He was bear-baited, there’s no other term for it

Stephen – in fairness there are several other terms for it, foot in mouth and think before you speak are just two.

I admit he didn’t handle it terribly well, but it was a pretty thankless position he was placed in

Just watching this, and the sheer hypocrisy of the little b*l*x is stunning me…

He refuses to give other people the same rights he claims these men were murdered in pursuit of. (I know, I have spent months trying to get him to do that)

He doesn’t even know his own family history whereby his own father was removed as IRA commander in (I think) Wakefield prison for exceeding the degree of subversion required of him to the detriment of IRA prisoners in general.

So what’s the alternative then? If Sinn Fein are so terrible, are we just going to stick with Fianna Fail or Fine Gael for the rest of our natural lives? Because that’s the way it’s looking. I’d quite like to put them in and then kick them out if they didn’t live up to their left-wing manifesto. And I say that as a neutral

Stephen,

I am still reeling from all that has pretty much been rammed up my nose (one way and another) about the corruption within Sinn Fein. It seems to me they are at least as rotten and corrupt as the rest…

…I haven’t had time to even consider an alternative, I BELIEVED in Sinn Fein (and took a LOT of stick for it over many years, I took a physical beating for supporting Gerry Adams in the 90s) I was wrong, I was horribly wrong…the truth I have seen makes my blood run stone cold.

I suppose the best of this very bad job is an all party coalition so they police each other and limit the worst of each other’s excesses?

Ah Gaye I don’t know how corrupt or not Sinn Fein are, you seem to have personal experience that I don’t have, I know I’m just sick of being governed by either FF or FG and would like some sort of leadership that wasn’t always biased towards the conservative middle-classes, which SF at least promise to provide. So I’d like to give them a chance for one term at least.

I see what you mean but that’s like some teenage girl keep going out with new a boy who beats her up because she has never had a lad that didn’t beat her up in the past.

:o)

Trust me, a Sinn Fein government will be like Fianna Fail with the turbo drive on full…they seem to have sold out to every rotten thing they can find to sell out to, then advertised for more in case they had missed any the first time around.

It’s my opinion the reason Sinn Fein have been so clean since becoming a power on the island this past 10 years is that with their past they have to be so. Anything short of that and they are shot down. I mean the long list of fraud, corruption and denial of justice by some of the other parties that have had all this time since independence to start governing themselves and they continually fail to discipline their members.
I’m sorry but I have to completely disagree and state that Sinn Fein in its position as the second largest supported party in the state IS I increasingly believe the best hope.
Now how do I sign up :-)

They were anti Ming’s weed legislation, that was the one thing that gave me pause…Oh you’re probably right, I just long for some kind of left-wing alternative to what we have

Peter,

When and where did you catch Sinn Fein doing something clean LATELY?

Cos I must have blinked and missed it…

Well I am looking for a left wing alternative to what we have too, but it never seems a good idea to hold my breath until I find one :o(

As far as I can see:

Right Wing = Screw money out of ordinary people through the private sector.
Left Wing = Screw money out of ordinary people through the public sector.

I don’t think we have a political persuasion that is prepared to commit to being harmless, let alone honest. :o(

That’s a very cynical reading of left-wing policy! It’s not about public or private being screwed over, it’s about the produce of labour being equitably distributed, not just pocketed by capitalists. And SF at least claim to stand for that in theory, more or less. Whether that would happen under them in practice remains to be seen!

Ah Stephen, for a variety of reasons I had the crash course in Sinn Fein and the left wing this year. I was personally traumatic be cause my father’s family are all old guard socialists and trade union people and my mother’s family are Thatcherite crooks…

It is not about equality and caring for others at all. It is just about jobs for the boys in the state and semi state sector, where the favoured few get to screw a fortune in salaries and more in expenses out of the taxpayer. If you are “in with the left wing in crowd” you can get your NGO 80% state funded on request without anyone ever checking to see if you have a user group that wants you let alone whether you are doing anything useful with the money. You can pay yourself a stratospheric salary and treat your vulnerable user group like sub-human commodities, copperfasten their ongoing social exclusion (so your power base never diminishes) under the empty rhetoric of inclusion…and play control games with, or sacrifice real people’s lives to your hearts content and your current agenda…that is what happens under any power they have today in practice, and the more power they have the worse it would get.

They are all as bad, corrupt and self serviing as the capitalists I have loathed all my life…and believe me, I have cried buckets of tears over this for very very real over the past few months….

Really? Anyone who goes onto Vincent Browne’s show must know how he conducts his interviews! SF are apologists for terrorists.

Yes that’s true – they’ve been apologising for Nelson Mandela for years.

Does changing your name yo the Gaelic equivalent improve your career option if a Sinn Fein politico?

I am glad it is not just me who sees this…that affectation and the optional Donegal accent annoys me almost as much as the rest of the man…

I think given the age of the party – Sinn Fein have been very very impressive. I was asked to join them while at university in 90s and wouldn’t entertain them. But now I’m really impressed with the strides they make. Yep – we don’t have great politicians in general but overall I think Sinn Fein are the party making the greater progress.

I used to think that Peter but the past year has brought me into close contact with Sinn Fein at several points and what I have seen absolutely horrifies me…they seem to have jumped straight from the political arm of subversion in conflict to established corruption in peace without ever HESITATING at idealism…

I have put a lot of thought into this and the only explanation I can come up with is that through the troubles they were more directly in opposition to the centuries old hereditary skulduggery of Whitehall and as a result adopted similar tactics and attitudes, which they are now cheerfully applying, half baked to assuming a degree of mainstream political power.

This time last year I saw Sinn Fein as the best hope for the future of Irish politics…now I am wiser and see no hope at all.

Gaye . what is your obsession with Padraig MacLochlain? . Your points lose any political weight when you start trying to belittle the mans family life( As if that has anything to do with you). You just seem bitter about something. Come on , since we re all up for the spirit of honesty, what has got up your snout?

Thanks Stephen…

Eamonn you are right, there is a very person tinge to this and I am going to tell you what it is. I just wrote some of it above. McLaughlin comes from a very similar background to my father, and physically resembles my father too. (See above he family were trade unionists and old guard socialists, my mothers family were Thatcherite crooks).

My family, both parents, were very abusive people and the only thing I could bring away from my childhood to cling to against all cold of adult life were the politics of my father, his brothers and my grandfather.

When the time came to approach McLaughlin I assumed we would be automatically given a fair hearing. I assumed he would do his best for us, I assumed he really believed in equality and rights for everyone,. because that is what my father’s family believed, as gospel for a hundred years.

…and this little man who looked like my father and was a few month older than my son ignored us except to treat us as if we were dirt between his toes. Lied about us, insulted us, excluded us, elevated criminals to dominion over us for fear we would expose the dirt in his own party, and I had a ringside seat for all of it.

I still believed that he was an aberration who could easily be dealt with by an appeal higher up, but no, we were treated with exactly the same contempt.

Being me I went digging among friends who are active in other areas and found there is nothing unusual in him behaving this way to anyone, and there is nothing unusual in Sinn Fein behaving this way to anyone either.They had tried to warn me, my own belief in Sinn Fein had always been unpopular.

I did a lot more digging and I have uncovered a lot of things that are too inconclusive to mention, and, it is only because I was cross checking a new revelation that may involve McLaughlin this week that so many facts are fresh in my mind….

But on a more personal level it has been like watching the only aspect of either of my own parents I could respect whither rot and turn to poison in front of my eyes, symbolised by this revolting hypocrital little man, and sadly, reinforced by the party he stands for and which I had always supported.

Does that answer your question?

Gaye, apologies in advance for coming to this late, as I have only just seen it linked from elsewhere. Nonetheless, I do hope you get to read this.

I don’t bother with this site much any more, having always found the comments far more entertaining, and more thoughtfully composed than the article itself, and also at times, enlightening and frustrating in equal measure. (There is the minor matter of my main account having been nuked from orbit for questioning the editorial content herein, but we won’t get into that because it amounts to the proverbial hill of beans at the end of the day.)

Bottom line, you express yourself concisely, cogently, and candidly. As someone said above, you write very well. Feckin’ right! I bury my thoughts in long winded prose, but you get right to the heart of the matter. Not only that, but as you say, you have (very) personal experience of this particular topic, and not only that, you are incisive and perceptive enough with your remarks to educate us and make us think at the same time. You have the very rare gift of unintentional suspense, in that the reader is drawn in and rushes to the end of the sentence to see what’s coming next. I’m being perfectly genuine here :)

I agree with a lot of what you say, and disagree with a little. We might get into that elsewhere, but I just wanted to thank you for your contributions here, with a hope to seeing more of them. Your flavour of input on a national broadsheet would have me queuing up on a Sunday morning, coin in paw, relishing the read.

Oh thank you…really a bit overwhelmed…I am more used to people getting cross with me.

You in the south really don’t get it. You use a war that was fought in six of your own counties (you seem to forget that) to score petty political points. I’d love to know which ex-ira men martin was talking to who said that. Chatting complete and utter….

Really? No votes?

Mercifully, Conall, we don’t get it. I’m delighted by that fact.

Not a war, a dirty terrorist action. Not my six counties. You are part of the UK and will remain so until a majority votes for a 32 county Ireland.

Which counties do you own Damian?

Are they the six counties we all voted to remain part of the UK?

Yes they are, we are loud and clear that part of this island will never be part of Ireland and that makes me very happy indeed :) ye made your bed

No, YOU made our bed.

Rhythm is a Dancer would win any snap election.

These shinners do not like been challenged. They want to be accepted as a mainstream party but when subjected to the same scrutiny they cry foul.
As u said if another leader party hadn’t reported an allegation ( at the time) of child abuse he would subject to sustained attack by Adams and co calling for his resignation.

Diarmuid

I see by your pic that you are admirer of the late Nelson Mandella. You may be interested in reading the following. Here’s a little snippet from the full article

…”Fanning repeated the question more pointedly: “But what was your position, Mr Mandela, on decommissioning weapons? And what advice would you give Gerry Adams?” Mandela’s mood turned suddenly steely. He looked seriously and sternly at Fanning. “My position, my position… my position is that you don’t hand over your weapons until you get what you want…

You are just another typical Irish hypocritical apologist.. You admire a man who was a “terrorist” or as I like to say – freedom fighter, but because he was black and locked up for decades and lived in South Africa – that’s alright and he’s a wonderful man (which by the way he was). See what I’m getting at here. Nelson Mandella saw NO difference between the war he fought against the white man in South Africa and the one fought by the IRA against the “crown” in our six counties.

Forgot to leave the link for the full article

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/ed-curran/nelson-mandela-was-against-ira-decommissioning-29384673.html

Ann – nowhere in that link does it say or suggest that Mandela saw no difference in his struggle and that of the IRA. The article is about decommissioning and he later clarified his statement stating it was a comment of principle and not policy.

Oh dear Ann you’ve been PWNED

Do you have a link for that “clarification” Paul. I’d like to read it.

Title of article: Nelson Mandela ‘was against IRA decommissioning’

In April 2000, the political row over the IRA’s unwillingness to decommission its weapons was dominating the political news during that visit to Dublin; so much so that, before Mandela came to lunch, he had met the Sinn Fein leadership.

“What advice, Mr Mandela, did you offer them,” asked the late Aengus Fanning, editor of the Sunday Independent, another guest at lunch.

So he was meeting with SF to offer them advice, and the advice offered was as a matter of principle he would not decommission. Yes, I know that Mr Mandela is no longer regarded as a terrorist and has been admitted to the pantheon of establishment saints.

However: “Pwned”? Really? I think you need to look up the definition of that word because clearly neither of the two Paul’s have a clue.

Hitler referred to the IRA as comrades, not surprising as they fought side by side

Censored – and where exactly in your little copy and paste does it even remotely suggest Mandela saw no difference between his struggle and that if the IRA?

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-03/news/mn-676_1_south-africa

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-07-04/news/9002230746_1_nelson-mandela-mr-mandela-ira

I see no where do any of SF/IRA apologists address my comment on Adams failure to report on his brothers abuse.
That’s typical of the shinners as in all areas they attempt to rewrite history
I await the campaign to make Adams a saint.

Anne – here you go. It is also reported in other sites. Now, where in your link does it suggest Mandela likened his struggle to that of the IRA.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/110501/MANDELA-MAKES-DISTINCTION-TO-CUSHION-HIS-IRA-REMARK.html

Anne – you should also read the links given to censor above, where Mandela describes the “slaughter of peoples”, which would indicate he certainly did not support the IRA or liken his struggle to theirs. If he did I do not think the word “slaughter” would have been used.

Diarmud, can I address your comment there?

On a human level I have lived and seen others confront by the same personal dilemma Gerry Adams was, and I honestly do not think any of us know what we would do in his shoes, in the context in which it happened. It must have been a nightmare scenario. God knows I have an equivalent younger sibling who is pretty tough to come to terms with, but not even in that league.

I if were Gerry Adams, and that were my family, confronting me with that problem at the time and in the context they did? I think I would probably have taken the brother for a little drive and run the car off Slieve League thanking god the cliffs were handy enough.

But I am not *SURE* that is what I would have done, because I am not Gerry Adams and I do not know the details of his position at the time. For that reason I cannot judge him as a human being there.

I certainly cannot judge Sinn Fein in terms of the private decision Gerry Adams made, I doubt if most of them had a clue about it. But I can judge him now and, even if my former support for Sinn Fein were intact I would say that he should stand down now for the sake of the party and the movement, and that as he does so he should have the moral courage to shoulder that burden of the disappeared and bring it with him and dealt with it.

One of the disillusions of the past year for me has been in discovering that the willingness and expertise which Sinn Fein apply to rewriting reality, past and present is not just opposing rhetoric.

So Paul, Nelson Mandel refused to meet SF because he disagreed with their struggle. Right or wrong?

Your kind make me sick. I bet you were one of the ones only too happy to label Nelson Mandel a “terrorist” before he was canonized. Copy and paste needed as your take on it is positively Orwellian.

Censored – are you mixing up Mandela with Mandelson?

Very good point Gaye. It was tough but no other politician North or South would still be leader if he’d done what Adams done in withholding info.

@ Paul

the articles that you gave links for are all from July 1990 when Mandela was in Britain during Thatchers reign and long before the peace process started. It was also 10 years before he made his comment about IRA decommissioning in 2000 to Mr Fanning. They might aswell be links to recipes for chocolate cake.

@ Dieamud

this news story has nothing to do with Gerry Adams family. People like you must feel delighted knowing that this young womans father abused her. Now trolls like you can bring it up and throw it in at any and every given opportunity to try and score points in a debate about SF. I am sure Gerry Adams niece got closure when her father was found guilty and sent to prison for what he did to her. Shame on you for using this womans sexual abuse as part of your argument, it speaks volume about the type of person you are and because of that I will never respond to any comment you point in my direction.

** Diarmuid

Ann,

I think you are wrong…I have expressed my own feelings about the Adams family catastrophe just above.

I get it.

It is unfair that anyone should have the sins of their brothers visited upon them, but it is human nature, it DOES happen, particularly in politics. People have questions, those questions need answers…and it is true that if it had been the brother of ANY other political leader Gerry Adams would be the first man up on his feet calling for his head.

However unfair that is on anyone, I am afraid there can be no double standards, it must be the same rule for all….

Sinn Fein are not a special case entitled to special considerations.

And it continues to be unfair to Mr Adams niece that people use what happened to her to gain political points or for imbeciles who comment on the Journal (yourself excluded as you are quite capable) to be bandying it about because they are incapable of debating the issue in hand ie. last Wednesdays Vin B show, not what Mr Adams brother did.

I take your point Ann,

To my shame I had not really thought how Aine would feel if she ever saw any of these remarks.

She is *NOT* a political issue, nor an extension of her Uncle, she is a person who was abused, and she has to deal with that the same way any victim of abuse has to deal with that. By extension the whole family has to find their ways to deal with that, as would any other family, including, dare I suggest, Gerry Adams himself.

Maybe it is a topic best kept completely off the political table?

Gaye

“Maybe it is a topic best kept completely off the political table”

I absolutely agree with you and it sickens me that people bring it up and talk about it for their own advantage.

Sarc well done mate

Paul don’t do that they live in a dream land it’s best not disturb them

Unfortunately jimmy your story is all to common, the murder of jean mc conville is a perfect example of this terrorist organisation trying to rule with fear- disgraceful subhumans

Something I have probably known all but only *realised* in the front of my mind recently is that if it were not for some very questionable family connections to the Republican movement I would definitely be too afraid to challenge and criticise Sinn Fein as freely as I have.

There is something VERY wrong with that applied to a party that affects to stand for rights and equality and against corruption and abuse in the mainstream.

I do not think it is possible to promote and advocate the rights and equality of people who look over their shoulders in fear for you even if you genuinely try – and Sinn Fein do not.

According to their manifesto, I should not have to be personally challenging corruption that abuses myself and others from my sick bed. I should be able to trust and count on Sinn Fein to do that for me…instead I found they were the ones orchestrating most of the corruption and McLaughlin (probably by chance) was the guy waving the baton.

I have no option but revise my impression of events in the North in a similar light.

Hello Jimmy,

I’m sorry your house was damaged in that bomb, but I want to point out that there are 2 sides to every story. I grew up in the North as well, in rural Co Tyrone where I still live and I’m afraid the RUC and British army did oppress me and my community, so I would like to record a small bit of my life experience which is somewhat different to yours. I am 50 now so I remember most of what happened during the troubles even back to the early 70,s.

When we walked to Primary school in those days we learned very quickly to fear the crown forces, be it the British army, the UDR or RUC. They would stop us on the road, threaten us and give us all sorts of abuse, the protestations of our parents, the local priest or teachers were to no avail. Indeed this older generation was terrified of these forces as there was a very vicious sectarian murder campaign being waged at that time against the Catholic community which everyone knew involved many of these same people. This everyday abuse went on into adulthood where it progressed into physical assaults and threats to our lives and I suppose we got used to it over the years.

So I just want to say that my community did not fear the IRA, in fact we viewed them as our liberators and protectors even though they weren’t able to protect us from everything and to be truthful they (the IRA) would not have been able to exist without the tacit support of that same community.

Anyway getting to the point of this discussion, I didn’t see the “Tonight with Vincent Browne” show which featured Pádraig MacLochlainn but I would like to say that Pádraig is a good republican an a good Irishman, I know him and have heard him talking many times and he has never made me sick or angry.

Merry Christmas to you and all yours Jimmy

Paul,

I some ways that is such a beautiful post that sums up the horror of civil war…you realise that all of you are telling the truth?

Each faction becomes as bad as the others as the conflict escalates and the bar raises. The very worse part is, that in all those factions only one can gain more than they lose at the end…

Hardly seems worth it, does it?

That is why Civil War only happens for very good reasons indeed. People forget, that, right next door, in the six counties, an accident of birth excluded you from most employment, the right to vote and even the status of a full adult human being….

That’s the British for you…it is what they do, and why I, personally, abhor them, and, whatever anybody says, I concur that the ONLY thing Whitehall (who run the place) ever respects or listens to is violence…not on the other side of the world, nor even the Irish Sea, but brought right into their own back yards.

I am glad I wasn’t the one having to make the choices…

Every life lost, every body or mind crippled or brutalised on any side is a tragedy, if probably an unavoidable one…doesn’t make the pain, or the fear any less…

But I am sorry, I will always set the bar by which I judge a good man and a good Republican a lot higher than the ignorance, absence of scruple, spite and open deceit that McLaughlin dishes out on a regular basis to anyone who is not an outright sycophant to himself, not even to the Republican movement.

I know there are people think highly of him but those people see the truth for themselves in time…perhaps too late…

I will also always set the bar by which I judge a worthwhile political party far higher than the cult of underhanded duplicity and synthetic socialism that Sinn Fein has chosen to become.

There can be no valid points to support violence. When I think of the men and women of 1916 etc. I feel profound regret that their sacrifice was not worth it in the sense that we do not have a republic of the type they sought. We just exchanged one set of masters for our own homegrown lot and then sold it all to the EU. I can’t wait for the sheer bloody hypocrisy in 2016!

@ patrick lyons. I dont recall you having a problem last week with the british army undercover killers who were shooting unarmed civilians. Would you like to condemn them for us now?

At least you got that right sony, the IRA of the Tan War and that of the northern conflict weren’t that different. The first action of the Tan war was the killing of two RIC men at Soloheadbeg, Tipperary, on the 21st of January 1919, the same day the First Dail met. The three IRA men involved, Sean Treacy, Seamus Robinson and Dan Breen are now regarded as patriots, heroes even. People have short memories.

Soldiers murdering unarmed civilians is disgusting and reprehensible. I condemn all murders.

Which is why you had Oliver Cromwell as your avatar a while back? Hypocrite.

Ha ha you will be waiting, similar enough to your notions about a united ireland :D

We’re jammin any comment on raping children

Gaye you seem to have a personal disregard for the TD. Is he not approachable?

I wasn’t aware of suggesting the existence of any unspilled beans.

Perhaps you would like to explain what you mean by that?

Malachy, I am sure you know far better than I how impossible it is to approach Sinn Fein never mind Paddy Joe unless it suits some convoluted agenda I have never been able to identify.

The majority of real sexworkers have tried to appeal to both Sinn Fein and Maclaughlin for a fair hearing for their blanket opposition to “Turn Off the Red Light” and have been totally ignored, no response, not even acknowledgement – as if we were animals in the pound…

Does this strike you as the kind of behaviour people are going to regard as fair, just and respectful? In any context.
http://sexwork.ie/2013/02/26/sinn-fein-to-support-turn-off-the-red-light/

However right up until the moment convicted pimp, and “Turn Off the Red Light” member Justine Reilly informed McLaughlin and the rest of the Justice Committee that she had seen subversive involvement in brothels the possibility of at least some limited discussion were on the table (on of his PA was involved with us)…after it every door slammed in our faces and there were TDs with Republican connections coming out of the woodwork to silence us and ensure that only our adversaries had a voice or a say in our futures

The first and worst of those was McLaughlin. To hear him spouting about the absence of the same rights he is determined to deny sex workers justifying cold blooded murder when denied to others turned my stomach The hypocrisy is staggering.

However, I have also been a disabled rights activist, I have many friends in other areas and I understand there is absolutely nothing unusual about this kind of corrupt response from within Sinn Fein in any area.

I also understand the carpet is fairly bulging with the more personal corruption that has been swept under it.

Only 6 months ago one of your own senior members asked me (off record because nobody will even acknowledge we exist on record) if my objection to McLaughlin related entirely to the sex work issue, I told him that was not the case as his behaviour seemed to be equally dishonest, self serving and despicable in every area and it seemed to me he was an embarrassment to Sinn Fein waiting to happen.

Tonight I get to say:

“I told you so”

Well that is quite an axe you have there Gaye. Here was I thinking you had some moral objection to SF.

Sweet Jesus, I’ve heard it all now, boo hoo SF don’t support your sex worker crap, well Gayle I have news for you, not one other party will support you with this crap either.

Censored,

I think you will find that is one moral objection, among many that would be less relevant here to Sinn Fein as they stand today. But a lifelong Republican I can see no grounds for moral objection to those who were driven to take up arms in the North…just to the despicable ways some of them chose to use them, and the despicable behaviour projected onto their names in the present.

How many moral objections do you need?

Mustard,

Tell me, are you a generic troll or one of PJ’s sock puppets, because I think I recognise the style from twitter.

Ah come on Malachy, of course we all know that anyone committed to any conflict has subscribed to a duty to engage enemy combatants at every opportunity, but an unarmed man under a white flag is a non-combatant and not a legitimate target.

When we forget things like that we abdicate a part of our humanity…I know British soldiers (at first mostly council house kids escaping the dole without anything like the maturity to deal with the emotional and moral complexity of the situation) had fired on a white flag but so what? Surely the IRA volunteers were supposed to be fighting for a better world, not one just as bad only with them the bully boys in charge of it.?

Or did I miss that memo?

The shinner inbreeding program is obviously working

Kerron it was a British problem, nothing to do with us Irish people, they are allowed their own empire as they see fit, that’s democracy folks and democracy says British ye shall remain and that suits us Irish just fine :)

And was it only a British problem too when Loyalists who colluded with the RUC blew up half of Dublin and Monaghan one Saturday afternoon when women with their children were out doing their shopping? That’s an idiotic comment to make.