Ex-mirror editor’s support for IRA condemned by PM

‘While acknowledging his right to express his views, the university has accepted his resignation’

BORIS JOHNSON “outright condemns” Roy Greenslade’s public support for the IRA, his spokesman said yesterday as the former Fleet Street editor resigned from his university role.

Mr Greenslade, once editor of the Daily Mirror, provoked outrage with an essay outlining his long-held Irish republican sympathies and declaring his support for IRA violence.

It led to calls for City, University of London to consider his position as honorary visiting professor, a post he held since quitting as a journalism lecturer in 2018.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman said he condemned the piece, in which Mr Greenslade said he kept his views quiet from Fleet Street colleagues because he could not hope to convince them “that the killing of civilians, albeit by accident, was justifiable”.

It is understood Mr Greenslade was told by the university that he had the option of staying or quitting before he offered his resignation. However, there were scenes of disquiet at the university over his actions, with colleagues said to be “deeply upset” and concerned about the reputational damage it might inflict.

Mr Greenslade had worked full time as a lecturer at City between 2003 and 2018 on subjects including journalistic ethics, but has since returned to speak.

A spokesman for the university said Mr Greenslade had resigned with “immediate effect”, adding: “While acknowledging Professor Greenslade’s educational contribution and his right to express his views, the university has accepted his resignation.”

In the piece for the British Journalism Review, he said he was “pleased to come out from hiding” over the affinity he had held to the republican cause since the 1970s. It was a dedication that did not waver when 21 innocent people were killed in a Birmingham pub by an IRA bomb in 1974, or when the Olympia centre and Cannon Street station in London were bombed in 1976 while he was working for the Sunday Mirror. Mr Greenslade, who has also been a media columnist at The Guardian, wrote: “I came to accept that the fight between the forces and a group of insurgents was unequal and therefore could not be fought on conventional terms.

“In other words, I supported the use of physical force.”

He paid for the bail of John Downey in 2013, who the High Court would later rule was linked to the 1982 Hyde Park bombing which killed four soldiers.