SAOIRSE32

Árd-Fheis 2008
A Chathaoirligh, a Theachtaí is a cháirde ar fad.

Fearaim Céad Míle Fáilte romhaibh go léir ag an Árd-Fheis seo, an ceathrú ceann is céad de chuid Shinn Féin. You are all very welcome to this, the 104th Árd-Fheis of Sinn Féin.

One of the most notable events of the past year has been the emergence of the so-called PSNI before the people, as the RUC and before that the RIC. Their function today is what it always was – to maintain, with as much force as necessary, British rule in Ireland.

The catalogue of raids on homes and arrests in recent years ranging from Belfast and Derry to Tyrone and Fermanagh, Craigavon, Armagh city and Newry has been extensive. The Western Allies in the 1940’s boasted of fighting for “freedom from fear of the policeman’s knock”, but in our Six Occupied Counties the policeman’s knock on the door, whether polite or impolite, has often been replaced by the battering ram, a stern reminder of English rule in the past.

In keeping with their desire for modernisation and “normalisation”, so-called, these paramilitary police dislike being called “the RUC”. But we know them for what they are – the direct agents and enforcers of British rule here.

Then when the acts of resistance - inevitable in Irish history – occur the Provo leaders publicly urge people to become informers and pass information to the enemy. They have also urged people to go into British courts and give evidence against those accused of resistance. Persons who themselves participated in resistance in the past, and who encouraged others to do so, have now gone so far as to turn their coats completely inside out. Irish history contains many examples of such renegades and today’s turncoats will in the future be remembered with Carey and the others who paid the price for their despicable actions. (more…)

By David Rankin
Coleraine Times
11 November 2008

THE Coleraine bombings of 1973 have been described as “a forgotten massacre” in a new book about the worst atrocities of the Troubles.

On the 35th anniversary of attacks on the town, Gordon Gillespie, in Years of Darkness: The Troubles Remembered, claims that the the IRA car bombings have largely been overlooked in the long and bloody history of the conflict here.

It was on June 12, 1973 when two cars stolen in the south Derry area were used to carry bombs to Coleraine.
At 3pm a 100-150lb bomb, hidden in a Ford Cortina car, exploded outside a wine shop in Railway Road, killing six pensioners and injuring 33 others, including a number of children returning home from school.
A second car bomb exploded in a garage at Hanover Place, five minutes after the Railway Road bomb and although no one was injured the explosion, writes, Gillespie, it “added to the overall confusion and panic.”

A warning that another bomb had been left in Society Street, proved to be a hoax. Although a warning had been given for the Hanover Place bomb there was no warning given for the Railway Road bomb.
“This led many to speculate that the bombers intention was to draw people towards the bomb in Railway Road and inflict as many casualties as possible,” says the author.

The book provides some gripping eyewitness accounts of those caught up in the mayhem as people fled for their lives from the town centre.
Gillespie contends that the death toll could have been much worse. “The only mitigating factor was that the carnage would have undoubtedly been worse if the bomb had exploded 15 minutes later when schoolgirls from the nearby high school would have been leaving school and walking along the street.”

The author quotes a passage from an Irish News editorial on the ‘Horror in Coleraine’ on June 14: “Those who engineered or committed the Coleraine slaughter do not give a damn about the most basic of all rights: the right to life itself. After Coleraine we are faced again with the terrible pathology of human beings who see nothing in the routine of destruction by methods which can so quickly mean death and indescribable injury to innocent people.”

Later that month a coroner at a Coleraine inquest described 12, June 1973 as the worst day in the town’s history and added: “Six more innocent people could not have been selected from the whole of Northern Ireland to die in the blast that day.”
The Coleraine bombing ranked with the worst of the atrocities seen in the Troubles but Gillespie claims that it is “now largely been forgotten within the broader narrative of the Troubles.”
“That is possibly because the Coleraine bombing came at the height of the Troubles, when such incidents were becoming all too familiar and the public was somewhat numbed by the frequency and randomness of the violence,” he contends.

The author adds that this may have also been because there was no doubt that it was the IRA who had carried out the attacks and that politicians may have been more concerned at the time with the outcome of the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
“Whatever the cause,” Gillespie concludes, “the Coleraine bombing arguably deserves greater notice from historians than it has received to date, not least because its casualties were among the most vulnerable in society.”

•Years of Darkness: The Troubles Remembered, Gill and Macmillan, £12.99.

IAIS
11/11/08

A statement from the loyalist paramilitary UDA has told loyalists to be “ready for battle” and accused republicans of ‘racism, ignorance and bigotry’.

The Ulster Political Research Group’s Frankie Gallagher, which ‘advises’ the UDA, said the statement referred to a “new battlefield”.

“To do battle in terms of social economy, in terms of bringing jobs into Protestant communities, in terms of unionist unity,” he said.

However, nationalist politicians said the statement was very concerning.

SDLP assembly member John Dallat said it was a scandal.

“The latest belligerent bluster from the UDA cannot go unchallenged,” he said.

“An armed paramilitary group can state without repercussions that it is getting ready to do battle, that it is training in the skills to defend unionist communities.”

Sinn Fein’s Jennifer McCann said the statement would undermine cross-community relationships.

“There’s a real concern here about what the UDA really mean in their statement. We have to recognise that the UDA are still an armed organisation,” she said.

Mr Gallagher said while the language of the UDA statement was “pretty harsh, I can tell you if that had been 10 or 15 years ago that would have been a lot harsher”.