Talk:Provisional Irish Republican Army/Archive 2

Airey Neave
Was he killed by the IRA or the INLA and is it know for certain?Philip Baird Shearer

He was murdered by the INLA and it is certain they are responsible. They have claimed responsibility, their political wing acknowledges they were responsible and the security forces hold them responsible.Fobo

Jean McConville murder
I made a small edit to the description of Jean McConville's death at the hands of the Provos, deleting "executed" and substituting "abducted and killed". I think this wording is more neutral. Many would use "murdered", though Sinn Fein members Mitchel McLoughlin and Mary Lou McDonald MEP have explicitly refused to do so (January 2005). "Executed" in my view carries connotations of legitimacy which are not appropriate in the case of this killing of a mother of ten children. Denis

A "small edit" what about the facts of the case?

Of all the hideous and blood thirsty atrocities carried out by the IRA in the name of so called Irish Freedom, the murder of Mrs Jean McConville must rate as one of the most blood-curdling tales to emerge from over 30 years of terror.

THE MURDER OF JEAN MCCONVILLE

Beaten up and killed for one simple act of charity. You might imagine that she had suffered enough. She was 37 and her husband Arthur had died from cancer just 10 months earlier. Her eldest daughter was in Muckamore Abbey (a home for the mentally retarded), and her eldest son Robert, 17, was interned on the prison ship Maidstone, suspected of involvement with Sinn Fein IRA. Jean McConville was 20 when she first met Arthur in Belfast. It was not a time of plenty, but it was a time of peace. He was Catholic, a British Army squaddie. She was a Protestant girl from working-class East Belfast. She changed her religion and began producing children. In early 1973, when the world first heard about Jean McConville, her daughter Anne was 19; Robert, the internee, was 17; Arthur was 16; Helen was 15; Agnes 13; Micky 11; Thomas 8; Suzanne 7; Billy and Jim, the twins, were six years old.

The Troubles came to Belfast in 1969. The family moved into a new home, a little house in St Jude's Walk part of the notorious Divis complex, overlooked by the appalling high-rise Divis Flats. You might think Jean McConville and her family had suffered enough. But Arthur was diagnosed with cancer and in the February of that year, 1972, he died. Robert was already in prison. Anne was in a home. Billy, one of the twins, lost a kidney and Helen broke her leg. Jean, trying to hold it all together, suffered a mental breakdown. But the fates weren't finished with Jean McConville. On just another brutal day in the Belfast of the Seventies, a single sniper's shot rang out from the Divis Flats, cutting down a young British soldier. As he lay bleeding on the pavement, Jean McConville came out of her house with a pillow, put it under his head and, as his life ebbed away, whispered a few prayers into the dying squaddie's ear. But others were whispering at the sight of such common decency.

Their whispering soon leeched back to the brave men of `B' Company, Provisional Sinn Fein IRA, Belfast, a group of notorious serial killers living in the twisted reign of terror of 1972. Everybody had suffered enough. But not Jean McConville or so some people thought. They daubed `Brit Lover' in red paint on the front door of her home and then, on the bitterly cold night of December 6, things took a sinister turn. A woman lured her into a car, where she was pushed to the floor and taken to a house on the Glen Road. They held her for four hours and beat her, claiming she was an informer, but that was nonsense.

She was found by the Army, wandering barefoot and confused. It was freezing cold. The Army took her to the barracks in Albert Street and tried to make some sense out of what had happened. ``They came and asked me to collect her. When I got to the door of the barracks I could hear her screaming, but she insisted on coming back to look after us,'' recalls her daughter Helen. The following evening Jean McConville was still sore from her ordeal.

Looking at her photograph now, you know that she had suffered enough. In the grainy black-and-white snap of 1972, she looks 20 years older than 37. But some people are never satisfied. Certainly not the bitter men of `B' Company. Shortly after Helen left eight men and four women descended on the house. ``They dragged her from the bathroom. They said they were only taking her for a few hours. My elder brother Arthur followed them down to a waiting car. One of the men pulled a gun and put it to his head and told him to f**k off,'' says Helen. ``They had been wearing masks, but they took them off outside. Arthur knew who some of them were, but he has never said who and he never will, or the same might happen to him.'' For years after that, Helen would pass one of the women almost every day, but their gazes never met.

The kids waited for their mother to come home and Helen took charge of the household. They were afraid to report her missing to the RUC, so Christmas 1972 came and went. Their granny, Mary McConville, 68, came over from her house in Collingswood Walk to help out. They scraped together a few presents but it was a cold and lonely Christmas without a mother, abandoned by the community. What happened to Jean McConville? She was taken to a house in the Beechmount area of Belfast for what Sinn Fein IRA call "interrogation". The brave "freedom fighters" put a plastic bag over the head of the Roman Catholic mother of 10 and began to question her. She suffered terribly until the last breath was squeezed out of her sad life. Some time after Christmas, a man called to the McConvilles' house. He had their mother's purse, with just her three rings inside it. He told them that he knew nothing about her, that he had just been asked to return it.

That was all they had left of their mother. On January 17, 1973, with the family at the end of their tether, the young McConvilles went to the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association for help. The next day the story was in the newspapers under the heading: `Return mother, family of 10 plead'. It makes heart-rending reading today. The IRA had murdered Jean McConville and now, in prolonging the McConvilles' agony by withholding her body, they were showing that they could control the lives and destiny of anyone who crossed them. Terrorism in its purest form. ``We daren't tell the police, because you don't do things like that around here. If we knew where to look for her, we would. No-one tells us anything,'' the then 15-year-old Helen told reporters. But the killers had further evil intent in store for the McConvilles. The following day ``reliable sources in Belfast told the papers that Jean McConville was ``alive and well and living in Britain.

That report (January 19, 1973) said she had been released by her IRA kidnappers, flown to Britain and was living at a ``secret'' hideout in Belfast. Years later the truth come out and proves the liars that Adams and co really are.

Jeans body was found in 2003 from information given by an IRA tout. She had 4 fingers chopped of, many broken bones from a vicious beating and was shot in the back of the head.

Robert McCartney murder
According to Frank Mulligan Too much time elapses between 1997 and 2005 on page + Robert McCartney murder and Belfast robbery links removed as they do not constitute "Notable Events" in the P.I.R.A. history as in this timeline. On account of this, he removed the links. I've reinstated them. The two issues have provoked the biggest crisis for the IRA & for Sinn Féin in a decade. It is vital that it is included. Fear ÉIREANN  19:56, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Supposed three aims
The article says that the IRA had three aims, one of whom was the merging of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That is technically incorrect. As was made clear repeatedly in An Phoblacht (for research purposes I once had to read every edition of it from 1974 to 1990. God that was a pain! Great for curing insomnia though. Just thinking about Article 2417 in Ruairi O'Bradaigh's 5000 article series on the 'wrongs of British rule' can make you sleep for a week. Only joking, if you are reading this BTW Ruairi. I know there is no such series. But the paper was so trite and propagandistic it felt like there had been a series like that! ) it never accepted the legitimacy of NI or the RoI, so it could hardly merge two states who it viewed as illegitimate. It actually, as it said, wanted to overthrow both states, in effect wiping the slate clean of the whole system of partition-based government since 1920. I've merged points 2 and 3 to read

# the political unification of Ireland through the overthrow of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and the creation of an all-Ireland socialist republic.

That is a more accurate description of its policy as described in exhaustive (and exhausting) detail by An Phoblacht. Fear ÉIREANN  05:21, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Second Class Citizens
The reason the PIRA was established was originally to protect the catholic people. During the late 1960's there was widespread discrimination against the catholic/nationalist minority at the hands of the unionist government. Innocent Catholics in Belfast and Derry were burnt out of their homes and attacked by loyalist mobs whilst the Northern Ireland State controlled police force (RUC) did nothing.

It was the inability of the Official IRA to protect its people, which led to the formation of the PIRA who attempted to act as a defensive force in parts of Nationalist Belfast and places such as "Free Derry Corner". The British Government did send in the Army in an attempt to quell these incidents, who were at first welcomed by the Catholic people, however they quickly became disillusioned when it became clear that they were not concerned with the welfare of the Nationalist people.

The instability and rioting throughout the state was shown throughout the world, including vicious beatings handed out by the RUC. In fact, the instability grew to the point where the Irish Republic's government had to ask the United Nations to intervene. This was only halted by the fact that Britain holds a permanent position in the United Nation's Security Council and was able to deny that any third party intervention was necessary.

The PIRA did not receive widespread support throughout the Nationalist community until the events of "Bloody Sunday” where 14 people were murdered in the Bogside, Derry by members of the British Army's Parachute Regiment. These unarmed civilians were killed by merely participating in a peaceful protest against Internment, another power used by the British to indiscriminately jail anybody without trial or even any evidence!
 * POV, stating that British soldiers "murdered" civilians on Bloody Sunday when no such evidence has yet been established....14 civilians were killed by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday, inexusable but not "murder". But then, a fanatic like yourself is probably unable to understand such distinctions.

It was this incident that led to popular support and the massive increase in the amount of PIRA volunteers. It was incidents such as this and the blatant disregard the British Army and RUC showed for the rights of the Nationalist people, which led to both the RUC and the British Army to be perceived as "legitimate targets".

In short, the rise of this organisation was due to the Stormont Government's policy of ensuring that Catholics were not entitled to have the same basic human rights as Protestants. It is important to recognise also that Protestants did recognise there was discrimination as many liberal Protestants did actually join NICRA (Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association). NICRA was set-up to protest against some practices and demand introduction of other policies. Items on NICRA's agenda included: ·	"Gerrymandering" - (the deliberate editing of electoral boundaries to ensure that Catholics could hold as few places in local government as possible)

·	"One Man On Vote" - In Northern Ireland you had to be a property holder. If that was not bad enough, each piece of property a person owned entitled them to one vote. For example a person who owned 2 houses and his own business would be entitled to 3 votes. This inevitably favoured Protestants who held the vast majority of the State’s property.

·	Allocation of Council Houses – This was most famously highlighted by Nationalist MP Austin Currie who staged a “sit-in” in a council house in Caledon when a young single Protestant girl with no children was given the house ahead of a Catholic family on the waiting list.

·	Repeal of legislation – The abolition of laws which were perceived to be discriminatory, including the “Special Powers Act”, the “Public Order Act”, the “Flags and Emblems Act”

·	Introduction of a Bill of Human Rights

military force of a country
The IRA is the military force of a country. It is the military force of Ireland. It was the military force of Ireland in the last nationwide election held, the second Dail. Thus in not only a national sense, but a democratic sense, they are the only legitimate army of Ireland. They are also the only army which has been engaged in trying to extricate foreign Anglo-Saxon armies from the soil of Ireland.

Anyhow, I'll accept Ryano's compromise version. Ruy Lopez 16:23, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

All of the above is seafoid, and every citizen of Ireland (except those who vote Sinn Fein) agree.

Plus, Ireland never saw a single Anglo-Saxon army on her soil. Cheers. Fergananim

Gotta agree with that, The IRA are not the legitimate army of Ireland. They are merely a bunch of criminals claiming legitimacy when in fact, nobody (with the exception of Sinn Fein) even consider them to be fighting in their name. Its time all you extreme nationalists accept that we do not want, need or even care for the IRA. They have lost their good name. They are no longer freedom fighters or soldiers. They are simply terrorists.


 * The vast majority of Irish people disagree with your crackpot theories on the IRA. Anyway, the compromise version is acceptable to me too. Demiurge 17:32, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Crackpot theories" is a polite way of saying it. I guess from his comments that Ruy actually knows very little about real Irish history (as opposed to the IRA propaganda version which most Irish people regard as bearing as much reality as Lyndon LaRouche's ramblings. Fear ÉIREANN (talk) 23:32, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Can something about Bloody Sunday be included under Notable Events? ---

No, because that only makes those against republicanism look bad along with many other atrocities commited against anyone who wanted a united Ireland over the last few centuries. This page, and everything in wikipedia regarding Irish History, is very Aglicanised. Painting the picture that the Fenian Movement, IRB and IRA were mindless thugs who didnt appreciate being part of the British establishment. Then when it comes to the treaty all these men such as Michael Collins etc are heroes and people like Cathal Brugha, Erskine Childers and even Eamonn De Valera, who did more than any man to shape modern Ireland and never SOLD OUT his beliefs, were deemed the enemy. Don't get me wrong, even though I still agree strongly with the IRA's political outlook, I dont agree with their means. But howcome is their such pressure on the IRA to decommision? Where is this pressure on the likes off the UVF, LVF, UDA, UFF? The most biggoted man I have ever seen is treated as hero amongst many unionists, Ian Paisley. How can a man so full of hatred be a "reverand". Back in the 1920's, the main reasons that Unionists wanted to stay apart from Ireland was 1.) They didnt feel Protestants would be treated fairly in a country with a Catholic majority. 2.) Ireland was not going to be a prosperous place to live.

However since then Ireland has grown into a very wealthy and prosperous country and no Protestant has ever been mistreated as was the fear. It is just pure bigotry keeping this country from being united.


 * It is up to all of us to make it neutral, but it pretty much is. Please specify the points you think should be addressed.  Yes Bloody Sunday should be included as it is an event that consolidated support for the PIRA irrespective of viewpoint, so just pu it in rather than whinging.  One of the problems here is that any neutral article will often appear Anlgacised to anyone who has been fed on a diet of pro rebublican media, particulalry in the US.  The heroes of 1916 should not be sullied in comparrison to the PIRA.
 * Italic textSorry buddy I am from Ireland there. I can tell you that after years of learning the history of this country, this is a very anglicised version of events, its not neutral. In a nutshell, it basically views anybody who supported republicanism as "BAD GUYS" and anyone who either opposed it or signed the treaty as "GOOD GUYS". The fact is that this treaty did not represent the whole country, as is reflected in the closeness of the dail debate and referendum

Then when it comes to the treaty all these men such as Michael Collins etc are heroes and people like Cathal Brugha, Erskine Childers and even Eamonn De Valera, who did more than any man to shape modern Ireland and never SOLD OUT his beliefs, were deemed the enemy.
 * No Dev just sold out Michael Collins and had his own bigoted agenda centred on one objective. He was also illustrious (sic) in being the only premier to send condolances to the German Embassy on reports of Hitler's death
 * Italic text Ireland's longest serving president and taoiseach, the man must have done something right.

Don't get me wrong, even though I still agree strongly with the IRA's political outlook, I dont agree with their means. But howcome is their such pressure on the IRA to decommision? Where is this pressure on the likes off the UVF, LVF, UDA, UFF? The most biggoted man I have ever seen is treated as hero amongst many unionists, Ian Paisley. How can a man so full of hatred be a "reverand".
 * Paisley is an idiot ordianed by his own father and with an honoury doctorate. Depsite some media coverage the aim is to make all paramilitary groups redundant.
 * Italic text Despite ALL media coverage on sky news etc. There is no denying that. Paisley is an idiot, but look at the support he has

Back in the 1920's, the main reasons that Unionists wanted to stay apart from Ireland was 1.) They didnt feel Protestants would be treated fairly in a country with a Catholic majority. 2.) Ireland was not going to be a prosperous place to live.
 * On the first point herein is one of the very things that the state of Ireland did itself no favours on to its united Ireland objective. Until recently condoms could not even be purchased in the REp of Ireland.  How could any northern protestant be tempted into what was cleary a Papalcentric state?  There was much sympathy in the youth of the sixties for civil rights and against gerrymandering that would have peacefully overcome the unfairness with the exception of only hardline loyalists.  Instead, the campaign of the PIRA only set to consolidate sectarianism.  At a point now where the children and even grandchildren of the youth of the sixties have come of age the irony is that we might now be seeing a community that overall looked south for unity and cooperation in Europe had the peace movement triumphed (who knows? but it is more likely than after the violent history that followed instead).  Gandhi and M L King junior succeeded in winning hearts and minds and eventually embarrasing oppressors into submission in a more powerful way than violence ever could.
 * Italic text That is just a ridiculous comment. The best you can come up with is condoms. Which is just stupid, I live in a chemist, and for as long as my memory can recall we have sold them, and my parents are very touchy on the sex issue. They grew up in the more papal oriented Ireland and are very devout catholics yet they sell them and one of my mothers best friends is protestant. Unless you consider recently dating back before the 80's. Ireland is a much more open minded country than before. Even the GAA has gone from getting rid of the ban and foreign games and soon we will have the privelige of watching the likes of roy keane and brian o driscoll play IMO the best stadium in europe. I have many protestant friends and the last thing they feel is any sort of uncomfort and alienation which cannot be said for the catholics of NI.

"How could any northern protestant be tempted into what was cleary a Papalcentric state?" Well if thats your view then how could any catholic be convinced to remain in what was clearly an Anglican and Unionist state? A few of Gandhi am M L King were the peacful men yes, but are you denying there was any violent members who supported them? The race riots?? Ring a bell?? However since then Ireland has grown into a very wealthy and prosperous country and no Protestant has ever been mistreated as was the fear. It is just pure bigotry keeping this country from being united.
 * This is a decsision for the communities of Northern Ireland. I don't see why it has to be united to be fair and democratic especially in an almost borderless EU.  Irish and Brits can work live and do what they want in any part of each other's country.  In theory one could say a division gives a choice for the people in Ireland whereas one state does not, just as the UK now has more devolved units.  considering the PIRA and Sinn Fein objectives border on a quasi-Marxist approach to government I don't think their objectives are the most free for any Irishman.
 * Italic text"I don't see why it has to be united to be fair and democratic especially in an almost borderless EU". If that view existed in everyone throughout history then the whole world would all be colonies of Britain. Ireland is an island totally cut off from mainland Europe and all of us down here have a great sense of national identity. The main reason for it to be united is to have the island as one country again with all of its people united! I have no anomosity towards anyone protestant or presbytarian but northern ireland is a country created due to these exact feelings towards catholics (totally unjust feelings at that). Ireland is a country with great history and tradition and identity. And all of this history includes the whole island and does not exclude the 6 coutnies being some puppet british dominion.
 * Dainamo 15:44, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Claptrap on voting rules-- the "property " qualification actually affected more protestants that catholics i.e more protestants than catholics were disenfranchised. This however fails to fit the "most oppressed people ever" syndrome of SF and its supporters. The "6 coutnies being some puppet british dominion." exists because the protestant continues to say no to catholic republican Ireland and her murder gangs. Given a 300 year history of attacks by catholics/republicans the protestant is entirely correct to maintain his stance.

forewarning of attacks
I couldn't help but notice that in the activities section of the article there is nothing saying that they usually issue statements before most of their attacks to allow for the evacuation of civillians. Could someone more knowledgeable about the subject add a line or two about it? --Kennyisinvisible 7 July 2005 19:21 (UTC)