Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label News Letter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News Letter. Show all posts
News Letter ✒ Kingsmills was a “war crime on a par with Bloody Sunday and Ballymurphy” according to the writer and historian Anthony McIntyre – who was once a member of the Provisional IRA himself.

​Mr McIntyre rejected previous republican attempts to deflect from the IRA’s responsibility for the massacre – which last week’s inquest ruled was an “overtly sectarian attack by the IRA”.

He said: 

I have heard a prominent Sinn Fein member speculate that the INLA might have been responsible. I regard this as spurious nonsense, designed to deflect.
My view is that truth and reconciliation calls from Sinn Fein are a subterfuge to mask an ongoing strategic thrust against the British and political unionism.

He said this:

reinforces the hierarchy of victims phenomenon by effectively proclaiming that the victims of the British are entitled to the truth but the victims of republicanism are not. It is not logically possible to ethically square that circle.
I have said publicly on a number of occasions that Sinn Fein meeting British monarchs cannot be about reconciliation. If Sinn Fein was motivated by authenticity on the issue of reconciliation, it would, at the very least, tell the victims of IRA war crimes such as Kingsmills that the IRA was responsible for them.
The Kingsmills war crime, much like the Disappeared, projects very dark blemishes onto the sanitised narrative of republican armed struggle.
Demands from any quarter for half the truth are transparently insulting and belittle any notion of reconciliation.

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly said the Kingsmill families “are entitled to truth and justice” in a statement dominated by demands for an end to the UK Legacy Act.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Kingsmill Was War Crime On A Par With Bloody Sunday And Ballymurphy, Says Ex-IRA Man

News Letter ðŸŽ¤ A former Provisional IRA prisoner has said that he does not buy Sinn Fein’s overtures towards reconciliation as genuine.

By Adam Kula

Anthony McIntyre, who was imprisoned for the fatal shooting of a UVF man and has since become a sharp critic of Sinn Fein, was speaking in the week that Michelle O’Neill assumed the top spot in Northern Irish politics, and then today attended a passing-out ceremony for new police recruits.

The party formally agreed to offer its moral and political support to the PSNI back in 2006 as a condition of entering government, but it has been criticised in the subsequent years by unionists, who believe the party has often paid little more than lip service to its support for the force.

The IRA killed about 300 police officers during the Troubles.

Countless others were wounded or went on to die prematurely through suicide, drink, and drugs.

On the subject of Michelle O’Neill as First Minister, Mr McIntyre told the News Letter:

When I look at what's happening I've a view that it's just a continuation and a confirmation of Sinn Fein's deradicalisation and becoming part of the establishment. Having said that, I think Michelle O'Neill has every right to be First Minister and be called First Minister.

He detects ongoing “resentment towards a nationalist – and particularly somebody from Sinn Fein – being First Minister” from unionists, adding:

Shouldn't they be delighted Sinn Fein have been tamed and brought into the political establishment and pose absolutely no threat to the interests of the British state? They pose absolutely no threat. It merely confirms that their strategic view of the IRA campaign was wrong, because they're now reduced to accepting British state terms for unification: namely only by consent. Nobody whoever fought in the ranks of the IRA will ever live to see a united Ireland. I am certain of it. What's in the opinion polls to say we will? It's alright everybody talking about it (but it’s like the saying) 'God make me good – but just not yet’.

On today’s PSNI ceremony, he said it is further evidence the party is “thoroughly domesticated” because “the PSNI is still an armed British police force that is still up to its neck on covering up on the legacy question”.

It is an “ideological flip-flop” from the party he said, adding:

If the SDLP were doing this I wouldn't bat an eye. It's consistent with what they've always done. It calls into question why the IRA campaign was ever fought. Surely what we have today could've been achieved without anybody dying? If they were going to be really genuine about making reconciliation with the unionist community, why not tell them the truth about Joanne Mathers, which they've denied since she was killed in April 1981? Why not tell them the truth about one of the IRA's greatest war crimes: Kingsmill? They still won't tell the unionist community the truth. So all this licking the queen and licking the king, I don't buy it as genuine gestures of reconciliation.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Passing-Out For Cover-Up Cops

Dr John Coulter ✍ As a political commentator, I’ve earned a reputation for speaking my mind on issues and readers of The Pensive Quill and The Blanket before that will know how forthright I’ve been in expressing my views!

Mind you, as a Presbyterian minister’s son growing up in the heart of the north east Ulster Bible Belt in the Sixties and Seventies, expressing what I thought was not always the wisest of policies.

Here’s a link to some of my more youthful misadventures I’ve penned for The Pensive Quill.

This month, there has been extensive media coverage about the internal bickering going on within the DUP. I grew up in the heartland of political North Antrim where the DUP and the late Rev Ian Paisley established themselves electorally.

During the Paisley senior era, while the party may have had its internal problems, challenges and disputes, it always managed to keep them under wraps and largely away from the public gaze.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of my late dad’s first electoral foray when he was the Ulster Unionist Party candidate for North Antrim in the 1983 Westminster General Election.


After Paisley senior won the North Antrim Commons seat in 1970, standing as a Protestant Unionist, the forerunner of the DUP, the Ulster Unionist Party in that constituency had either supported Paisley Senior as the agreed UUUC/DUP candidate, or had parachuted in an outsider.

But in 1983, my dad - Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE - was the locally-selected North Antrim candidate for the UUP as well as being a Presbyterian minister, senior Orangeman and a lecturer in the Ballymena Technical College.

Five new Westminster seats had been created for the 1983 poll - among them East Londonderry and East Antrim, so the DUP had its eyes on a hat-trick of election victories in geographical north east Ulster.

The original DUP plan was for Paisley senior to run in the new East Antrim, much of which came from the old North Antrim constituency, with Jim Allister (then a North Antrim DUP Assembly Member in the former so-called Prior Assembly from 1982-86) running in the new-look North Antrim, and prominent former Coleraine Mayor James McClure running in the new East Londonderry constituency.

However, with the selection of my dad as the North Antrim UUP candidate, to keep his large majority, Paisley senior switched back to the new North Antrim, sending Jim Allister into East Antrim.

As a party, we knew we had a massive challenge in taking on Paisley senior in his home political turf. But it stopped ‘Big Ian’ from roaming into East Londonderry and East Antrim to canvass for Messrs McClure and Allister respectively.

The net result was that whilst Paisley senior comfortably retained North Antrim with a 13,000 vote majority, the UUP’s William Ross and Roy Beggs senior took East Londonderry and East Antrim. Ironically, both Commons seats later fell to the DUP.

But that 1983 election was a tough challenge as some of the Paisley supporters turned violent. During a canvass of the former Fair Hill Market in Ballymena, dad was punched and kicked.

He carried a personal protection weapon and the assault ended when a Paisley supporter went to punch dad in the ribs and hit the butt of his handgun! Realising some of the UUP team may be armed, the assault stopped almost immediately.

There is no suggestion that Rev Paisley knew about, sanctioned, or even approved of the assault on my dad by his supporters.

It was not the most pleasant of things for a son to see the bruises on his dad’s side. To say that I was angry is an understatement. I have made no secret about being a born again Christian. But being ‘saved’ certainly does not mean I am perfect. Born again believers have tempers, too.

After this incident in Ballymena, I took a phone call at our home. It was from a man claiming to be the Rev Ian Paisley and he had that deep booming voice Paisley senior was known for. Thinking it was a prank caller, I was just about to scream some abuse down the phone when my dad came alongside me.

Remembering the trouble I’d been in during that notorious mission hall service in the late 1960s for using bad language, I decided it was better to tell dad that a man claiming to be Ian Paisley was on the phone.

Dad took the call. It really was Paisley senior! He wanted to tell dad to stand aside in the election and let him give Sinn Fein an electoral drubbing!

Could you imagine the trouble I would have been in with dad and Rev Paisley if I’d used the same very unChristian language to the DUP leader and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster that I had used to that young evangelist who was taunting me at the mission hall in the 1960s!

Sinn Fein in North Antrim in the 1983 election was a two man and a dog outfit and polled less than 3,000 votes compared to Paisley senior’s almost 24,000 votes and dad’s almost 11,000 votes.

There was no way dad would have stood aside. The fact that Rev Paisley was even calling him in the first place was proof enough the former was concerned, not about losing the seat, but about the fate of East Londonderry and East Antrim.

The old Fair Hill Market incident would not be the first time my dad would feel the wrath of DUP anger. A decade later, during the 1993 local government election campaign whilst out canvassing, a staunch DUP woman was so incensed by the UUP canvassers, she set her dog on dad and he was bitten and had to have a tetanus jab!

Dad had the last laugh as that was the year the DUP’s majority grip on the old Ballymena Borough Council was broken and dad became the new Mayor of Ballymena, the first UUP councillor to hold the post for around two decades.

However, bearing in mind the trouble I landed myself in by swearing at that young evangelist in Co Tyrone in the 1960s, there was one incident in the mid 1980s which I never told my dad about.

In 1985, the Anglo-Irish Agreement of that year sparked a street campaign by loyalists and unionists against the so-called Dublin Diktat. Ulster Says No rallies were held across Northern Ireland. I was a staff journalist at the Belfast News Letter at that time.

I was assigned to cover an Ulster Says No rally in Coleraine one Saturday. The weather was atrocious. It rained constantly, and I don’t mean a persistent drizzle - the heavens opened and it was pelting down!

It was so bad, I couldn’t use my notebook to report on the speeches as it would have turned to a soggy mess. I used my dictaphone to record the speeches. I was thoroughly soaked, and whilst I loved my job as a journalist, I returned home in a foul mood.

But that was only the start of my troubles. Instead of asking the then RUC for a crowd estimate, I asked the parade organisers and duly put this figure in my report.

You can imagine the anger which erupted with my line management when the nationalist Irish News carried an estimate of the parade which was about 1,000 more than my article!

To say that the news desk was angry with me was putting it mildly. The pro-Unionist Belfast News Letter’s crowd estimate was much lower than the nationalist Irish News report of the same Coleraine event!

After my dressing down, I simply wanted to find a corner of the Donegall Street News Letter building, hide and get on with my work. No such luck!

Suddenly, the telephone extension beside me rang and an angry male voice who gave his name as a very, very senior DUP politician spoke - asking me where I’d got my estimate from.

At virtually the same time, a senior News Letter executive appeared at the door of the room where I was working and shouted - there’s the man who can’t get his figures right!

I may be a born again Christian, but I constantly let the Lord down. I snapped. I yelled down the phone - ‘why don’t you just fuck off!’ And promptly slammed down the phone. The room of colleagues fell silent. I glanced over my shoulder to see the senior News Letter executive standing silent and gobsmacked, too.

Colleagues in the room were clearly shocked. They had never heard me use such foul language before, and certainly not to someone on a phone.

The journey home to Clough, Co Antrim, from Belfast that night was a long one. Questions and concerns flooded my mind.

Was the person on the phone really who they said they were? Was this person merely pretending to be a very, very senior DUP politician? Would I get home to find my dad furious at my behaviour? Would I get disciplined, suspended or sacked for telling a very, very senior DUP politician to ‘fuck off’?

When I got home, not a word was said. When I arrived at the News Letter the next day, nothing was said - and the incident was never mentioned to me ever again. This is the first time I have mentioned the incident since it happened after that mid 1980s Coleraine Ulster Says No parade.

During my dad’s time as a Stormont UUP MLA, I would meet this very, very senior DUP politician on a fairly regular basis. Nothing has ever been said.

I was tempted on a number of occasions during dad’s time at Stormont to approach this very, very senior DUP politician and politely and calmly ask him if it really was him who phoned me at the News Letter in the mid 1980s. But remember the secular proverb - curiosity killed the cat!

Dad passed into eternity in September 2018 without me ever talking to him about that News Letter incident.

Perhaps when I meet him again in eternity, I will confess what I said to that very, very senior DUP politician. I can well imagine dad’s reaction. It will be the same phrase as used by Captain Mainwaring in the hit TV sitcom, Dad’s Army, to Private Pike - ‘You stupid boy!’

As the very, very senior DUP politician has never mentioned the incident to me, I’ll placate my conscience by thinking - maybe it wasn’t him, but someone pretending to be him to give me another dressing down for quoting the wrong source for my Coleraine crowd estimate!
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. 

Giving The DUP Some Lip!

News Letter ✒ David Trimble 1944–2022: Ex-IRA killer says late unionist’s 1998 deal will not lead to Irish unity in his lifetime.


Adam Kula
27-July-2022

A former IRA killer has said that the 1998 agreement brokered by the late Lord Trimble will not lead to a united Ireland within the lifetime of any PIRA members.

Anthony McIntyre, a 65-year-old who is now living in the Irish republic, voted against the Good Friday Agreement himself.

He said that Mr Trimble’s 1998 deal only served to highlight how “futile” the Troubles had been, since it differed little from the power-sharing proposals of the Sunningdale Agreement over two decades earlier (a deal which was subsequently killed off by loyalist street protests in 1974).

The Good Friday Agreement was approved by 71% of voters, despite unionist fears that it gave away too much to republicans and could be used as a springboard towards Irish unity.

Mr McIntyre told the News Letter, that some in the republican leadership were “enthusiastic about it” because it offered them “a career path”.

The grassroots were less impressed, but “went out and voted for it because they were told to”.

I remember a meeting when they were trying to sell the Good Friday Agreement. It was described by a leading Sinn Fein figure as, not a stepping stone to a united Ireland, but a stepping stone to a stepping stone – which to me was utter [rubbish].

For Mr McIntyre, the agreement was “a British declaration of intent to stay:

 . . . The Good Friday Agreement turned republicanism on its head. It completely invalidated the republican raison d’etre. It said to republicanism: 'Your campaign of coercion is wrong, now you want to go for consent.' These are what the British terms for Irish unity always were – it’s not that Britain is opposed to Irish unity; it’s opposed to the terms on which you pursue Irish unity. If they’d signed up to that 40 years ago we’d have never had the war.”

Hard To Justify Post-Sunningdale Killings

The war just helped delay a solution. Now I don’t get into the grounds of criticising it or sort of condemning it and moralising about it. But strategically the war was futile. Had the republicans signalled to the British in the mid-70s how little they were prepared to settle for in terms of traditional goals, the British would’ve moved heaven and Earth to compel the unionists to settle up with republicanism. It’s very, very hard to sit down and justify any life lost from anybody post-Sunningdale.

That’s because of “how little difference there is” between Sunningdale and Good Friday Agreement.

As to whether the Good Friday Agreement did indeed pave the way for Irish unity, he said: 

“No I don’t see it as a stepping stone. Anybody who fought in the Provisional IRA will not live to see a united Ireland. I’m absolutely certain. You tell me – when’s a united Ireland going to come? It’s not going to come in the next 20 years, and sure most of us will be dead by then.”

Assassination ‘Not A Realistic Strategy.’

Asked if any consideration had ever been given to killing Trimble, Mr McIntyre said he that, by the mid-90s, Sinn Fein was meeting with major UK and US statesmen, and whilst that was going on killing an elected unionist would have been seen as “beyond the pale”.

Would they have liked to have taken him out? I’m sure there were people who’d have liked to take anybody out who disagrees with them. “You always get that sentiment in totalitarian structures, authoritarian structures. I’m sure you’d have got people saying ‘ah we should shoot the b*****d’. But it was never a realistic strategic proposal.

 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

No Irish Unity In Our Lifetime

From the News Letter Sam McBride has questions about the decline of the Sinn Fein vote in the North. 

The general election’s disastrous outcome for unionism and the rapid rise of the Alliance Party has masked that the result is profoundly concerning for Sinn Fein.

Where there has been focus on Sinn Fein’s problems over the last few days, it has focused on Foyle – understandable because what had been a Sinn Fein lead of 169 votes turned into a landslide majority of more than 17,000 for SDLP leader Colum Eastwood.

In a safe nationalist seat where the SDLP put up a credible candidate and nationalist voters could express their preference without any fear of a unionist victory, voters deserted Sinn Fein’s Elisha McCallion en masse.

Ms McCallion was widely regarded – even among some republicans – as simply not up to the job.

Continue reading @ the News Letter.

Yet Another Electoral Warning To Sinn Fein – But Is It Listening?

Philip McGarry a recently retired co consultant psychiatrist examines the contrasting words of Pam Morrison and Gerry Adams in respect of the former IRA chief of staff Kevin McKenna. He sees in them a a reflection of the Better Angels Of Our Nature and The Worst Of Our Past.

Last week saw two very significant and contrasting interpretations of our recent history in Northern Ireland.

The first was the moving testimony of Pam Morrison, speaking publicly for the first time about her three brothers who were separately hunted down and murdered by the IRA in rural Fermanagh in the 1980s.

The second was the funeral of Kevin Mc Kenna, allegedly a former IRA leader.

Ronnie Graham was killed in June 1981 as he was delivering coal.

In November 1981 Cecil Graham was leaving his in-laws’ house where his Catholic wife was staying with their prematurely born five week old son Darren, when the IRA shot him 16 times.

In February 1985 Jimmy Graham was parking his school bus at a primary school in Derrylin when he was shot 26 times.

Continue reading @ The News Letter.

Better Angels Of Our Nature Or The Worst Of Our Past

From Mark Rainey @ The News Letter, an interview with Anthony McIntyre about Loughgall.

Loughgall: IRA inmates’ joy turned to despair as news of SAS ambush reached Maze prison

From Joy To Despair

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)