To think that the timing of Gerry Adam's arrest does stink a bit?

[ClubName]

I despise the man and hope they have enough on him to let him rot, throw away the key etc

But, whatever they have it's not new (not new this week anyway) and I can see why he and his supporters think the timing of his arrest is political.

More importantly, unless he does end up in prison for a long time (which sadly I doubt) this whole business is just going to enhance his popularity and build the case that the PSNI aren't impartial

FrigginRex it must work better than letting loads of people on both sides labour under threat of prosecution? Gerry Adams was arrested for a crime which happened 40 years ago, and under the terms of the GFA even if he was tried, convicted and found guilty, he would serve only 2 years at most (and I don't like to think what it would do to the peace process). Is it really worth picking off ex-PIRA members (and the dogs in the street know about Adams) one by one to stand trial, or better to have a truth commission to answer families' questions?

There are those just waiting to kick off the violence again, peace is still so fresh and new. Maybe in twenty or thirty years a truth commission could work when peace is a way of life for so many. The people of NI deserve to live their lives as the rest of us do, free from fear.

The bit that made me really want to throw something at the TV was when the murdering scumbag said he had been questioned about his " human right related activities" so apparently the IRA are a human rights organisation!
The family of that poor lady know full well who killed her, one of the children witnessed it and was beaten and threatened himself ( age 11) so he saw their faces

The family of that poor lady know full well who killed her, one of the children witnessed it and was beaten and threatened himself ( age 11) so he saw their faces

Sorry, HoppingGreen, I don't think you have a clear grasp of the facts of the case.

Not sure how the Queen controlled herself when she met McGuinness

Probably in the same way that he controlled himself when he met the woman who decorated soldiers that committed unspeakable atrocities.

Swings both ways, doesn't it.

I hate these threads. People are so black and white.

Gerry Adams and MM have become almost characatures of villains. You must remember that to others, your queen and the soldiers who acted under her command are the villains of the peace.

As they say: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

I DO NOT condone any actions of the IRA. I am NOT an IRA sympathiser. I'm just saying it goes both ways.

Nelson Mandela was a terrorist too, in a lot of people's eyes!

The children did not witness her death.

Neither was she killed for aiding a dying British soldier. That's what many believe, but it doesn't line up with the facts.

Well said Waltermitty. I think there has to be some sort of recognition of the fact that the violence perpetrated on all sides was, at least in the 70's carried out by very young adults who had all been born and rared into a community which believed in the "right" of their position. I think many English people can accept that British soldiers at that time were young, frightened and under attack which may give some insight into their appalling actions but can't seem to accept the same about the PIRA. Young people signed up for the PIRA for the same reasons young people signed up for the British Army.

When I was six years old, a little boy in my class in school was murdered, in cold blood, alongside his parents in a case of mistaken identity when they returned from a family holiday. Orphaning his older siblings. He was killed by the IRA. Yes, Gerry Adams and whichever other scumbags did this deserve to go to prison. We don't need a 'truth investigation' to establish that this was heinous crime that had nothing to do with a 'war'.

When my older sibling was the same age, scarlet, my cousin was beaten to a coma by British soldiers for no reason whatsoever and were never, ever brought to justice or even questioned.

The IRA were fighting a war whether you think it or not.

If you can acknowledge that the crimes committed by the PIRA were heinous you must acknowledge that they were equally heinous on the other side. By the British army and loyalist groups.

Yes, and they all should bloody well be in prison. That family destroyed, and for what? A peace of land. This was a completely innocent child who had done nothing wrong.

Yes, and they all should bloody well be in prison

Well we agree very much on that! :)

Agreeing with WalterMitty and Bruthas.

Anyone interested in a fuller account of what was happening around the time of a Jean McConville's murder -about 500 people were killed in 1972" and thousands injured, people burnt out of their homes, interned, tortured, tarred and feathered etc - and why her family was particularly vulnerable to whispering campaigns, could do worse than read the London Review of Books article by Susan McKay linked to earlier.

*frigg

Yes?

frigginrex
I take my hat off to your family.
I wish I understood the history better about NI.
I grew up hearing about it my whole life on the news.
It just seems like a lot of violence and wasted life to me.
I cannot imagine what it was like to live with it.

If the IRA hadn't chosen a terrorism style of fighting, hidden within their communities like the cowards they were there wouldn't have been so many mistaken identities or accidental military shootings !

Scumbags the lot of them and cowards, they put their own communities at risk as much as everyone else !

Exactly! Look at Scotland (where I now live), many here now desperately want to leave the UK but I don't know of Alex Salmond hiding in ditches detonating bombs killing innocent civilians.

Thank you ihate. It would have been great for my GM to hear David Camerons apology but she did not die with hate in her heart. It would have been so easy for my uncles to have joined the PIRA to avenge their brothers death and I am sure they were very tempted.

Has the Scottish state passed legislation recently which directly tramps all over the Civil Rights of a section of the population due to their religion? Have any Scottish politicians declare Scotland a Protestant state for a Protestant people? Have the English moved the Army onto the streets of Scotland? Have entire streets in Glasgow or Edinburgh been razed to the ground because of the perceived religion of the residents?

I don't know enough about Scottish history to comment but I do know that there is a huge amount of anti- English feeling which has stemmed from something.

I fully understand that horrendous, awful things happened to Catholics in the past, and they were discriminated against. However, this doesn't in anyway excuse mass murder. It just doesn't. Those that took the lives of others deserve to go to prison for a very long time, no matter which side of the political divide. Why would the ethics in this situation be any different to ANYONE who is a victim? If we go down that route, what kind of civilised society are we?

Indeed, Bruthas. Scarlett'smummy, with the best will in the world, surely you can see it's a totally dissimilar situation?

I'm sorry for your family's loss, Friggin.

Snow do you know anything about the IRA, the struggle for independence, the black and tans, Irish history? The IRA did not simply choose a terrorist style, they emulated with what they had seen done to Irish people. Again, neither was right. I don't want to start a row but lets be honest, Irish people were treated appallingly for centuries by Britain (by my maternal family, who came here generations before).

but the IRA then dragged off her 11 year old son, to terrify him into not naming names. It brings a whole new depth to the concept of evil.

I heard him on the radio.

Who beats a mother of 10 children one day. Drags her away to murder her the next and then beats her youngest child to make sure he keeps quiet?

I imagine that those of you in NI were not, well probably just as shocked as me, but not surprised at that.

Those of us on the mainland just don't hear much. There was a radio programme a while ago about teenagers being given appointments to be shot. Not in the 1970s or 1980s but now, today. There are teenagers who get a phone call telling them where to be at a certain time and that they will be shot and there are parents who will drive their child to the appointment because the consequences of not doing are worse.

I found listening to it shocking, but I'm equally shocked that it is not deemed newsworthy.

There is so much we in mainland Britain don't know. I'm sure there is a lot that people in NI don't know or know bits and pieces.

I'm not sure how I feel. I know I feel desperately sorry for the family, but about the political side of things?

Hard as it may be moving forward it would seem would involve less death and maiming, but how you do that? Everyone in NI I admire the efforts that have been put in, that are not generally heard of, to bring about and keep a peace. Not the bigwigs and politicians but the ordinary people.

Thank you Burren.

Snow seriously?

Your post is ridiculously one dimensional.

And with all due respect to the English, your news was hardly unbiased. You saw and heard what they wanted you to see and hear.

It's all very well to feel sorry for the Catholics 'back then'. Do you feel sorry for the Catholics who are still living with the fall out?

For the Protestants who's lives were equally destroyed by the British? It's not like anyone wore a sign saying what they were.

And, at the end of it all the point has to be made:

The PIRA were fighting against occupiers of their country. That's what they thought/think.

If Germany had succeeded, the British would have been fighting against occupiers of their land and they would have been terrorists.