I’m not justifying everything theiradid,insistsmcdonald
SINN Fein leader Mary Lou Mcdonald has said that while the armed campaign by the IRA was “justified to take on the British state” she would not support every action that it took.
Ms Mcdonald said she did not live through the worst of the conflict and said it is her “absolute determination that we learn from that and we never go back”.
Ms Mcdonald was speaking on the RTE radio programme Today With Sarah Mcinerney show after remarks she made in a Sunday newspaper about the IRA.
When asked if it was justified for the IRA to kill people, she said: “It was justified, I believe, to take on the British state.
“Here’s the reality; when a conflict commences — it becomes almost self-sustaining.
“That is why it almost becomes difficult to stop.
“It is not my job or role in life to be out justifying anything except to say to justify my own analysis and position in terms of Irish life and of building a better future for all of us.
“I am not justifying every action at all, at all.
“I absolutely understand the horror and pain that was visited on people and it is my absolute determination that we can learn from that and never go back.”
Ms Mcdonald said, as she lived in Dublin, she was not it a position to “take up armed conflict”.
“I am in the very lucky position that I have never had to make that decision... I’ll give you a straightforward answer, at no stage have I picked up a gun or hurt another human being.”
She said she could understand why those living in Northern Ireland at the time would have joined the IRA.
“In circumstances where a whole section of society had no prospects of jobs, houses, votes... in circumstances where you had internment, plastic bullets — all of that. I did not live that — it was not my reality — I wasn’t faced with it.”
“I made the simple point that any person faced with that scenario might have become embroiled in it and might have volunteered with the IRA. That’s the point that I made and it is not a point made to cause distress and hurt to people.”
Ms Mcdonald sparked controversy this week after she told the
Sunday Independent she wished the IRA’S war of terror was “utterly inevitable” and “justified”.
“I wish it hadn’t happened. But it was a justified campaign,” she said.
“It was inevitable; it was utterly inevitable and anybody with even a passing sense of Irish history could have predicted it surely as night followed day.”
Asked if she would have joined the IRA had she been older at the time, Ms Mcdonald said: “Yeah, I think there’d be every chance, every possibility. I grew up in Dublin so the Troubles and the conflict were the background noise of my generation.
“When we were growing up, we were at a distance from it in one sense […] but it was the framing narrative of news broadcasts, night in, night out, the political debate.
“So growing up in Belfast, growing up in Derry, growing up in Tyrone — they weren’t at a distance, they were right in the middle of the conflict. But you can only live the life that you have lived and I don’t think you can second guess yourself on what you might and what you might not have done.”
Ulster Unionist leader Steve Aiken had condemned the comments as “an insult to all the many innocent victims of terrorism — on all sides in the Troubles”.
“Remarkably for a political leader who says she is willing to reach out to Unionists, Mary Lou Mcdonald has demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of the abhorrence we all feel for the Provisional IRA and its campaign of butchery and ethnic cleansing,” he said earlier this week.
DUP victims spokesman Sir Jeffrey Donaldson had said: “The Sinn Fein leader is sending a very confused message to young republicans looking at dissident terror groups today. Terrorism was never justifiable and failed in every aspect. It only legacy is one of broken hearts and broken homes.”
❝ I understand the pain visited on people, it is my absolute determination that we can learn from that