Fearful for the future of the whole peace process

A lot of things in Irish politics sicken me but few things have sickened me more than the sight of Unionist politicians trying to get the Government here to apologise for the actions of the IRA in the past.

 

Are these people blind or is it just that they cannot see? The fact is that the IRA would not have been there at all but for the failure of Unionist politicians in the past to grant some basic civil rights to Catholics.
A former Northern Ireland prime minister admitted that what they had in Stormont was “a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people”. Another Northern prime minister said he would not employ a Catholic.

Catholics were discriminated against in every aspect of life in Northern Ireland. They found it almost impossible to get anything but the most menial and most poorly paid jobs. They were denied local authority housing and many otherwise eligible people were denied the right to vote in local elections. The Unionist oligarchy operated a system of apartheid against the Catholic minority that was the envy of the white-only government of South Africa, who invented the term. When Catholics in their thousands tried to march peacefully for their civil rights they were battoned by the police and murdered by the soldiers.

There was no IRA then or no organisation equipped to defend Catholics from Unionist and loyalist thugs in or out of uniform. The letters ‘IRA’ came to stand for ‘I Ran Away’ among beleaguered Catholics on the streets of Belfast, Derry and elsewhere.

I worked as a reporter for the Irish Independent in Belfast at the start of The Troubles and witnessed at first hand what was happening. The Provisional IRA came into existence because the ‘official’ IRA seemed to be more concerned about fishing rights on the rivers and lakes of Connemara than about the plight of Catholics and Nationalists in Northern Ireland.

That was the background to the formation of the Provisional IRA, or the Provos, as they came to be known. Hundreds of young Catholic men and women started flocking into the Provos and other Republican organisations, mainly to defend their local communities. They were not too concerned then about a united Ireland or about a Socialist Republic. That desire came later. Their only and immediate concern was to equip themselves with weapons to defend their communities from bigoted mobs aided by the police and spurred on by Unionist zealots in Stormont.

So when people like Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster call on Enda Kenny to apologise for the actions of the IRA in the past, I reach for the vomit bag. It was their own Democratic Unionist Party, along with the official Unionist Party and all the other Unionist and Orange groups that put fire and brimstone into the IRA.

I suppose for the sake of harmony with our Protestant brethren in the North, Enda Kenny feels obliged to meet them. He has now met at least two deputations from the North seeking an apology from him.

I can understand the feelings of victims of IRA violence because they genuinely have suffered but others are only using the victims as a bandwagon from which to preach hatred against the Republic of Ireland.

Why the hell should Enda Kenny apologise for the IRA? And why the hell should anybody expect him to? Fine Gael has been more opposed to the IRA than any other party in the Republic and that hatred has gone back to the civil war fought down here 90 years ago.

If Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster were more interested in the cause of the victims of IRA violence than in rubbing our noses in it they would turn to their colleague in the power-sharing executive in Stormont, Martin McGuinness, and ask him to apologise. But that is not their agenda.

The people or the Government of the Republic have nothing to be ashamed of. Only a very small minority of people in this State gave any support to the IRA and those who did were hunted and jailed by the special branch and the courts here, mainly through using the Offences Against the State Act, one of the most draconian pieces of legislation passed by the Dáil.

Arlene Foster claims this Republic was a safe haven for the IRA, who were allowed to come and go across the border as they pleased during The Troubles. That is a lie. The border was constantly patrolled by units of the army and gardaí to prevent such crossings. If IRA men were able to escape from one side of the border to the other, then the blame must lie equally with the British Army and the RUC, who were also stationed there.

When I read about these deputations seeking apologies from us, not alone do I puke but I also fear for the future of the whole peace process. There is still a lot of hatred between both sides and politicians on both sides should be trying to break down those walls of hatred rather than building new ones.

Those deputations are not going to get anywhere. All they will do is cause more tension. Now if they were to seek apologies from all sides for what happened in the past, I might have some support for them. Because, remember all the violence did not come from one side only.

I was on the streets of Dublin on a Friday afternoon in May 1974 when Loyalist bombs exploded, causing widespread death and injury. If Unionist politicians made some effort to bring to justice those responsible for those bombs, I might have some understanding of them.
But by their silence I know and don’t trust them.