h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>"It is the realisation of this fact that is now making the Republican community realise that they have been badly misled over the 45 years."

Your assessment is very interesting, although a lot has changed since then. In the late 50s and early 60s, nationalists might as well have been banging their heads against a brick wall regarding any sort of political progress. It wouldn't have mattered what tactics they used, the status quo would have been maintained. Nowadays they are a lot more powerful due to all sorts of reasons - demographic, educational, political maturity. You could argue however that in the past 11 years, the progress made has been exponentially greater than in the preceeding 25 years.

Also the Marxist connection is interesting. If anything it always made me wonder why the IRA ever got such strong US support given that this was was historically the case, and may well be the case today. "Your enemy is my enemy" sort of logic, I guess.

It would, but he can't do that to the McCartney's now. They are too high profile - everyone would notice, and that really would be the end of the IRA.


Geggs

Re the McGuinness warning - It's quite clear that the media built this one up. This wasn't what McGuinness was trying to say at all. His concern was that people with a long history of attacking Sinn Fein were now associating themselves with the McCartneys. He was also concerned that the police were using the McCartney case as a political football rather than a criminal inquiry. These are reasonable concerns, although personally I disagree. Sinn Fein are claiming that the police now know everything they need to know about the McCartney killing, and they have sufficient witnesses to press charges. So far this hasn't happened.

To think that he was threatening them is to take things a bit too far.

Fair enough. But at the same time Sinn Fein haven't gone out of their way to help the police.

For example that Sinn Fein candidate that was in the bar at the time but saw nothing has given a full statement about the nothing she saw to her solicitor. Not the police, who are the people she should have given such a statement to, even if she really did have nothing to say.


Geggs

The very fact that SF are willing to accept that some of their boys should be tried in a court of law is a quantum leap forward. They need a resolution to this case urgently, as they are haemorraging support (including lucrative financial backing) all over the place. "Whatever you say, say nothing" is not going to get them out of the current mess they find themselves in.

True, in the 50s and 60s the nationalists where banging there heads on a brick wall. But once the S**t had hit the fan in 1969, brought about by the Civil Rights movement, there was a golden opportunity to achieve something, but it was missed.

The Storemont Government was dissolved, the biggest bugbear the 'B' Specials were disbanded and the British Army moved in taking over most of the Policing from the RUC. That is why the Official IRA declared a ceasefire. But there were a small minority of IRA members who where not prepared to go about it politically, they wanted a total unification of Ireland and where prepared to use violence to achieve that aim. Something the neither Dublin nor Westminster were prepared to tolerate.

However, there was another fly in the ointment and that was Ian Paisley, the best recruiting Sergeant the IRA ever had.

As for the American support for the IRA, it was a case that if your are Irish and you are against the British then your are our friend. Most of the support for the IRA in America was centred around Boston and New York, both with a huge Irish population.

It is interesting to see how that support dwindled after 9/11 and the reception Gerry Adams is getting at the moment. How things change!

Donald

Personally I am not at all enamoured by the politics of Sinn Féin - it's as socialist red as you can get, and it leaves a lot of questions open regarding who is going to pay for all the good stuff they are promising and how our economy could possibly survive the implementation of their policies. It's isolationist, it has unsophisticated views regarding the Protestant community and Irish unification and it brings with it a lot of baggage that should best be assigned to the history books.

However, I do recognise that they represent the views of an awful lot of people who have been completely left behind by the sudden economic boom in Ireland, that there are a lot of people of high integrity working at a community level in the organisation and that they have a legitimate right to push for Irish unity. If they wish to pursue their aims through exclusively peaceful and democratic means, then I welcome it. They are popular because of the policies they pursue ring a chord with many people, both north of the Border and south of it.

They do not need the IRA.

I don't see how Sinn Fein MPs refusing to sit in parliment helps to pursue their aims through exclusively peaceful and democratic means. I also don't see that councillers, people who represent and run their comunity, can fail to see a beating, a murder and then a cover up right in front of them (then only even admit to being in the place when challenged) and retain credability. Having murderers and men of violence as you leaders and spokesmen isn't indicitive of a peacefull and democratic political party. Sinn Fein were, and still are, the political wing of the provos. I agree that not all members of Sinn Fein are members of the IRA. However I do belive that all members of the IRA are members of Sinn Fein. The catholic comunity of the province needs an alternative. I hope it can arise out of this mess because Sinn Fein are still rotten to the core.

It seems now that a whispering campaign has started against the McCartneys - where did the get the money to go to the US, who is behind the campaign, that they didn't really love their brother, etc. etc. Some graffiti was found in the Short Strand area where they live - "Whatever you say, say nothing" and one of them received a death threat in her post when she arrived back from the States.

Nobody has yet been arrested and now it's probable that no convictions will ever be secured.

So it seems that the IRA, rather than face up to the serious allegations being put to them, see the McCartney's more as an establishment threat than as a positive force for change. They seem to be determined to alienate them from the grassroots.