Letters to the editor: I am still pursuing justice after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings
Firefighters amid the aftermath of the bomb that detonated on May 17, 1974 near Guiney's shop in Talbot St, Dublin, which killed 23 people and seriously wounded 83 others.
I was fortunate enough not to have any member of my family caught up in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 17, 1974.
However, a close family friend, a young wife, and mother of two children on her way to Connolly Station to catch her train home was one of the 33 innocent people who lost their lives that day.
Each year on May 17, I pay my respects to this lady, her family, and all the victims of the atrocity, at the Talbot St memorial that was erected in memory of the victims of the biggest mass murder during the Troubles.
Inexplicably, it was 25 years before any Taoiseach would agree to meet the families of those killed in the bombings.
A report issued by the joint Oireachtas committee on justice in 1984, highlighted instances of Downing Street obstruction in investigating the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974.
The British government ignored three all-party resolutions passed unanimously by Dáil Éireann in 2008, 2011, and 2016 urging the British authorities to make relevant undisclosed documents available to an independent, international judicial figure.
It is regrettable that British policy remains unchanged.
Those families must still be wondering why they have been treated so shabbily over the years.
Just weeks after the atrocity, the Garda investigation was effectively wound down, Garda files relating to the bombings went missing, and the late Mr Justice Henry Barron in his report said that “the government of the day did not show much concern for those killed and injured in Dublin and Monaghan”.
I am both saddened and outraged at suggestions that people like me should ‘move on’, ‘show maturity’, and stop dragging up the past when I campaign for the British government to release the files which were withheld from the Barron Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
I face accusations of being anti-British for seeking the truth.
Despite this, I will continue to seek justice for my late friend, not revenge, acknowledgement of the loss and grief of my late friend’s family, not recrimination, and no, I will not ‘move on or ‘show maturity’, I will stay true to my friend.
The possibility that I may fail in my struggle will not deter me from pursuing a cause I know to be just.
On an ordinary Friday evening in Dublin in 1974, when there were buses to catch and work to finish, many families were preparing for a Holy Communion.
Three bombs exploded in Dublin and a fourth exploded in Monaghan. The born and the unborn were slaughtered and eviscerated with peculiar ease that poses awkward questions for British intelligence to this day.
I would urge your younger readers to read the news reports from that awful blood-soaked day — Vincent Browne in particular. He was there. A seasoned journalist, tough as teak, yet it is something he has never fully gotten over.
They say that the past is a foreign country. Let’s hope and ensure that it is. The prancing, complacent political inattention to angry and disenfranchised loyalist sentiment in Belfast and elsewhere in recent years is something we all should be much more careful about.
Sinn Féin say the war is over. But they have not left it behind entirely. There is no compelling evidence to assure us that loyalist paramilitary violence will never rear its ugly head again if Sinn Fèin’s “50% plus one” concept of a “united Ireland” becomes a forgetful cud-chewing bovine orthodoxy.
To paraphrase Father Ted: “Paramilitary violence is neither small nor far away on the island of Ireland.”
We need a strong Government leader to take care of our country, to make people obey the laws of this country, before widespread anarchy prevails.
Watching the recent wanton display of thuggery and intimidation on elected government officials at their homes, is a step too far, and a blatant exhibition of ignorance.
The misguided actions by students of Trinity college is an absolute disgrace towards the one-sidedness of the Gaza war.
Where were these students when the IRA were slaughtering innocent men, women and children?
It appears to me that young (educated) people today are totally ignorant or unaware of their history, be it recent or past.
A disgraceful display of absolute ignorance. Shame, Shame, Shame.
Referring to Tom Kenny’s excellent article on GAAGO payroll (May 8, Irish Examiner Sport) I absolutely agree with his analysis that it is hurting hurling and does nothing to promote love of the sport among young children.
Could I also add another group who have been badly affected by GAAGO?
I refer to the thousands of senior citizens who have not got broadband, smartphones or smart televisions and cannot access the games that they love so dearly.
These are the people who worked to promote hurling most of their lives as volunteers — running local clubs and training young potential county players.
The GAA has lost its way if it considers making money more important than looking after its loyal supporters.
Suzanne Harrington’s question ‘where are all the protest singers?’ (Irish Examiner Weekend, May 4) is timely and important.
Protest music rose to prominence, first in the US, in the 1960s in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War.
It followed a decade of extreme McCarthyite repression of dissenting views that only truly ended with Barry Goldwater’s crushing defeat in the election of 1964.
Today, we face a similar geo-politic landscape, with a worrying threat of nuclear armageddon stemming from two pointless wars.
At last, young Americans are rekindling our faith in human decency, after decades of many of us despairing of any revival of decency in American public life.
And yet, there is no accompanying protest movement in popular music.
Of course, there doesn’t really need to be, since protest and peace songs are timeless, like their subject matter.
Donovan’s ‘Universal Soldier’ rings even more true today than when he wrote it.
Pete Seeger’s ‘Where have all the Flowers gone’ is based on a very old tradition of anti-conscription songs, like our own ‘Arthur McBride’.
In the absence of new songs, could we not just make do with the old ones on the radio?
It is here that we may have the answer to Harrington’s question.
When was the last time you heard John Lennon’s ‘(Happy Christmas) War is Over’ (or any peace song) on the radio?
It is likely that you have not heard Lennon’s classic since Christmas 2021, before the war in Ukraine, even though you could not escape from it for the whole of any December for decades before that.
If young musicians wrote anti-war songs, they might suspect, with reason, that they would never be played on the radio, so that they might as well be shouting in a bucket.
I see that Iarnród Éireann is marking Bike Week (May 11-19) by launching a poster campaign effectively banning bicycles from its Cobh commuter service. Yet another assault on the beleaguered commuter and a mockery of national active travel policies.
Can we not have our rail service run by people who actually want citizens to use it?
