Readers' Blog: Sinn Féin try to erase IRA’s history of murder
The recent coverage of Jude Collins’ book on Martin McGuinness and Mary Lou MacDonald’s criticism of RTÉ’s Miriam O’Callaghan during the presidential election highlight the brazen and ongoing attempts by Sinn Féin to downplay the activities of their paramilitary wing, the Provisional IRA.
O’Callaghan’s interviewing of McGuinness was extremely unsatisfactory. Here was a high ranking ex-Provo going for the Irish presidency, and yet instead of being rigorously questioned about his sinister past, he was asked only one pertinent question by O’Callaghan. McGuinness then intimidated O’Callaghan into not asking any more relevant questions about his PIRA activities. Mary Lou MacDonald’s brazen arrogance and indignation at O’Callaghan’s attempted questioning of McGuinness reveal an utter hypocrisy about Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA’s terror campaign.
In this context, MacDonald and Sinn Fein have been very successful in airbrushing the murderous campaign of the Provisional IRA almost out of existence — and this success has been reinforced by the collective amnesia of the general population, the incredible ignorance of the younger generation, and the moral cowardice of the majority.
People need to be reminded of the true nature of Sinn Féin and of the sort of people that characterises its ranks. How dare people forget about 23-year-old Mary Travers, who was gunned down by a gang of Provo thugs that included Sinn Féin’s Mary McArdle or the 200 innocent people who were maimed as a result of a car bomb planted in central London by Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly and some of his Provo friends.
Looking to the future must never mean erasing the past, however inconvenient a truth it is for Mary Lou MacDonald and Sinn Fein.
