out badly in the whole affait for running with it in Parliament (Jeremy Corbyn and Antisemitism is neither here nor there apart from the detailed and forensic allegations currently being considered by the EHRC)

    The point I was making about humans and animals is that it is humans that have the agency, premididation and logistical skills not just to kill but to kill, enslave and erase from memory other groups within its species.

    Frankie

    "Did you learn anything in school .. life or other"

    Did you ever learn that, for example, people do not choose to be transsexual, homosexual, neurodiverse etc? Did you ever learn not to stereotype of make assumptions about people?

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  23. And if the Confederate flag was not seen as racist until 1948, it most certainly is now because of the Dixiecrats who were a splinter group from the Democratic Party due to its increasing adoption of a black civil rights agenda. SO IT WAS NOT THE US DEMOCRATIC PARTY WNO MADE IT RACIST. Besides I can hardly imagine that Southern blacks growing up under Jim Crow would have seeen that flag as anything other than racist.

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    Replies
    1. Barry - here are some pieces on the flag issue from Pete Trumbore TPQ and
      another

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  24. Barry and the
    Daily Mail neither an anti-Tory paper.

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  25. AM

    Telegraph behind a pay wall Mail disabled by Ad-blocker that I do not know how to unblock. I get the strong evidence but would need to read both to come to my own conclusions.

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    1. Barry - it shouldn't be too hard to find some useful stuff on the web. Strange that the Telegraph is behind a pay wall as I get it without paying for it. Ad Blocker is a bollix but I can get the Mail as well. I hate hitting the Sun inadvertently as the second I realise it I close. Simple refuse to look at the rag whether online or in hard copy.

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  26. Anthony

    I am quite ok with the Confederate flag residing in a museum or at the cemeteries where the Confederate fallen are buried.

    But I do feel unease when I see it flying it from someone's house when I do my free paper delivery round on Colchester estates or on the back of a pick-up truck on thde A12. Is there really an American Civil War connection there?

    I was interested in your discussions with Peter on the 2018 Confederacy thread as to allowing swastikas on the graves of German soldiers who fell in World War II. Since the display of Nazi symbols in Germany is illegal I guess that would never happen.

    I could accept Wehrmacht conscripts being honoured in this way, never members of the Waffen SS.

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    1. Barry - Nazi troops are not just buried in Germany.
      Colchester Confederate flags are a bit like Shankill Israeli ones. They are used for a different and very particular purpose.
      Pete's view was more nuanced than is the norm and allows us to dig beneath the rhetoric.
      Many Wehrmacht were war criminals and many Waffen SS were not. When Jochem Pieper was tried for war crimes it was officers from the Allies who spoke up on his behalf.
      The Waffen SS was frequently a brutal military force but often the real devils were the ordinary men of Police Battalion 101: The tinkers and tailors from Hamburg.

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