Slugger: Sods And Odds

Posted on November 20, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

No reply from Slugger O’Toole about my “yellow card” on their anti-republican, anti-SDLP message board.
To his credit, Alan …the acceptable face of Sluggerdom has put a comment on my Facebook that my comment “was deemed dismissive and did not engage…”
Hardly the point…I would have thought.
I am a fairly mainstream-nationalist-republican and while I cant claim to speak for anyone, I would have assumed that my comment is not that different from the view that most people voting SDLP or Sinn Fein would express.
So no surprise that this is a view that Slugger O’Toole does not want to hear.
Can it be a surprise that an Association of ex-RUC members see themselves as victims of the Peace Process…they held the line, did the counter-terrorism thing, their actions and collusion were covered up by spooks and British politicians and they dont want to be accountable.
What exactly is the purpose of engaging with that viewpoint. The viewpoint of “Yesterday’s Men” as I called.
If “Yesterday’s Men” is perjorative then getting called a “Fenian Bastard” by some of the people wearing RUC uniform in the 1970s was certainly worse.
But then nobody got called that where LetsGetAlongerists lived.

And yesterday’s statement has a curious follow up when the Attorney General John Larkin, no less….considers we should draw a line under Troubles-related deaths…rubber-stamping the de facto amnesty we have had since the Good Friday Agreement.

Of course Sinn Fein will publicly state that this means victims of state murder will not get Justice.
And DUP will publicly state that this means that victims of the IRA murder will not get Justice.
But of course privately they will be glad to move on.
And even the RUC Old Boys Club will breathe a sigh of relief.

Now Alan thats what I call being “excessively dismissive”.
The Peace Process survives.
Gin and Tonics all round.

Yet something is still not quite right about that “yellow card”.
Whodunnit?
Well…Alan to his credit has at least explained (not very convincingly) so I tend to rule him out.
But consulting Paddy Powers to get “odds” on the other runners.

Mick Fealty….surely not. He did after all request Facebook friendship over the weekend. And he wouldn’t do that to a buddy.

Sheldon Cooper….well I daresay he has a floppy disc, listing his mortal enemies. And I would be devastated if I am not on the list.

Dimbleby….well he doesn’t seem to like me (and Im glad).

Quintin Forward….is he even a Slugger Moderator? Probably more likely to avoid me…or has he taken offence at me chasing him round the Armagh City Hotel (SDLP Conference 2012) just to get a blurred photograph?

Doctor Doctor Mac PhD….a new Slugger name but promoted to moderate? Surely not.

And hopefully not one of those nice Platform for Change people? Or maybe it was just an over-enthusiastic student intern.

Talking of Platform for Change, it is extremely unlikely that I can attend.

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Yellow Card?

Posted on November 20, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Well here is a strange thing or is it?
Slugger O’Toole, the anti-nationalist message board agonises about not having many SDLP voices there.
So…Mick posts a longish thread about a statement by Retired Police Officers Association. …effectively the voice of the old RUC.
I posted that
“What Id expect from Yesterday’s Men”.

Lets parse that….”what Id expect”…..yes it is what Id expect. To say other would be wrong.
“Yesterday’s Men”….ad hominem. ??? Playing the Man???
Oh Im sure that the old RUC have been called worse.
They’ve certainly called ME worse.

So some hours later, I get an email from Sluggers Moderating Team telling me that I have been yellow-carded.
At the risk of offending the sentiments of my readers….this is absolute BOLLIX.

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On The One Road

Posted on November 18, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Great to see the “On The One Road” banners in the crowd at Friday nights football match between Ireland and Latvia. And even better to hear the song “On The One Road” blaring out from the public address system about half an hour before kick-off.
I recall singing this song in primary school over fifty years ago.
Not quite a rebel song…I understand it was written during World War Two (the Emergency 1939-1945).
“North men, South men, comrades all…Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Donegal…we’re on the one road, swinging along….Singing a Soldiers Song”.
The banner and song becomes relevant as Irelands under-performing team is now managed by a Dream Team….Martin O’Neill (former Norn Iron player and successful manager of among others Celtic) and Roy Keane, arguably Irelands best ever player, Cork man and of an explosive temperament.
A popular choice with fans before their first match…but really the success of the Dream Team will depend on more than a comfortable 3-0 win over lowly Latvia.

For several years now, Norn Iron football authorities have watched talented footballers…Irish citizens born in the North…exercise their right to play for their nation, Ireland. Stupidly the Northern Association asked for a ruling from the World governing body (FIFA) hoping that FIFA would state that Northern-born players could play for Norn Iron.
The “northern” case was thrown out, making it impossible for any good relations to develop between the Norn Iron football authority and northern nationalists and Catholics.
On Friday night, James McClean from Derry and Marc Wilson (Aghagallon) started for the “Republic”. A third Derry-born player Darren Gibson would have played but was injured.
The remarkable thing is that it is no longer “remarkable” to see northerners in the Irish team.
Thats Yesterday’s Battle.
Norn Iron Football is plagued by Sectarianism. See my blog a few weeks ago about the Linfield-Cliftonville match. At least on that occasion the Referee to his credit called for a public address announcement that nit should stop.
While I admire much good work done over the past twenty years, it is far too little and far too late.
The process cannot be reversed in Belfast.
Nor can it be reversed in Dublin.
We have…in effect an all-Ireland National Football team and it was achieved without compromising on the National Flag or the National Anthem.
When Martin O’Neill signed up , the all-Ireland dimension was achieved.

Of course, it can be pointed out that the manager of a national football team is quite different from the players.
Necessarily Irelands players have to satisfy the rules on eligibility but the manager and staff can be recruited from anywhere.
Nobody in Italy saw Trappatoni as a traitor to Italy when he took on the Irish job. But of course Norn Irons unionist knuckle-draggers see O’Neill (64 appearances as a player for Norn Iron) as a traitor.

Martin O’Neill is just two months older than me. He was born in Kilrea, County Derry but spent his teen years in North Belfast. He passed his 11-plus in the same year as me. He went to Grammar School…St Malachys and did his A Levels in 1970.
He was already playing Irish League Football for Distillery. I saw him play on a few occasions.
He enrolled to study Law at Queens University but the Troubles had started in 1969….and in 1971 he was offered professional terms with Nottingham Forest in England.
Any young man with any talent would have done the same. Significantly his family all went.
And he had a very successful career…two European Cups with Nottingham Forest and sixty four appearances for Norn Iron. And of course a successful managerial career…with a talent for making the most of mediocre teams.

So I “get” 61 year old Martin O’Neill. Not that much different from a Catholic grammar schoolboy like myself.
Except of course that he could play football.
It is amazing how few of my generation actually stayed in Belfast.
Theres sometimes a way out….Sport. Education.

So maybe its a generational thing. The BBC interviewer last week asked Martin…as a Gaelic football playing schoolboy in County Derry, would he have supported Norn Iron or the Republic of Ireland.
The best answer is NO ANSWER.
Martin O’ Neill could have said “no comment…I dont want to be drawn into that”.
Or he could have waffled.
Instead he just completely ignored the question.
That said all.

For like I said …Martin O’Neill is not much different from me.
He played for Distillery and I watched him play for Distillery. And he …like me…would have known that Distillery was the local team, briefly challenging “orange” Linfields dominance.
I cant remember if Martin played on the Distillery team in the 1969 Cup Final (against Ards) but I was there on the Spion Kop at Windsor Park when the bottles rained down on us from the Main Stand. Ards AND Linfield supporters. Id actually forgotten how the most foul mouthed sectarian abuse can come from “respectable” middle aged men in the better seats.
And I note that the RUC baton charged Distillery fans.
Thats how it was in 1969.
And it was twenty five years before I was back in Windsor Park. Took one of my sons (then aged 8) to see Norn Iron play Romania.
But in the 1970s and 1980s Martin O’Neill was playing for Norn Iron.
and he would have heard the songs and the chants.
And of course as manager at (Glasgow) Celtic.
I cant read Martin O’Neills mind but as a teenager …the Republic of Ireland seemed a distant place. Customs officers checking insurance documentation etc made it near impossible to visit.
The Football Team was referred to as “Eire” and we knew little about it. Ironically in Footballing terms “Norn Iron” was simply referred to as “Ireland”.
Funny how this generational change has come about.
And of course back in the 1960s Martin O’Neill was compelled to give up Gaelic Football by the GAA because he plYed a “foreign game”.
So a young man from Kilrea in 2013 has more choices and no difficult ones.
He can play Gaelic Football and that “foreign game” (Football, Soccer).
he can opt to play for Ireland ( previously Eire) or Norn Iron (previously Ireland). The dinosaurs in Windsor Avenue committee rims and the knuckle draggers in Windsor Park have practically ensured that he will exercise the Dublin option.
Which is bad news for LetsGetAlongerist sporting types who think that northern nationalists have some kinda duty to make Norn Iron a homogenous place.

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Inflatable Rats…Old Belfast…New Belfast

Posted on November 17, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

I was watching Sky News at midnight last night. The lead story was that the British Government was going to do “something” about intimidation of directors of the Grangemouth Oil Refinery by trade unionists. It is said that members of the Unite Trade Union had been picketing the homes of directors and standing in gardens with….a giant inflatable rat (sic).
I think all reasonable people … including life-long trade unionists like myself appreciate that in bitter industrial disputes, things can get out of hand.
Yet around the same time that I was watching Sky News…reports were coming thru from East Belfast that there had been an arson attack on the local constituency office of the Alliance Party.
Readers of this blog will know that I dont much care for the Alliance Party. It should go without saying that I condemn this attack…and indeed all attacks, that they have endured since they screwed up with their policy on the “Fleg” at Belfast City Hall, almost a year ago.
Thanks to Peter Robinsons little problem in 2010, Naomi Long won East Belfast in the Westminster parliament. It appears pretty obvious that the campaign against Alliance in East Belfast, is at least partly designed to ensure the Party loses the seat in 2015.
It is also pretty obvious that unionist-loyalist paramilitaries are behind the ongoing rioting and that the UVF have been involved in criminal activity, including drug dealing and intimidation in East Belfast.
The PSNI are powerless in the face of this. The Peace Process is believed to be too fragile to move against this sort of crime..
By any reasonable standard, the (latest) arson attack in East Belfast is a more direct and dangerous form of intimidation than an Inflatable Rat.
But while David Cameron’s Government is prepared to do “something” about the Inflatable Rat, nobody seems prepared to do “anything” about continuing criminality in East Belfast.

The PUP has…ahem the “ear” of the UVF and it is to be welcomed that Party Spokesperson, Dr John Kyle has condemned the attack, although it does seem to be a qualified condemnation.
Dr John Kyle …he is a family doctor…seems the softly spoken voice of there PUP.
He is popular with the City’s MetroTextual Twitterati, who would be unlikely to be Facebook Friends with UVF thugs.
There is a curious mirror image. The Twitterati are not very fond of Gerry Adams and Gerry Kelly but Belfasts mayor Mairtin O’Muilleoir (also Sinn Fein) is loved and his every word and deed is re-tweeted by his admirers…the artsy set, the academics,the journalists, the lobbyists and assorted hangers on.
As he moves thru the City with his EIGHT (count them!!!) chaplains, his photographer and his Poet Laureate (honestly) his Twitter account (“New Belfast”) is admired.
This morning, he attended a Remembrance Service for the City’s Dockers. And this afternoon a Remembrance Service for the Transgendered Community.
On Friday night, it was Van Morrison.

But the point is that the Media cant get away with trying to distinguish between GOOD PUP and BAD PUP. Or GOOD SINN FEIN and BAD SINN FEIN.
In Belfast and Norn Iron…Double Standards and Ambiguity reign.
And that extends to the Alliance Party.
In Government, they owe their position to DUP and Sinn Fein.
And the PSNI wont move against their tormentors.
And the Minister for Justice…is David Ford who is actually Leader of the Alliance Party.
You couldn’t make it up.

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21st Century Boys

Posted on November 16, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

I have to say that I like Basil McCrea and I like John McCallister more. But I am still not sure that the Party they founded (NI21) can make any impact.
Being “liked” is not enough.
And Basil and John …the McUnionists…they dont seem to take themselves seriously. The Twitter parody account is almost more credible than the genuine one.
Funny people can only go so far in politics. They stay on the “fringe”.
Lembit Opik, Giles Brandreth, Austin Mitchell, Barry McElduff. You see my point.
In an interview with Slugger O’Toole earlier this week, Chris Lyttle, the Alliance MLA for East Belfast opined that he had looked at NI21 policies and did not see much difference to Alliance. And thats the point…Alliance are scared of NI21.
The Alliance Party have had it too easy for too long as the LetsGetAlongerist market leader in Norn Iron.
Their attachment and dependence on DUP and Sinn Fein is a complete sell out of their founding principles so the arrival on the scene of a new letsgetalongerist and liberal unionist party…which actually has principles …is bound to affect the Alliance vote.
A popular visitor at the SDLP Youth Conference in March 2012, John McCallister appealed to the audience to give him a preference, which he feels he will need at the next Assembly Election. Indeed my recollection is that he said he gave Alliance his EIGHTH preference.
So if Chris Lyttle thinks NI21 is not very different from Alliance, then clearly John McCallister disagrees.
NI21 speeches of course contained sideswipes at UUP and SDLP and it was stated that both have Sectarianism in their DNA. As a SDLP member, I resent this but it is hardly serious and just a matter of giving the speech some artificial balance.
The thing is Basil and John got elected on the ticket of a Party that they believe to be sectarian.
Aguably the UUP is less sectarian today than it was when they joined the Party and stood for election and were elected under its banner.
Reference was made to opinion polls which show NI21 doing well and Basil McCrea noting (a tad optimistically) that they are not far behind UUP and Alliance is an indication that they are looking for votes from those voters.
They are hoping that “liberal unionists” will switch to them.
They are hoping that “letsgetalongerists” switch to them.

As a SDLP voter and member, I have nothing to fear from NI21. Indeed I encourage them.
In 2011, I told anyone who would listen that the Alliance Party is a dangerous undemocratic party who if they got a single extra Assembly seat, would get two Executive seats.
I wish I had been wrong about that.
The SDLP MUST of course increase its own number of seats in 2016. I certainly believe it to be possible but it is just as important that the Alliance Party is pinned back and some manners put on them.
I am not sure that the SDLP outside Belfast really gets this.
In ALL constituencies, SDLP and Sinn Fein are rivals for the nationalist vote….but in some constituencies eg Lagan Valley, South Belfast, South Antrim….Alliance are also rivals.

Does the SDLP in West Tyrone, Fermanagh-South Tyrone and West Belfast really get that?
And more importantly do the policy makers at the heart of the SDLP get it?

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Van Morrison …Days Like This

Posted on November 15, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

So Congratulations Van The Man. Freeman of the City of Belfast.
Who would have guessed it.
Certainly not me in the early 1960s, when I used to walk past the Sailors Club and long haired people in jeans could be seen. Not “Beatles Long Hair”…longer hair, scruffier.
Who knew that Belfast had an R& B band called “Them”?
Actually not many of us…then “Gloria”, “Baby Please Dont Go” and best of all “Here Comes The Night”. Thats a genuine classic.

Then they split up. Van Morrison went to United States, had legal problems with his record company. But “Brown Eyed Girl” is another classic.
And frankly nobody ever heard of him again…until he showed up living in a luxury house somewhere in the Republic of Ireland. Living with a former model.
To be honest, nobody seemed to like him very much. He was…best described as “diffident”. Or “pig ignorant”.
Oh…and doing the cabaret when President and Hillary Clinton visited Belfast and switched on the Christmas Tree lights.
“Have I Told You Lately That I Love You”…..nice wee song but Rod Stewart does it better.
The Christmas Tree thing re-habilitated Van. Suddenly he was OUR ” Van The Man”…not really “diffident” or “pig ignorant”.
He is a CHARACTER. When you are classified as a “character”, you can get away with anything….like wearing dark clothes, shades and a daft hat.
The Christmas Tree thing…..that was the first Days Like These.

Titanic, MTV Awards, G8 Summit, Barak Obama Visit, Derry City of Culture and World Police and Fire Games, all designed to make us feel good about ourselves. Dont mention the fact that Van Morrison from East Belfast gets the Freedom of the City in the same week that a new Peace Wall is announced for ….East Belfast.
So its Bread and Circus Time again.
Another distraction…to take our eyes away from a corrupt government, police inaction at rampant criminality, Orange Culture and Flegs.
And the people will fall for it…again.
Free Tickets to see Van Morrison. And a minor scandal as some have ended up being sold on Tinternet. And dire warnings that if you have bought a “free” ticket for £100, you will be turned away.

Welcome to the “no mans land”….the Shared Space between Post-Conflict and Pre-Conflict.
We will have even more Days Like This.
To dissent from this…is to be a traitor to Belfast, a grumpy old man but surely, there is somebody in public life with the guts to tell the Norn Iron Establishment that the Emperor has no clothes.
All this is a sham.
Someday the Man Who Sold The Monorail to Springfield (The Simpsons) will show up in Norn Iron.
Oh and by the way Van Morrison gets the Freedom of the City of Belfast in 2013 but …in 2001, he was on an Irish Stamp.

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Fair Play SDLP Ballycastle

Posted on November 12, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Interesting motion (deferred at Conference) from SDLP in Ballycastle.
Asking SDLP should organise in the Republic of Ireland.
Good idea? Yes …not necessarily in the short-term …but SDLP has to put down a marker that it is an all-Ireland party.

SDLP has often been accused of being too close to Fianna Fáil. And of course SDLP is the sister-party of the Irish Labour Party. Frankly there is a partitionist element to much Labour thinking in Dublin. Indeed in 1974, I walked out of a SDLP Conference, when Conor Cruise O’Brien was making a speech bringing fraternal greetings.
I much admire many Labour in the South….but as an “old hand” who campaigned in the same streets as the political wing of the Official IRA gunman who shoved a gun in my mouth in 1974….I have no great regard for the way the political wing became Republican Clubs, then Workers Party, Democratic Left and disbanded to merge with Irish Labour. Entryism peaked with Eamonn Gilmore, Irish Leader and now Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Is it inconsistent to only ask some people and organisations to account for their 1970s behaviour and not ask the same of others.
Of course Fianna Fáil is toxic. They betrayed the Irish nation by their ineptitude or worse for the events that led to the Financial Meltdown.
Irish Labour has betrayed its electorate, the Irish working class. And will implode at the next election. I am not a big fan of some of the crazier lefties…no friends of the northern nationalists.
Is there room for a Social Democratic Party to arise from the Debacle.

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Eddie McGrady RIP

Posted on November 11, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

SDLP members are saddened tonight at the death earlier today of Eddie McGrady, one of the first people to join the SDLP in 1970.
I had never formally met him, but can still recall the first occasion that I actually saw him.
The Falls Branch delegation arrived a little late to the 1973 SDLP Conference and Eddie (Chairman of the Party) was opening the Conference.
Eddie was a junior minister in the ill-fated Power-Sharing Executive, which only lasted six months, brought down by the continuing violence and the “Ulster Workers Strike”.
The son of a Nationalist politician, who had fought the (future) Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner in the 1949 Election in East Down for the Norn Iron Parliament….Eddie himself was defeated by Faulkner in 1969.
Eddie had broken with the Nationalist Party in the late 1950s. And was one of the key figures in the short-lived National Democrats, which sought to modernise Nationalist politics and unite the disparate strands such as the Nationalist Party and Republican Labour Party.
Ironically it was the “Crossroads Election” of January 1969 and the Troubles of August 1969, which led to the formation of the SDLP in 1970.
Established politicians, Gerry Fitt (Republican Labour) and Austin Currie (Nationalist) joined forces with Paddy Devlin (NILP) and newly elected Civil Righters, John Hume, Ivan Cooper and Paddy O’Hanlon and “senators” Claude Wilton (Liberal) and Paddy Wilson (Republican Labour) to form the SDLP.
Despite having no elected representatives, the National Democrats had an organisation of sorts and dissolved the NDP to throw their weight fully behind the new venture. It was Eddies NDP who provided the logistical support and established a SDLP brand, rather than a group of larger than life individuals.
Eddie fought three losing Westminster campaigns in South Down Enoch Powell, the English former Minister, whose racist views were too toxic for the Conservatives but actually embraced by the UUP.
Eddie defeated Powell in the 1987 Westminster General Election.And held the seat for the SDLP. He stood down at the 2010 General Election. His protege, Margaret Ritchie won the seat.

“Steady Eddie” was a key figure in SDLP History. Well respected by people in different parties…some of it will be genuine but we will have to endure the putrid hypocrisy of SDLP-hating websites like Slugger O’Toole. Look out for some of the usual name-dropping, mixing supposed praise with the usual dig at SDLP.

I did not know Eddie McGrady in any way. I probably never really “met” him. At party conferences over the past few years, he looked frail on occasions and his death after illness is expected.
Indeed his declining condition was referenced on occasions on Saturday at the SDLP Party Conference.
Alasdair McDonnell spoke of visiting him for the final time.
Eddies final message to SDLP.
“Dont mourn for me. Just go out and finish the job”

Rest in Peace.

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Let Us Remember…Cuimhnimís

Posted on November 10, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

A pause to remember the men and women who have served in the Irish Defence Forces, at home during Peace and during The Emergency (1939-45) and who have served with the United Nations.
image

And a word for my friend “R McK” from County Armagh, who flies off next week to Lebanon.

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Gerry Adams?

Posted on November 6, 2013 by fitzjameshorse

Is time running out for Gerry Adams?
Are the Vultures flying overhead.
Gerry has a lot of enemies …not least on Slugger O’Toole so if/when he retires or resigns, there will be much joy in that Quarter.
But frankly, Gerry is about 63 years of age…a grandfather and not in the best of health, so his resignation would hardly be unexpected.
But the prospect of The Fall of The House of Adams…is given a certain extra spice by the fact that his resignation/retirement might be accompanied by enough humiliation to damage his legacy.

For the best part of forty years, Gerry Adams has played a game of cat and mouse with his critics…his enemies.
He has been routinely accused of being a leader of the Irish Republican Army.
He has routinely denied it.
I have routinely laughed about it because its irrelevant.

Nobody ever admits being a member of the IRA. There is a curious code about such things. People are “ex-prisoners”. People are “Republican activists”. We get the code.
Nobody spells it out.
Being a member of the IRA is illegal. Admitting to such a thing invites scrutiny on other people.
And the “ex-prisoners” are not much bothered by Gerry’s denials.
Nor are “Republican activists” bothered.
They “get it”
And so do Sinn Fein voters.

But two things have emerged lately. Gerry has survived…more or less….accusations that he could and should have done more when he discovered that his neice was a victim of sexual abuse …Liam Adams (a brother) has recently been convicted of some pretty horrific crimes.
For three weeks now, I have been trying to write a nuance piece on Catholic attitudes to the old Royal Ulster Constabulary…in matters of “ordinary” crime. Its proving very difficult to write…not least because its a difficult subject.

And the second problem is The Disappeared and more precisely Mrs Jean McConville.
The Disappeared are a group of around seventeen people, who were killed by the IRA during the Troubles. And the bodies were never found. After the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA agreed to help locate bodies. So far, ten bodies have been exhumed from bogland and remote countryside. The families have been given a degree of closure.
The Disappeared come from the darkest days of the Troubles. It is one of the nastier aspects of the Troubles. All incurred the wrath of the IRA…their families routinely speak of personal disputes with the local IRA but it is common knowledge that some were informers.
Their deaths lonely and brutal.

RTE and BBCNI showed a documentary on “The Disappeared” last night. I have not watched it. Its not a subject that I wish to re-visit. People of my age dont really need to see such things.
Gerry Adams surviving one Scandal is certainly possible. To survive both….now thats a tall order.

The story of Jean McConville is a tragic one.
A mother of eight young children and living in the Divis Flats area of West Belfast, she was abducted by the IRA in 1972.She was literally torn away from her family.
She was taken away, beaten, murdered and buried on a beach in County Louth. The location of her body was unknown for thirty years.

It has of course been assumed that Gerry Adams was the Officer Commanding the Second Battallion of the Belfast Brigade and that Divis was in this area.
Mrs McConville (her supporters claim) was a decent woman who went to the aid of an injured British soldier. There is no evidence to support this.
Mrs McConville (the IRA claim) was an informer who reported information to the British Via radio transmitter. Equally there is no evidence to support this.
Clearly in a war situation…and God knows it WAS a war in 1972…informers cannot expect anything good to happen. Unionists might well argue that she was doing her duty as a “good citizen” but really few people in West Belfast would have seen it that way.
The fact that she was a widow with several children…the youngest aged six…is particuarly poignant and makes it noteworthy.
But for several years, Gerry Adams was Member of Parliament for West Belfast. Very few held his alleged history against him.

Certainly the story of Jean McConville was lost amid a lot of other stuff. Gerry Adams has always insisted he was never a member of the IRA. His constituents would frankly have regarded these denials as “little white lies”.
The ambiguity was required as the Peace Process gathered momentum in the 1990s. And the British Government, Irish Government and of course the Media invented a new narrative for Mr Adams. The Peacemaker.
When the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, the victims like Jean McConville were airbrushed out.
Effectively there is an Amnesty.
It was always the understanding (never admitted) that nobody was going to pay anything more than lip service to the Victims.

But Sinn Fein were never meant to be anything more than the minority nationalist Party in the New Order. All changed when Sinn Fein started defeating SDLP for nationalist hearts and minds.

And the allegations surrounding The Jean McConville Case re-surfaced some years ago. And even more recently when two deceased IRA members left testimony incriminating Gerry Adams.

The vultures are indeed flying overhead.
Some or even many might have a degree of sympathy for Gerry Adams over his family circumstances. He has stated that he DID tell a priest (now deceased…conveniently say his enemies) of concerns about his brother.
But coupled with denials about his IRA past, this stretches credibility.
To actually admit that he was a senior IRA figure might make denials about Jean McConville credible.

All in all, the story of the Troubles is not a nice one.

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