IRA warlords carry a weight of shame to the grave

A Eagarthóir, Through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s we grew accustomed to the denials by Sinn Fein and its military fellow travellers in the Provisional IRA of responsibility for horrendous murders such as those of Jean McConville, Jerry McCabe and probably the most sectarian of all its evil deeds, the Kingsmill massacre of ten innocent Protestant workmen on their way home from work. The eleventh, Alan Black, miraculously survived despite being shot 16 times. He still lives and awaits the truth from Sinn Fein as to who carried out the terrible, senseless massacre.

Maybe the admission last week by Michael Christopher Hayes of his involvement in the Birmingham bombings offers some glimmer of hope to Mr Black and to the many others who still await information on the identity of their assailants.

Surely the time is now for Gerry Adams and other senior Sinn Féin/ Provisional IRA figures from that era to identify those who caused such mayhem and destruction.

It is equally horrendous to realise that Sinn Féin/Provisional IRA allowed six totally innocent people to languish in jail for almost 17 years when they were wrongly found guilty of the Birmingham bombings. It is a crime, probably worse than murder to knowingly allow innocent people to rot in prison while the names of the real murderers were well known to the IRA leadership.

The same undoubtedly applies to the Guilford four and possibly to others whose innocent lives and human dignity were abysmally abused by Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA.

It is well known that the Provisional IRA was an army style organisation and that each socalled military encounter had to receive sanction from ‘on high.’ What a weight of guilt those people must carry as they drift into old age at the realisation of lives they ordered extinguished and of the innocent they consigned to almost endless years in dreary prison cells.

Strange indeed, that they dare to annually visit the grave of Wolfe Tone, who spoke longingly of uniting Protestant, Catholic and dissenter.

But I suppose hypocrisy comes easy to those who allowed the innocent to suffer the lash while the guilty roamed free and maybe even assumed high office.

Le Gach Dea-Ghuí, Michael Gleeson (Cllr), Clasheen, Killarney.