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Biffo ✏ writing in Red Bull observes that it appears many senior political Freestaters have a favourite version of the IRA.
21-June-2023
The favoured Freestate version would appear to be the original Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), known as the “old IRA“? They were formed in 1917 from members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army. The anti-treaty old IRA from the 1920’s killed many of their former comrades in cold blood and even assassinated Fine Gael’s current poster boy, General Michael Collins. June 28th, 1922 to May 24th, 1923 was a historically traumatic revolutionary period, involving the deaths of an estimated 1,600 people. The Civil War followed the War of Independence and was fought between the Irish provisional government who supported the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty, and the anti-treaty IRA.
Original ticket for the November 21, 1920 ‘Great Challenge Match’ between Dublin and Tipperary
at Croke Park. Fourteen innocent people were mown down indiscriminately by British Crown forces.
Members of the old IRA engaged in a rather ugly violence against their auld British enemy during the war of independence. Former IRA comrades, on both sides of the civil war, went up close and personal in vicious combat. There was very little “gallantry” in the type of face to face combat the IRA engaged in. Nowaday’s, old IRA violence has been historically sanitised and has become societaly acceptable. In truth, the old IRA assassinated many people who were unarmed and defenceless and they did it with a cold blooded brutality. They engaged in guerrilla war which involved ambushes, murderous reprisals and vicious assassinations. Michael Collins’ Squad’s infamous purge of Dublin Metropolitan Police G Division detectives and British Army intelligence officers was a notoriously violent period of revolutionary mayhem. Early 1900’s Irish revolutionary IRA violence is deemed, by the Freestate, to be an acceptable type of violent insurrection for state commemorations.

Members of the IRA special service unit known as The Squad, or the 12 Apostles, established as a counter-intelligence and assassination gang in 1920. Depicts Gearoid O’Sullivan, Adjutant General, IRA, and members of GHQ Squad and Intelligence Department.
In the past, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin willingly attended ceremonies commemorating fallen IRA volunteers. Both anti-revolutionary political leaders stood in solemn remembrance alongside descendants of those who killed and were killed during the Irish Civil War. IRA volunteers who fought and died in pursuit of a united Ireland were included in Civil War commemorations. Some of the most henious acts in the history of this island were perpetrated during the War of Independence and the Civil War by those IRA volunteers who were being commemorated by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.

Worth a read
Annually, the Irish establishment pulls out all the stops to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising period of revolution. What very few people realise, far more uninvolved civilians – about 280 – were killed in the supposedly “honourable” five days of street fighting in Dublin than in any single act of political violence in 1920. Commemorating honourable revolutionaries, who caused the deaths of innocent people, as well as commemorating the sheer brutality of all sides in the civil war is deemed acceptable by Irish government leaders.


“For me … if I had the privilege of leading government I would be a taoiseach for everybody and I would act in a way to foster respect, reconciliation and understanding and never in a partisan way to give offence to anyone. If I were taoiseach there’s a set pattern of what the taoiseach attends and does not attend.”

In a recent revelation to the media, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald declared that when she becomes Taoiseach she will likely refuse to attend Provisional IRA commemorations. Many republicans will view this announcement as a step too far in the party’s ongoing assimilation project. The attempt to move the party further toward mainstream acceptance of SF as a party fit to govern. Wavering SF supporters, many who struggled with the party’s attendance at a British Queens funeral and more recently at the state coronation of a foreign King, will find it difficult to accept the notion of a Freestate heirachy of good and bad when it comes to fallen IRA volunteers.


It should be remembered, the PIRA came about in armed defence of Catholic communities in December 1969. It followed an acrimonious split between republicans into the two factions known as the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. Catholics were being treated as second class citizens by a unionist sectarian state. However, the powers that be in the southern jurisdiction did very little to protect those hard put upon Catholic communities. In fact, consecutive Freestate governments consciously turned their backs to the desperate plight of an under siege Catholic population in the wee six. The struggle for a free and independent 32 county Ireland was not on their agenda in any way shape form or fashion. The North was the gimpy awkward relative no one in the wider Freestate political family wanted to talk about. Many in the Freestate adopted the ostrich theory of political involvement and would have been delighted if the North had simply disappeared altogether. The SF President in saying what she did has offended many republicans. Do their opinions not matter anymore in her island of equals and respect? Where is the potential future head of state’s respect for republican victims of British shoot to kill violence and state murder perpetrated throughout the north since 1969?


We declare our allegiance to the 32 county Irish republic, proclaimed at Easter 1916, established by the first Dáil Éireann in 1919, overthrown by force of arms in 1922 and suppressed to this day by the existing British-imposed six-county and twenty-six-county partition states … We call on the Irish people at home and in exile for increased support towards defending our people in the North and the eventual achievement of the full political, social, economic and cultural freedom of Ireland - The first PIRA statement issued on 28th December 1969.


Many media outlets have correctly interpreted McDonald’s words as a political signal to the establishment. She would be inclined not to attend PIRA memorial events if and when she becomes Taoiseach of Ireland. This declaration made by the SF President comes amid the fallout of Sinn Fein MP John Finucane’s decision to speak at a “south Armagh volunteers commemoration” . In the past, in his role as Belfast Mayor, Finucane laid a commemorative wreath to honour those who died in the WW2 battle of the Somme in 1916. It was a gesture which received little, if any, reciprocation from unionism. Yet Finucane was lambasted for weeks leading up to the ‘South Armagh volunteers commemoration’ in Mullaghbawn by both unionism and the media for attending a commemorative event honoring fallen PIRA volunteers. It was an event which Mary Lou McDonald will refuse to attend when she becomes crowned Taoiseach of conservative middle class Ireland.


Top picture shows Belfast Sinn Fein mayor John Finucane who joined with the British Legion to pay tribute to the fallen as the city marked the Armistice. Bottom picture is John Finucane speaking at an IRA commemoration in south Armagh.
When SF leaders respectfully commemorate British war casualties at cenotaph’s they are attending a commemoration of British state terrorism. When SF leaders deign to attend a Kings coronation they acknowledge the right of empire to exist and to commemorate its inglorious past. The British Empire, with its savage colonial history, has seen many millions brutalised and murdered under the leadership of the British Crown. Hypothetically, if Taoiseach Mary Lou McDonald, at some stage in the future, refused to attend a South Armagh commemoration but turned up instead to lay a wreath for dead British soldiers at a cenotaph, it will inevitably further test the patience of many of those republicans once loyal to the SF political power project.

A moral superiority exists when it comes to remembering the actions of the old IRA in comparison to the PIRA. The narrative favoured by the Freestate is that the old IRA fought a just and good war. However, their narrative further suggests the Provos were cold-blooded murderers who slaughtered innocents. The leadership of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (both parties emanated post civil war from anti-treaty and pro-treaty IRA volunteers) are always going to justify the savagery and blood spilt in the development of their own parties history. However, they would seek to deny that very same opportunity to those commemorating post 1969 PIRA fallen volunteers. The pronouncement by the SF President regarding not attending future PIRA commemorations will be a bitter pill for many Irish republicans. Mary Lou McDonald’s announcement provides further succour to the Freestate premise that the violence of the revolutionary period and the civil war was somehow lesser than the violence on the streets of Strabane, Derry and Belfast throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

The blatant Freestate airbrushing of history conveniently ignores the overt hostility initially faced by 1916 revolutionaries. Many Irish citizens in Dublin shouted abuse and spat on the revolutionaries as they were paraded past them in defeat. Had James Connolly and Padraig Pearse not been executed, would the Easter Rising be seen today as an honourable revolutionary strike against the empire for freedom and independence? Or might it be seen today as a grubby, armed and largely unsupported insurrection which killed almost 300 innocent civilians? One man’s freedom fighter and all that palaver!

November 1920
When assessing the differences, if any, between the old IRA and the PIRA there are many variables to consider, including historical context and legitimacy of violent insurrection. In November 1920, 14 suspected British Intelligence officers were executed by the old IRA, with 9 reported to be wearing their pajamas and unarmed at the time. These assassinations were followed by the indiscriminate shooting of civilians attending a football match at Croke Park where a further 14 died at the hands of crown forces. During a 48-hour period 38 people would be violently killed and a further 79 wounded. Many were non-combatants and the innocent dead and injured included women and children. It was savagery beyond comprehension. Speaking after the events Michael Collins said of the 14 killed by his squad, “By their destruction the very air is made sweeter.”

Any discussion linked to rights and wrongs of the Freestate revolutionary period and the post ‘69 revolutionary period is subject to a verbal defensive game of whataboutery. War is a dirty business. Whether it’s a bloody war which achieved partial sovereignty and ongoing partition, or a bloody war seeking to achieve full sovereignty and an end to partition, war is never conducted in an honourable fashion by sworn enemies. A Taoiseach for everyone should mean a Taoiseach prepared to stand in commemoration with both old IRA and PIRA fallen volunteers. There should be no place on this island for a heirachy of commemoration. A Taoiseach should be open to attending all respectful commemorations or none.

Former RUC Chief Constable and current Garda Commissioner Drew Harris attending a memorial of Michael Staines who was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and on its Supreme Council from 1921 to 1922. He served as Quartermaster General in the GPO during the 1916 Easter Rising and was later interned with his fellow insurgents at Frongoch internment camp. Staine’s served as the first Garda Commissioner before fascist Fine Gael’s Eoin O’Duffy took over in September 1922.
Lest anyone should misunderstand auld Biffo’s intentions in penning this blog article, let me make a few things clear. I am anti-war. I am anti-violence. I did not nor do I condone the violence of 1916 to 1923 or the violence of the 1970’s onwards. However, I fully understand when faced with a despotic empire in the 1900’s and being under the jackboot of a sectarian statelet in the 1970’s, many people felt they had no choice other than to fight back. 

This blog article was penned because of the apparent willingness of a SF President to commemoratively abandon those who sacrificed everything in the name of the IRA from the 1970’s onwards in order to attain power in the Freestate. 

This blog was also penned because of the insatiable SF desire to be finally accepted within a Freestate which openly commemorates those from the early 1900’s who also killed in the name of the IRA. There is no good or bad IRA when it comes to commemorations. The absence of respect and reconciliation will hurt deep, if and when a future SF Taoiseach refuses to attend a commemoration of PIRA hunger striker’s like Bobby Sands and so many other patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice. 

Finally, I often wonder if those fallen patriots, taken by war from 1916 onwards on this island, would be comfortable, or even be in agreement, with many of those mainstream politicians who regularly attend republican commemorations.

28 July 2005 – the Provisional IRA announced its members had “been ordered to dump arms.”

🖼 Biffo is a life long trade unionist & workers advocate.

Do You Have A Favourite Version Of The IRA?

Biffo ✏ writing in Red Bull observes that it appears many senior political Freestaters have a favourite version of the IRA.
21-June-2023
The favoured Freestate version would appear to be the original Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), known as the “old IRA“? They were formed in 1917 from members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army. The anti-treaty old IRA from the 1920’s killed many of their former comrades in cold blood and even assassinated Fine Gael’s current poster boy, General Michael Collins. June 28th, 1922 to May 24th, 1923 was a historically traumatic revolutionary period, involving the deaths of an estimated 1,600 people. The Civil War followed the War of Independence and was fought between the Irish provisional government who supported the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty, and the anti-treaty IRA.
Original ticket for the November 21, 1920 ‘Great Challenge Match’ between Dublin and Tipperary
at Croke Park. Fourteen innocent people were mown down indiscriminately by British Crown forces.
Members of the old IRA engaged in a rather ugly violence against their auld British enemy during the war of independence. Former IRA comrades, on both sides of the civil war, went up close and personal in vicious combat. There was very little “gallantry” in the type of face to face combat the IRA engaged in. Nowaday’s, old IRA violence has been historically sanitised and has become societaly acceptable. In truth, the old IRA assassinated many people who were unarmed and defenceless and they did it with a cold blooded brutality. They engaged in guerrilla war which involved ambushes, murderous reprisals and vicious assassinations. Michael Collins’ Squad’s infamous purge of Dublin Metropolitan Police G Division detectives and British Army intelligence officers was a notoriously violent period of revolutionary mayhem. Early 1900’s Irish revolutionary IRA violence is deemed, by the Freestate, to be an acceptable type of violent insurrection for state commemorations.

Members of the IRA special service unit known as The Squad, or the 12 Apostles, established as a counter-intelligence and assassination gang in 1920. Depicts Gearoid O’Sullivan, Adjutant General, IRA, and members of GHQ Squad and Intelligence Department.
In the past, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin willingly attended ceremonies commemorating fallen IRA volunteers. Both anti-revolutionary political leaders stood in solemn remembrance alongside descendants of those who killed and were killed during the Irish Civil War. IRA volunteers who fought and died in pursuit of a united Ireland were included in Civil War commemorations. Some of the most henious acts in the history of this island were perpetrated during the War of Independence and the Civil War by those IRA volunteers who were being commemorated by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.

Worth a read
Annually, the Irish establishment pulls out all the stops to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising period of revolution. What very few people realise, far more uninvolved civilians – about 280 – were killed in the supposedly “honourable” five days of street fighting in Dublin than in any single act of political violence in 1920. Commemorating honourable revolutionaries, who caused the deaths of innocent people, as well as commemorating the sheer brutality of all sides in the civil war is deemed acceptable by Irish government leaders.


“For me … if I had the privilege of leading government I would be a taoiseach for everybody and I would act in a way to foster respect, reconciliation and understanding and never in a partisan way to give offence to anyone. If I were taoiseach there’s a set pattern of what the taoiseach attends and does not attend.”

In a recent revelation to the media, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald declared that when she becomes Taoiseach she will likely refuse to attend Provisional IRA commemorations. Many republicans will view this announcement as a step too far in the party’s ongoing assimilation project. The attempt to move the party further toward mainstream acceptance of SF as a party fit to govern. Wavering SF supporters, many who struggled with the party’s attendance at a British Queens funeral and more recently at the state coronation of a foreign King, will find it difficult to accept the notion of a Freestate heirachy of good and bad when it comes to fallen IRA volunteers.


It should be remembered, the PIRA came about in armed defence of Catholic communities in December 1969. It followed an acrimonious split between republicans into the two factions known as the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. Catholics were being treated as second class citizens by a unionist sectarian state. However, the powers that be in the southern jurisdiction did very little to protect those hard put upon Catholic communities. In fact, consecutive Freestate governments consciously turned their backs to the desperate plight of an under siege Catholic population in the wee six. The struggle for a free and independent 32 county Ireland was not on their agenda in any way shape form or fashion. The North was the gimpy awkward relative no one in the wider Freestate political family wanted to talk about. Many in the Freestate adopted the ostrich theory of political involvement and would have been delighted if the North had simply disappeared altogether. The SF President in saying what she did has offended many republicans. Do their opinions not matter anymore in her island of equals and respect? Where is the potential future head of state’s respect for republican victims of British shoot to kill violence and state murder perpetrated throughout the north since 1969?


We declare our allegiance to the 32 county Irish republic, proclaimed at Easter 1916, established by the first Dáil Éireann in 1919, overthrown by force of arms in 1922 and suppressed to this day by the existing British-imposed six-county and twenty-six-county partition states … We call on the Irish people at home and in exile for increased support towards defending our people in the North and the eventual achievement of the full political, social, economic and cultural freedom of Ireland - The first PIRA statement issued on 28th December 1969.


Many media outlets have correctly interpreted McDonald’s words as a political signal to the establishment. She would be inclined not to attend PIRA memorial events if and when she becomes Taoiseach of Ireland. This declaration made by the SF President comes amid the fallout of Sinn Fein MP John Finucane’s decision to speak at a “south Armagh volunteers commemoration” . In the past, in his role as Belfast Mayor, Finucane laid a commemorative wreath to honour those who died in the WW2 battle of the Somme in 1916. It was a gesture which received little, if any, reciprocation from unionism. Yet Finucane was lambasted for weeks leading up to the ‘South Armagh volunteers commemoration’ in Mullaghbawn by both unionism and the media for attending a commemorative event honoring fallen PIRA volunteers. It was an event which Mary Lou McDonald will refuse to attend when she becomes crowned Taoiseach of conservative middle class Ireland.


Top picture shows Belfast Sinn Fein mayor John Finucane who joined with the British Legion to pay tribute to the fallen as the city marked the Armistice. Bottom picture is John Finucane speaking at an IRA commemoration in south Armagh.
When SF leaders respectfully commemorate British war casualties at cenotaph’s they are attending a commemoration of British state terrorism. When SF leaders deign to attend a Kings coronation they acknowledge the right of empire to exist and to commemorate its inglorious past. The British Empire, with its savage colonial history, has seen many millions brutalised and murdered under the leadership of the British Crown. Hypothetically, if Taoiseach Mary Lou McDonald, at some stage in the future, refused to attend a South Armagh commemoration but turned up instead to lay a wreath for dead British soldiers at a cenotaph, it will inevitably further test the patience of many of those republicans once loyal to the SF political power project.

A moral superiority exists when it comes to remembering the actions of the old IRA in comparison to the PIRA. The narrative favoured by the Freestate is that the old IRA fought a just and good war. However, their narrative further suggests the Provos were cold-blooded murderers who slaughtered innocents. The leadership of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (both parties emanated post civil war from anti-treaty and pro-treaty IRA volunteers) are always going to justify the savagery and blood spilt in the development of their own parties history. However, they would seek to deny that very same opportunity to those commemorating post 1969 PIRA fallen volunteers. The pronouncement by the SF President regarding not attending future PIRA commemorations will be a bitter pill for many Irish republicans. Mary Lou McDonald’s announcement provides further succour to the Freestate premise that the violence of the revolutionary period and the civil war was somehow lesser than the violence on the streets of Strabane, Derry and Belfast throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

The blatant Freestate airbrushing of history conveniently ignores the overt hostility initially faced by 1916 revolutionaries. Many Irish citizens in Dublin shouted abuse and spat on the revolutionaries as they were paraded past them in defeat. Had James Connolly and Padraig Pearse not been executed, would the Easter Rising be seen today as an honourable revolutionary strike against the empire for freedom and independence? Or might it be seen today as a grubby, armed and largely unsupported insurrection which killed almost 300 innocent civilians? One man’s freedom fighter and all that palaver!

November 1920
When assessing the differences, if any, between the old IRA and the PIRA there are many variables to consider, including historical context and legitimacy of violent insurrection. In November 1920, 14 suspected British Intelligence officers were executed by the old IRA, with 9 reported to be wearing their pajamas and unarmed at the time. These assassinations were followed by the indiscriminate shooting of civilians attending a football match at Croke Park where a further 14 died at the hands of crown forces. During a 48-hour period 38 people would be violently killed and a further 79 wounded. Many were non-combatants and the innocent dead and injured included women and children. It was savagery beyond comprehension. Speaking after the events Michael Collins said of the 14 killed by his squad, “By their destruction the very air is made sweeter.”

Any discussion linked to rights and wrongs of the Freestate revolutionary period and the post ‘69 revolutionary period is subject to a verbal defensive game of whataboutery. War is a dirty business. Whether it’s a bloody war which achieved partial sovereignty and ongoing partition, or a bloody war seeking to achieve full sovereignty and an end to partition, war is never conducted in an honourable fashion by sworn enemies. A Taoiseach for everyone should mean a Taoiseach prepared to stand in commemoration with both old IRA and PIRA fallen volunteers. There should be no place on this island for a heirachy of commemoration. A Taoiseach should be open to attending all respectful commemorations or none.

Former RUC Chief Constable and current Garda Commissioner Drew Harris attending a memorial of Michael Staines who was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and on its Supreme Council from 1921 to 1922. He served as Quartermaster General in the GPO during the 1916 Easter Rising and was later interned with his fellow insurgents at Frongoch internment camp. Staine’s served as the first Garda Commissioner before fascist Fine Gael’s Eoin O’Duffy took over in September 1922.
Lest anyone should misunderstand auld Biffo’s intentions in penning this blog article, let me make a few things clear. I am anti-war. I am anti-violence. I did not nor do I condone the violence of 1916 to 1923 or the violence of the 1970’s onwards. However, I fully understand when faced with a despotic empire in the 1900’s and being under the jackboot of a sectarian statelet in the 1970’s, many people felt they had no choice other than to fight back. 

This blog article was penned because of the apparent willingness of a SF President to commemoratively abandon those who sacrificed everything in the name of the IRA from the 1970’s onwards in order to attain power in the Freestate. 

This blog was also penned because of the insatiable SF desire to be finally accepted within a Freestate which openly commemorates those from the early 1900’s who also killed in the name of the IRA. There is no good or bad IRA when it comes to commemorations. The absence of respect and reconciliation will hurt deep, if and when a future SF Taoiseach refuses to attend a commemoration of PIRA hunger striker’s like Bobby Sands and so many other patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice. 

Finally, I often wonder if those fallen patriots, taken by war from 1916 onwards on this island, would be comfortable, or even be in agreement, with many of those mainstream politicians who regularly attend republican commemorations.

28 July 2005 – the Provisional IRA announced its members had “been ordered to dump arms.”

🖼 Biffo is a life long trade unionist & workers advocate.
Biffo The IRA

6 comments:

  1. Deaglán O'Nualláin11:16 PM, July 04, 2023

    John Bruton might have been the most prominent voice questioning the morality of the 1916 Rising, but popular opinion has not engaged in the way you describe, moving from support of past violence to support for contemporary violence. The psychological mechanism looks to be that the view of the distant past is influenced by the events of the present, so the reaction against the violence from 1969 onwards went to discredit the Easter Rising and its leaders.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Deaglán O'Nualláin11:24 PM, July 04, 2023

    I would also draw a sharp distinction between the strategies of the two periods, namely that the War of Independence IRA largely killed civilians by gunfire, so with more discrimination and in smaller numbers in any one incident. The PIRA bombing was more likely to cause mass-casualties and hit civilians. The British make a similar distinction in the remembrance of the WW2 aerial bombing campaign, with the memorials to both Arthur 'Bomber' Harris and to the Bomber Command crews in London, regularly defaced with paint.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AM7:54 AM, July 06, 2023

    State formation blended with foundational myths gives those with state power an awesome ability to set the agenda. A very thoughtful piece.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AM7:35 AM, July 07, 2023

    Tonyol Dublin comments

    In Biffo's revisionist view of the IRA, That hoary old chestnut, "war is a dirty business" predictably is trotted out, to defend the atrocities committed by the IRA in their doomed, violent pursuit of a united Ireland. I still cannot figure out, and never will, how turning Patsy Gillespie, a cook, into a human bomb or the cold-blooded murder of Joanne Mathers, a young mother of two collecting census forms for pin money, would somehow bring about a united Ireland. But perhaps the "brave IRA volunteers" who carried out these murders, on Martin McGuinness' turf, and perhaps on his say-so, can enlighten me.

    With regard to revising history, the IRA styles itself as an "undefeated army". Their sole military objective was to force the British to leave Northern Ireland. They failed abysmally. And they gave up their weapons (or some of them}. But only a defeated army surrenders its weapons - so much for the "undefeated army".

    Still, there are signs of progress within the Sinn Fein IRA ranks. In 1999, Gerry Adams said in 1999 that within fifteen years a united Ireland would be well on the way. His vision of a united Ireland, one in which the unionist community would be subsumed into a thirty-two county republic, was a deluded pipe-dream. He was beginning to think about persuasion in 2003, but with words that would chill unionists to the bone., "“Winning unionists over to republicanism will not be easy, but it is not impossible”. He added, "“We have to show them by our words and our actions, or our non actions, that Sinn Féin – that Irish republicanism, always a generous philosophy – is their future". After Kingsmill and Shankill Road?

    By 2009, Adams was beginning to see sense - and effectively admitting the futility and failure of the IRA's "war". He said "Sinn Féin believes that a national representative democracy in a sovereign reunited Ireland is desirable, viable and achievable in this generation through peaceful and democratic methods".
    More recently, in May this year Adams re-stated the united Ireland route by consent in more chilling words to unionist - the “surest guarantee” that unionists’ cultural identity “will prosper and be protected” in a united Ireland is if they co-operate". What will they be protected from? And will this protection be removed if they do not co-operate? This leopard never changes his spots.
    However,the new Sinn Fein XXX leader, Mary Lou McDonald has finally put an end to the illusion that the IRA's "war" had any redeeming features. Having accepted that unity can only be achieved by consent, and the first phase of which would be a border poll, she said "we should not rush into a border poll". Why? Because as things stand, people on both sides of the border would be asked to buy a pig in a poke and the chances of success are roundabout zero. To add insult to injury, McDonald has said that, as Taoiseach, she will not attend IRA commemorations.

    The final outcome of the IRA "war" is that the Republic of Ireland has effectively waived its constitutional claim for jurisdiction over the whole island of Ireland (Article 3 of the Constitution) and the decision to hold a border poll is at the whim of a British government minister - as specified in the Belfast/Good Friday agreement - an agreement lauded day and night by Sinn Fein IRA. With the economy wrecked by the Provos, the North's political leaders are in constant procession to Westminster with their begging bowls to keep the show on the road.

    Is this what the hunger strikers died for? They must be spinning in their graves. But at least the sixteen prison officers murdered in cold blood by the IRA will have the satisfaction of knowing the IRA lost "their "war".

    Undefeated army? Yeah, right.

    ReplyDelete
  5. frankie10:16 PM, July 08, 2023

    (I don't have a favourite. The only IRA Iknew was the Provisionals and a handful of members of the Officials. I went to school with heads who ended up joining various PFR groups and none of them threatened me, slapped me around or pointed a gun at me and asked me questions the way British state forces did on a weekly basis. )

    Tonyol Dublin..........
    That hoary old chestnut, "war is a dirty business" predictably is trotted out, to defend the atrocities committed by the IRA ....

    Patsy Gillespie was murdered to cover up for a British Agent. And the last person to talk to Joanne Mathers was Willie Carlin another British Agent.

    ReplyDelete

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