Shoot to Kill 1982

[stew]

The RUC murdered one of the own. Constable Campbell, a Catholic from the north Antrim area was killed by the RUC so they had a history of killing their own.

They were more prone to aiding and abetting loyalist terror gangs, helping them kill Catholics and setting up bogus road blocks etc. Scum.

[GweylTah]

I find it a crying same and something of a human tragedy when people like the preceding poster either lose the free-thinking gene they were born with, or else are just blinded by hatred and prejudice fed from the tit, and unable or unwilling to contemplate or challenge their own views, however daft or deluded.

[stew]

I find it a crying same and something of a human tragedy when people like the preceding poster either lose the free-thinking gene they were born with, or else are just blinded by hatred and prejudice fed from the tit, and unable or unwilling to contemplate or challenge their own views, however daft or deluded.

Do you go out of your way to sound like a feckwit gweyltah.

Have you ever contempleted your views on republicianism or the GAA gweyltah?

I have no prejudice nor hatred in me gweyltah but given the ruc's history of terrorism and collusion I have no doubt that the Campbell families version of events are true and that in fact the ruc killed Constable campbell because he was a Catholic............ it's not as if this behaviour had never happened before his murder now is it?

The biggest problem I have with the likes of you is your one sided moral outrage  and your lack of accountability for the so called 'security frorces'.

[MW]

That's an honest and succinct post MW. I think it's probably the first time in our little tête à têtes that you have actually recognized the right of republicans and nationalists to hold a different view on the conflict without telling us what our view should be  - and I thank you for that.

It may be the first time I've actually said that I do, but that's because I've never felt the need to say that. I don't thik I've exhibited any unwillingness to deny anyone an opinion or viewpoint - it's just that as a former history student I can't stand inaccuracy and pseudo history, and biased narrative masquerdinmg as factual history. Both sides are guily of this in NI, and I'll take on a unionist/loyalist natrrative that jars with me as well. This isn't to say I don't have my own biases too, growing up in Northern Ireland we all will, but I'm happy to discuss my opinions and have them dissected and do likewise.

To answer your earlier question on how I view the actions of the IRA, well in many ways they are a mirror image of yours. I am against all killing, but mostly I couldn't have cared when another RUC member or Brit solider got killed, because I viewed them in the same way that you viewed the IRA. They terrorized my family and my community. In the earlier days they committed cold blooded murder and later they organized the loyalist gangs to do it for them. So the way I saw it they probably had it coming to them, if not for their own actions but as payback for others in their respective organizations.

I can see where your point of view is coming from but I would argue that it isn't quite a mirror image of mine. I see a fundamental difference in membership of the paramilitary groups and being a police officer or a soldier. The IRA and INLA were geared to two things - murdering people and destroying property. That was their modus operandi. That was what (after the disappearance of the no-go areas in 1972) their 'active' mebers were involved in doing - it was their raison d'etre as IRA and INLA members. (Just as in the UVF and UFF). Whereas if you took a police officer, any officer, his duties were highly unlikely to have been conncted with killing anyone. They could have been in preventing shoplifting, catching drug dealers, maintaining the flow of traffic. Even those who were involved in counter-terrorism would most likely have been involved in inforamtion gathering, policing roadblocks etc - preventing attacks taking place and prosecuting the perpetrators. Then there's soldiers, both UDR/RIR and the 'regular' Army. Pick a soldier at random and you'll find his role entailed patrolling, manning watchtowers, manning checkpoints, perahps riot control. Now certainly there were many abuses of position, some of them very serious, and I wouldn't dispute that a number in the security forces aided loyalist terrorists or allowed informers both loyalist and republican to commit serious crimes. But there's a fundamental difference there in the roles of the terror groups and the security forces and what 'activity' therein entailed.

I appreciate that's nowhere near how you see things and I respect that, but the conflict as dirty and nasty as it was, had us all thinking and acting in ways which would be unimaginable in a normal society.

True. And I think we need some method of dealing with the past and surpassing it.

[Donagh]

They involve the shooting of three IRA men: Sean Burns, Gervaise McKerr and Eugene Toman; Irish National Liberation Army suspects Peter Grew and Roderick Carroll; and Catholic teenager Michael Tighe.

He also probed events surrounding the shooting of Michael Tighe, 17, at a hayshed near Craigavon, Co Armagh, the same month. IRA explosives had been stored there but the victim was not connected to the organisation.

I'd expected better of you 5Times, where did you pull that rubbish from – Newsletter or Tele? Check out www.shoottokill25.org for latest news and updates, including an online auction.

Big thanks to Balladmaker for arranging the fundraiser....

[Donagh]

Sorry 5Times, I saw the same Press Association article carried in today's Irish News. I'd have expected the IN at least to check the thing before they printed it but then I turned to the sports section and they have a PA Sport article describing Leinster Centre Felipe Contepomi as the "former Bristol fly-half". May be true enough but FFS...

[Donagh]

List of events now online:

http://www.shoottokill25.org/

[Candyman]

I see when the new enquiry opened a few weeks ago, 65boxes of new evidence were uncovered that the Crown forces hadn't declared...
Im sure they will make for interesting reading, why were they kept from the families and their legal team all these years?

[Donagh]

Events happening around Lurgan this weekend. All welcome to attend.

Mass Tonight (Thursday 8th Nov) 7.30pm St Paul's Church, Francis St., Lurgan
Céilí Mór tomorrow evening 8.30pm Clan na Gael CLG, Francis St., Lurgan
New mural unveiling, Sat, 12.30pm in Kilwikie estate, Lurgan
New mural unveiling, Sat 1pm in Taghnevan estate, Lurgan
Memorial dedication, Sat 2pm, Tullygally East Rd, Lurgan
Book launch with readings from family and other contributors, followed by function, Sat 8pm, The Stables, Lurgan
Candlelit vigil, Sunday 11th 7pm at the new memorial on Tullygally East Rd

[Donagh]

Stephen Moutray has a bit of cheek to be complaining about this when he and his fellow unionist councilors in Craigavon voted to place a memorial to Loyalist murderer and drug dealer, Swinger Fulton on council land the other week. As for the Newletter, that they can't even spell the lads names correctly says a lot.


From today's Newsletter.

IRA monument 'an attempt to re-write history'

The unveiling this weekend of a monument to three IRA men shot dead by the security forces in Lurgan is "an attempt to re-write history", an MLA said yesterday.
Upper Bann DUP MLA Stephen Moutray hit out at the memorial to Gervaise McKerr, Sean Burns and Eugene Toman, killed on November 11, 1982.

Mr Moutray said: "This is only the latest example of republicans attempting to re-write history.

"We are all trying to move on into a new and better future for the people of Northern Ireland.

"That will not be helped by this kind of development, designed as it is to divert people's gaze away from the largest abuser of human rights during the course of the Troubles."

Mr Moutray
said he would investigate whether the monument had received the proper planning approval.

"I shall be raising this with the relevant department with a view to seeing just how legal it is and what the department plans to do about it," he said.

Earlier this year, Coroner John Leckey held a preliminary hearing into six controversial killings at the centre of an alleged police shoot-to-kill policy 25 years ago.

The case includes the three IRA men shot dead by members of a specialist RUC unit in Lurgan.

At the time of the controversy over the Lurgan deaths, former deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester Police John Stalker was brought in to investigate. His report was never published and earlier inquests into the killings were abandoned.

The Government has always denied any "shoot-to-kill" policy existed and has resisted calls from families to look again at what happened.

[lynchbhoy]

Didnt realise until yesterday that "Swinger" was a nephew of the Prentice brothers.
Swinger was quite an apt name considering how he died.

there was def no way that the prentice brothers were in any way involved in 'the committee'
ahem

[Gaoth Dobhair Abu]

Didnt realise until yesterday that "Swinger" was a nephew of the Prentice brothers.
Swinger was quite an apt name considering how he died.

lol 

[Donagh]

Feckit 5Times, you should have got him to autograph a copy.

As for Stephen Moutray and the rest of the unionists crawling out from under Swingers grave, it they had wanted to prevent the memorial being built they could have put a stop to it at any time over the last four weeks with an injunction. It has been widely reported from the foundations went in and the whole town knew what was being built. However putting an objection then would only have served to highlight his scandalous vote in Craigavon Council, whereas, now he can slabber away in the full knowledge that nothing will be done.

And Stephen if you are reading, the memorial does have planning permission. The people of the local area were widely consulted and the location was even moved at one point at the request of local residents. The support of the local community was clearly demonstrated by the thousands of people that attended the various commeration and fundraising events over the past three months. Can you say you have the same support for the memorial you erected to Swinger?

[lynchbhoy]

He laughed and told me that if those allegations were true, would everyone in South Armagh be driving new diesel BMWs.
One thing you should take into account.

at least he had an answer ready, pretty tenuous though imo

[lynchbhoy]

Is it just me or did Billy & Swinger not look like a couple of Nancy Boys with their leather waistcoats and moustaches?

that was prob fashionable around the time they were 'banged up'