A member of the UK Parliament is the keynote speaker at an event tomorrow commemorating ‘volunteers’ in South Armagh. The ceremony will take place in the tiny village of Mullaghbawn, set in the now picturesque Ring of Gullion, more familiar to students of the Northern Ireland Troubles as the heart of ‘Bandit Country.’ According to one Northern Irish politician, previously the event has included a ‘roll of honour’ for members of the IRA.
Sinn Fein’s North Belfast MP, John Finucane, who is billed as the keynote speaker, is no stranger to the sort of sectarian horror terrorists inflicted on this part of the world. In 1989 his father was murdered in front of him by Loyalist volunteers who broke through his front door and shot his defenceless father 14 times as they sat at their Sunday dinner. Any ‘celebration’ of the exploits of this murderous gang would be foul and inconceivable.
Yet for Sinn Fein and the IRA, celebrating terrorists is merely the continuation of a strategy which sees no contradiction in attending the coronation of King Charles then continuing to glorify the murderers of his British subjects.
Remembering the terrorist dead of Northern Ireland’s troubled past is something of a preoccupation for Sinn Fein. This is a party that does not do irony. Their utopia, given something of a boost by recent local elections, is a united Ireland where Unionists are welcome and cherished – but who also have to put up with the terrorist killers who butchered their families routinely venerated as patriots.
It’s not clear exactly who will be commemorated at the Armagh event. But South Armagh is littered with examples of republican terrorist atrocities that in intent if not in scale equate to sectarian ethnic cleansing of an isolated, terrified Unionist population .
One wonders if the IRA Kingsmills gang will be among the ‘volunteers’ remembered at the event, which promises ‘music, refreshment and kids entertainment.’ I think the less the ‘kids’ know about ten Protestant civilians forced out of a van at a bogus checkpoint in South Armagh and hosed to death with automatic rifles, the better for their mental health.
In fairness a senior Sinn Fein official has belatedly condemned the Kingsmills atrocity as ‘shameful.’ But authorities believe the weapons from the atrocity were used in 110 future attacks. It’s hard to see how a generic celebration of IRA operatives, some of whom were killed in engagements with British security forces, can be disentangled from the earlier actions of clearly psychopathic serial killers.
The Kingsmills massacre was presaged by the murders the day before of six Catholics by Loyalists fanatics. It would be inconceivable and an affront to human decency for these murderers to receive anything other than utter contempt either. But the same rules simply do not apply to Sinn Fein, perhaps the only political party left in Europe that insists not only that the IRAs’ ‘armed struggle’ was necessary but that it is something to be proud of and to routinely celebrate.
The revulsion and offence Unionists feel when senior Sinn Fein officials appear at IRA commemorations is simply priced in, the cost of keeping an electoral base of nativist bigots happy.
Republicans claim ‘parity of esteem’ with the British tradition of Remembrance Sunday, perhaps forgetting that the IRA murdered 12 civilians in an attack on a Cenotaph in Enniskillen in November 1987. The volunteers listed in the IRA’s official ‘roll of honour’ for South Armagh are not like the regular soldiers they opposed. The roll includes failed bombers who blew themselves up, criminal extortionists, hunger strikers and wedding assassins. Raymond McCreesh, another South Armagh IRA terrorist who starved himself to death in HMP Maze in the 1981 hunger strikes, was arrested by British soldiers with a weapon that was used in the Kingsmills massacre.
The pogroms in South Armagh ought to be remembered in silence and abject remorse and not with any sort of pride. But Sinn Fein, despite the slick agitprop, remains a party chained to a violent past.
Their Armalite and ballot box strategy has delivered electoral benefits with a younger generation of republican voters who do not know or do not care about the headstones of their British neighbours. In return, Sinn Fein’s party leaders say with a straight face to unionists they will be welcome in a future where victims and perpetrators have swapped sides.
Comments