Provos re-writing history -- Stormont Watch

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Date Posted: Sun, May 20 2007, 15:40:58 PDT
Author: Tom Kelly-irish News
Subject: Provos re-writing history

Provos rewriting history to help them sleep at night
Posted on 16/5/2007 at 13:13:10 by Peadar

Provos rewriting history to help them sleep at night

(Tom Kelly, Irish News)

They say that history is written by the victors. Electorally speaking Sinn F�in is the winner on the nationalist side but despite their best efforts one could not call them victors as lock, stock and smoking barrel their current position owes everything to the SDLP. Yet they are trying to put a very different spin on their journey from physical force republicanism to constitutional nationalism.

Last week a propagandist for revisionist republicanism tried to pathetically put some kind of context on the events at Stormont last Monday by invoking the sacrifices made by those in the Provisional movement as if in some way murder had a legitimate role in creating the peace.

While I have no gr� for republican militarism � I have no doubt that many of those in the wider republican community, who gave their lives during the past 30 years are squirming in their graves at having paid the ultimate sacrifice for a devolved government in Northern Ireland with Ian Paisley as first minister.

I am also sure that those who wasted their youth in prison, away from their families and who missed out on the joys of being around to take their children on holidays or adequately provide for their spouses feel somewhat empty watching the Provisional elite popping champagne corks at Stormont.

Don't get me wrong � I wanted and wished for the 'lion and the lion' to lie together but the moment of passing has a poignancy even among the republicans and loyalists who got sucked into a war not of their making as cannon fodder for the same 'Johnny-come-lately' leaders who are now at the bridgehead of peace-making. Nevertheless we are where we are and are grateful for it but what of those who across the community who paid the ultimate price for the ignorance of a futile war and the hate-fuelled sectarianism that those who govern us once espoused? Of course, that was yesterday and today is today but the legacy of the past 30 years will not so easily be glossed over.

There was also a hefty price paid by those democrats who refused to be intimated by either the sinister hand of the state or by paramilitaries and who alone defended the very right to free speech without recourse to a single bomb, bullet or balaclava.

Their sacrifice is all too easily forgotten by the would-be republican revisionists who are desperately seeking some moral point which could justify what were in many cases little more than murderous and brutal acts executed by ruthless people.

Everyone knows the awful price paid by the SDLP senator Paddy Wilson who was butchered by the psychotic fanatics of the UDA � the same UDA who the British government now intends weaning off thuggery and racketeering through bribery. Yet there were others too. What of the sectarian and thuggish attack by loyalists on Anita Currie � wife of Austin Currie? What of those brave republican-inspired mobs which burned Gerry Fitt from his home? What of the bomb under the car that Joe Hendron used to take his children to school? What of the bullets sent to the homes of SDLP members of district

policing partnerships? What of the sustained campaign of intimidation that drove SDLP assembly member Pat Ramsey from his home?

The list is endless and for SDLP members attacks and threats came from both loyalist and republican thugs.

In some cases the attacks were fed by the intemperate and inciteful language of some Sinn F�in politicians.

For years being an SDLP member meant accepting the attacks and the threats as part of the cut and thrust of what passes for politics in the north.

Yet no SDLP member took the life of another to further their political ends, no SDLP member ever kneecapped a child and tried to dress it up as justice and no SDLP member fuelled sectarianism by making inflammatory speeches.

In the Provisional revisionist handbook they would have us believe that they and they alone made sacrifices. Through their green-tinted glasses they are trying to rewrite history but the facts are far removed from the myth they are trying to propagate.

They believe if they say it often enough and loud enough people will believe it.

Given some of their past actions there is

no doubt they may wish history was different as it can't be easy to sleep peacefully or to honestly answer children when they ask: What did you do in the war daddy?

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