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Showing posts with label Brian Stanley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brian Stanley. Show all posts
Irish Times ✒ TD said social media should be about engagement and the cut and thrust of political argument.

Marie O'Halloran

A social media “pile-on” against anyone who criticises Sinn Féin does not aid or assist the party, its housing spokesman has said.

Eoin Ó Broin insisted Sinn Féin had very clear social media guidelines and policy and where people make complaints “we follow up very vigorously”.

But he hit out at a claim by Minister for Further Education Simon Harris that the party sent in the “heavies” when a UCD Ógra Shinn Féin member Christine O’Mahony was critical on Twitter of the party.

On Friday Ms O’Mahony tweeted about being told not to discuss internal issues in public and after a party member called to her house to ask her to delete recent critical tweets.

She left the party in light of the controversy surrounding Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley who said he had nothing to apologise for over a 2017 tweet about Leo Varadkar. 

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Social Media ‘Pile On’ Against Sinn Féin Critics Does Not Aid Party, Ó Broin Says

Irish Times ✒ Careless tweets from influential people like Brian Stanley matter terribly.

Kathy Sheridan
 
What was the purpose of Brian Stanley’s tweet glorifying mass killings in two different eras? The message, sent at 8.33am on a Saturday, was no early-hours slip into sentimentalism.

That kind of tweet requires a very particular mindset. Who was he thinking of addressing, galvanising or alienating at that hour?

Was it the lads of the old brigade? Or middle-aged boyos handy with an Up the ‘Ra slogan? Or was it for the young who tread the line between shrugging off the party’s greatest hits , as regularly resurrected by party members, and then complaining that others weaponise them to shut down young Sinn Féin voices?

A 32-year-old SF ard comhairle member from Co Leitrim enjoyed the celebration in Stanley’s tweet. “He acknowledged successful IRA operations that are matter of historic record,” tweeted Seadhna Logan. 

“Both were militarily very effective and highly efficient examples of Republican guerrilla ingenuity. For many like me, the role of the provos was every bit as important as the lads of Kilmichael.” 

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

What Was The Purpose Of Brian Stanley’s Tweet Glorifying Mass Killings?

Irish Times ✒ Woman asked to remove social media posts criticising tweets by TD Brian Stanley.
 
Jennifer Bray

A Sinn Féin member has resigned from the party saying she was told not to discuss internal issues in public and after a party member called to her house to ask her to delete recent critical tweets.

Christine O’Mahony (22), from Co Meath, said she has left the party in light of the controversy surrounding Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley, who said he had nothing to apologise for over a 2017 tweet about Leo Varadkar.

In that message, the now-head of the Public Accounts Committee wrote: “yippee 4 d tory. it’s Leo. U can do what u like in bed but don’t look 4 a pay rise the next morning.”

Ms O’Mahony criticised this online and said she encountered significant pushback from the party.

She received messages from other members of Ógra Sinn Féin stating that a cornerstone of the functioning of the party was to have discussions that were kept internal and that adhered to the principles of “democratic centralism”. 

She was told that “going after” the party would only serve Sinn Féin detractors.  

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Sinn Féin Member Resigns Amid Claims Party Is Trying To ‘Silence’ Her

Anthony McIntyre ponders on the self-harm Sinn Fein has a penchant for inflicting.

By the rules of the game that Sinn Fein has opted to play, party figures keep making the same boob, apparently oblivious to Einstein’s definition of insanity. Nothing is gonna change no matter how many times its leading lights experience a rare public Up the Ra moment. 

So once they start staggering or swaggering out to punch the air with a bellow of Praise The Provos, their veneration is certain to be short lived. It is never going to evoke from the political class, to which it now belongs, a loud murmur of Amen, Hallelujah to the H Block hunger strikers. The response will invariably be, go to the sin bin until you come back wearing a monkey suit.   

Sinn Fein has stepped onto the very landmine it, of its own volition, laid. Brian Stanley, chair of the Dail’s Public Accounts Committee, is the latest head on the chopping block, now nervously wondering if the axe will fall. His was a triple tweet whammy, the first salvo of which was launched by way of a barrack buster:

kilmicheal (1920) and narrow water (1979) the 2 IRA operations that taught the elite of d British army and the establishment the cost of occupying Ireland. Pity for everyone they were such slow learners.”

Setting aside the gloating tone of his comment - always hard to make allowances for - what Stanley is being slapped down for by his critics is the Narrow Water operation and his linking of it to Kilmichael, both of which produced hefty British military casualties. Fianna Gael and Fine Fail – it really is that hard to tell the difference – at least can stand over the actions of the War that launched their post partition political projects. Not so Sinn Fein. It is sent scurrying in search of an apology each time its members venture out to justify any aspect of the Provisional IRA’s armed struggle. It unfailingly obliges.

Despite Stanley's praise for the lesson taught to the British for their "occupation" of Ireland, the British presence remains on the very same terms that it did at the time of Narrow Water: consent of a majority in the North. 

Therein lies Sinn Fein's dilemma. It has abandoned the coercion principle it once gave unambiguous support to, in favour of the consent principle, yet wants to sentimentalise the instrument of coercion. What it painfully discovers, without learning from, is that once the ground on which Themselves Alone stood is vacated, hollowed out is any substance to its legitimising of the attempted armed coercion of Britain out of Ireland, and by force of arms compel the North to become part of a unitary state against the wishes of a majority of the Northern population. Acceptance of the unity only by consent formula thrusts a dagger straight through the heart of any historical legitimacy the Provisional IRA campaign laid claim to. It also makes it relatively easy for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to stand over their IRA forbearers while making Sinn Fein uncomfortable when it seeks to stand over the Provisional IRA. Our IRA good: your IRA bad. And because of Sinn Fein's readiness to blink first, it works. Better to say nothing than to unsay in the afternoon what had been said in the morning. 

Given what Sinn Fein ultimately settled for - on terms the Provisional IRA fought against, not for - the Provo campaign could only make sense if the body had operated as the armed wing of the SDLP. The demands of the SDLP were met in the Good Friday Agreement which at the same time rejected the Provisional methodology and aim of unity through coercion. Yet it proved enough to end the Provisional IRA campaign. As Glenn Patterson caustically observed in 2008: "Applying the 1919-21 war of independence's model of end results would give us the war of devolution with a north-south dimension."

That was not worth a single life, neither Para, Provo nor the countless others who died for what was on offer in 1973. Seamus Mallon rather than Brian Stanley identified the slow learners. 

 ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Don't Lead With Your Chin

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