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

treaclesoda that's great, now, but what about in 1969?

scarletssmummy that's precisely what the NI civil rights movement was all about - campaigning and (attempting to) using the law. It was met with a vicious backlash by forces of the NI government and extremists within NI society.

Catholics DID campaign. The civil rights movement marched from Belfast to Derry in 68, getting stoned by loyalists and attacked by the police...and in 72 getting murdered by the British Army!! My mum and dad marched - my mum carrying my eldest sister on her hinch up the Glenshane Pass and was clobbered with stones! Most Catholics campaigned peacefully and were beaten, blasted with water, stoned, faced with internment and murdered just for wanting equality in their own country....where they had been LONG before Protestants arrived on the scene.

I'm no fan of the PIRA and wouldn't make any case for their legitimacy as an Army. I'm Irish and they certainly were not acting in my name. But Abra1d, your own numbers (and I don't know how accurate they are but I'll take your word for it) demonstrate that 40% of those killed were killed by loyalist paramilitaries and/or the British Army (and let's face it, in the case of the UDR in particular, there was a fair bit of overlap there).

And in the case of the 10% killed by the British army, surely this is all the more troubling because they are the State sanctioned army, paid for by British taxes and overseen by the British head of state. Surely the atrocities they committed should be the ones the British populace is most concerned by for these reasons?

Let's remember that people murdered by the British Army in Northern Ireland included not only known and suspected IRA combatants, but also the innocent men and boys shot on Bloody Sunday, and also innocent children like Manus Deery , Annette McGavigan , Stephen Geddis , Carol Ann Kelly, and (sadly) many more.

Treacle said it's the hypocrisy that sticks in the throat, and I agree. I am no apologist for the IRA, because I don't think that a campaign targeting civilians and/or disregarding the risk to them is in any way defensible, in any 'type of war'. But I do find it very galling that time and time again when Northern Ireland affairs are discussed on here, people behave as if the IRA are the one and only villain of the piece, and they express wonder at how their beloved Queen (who, as was stated upthread, decorated the Paras who murdered civilians in Derry) can stand to shake the hand of Martin McGuinness, and they minimise and dismiss the very real, very entrenched and state-supported British/Protestant/Unionist Supremacy establishment that destroyed Irish lives and opportunities for generations. As if Gerry, Martin and Company went out and decided to start murdering people in a vacuum. The blinkered ignorance is astounding.

Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry, like Joan McConville, are among the faces of innocence that should remind us that the IRA's campaign was murderous, merciless and indefensible. But Paula Strong and Clare Hughes, children every bit as innocent as the two boys in Warrington, were killed by British Loyalist Paramilitaries in much the same fashion, by a bomb planted by someone who didn't give a shit who he killed as long as he made his point. I never seem to see their names on here when people are spitting nails about the unaddressed atrocities of the past. Joan Connelly, a mother of eight, was one of the civilians killed by the British Army in the Ballymurphy Massacre, which the government decided just last week was best left in the past, determining that no review of soldiers' actions should be carried out. I wonder if her children deserve justice less than Mrs. McConville's children do?

I know that members of the McConville family believe that Gerry Adams was involved in their mother's murder. They may well be right, and they must feel gutted that he seems to have escaped justice (again). I'm sure that the family members of those killed in Ballymurphy feel equally gutted this week that the people responsible - British Soldiers - won't even be questioned about it. But not one word about that, among those on here who apparently feel so strongly about justice being done for historical murders in Northern Ireland.

There's your hypocrisy.

If IRA were fighting a war...does it not follow then that GA AND MM are ossibly guilty of war crimes. against their own community?

I did actually mention Ballymurphy up thread. I said I would be in agreement with pursuing prosecutions.

Fantastic post Gany

treacle sorry, the bit of my post addressed to you was just the line agreeing with you that it's the hypocrisy that's a big problem.

From what I've seen, on Mumsnet that hypocrisy takes the form of near-universal revulsion / condemnation of the IRA (which I agree with), and near-complete and utter silence on the systemic oppression of Irish Catholics that gave rise to the IRA, and on the atrocities committed by Loyalist Paramilitaries and the British Army.

I find that galling, but was not blaming you personally for it. :) Just namechecked you in agreeing that there's plenty of hypocrisy in these discussions.

I know Jean McConville's son has said exactly that, Lola, that Gerry et al should be charged in The Hague as a war criminals. In that scenario there would be an awful lot of British Soliders and British State Officials joining them in the dock.

I also am absolutely in agreement that those who committed atrocities on the British side should be called to account.

No problem! I just wanted to be clear. I am vehemently opposed to the IRA, and can not find any justification for the things they did. I am also horrified by atrocities committed by the British state and have never shied away from the fact that these people should not be above the law. The problem in NI is that my viewpoint has sometimes seen me labelled as an IRA sympathiser, which is incredibly frustrating.

Great post Ganymede. The hypocrisy and self righteousness displayed by some posters is truly galling indeed, especially given their apparent lack of knowledge of irish history.

So do all those who romanticise the IRA also support those other well known "freedom fighters" al quaeda ? 9/11 the Birmingham bombing it's all the same to me terrorism is terrorism !

Who's romanticising the IRA?

And of course atrocities by Loyalist paramilitaries, I should have made that clear.

As an aside, I think that in general terms, some of the reason why loyalist atrocities sometimes slip under the radar where 'universal revulsion' is concerned is because they never quite mastered (for want of a better way of putting it) bomb making the way the IRA did. A bomb in the middle of a busy town is so indiscriminate that almost anyone can view the victims as innocent.

Loyalists had a tendency to make targeted gun attacks on individuals or groups. The fact that these people were innocent civilians was sometimes overlooked because there is a huge tendency in NI to think 'well, maybe he/she was up to something and we just didn't know about it...'

Apart from the SINGLE deadliest attack in the Troubles, treaclesoda!!!: the Dublin/Monaghan bombings in 1974. 40th anniversary coming up. No warning, 33 people killed. British state collusion in that bombing has been long suspected.

Yes, I'm aware of that, and I didn't say that they never bombed. And I have not claimed that that was any less awful than an IRA bomb. I think there is widespread public sympathy for those victims and their families.

The point I was making (obviously badly!) was that when I was growing up there were far more gun attacks by loyalists and by being seen to target individuals they were able to make people suspicious that those people had bedn targeted for a reason. A lot of murders when I was a teenager didn't even make the UK national news, so unconcerned were people about the victims.

And just to make absolutely clear, I don't mean 'that's what I think'.

I mean there is a mindset here, and I'm trying to explain it for people who don't live here and aren't familiar with the place.

Runes- is that directed at me??? How exactly am I being self righteous by saying that what the IRA did during the troubles is totally unjustified, and if Gerry Adams was responsible he should be brought to account? There are thousands of people in NI who have never supported the work of the paramilitaries on either side, we are not self righteous we just feel that their behaviour is disgraceful and wrong. You don't need to know the full ins and outs of Irish history to know that.

Yes, I broadly agree with you: loyalists only mastered bombing technology when they had assistance from the British forces. While there might be public sympathy for the Dublin/Monaghan victims (and I don't think that case is as well known as other bombing atrocities, actually), it doesn't extend to the British and NI state handing over documentation that was promised to the legal inquiry headed by Justice Barron. Dirty, dirty war.

And yes, the loyalist 'pan-republican front' rhetoric was pervasive and repugnant. I've interviewed some ex-paramilitaries who still try to justify blatantly sectarian attacks in those terms.

Scarlett I agree. I find it baffling that the people who never supported violence in the first place are sometimes viewed as being the real obstacles. I just can't get my head round how that works.

a lot of murders when I was a teenager didn't even make the UK national news, so unconcerned were people about the victims

I think that's the problem on this thread.

People say and read totally biased "news reports" and assume they know what went on.

scarlett I think the self-righteousness might stem from your statements along the lines of 'Catholics should just have campaigned within the law'. You didn't respond to the response from a couple of posters that nationalists tried just that, and were met with violence and intransigence. What then? And what do you do if the very state is set up to ensure one-party rule, if the boundaries of the state were drawn to minimise the likelihood of the transfer of political power?

I also find it amazing that people who are surpised and appalled that Gerry Adams enjoys any political support, or that Martin McGuinness is the Deputy First Minister and dines with the Queen, express no thoughts whatsoever on the First Minister Peter Robinson, a man who had clear ties to the Ulster Resistance, an organisation involved in training and arming the UDA and UVF, both organisations responsible for atrocities as horrific as anything the IRA did (some of which are mentioned upthread).

Again, this isn't whataboutery in the sense of "never mind what McGuinness did, look at Robinson." I couldn't share a table with McGuinness. But why is the outrage so one-sided whenever it's discussed on here?

Janine I'll be honest here. I struggle with that, I really do. I do believe that change has to come about democratically, by protest, by campaigning, by changing the law. And I've seen first hand what terrorism does to people, to the families who are mourning, and the cycle of bitterness that it results in.

I honestly don't know. I know that I lived my childhood in terror of the IRA, in fear of walking past a parked car (I still hate parked cars now) in case it would blow up. Maybe I should be able to see it a bit more objectively but I don't know that I can.

This is a genuine question...any poster on here who is northern Irish Catholic do you want NI to become part of ROI again and leave the UK?