Now let’s honour the IRA’s prison staff victims?

THERE was massive publicity recently about the free choice of 10 convicted prisoners from two secret armed revolutionary gangs — INLA and PIRA — to use the emotional blackmail of a hunger strike to enforce their will within Northern Ireland’s prison system in 1981.

Why not a single word about 29 public servants who are on the NI Prison Service roll of honour — two retired men, two women, three governors, a hospital officer, a chief instructor, three clerks, and 17 male officers of various levels?

And most significantly, although 21 died from 1974 to 1980, averaging three per year, and 10 in 1979 alone, not one died in 1981, or until October 7, 1982. One woman and five male officers, the hospital officer and chief instructor — eight in all — died from then to 1993.

Was this not a totally cynical tactic by terrorists to avoid bad publicity while they were milking their hunger strike weapon for all it was worth — a gap of 645 days, and then their murder of prison staff could be safely resumed.

We are now asked to ‘commemorate’ the self-elected deaths of 10 serious criminals, each one a member of a ruthless gang which can only be described as organised serial mass murderers.

Are those 10 lives worth so much more than the loss of 29 public servants who died doing their duty to protect all citizens from subversive and other serious criminals.

We now have a rewriting of recent history to eliminate their memory, just as before their lives were callously snuffed out.

And when will those 29 brave and honourable women and men be either publicly or officially remembered and rightly honoured — apart from privately among their grieving families, colleagues and friends.

We all owe them, their colleagues and relatives at least that much.

Tom Carew

Merton Drive

Dublin 6