The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #79089 Message #1431167
Posted By: GUEST
09-Mar-05 - 10:30 PM
Thread Name: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
Subject: RE: BS: IRA offers to shoot suspects
I'd say The Curator is Irish all right. He wouldn't be the only one in Ireland with that mentality. The problem is not so much his views, but that he is determined to stand his ground in the face of all logic. Specifically, he simply hasn't noticed that the world has moved on since the bad times he remembers.
Let me be clear: the RUC was a national disgrace, as bad as everything else I mentioned in an earlier post. Someone mentioned the courageous Pat Finucane. Madden & Finucane in Belfast were my solicitors. I'm fully aware of the collusion that went on between the RUC and loyalist murderers. I remember the alarm spread by the notorious thugs known as the Shankill Butchers, and the fact that 12 detectives were put on their trail, at a time when 150 were looking for the Yorkshire Ripper. I saw at first hand the crass and disgusting behaviour of British troops in Belfast in the early years of the troubles, that did so much to stir up hatred in the communities they were supposed to be protecting. An in-law remembers vividly the night 70-odd years ago that the McMahon family were murdered in Belfast by a gang led by RUC inspector John William Nixon (who was subsequently elected a unionist MP).
For sure there are enough horrors in the not-too-distant past for The Curator to dine out on for years to come. But instead of wallowing in the past, it is surely time to recognise that more civilised values are taking root and that there is a real prospect of reconciliation, given a degree of goodwill on both sides. The McCartneys are not the first family to say they don't want any reprisal killings. Those who continue to wear their bitterness on their sleeves could surely learn something from such examples.
Certainly the root-and-branch reform of the RUC should have been a major priority many years earlier, but the process is now well underway, and has already gone farther than many would have foreseen a few years ago. John Stevens, who recently retired as the UK's most senior cop, did much to expose the scale of RUC-loyalist collusion - despite his inquiry being sabotaged by elements within the RUC.
It is a pity that Sinn Fein felt constrained by history against acknowledging the good faith behind police reform. They now find themselves forced, by one brave family, into recognition of the Police Service of Northern Ireland - de facto, if not de jure. There is really no other way to interpret what Gerry Adams said at the SF ard fheis last weekend (where incidentally the McArtney family were feted as honoured guests). From reading The Curator's comments, one wonders if he is aware that Adams spoke at all.
For all that there were mistakes, blunders, own goals, and innocent lives lost, the PIRA campaign did, in my view, have some legitimacy, having been launched when Northern Ireland was not a democracy in any meaningful sense. It is therefore regrettable to see it losing its way so catastrophically in the last few weeks. It was bad enough offering to kill McCartney's murderers, but utterly stupid (as even McGuinness said in slightly more restrained terms) to state this proudly in a public statement.
But the episode is useful in one way, in that it shows up the demands for proof about the Northern Bank raid as being wholly disingenuous. Those behind such demands know full well what the difficulty is. But let me spell it out: if the police are struggling to get evidence in the McCartney case, where there has been special pleading from Gerry Adams for full co-operation, then obviously it will be that much harder to get evidence about the Northern Bank raid. Even in cases where the IRA have claimed responsibility, it has often been impossible to get enough evidence to prosecute anyone.
Yet who knows? With the IRA's standing now as low as it was at the onset of the troubles, someone may yet recover his memory, and recall some significant detail about the Northern Bank raid - and stand up to be counted.