At ‘Feile an Phoibal’ (the West Belfast republican festival) over the weekend the long suffering people of Northern Ireland were subjected to some of the most vile glorification of terrorism ever witnessed in our post GFA society.
The entire ‘festival’ became a tacky, tasteless and vulgar display of support for Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein.
Hamas/PLO style headbands were on sale. Grown men ran around in gawdy PIRA t-shirts, complete with the gaelic words “tiochfaidh ár la” in the shape of an assault rifle.
Perhaps worst of all was the mass, cult like chanting of the banal phrase “oh ah up the Ra”.
What does “up the Ra” mean? Is it a reference to an obscure rock band? Is it a chant in support of a football club with a bizarre nickname? Is it referring to the Egyptian sun god?
Spot the difference.
No. Believe it or not it is a chant sung in support of the most murderous, psychopathic and ruthless terrorist organisation that Europe has ever seen.
Of course, if you live in Ulster you already knew that. “Up the Ra” is an expression of support for the ‘IRA’, more specifically (since there have been more than a dozen different terror gangs of that name) the Provisional IRA.
How does an organisation which slaughtered hundreds of innocent people end up being referred to as “the Ra”?
The Ra did that. To one of their own community.
How does a group of murdering criminals, a group, which carried out stomach churning atrocities such as the Claudy bombing, Bloody Friday and the La Mon Hotel attack, come to be known by a childish, stupid nickname like “the Ra”?
One word. Disneyfication.
The Land of Make Believe
In the land of Irish nationalist make believe, members of “the Ra” were smiling, gentle, progressive socialists with large families and a love of small furry animals. Fun loving scamps who were forced to fight a war against the evil, imperialist Brits and their ‘planter colonist’ lackeys because until the Good Friday Agreement, Catholics in Northern Ireland were forbidden from voting, having jobs, attending university, speaking gaelic or playing hurley.
These warrior poets, who in their spare time helped old ladies across the street and rescued cats stuck in trees, waged a heroic guerilla campaign against the full might of the British Empire, armed only with a few assault rifles, home made mortars and a cheery sense of patriotism.
Thomas McElwee, “the Ra” man. His only crime was a sectarian fire-bomb attack in which a young mother was killed.
Can you detect a hint of sarcasm here? Well, I am being sarcastic and I am exaggerating, a little, but in essence this is what many Irish nationalist extremists actually believe.
As part of this Disneyfication, this child-like vision of the past, the term “Provisional IRA” seems out of place. Even the historically inaccurate and legitimising term “IRA” seems just a bit too serious, too grown up. Hence why nationalists/republicans have reduced the Provisional Irish Republican Army to “the Ra”.
You see “the Ra” sounds a bit more fun, a bit less serious. It trivialises the crimes of the Provo murder gangs, it minimises them. Would a smiling, cuddly group of “the Ra” members chain a Catholic man to the steering wheel of a van packed with explosives and force that innocent man to drive that payload of death and destruction to it’s destination under the threat that if he didn’t, they would murder his wife and children?
Patsy Gillespie, an ordinary family man, turned into a human bomb by “the Ra”.
Would the warrior poets of “the Ra” abduct, torture, murder and then secretly bury a widowed mother of ten young children?
What I’m getting at here is that the invention of the term “the Ra” and it’s subsequent widespread adoption by Irish nationalists is deliberate. It is part of the Disneyfication of violent republicanism. It is a calculated insult to the victims of the sectarian PIRA and it is a way to ‘soften’ and to romanticise a blood soaked terrorist organisation.
Mind Your Language
Of course, Irish nationalists will scream and wail that some people in the Unionist/Loyalist community use the term too. That is correct but it is merely a very small, unthinking minority who (occasionally) copy the terminology of radicalised Irish republicans.
Sandra Morris, burnt to death by “the Ra” at La Mon. Her husband Joseph survived despite horrific injuries.
It is also something which Loyalist activists, ourselves included, are educating people in our community about.
It is bad enough that some Loyalists and Unionists refer to the Provo murder gangs as “the IRA”, as if that organisation was the same as the original, almost equally as blood thirsty, IRA that fought during the Irish War of Independence. As if no splinter group, no breakaway faction had ever emerged from the foul ranks of Irish nationalist terrorism.
Bad enough that some people legitimise the Provisionals by erroneously referring to them as “the IRA”, thus giving PIRA/Sinn Fein sole ownership of a title that has been (and still is) claimed by a myriad of different Irish nationalist death squads, many of whom gleefully engaged in murderous feuds with each other at one time or another.
Little Eileen Kelly, aged just 6, killed in a feud between Provisional “the Ra” and Official “the Ra”.
Let me be perfectly clear; the Provisional IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The Official IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The Real IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The New IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The Continuity IRA…….you get the picture.
Every single one of these criminal gangs is, in some way, a splinter group, a breakaway faction. Some times they are a breakaway faction of a breakaway faction. Calling them “the IRA” aggrandises them. It implies that “the IRA”, and by extension, Irish republicanism, is a united, monolithic entity, rather than the deeply divided, often antagonistic, sordid collection of murder gangs that it is in reality.
The infantile word games of Irish nationalism should be avoided by Loyalists at all costs.
A young Catholic woman tarred and feathered by Provisional “the Ra”. Her ‘crime’? She was engaged to a soldier.
We must be careful and considered with our language and our choice of words. Just as no Loyalist would ever refer to Northern Ireland as “da norf”, in the way that Irish nationalists do, we should also never legitimise their absurd Disneyfication of history by repeating their moronic slang and saying “the Ra”.
The Psychology of Terror
It is pertinent to note that this kind of linguistic infantilism occurs within other organised crime groups too. The Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, often refer to themselves as “the outfit”, or “the firm”, or even “the family”. Of course, the American media does not legitimise the Mafia by borrowing these euphemisms.
The Aryan Brotherhood, an American neo-Nazi prison gang (which uses explicitly Irish nationalist imagery) refers to itself as “the brotherhood”, or “the Shamrock”, or just “the rock”.
Some up and coming young psychologist should study this phenomenon. Is their an innate need for the members and supporters of these groups to soften, or to minimise, the sinister image of said groups by giving them less threatening ‘pet names’? If so, is this need a conscious or sub-conscious one?
Is there perhaps, some natural, sub-conscious aversion to the crimes of these vile criminal gangs that the human mind seeks to counter by attaching a less obvious, less loaded name to the organisation that they support? Just as Far-Right groups tend to avoid the labels of “national-socialist’ or ‘fascist’.
I have long argued that Irish nationalism should be studied from a psychological perspective. It is, and always has been, an extreme ideology, it’s adherents clearly and unequivocally radicalised.
Irish republican herd mentality at it’s bloody and horrificworst.
Part of that radicalisation is ‘group think’, wherein nationalists/republicans are induced to think along party lines from a very young age. Going against the thinking or behaviour of “the community” is actively discouraged. Another way to describe this phenomenon would be a herd mentality.
Obviously young nationalist extremists are comfortable chanting “up the Ra” as part of a large, drink and drug fuelled mob, but would they, for example, be comfortable to stand alone, or in a very small group, and chant “up the Claudy bombers” or “up the nutting squad”?
Would they spit in the face of PIRA/Sinn Fein victims literally rather than just figuratively?
Would they stand in front of a group of RUC widows and screech “up the Ra”?
John Proctor, a young RUC officer murdered by “the Ra” while visiting his wife and newborn son in hospital.
I don’t think they’d have the guts. I think that many of these indoctrinated youngsters are so utterly brainwashed that they barely even think when they are singing about the Provisional IRA or running around in green, white and gold headbands emblazoned with “up the Ra”.
But take them out of their sectarian bubble, take them away from the mentality of the baying mob, take them out of their intellectual ghetto (if that is possible) and I think you will find that they are a lot more reticent about their glorification of Provo baby killers.
Culture Wars
Thankfully, the Feile an Phoibal hate-fest is coming under extreme scrutiny and those who justify the abhorrent chants and sectarian singing are becoming ever more marginalised. This has not happened by accident.
For years, Irish nationalists/republicans have waged a culture war against the Loyalist and Unionist people. We have watched on while they have attacked every facet of our culture and traditions. We have studied their tactics, their propaganda.
The Omagh bombing. Carried out by maniacs who also claim the title of “the Ra”.
If it were not for their own Nazi-esque supremacist attitudes towards Loyalists they would have seen this coming. They did not. Loyalists were too stupid to wage a culture war of their own they said. Loyalists are mere subhumans they said. Loyalists just aren’t capable of copying Irish nationalist tactics they said. They were wrong, as always.
Sinn Fein revisionism and the Disneyfication of the Provisional IRA is now opposed like never before. Ordinary nationalists are being exposed to the real historical truth like never before and now the cultural counter-attack is entering a new phase.
Would the drunken & drugged up louts who attended Feile be comfortable singing “oh ah up the baby killers”?
The Loyalist community will never again tolerate the casual glorification and normalisation of Irish nationalist terrorism at publicly funded events. We will never again tolerate the squalid, repulsive and infantile Disneyfication of Provo murder gangs.
Sing “oh ah up the Ra” in your pubs, your GAA clubhouses and your shebeens. Sing all you want but we, Loyalists, are going to make damn sure that your sectarian sing-alongs never again receive a penny of public funding.
Consciously or sub-consciously sanitise and soften your sadistic, psychotic Provo heroes by calling them “the Ra”, but know this – we won’t indulge your fantasies. We will never let you forget what “the Ra” did to men, women, children and even babies. We will never accept your behaviour as normal. We will never allow radicalised extremists to dictate what is, or is not, culturally acceptable.
Let us begin this blog post by reiterating our condemnation of the recent video which emerged of a number people, who would probably describe themselves as Unionists or Loyalists, singing a vile and hateful song about Michaela McAreavey, who was murdered whilst on honeymoon in Mauritius in 2011.
Those people do not represent anybody but themselves. Songs like the one they sang about Mrs McAreavey are sick and disgusting. There can be no justification for such sectarian behaviour, no “ifs or buts”. It was wrong. It was deeply offensive. It was spiteful. It was sick. Full stop.
Unfortunately, some of the reaction to it has been every bit as hateful, bigoted and sectarian. People have reacted to a hateful incident by being just as hateful themselves. It has become a vicious circle of sectarianism. A closed loop of hate, bigotry, anger, outrage, offence and distrust, leading to yet more hate, bigotry, anger, outrage, offence and distrust.
Make no mistake about it – if we truly want Northern Ireland to work, if we genuinely want our wee country to have normality and stability, then that vicious circle of sectarianism and hatred must be broken.
We cannot break that circle by reacting to hate and sectarianism with even more hate and sectarianism.
Houses of Glass
Irish nationalists went into meltdown over the “McAreavey incident”, which allegedly took place inside an Orange Hall, although that has yet to be confirmed. They were justified in doing so. I would have expected nothing less.
But one would have supposed that those who were most vociferous would be those with the “cleanest hands” in regard to bigotry and sectarianism, right? Wrong. Instead we saw some of the most bitter, hate-fuelled and sectarian people in the British Isles labelling the entire Unionist/Loyalist community as being “subhuman”, gloating about the death of Protestants, calling for political parties to be banned, calling for mass ethnic cleansing etc etc etc.
Jimmy Bell was Rangers FC kitman until his untimely death from cancer just before the Europa League final. “Normal organisations” according to a lot of Irish nationalists include; PIRA/Sinn Fein, the AOH, the IPLO etc
We saw old sectarian stereotypes brought back to the fore. We saw people (who yes, of course, were justifiably angry) berate, lecture, demonise and vilify the entire PUL community.
We saw the old buzzwords coming back out. We saw people calling for the Orange Institution to be banned. We saw people call for the idiots responsible for the original incident to be killed.
In short; we saw a reaction which was every bit as vile, sectarian and bigoted as the original instance of sectarianism and hatred.
Loyalists and Unionists tried to bring some sort of balance to the social media furore. The very many instances of sectarian singing by GAA teams, Celtic supporters groups, casual groups of Irish nationalists etc were all highlighted.
But rather than condemn such incidents, nationalists and republicans attempted to downplay them or even justify them.
Contrast and compare with the reaction to the original “Dundonald video” by Unionists and Loyalists, who universally condemned it.
“How Can I Make This About Me?”
The reaction of some politicians and so-called journalists was just as sickening. Rather than condemn the original incident, condemn sectarianism and call for unity, one or two well known individuals attempted to make personal capital from the incident.
I will not dignify those wretched people by naming them here, my readers know who I am referring to, or should at least have a fair idea.
By attempting to use this incident for their own ends, they have not only trivialised it, but also added yet more insult to injury.
These are people who should know better but who have, unfortunately, been able to make careers out of personalising serious societal issues and exploiting communal divisions for their own selfish ends.
The media
Certain broadcasters and “news outlets” (I use the term loosely) are also guilty of stoking intercommunal tensions. It is only right that they should have reported on the story, of course, but certain sections of the media actually appear to be trying to keep the story in the news, long after it actually was news.
Their actions were grossly irresponsible. At a time when Northern Ireland as a whole had united in disgust, certain people in the media decided it was a good idea to throw fuel onto the fire.
All Unionist political parties condemned it, including the DUP. Would these same people support a ban on Sinn Fein? Soaradh? The IRSP? The GAA?
Don’t be Mistaken
This blog post is not an attempt to deflect away from, nor to justify the abhorrent, hateful, sick behaviour of a few drunken idiots singing a despicable, moronic, nasty song about the death of an innocent woman. It is merely an analysis of the reaction to that ugly, sectarian and undignified incident.
An incident which, as I’ve already stated, was roundly condemned by the Unionist/Loyalist community as a whole.
If only the Irish nationalist/republican community was as robust in their condemnation of hate.
If only, even just once, we could see or hear the so-called political “leadership” of that community call out and unequivocally condemn the actions of the legion of sectarian bigots, racists and misogynistic idiots who attack, ridicule, mock, disparage and generally harass Unionists and Loyalists on a daily basis.
Calls for mass ethnic cleansing, like this one above, are posted online by Irish nationalist extremists on a daily basis.
If only. Yesterday our ISOT twitter account posted a screenshot of Irish nationalists mocking the murder of Lord Mountbatten and four others (the dead included 2 children). We asked nationalists/republicans to condemn it.
Only one did so.
So, which community has the biggest problem with hatred and bigotry? Which community unites in condemnation of sectarianism and which community, when confronted with bigotry and prejudice, goes into a solemn and stonewall silence?
It is up to you to decide for yourself. I will however make a prediction; before the end of 2022, a video will surface of nationalists/republicans mocking the death of Protestants, or British soldiers, or RUC officers, or singing songs glorifying the heinous actions of the INLA, Provisional IRA, IPLO etc, or desecrating a War Memorial, or vandalising an Orange Hall and the vast majority of Irish nationalists will ignore it and pass no comment.
Unfortunately that is the society that we live in and, equally unfortunately, that is the society we will continue to live in unless everyone has the moral courage to condemn sectarianism regardless of it’s source.
Loyalists and Unionists have no difficulty in condemning and calling out bigotry and hatred from wherever it may emanate. Irish nationalism however does not seem ready, or able, to face up to it’s own problems in this regard. That is a fundamental difference and it is one that I intend to address at a later date.
For a very large number of nationalists and republicans condemnation of sectarian hatred seems to be a kind of bizarre one-way process. One in which they expect “sackcloth and ashes” from the Unionist/Loyalist community when a member of that community oversteps the bounds of acceptable behaviour, but conversely, remain steadfastly silent when it comes to members of their own community.
Such hypocrisy and partisanship will forever be an obstacle on the road to eradicating sectarianism.
As we fast approach another NI Assembly election I believe it is time for an open and frank discussion about Stormont and it’s future.
The Northern Ireland Assembly, as it is currently constituted, is in urgent need of reform and rejuvenation. There are very few who would disagree that, at present, Stormont is dysfunctional, bloated and top heavy.
When it was first conceived, the Assembly was expected to be a parliament for all; one in which all political views were represented. It’s original 108 seat composition was designed to give small parties, especially those who were pivotal to the “Peace Process”, such as the PUP and Ulster Democratic Party, a reasonable chance to have representation.
Gary McMichael (UDP) & David Ervine (PUP)
Such was the naivety of the time. Although the PUP did garner sufficient votes to have 2 MLAs elected in the early years of the Assembly, the Ulster Democratic Party did not, and thus a party which had been right at the very heart of the Peace Process and the drafting of the Good Friday Agreement was excluded from one of the very institutions that they had helped to create.
Northern Ireland would be in a much better place had the Unionist and Loyalist electorate voted for McMichael and Adams in the same kind of numbers as they voted for Paisley and McCrea, that however is a discussion for another day.
Instead of a “parliament for all” Ulster got a toothless regional assembly which quickly devolved back to the local default setting of Orange vs Green.
Orange, Green and…….Yellow
Today things are even worse, for now we have a toothless, bloated and unworkable regional assembly dominated by the largest “Orange” party and the largest “Green” party, with an otherwise irrelevant Yellow party holding the balance of power. We deserve better!
Of course, the Stormont Assembly has been trimmed down a little. Gone are the days of 6 MLAs for every constituency (in the forlorn hope that the peace-makers would all get a seat at the table). Now each constituency elects 5 members, but that is still far too many.
If Ulster politics is to be forever dominated by Orange, Green and…erm…….whatever, then we must have a smaller, leaner and more efficient Assembly. One which is functional and fit for purpose.
A Better Way
The old (dearly lamented) Parliament of Northern Ireland, which was illegally and unconstitutionally prorogued on that black day in March, 1973, had 52 elected members.
Coat of Arms of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, unconstitutionally stolen away from us on the 30th of March, 1972
52 Members of Parliament was more than sufficient, although I will concede that the use of the “First Past the Post” electoral system was ill suited to Northern Ireland.
It is not the position of ISOT that we go back to having 52 separate little constituencies, each electing a single representative, although that would make for some rather interesting results at election time.
Instead, what we propose is that the number of MLAs per constituency be reduced from 5 to 3, or even to just two. Thus radically reducing the total number of Assembly members.
Reducing the size of the Assembly down to 54 MLAs (or fewer) might be a little drastic, since that is only two more members than the old Parliament of Northern Ireland (which remains to this day the sole legal and legitimate legislature of this country!) and, of course, the population of NI has grown a little since 1972, however, having 4 MLAs elected to each constituency still gives us a total of 72, which is too many for such a small electorate.
Better perhaps to have a kind of “top up” system like the one used in Scotland and Wales, in which a certain number of members are elected from geographical constituencies and that number is then topped up by the election of a number of representatives from “regional constituencies”, some times known as “regional lists”.
The Welsh Example (enghraifft hCymraeg)
We will take Senedd Cymru (the Welsh Parliament) as our example. In Wales forty of the Members of the Senedd are elected from single-member constituencies on a “plurality voting system” (first past the post) basis, the constituencies being equivalent to those used for the House of Commons. A further twenty members are elected from regional “closed lists” using an alternative party vote.
There are five regions: Mid and West Wales, North Wales, South Wales Central, South Wales East and South Wales West, each of which returns four members.
If we imagine a similar system in Northern Ireland, we could have 2 members of the Assembly elected from each of our 18 Westminster constituencies, giving us 36 MLAs, with a further 24 elected from regional lists- with 4 regions each electing 6 MLAs. The total number of Assembly Members would be 60, the same as in Wales, which has a population of about 3.1 million, compared to Northern Ireland with its population of around 1.85 million.
Sixty Assembly Members would be more than enough and it would be quite straightforward to divide NI into 4 electoral regions, for example the simplest division would be; Greater Belfast, Antrim and Londonderry, Armagh and Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone.
What it Would Mean
This would make for some interesting results. Most constituencies would be either “Orange” or “Green”, although the likes of Fermanagh/South Tyrone, South Belfast and North Belfast might well buck that trend.
Without going into the results of past Assembly elections or doing any number crunching whatsoever (ie pulling the results off the top of my head and using my political anorak super-powers) I would envision that the geographic (ie Westminster constituencies) would look something like this-
North Antrim; 1 DUP, 1 TUV
South Antrim; 1 UUP, 1 DUP
East Antrim; 2 DUP
Lagan Valley; 2 DUP?
North Belfast; 1 SF, 1 DUP (maybe 2 SF)
East Belfast; 1 DUP, 1 Naomi Long
South Belfast; 1 SDLP, 1 UUP?
West Belfast; 2 SF
Upper Bann; 1 DUP, 1 UUP
North Down; 1 DUP, 1 UUP
Strangford; 2 DUP (maybe 1 DUP, 1 UUP)
South Down; 1 SF, 1 SDLP
Newry & Armagh; 2 SF
Fermanagh/South Tyrone; 1 SF, 1 DUP
Mid-Ulster; 2 SF?
West Tyrone; 2 SF
Foyle; 1 SF, 1 SDLP
East Londonderry; 2 DUP (maybe 1 DUP, 1 Ind. Unionist
As you can see, many constituencies would become quite monolithic; some solidly DUP, some solidly Sinn Fein. Such is the tribal nature of politics here.
The results from the regional lists would be more interesting. Would Greater Belfast elect 2 Unionists, or 3? Would Alliance win a seat?
Naomi Long of the Alliance Party
In Fermanagh/Tyrone would Unionists be able to take 2 seats or just one? In Armagh/Down would it be a 4/2 split in favour of the Unionist parties or an even 3/3 between Unionist and nationalist?
Antrim/Londonderry would perhaps be the most fascinating. The Unionist votes of North Antrim, East Londonderry, East Antrim, Lagan Valley and South Antrim would outweigh the Irish nationalist votes of Foyle and South Londonderry, but by how much? 4/2, or could it even be 5/1?
Let us speculate for a moment; let’s say that in Greater Belfast Sinn Fein win 2 seats and that the SDLP, DUP, UUP and Alliance each win one seat. In Armagh/Down we have an even Unionist/nationalist split, with the DUP taking 2, Sinn Fein taking 2 and the SDLP and UUP each picking up seat.
Let’s suppose that in Fermanagh/Tyrone Sinn Fein win 4 seats, with the SDLP and DUP winning one each and that in the Antrim/Londonderry region the DUP get 3, and the UUP, SF and the SDLP each get one seat. Let us further assume that my earlier predictions/presumptions were correct, that gives us a 60 member Assembly composed of –
DUP – 22
Sinn Fein – 21
UUP – 7
SDLP – 7
Alliance – 2
TUV – 1
Of course this is all just pure speculation, indeed, it is speculation on a hypothetical election the type of which will most likely never happen but I believe that it demonstrates that a 60 member NI Assembly is both workable and representative.
It is, however, not only the size of the Assembly that is the problem, it is the mechanics of the Assembly too.
Mandatory Coalition is simply unworkable in the long term and must be replaced by voluntary power-sharing. The largest Unionist party and the largest nationalist/republican party undertaking (pre-election) to form an executive perhaps? With the next 2 largest parties automatically designated as the official opposition?
Soaradh and Provisional Sinn Fein. Same crap different decades.
Of course, all this is just ‘pie in the sky’. There is little incentive for any of our political parties to reduce the number of grossly overpaid MLAs, and there are at least 2 parties who do not want Stormont to work, Provisional Sinn Fein being one of them.
In fact, Sinn Fein do not want Northern Ireland to work, full stop. Thus having them in government is actually quite ludicrous, although political realities must be accepted and one cannot simply ignore the mandate given to the Provisional republican movement, as lamentable as it is.
For the foreseeable future it looks as though the long suffering people of Northern Ireland are going to be stuck with a DUP/SF duopoly, despite it’s obvious flaws.
Despite all the forecasts of DUP disaster, despite what opinion polls might predict, it is highly likely that the DUP will remain the largest Unionist party. I’m unsure whether that’s a positive or a negative.
This Assembly election could have been a golden opportunity to reform and rejuvenate the NI Assembly. Instead we are headed for another “us vs them” election in which the real losers will be the ordinary people of this country.
Trimming the Fat
The decision on the shape and direction of our “toy-town parliament” could, of course, be taken out of the hands of local politicians.
Westminster could decide to “trim the fat” and save the Ulster taxpayer a few million pounds in MLA’s wages. I’m not entirely sure that it is within their power, perhaps such a decision is one which the Assembly itself would have to make.
Could central government take steps to reform Stormont over the objections of those who have their snouts in the trough? Or is the devolved legislature a devolved matter?
I am not entirely sure. What I am entirely sure of however, is that the “powers that be” in London centralised our health care system with apparent glee, closing hospitals and A&E departments right, left and centre, and had the audacity to tell a credulous public that it was in their own best interests!
They then took the knife to our local councils, reducing them from 26 to just 11. Why can they not then even propose that we reduce the number of MLAs even if they have no authority to impose such a reduction?
There would be no backlash from the vast majority of the voting public, many of whom already suffer from an acute form of political fatigue.
The only backlash that is likely to come would be from the vested interests themselves – ie the political parties.
Would it be cynical of me to suggest that an MLA in imminent danger of losing his/her (extremely well paid position) would fight much harder to ensure that didn’t happen than they would to stop the mass closure of local hospitals or the ruthless gutting of local councils?
No real discussion on the future of our democracy will take place however. No radical proposals will be considered. This is yet another tragedy of our divided society.
Loyalism Offers Hope
Would an open and civil debate on the number of MLAs and the form of our devolved assembly not be infinitely more helpful than yet another angry exchange about a so-called gaelic language act, or the non-existent “discussion” about a possible border poll?
A happy, hopeful, progressive and not at all radicalised Sinn Fein activist.
Of course it would, but it won’t happen because the future of, the very existence of, one of our biggest political parties is dependent on selling fantasies to it’s voters instead of actually trying to make Northern Ireland work for everyone, whilst another of the largest parties seems to lack any kind of clear vision for the future at all.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Loyalism offers a real alternative. Grassroots Loyalism is seeing a once in a generation resurgence. Young Loyalist voices are coming out of their communities and rising to prominence.
All over Northern Ireland, Loyalists are working for real change, not just for their own community but for everyone. We are still 10+ years away from seeing this translated into success at the ballot box, but such success is inevitable. The Loyalist working class has been failed by “big house” Unionism for the last time. From now on Loyalists will speak for themselves. Some people have their own narrow, incorrect and/or outdated notions about Loyalism but those who are not prejudiced or misinformed know that Loyalism is a radical and populist force. A force for change.
Much of the Belfast Agreement is based upon ideas put forward by the UDA and the Ulster Democratic Party in their ‘Common Sense’ (aka ‘Northern Ireland – An Agreed Process’) policy document of 1987.
Lyttle, Barr and McMichael of the UDP.
It was the Ulster Democratic Party who first proposed the idea of a bill of rights for NI, and it was Loyalists who were always first to explore ways of ending the conflict and building peace, meeting with their mortal enemies on many occasions, such as in Libya in 1974.
Loyalists will not shy away from the hard questions. Loyalists will not be governed by self-interest. If the Stormont Assembly still exists in 10 or 15 years time, then it will be Loyalism which will ensure that it is reformed and given fresh impetus.
The time for an open discussion about the future of the NI Assembly and its makeup is now, but it will not happen now. That is down to the lack of vision of all the parties presently represented there.
Business as Usual
A grand old lady who deserves a real Parliament.
As usual in this country, the things we should be talking about today are pushed to one side, only for us to return to the issue at some point in the future when next we have a collective moment of clarity and decide that we do actuallywant to create a society worth living in.
In the meantime Provisional Sinn Fein will continue to sell a fairytale to their gullible voters, the DUP will continue to use scare tactics on theirs and an irrelevant, condescending, toxic little yellow cabal will continue to hold the balance of power.
For now that is the grim reality of Ulster politics. For some reason I’m reminded of a quote by a certain Dutch philosopher….
“In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king” ~Desiderius Erasmus
We are astounded and disgusted by the tone and content of the latest report into so-called “collusion” by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.
Following on from the utter balderdash released by PONI with regards to the actions and activities of the North Antrim and Londonderry Brigade UDA/UFF (1989-94), that office has now released a further erroneous and, frankly, scandalous report, this time on the activities of the South Belfast Brigade UDA/UFF during the same time period.
Despite the fact that no actual tangible evidence of “collusion” was found, the Police Ombudsman has once more obfuscated, employed some semantic gymnastics and, apparently, tailored the final report to suit the entirely false historical narrative of the Provisional republican movement.
Once again the absurd phrase “collusive behaviour” has been trotted out. Once again the presence of police informers within the ranks of a Loyalist organisation has been presented as “collusion”.
This appears to be an attempt to reinforce the ridiculous, simplistic, reductionist and childish narrative which PIRA/Sinn Fein has been carefully crafting since the late 1980s.
If, as intimated by the Police Ombudsman, the mere presence of informers within the ranks of an armed group constitutes “collusion”, then when might we expect reports and inquiries into the crimes and atrocities of the Provisional IRA, Official IRA, INLA, IPLO, Real IRA etc?
It is our opinion that the Police Ombudsman is using her office (and public money) to propagate the mythos of Irish republicanism.
PONI apparently spares no effort in attempts to tarnish the reputation of the Security Forces & dismiss the actions of Loyalists.
Irish nationalism has to demonise the Security Forces in order to justify the murder of off-duty Police reservists, former UDR men murdered whilst driving school buses, RUC officers shot in the back whilst buying a newspaper etc.
There is no better way to do that than to propagate the myth that “collusion” was institutional and widespread.
If nationalists/republicans can convince the gullible that Loyalist armed groups were mere proxies of the British state and/or the Security Forces, so much the better for them.
Furthermore, Irish nationalism simply has no room for Loyalists. The ludicrous narrative spun by these demented, radicalised individuals is one of “brave native gaels” vs “the evil British empire”. Loyalists and Unionists are dismissed, as either misguided and stupid, or as barely human “planter colonists”.
Nationalists simply cannot recognise Loyalists as an independent and independently thinking people. Therefore, Loyalist paramilitary organisations must be dismissed as being mere puppets of the “evil Brits”.
This (almost comical) historical narrative seems to have been fully embraced by the Police Ombudsman who seems indecently eager to bolster it, even going so far as to coin the Sinn Fein-esque term “collusive behaviour”.
Why, when the PONI report clearly states: “This investigation has found no evidence that police were in possession of intelligence which if acted on, could have prevented any of the attacks“, has the phrase “collusive behaviours” been once again trotted out?
Why, if no real evidence of “collusion” was found (certainly not enough to warrant prosecutions) did the Police Ombudsman state that the allegations of collusion made by relatives and politically motivated ‘relatives groups’ were: “legitimate and justified”?
Is the Police Ombudsman biased in favour of a particular community or a particular political party? It would seem so.
Any suspicion of bias is ample reason for Loyalists and Unionists to call for her to resign and that is exactly what our elected representatives should be doing!. Furthermore, they should also be calling for the post of Police Ombudsman to be abolished and for it to be replaced by an independent police complaints commission.
Historical legacy issues are being weaponised by Irish nationalist extremists. It is astounding, and utterly unacceptable, that they should be assisted in doing so by any public office, not least that of the supposedly impartial Police Ombudsman.
We urge all Unionist political parties, all Loyalist and Unionist community groups and all individual Loyalists and Unionists, to join us in calling for the resignation of the present Police Ombudsman.
There must be some semblance of balance in regard to legacy issues. There must be equality with respect to the re-investigation of Troubles related attacks and there must be no more pandering to the Provisional republican movement.
The Irish nationalist/republican narrative surrounding so-called “collusion” has changed over the years. Republicans used to allege that there was collusion between Loyalists and state agencies (RUC, MI5, UDR etc) in a relatively small number of cases, mostly involving the killing of high profile republicans.
Since the end of the Troubles though, that narrative has undergone a rapid evolution. Firstly, nationalists and republicans began to allege collusion between Loyalists and the Army in bomb attacks on targets in the Irish Republic.
Then they began to allege that collusion was much more widespread. More and more incidents were added to the list.
Now the nationalist/republican narrative is that “collusion” was institutional and so widespread that some Irish nationalists now earnestly believe that every single attack carried out by Loyalist armed groups was an instance of collusion.
The Police Ombudsman’s report, released this week, into the actions of the Londonderry and North Antrim Brigade, Ulster Freedom Fighters, inevitably gave further credence to the Irish nationalist/republican narrative.
That report, whilst finding little or no actual evidence of “collusion”, was littered with innuendo and loaded terms such as “collusive behaviour”. All of which was designed to help prop up the nationalist narrative.
A large section of the nationalist community is now convinced that the UDA/UFF and UVF were mere “proxies”, either of the Army or the RUC, depending on who you ask, and that new narrative is being spread at an alarming rate.
With that in mind we felt that it now would be a good time to ask a few questions about the PIRA/Sinn Fein sanctioned version of history and, specifically, about the ever changing narrative with regards to so-called “collusion”.
We will follow up with a few more questions about the very real phenomenon of collusion between Irish republican murder gangs and a whole list of outside agencies (including the Irish government and the Libyan government) in a couple of weeks time.
Our list of questions is not exhaustive and many of our readers will, no doubt, have their own questions.
Will any nationalist/republican be brave enough to answer these questions? I doubt it. Nevertheless, it is a useful exercise. If nothing else we will expose to wider scrutiny the contradictions and gaps in logic of this toxic and pernicious narrative, which is designed to lump together all those whom Irish nationalist extremists regard to be their enemies and to blacken the name of innocent people, especially those who served in the RUC and UDR.
Q1: If Loyalist paramilitary groups were “directed by the British state”, why were thousands of Loyalists imprisoned for political offences?
Q2: If the Irish nationalist narrative is true, why did the RUC/Army/MI5 etc allow the murder of Billy Wright inside a supposedly high security prison?
Q3: Nationalists and republicans allege that the UFF and UVF were ineffective groups who rarely succeeded in killing republican terrorists, how can that be if the “collusion” narrative is true?
Q4: Why, if the republican version of history is accurate, did the state proceed with so-called “super grass trials” involving more Loyalists than republicans?
Q5: Furthermore, why did the state allow the details of those Loyalists involved in “super grass trials” to become public knowledge?
Q6: Why would Loyalists accuse RUC Special Branch of colluding with the Provisional IRA in the murder of a number of leading Loyalists?
Q7: Why did Loyalists and republicans alike refer to Castlereagh Holding Centre as “Castlereagh Torture Centre”? Surely Loyalists would have been given preferential treatment?
Q8: Why, in many cases, were allegations of collusion not made at the time or shortly afterwards?
Q9: Why, if the republican narrative is true, were Loyalists statistically more likely to be arrested, charged and convicted of political offences than their Irish nationalist counterparts?
Q10: If, as some nationalists allege, the UDA/UFF and UVF were controlled and directed by the RUC, who shot and killed RUC Const. Michael Logue on the 29th of December, 1973?
Q11: If Loyalist paramilitary groups were mere proxies of the state, why did the state spend time, money and energy in “psy-ops” designed to damage those groups?
Q12: If the republican version of history is accurate, then the RUC must have formed the modern UVF in 1966, is that plausible?
Q13: Why did the East Belfast Brigade of the UDA briefly “declare war” on the British Army in 1973?
Q14: If, as claimed by Irish nationalists, there was collusion between the UFF and the state in the run-up to the Greysteel attack, why were the four men responsible for that attack swiftly arrested and charged?
Q15: If Loyalist paramilitary groups were mere “proxies of the British state”, why didn’t “the British state” provide safe-haven for wanted Loyalists in England, Scotland and Wales?
Q16: Why did Loyalists frequently get into often violent confrontations with the Security Forces?
Q17: Why did Loyalist armed groups kill suspected informers on a fairly regular basis if such groups were, in their entirety, controlled and/or directed by the RUC, MI5 etc?
Q18: Why were members of the North Antrim and Londonderry Brigade UDA convicted of stealing weapons from the UDR base in Coleraine? Surely, if the republican narrative is to be believed, the UDA/UFF had no need to resort to stealing guns?
Q19: Why would members of organisations which were directed/controlled by the state and/or Security Forces, resort to armed robbery, protection rackets etc in order to raise funds for those organisations?
Q20: Why would the Security Forces operate a so-called “shoot to kill” policy if, as nationalists allege, they already had Loyalist groups to carry out killings on their behalf? Do these two components of the nationalist/republican narrative not conflict with each other?
Q21: Who killed Kenneth Stronge and why?
Q22: If Loyalist paramilitary groups were mere “proxies of the British state”, then why did Loyalist prisoners embark on a protest campaign for political segregation in prisons in the early 1980s? Surely their “controllers” would have granted segregation without the need for at least one Loyalist POW to almost die on hunger strike?
Q23: Why didn’t those “directing and controlling” the UFF and UVF ever supply those groups with plastic explosives, such as Semtex, PATP or C4?
Q24: Why did the Army shoot UDA volunteer John Black in June, 1972?
Q25: Why did Loyalist groups, principally the UDA, establish “no go areas” in parts of Belfast and Londonderry in the Summer of 1972? Why would they have any reason to keep the RUC and Army out of Loyalist areas?
Q26: Why did Loyalists kill UDR man Henry Russell if, as nationalists allege, the UDR was working hand-in-hand with Loyalist paramilitaries?
Q27: Why, in 1984, did Billy Wright make a public statement (published in at least two newspapers) that he believed that he would be killed by the Security Forces?
Q28: Why was UDA volunteer Robert Warnock shot dead by the RUC in September, 1972? Why did police make little effort to arrest him but instead opened fire?
Q29: Why did a member of the UDR save the life of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams after a UFF assassination attempt in 1984?
Q30: Furthermore, why was the ammunition used in that attack tampered with by the Security Forces in order to render it ineffective?
Q31: Why, if the republican narrative is true, did “the state”, RUC, British Intelligence, etc etc, permit the Ulster Workers Council strike? Why was the UDA not ordered to call off the strike?
Loyalists during the UWC strike.
Q32: Furthermore, why did the Army have to make contingency plans to staff the power stations during the latter part of the UWC strike? Couldn’t the UWC/UDA simply have been told not to shut down the power stations?
Q33: Why was UVF volunteer Brian Robinson killed by undercover soldiers? Why didn’t they simply allow Robinson and his accomplice to escape?
Q34: Why did Loyalist activists make use of safe houses throughout Northern Ireland? Why did they feel it necessary to avoid arrest or possible death at the hands of the Security Forces?
Q35: If the nationalist/republican narrative is true, why was a huge UVF arms shipment, purchased on the black market from an Eastern European arms dealer, intercepted at Teesport, England, in November, 1993?
Q36: At the time of his arrest, David Ervine, a UVF member at the time, was ordered by the Army to make safe the bomb he was transporting. Is this the action of people allied to, or working with, the UVF?
Q37: The Army and RUC knew the location of dozens of “on the run” republican terrorists who were living openly in the Irish Republic. If the Security Forces really were providing Loyalist groups with information, why was only such individual (John Francis Green) ever killed in a cross-border raid by Loyalists?
Q38: Some nationalists/republicans now allege that the UFF Active Service Unit that killed leading Provo Eddie Fullerton were “escorted” across the border by the RUC, but it is an established fact that the ASU actually crossed Lough Foyle by boat, how can both be true?
Q39: Why did Loyalists have to resort to stealing commercial explosives from quarries and coal mines in Scotland if, as nationalists allege, they were being armed by state agencies?
Q40: The RUC had thousands of officers and civilian employees. Republicans say that “collusion” was an open secret. Why didn’t any RUC officer or employee go public with allegations of “collusion” at any time during the Troubles?
Q41: It has become a popular nationalist trope that the UDR were nothing more than Loyalist paramilitaries in official uniform. Do they include the many Catholics who served in the UDR? Are they openly admitting that, far from being sectarian, Loyalist paramilitary groups were actually “cross community” organisations?
Q42: Why was Tennent Street police station on the exclusively Loyalist Shankill Road area of West Belfast, attacked on several occasions, with the RUC barracks coming under “sustained fire from the local UDA” on one occasion?
Q43: Why did the UDA kill RUC Const. Andrew Harron and why was one of the men convicted of his killing the only man in the history of the Troubles to be sentenced to death?
Q44: If the RUC was “directing and controlling” the UDA/UFF and UVF, why was Const. Gregory Taylor killed in Ballymoney in 1997?
RUC man Greg Taylor
Q45: How did Loyalists react to the killing of civilians by the British Army in the Shankill area in the early days of the Troubles? Why was there such a reaction if Loyalist groups were mere “proxies” of the Army, RUC etc?
Q46: Loyalist paramilitary groups, especially the UVF, manufactured home made weapons in underground arms factories across Ulster, but why was this necessary if the republican narrative is true and Loyalists were being supplied with guns by the Security Forces?
Weapons made in secret UVF arms factories and subsequently uncovered and seized by the Security Forces.
Q47: If the nationalist/republican narrative is accurate, then why did Army technical officers have such difficulty defusing Loyalist explosive devices? Wouldn’t those same technical officers (ie Bomb Disposal) have been the ones instructing and directing the Loyalist bomb makers?
Q48: Why did the Army save the lives of Bernadette Devlin and her husband after they were seriously injured in a UFF gun attack at their home? Why would the Army save the lives of 2 senior republicans that Loyalists had just tried to kill?
Q49: Furthermore, why were the UFF Active Service Unit not permitted to escape?
Q50: In the wake of the signing of the Anglo-Irish diktat, Loyalists carried out more than 500 attacks on the homes of RUC personnel. 120 RUC officers were forced out of their homes completely. If the nationalist/republican narrative is true, then why were Loyalists attacking the RUC and why were such attacks not stopped?
Q51: In a report published in 1985, the RUC Chief Constable, Jack Hermon, severely criticised Loyalist parades. If, as nationalists allege, the RUC controlled and/or directed the UDA, why didn’t they use that group to curtail or discourage Loyalist parades?
Q52: On the 16th of October, 1972, two young UDA volunteers were killed by the Security Forces during rioting in East Belfast. If the republican narrative is true, then why were Loyalist rioters attacking the police and Army and why did the Army respond with lethal force?
Q55: In response to the deaths of the two UDA men the previous day, the Loyalist paramilitary group opened fire on the British Army in at least 7 different areas of Belfast. A number of soldiers were wounded. How and why did this happen if the UDA were allies of, or controlled by, the very people that they were shooting at?
Q54: Why did the RUC refuse to enter some Loyalist areas without an Army escort being present?
Q55: In February, 1973, two Loyalist paramilitaries (one UVF member and one UDA member) were shot dead by the British Army, again in East Belfast, again during rioting. Do Irish nationalists regard this as some kind of “friendly fire” incident?
Q56: If the nationalist narrative is correct, then why were Loyalist groups permitted to target and even to assassinate members of the Prison Service? Did the RUC, MI5, Army (delete as applicable) regard the Prison Service as being dangerous terrorists?
Q57: Why did a number of Loyalist volunteers die in premature explosions? If republican allegations are true then wouldn’t the Army/UDR/MI5 have shown UDA and UVF bomb makers how to construct devices that wouldn’t go off whilst in transit?
Q58: In many instances, Loyalist paramilitary groups would assert that victims of their attacks were members of Irish nationalist terror gangs. When this was the case, the Security Forces never confirmed these claims but, paradoxically, would publicly deny such claims when they were not true (or when they could be plausibly denied). If they were acting in collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries, why would they do this?
Q59: Why did the Security Forces, principally the RUC, frequently raid the homes of Loyalists looking for arms, intelligence files etc?
Q60: Nationalists (now) allege that the RUC, as an organisation, acted in collusion with the UDA/UFF and UVF. Do they include the many RUC officers who were from a Catholic/nationalist background in that particular allegation?
Q70: Irish nationalists make much of the fact that the UDA/UFF, UVF and Ulster Resistance brought in a large quantity of arms from South Africa. If the republican narrative were accurate though, why were Loyalists buying weapons from a Lebanese arms dealer?
A portion of the ‘South African’ arms shipment – siezed by the RUC soon after it arrived in Ulster!
Q71: On the 10th of June, 1973, a bus driver (Samuel Rush) was killed in the crossfire during a gun battle between the Army and the UDA in East Belfast. If the nationalist narrative is true, then why were East Belfast UDA shooting at the British Army?
Q72: Just 13 days later, the UFF shot dead a Protestant man whom they alleged was an informer. If the republican narrative is accurate, why was such an action necessary?
Q73: During that Summer, the UFF carried out approximately 15 bomb attacks across Northern Ireland, some of which were no-warning attacks. If, as alleged, the Security Forces were directing/controlling the UDA/UFF, how did a wave of bomb attacks benefit the RUC, UDR and Army at a time when they were under immense pressure due to the number of republican bomb attacks?
Q74: The first RUC man to die in the recent conflict, Victor Arbuckle, died at the hands of a Loyalist gunmen in October, 1969. The last RUC officer killed — Frank O’Reilly — was also the victim of Loyalist violence. How does this tally with the Irish nationalist version of history?
Q75: Furthermore, does the “republican movement” intend to erase these RUC officers from history because their deaths contradict the official Irish nationalist narrative?
RUC Const. Frank O’Reilly
Q76: Why do Loyalists allege the involvement of the Security Forces in the death of UDA leader Tommy Herron? Did the SAS kill Herron as some people have claimed?
Q77: If, as nationalists allege, the UDA were mere “proxies of the British state”, why did Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi invite a UDA delegation to Libya to meet him in November, 1974?
Q78: Furthermore, why did British Intelligence/MI6 follow the 5 man UDA delegation throughout their trip to Libya?
Q79: Why were another 2 young UDA volunteers shot by the Army during “disturbances” in East Belfast in February, 1974?
Q80: If the nationalist narrative is true, why did the SDLP, Official Sinn Fein/Workers Party, Provisional Sinn Fein and other nationalist groups meet with the UDA on numerous occasions dating back as far as 1974? What would have been the point of meeting with an organisation that was merely a “front” for the Security Forces?
Q81: Why, if republican allegations are true, did the Security Forces establish a number of (often competing) Loyalist organisations? Wouldn’t a single organisation have been preferred?
Q82: Furthermore, why were Loyalist groups permitted to engage in violence against each other? If, as alleged, they were directed/controlled by the Security Forces, what possible advantage could there be in violent confrontation between the two main Loyalist groups?
Q83: If the UDA were mere “proxies of the British state”, why did they endorse the idea of an independent Northern Ireland? This was never supported by any British government. How does this tally with the Irish nationalist version of history?
Q84: Why would the Security Forces allow their “proxies” to carry out bomb attacks in England and Scotland?
Q85: The UDA/UFF and UVF killed a number of irish nationalist terrorists who later turned out to be high level informers. If the republican narrative is true, why would those “directing” Loyalist paramilitary groups permit them to kill republican informers/agents?
Brendan ‘Ruby’ Davison, PIRA terrorist, state agent/informer and alleged paedophile. Killed by the Ulster Volunteer Force, July, 1988.
Q86: Why did the RUC kill UDA volunteer Edward Walker, who was shot dead by the police in June, 1976, at Newtownabbey? Why was he not arrested?
Q87: On the 25th of June, 1966, a UVF unit went to the home of a prominent republican in the Falls Road area of West Belfast with the intention of killing the man. The target was not at home so the UVF men instead set fire to the man’s house. Do Irish nationalists believe that this incident involved “collusion” between the UVF and “state actors”?
Q88: During 1970, 42 nationalist owned licensed premises in mainly Unionist areas were bombed by the UVF. Was there collusion in these incidents?
Q89: If, as nationalists allege, the UDA and UVF were being controlled and directed by the RUC, MI5, UDR, Army etc, why did Loyalist paramilitary activity reduce to almost nothing in the mid 1980s?
Q90: Why, if the republican narrative is to be believed, did those “directing and controlling” Loyalist armed groups, allow the emergence of break-away groups such as the LVF?
Q91: Why didn’t Loyalist paramilitaries kill anyone between October, 1969 and October, 1971?
Q92: Why did the Security Forces kill UVF volunteer Sinclair Johnston?
Q93: If the UDA was “directed and controlled” by the RUC, or if the RUC were sympathetic to, or allied to the UDA, why were 41 RUC officers injured during the UDA/UUAC “Day of Action” in May, 1977?
Q94: Why did both the UDA and UVF target and kill people who were witnesses to robberies, shootings etc? Surely, if the republican narrative is true, Loyalists would have had no need to resort to such drastic measures to ensure their volunteers would not be jailed?
Q95: Why did the RUC raid UDA headquarters on several occasions whilst the UDA was still a legal organisation?
Q96: Furthermore, why did the British government bother to proscribe the UDA? If the UDA were the “proxies” of the British state, the state could surely have found some grounds for it to remain a legal organisation.
Q97: Why did the RUC kill UDA volunteer Stephen Hamilton?
Q98: If, as nationalists allege, the UDA was “directed and controlled” by the RUC, Army, MI5 etc, why was a criminal like James Craig permitted to rise to a position of leadership?
Q99: If Craig was put into a position of leadership by the RUC, Army, MI5 etc, why did they then allow the UFF to kill him?
Q100: Why did the RUC relentlessly target Johnny Adair and why was a totally new offence of “directing terrorism” invented in order to take Adair off the streets?
Q101: Most of the funds used to purchase the South African/Lebanese arms shipment came from the robbery of a bank in Portadown. Why was this necessary if the Security Forces/state were facilitating the arms deal?
Q102: If the nationalist narrative is true, why did the UFF open fire on an RUC patrol on the Shankill Road, Belfast, on the 10th of February, 1990?
Q103: If Loyalist paramilitary groups were mere “proxies of the British state”, why did those groups declare a ceasefire which lasted from the 29th of April until mid May and was designed to coincide with political talks between the four main parties (the Brooke-Mayhew talks)?
Q104: If, as nationalists allege, the UDA/UFF were “directed and controlled” by the Security Forces, why did the UFF firebomb government offices in Dundonald, Co. Down in December, 1991?
Q105: If the RUC having informers within Loyalist groups is described as “collusion” by Irish nationalists and republicans, then how do they describe the RUC running a huge number of informers within republican death squads such as the Provisional IRA?
Q106: Who killed Leonard Durber and why? Durber was a 26 year old soldier, fatally wounded in an incident in East Belfast in late 1972.
Q107: Why was UVF member Robert McIntyre shot dead by the UDR in 1973? Don’t republicans claim that the UDR were Loyalist paramilitaries in uniform?
Q108: Many officers from other UK Constabularies transfered to the RUC and served with distinction. If, as nationalists claim, “collusion” between the RUC and Loyalists was an “open secret”, why did none of those English, Welsh and Scottish officers go public about it?
Q109: In 1972, an RUC officer entered a Loyalist “no-go area” in the city of Londonderry, he was subsequently “arrested” and disarmed by a UDA patrol. How did this happen and why? Surely that incident alone disproves the new Irish nationalist narrative of the RUC “directing and controlling” the UDA?
Q110: Why were so few Loyalist attacks carried out in the Newry/South Armagh area, or in the cityside area of Londonderry, both of which had extremely heavy concentrations of Security Forces? Surely, if the republican narrative is accurate, then there should have been more attacks in such areas, not fewer?
Q111: Who killed RUC Const. Mildred Harrison, the first female police officer killed during the Troubles?
Q112: Why did the British Army shoot dead UVF volunteer Robert Wadsworth in Belfast, 1975?
Q113: Why did the UVF, whom many nationalists now claim were armed by the UDR/RUC/Army, resort to stabbing to death a Provisional IRA member in Castlewellan, Co. Down, on the 18th of May, 1975? Did the UVF unit responsible simply decide not to use the guns that Irish nationalists allege the Security Forces were handing out to them?
Q114: Furthermore, why did the “armed by the state” UVF stab to death another man who tried to prevent a bomb attack at Sallins, Co. Kildare, Éire in June, 1975? Perhaps the UVF had an expert knife thrower or a ninja in their ranks at the time?
Q115: If, as claimed by nationalists/republicans, Loyalist paramilitary groups were armed by “state actors”, then why did the newly formed UDA have to defend Loyalist areas of Belfast and Londonderry armed only with wooden cudgels, baseball bars and harsh language?
Q116: When do nationalists and republicans believe that “collusion” ended? In the early 2000’s the UDA carried out an extensive pipe-bomb campaign against nationalist targets across Northern Ireland. Do Irish nationalists believe that there was “collusion” in those attacks? Do they believe that the RUC or Army, or whoever, was “directing” the UDA in the years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement? If so, why did nationalist politicians not mention it at the time?
Q117: Why did the UVF target and kill RUC man Joe Campbell who was shot dead outside Cushendall police station in February, 1977? Do nationalists believe that this was just an example of a “lover’s tiff” between the UVF and the RUC?
Q118: Why did UVF/RHC activity drop off dramatically in 1978-81?
Q119: Why did the RUC kill UVF man William Miller in March, 1983? Was Miller’s death part of the “shoot to kill” policy that Irish nationalists used to complain about but now rarely ever mention?
Q120: On the 15th of November, 1985, why did the PAF force a taxi driver to take a 4lb bomb to it’s target – North Queen Street RUC Station? The device was defused by Army technical officers but why would the PAF target a police station if nationalist/republican allegations are true?
Q121: Is a wholehearted belief in the Irish nationalist/republican version of history a symptom of radicalisation, something akin to religious fanaticism or cult indoctrination?
Q122: If, as nationalists claim, Loyalist armed groups were being given intelligence reports by the Army, UDR, RUC, MI5 etc, why did so many Loyalist attacks in the 1970s focus on nationalist/republican bars, social clubs etc?
Q123: Why did the UVF adopt a policy (in the 90s) of killing the relatives of known PIRA, INLA members? What sense does that make if, as republicans allege, the UVF and UFF were being given detailed intelligence by the Security Forces?
Q124: The British agent/informer known by the codename ‘Stakeknife’ is believed to have been involved in dozens of Provisional IRA murders, do nationalists regard this as “collusion”? If not – why?
‘Stakeknife’?
Q125: Why is the nationalist/republican historical narrative continuing to evolve and change over time? Do other versions of historical events change in this manner?
There are at least 20-30 more questions we could include. In all honesty this blog post should have been written over the course of a couple of weeks, rather than one weekend.
Anybody who is really interested in the unvarnished truth must look at the available evidence and then make up their own minds.
Did some serving and former members of the UDR collude with Loyalist paramilitaries? Yes.
Was the UDR as a regiment guilty of the things that Irish nationalists and republicans allege? No.
Did such collusion all but end by the mid 1980s? Yes.
Did a (very) few RUC officers become involved with Loyalist armed groups? Yes.
Was this “widespread and institutional collusion”? No. In fact, it was a case of the UDA/UFF and UVF infiltrating the police.
Was the use of informers tantamount to “collusion”? No. If it was then almost every Irish nationalist act of violence could be considered an example of collusion.
Did republican gangs, in particular the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein, collude with outside “agencies”? Yes. Everyone from Colombian drug cartels to the Libyan state and everyone in between.
Was collusion between the Provos and “outside agencies” widespread? Yes.
In my opinion, a foreign government sending a terrorist organisation ship loads of arms and explosives amounts to pretty serious collusion. Far more so than a UDR man handing over a few files to the UFF or UVF in a pub.
Is being gifted tonnes of weaponry by a 3rd world dictator “collusion” or “state sponsored terrorism”?
Millions of dollars in cash and millions more in guns, contraband and cocaine is pretty serious collusion.
Unfortunately, in Northern Ireland today it seems that only one community is deserving of “truth and justice”. Even if the “truth” is massaged and reshaped a bit to suit the prevailing narrative.
And that dear readers is why it is vitally important for those who are interested in real truth and justice to ask difficult questions and to keep asking them until we get a few answers!
Democratic Unionist Party MLA Diane Dodds recently took to twitter to wish everyone a happy New Year.
In almost any other society, in any other country on Earth, this would have been totally unremarkable. Sadly though, we in Northern Ireland are plagued, tormented and held back by a disturbed, hateful, backward and downright toxic minority who will readily sieze any opportunity to spread their vitriolic and sectarian poison.
New year – same old nationalist bigotry, propaganda and hatred.
And so one particular twitter user decided to reply Mrs Dodds’ tweet with a sickening reference to the Dodds’ dead son, Andrew, who sadly passed away in 1998, aged just 8 years.
I have a screenshot of the offending message, as I’m sure do many others, but I am not going to post it to this blog. Suffice to say that it was sickening, vile and designed to cause as much hurt and offence as possible.
At this point you might well be asking yourself who would do such a thing, who would (and could) stoop so low?
The problem that Irish nationalists refuse to address – their own community’s hatred, racism and bigotry.
The answer is not “internet trolls” or “twitter trolls”. The answer is Irish nationalist extremists.
Irish nationalist extremists who believe that they can shut down social media users who do not share their bigoted, prejudiced and often racist worldview.
Irish nationalist extremists who cannot help themselves when it comes to expressing their irrational, psychotic hatred of anything Unionist, Loyalist, British or non-Catholic.
A (sizable) minority of radicalised individuals, often acting in an organised manner, who believe that social media, like the very soil of Northern Ireland, should belong solely to those who are Irish, “gaelic”, ultra-nationalist and Roman Catholic.
I am loathe to even mention religion but it has to be mentioned because the nationalist/republican trolls of twitter are absolutely obsessed with it.
To them “Catholic” and “irish nationalist” seem to be interchangeable terms which mean exactly the same. It is an outdated, archaic attitude. Almost medieval but, alas, it is an attitude which seems to be deeply ingrained within the nationalist community, especially amongst those extremists who spend the most time on social media.
It is not only sectarianism that oozes out of such individuals, they often spew out deeply racist comments, jibes, slurs and insults. They often engage in misogyny too, with Unionist/Loyalist women apparently seen as “fair game” by these pernicious, angry, embittered trolls.
Nothing is taboo to these Irish nationalist keyboard commandos. Nothing is too hateful, too ignorant, too vile, too rotten or too evil.
Twitter has no problem with users casually tweeting about sectarian genocide – as long as those users are Irish nationalists of course!
Such individuals call for widescale ethnic cleansing on a daily basis. They mock Ulster-Scots culture and deny the very existence of the Ullans leid. They insult the memory of terrorist victims. They goad the families of victims. They spread lies and disinformation. They libel people. They threaten people. They post ghoulish images of people murdered by Irish nationalist criminal gangs.
They justify the actions of republican murder gangs. They taunt people. They accuse people of drug dealing or of being members of proscribed organisations. They post offensive racist and sectarian memes. They applaud sectarian vandalism. They harass women. They harass elected representatives. They harass Loyalist activists and community workers. And they get away with it!
In the eyes of twitter support Irish nationalists can do no wrong. Even the vile, reprehensible tweet sent to Diane Dodds wasn’t deemed to violate twitters rules on abuse. Nationalists and republicans seem to be able to do and say exactly as they please whilst twitter bans other users for the most innocuous things.
Of course, the so-called political “leadership” of Irish nationalism remains steadfastly silent on the issue. They refuse to even acknowledge the problem.
One would expect such an attitude from Sinn Fein, the morally bankrupt political wing of the blood drenched Provisional IRA. One does not expect it, however, from the SDLP. Yet they are as silent, as acquiescenct, as the Shinners.
The Provisional republican movement will never criticise or rebuke Irish nationalist online trolls. Precisely because most of those trolls are Provisional Sinn Fein voters, supporters and, in many cases, party members and activists.
It is much more difficult to fathom why the SDLP, People Before Profit and Aontu will not acknowledge that the Irish nationalist community has a very real and very serious problem with online trolling, bigotry and sectarianism.
Profile picture of an Irish nationalist terrorist? No problem on twitter.
Some will feebly attempt to argue that “both sides are as bad as each other”. That’s a non-starter. It’s patent nonsense. We have challenged (and will continue to challenge) any individual who believes such propaganistic idiocy to produce their evidence and have offered to provide them with eight examples of nationalist bigotry and hate-speech for every one example they find from a supposedly Unionist or Loyalist social media account.
I don’t for one moment believe that the ratio is 8-1. I honestly believe that it is more likely to be at least 12-1 and possibly much higher even than that.
If the Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson took screenshots of the disturbing, disgusting and often sinister abusive replies his tweets recieve from Irish nationalists on a daily basis, I am 100% sure that he would have (literally) tens of thousands of examples and could probably add at least another 50 every single day.
ISOT have compiled almost 5,000 such screenshots. We continue to add that collection on a daily basis, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year. Even on Christmas day.
Why do we wade through such moronic bigotry, such vile and hateful crap? Because we believe that the problem is a serious one, one which destroys community cohesion and further deepens the catastrophic division which exists within Northern Ireland society.
“snouts” = Protestants
The issue of Irish nationalist online hate must be addressed, sooner rather than later. To their credit, some journalists have addressed it, though others, notably those who are themselves from a nationalist background, continue to ignore it.
Not every Irish nationalist is a social media troll of course. Many nationalists, like many other people, are not on social media and many of those who are conduct themselves in a civil and correct manner. Those people are not the problem. The problem is the very large number of Irish nationalists and republicans believe that abusing people on social media is an extension of the so-called ‘armed struggle’.
The same kind of people who sheltered, fed, funded and supported Irish nationalist murder gangs like the Official IRA, Provisional IRA, INLA and IPLO.
The kind of people who believe that their Protestant neighbours are “planters” and “colonists” and “immigrants”. The kind of people who have fully bought into the dehumanising anti-Loyalist and Anti-British narrative of Provisional Sinn Fein and it’s front organisations.
The kind of people who thought Ladfleg was hilarious satire when, to most impartial observers, it was nothing but a vicious, nasty and sectarian group of well organised trolls.
“trools”
Let’s not forget that the current crop of nationalist trolls learned their trade from “the Lads”. A group which was a rogue’s gallery of bitter Irish republican bigots, scam artists, Far-Left agitators, alcoholics and drug addicts.
Oops
It was Ladfleg that began the toxic and dehumanising “all Prodz is stoopid” narrative, now taken up with zeal by latter day nationalist trolls. It is also worth remembering that the ‘LAD’ group, as admitted by one of their own members, operated hundreds of social media ‘sock puppet’ accounts, a tactic now employed by Irish nationalist trolls more widely.
It was concerted pressure from Loyalists that put an end to that particular group, causing it to implode in spectacular fashion with former ‘Lads’ sending ourselves (and others) cringing messages, full of details of how the group operated etc., in the hope of distancing themselves the worst of the fall-out over its collapse.
It is much more difficult to expose and shut down the Irish nationalist/republican trolls operating on twitter currently. Indeed, it could be likened to trying to nail jelly to a wall.
Accounts appear and disappear. Some tweet a storm of abuse then remain dormant for months. Others keep up a steady drip, drip, drip of bigotry, propaganda, lies and insults.
Some, like the account responsible for the outrageous and disgusting tweet sent to Diane Dodds, are over-the-top, blatantly racist and sectarian, overtly hateful and offensive. Others are much more subtle, no doubt carefully following the Provisional Sinn Fein guidelines set out for their “online supporters” to follow.
Some fall somewhere in between the two extremes, but they all share commonalities. All of them use the same unsophisticated vocabulary. All of them subscribe to the same reductionist, almost childish, historical narrative trotted out by PIRA/Sinn Fein. All of them are motivated by the same irrational, illogical hatred of anything that they perceive to be ‘the other’.
They deflect, deny, distort and deligitimise. They express dismay and disdain for any position which deviates from Irish nationalist orthodoxy. They insult, goad, abuse, mock and attempt to intimidate. In many ways their tactics mirror those of nationalist/republican terror groups.
As one twitter user (@BigMickThomo) recently put it – “Online anonymity has replaced the balaclava.“
I couldn’t have put it any better. It is a succinct and devastatingly accurate way to sum up the sort of pond life who infest social media, spewing hatred and bile in every direction.
The efforts of these radicalised Irish nationalist extremists are often counterproductive. They call attention to the kind of hatred and fear that seems to permeate through the nationalist/republican community like some virulent disease.
Occasionally they go too far and one of their number ends up in court, thus briefly shining a light on the behaviour of these online extremists.
That doesn’t mean that their trolling and bigotry should ever be tolerated. They perpetuate sectarian attitudes, spread lies and wild allegations about innocent people, prop up the dehumanising republican narrative, cause gross offence, spread wild disinformation, disseminate PIRA/SF propaganda and generally make social media a cesspit for ordinary, decent people.
An INLA supporter who clearly doesn’t know what the word “sectarian” means.
No one is trolled as relentlessly as Unionist/Loyalist women and those from a Catholic background. I suggest that they think that the former are somehow an easy target, whilst they regard the latter as being turn-coats or “soup drinkers”, to borrow the terminology of the hard-of-thinking.
It is in these cases where the misogynistic attitude of these nationalist trolls, and their overt sectarianism, really comes to light. All of their hatred comes bubbling to the surface, their extremist views are no longer hidden behind a thin veil of sarcasm, mockery and school-yard “humour”.
It is long past time for our elected representatives to attempt to tackle this issue. Unionist MLAs should be publicly asking why nationalist politicians deny that any such problem exists. They should shut down the ridiculous “both sides are as bad as each other” narrative before it has a chance to gain traction.
It is long hanging fruit, an easy way to put Irish nationalism under the microscope and seriously damage the carefully crafted image that Provisional Sinn Fein and the SDLP have worked for years to create. Especially Provisional Sinn Fein!
I won’t hold my breath however. For now it looks like the campaign against Irish nationalist online extremism and trolling will have to be conducted (as always) by us lowly Loyalist and Unionist activists.
That won’t deter us. We are, by now, rather used to having to rely on ourselves. We are not talking about moving mountains either. It is not difficult to expose these hateful idiots. It is not difficult to document their activities and their hate-speech.
The only thing necessary is for all Loyalists and Unionists on social media to screenshot any and all examples of nationalist hate and bigotry that they come across, report it and either post their screenshots or pass them to someone who will, or someone more high profile who has a much larger audience.
The more this problem is exposed to the light of public scrutiny, the harder it will be for Irish nationalist political parties, the media and the social media companies to ignore.
More terrorist imagery, this time a twitter header.
The unadulterated hatred and bigotry of these nationalist/republican “keyboard warriors” presents Loyalists and Unionists with an almost unique opportunity to expose Irish nationalism for what it really is – a crude form of religious separatism, firmly anchored in 19th century ideas of natavism and “blood and soil” ethnocentrism.
Recently I received a copy of a quite rare book. A book which was, according to the mythos surrounding it, pulled from circulation because of the explosive information that it contained.
The book is titled ‘Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922’ by ‘G. B. Kenna’.
I must admit that this book was a real eye-opener for me personally. Not because I knew nothing of the violence in Belfast in those years, the so-called “First Troubles”, no, I have read about & researched quite extensively on that dark period of Ulster history.
The book was an eye-opener for an entirely different reason. You see, I had (somewhat naively) convinced myself that the historical revisionism & creation of baseless, propaganistic narratives by Irish nationalists was a recent phenomenon.
It is not. Distorting historical truth, sanitising the actions of violent Irish nationalist gangs & attempting to portray the nationalist minority as the world’s greatest victims is an exercise in propaganda as old as Irish nationalism itself.
In this blog post I will reproduce sections of the book, ‘Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922’, without alteration. I will comment on them as little as possible. It will then be up to you, the reader, to decide if the book is an accurate, truthful & unbiased record of historical facts, or not.
We shall begin with the portion of the book which reads as follows –
“THE FIERY CROSS. On the twelfth of July, 1920, at Finaghy, a suburb of Belfast, Sir Edward Carson delivered a very bitter speech—outlandish, one would say, for any man holding such a responsible position—to the assembled Orange brethren. Of course, it was religiously read by all his followers in Ulster. The chief theme of the harangue was that the loyalists of Ulster were in imminent peril from Sinn Fein, that he was losing hope of the Government’s defending them, and that they must be “up and doing to protect themselves.” And these are not mere words, he said; ”I am sick of words without action.” He dragged in the Catholic Hierarchy and the priests. The speech was altogether a good sample of the ”Raw-head-and-bloody-bones ” kind and well calculated to excite the fanatical elements. Of course, as everyone knows, there was absolutely no menace of the kind.”
“Absolutely no menace of the kind”.
IRA ‘Northern Division’, photographed Co. Antrim, 1920.
Perhaps the author of ‘Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922’ was of the belief that the IRA were active in Ulster in 1920 (in point of fact they were active in 1919) merely to assist elderly ladies in crossing the road? Perhaps he believed that the IRA’s so-called ‘Northern Division’ were in fact Unionists who had armed themselves to defend the Unionist people from attacks by the ‘Southern Division’?
Had Sinn Fein/IRA not already killed dozens of people across the island by July, 1920? Had they not already attacked a Royal Irish Constabulary barracks in the city of Londonderry? Had they not already fired at Loyalists in that same city in April of that year, with the clear intent to kill as many as they could? Had they not already attacked, fired upon & then set ablaze a police station in Co. Armagh, just 2 months before?
Perhaps the IRA murder of a policeman in Derry in mid May had never happened? Maybe the massed attack on the police station in Crossgar, in which 200 men were involved, was a mere figment of Unionist imaginations?
Was another policeman not shot dead by “Sinn Feiners” in South Armagh at the start of June, an attack which also left a civilian dead? And wasn’t a Sinn Fein man shot dead in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, on the 16th of June, whilst trying to murder police officers?
Who did the Ulster Volunteer Force engage in fierce fire-fights throughout the city of Londonderry between the 18th and the 25th of June? Perhaps the author of ‘Facts and Figures’ believed that it was Cossacks, or maybe Apaches who were locked in battle with the UVF?
Londonderry, 1920.
“Absolutely no menace of the kind”, ha! Mr Kenna is not off to a very good start with his ‘Facts and Figures’!
Now let us move on to one of the main themes of the book- that the police & army stood idly by & did nothing to prevent disorder or protect the nationalist community.
Collusion?
I will supply the reader with just a handful of the very many examples of this entirely untruthful accusation against the forces of law & order.
“..the frenzied Protestant mobs, who in their strength defied a weak and indulgent police.”
“The other side [nationalists], finding themselves in most instances without any adequate military or police protection….”
“But who shall ever write the history of that innocent Catholic group in Ballymacarret, surrounded by coarse, savage enemies, in numbers ten to one, well armed, confident and often supported by the forces of the law!
“Most Rev. Dr. Macrory [sic], Catholic Bishop of Belfast, felt compelled to wire Lloyd-George about the lawlessness in Belfast and the butchery of his people. He protested also against the inactivity of the British military, who afforded little or no protection.”
“The throbbing of a police lorry is often but a sure sign that murder is abroad”
These examples should be ample to demonstrate one of the main themes of the book. One could well imagine, some of the more antiquated language aside, that the paragraphs above were from ‘An Poblacht’ or some other organ of Provisional IRA propaganda from our own time!
Indeed, all that is missing is the cry of “collusion”. A word that was perhaps unfamiliar to the erstwhile Mr. Kenna when he wrote (or perhaps Co-wrote) “Facts and Figures”.
Do these claims of police & army inaction stand up to scrutiny? No, they do not. For in the very same book in which we find these claims we also find the following-
“…the great majority of the casualties among the ‘Loyalists’ were due to the fire of the military and the RIC.”
“Among the dead…..was Alex Twittle [sic] an Orange sniper of whose death the following official report was issued; “a soldier was sniped at. He returned fire and shot the sniper dead” “
“The Orange mob…..had to be dispersed by military fire.”
“A notorious Orange sniper, H. Hazzard, was shot by the military.”
“It will be observed that the number of Catholics on the foregoing list is much larger than the number of Protestants. Of the latter, a big proportion were the victims of military fire. The Orange Party, being always the aggressors, were often made to pay for such aggression.”
Ah yes, the very same police and “military” who sometimes allegedly aided Loyalists & sometimes supposedly just stood around & watched as “innocent Catholics” were “pogromed”, were also killing “Orange” snipers & firing live rounds into crowds of Loyalists. I think I just heard the sound of a narrative collapsing!
The (obviously) pro-Loyalist New York Times with pictures of the “inactive” British army trying to prevent further violence in Belfast!
Were the police & army being inactive when they were killing Unionists & Loyalists on the streets of Belfast? Perhaps the author believes that the Army & the RIC should have simply killed Unionists wholesale?
Perhaps the author of “Facts & Figures”, who was not ‘G. B. Kenna’ at all but rather the Roman Catholic priest John Hassan, genuinely believed that the police & army were biased because they killed only slightly (about 40%) more Protestants than Catholics?
Now we come to my very favourite part of this little book. The part where Hassan contradicts himself within the space of just a few paragraphs! The part that is indicative of the attitude of Irish nationalists, the part of the book where two Irish republican extremists are presented as being purer than the driven snow.
I will keep you in suspense no longer.
“On the evening of April 23rd, two members of the Auxiliary Police were fired at & shot in Donegall Place. During curfew the following night Patrick & Daniel Duffin, two of the most respected & well-conducted Catholic young men in the whole city, were very brutally murdered in their homes by members of the local RIC.
Wow. Two Auxiliary Police “were fired at & shot”? Does the author not mean ‘Two Auxiliary Police men narrowly survived an IRA murder attempt’?
‘Father’ Hassan would have the reader believe that the two auxiliaries were hit by a wayward youth firing a BB gun!
The most startling thing though is his description of the two men who were not just brutally murdered but “very brutally murdered” the following night, apparently in retaliation for the attempted murder of the two police officers.
In his own words these two unfortunate young men were two of the finest young gentlemen in all of Belfast! Two fine, upstanding, innocent men. Shame that he ruins their reputation just three paragraphs later, on the very next page in fact, by reporting that-
“…..their coffins were draped in the Republican colours & carried behind the hearse by relays of the IRA.”
Oh. Oh dear. So the brothers Duffin were two of the most respected and well-conducted young men in the whole of Belfast but just happened to be members of the IRA as well? Maybe they had joined an illegal, blood-soaked, subversive terror organisation by accident? Maybe they were in the community outreach section of the IRA?
The funeral of an IRA “innocent”.
If it was not so tragic it would be hilarious. It seems that many in the Irish nationalist community regard dead members of murder gangs as “innocent”, not just in 1922 but to this very day.
Wrong on Every Count
The propagandist Hassan filled his little book with lies, misrepresentations, half-truths & distortions. So much so that many historians, even those from an Irish nationalist community background, now completely discount “Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom” as a reliable source of information.
For example, Hassan’s figures on the numbers killed are wildly inaccurate & have been shown as such both by people who lived through that period of violence & by numerous historians since. Four of those named by Hassan as being victims of the so-called “pogrom”, were in fact victims of accidental shootings, fatally wounded when guns went off unintentionally.
Two of those listed by Hassan were victims of incidents which happened outside Belfast. On the 4th of November, 1920, RIC Sgt. Sam Lucas died in a Belfast hospital – however his wounds had been received in the course of an IRA attack on the RIC barracks in Tempo, Co. Fermanagh.
Hassan also records the death of a “Private Hepworth” on the 25th of February, 1921. This might refer to the death of RAF Flight Officer Hepworth Ambrose Vyvian Hill, who was shot when he failed to answer the challenge of a sentry at Aldergrove Aerodrome in Co. Antrim, many miles from Belfast.
At least three deaths on Hassan’s list were not politically related at all. For example; William Bell, who died on the 2nd of December, 1920, was killed when part of a wall fell on him during a thunderstorm.
About half a dozen other victims were also double counted by Hassan, no doubt in order to “bulk up” the number of nationalist victims.
Six of the deaths listed by Hassan could not be corroborated by reports in any of the Belfast newspapers, meaning that they could very well have been total fabrications, added to the list of victims by Hassan for the reason stated above.
“Trust me, just trust me ok….”
A final death as a result of an accidental shooting was not included in Hassan’s list, undoubtedly because it did not quite fit the priest’s own narrative. Joseph Burns, who died from gun shot wounds on the night of the 12th – 13th January, 1922. Burns is named as a member of the IRA on the Co. Antrim republican memorial in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery, although for years, an element of mystery surrounded his inclusion on this memorial, as his death was not reported in any of the Belfast newspapers at the time.
In later years the mystery was cleared up when republican sources admitted that Burns, alongside two other members of an IRA gang, was accidentally killed whilst cleaning weapons. In 1932 Burns’ mother admitted that “I had to take his death quietly as the police were making active enquiries in the case.”
For many years it has been strongly rumoured that several members of the Official IRA & the Provisional IRA, during the more recent conflict here, also met with violent deaths that were subsequently covered up, for various reasons. How many more mothers had to quietly take the death of a son, in order to avoid police attention or save Irish nationalist extremist gangs from embarrassment or awkward questions?
When is a Pogrom not a Pogrom?
The Kishinev Pogrom took place between the 19th and the 21st of April, 1903, its victims being the Jewish community within that city. Kishinev (Chișinău) is now the capital of the independent republic of Moldova but in 1903 was a provincial city of the Russian Empire. During the pogrom of 1903, a total of 49 Jews were killed, 1,500 Jewish homes were destroyed & dozens of businesses wrecked.
Why do I include these events in a blog post about events in Belfast in 1920-22? Well I include them because the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 is fairly typical of what most people mean when they use the term ‘pogrom’. There are dozens of other examples.
Notice that fatalities in Kishinev include only members of one community; the community which was being targeted.
The Jewish minority in Kishinev did not kill anybody. No Jews were accidentally killed whilst cleaning rifles. No Russian police officers were shot. No retaliation was carried out.
The aftermath of Kishinev Pogrom, 1903.
Contrast that with what was happening in Belfast in 1920-22.
If events in Belfast, between July, 1920 and October, 1922, could truly be described as a “pogrom” wouldn’t that mean that almost all of the victims should be from the minority community?
Even if 70-75% of the victims were from the minority community, using the term “pogrom” would probably be justifiable.
Were 70-75% of the victims from the minority community? No. They most certainly were not.
Approximately 498 people died during the violence in Belfast during 1920-22. Of those killed 280 were Irish nationalists, of whom at least 26 (almost 10%) were members of the IRA. A further 37 of the total number killed were members of the Army, RIC/RUC & Ulster Special Constabulary. That means that 181 of those killed were Unionists/Loyalists, or at the very least from a Unionist/Loyalist background.
Those numbers do not add up to a “pogrom”!
An spasm of intercommunal violence? Yes. A tragic episode of civil unrest? Yes. A Pogrom? Definitely not.
In fact, in the first 18 months of the so-called “pogrom” nationalists killed more people than anyone else. 84 Unionists died in that time, compared to 81 nationalists.
Does that sound like a “pogrom” to you?
Of course, the truth seems to be an alien concept for those extremists & fanatics who call themselves Irish nationalists.
A historian writes…
What other group of people, anywhere on Earth, could engage in a campaign of murderous violence & then attempt to portray themselves as the victims of a “pogrom”?
What other group could, with a straight face, describe members of an armed & violent organisation as “innocent”?
What other group of people would try to convince the world that they are helpless victims of sectarian violence, when in fact they are the worst perpetrators of such violence?
I will leave you with the words of Mr Hassan; “The Turk has the Armenian in the Dock & is close to securing a conviction.”
Contrary to what Mr Hassan believed though, Irish nationalists are not the Armenian but the Turk!
Irish nationalists and republicans would have one believe that the Irish Free State, and the subsequent Irish Republic, was a haven of freedom, peace and tolerance. A place where sectarianism, sectarian violence and hatred was unheard of.
As usual, the real truth is radically different from the laughably, almost child-like, version of the past that is parroted by Irish nationalists.
From the foundation of the Irish state until the present day, the Unionist and non-Catholic minority in the Irish Free State/Irish Republic have faced persecution, repression, discrimination, boycott and violent attack.
The most serious of such incidents have been carefully airbrushed from history. Jettisoned from the historical narrative by those who are only interested in a laughably reductionist propaganda version of history.
We hear, almost ad nauseum, about the so-called “pogroms” and other such violent attacks against the Irish nationalist minority in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Curious then that we hear nothing about the anti-Protestant pogroms which occurred in the Irish Free State/Republic.
Irish republican extremists continue to target Protestant churches, businesses and homes to this day.
I do not intend to cover the outrages and atrocities of the 1919-1923 period, which are simply too numerous to properly document in a blog post.
Instead I am going to focus on a couple of incidents, one of which occurred in July, 1935 and the other in July, 1972.
I am confident that few, if any, of our readers will have even heard of these incidents!
The Limerick Pogrom
At about 10.30pm on the 20th of July, 1935, a Saturday night, rioting broke out in the city of Limerick.
This was not unheard of in the urban areas of the Irish Free State, just as it was not unknown in other towns and cities in other parts of the world.
This particular “riot” however, did have an aspect to it which was largely unknown in other countries.
For the most notable feature of the Limerick violence was that it was aimed exclusively against the city’s small Protestant community.
A large number of shops had their windows smashed – all of them owned by Protestants.
Also attacked were the Protestant Mission Hall in Mallow Street, the Protestant Young Men’s Club in O’Connell Street, the Masonic Club in the Crescent and even the Baptist Church near O’Connell Avenue.
On several occasions the rioters, fuelled by hatred and strong drink, tried to enter those buildings with the obvious intention of wrecking them and burning them to the ground. They were only prevented from doing so by police baton charges.
There was an attempt to set the Presbyterian Church at Mount Kennett on fire, and the Garda managed to head off another violent attack on St. Michaels, the Anglican church in Pery Square.
The homes of two clergymen, Rev. Canon Abbott in Barrington Street and Rev. Archdeacon Waller in Upper Mallow Street, had all of their windows broken. Three more Protestant homes were also attacked, with many windows broken.
In an official report, published in the wake of the pogrom, it was stated that some of the crowd intended to attack every building in the city associated with Protestants, reporting that rioters promised that “we won’t leave a Protestant house standing”.
During the night police were detailed to protect not just business premises and churches but also isolated Protestant homes in Limerick’s suburbs.
Garda attempting to curtail the violent rampage were taunted by rioters shouting “Are ye Catholics?”. Implying that no Roman Catholic should try to stop them, whether they were police officers or not.
The Limerick pogrom was just one of a series of assaults on Protestants in the ‘Free State’ that July.
Most of these incidents, which included arson attacks, window smashing, the painting of sectarian slogans on walls, attempted murder, threatening letters etc, were carried out by individuals “or small groups”
One exception was in Galway City. There a strike developed into a march demanding that Protestant workers be dismissed from their jobs. This overtly sectarian march was attended by several hundred people.
Limerick however was the only location that saw large crowds openly and violently attack Protestant targets.
Some saw this as evidence of the city’s tradition of militant Catholicism. The left-wing ‘Republican Congress’ newspaper argued that the riot “arose out of bigoted teachings among a population unusually well organised in Catholic bodies. There is no other explanation for an anti-Protestant pogrom in this predominantly Catholic city.”
The intensity of Roman Catholic zealotry in Limerick may well have been a factor in the violence. The way the riot developed following a relatively minor incident (the initial smashing of windows at ‘Goods’ hardware shop), and the fact that, despite the numbers involved, the violence was so selective – with not one non-Protestant shop having its windows broken – would also point to some level of organization.
Local politicians and clergy condemned the pogrom, though some attempted to rationalise the violence by asserting that is was almost certainly a reaction to sectarian violence which had broken out that summer in Belfast.
Perhaps the one-sided and sensationalist reporting of events in Northern Ireland played a part in whipping up anti-Protestant sentiments in the Irish Free State.
Perhaps the more sectarian and intolerant section of Limerick’s Catholic community were merely waiting for some excuse to ‘ethnically cleanse” their city of “heretics”.
A Nationwide pogrom?
In Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, at 6am on the morning of 16 July, 1935, the’ ‘Donegal Service Depot’, a Protestant owned motor business, was completely destroyed in a sectarian arson attack. The windows of seven Protestant owned shops in the town were also broken on the same night.
During the early hours of Monday, the 22nd of July, the Anglican church in Kilmallock, Co. Limerick was burnt down, while the windows of the local rector’s home were smashed along with those of a Protestant owned shop.
There were “several” arson attacks in Clones, Co. Monaghan. The town’s Masonic Hall was completely gutted, while extensive damage was done to a gospel hall used by the Plymouth Brethren and to the Pringle Memorial Hall (a Protestant social club). A bakery owned by a local Protestant family also had all of it’s windows broken.
Over the next few days there was an arson attack on the Methodist Church in Boyle, Co. Roscommon, an attempt to burn the Masonic Hall in Kells, Co. Meath and arson attacks which caused extensive damage to four cottages belonging to Protestant families in the Corran area of Co. Cavan.
Shots were fired into the homes of two elderly Protestant farmers in Co. Tipperary, another gun attack was carried out on the Bank of Ireland premises in Listowel, Co. Kerry The manager of the bank, a Protestant, lived over the premises with his young family.
There was another attempted arson attack on a Protestant church in Kilnaleck, Co. Cavan. Back in the city of Limerick, numerous windows were smashed in the Presbyterian Church (which had survived an arson attempt during the sectarian pogrom the previous weekend). Windows were also broken in a Protestant Church in Trim, Co. Meath and a Masonic Hall in Athlone.
An abandoned Orange Hall, Co. Monaghan, Éire.
In Bray, Co. Wicklow, a number of windows were smashed in the Men’s Institute on Main Street (known locally as the ‘Protestant Hall’) and two Protestant teenagers were badly beaten by a gang who first asked them what their religion was.
During the same period sectarian slogans appeared in several areas. “Remember Belfast” was painted on the home of a Protestant family in Ballina, Co. Mayo, along with the somewhat bizarre slogan “Orange shops of Ballina take the Catholic money and smile on.”
In Monaghan inscriptions such as- “The South will settle Belfast”, “Boycott Orangemen”, “Prods beware” and “God bless the Pope” were painted on roads around Castleblayney, a town which, at the time, had a sizeable Protestant community, perhaps as much as 50% of the population.
On the main street of Ballybay, Co. Monaghan, the sectarian slogans – “Orangemen beware”, “Faith of Our Fathers” and “Will Ballybay stand and see Catholics shot in Belfast?” appeared.
“Remember Belfast” was painted on four Protestant homes in Athboy, Co. Meath. Similar slogans also appeared near Protestant businesses in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford.
Church of Ireland church at Tourmakeady, Co Mayo. The church was abandoned in 1961 and now lies in ruins.
In Dunmanway, Co. Cork, the slogan “Remember ‘21-watch Belfast” was painted on the roads. In Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath, posters warning that “if this trouble in Belfast goes on much longer we will be compelled to make it hot for you so look out for trouble”, were posted at the Anglican Church and rectory.
Hundreds of threatening letters were delivered to Protestant homes and businesses in various parts of County Monaghan, the poorly spelled letters, which were littered with obscenities, contained statements such as – ‘We don’t want you or your Orange bastards in the Free State.”
They also contained phrases such as – “if you are wise better look for a job in the Six Counties, where you don’t like our Pope. Bullets and grenades are cheap.”
Many of the letters added an extra warning “Beware the IRA.”
In Dunmanway, Co. Cork, two Protestant bank clerks received letters, apparently written by an individual who was barely literate. The letters gave the two men a “First and final warning: we ask you to appeal to youre Brethren in the North for the protection and salvascion [sic] of our innocent Catholics. If murder is continued you shall also share the same faith [sic]. Reporting to the Police is dangerous”
Anti-Protestant boycotts have been used as a tactic by Irish nationalists since 1921.
There were many other examples of intimidation, like an attempt by an ex-Free State Army officer to post up handwritten notices calling for a boycott of Protestants in Killaloe, Co. Clare. In Co. Wexford a shot was fired at a Protestant clergyman’s car.
‘An Garda Siochana’ were not free from sectarianism either. After receiving a report of threats of being made against a Protestant businessman in Kilkenny, they described the man (in an official report) as – “a Protestant and a very bitter one”.
The reaction of many of those who were targeted is very revealing. Some of those who received threats in County Monaghan requested police not to pursue investigations, seemingly fearful of further attacks.
In County Cork police conceded that the case would not be solved because-
“The injured parties and the Protestant community generally are endeavouring to hush the matter up. They are of the opinion that the solving of this crime would start more trouble.”
Given the deeply entrenched sectarianism within Irish nationalism, “more trouble” was inevitable for the non-Catholic minority in the Irish Free State/Irish Republic.
St Johnston, 1972
Situated on the banks of the river Foyle, only four miles from the border with Northern Ireland, St. Johnston has one of the oldest Orange lodges under the jurisdiction of the City of Londonderry. That lodge- LOL992- is mentioned in the Grand Lodge record as far back as 1821.
In 1922, the hall was occupied by armed republicans who cynically destroyed valuable lodge property including records going back over a century.
Other attacks on the lodge, local band and the Protestant community in general occurred over the years but it was not until the summer of 1972 that the first real pogrom took place.
The pogrom began when local Orangemen returned from the Twelfth of July parade at Garvagh, Co. Londonderry, and formed up at the railway station to march the 400 yards to their hall. They were attacked on the way by a large crowd, who had gathered outside a pub.
Nationalist/republican extremists, fuelled by drink, pelted the lodge and accompanying pipe band with bottles, stones and empty beer glasses.
The hate-filled mob then surged forward. Orangemen and band members (including women and children) were kicked, punched, bitten, spat upon and struck with bottles and other makeshift weapons.
Orange banners were broken and torn, drums were smashed and bagpipes destroyed. But the sectarian mob were not yet done.
The local Masonic hall was burned down, two attempts were made to set fire to the Orange hall, petrol bombs were thrown at the Presbyterian church hall, all the windows in the Congregational church were broken and a Protestant-owned store was gutted in an arson attack.
Several Protestant homes were attacked by the baying mob, homes had windows broken and fences smashed. A car was overturned and set on fire; stones were thrown at firemen and one of their fire-engines hijacked and destroyed.
In one case an attempt was made to break into the home of a local Protestant family. The householder, fearing for the lives of his wife and children, opened fire on the attackers with a shotgun. Three of the attackers were wounded and their confederates turned tail and ran from the scene, leaving their three injured mates behind.
Eventually troops had to be called in to assist the police in trying to quell the violence.
St Johnston Orange Hall.
The ‘Irish Independent’ reported that; “one Protestant woman said yesterday that local Catholics went berserk. She said they smashed their way into her home after attacking her car. She alleged they also attacked the home of a 77-year-old pensioner.”
Despite an uneasy calm being restored, there were reports that several Protestant families had fled to relatives in Derry.
In the immediate aftermath of the pogrom the (nationalist) ‘Derry Journal’ newspaper condemned the appalling violence, asserting that the Orangemen had a “perfect right to their parade in their native village.” It is difficult to believe that any Irish nationalist publication would share that view today, sadly sectarianism has become so ingrained within sections of that community that any such assertion about an Orange lodge or band would today be seen as outrageous!
The Provisional IRA in Donegal also stated that the rioting “had nothing to do with them.”
“Nothing to do with us guv, honest”
Local republican Frank Morris went much further, condemning the violence and going on to say that “Orange marching [is] a great tradition in East Donegal.” Again I would point out to the reader that in 2021, it would be unthinkable for any Irish republican to publicly echo the sentiments of Frank Morris. Such is the anti-Orange and anti-Protestant hatred that has been inculcated into nationalism by the likes of PIRA/Sinn Fein over the intervening 49 years.
In August the head of the Orange Order in Donegal, David Beattie, wrote to ‘Taoiseach’ Jack Lynch. Beattie explained that local Protestants were “particularly concerned at the level of intimidation which has been directed against Protestants in the area for the past 2/3 years” and warned that the fact that numerous Protestant families have felt compelled to leave their homes and seek refuge in Northern Ireland may well be the beginning of “a general Protestant exodus.”
Mr Beattie informed Jack Lynch that the UDA in the city of Londonderry had “offered assistance” but that the offer had been “politely refused”.
These were desperate and worrying times for the Protestant people in the area. In the weeks and months following the pogrom many Protestant families left their homes permanently, and several attempts were made to burn down the Orange hall.
Out of the blue?
Was the St Johnston pogrom an aberration? Unfortunately, no. During the June, 1969 general election, Bertie Boggs, a Fine Gael candidate from a Protestant background, was confronted with allegations that he was a supporter of Ian Paisley.
Roads in Inishowen were painted with nasty sectarian slogans proclaiming “Vote Boggs No. 1: No Pope Here”, and bizarre rumours circulated that Boggs, a councilor in Malin town, was a B-Special.
Cllr. Boggs vigorously denied this and claimed that he was the victim of a smear campaign by elements in Fianna Fáil. He was not elected. Similar claims were made during the election about Fine Gael’s successful candidate Billy Fox, also a Protestant, in Co. Monaghan.
On the night of Monday, the 11th of March, 1974, Billy Fox was murdered by the Provisional IRA. Some people have speculated that the killing was in retaliation for a Loyalist attack which had taken place the previous November, when Loyalists bombed a Provo ‘safe-house’ at Legnakelly and shot one of the occupants, a man described euphemistically as a “republican activist”.
Billy Fox
In August, 1969, multiple threats had been sent to Protestant families in Co. Donegal. The threatening letters came from a group calling itself the ‘United Catholic Front’. They accused the recipients of being B-Specials.
A petrol bomb was later thrown into the home of one of those who had received a threatening letter.
The belief that local Protestants were members of the B-Specials was also echoed from republican platforms.
“Civil Rights activist” Ivan Barr told a rally in Lifford that they (local republicans) were “aware that men were coming across the border [from Donegal], donning uniforms in Strabane and taking out rifles”, but “if they are attacked or interfered with on this side of the border it will bring retaliations in Strabane.”
Tensions arose again during the summer of 1970. Rossnowlagh, the site of the only annual Orange march in the Irish Republic, usually passed off without incident, but Fianna Fáil’s Bernard McGlinchey predicted trouble if it was allowed to go ahead. He claimed that Orangemen had crossed the border the previous August “to help B-Specials in their foul work”, and alleged local involvement in the recent UVF bombing of an RTÉ television mast at Raphoe.
The Ulster Special Constabulary, Category ‘B’ aka “B-Specials”.
No doubt it will come as a something of a shock to many of our readers to learn that some republicans, on this occasion Sinn Fein, defended the Orangemen’s right to march, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh blaming ‘Blaneyite’ elements for introducing tension into what he described as “a completely harmless affair”. Nevertheless, the parade was cancelled and it was not permitted to take place again until 1978.
Had this happened in 1990 or 2000, as opposed to 1970, Sinn Fein would have been at the forefront of establishing a “Residents Group” to oppose the march! It is almost frightening to think that the Sinn Fein of 1970 were less sectarian than the Sinn Fein of recent years but one must conclude that that is indeed the case.
In the midst of the controversy over the Rossnowlagh parade an attempt was made to burn the Orange hall in Lifford. Such incidents increased thereafter; in the last six months of 1970 there were several serious attacks on Orange halls in Donegal. In January, 1971, the home of the Church of Ireland rector at Tamney was damaged by a bomb, and a few weeks later the Congregational church in St Johnston was fire-bombed.
Such attacks continued throughout the decades that followed. Sometimes such incidents increased in the wake of Loyalist cross-border attacks, at other times the actions of Loyalists seemed to act as a deterrent to the petrol bombers and arsonists of Donegal.
“They riddled me”
One such cross-border attack sent a very clear message to Irish nationalist/republican extremists in Co. Donegal, an operation which, regardless of your opinion of it, undoubtedly prevented much loss of life in the East Donegal/Derry city/West Tyrone areas for many years afterwards.
In February, 1974, a UVF Active Service Unit, possibly from the much feared Mid-Ulster Brigade, ambushed one of the most senior (and most dangerous) PIRA operatives in Ulster. They came within a hairs-breadth of killing their target. That targets name was Jack Brogan.
A mere 3 weeks before the ambush, Brogan had been acquitted of the murder of RUC detective constable John Doherty, a Catholic, who was shot dead while visting his family home in Lifford, Co. Donegal, in October, 1973.
Brogan, who was given an award by Provisional Sinn Fein in 2010, once stated that; “I was very active in west Tyrone, along the Donegal border. Our house would be raided nearly every month. If anything happened in the area our house would be the first to be hit.”
Brogan’s ‘activity’ saw him rise quickly through the ranks of the Provisional IRA. In 1971, after a Security Forces raid uncovered guns and explosives at his home in West Tyrone, Brogan went ‘on the run’, living openly just a few miles across the border in Ballybofey.
Indeed, Brogan was so secure in his new home that by 1974 he was running a garage in the town!
In October, 1973, John ‘Jack’ Brogan was arrested by the Garda and subsequently charged with conspiracy to murder and membership of the Provisional IRA. The conspiracy charge relating to the murder of the DC John Doherty in Lifford.
In mid January, Brogan and his co-accused (another West Tyrone Provo on the run and living in Ballybofey) was acquitted, the presiding judge saying that “there was strong suspicion” that the two men were the killers but not enough evidence.
A British Army report from the time states that “the resumption of car bombings, anticipated by the SF [Security Forces] after his release on 15 January 1974, occurred on 29 January 1974 when a car bomb exploded in Castlederg.”
Not long after that bomb attack, Jack Brogan walked into a carefully prepared Loyalist ambush.
Four UVF gunmen lay in wait for Brogan and when he left his house at approximately 10:30, the four volunteers opened up on him.
Brogan said later- I walked out of our house in Ballybofey one night…..and they riddled me. There were four of them with four different types of weapons; 17 rounds were pumped into me.”
Brogan was rushed to hospital and, miraculously, survived. Although he had a leg amputated, such were the severity of his injuries, and in total spent 9 months in hospital.
Nine months in which PIRA attack attacks in West Tyrone mysteriously decreased to almost nil.
17 years later another prominent republican would be assassinated by Loyalists in Co. Donegal. Eddie Fullerton, a senior member of Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein was shot dead at his home in Buncrana. The UFF volunteers taking part in the operation having earlier crossed Lough Foyle in a dinghy.
PIRA/Sinn Fein godfather Eddie Fullerton.
The killing of Eddie Fullerton and the attempted assassination of Jack Brogan have been airbrushed from history by Irish nationalists, just as the anti-Protestant attacks and pogroms of Limerick, Donegal et al have been carefully airbrushed out.
Irish nationalists and republicans want the world to believe that such things never took place. They want to fool the world into believing sectarianism was (and is) a problem only in Northern Ireland (and Scotland to a lesser extent – for now).
They want young people in Northern Ireland to believe that Loyalists are/were nothing but thugs, incapable of well planned and coordinated attacks, especially against targets in the Irish Republic.
They have a version of history which is entirely divorced from reality. Their narrative is far-fetched and incapable of standing up to even the most superficial scrutiny.
Older Loyalists and Unionists, those of us who lived through (at least some of) the conflict, have a duty to the post-ceasefire generations, and to generations as yet unborn, to challenge Irish nationalism’s cartoon version of the recent past.
And all Loyalists and Unionists, regardless of age or location, have a duty to make sure that the story of people like those forced from their homes in Limerick and St Johnston, people persecuted and attacked because they were seen as Unionists, is never forgotten.
Republicans can try to airbrush all they want, it will be utterly futile if there are Loyalists and Unionists standing ready to make sure that history is not covered up, altered, sanitised or misrepresented.
So, our challenge to you is; tell the stories of the persecuted, the bereaved, the down-trodden, the demonised, the maligned, the harassed and the oppressed. Tell the truth, loudly and often.
Tell your children and your grandchildren about Limerick, St. Johnston, Monaghan. About how Loyalists were forced to flee from the City side of Londonderry. About how Unionists were intimidated out of Bellaghy, Dunloy, Torrens, Rasharkin and a dozen other places.
Tell them about the “proxy bombs”, about the “disappeared” and about the no-warning bombings. They’ll hear plenty about ‘Bloody Sunday’ and Ballymurphy and how evil the Security Forces were. They’ll hear plenty about “collusion” (though only the ‘right kind’ of collusion).
They will hear all about “civil rights” and internment. Whether they want to or not. It’s up to you to make sure they also get to hear about all the things that certain people don’t want them to hear about.
The treatment of Unionists in the “utopia” of the Irish Free State/Irish Republic is as good a place as any to start.
Irish nationalist murder gangs operated largely without conscience. During ‘The Troubles’ they often killed children, even babies. Sometimes they killed old people.
Most of their atrocities are well documented – Enniskillen, Teebane, Darkley, La Mon, the Birmingham pub bombings, the Dropping Well bombing, Claudy, the Shankill, etc etc.
There are however, a handful of such atrocities which, for one reason or another, are largely forgotten. One such example is that of the 1973 Coleraine bombing, which saw the Provisional IRA claim the lives of six pensioners.
Saturday, the 12th of June, was the 48th anniversary of that heinous sectarian massacre, I think it is therefore an apposite time to revisit that dark day and, in so doing, remember those innocent people who were killed and gravely injured.
The Nightmare Begins
On the morning of Tuesday, the 12th of June, 1973, two stolen cars, both Ford Cortinas, both light blue in colour, were stolen in the South Londonderry/Toomebridge area. They were driven to a location near the exclusively nationalist village of Swatragh and there two bombs were loaded aboard, one in each stolen vehicle.
The carbombs were parked on Railway Road and Hanover Place respectively. Two vague warnings were made to the Telephone Exchange at approximately 2.30 p.m. The caller gave an approximate location for the Hanover Place device and for another bomb that the caller claimed had been left on Society Street, which later proved to be a hoax, a tactic used by the Provisional IRA to cause confusion and maximise the number of civilian casualties.
The mural which stood in Coleraine town centre until the 1990s.
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The town was, as usual, very busy that afternoon. It was a warm, pleasant day and children were getting out of school.
Nobody could have known the horror and terror that was about to be unleashed.
“Mayhem”
At shortly after 3 p.m., the bomb packed into the Ford Cortina on Railway Road exploded.
It was a large device, containing approximately 150lbs of high explosive, and had been placed outside a wine shop on the bustling street, which was then, as it is now, one of the busiest thoroughfares in Coleraine.
The aftermath of the blast.
The no-warning car bomb killed six pensioners, four women and two men, and injured 33 others, a number of them children who had just finished school for the day and had made their way the short distance to Railway Road to meet friends and buy sweets.
The 33 injured also included a baby who was just a few months old. The infant was very fortunate not to have been killed.
The six innocent people brutally murdered in the bomb blast were—Elizabeth Craigmile (76), Robert Scott (72), Dinah Campbell (72), Francis Campbell (70), Nan Davis (60), and Elizabeth Palmer (60)— all of them Protestants, all of them considered “legitimate targets” by the Provisional IRA because of their religion.
The victims of the bombing.
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Francis and Dinah Campbell were husband and wife, the parents of 2 grown-up children. Elizabeth Craigmile was Frank Campbell’s sister, a widow who also had 2 children. All three were from East Belfast.
Nan Davis, aged 60, was a widow who lived alone at Linden Avenue, in the Millburn area, not far from the scene of the explosion. Elizabeth Palmer, also aged 60, was from Portrush.
Mr Robert Scott, aged 72, was from the Portstewart Road area of Coleraine and was well known around the town.
A Family Holiday Turned to Tragedy
Elizabeth Craigmile, the Campbells and their daughter Hilary had driven up to the North Coast a few days earlier, staying in Ballycastle for a well deserved break, away from the bombs and the bleak sectarian strife of their native Belfast. On the day they were so brutally murdered, the family had sent a postcard to friends, it read “Having a nice time and enjoying ourselves“.
They were on their way home when the bomb had gone off; standing beside the car-bomb at the moment of detonation.
They had only stopped in Coleraine to buy a few small items for their journey back to East Belfast.
The funeral of Francis and Dinah Campbell.
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Elizabeth Craigmile, a 76 year old widow, was Francis Campbell’s sister, Dinah’s sister-in-law. Hilary Campbell, the only member of the family party to survive the bomb attack, was very grievously injured and lost a limb, leaving her permanently disabled. She was 30 years old at the time.
The mental scars of losing both her parents and her elderly aunt in such a horrific, brutal and sudden way must have been every bit as hard to bear as the appalling physical injuries she suffered.
Several of the 33 wounded were maimed, their lives forever altered by the actions of callous terrorists who had targeted them because of their perceived religion.
The bomb left a deep crater in the road and the wine shop was engulfed in flames— it also caused considerable damage to other buildings in the vicinity.
Railway Road was a scene of carnage and devastation; the mangled wreckage of the Ford Cortina which had contained the bomb lay in the middle of the street, the bodies of the dead and injured lay in pools of blood amongst the fallen masonry and roof slates, shards of glass from blown-out windows blanketing the ground.
Local people and those working for the emergency services who had rushed to the scene spoke of “utter confusion” with many people “wandering around in a state of severe shock“.
Five minutes later, the second bomb went off in the forecourt of Stuart’s Garage in Hanover Place. Although this explosion miraculously caused no injuries, it added to the panic and confusion caused by the first bomb, exactly as the republican bombers had intended.
The Smoke Clears
David Gilmour, who was just 10 years old at the time, was caught up in the bombing along with his mother and father.
He and his mother had been sitting in their car, which had been parked directly across from the stolen Ford Cortina containing the bomb. At the precise moment the bomb detonated, another car had passed between the Gilmours and the deadly car-bomb, shielding them from the full force of the blast, although their car was badly damaged.
Mrs. Acheson, one of the many people injured in the blast.
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He recalled that when the bomb exploded everything had gone black, “deeper and darker than black – the blackness only punctuated by pinpricks of orange“. He learned later that those “pinpricks of orange” were most likely metal fragments from the exploded car or embers from the fertiliser that had been used to make the bomb.
In the immediate aftermath of the blast, there had been several seconds of unearthly silence before, as Mr Gilmour recalled, “all hell broke loose“, with people rushing from the scene and others going towards the scene of devastation to tend the wounded, many of whom were screaming in agony.
The Provisional IRA claimed responsibility for the bombings but, ludicrously, said they had “mistakenly given the wrong location” for the carbomb on Railway Road when they sent their telephoned warning.
It is a matter of record that no warning was given for the first bomb. It was the intention of the Irish nationalist murder gang who had planted the bomb to draw people away from the point where they had warned a bomb was and instead go towards the real bomb in Railway Road in order to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible.
It was a tactic used before by the Provisional IRA and a tactic that they would use again many times.
Undoubtedly, the death toll would have been much higher had the bomb gone off just a few minutes later when girls from a nearby high school would have been leaving the school and walking along the street. It has even been speculated that, given the location and the timing of the no-warning bomb, that local school children were amongst the primary targets of the psychotic sectarian bombers.
Indeed, it is inconceivable that the Provo bombers would not have known that their device would almost certainly kill and/or maim children, since it was timed to explode at 3 o’clock on a weekday afternoon, just a few hundred yards from one of the largest schools in the area.
David Barbour, a former member of the Ambulance Service who was on duty that day recalled vividly—
“It was my duty to collect nursing staff and take them to the scene, to see what could be done as well as collecting people suffering major injuries and transporting them to the Accident/Emergency Centre. The scene was of people lying in several places, rising smoke, black dust, and damaged buildings.
The activity at the hospital was hectic as medical, nursing and technical staff selected patients for appropriate treatment. I wondered for some time how staff would cope with such a major incident. They actually did well in the face of such a challenge and health service staff in town as visitors volunteered their services if required.”
The entire town was in a state of shock and dismay, as were most right thinking people right across Northern Ireland.
The Irish News remarked in an editorial the following day that— “Those who committed the Coleraine slaughter do not give a damn about the most basic ofall rights: the right to life”
Convictions
On the 6th of July, 1973, a 22-year-old woman and 19-year-old man, were both charged with the murder of the six pensioners.
The following January however, charges against the woman were suddenly dropped. Perhaps the case against her was a weak one, or perhaps she was a paid agent working on behalf of the Security Services or RUC Special Branch!
Two men were eventually convicted for their part in the atrocity; the 19 year old mentioned above (described as being the boyfriend of the 22 year old woman) and another teenager— 18 year old Sean McGlinchey.
No longer a teenager—Sean McGlinchey, mass murderer.
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McGlinchey, from Bellaghy, Co. Londonderry, the younger brother of another republican killer— Dominic ‘Mad Dog’ McGlinchey— was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for the six murders.
At the time, Dominic McGlinchey was a senior member of the Provisional IRA in the South Londonderry area. He would later join the INLA/IRSP, becoming the leader of that gang.
Under McGlinchey’s leadership the INLA carried out some of the most brutal and overtly sectarian atrocities of The Troubles, including the 1983 Darkley massacre, when crazed republican gunmen opened fire on worshippers attending a church service at Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church, Co. Armagh, killing three and wounding a further 7.
A policeman surveys the scene inside the Gospel Hall in Darkley, Co. Armagh.
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Sean McGlinchey was no less bitter, hateful and sectarian than his older sibling. After his release from prison he became a member of Provisional Sinn Fein and was elected to Limavady Borough Council. Unbelievably, in 2011, he was appointed mayor of the borough.
The deep rooted and toxic tribalism of those who vote for such an individual is painfully obvious. One cannot imagine any circumstances in which the Unionist/Loyalist community would have voted for one of the Shankill Butchers. The comparison is, I believe, a fair one.
Not only were Sinn Fein voters prepared to overlook the fact that Mr McGlinchey was a mass murderer, they were also prepared to overlook the fact that his brother was a mass murdering drug dealer and the former Godfather of an organised crime gang which wallowed up to its neck in sectarian violence.
Irish nationalist terrorists Dominic McGlinchey, Ian Milne and Francis Hughes.
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Perhaps those who endorse Sean McGlinchey at the ballot box vote for him because he is a mass murdering sectarian thug, rather than in spite of that fact?
How many of those who have previously voted for McGlinchey secretly feel that his murderous actions were justified?
These are the same people who regularly attempt to lecture Loyalists about “equality”, “justice” and “civil rights”. Loyalism will take no lectures on such things from the kind of twisted, morally bankrupt individuals who vote for a ‘granny killer’.
The Provos Return
On Friday, the 13th of November, 1992, the Provisional IRA bombed Coleraine again. Thankfully, miraculously, no-one was killed or injured.
A large van bomb was parked in the centre of the town, in the middle of the pedestrian area. It exploded at around 11 p.m.
Although extensive property damage was caused, which resulted in several major buildings being demolished, no one was killed or seriously injured.
Coleraine Town Hall required major structural work, and was not reopened until August 1995.
The circumstances of the 1992 bomb attack were very different from those of the 1973 bombing.
In November, 1992, the Provisional IRA’s so-called ‘South Derry Brigade’ (a geographical absurdity since that ‘brigade’ was/is centred on the republican village of Dungiven and the surrounding area, which is most definitely not in South Londonderry) was in dire straits.
In the previous 18 months, the Provos in South Londonderry had lost 4 of their “top men”— all of them killed by the Londonderry and North Antrim Brigade of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, more specifically by that brigade’s 6th (South Londonderry) Battalion.
Republicans in the area were overtaken by their lust for revenge but, wary of the consequences of directly targeting the UFF, who would surely have struck back with their (by now) trademark ferocity, they instead chose to vent their frustration on a much larger (and softer) target.
That target was the commercial heart of Coleraine. Aided by local republican criminals/drug dealers, who acted as spotters for the bomb team, the Provo gang, all of whom were drawn from the same small area, drove their van-bomb into the Diamond and hastily made their get-away.
They hoped to devastate Coleraine. They hoped to reopen the wounds first inflicted in 1973. They hoped to intimidate the people of the town. They were to be harshly disappointed.
The people of Coleraine rallied together and within days many traders were back in business. Shops and offices were rebuilt, better and, in a lot of cases, bigger than before.
The Provisional IRA failed to break the spirit of the people of Coleraine in 1992, just as they had failed to break their spirit in 1973.
By the time of the first PIRA ceasefire in 1994, that organisations ‘South Derry Brigade’ had been largely nullified, reduced to a handful of attacks, the vast majority of them sectarian in nature.
The Memorial
On the 25th of April, 2018, Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council passed a motion supporting an official remembrance event and permanent memorial to those killed in the 1973 outrage.
Once again demonstrating their lack of emotional intelligence, tact and basic human decency, Provisional Sinn Fein tabled an amendment to that motion which attempted to remove the word “atrocity” as well as any reference to the PIRA/Sinn Fein.
One of the Sinn Fein men at that council meeting was none other than mass murderer Sean McGlinchey!
Thankfully, the Provos amendment to the motion was defeated, with the six Sinn Fein councillors— including McGlinchey— abstaining in the final vote to approve the motion.
McGlinchey is unrepentant. In September, 2015, during a heated row in council chambers in Coleraine, the very town he had bombed, McGlinchey roared that “I’m an ex-IRA man. I’m proud of it”.
Despite some earlier weasel words, vaguely expressing regret for his part in the 1973 atrocity, it is easy to see that Sean McGlinchey is just as bitter, disturbed and full of hatred now as he was in the ’70s.
He has absolved himself of blame, claiming that he left the deadly car-bomb in the wrong place because he didn’t know that Coleraine, one of the largest towns in Northern Ireland even in 1973, had a one-way traffic system!
Sean McGlinchey—not the sharpest tool in the box!
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So much for the idiotic propaganda which seeks to portray the Provos as being ‘sophisticated’, or in some way ‘professional’.
The truth, as uncomfortable as it is for some people to grasp, is that PIRA/Sinn Fein were, more often than not, amateurish, bungling and burdened by the stupidity of their own so-called ‘volunteers’, many of whom had difficulty writing their own names.
“Bear in Mind These Dead”
In the centre of Coleraine stands a war memorial, upon which is inscribed the names of those men from the town who paid the ultimate sacrifice in two world wars and the war in Afghanistan.
The names of some of my own family are on that war memorial, which survived almost unscathed the republican bomb attack of November, 1992.
Loyalist Coleraine remembers her dead with pride and solemnity.
She faithfully remembers the dead of the Somme, of Messines, of Cambrai, of Ranville and the Ardennes. She remembers also the six innocents murdered by the Enemies of Ulster on the 12th of June, 1973.
Though the Coleraine bombing is often described as the “forgotten atrocity”, the dead of that atrocity are not forgotten and will never be forgotten.
Unionism and Loyalism is enjoying a real ‘feel good factor’ at the moment. Outwith the DUP, who are undergoing something of a difficult leadership transition, Unionism is well and truly ‘on the up’.
The election of Doug Beattie as leader of the UUP has reinvigorated that party and the ongoing grassroots opposition to the unworkable Northern Ireland Protocol has galvanised and unified Loyalism in a way that has not been seen for at least 25 years.
Young Loyalists, many of whom were still at school 5 years ago, are rising to positions of leadership and prominence.
Loyalist women are increasingly finding their voice, something which obviously terrifies the nationalist/republican misogynists and troglodytes who infest social media.
David, aka scum, signs all his tweets. He does the same thing with letters, eg. “yours sincerely.. scum”.
Initiatives, such as ‘Let’s Talk Loyalism’, have many people within the working-class Loyalist community buzzing.
All in all, Loyalism is in a tremendously exciting position. Reinvigorated, unified, positive and forward thinking, Loyalism has gone through a period of deep introspection and soul searching to emerge more energised, more dedicated, more focused and much more sophisticated, certainly in terms of things like community engagement and perception management.
Unionist poster, Circa 1912.
In a myriad of different ways Loyalism is leaving nationalism in its wake.
For the first time in a long time, the media are talking positively about Unionism and Loyalism. The so-called “Beattie bounce” has captured the imagination, whilst the emergence of at least half-a-dozen articulate, intelligent and forthright young Loyalists (with a rapidly expanding media presence) has mightily impressed many people, including a growing number of so-called “political neutrals”.
Unionism and Loyalism isn’t just moving forward, it is striding forward! Of course there is still much work to be done, the rejuvination of Loyalism and Unionism is undoubtedly a “work in progress” but the keyword in that is ‘progress’ and Loyalism is definitely going in the right direction.
Subtle Differences
As a Loyalist, rather than a Unionist, there are many issues I will never agree with the UUP on, despite the almost universal positivity surrounding the “Beattie bounce”.
This is, of course, because of the fundamental differences between Loyalism and Unionism.
For the benefit of those readers who do not know; Unionism places the Union above all else. Loyalism places the people, the organic community, above all else.
Unionists are ideologically opposed to the idea of an independent Ulster, Loyalists are not and, in fact, many Loyalists support radical self-determination to some degree or another.
Furthermore, Unionism is a ‘constitutional’ tradition, ie. a tradition in which violence is eschewed in all but the most dire circumstances, whereas Loyalism is a “physical force” tradition, which advocates the defence of the people and the nation by any means necessary.
Armed Loyalists at an unknown location, Circa 1992.
The vast majority of the Unionist/Loyalist community understand the difference between the two political doctrines, just as they understand the fundamental differences between Irish nationalism, as a whole, and Irish republicanism as a particular strand of nationalist thought.
That is to our advantage. It is patently obvious that the majority of nationalists and republicans do not know the difference between Unionism and Loyalism and have no inclination to learn.
This is symptomatic of the arrogant Irish nationalist/republican mindset. The vast majority of nationalists view their Unionist and Loyalist neighbours as, at best, confused Irish men, and at worst as sub-human “planters”. In either case, nationalists believe that they need not concern themselves with the subtle differences between Loyalism and Unionism.
Apparently “Woke-ism” was around centuries ago. I did not know that!
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Which leads us into to the next issue…
The Stagnation of Irish Nationalism
How far has Irish nationalism progressed in the last 10 years?
Where are the young nationalists and republicans who will lead that community in coming decades?
Where is the nationalist strategy to modify (or modernise) their interactions with non-nationalists, both online and in the real world?
The answer to the above is – nowhere, nowhere, nowhere! And long may that continue.
The so-called ‘leadership’ of the nationalist community, in particular the leadership of Provisional Sinn Fein, is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty towards their own supporters, members and constituents.
They have been assuring them for years now that “victory is at hand”, they have touted everything from “Unionist outreach”, to Brexit, to demographics as being their route to this long awaited “victory”.
There’s a reason Machine-gun Marty never won the lottery or did very well betting on horses!
They have delivered…..nothing. Unionist outreach proved to be beyond them, being unable to contain their tribalistic hatred long enough to convince Unionists that they were in any way sincere.
Demographics is a dead horse. Catholic no longer equates to nationalist/republican, even if there was to be a Catholic majority in N. I.
But we are getting away from the point here. The point being that Irish nationalists have been convinced by their own political and community leaders that all they had to do was sit back and wait.
And sit back and wait is exactly what they did. They somehow thought that, instead of strategising, narrative building and constructive dialogue, it was a much better use of their time and energy to mock Unionists, dress up in crocodile onesies and post “up the Ra” 300 times a day on social media.
Such sophistication, such subtlety lol.
They actually regressed to the point where a large element of the nationalist community, at least online, allowed itself to be lead by an online trolling group for 8 years!
Today the Irish nationalist/republican community finds itself absolutely devoid of fresh thinking. They are in exactly the same position now as they were a decade ago. The best bit is that they don’t even realise it.
Whilst Unionists and Loyalists are engaged in street level activism, serious dialogue, self criticism and a general re-evaluation of our structures and political mechanisms, nationalists are spewing their usual bile and making the world’s most childish memes.
I warned you, dear god I warned you but you just had to see them, didn’t you?
They do so in a state of seemingly blissful ignorance.
“Only Loyalists Have Problems”
That’s basically the message from most Irish nationalists and republicans. To hear them talk or from reading their posts online, one would be forgiven for thinking that their community had no problems.
According to orthodox Irish nationalism, it is only the Loyalist community that has a drug problem, only the Loyalist community that has a problem with social exclusion and economic deprivation, only the Loyalist community that has a problem with anti-social elements.
Suddenly I have a mental image of a certain large African bird!
Do they really not see the damage they are doing to their community by denying the existence of such problems? Are they really that lacking in self awareness?
It doesn’t seem to bother them. As long as they can attack and vilify non-nationalists they are, apparently, perfectly happy to ignore the blatantly obvious.
Loyalism will move on without them. Nationalists and republicans can consign themselves to an intellectual ghetto if they so wish. We have bigger fish to fry.
Yeah, like I said….intellectual ghetto.
Of course, in a way, Loyalism and Unionism had to undergoa period of self reflection and rebuilding. We had stagnated in exactly the same way that nationalism is stagnating now.
The undemocratic implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol (and the opposition to it) proved to be a catalyst for change. The restructuring and reorientation of the DUP may yet prove to be another such catalyst.
Sometimes it is necessary to take a step backwards in order to move forwards. Loyalism took that backwards step, as painful as it was, now we are moving forwards – inexorably, relentlessly, incessantly forwards.
It's still only thursday 
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