A sad episode in our history

Although it will be some weeks before the skeletal remains found on a beach near Carlingford in Co Louth can be conclusively identified by DNA, it seems highly probable following the post-mortem that they are those of the late Jean McConville, who was murdered by the IRA in 1972.

She was shot in the back of the head in what must rank as one of the greatest outrages ever perpetrated in the name of republicanism.

The Provisional IRA has accepted responsibility for the outrage. Some of these so-called republicans pose as Catholics, though any decent person must question whether they even understand the most basic tenets of Christianity.

Mrs McConville, 37, was an east Belfast Protestant who married a west Belfast Catholic and converted to Catholicism.

Her husband, Arthur, a former British soldier, died in 1971 leaving her with ten young children, living in the Divis flats complex in the lower Falls. She was kidnapped and murdered in 1972 by 12 Provos who broke into her home and seized her while she was taking a bath.

They dragged her from her home despite the hysterical pleading of her children. Her alleged ‘crime’ was that she had comforted a British soldier who had been shot and called on her for assistance.

If anybody else had ever stooped that low in killing somebody merely for doing her Christian duty towards human being in distress, the overwhelming majority of people in this country would have been outraged. It makes it all the worse when that person was killed in the name of an Irish Republic.

The age-old canard, that she was an informer, was used to justify the murder, thereby adding insult to the most extreme injury. Not a shred of evidence was ever produced to back up that distortion. Could anybody be so foolish as to believe the Protestant-born wife of a former British soldier and the busy mother of ten young children, would even have had worthwhile information to pass on?

Of course, some people blinded by sectarian bigotry could have justified this outrage in their own twisted minds. The killing is a grim reminder that the murderers and bigots were, and are still to be found, on both sides of the sectarian divide.

The so-called republicans, who so regularly invoke the name of Wolfe Tone, ignore his exhortation to “abolish the memory of all past dissensions”. Instead they seek to perpetuate those memories, as they exploit the Easter Proclamation and ignore its call to “cherish all the children of the nation equally”.

Most of the books on the Troubles do not even mention Jean McConville, much less the fact that her orphaned teenage daughter was left to rear nine siblings. This whole sorry saga should be highlighted as a reminder of how republican ideals have been debased by demented fanatics.