The Daily Mail

[seafoid]

The Daily Mail have today published an article describing the Bloody Sunday murderers as "Britain's brave paras".

If ever a paper needed boycotted it's that horrible, vile rag. Not to mention it's "Irish" edition.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2568874/If-terror-suspects-immunity-not-Britains-brave-Paras-Furious-MPs-demand-immunity-soldiers.html#ixzz2uc5qCEZ5

The DM is a vile piece of work. They also deny climate change.
Not to mention the soft porn on the website while moaning about the sexualisation of young girls

[lawnseed]

I never buy or read any brit paper. Why pay to put yourself in a bad mood? I know all about "our boys"
And the tsumnami of polish people who are out breeding to brits in their own country. I dont care about uk soccer or any of the other sports they are useless at so why pay to read this stuff.

As regards otrs or ex combatants of any type a deal is a deal. We all voted for peace and thats what we got (mostly) of course i'd like to see the paras on trial but it aint gonna happen. Nether the provos nor the brits want to wash their dirty linen in public. The irish state cant even get closure on dub and monaghan. Its too soom maybe in fifty years the full records of what happened will be opened and filed under 'history" 
Our kids will find out when we are all dead and hopefully theyll read it and forget it.

[gallsman]

I think it's a technicality that 'if new evidence' arises. These cases are very old, and how many are actively being investigated at this stage? Not many I'd say.

Anyway, as I said, the conditional amnesty (is that better?) for OTR is to be welcomed I think, but I can see why some people would be saying why not a similar conditional amnesty for the dicks in Derry.

The "dicks in Derry" are not an anomaly like the OTRs. They are the forces of the state and have never had to go on the run. What irritates me too is the constant fixation on the Bloody Sunday soldiers (as if they are somehow a parallel of OTRs) and whether they should be granted immunity. Is it because there was an apology for Bloody Sunday? Well, the IRA issued a full apology almost 15 years ago, but I didn't hear any unionists clambering to have immunity for them from then on. Why don't the people who bring up the Bloody Sunday murderers also bring up the murderers of Ballymurphy too for instance? Their silence on those particular murderers, and on hundreds of others, remains deafening. None of these OTRs have been granted immunity, and while no IRA members have immunity, then no British soldier should either.

Along with the hungerstrikes, Bloody Sunday is, in my opinion, one of the two most significant and heartwrenching events of the troubles from a Republican perspective. It is precisely because of this that Bloody Sunday and the hungerstrikes, despite all the overwhelming evidence against the Paras in Derry and Thatcher in Whitehall, are held by Loyalists and the Brits as triumphs - they try to protect their boys involved because those particular events are so important to us.

[muppet]

I despise that paper and I can recall vividly, form my time living in England, how dim a view it took of me and my countrymen and women.

However..........

...that article and its headline appear to quote MPs, Tory MPS at that. They should be the subject of this particular thread.

What it shows though is the hypocrisy of people who invoke dangerous rhetoric when 'our boys' appear to somehow lose out. That applies to both sides as far as I can see. But it takes a particular type of hypocrite to view the paras as victims in this. The paras pulled the trigger, that is not in dispute. The Birmingham Six and Guildford 4 didn't, nor did the Hillsborough fans. Where were the Tories then?

[seafoid]

Re brit papers
Last july the irish star had george windsor on the front page. WTF

[theticklemister]

f**k lads, what do u expect?

I couldnt give two hoolies.

Thats the answer to this thread.

[lawnseed]

If the bloody sunday paras go on trial they are gonna say they were following orders. The guys who gave the orders will say the same thing. This is where the problem leads right to the heart of british establishment- toffs sitting in gentlemens clubs in london lords and royalty. If it was just a handful of oikes from newcastle they'd already be in jail. Its never gonna happen.

As for the mail it appeals to a certain type of brit usally that oike who licks stamps for a living and gives orders to the guy who reads the sun.. Sophisticated types

[Maguire01]

If a full amnesty for all were to be called tomorrow, around 25,000 republicans would have served jail sentences totaling 100,000 years.

I've heard this figure quoted by SF a few times over the past few days. It seems incredibly high (particularly the 100,000 figure). Is there any reliable source for this?

[Maguire01]

So you don't support a full amnesty for all, you want everyone who committed atrocities to be charged and convicted. That's fair enough.

I haven't said what I support. On one hand it would be good to draw a line under it all, as people like Danny Morrison would support doing. On the other hand, drawing a line under it all would be the final act in absolving Britain of any culpability for what went on here for thirty years. Their refusal to convict members of the state forces has only been an unwritten rule. A full amnesty would make it a written rule. While 25,000 republicans went to jail and only a bare handful of british soldiers/RUC officers did, then that would be a funny type of justice legacy, and would potentially copper-fasten the long-running alienation of the families of collusion victims and the two-tier victimhood. Probably the best option, if there were no more convictions, would be a truth commission, and where the British would admit publically (as it has done so privately to Martin McGuinness) that it was not just a referee, but a protagonist, and come clean on it's collusion. I fear that's just too much to ask from them though (while they will continue to lecture republicans on peace and law and justice and respect).
"It took a Labour government under Tony Blair, for the first time, to recognise that the British government's policies in the north of Ireland were as much a part of the problem as anything that the IRA was doing. Because Tony Blair, in the week that led to the Good Friday negotiations, actually said to me, 'Martin I have read a number of history books and I accept that we were as responsible for the conflict in the north of Ireland, as anybody else.' That was a massive admission, for any British prime minister to make to the leaders of Irish republicanism."

A truth commission would be a farce, in my opinion. I don't believe for a second that we'd get the full truth from any of the relevant parties to the conflict. I'd consider anyone who thinks otherwise to be extremely naive.