Our darkest hour ahead if we don’t stand up to Sinn Fein

THE latest Churchill film, Darkest Hour, opened last week in Irish cinemas. The title also applies to the dark hours ahead of us if we don’t stop enabling Sinn Fein and indulging Northern nationalists.

No, I’m not going to wax indignant about the McElduff affair. All I can manage is a tired “I told you so” in three areas.

First, I repeat that enabling Sinn Fein’s manipulation of the peace process is corroding our moral compass and will eventually end in civil strife.

Even the best of our journalists seem to feel obliged to soften the full force of the past for the sake of the peace process.

Last Monday, Tommie Gorman, on both RTE TV bulletins, referring to the Kingsmill massacre, said the 10 Protestant workers were killed by “republicans”.

Why not say they were murdered by the Provisional IRA, whose campaign Sinn Fein still lauds?

Second, I have long argued that Mary Lou McDonald as SF leader would be worse than Gerry Adams because we would let our guard down.

But her car-crash interview with Justin McCarthy on RTE shows she will be forever tethered to the moral and political choices she made when she joined Sinn Fein.

McDonald’s furrowed brow was meant to convey concern. But it had been subverted by tribalism at the SF ard fheis.

Sinn Fein members, with no shame, deliriously cheered all references to the Provisional IRA — the murder gang that tortured and killed Jean McConville, Tom Oliver and Paul Quinn.

Finally, we have to face a hard truth. Northern nationalists continue voting for Sinn Fein, a delinquent and sectarian party.

When they don’t vote for Sinn Fein they vote for the SDLP, which time and again has failed to put blue water between it and Sinn Fein.

Recently the SDLP reneged on a deal with unionists to oppose naming a park after the late Raymond McCreesh, an IRA man widely believed to be one of the Kingsmill gang.

Northern nationalists went on voting for Sinn Fein, even after the Enniskillen atrocity, and have gone on doing so ever since.

In contrast, Northern Protestants do not vote for mass parties linked to loyalist terrorists. DUP conferences don’t celebrate the Greysteel killers.

I reject Sinn Fein’s demonisation of the DUP. And no, I’m not being naive.

For years I’ve talked with former members of the RUC, most from rural backgrounds, many of them DUP supporters.

Sam McCracken (a pseudonym) is typical of their straight-forward moral mindset. Here’s what he had to say about Barry McElduff.

“Prancing about with a Kingsmill loaf on his head is typical of this narrow-minded wee man. I remember one time when he took issue with Walkers’ potato crisps having a little Union Jack displayed on the packet.”

Note that Sam does not blame anyone but the perpetrator. Not only that, he adds the following fairminded observation.

“Regarding the Kingsmill massacre one should not forget that two Catholic families were attacked the night before, leaving five dead, an equally atrocious act of barbarity.”

In spite of Provo terror I believe that most Protestants have kept a moral compass. They deserve to be defended against Sinn Fein sectarians. Brendan Gleeson was brilliant as Churchill in Into The Storm, better than Albert Finney in the prequel, The Gathering Storm.

But Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour catches something extra — the extraordinary physical energy of Churchill.

Three points. First, if interested in the intriguing triangle of Churchill, Collins and De Valera, you should read Paul Bew’s Churchill and Ireland.

Bew more than proves his contention that Churchill “shaped the relationship between the two islands more than any other British politician”.

He notes Churchill’s admiration of passion and action may have linked him to Collins in a shared manicdepressive temperament.

Diarmaid Ferriter, reviewing Churchill and Ireland, thought this farfetched and “not backed by convincing evidence”.

But two distinguished contributors to my RTE film Darkness Visible testified to temperamental traits Churchill and Collins had in common.

Anthony Storr told us: “Churchill suffered from lifelong depression, which he famously called his ‘black dog’.”

Dr Anthony Clare believed that if Collins had not met the black dog he certainly heard it bark.

“Frank O’Connor in his biography of Michael Collins details traits of Collins that we would now see reflecting a cyclothymic personality — someone with great swings — and in that sense the temperament is certainly that of a man whom one can conceive, perhaps at a later age, sustaining a more significant manic episode or depressive episode, but then of course he was a young man when he died.”

Finally, we must now learn the hard lesson that Churchill taught his people — that appeasing a delinquent aggressor only increases his demands for more.

Sinn Fein is using the peace process to try and intimidate us into silence about its sick past. I am proud to write for a newspaper that has never given in to that blackmail.

***** Last week, in his latest letter in our long-standing dispute about sectarianism and the Cork IRA, Dr Andy Bielenberg of UCC accused me of telling “historical porkies”.

Rather than follow him down that rough road, I’m going to close the debate on my side with three final comments.

First, my alleged “porkies” are based on Bielenberg’s own figures in the Cork Fatalities Index.

Although only 9pc of Cork’s population was Protestant, Dr Bielenberg accepts that 31pc of the victims, almost one-third, were Protestant. This figure increases to 52pc if ex-soldiers are excluded from the figures.

Second, Dr Bielenberg’s concession that the Dunmanway massacre was a “sectarian reprisal” is a welcome admission but it is also a red herring that distracts us from the Cork city situation.

Although 10 Protestants were killed during the period in the No 3 Cork Brigade West Cork area on suspicion of being spies, by far the greatest number of “spies” were killed in the No 1 Cork City Brigade area.

Finally, Dr Bielenberg attempts to explain away the disproportionate targeting of Cork Protestants as follows:

“It is not surprising that Protestants constituted a higher share of the victims than they did of the population at large; they constituted a higher share of the active loyalist opposition.” (My italics.)

If such an “active loyalist opposition” existed, why were British military intelligence and RIC chiefs constantly complaining about the lack of information coming from Protestants presumed to be loyalists?

This sounds suspiciously like a revival of a real historical porky, the longdiscredited fantasy of an “Anti-Sinn Fein League” conjured up by the Cork IRA to explain away the existence of informers within its own ranks.

‘Mary Lou McDonald is tethered to the moral choices she made when she joined SF’