More musings on Sinn Fein...

[Evil Genius]

Sinn Féin's double standard when dealing with the past

(by Liam Clarke, Sunday Times)

Many of the worst crimes in history were carried out for political motives by people who felt fully justified in perpetrating them. Their politically motivated offences were still crimes, of course, and could not just be forgotten about. This is a point that entirely escapes Sinn Féin.

A republican ballad recalls how Kevin Barry, a young IRA man hanged for killing a British soldier in 1920, walked to the gallows with his head held high, saying he wished to be shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog. The song eulogises his political motivation, his clear conscience and his calmness facing death.

The problem is that exactly the same could be said of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator who showed dignity and courage before his executioners. It is also true of Adolf Eichmann, the SS leader who coined the term "final solution" for the Holocaust, or Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator who maintained that history would absolve him.

All three men, generally regarded as monsters, walked to their deaths with their heads held as high as Barry's. Like him, they asked to be shot like soldiers rather than hanged like dogs. They even showed great fortitude in their last minutes.

Hannah Arendt, a Jewish writer who chronicled Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, concluded that the Nazi was the type of person who "commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well nigh impossible for him to know that he is doing wrong". Perhaps this is the true definition of a political offender.

It would be facile to say that Barry, a boy of 18, was in the same league as these mass murderers. Neither is the IRA to be equated with the SS on the scale of evil.

The fact remains, however, that Eichmann, Saddam and Ceausescu were all political criminals. Their clean consciences and their courage in the face of death does not excuse their deeds.

We will not forget their crimes, nor refuse to mention them for fear of causing offence, any more than we will forget the crimes of the modern IRA. The fact that a person feels good about what he has done does not wipe out the consequences of the action.

It is quite sensible to argue that, since they are unlikely to reoffend now that the terrorist campaigns are over, former paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland should be given a break when seeking employment. Most signed an agreement to abide by the ceasefires when released and I believe they should be given the chance to integrate into society, and should not be pushed to the margins by being discriminated against in employment.

It's quite another thing for Martina Anderson to propose that criminal records earned by republican and loyalists during the Troubles should be expunged. She is herself a former bomber captured in 1985 in a flat in Glasgow from where a wave of attacks across Britain was being plotted. She clearly feels comfortable in her own mind about what she has done, and more often talks about her harsh treatment in prison than the mayhem she plotted. One of those captured with her, Patrick Magee, was convicted of murdering members of the Tory party in the Grand Hotel.

The Brighton bombing was undeniably a politically motivated act.

"We had a political situation that produced political prisoners," Anderson has argued. The underlying assumption is that if an assault or robbery is carried out with a political motive, it is less reprehensible than if carried out for personal reasons.

Last year Anderson visited the Scottish parliament as the guest of Margot McDonald, an independent MSP. It was recently put to her that, during the visit, she had said that Tory MPs were legitimate targets. She declined to comment, telling the questioner, Gregory Campbell of the DUP, not to dwell on the past.

Unfortunately for her, this is not how the world sees things.

Again and again the republican movement's view of its actions collides sharply with reality.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were repeated attempts to get international courts to give IRA convicts prisoner-of-war or political status. All were unsuccessful. The grading of offences by motivation was something that had no validity outside republican ideology.

For Anderson, political motivation means that, here and now, IRA actions should not be dwelt on except at republican commemorations when ex-prisoners are congratulated and the dead remembered. At best the political motivation, now that the campaign is over, becomes a springboard for political action of a more conventional type.

"Let us take on this task readily, with determination and with container-loads of energy, following the example of the people down the years who gave their lives in pursuance of this struggle," Anderson said at the Edentubber commemoration for the four IRA members and civilian whose lives were wasted when a bomb exploded prematurely in Co Louth in 1958.

This sort of thinking may be useful as a psychological device to deal with her violent past, years in jail and the death of her friends.

Otherwise, she might suffer the full mental anguish that would normally be associated with such memories. But as a line of argument it won't be accepted by anyone who did not support the IRA campaign. She is speaking a different language from most of the population.

Sinn Féin operates a seemingly unconscious double standard in which the wrongdoing of others is to be remembered and probed, but IRA activity, although it caused pain, sits outside the criminal justice system and truth-recovery process. Anderson, now a member of the policing board, speaks of instances of politically motivated collusion between the security forces and paramilitaries as "crimes against humanity".

Yet IRA actions were never crimes against humanity, because they were inspired by the same sort of political motives she attributes to the police.

The point featured in a recent exchange between Martin McGuinness and Stephen Nolan of the BBC, who has a gift for bluntness.

Nolan asked McGuinness if he had killed anybody. McGuinness hedged and talked about being an IRA leader at a time when people suffered.

"I'm wondering if I am looking at a killer," Nolan persisted. "You can wonder all you like," replied McGuinness.

Asked if, now that he supported law and order, McGuinness would like people to report anything he had done wrong, he replied: "I'm not a criminal. I was never a criminal . . . I'm not asking or advocating that republicans and nationalists should give information on the IRA over the IRA campaign. I can't do that."

This attempt to close the book on the IRA campaign because of its political character, while calling for public inquiries into other acts of violence that sprang from the political conflict, won't wash.

It leaves Sinn Féin looking like hypocrites, having no answers to the hard questions.

liam.clarke@sunday-times.co.uk


June 11, 2007

[Donagh]

Can you at least have the manners to post on existing threads instead of spamming up the Board with whatever shit you have stumbled across on Slugger or Our Wee Cesspit?

[Mentalman]

A republican ballad recalls how Kevin Barry, a young IRA man hanged for killing a British soldier in 1920, walked to the gallows with his head held high, saying he wished to be shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog. The song eulogises his political motivation, his clear conscience and his calmness facing death.

The problem is that exactly the same could be said of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator who showed dignity and courage before his executioners. It is also true of Adolf Eichmann, the SS leader who coined the term "final solution" for the Holocaust, or Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator who maintained that history would absolve him.

Maybe I'm thick, but I don't understand why he's prefaced his arguement with this rubbish. Placing Barry in a comparison with Hussein, Eichman and Ceausecu? One hanged for the killing of a British soldier, the others mass murderers? He then goes on to say this very thing himself:

It would be facile to say that Barry, a boy of 18, was in the same league as these mass murderers. Neither is the IRA to be equated with the SS on the scale of evil.

So why mention it? Just to grab our attention, to be controversial? Why not premise the arguement properly, instead of taking away from it with this drivel? What has Kevin Barry, died 1920,  got to do with the recently ended hostilities in the North? His IRA, and their circumstances, bear as much resemblance to the current one as chalk has to cheese.

[T Fearon]

Clarke might well tunr his attentions to Unionist Hypocrisy

Such as support for the rule of Law and Order...except when the Police are called upon to enfore Orange Parade bans etc, then Paisley and Trimble are at Drumcree to oversee the mayhem.

[lynchbhoy]

liam clarke  
journalist

[Evil Genius]

Can you at least have the manners to post on existing threads instead of spamming up the Board with whatever shit you have stumbled across on Slugger or Our Wee Cesspit?

The other current thread on Sinn Fein addresses a different subject, namely their electoral position in the ROI, whereas this article addresses their position vis a vis Law and Order, Crime and Politics etc.

I had thought about including it in the other thread, but concluded that would only risk "spamming" things up further; otherwise, why have separate threads in the first place? Why not just have one amorphous thread entitled "Politics" or somesuch?

Anyhow, now you've finished "playing the man", do you wish to "play the ball" by any chance?

Or do you just prefer to "spam up" the Board with posts on topics on which you have neither interest or opinion? 

[Evil Genius]

Clarke might well tunr his attentions to Unionist Hypocrisy

Such as support for the rule of Law and Order...except when the Police are called upon to enfore Orange Parade bans etc, then Paisley and Trimble are at Drumcree to oversee the mayhem.

Whataboutery alert...

[Evil Genius]

liam clarke  
journalist

That's told him about right! In fact, you really tore apart his article there, line by line. Forensic, I'd almost call it...

[Evil Genius]

Maybe I'm thick, but I don't understand why he's prefaced his arguement with this rubbish.

Wow! Answering your own question before you even asked it! Quite a skill...

[SuperMac]

Can you at least have the manners to post on existing threads instead of spamming up the Board with whatever shit you have stumbled across on Slugger or Our Wee Cesspit?

" Our Wee Cesspit " Very good. Well, everyone on the board may have our differences from time to time, but honest to God, that fella has to be the biggest gobsh!te that anyone could have the misfortune to have posting on a board. Do us all a favour and drop dead will ya pal 

[his holiness nb]

EG, the old "Anyhow, now you've finished "playing the man", do you wish to "play the ball"" card is getting old, especially considering how the following 3 posts, all by you, could be considered to be doing the same  

Although I am sure you will give a lengthy reply to show how you didnt  

[Evil Genius]

EG, the old "Anyhow, now you've finished "playing the man", do you wish to "play the ball"" card is getting old, especially considering how the following 3 posts, all by you, could be considered to be doing the same  

Although I am sure you will give a lengthy reply to show how you didnt  

The pre-Election poll on this Board, as well as many of the posts on this Board, would indicate that there is a significant number of SF supporters hereabouts.

Yet when I reproduced a studied article on a key aspect of party policy, only one poster, Mentalman, thought to address the issues raised (and then only one rather peripheral aspect of it).

Meanwhile, Donagh lays into me for daring to post it, Fearon blethers on about the OO, Lynchboy disparages the author's credentials, Supermac, with his customary charm, invites me to "drop dead" (again) and now you intervene again to question the messenger rather than the messenge.

Well the fact is, I originally posted the article entirely without comment of any kind, so I am hardly the story.

Talking of which, am I to presume that since no SF supporter, or Republican generally, has attempted to rebut what Clarke is actually saying, is this a case of "the truth hurting"? 

[Donagh]

EG, the old "Anyhow, now you've finished "playing the man", do you wish to "play the ball"" card is getting old, especially considering how the following 3 posts, all by you, could be considered to be doing the same 

Although I am sure you will give a lengthy reply to show how you didnt 

The pre-Election poll on this Board, as well as many of the posts on this Board, would indicate that there is a significant number of SF supporters hereabouts.

Yet when I reproduced a studied article on a key aspect of party policy, only one poster (Mentalman) thought to address the issues raised and then only one rather peripheral aspect of it.

Meanwhile, Donagh lays into me for daring to post it, Fearon blethers on about the OO, Lynchboy disparages the author's credentials, Supermac, with his customary charm, invites me to "drop dead" (again) and now you intervene again to question the messenger rather than the messenger.

Well the fact is, I originally posted the article entirely without comment of any kind, so I am hardly the story.

Talking of which, am I to presume that since no SF supporter, or Republican generally, has attempted to rebut what Clarke is actually saying, is this a case of "the truth hurting"? 

EG, there are conventions on the Board which we all abide by and one of them is not to be reproducing threads especially when there was already an active one at the top of the Board. Far from the truth hurting, I read the article the other day and dismissed it as nonsense. If the members of this board took the time to read never mind response to every inane post you make, we'd all be on here full time. Empty vessels and all that...

[his holiness nb]

"and now you intervene again to question the messenger rather than the messenge"

No I question your doing the above 

[lynchbhoy]

Lynchboy disparages the author's credentials

I glance through the paper and read a few lines from his 'articles' each week to see what he is banging on about
so I think I can safely say that I can laugh at his notions of being a journalist.

like a lot of you people, someone should let him know that there has been a ceasefire since the early/mid 90's - and that certain things like decommissioning  etc have all happened.
Jeez you'd swear that 'kingsmills' happens every week according to him and a lot of the unionist fraternity