Unionism

One of the more pathetic argument deployed by Remainers before the EU referendum was the notion that a vote for Leave would endanger the union by alienating Scotland, supposedly a EUphile bastion, and thus fan the flames of Scottish Nationalism.

According to Labour’s Remainer in chief, Alan Johnson, if the UK voted Leave we would be taking a “very, very high risk not just for Britain’s place in Europe but Britain’s continued unity”. Nick Clegg told us; “If we vote to leave the EU, I have no doubt that the SNP will gleefully grab the opportunity to persuade the people of Scotland to leave the UK as well.” George Osbourne asserted, “The simplest and easiest way to take the (Independence) issue off the table is to vote for Remain” as we shouldn’t give the Nationalists “any excuses.”

The First Minister herself, Nicola Sturgeon, predicted that if Scotland was “dragged out of the European Union against its wishes”, in other words if the United Kingdom as a whole voted to Leave, while Scotland voted to Remain, then there would be a sharp rise in support for Scottish Independence and might constitute the “material change in circumstances” needed to hold a second Independence referendum; “Indy-Ref 2”.

On the morning of the 24^th the results looked ominous for Unionists. While the UK voted to Leave, Scotland voted to Remain by a margin of 62% to 38%, with every single council area voting remain. Nicola Sturgeon immediately announced that these results made Indy-Ref 2 “highly likely” and announced that she had ordered the preparation of the legislation necessary to enable a new independence referendum to take place.

Scotland was to recoil in horror at what Alex Salmon called “The Full English Brexit”, former Unionists were to start marching to a Nationalist war drum in the numbers necessary to swing Indy-ref 2. To win a hypothetical “Indy-ref 2” Nationalists must convince 191,969 No voters to become Yes voters. There are around a million-dual No / Remain voters in Scotland. It seemed possible in the immediate aftermath of the vote than many of these thrifty Scots who had voted no because they were worried about the economic consequences of “Independence” might be convinced to change their mind because they were worried about the economic consequences of Brexit. Sturgeon bet the house on this being the case.

Happily, this gamble doesn’t seem to have paid off. In the recent general election, the SNP vote dropped from 50% of the popular vote to 37% and SNP representation dropped from 56 to 35 seats. Meanwhile, the Scottish Conservatives popular vote share increased from 15% to 29%, making 12 gains and getting the total number of Scottish Conservative MP’s up to 13. By a consensus of anybody with any familiarity with the contemporary Scottish political scene whatsoever, these results leave the SNP’s plans for Indy-ref 2 dead in the water for the foreseeable future.

How can all this be? Well very few of Scotland’s No / Remain voters have switched sides on the Constitutional question and in fact many are very angry that there Remain vote is being hijacked to push for an Indy-Ref 2. On the other hand, the 38% of Scots that voted Leave (1.1 million) are more than the number that voted to make Nicola Sturgeon First Minister. Furthermore, it includes around 400,000 Yes voters.

Being independent is supposed to be about thinking and acting for oneself; being autonomous and free, not being subject to others authority or jurisdiction and being self-sufficient. In other words, it means pretty much the opposite of everything involved in EU membership. Furthermore, Scotland trades four times as much with the rest of the UK as it does with the rest of the Europeans Union. It’s difficult to make an economic case for independence based on the economic risks of Brexit; especially when EU membership for Scotland would almost certainly include Eurozone membership.

Given the choice between a generous devolution settlement in a genuinely Independent United Kingdom and phony “independence in Europe”, many Yes voters prefer the latter. In fact, that’s the position now taken by Jim Silliars (more or less), the SNP’s former deputy leader and original architect of “Independence in Europe”, which underlines the bankruptcy of the position.

Many of these voters were located on the North-East of Scotland, probably because of the damage done to these coastal communities by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Once solidly Conservative territory, Angus, Moray and Banff and Buchan all returned Conservative MP’s for the first time since 1983. Of those Banff & Buchan was the only constituency in Scotland that voted Leave.

In Moray, the vote was essentially tied and in Angus the Leave vote held up well at 48% (10% above the national average). In fact, of the twelve new constituencies to return Conservative MP’s in Scotland, eight had Leave votes higher than the 38% national average, although ironically the Scottish Conservatives most prominent Brexiteer, Ross Thompson, was elected in a constituency that voted to Remain by a higher margin than the national average (68% to 32%).

Of course, many would point to Ruth Davidsons excellent leadership as a key reason for the revival, and rightly so. In 2016 the Conservatives recorded our best ever result in Scottish Parliament Elections, returning a record 31 MSP’s and displacing Labour as the main opposition to the SNP. But the fact remains that of those 73 Holyrood seats selected by FPTP only 7 returned Conservative MP’s in 2016 (unlike on the lists, where the number was 24 out of 56).

Based on those results one would have expected the Scottish Conservatives to return around 4-6 MP’s out of 59, not 13. What changed? Particularly in the North-East? Brexit. If the story of the Scottish Conservatives success in 2016 was Labour No voters becoming Tory voters, the story of Scottish Conservatives success in 2017 was of SNP Leave voters becoming Tory voters.

If you’re reading this, then like me you probably voted to Leave the European Union. Like me you believe that it’s an anti-democratic and unaccountable behemoth and a menace to Liberty. However, it seems that contrary to the popular wisdom at the time, by doing so you were not only helping to protect Britain’s sovereignty externally; but helping to preserve its unity internally.

Not bad work for one days of voting!

Euan McHardy is Head of CfL Scotland, a politics student at the University of Glasgow and Ayn Rand evangelist. Follow CfL Scotland on Twitter here. 

On 23 June 2016 a small miracle happened in Northern Ireland. Despite polls placing the percentage of Northern Irish voters who were going to vote to leave the European Union at 13% in late 2015 and just 26% in the days before the referendum, 44% of Northern Irish voters turned out and voted leave.

To put that in context, that’s a far greater proportion than Scottish residents who did. And a larger proportion than Londoners. One Northern Ireland constituency, North Antrim, polled over 70% for leave and in several other constituencies it wasn’t close. Even metropolitan Belfast partly bucked the trend, with East Belfast narrowly voting leave and North Belfast coming within in whisker of doing the same.

The longer the campaign went on, the more people saw the logic of leaving the EU and, given how the polls saw leave gradually gaining ground, with another fortnight to campaign, there’s no reason to believe that Leave wouldn’t have gained the backing of over 50% of the Northern Irish electorate. Three people in every 100 voting the other way would have done it, after all.

Despite cold hard fact determining that the referendum really was a very close run thing, continuity remainers, have attempted to construct a mandate that doesn’t really exist. Firstly it relies on the assumption that Northern Ireland represented something more than a mere counting area in the referendum. It didn’t, yet this hasn’t stopped Sinn Fein, who’ve never accepted the state exists, to bizarrely claim to speak for ‘the North’. Secondly, the devolved institutions, as were and perhaps will never be again, have zero say on constitutional issues. They’re a reserved matter and the courts agreed.

While this pretty persistent whinging has no doubt been for political gain – Sinn Fein were against every single European treaty – the assumption of remainers that they speak for the whole of Northern Ireland has been left largely unchallenged by the media. And now, with the advent of a General Election, they are now attempting to use it to draw out support for remaining in the EU or the impossible ‘special status’.

Our politicians are notoriously myopic and have grown comfortable existing in a little tiny corner of the world where the EU, like some sort of benevolent overlord, showered money and attention upon them. Any change, even for the better, is just too much for them to bear. This mindset was probably best demonstrated by the constituency result in Foyle. With the importance of EU funding in that part of the world impressed upon them, three in four voters opted to remain. Yet very few voters questioned whether Londonderry’s general economic malaise, frequently commented upon by its residents, was in any part due to the EU.

Having initially clung on to the belief, perhaps encouraged by Europe’s frequently ignored referenda, that Brexit would never happen, the latest delusion manifested itself in an attempt at forming an Anti-Brexit pact, aimed at beating leave-supporting MPs in several constituencies. Even if it had of been successful, the idea that it would have had any bearing is as equally ungrounded in reality as the propositions underpinning ‘continuity remainers’. The new reality and one to which these people must adjust is one that opens up Northern Ireland to the world, and where the best intentions will not be facilitated by the EU, but only ever frustrated by it.

The best example of this is the Irish border. This issue has been largely seized upon by Sinn Fein, who have played on border community folk memory to drum up fear of a time when isolated roads were closed off and security checkpoints were placed on both sides to deter smuggling and terrorist-related activity. Evoking images the past, as is often the case in this part of the world, may create a powerful narrative but the 21^st century reality is much different.

Borders fulfil several roles, namely the control of trade, security and the movement of people. At present the border is free-flow and you would barely know it was there. But with the right North-South deal, similar to that Norway and Sweden enjoy, there is no reason why it would need to change. While Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson obviously took great delight in telling the Prime Minister to “stick a hard border where the sun doesn’t shine”, it’s really not Theresa May she needs to be whinging to. It’s the EU. Free movement between the two nations will not be curtailed – the Common Travel Area agreement is a rolling ministerial one so has not, and can not, be supplanted by EU law. However customs can only be managed in one of two ways. A free trade agreement, such as had existed prior to 1973,  with the Irish Republic which would render the need for controls meaningless. However this can only come in through the EU. A single integrated system managed by the UK and Irish Republic however is a different matter.  Automatic number-plate recognition and a single system for applying necessary, and hopefully avoidable, tariffs, can ensure that traffic and people continue to cross the border unabated. All this is a far cry from the images haunting the fevered dreams of Republican propagandists.

But even if the above wasn’t the case and Northern Ireland wasn’t able to trade with the Republic outside of WTO rules, the problem wouldn’t be fatal. If you listened to our media you would believe that Northern Ireland has developed an economy which is totally in sync with that of the Irish Republic. And why wouldn’t it be? The EU has, after all, spent a clean fortune attempting to bolster North-South trade through various infrastructure projects. But the figures don’t bear that assumption out. The latest year for which figures are available, 2014, reveals that only 7.8% of our trade turnover involves products that go south, while 8.3% is accounted for by the rest of the of the EU. By contrast 45% of our trade is tied up with Great Britain and 17.1% – more than involves the Irish Republic and the rest of the EU combined, is with the rest of the world.

In short, Northern Ireland’s economic reality is bound up with the rest of the UK and the rest of the world.  You could theoretically put a huge wall along the border to completely cut off movement and trade and it wouldn’t be anywhere near as damaging as the United Ireland tragically mooted by some as the alternative.

After Brexit, Northern Ireland will benefit from better access to the global markets it quite clearly excels in, despite having to operate within the narrow confines of trade deals agreed by 27 member states. Currently, Northern Irish businesses must operate in a system that ensures our prospects are consistently curtailed by trade deals agreed by powers so remote as to be rendered useless to us. Bringing the needs of Londonderry and Ballymena closer to the negotiating table will be hugely positive. Right now, they’re an afterthought.

Our curtailed opportunities are one of several reasons that Northern Ireland is heavily reliant on its public sector to the extent that its economy is completely out of kilter with anything that a serious economist would recognise as being in any way normal. The public sector’s widely acknowledged drain on competitiveness completes a vicious circle that we’ve just been handed an opportunity to break out of.

It beggars belief that the debate about Brexit has been wholly dominated by those who backed the status quo because the potential for Northern Ireland outside the EU is bright. But unless Brexiteers start to shout about the opportunities during this General Election campaign then Northern Ireland will be sold short once again.

Neil Wilson is CfL Campaigns Director. Follow Neil on Twitter: @libertyneil

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History, especially that section of history which passes into the national consciousness, is rarely fair. That is why it’s entirely possible that the present Government will be remembered, above all else, as the administration which lost the Union.

The exact Brexit deal which is agreed, and its wider impact, will be a historic footnote compared to whether Britain survives as a political unit. The Union’s contribution to Britain’s security and prosperity is hard to overstate, and its collapse will essentially mark the end of the UK as a great power. Consequently, preserving the Union should be the top priority for both the Government and wider Conservative movement.

The Scottish Nationalist Government has announced its intention to hold another independence referendum. In 2014, then SNP leader Alex Salmond described the upcoming referendum as an ‘once in a generation’ opportunity. Perhaps he was using the lifespan of a rabbit as his reference point.

To be fair, it’s undeniable that, at least to some extent, Brexit has changed the playing field. The UK outside the EU won’t have the same economic, and to some extent political, relations as the country Scotland voted to remain part of in 2014. Thus, whilst Sturgeon’s call for a second referendum is currently being blocked by the Prime Minister, a stance backed by Scottish public opinion, another referendum as some point looks highly likely.

I’ve noticed that a small, but significant, section of English Conservative opinion has become increasingly defeatist regarding the Union. With a few exceptions they don’t want Scotland to leave the UK, but they think she could well do and that it doesn’t matter all that much if she does. Defending the Union, unlike say ensuring Brexit, isn’t an issue which would drag them to the barricades. I’m convinced this view is mistaken.

The British Union has, by my reading of its record, been an almost unparalleled success. Let’s focus on that most fundamental duty of any state; ensuring the security of its citizens. Since the 1707 Act of Union the island of Great Britain has not been successfully invaded by any hostile power. Can anyone seriously contend that peoples of Britain would have been safer, when confronted with the likes of Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler, had we not been politically united? British unity greatly enhanced our internal security, allowing Britain to become an outward facing power exporting both its governmental system and people around the world.

Some of the above may strike you as alarmist. But when considering a question as fundamental as the Union we should be thinking in terms of decades, if not hundreds of years, rather than electoral cycles. It’s very easy, when you live in a country as stable and peaceful as Britain, to come to the erroneous conclusion that this is the natural state of affairs. You hardly need to be a keen weather watcher to have noticed dark clouds on the horizon.

The current American President’s commitment to NATO, and indeed to Liberal Democracy, is conditional at best. Putin shows no signs of reconciling himself to the current borders of Eastern Europe, whilst the radical Right could plausibly make a breakthrough in one of several Western European states. Now is hardly the time to start undermining the fundamentals of our national security.

A view has formed in certain quarters that the end of the Union is, at some point, virtually inevitable. That the forces of nationalism are too strong, bending the Union until at some point it snaps. I’m confident this is nonsense. Nationalist movements can, and have, been defeated in countries similar to the UK before.

There was a time when Canada’s survival in its current form looked pretty unlikely, especially after the 1995 Quebec independence referendum when the Canadian Union survived by a whisker. Catholic and French speaking Quebec is surely culturally further from the rest of Canada than Scotland is from England. And yet the Quebec question now looks settled in favour of unity. A recent poll found that 69% of Quebecers believe the sovereignty question has been resolved, with an even larger majority favouring continued union with the rest of Canada. Meanwhile, the vote share of the main nationalist party in Quebec has fallen sharply as a result of, and I hope your listening SNP, incompetent performance in Government.

The importance of the Union as the bedrock of the British people’s security, and hence prosperity, should not be underestimated. Its collapse would be a historic catastrophe, making Suez seem almost trivia. To her credit, Theresa May seems to appreciate this.

The British Union has achieved an enormous amount, and could achieve a good deal more in the future. It is absolutely worth protecting.

James is a liberal-conservative blogger. He graduated from Oxford University in 2014, and has a years previous experience of working in Westminster. You can follow him on Twitter at @JBickertonUK

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There’s a cartoon floating about the Remain pages on Facebook just now. The strip depicts a Brexiteer galleon sailing towards a precipice while the canny Scottish crew-members have liberated a skiff and are making for the shores of the European Union. There are two things wrong with this sketch; firstly, the shores of the EU are not necessarily welcoming; secondly, the skiff is depicted with paddles. Scotland doesn’t have any.

On March 13th Nicola Sturgeon announced she would seek permission from Westminster for a second Independence Referendum. Although Theresa May dismissed the announcement as “playing politics” she is unlikely to refuse the request for fear of reinforcing the impression of Tory Imperialism over Scotland. Sturgeon is looking for a date around autumn 2018 to spring 2019; when the UK is in the midst of the Brexit negotiations, so the Nats can manipulate the uncertainty surrounding the deal-making in their favour. Theresa May, quite rightly, wants a date after the Brexit talks are completed and the Scottish people can make an informed decision with knowledge of their future prospects. Morbid as it is to say so, delaying a plebiscite could mean there are fewer of the elderly voters around who saved the day in the 2014 Independence referendum, while more younger voters, keener on separatism, could be of voting age.

Despite wanting to leave the EU in the 1975 membership referendum, the SNP now claims to have EU molecules in the party’s genetic constitution. However, a recent Scottish Attitudes survey carried-out between July 2015 and January this year showed that 43% of respondents want the EU’s powers reduced and 17% want to leave, more than at any time since 1999. This compares with 43% favouring reduced powers and 22% wanting to leave the UK as a whole. This means that over 60% of people in Scotland can be classed as Eurosceptic, just five points below the figure for Britain as a whole and higher than recorded by any previous Scottish Social Attitudes survey. Given also, that the Nats are a zibaldone of opinions from across the political spectrum united only by their love of Braveheart, tying independence with EU membership to tightly could be a dangerous existential game for the party.

As mentioned above, the shores of the EU are not necessarily welcoming to an independent Scotland. Spain’s foreign minister Alfonso Dastis recently stated during a visit to Peru that “Spain supports the integrity of the United Kingdom and does not encourage secession or divisions in any of the member states. We prefer things to stay as they are”. He then added that “If by mutual agreement and under the constitutional regime, Scotland ends up being independent, our thesis is that it can’t stay in the EU. It would have to queue up, meet requirements and go through the usual negotiations”. Also, the Icelandic foreign minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson has torpedoed the auxiliary option of EFTA membership for an independent Scotland by stating that applications would not start until the country is fully independent, which could take several years, leaving Scotland deeply indebted and economically rudderless.

This brings me onto the metaphor of a paddle-less skiff. According to the IMF World Economic Outlook for Spring 2016, if Scotland was an independent nation, its deficit would be -10.1% of GDP , twice as bad as Japan (-5.2%) the next most indebted nation, and more than twice that of the UK as a whole (-4.4%). Even if the EU conditionally accepted Scottish membership, the deficit would need to be below -3% for entry. Such a debt-restructuring process required would make the current Tory austerity regime seem very tame.

Scotland’s greying population and weak tax base has long been offset by the bounty of North Sea Oil, but the OBR now forecasts revenues to average around £0.7 billion a year between 2015–16 and 2019–20, rather than the £2.6 billion a year it anticipated just a few months ago. According to the Financial Times, Scottish GDP in the third quarter of 2016 grew 0.2 per cent while equivalent UK growth was 0.6 per cent. Compared with the same period of 2015, Scottish GDP was up only 0.7 per cent, against the UK-wide figure of 2.2 per cent. Despite a financial black hole of an estimated £15 billion that has risen under the SNP’s watch, a HM Treasury report from autumn last year showed that £10,536 of public expenditure is spent, per capita, each year on people north of the border. That’s £1,460 more than the UK average of £9,076.

Out of nearly £591billion of UK public spending in 2015-16, England accounted for £483bn, Scotland £57bn, Wales £31bn and Northern Ireland £20bn. The Scottish government’s own figures from January this year demonstrate that 63% of Scotland’s trade worth £49.8 billion is done with the rest of the UK, compared to 16% worth £12.3bn with the EU. Only someone who believes the Battle of Stirling Bridge was fought in a field, could deny the exponential benefits of Scotland’s 320-year old Act of Union with England.

Now I have a confession to make. Though initially supportive of Brexit, I turned towards the Remain-side and eventually voted to stay. I did so because as campaigning wore on, I became disillusioned by a creeping populism and xenophobia, that I feel, won the day to an extent. I also felt it logically inconsistent to have campaigned for ‘the bigger picture’ during the 2014 Independence Referendum, only to quibble about my gripes with the CAP, CFP and European Arrest Warrant, during the EU Referendum. However, it was the UK as a whole, that voted to leave the EU, not the constituent parts, and I accept that decision.

At a recent PMQ’s Theresa May confronted the SNP’s deputy leader Angus Robertson’s threat of another Scottish Independence Referendum by declaring “Scotland will be leaving the European Union, either as a member of the United Kingdom or if it were independent, as it is very clear from the Barroso document that it would not be a member of the European Union. What we need now is to unite, come together as a country, and ensure that we can get the best deal for the whole of the United Kingdom”. And that I believe is what Remainers like me must do. Another Independence Referendum will only disrupt and misdirect energies that should be channelled towards pressuring the government for a suitable deal with the EU that preserves free-market access and secures a solid base for the UK’s future prosperity.

Callum is a free-thinking Whig politically and plant machinery operator professionaly 

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Today it was announced that Martin McGuinness, former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and IRA commander passed away. He was hailed as a ‘peacemaker’ and a man who led Republicanism from the armalite to the ballot box; one of the ‘chuckle brothers’. What will his legacy be?

‘Bloody Friday’

On 21st July 1972 at least twenty bombs exploded in the space of eighty minutes, most within a half hour period. The majority were car bombs and most targeted infrastructure – especially the transport network. Nine people were killed, including two British soldiers and five civilians, while 130 were injured – some of them horrifically mutilated. Of those injured, 77 were women and children.

The event would come to be known as ‘Bloody Friday’.

Just 10 days later on 31st July 1972 three car bombs exploded mid-morning on the Main Street of Claudy in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The attack killed nine civilians. The first bomb, hidden inside a stolen Ford Cortina, exploded at 10:15 outside McElhinney’s bar and store on Main Street. Six people were killed by this bomb; among the dead were an eight-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy. A second bomb, hidden inside a stolen Morris minivan parked outside the post office on Main Street, was spotted by a police officer, who then began directing people away from the area towards Church Street. At 10:30, a bomb hidden inside another stolen minivan detonated outside the Beaufort Hotel on Church Street. The bomb outside the post office exploded almost simultaneously, killing three people, including a 16-year-old boy injured in the first blast.

The kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville

Jean McConville was a woman from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who was kidnapped and shot dead by the Provisional IRA and secretly buried in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland in 1972. She was wrongly accused by the IRA of passing information to British forces.

On the night of her disappearance, four young women took McConville from her home at gunpoint and she was driven to an unknown location. Dolours Price admitted that she was one of those involved in driving her across the border. McConville was killed by a gunshot to the back of the head.

McConville’s seven youngest children, including six-year-old twins, survived on their own in the flat, cared for by their 15-year-old sister Helen. After three weeks, the hungry family was visited by a stranger, who gave them Jean’s purse, with 52 pence and her three rings in it. Her terrified children were left to fend for themselves for a month, across the Christmas period, before being scattered to the wind by social services when Jean’s disappearance was widely reported and acted upon.

Her body remained undiscovered for 40 years until it was exposed by a storm.

The Birmingham Pub Bombings

On 21st November 1974, bombs exploded in two Birmingham pubs. 21 people were killed and 182 injured. Many of those wounded were left permanently disabled, including one young man who lost both legs, and a young woman who was blinded by shrapnel. The majority of the dead and wounded were young people between the ages of 17 and 30, including a young couple on their first date, and two Irishmen, brothers Desmond and Eugene Reilly (aged 21 and 23 respectively). The widow of Desmond Reilly gave birth to his first child four months after his death. One of the victims, 18-year-old Maxine Hambleton, had only entered the Tavern in the Town to hand out tickets to friends for her housewarming party. She was killed seconds after entering the pub and had been standing directly beside the bomb when it exploded, killing her instantly. Her friend, 17-year-old Jane Davis, was the youngest victim of the bombing

The Provisional Irish Republican Army have never officially admitted responsibility for the Birmingham pub bombings, but a former senior officer of the organisation confessed to their involvement in 2014. Five members of the Provisional IRA have admitted to committing the Birmingham pub bombings, relying on a clause in the Good Friday Agreement offering immunity from prosecution. Two of these men have since died and a further two have been promised immunity.

The Kingsmill Massacre

On 5th January 1976 Gunmen stopped a minibus carrying eleven Protestant workmen outside Kingsmill, lined them up alongside it and shot them. Only one victim survived, despite having been shot 18 times.

A 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team found that members of the Provisional IRA carried out the attack, despite the organisation being on ceasefire.

The murder of Jeffery Agate

Jeffery Agate was a well-liked and respected figure in both DuPont and the Londonderry community. He was shot dead by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army outside his home at Talbot Park, Londonderry as he returned from work on the evening of February 2nd, 1977.

Raymond McClean wrote in The Road to Bloody Sunday that “Jeff Agate was an honest and just human being of the highest calibre. His assassination by the IRA left me in total disbelief and disgust.” Agate’s killing prompted an enormous outpouring of public grief that culminated in a mass protest at Guildhall Square in Derry and united people from all communities at a time of heightened sectarian tension.

His widow, Alice Vera Agate (née Dand) returned to her native Newcastle upon Tyne where she lived in relative isolation until her death in 1994.

Agate’s murder was the first in a series of IRA attacks on businessmen. The IRA claimed that “Those involved in the management of the economy serve British interests. They represent and maintain economic interests which make the war necessary.”

The La Mon Restaurant Bombing

On 17th February 1978, La Mon hotel was struck by a large incendiary bomb, containing a napalm-like substance, outside one of the restaurant’s windows. There were 450 diners, hotel staff and guests inside the building. The IRA members had tried to send warnings by telephone, but were unable to do so until nine minutes before it detonated. The blast created a fireball, killing twelve people and injuring thirty more, many of whom were severely burnt.

Twelve people were killed, having been virtually burnt alive, and a further 30 were injured, many of them critically. Some of the wounded lost limbs, but for the most part received severe burns. One badly burnt survivor described the inferno inside the restaurant as “like a scene from hell”, whilst another who lost her daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law, Ian McCracken, said the blast was “like the sun had exploded in front of my eyes”. There was further pandemonium after the lights had gone out and choking black smoke filled the room. The survivors, with their hair and clothing on fire, rushed to escape the burning room. It took firemen almost two hours to put out the blaze. The dead included eleven Protestant civilians and one RUC officer. Half of the victims were young married couples. Most of the dead and injured were members of the Irish Collie Club and the Northern Ireland Junior Motor Cycle Club, which were holding their yearly dinner dances in the Peacock Room and Gransha Room respectively. The former took the full force of the explosion and subsequent fire; many of those who died had been seated closest to the window where the bomb had gone off. Some of the injured were still receiving treatment 20 years later.

The hotel had been targeted by the IRA as part of its firebomb campaign against commercial targets.

The murder of Mary Travers

Mary Travers was a teacher who was shot dead on 8th April 1984 by Provisional IRA gunmen trying to assassinate her father, Thomas, a Catholic magistrate. Mary Travers was 22 at the time. She, her parents and siblings had left St Brigid’s Catholic Church in Derryvolgie Avenue in south Belfast when two gunmen opened fire. Mary Travers was shot once through the back and her father was shot six times. One gunman brought his gun to point-blank range at her mother’s face and attempted to fire twice, but the gun jammed.

“In 2011 we are told to put the past behind us and move on,” Paul Travers, Mary’s brother,  said. “I go home every year to visit my family and notice the murals to the hunger strikers are lovingly maintained. My sister Mary did not starve herself to death. She was murdered by those who now claim to be the ‘peacemakers’. Mary has no mural. However, her memory is as alive to me now as it was 27 years ago, when I travelled with her bloodied body in the ambulance to the Ulster Hospital. It is the same for the other victims of the Troubles.”

“You compare yourselves to Nelson Mandela. Well then, do as he did, if you are brave enough. Embrace the need for genuine truth and reconciliation and support the very institutions, such as the Historical Enquiries Team, that have been established to find it. Don’t ignore them. Tell us who committed these foul atrocities. It seems to me that you selectively support those aspects of the 1998 peace agreement that suit you and not the ones that don’t. You did the same thing during the Troubles. It is not acceptable now. You are the ones who will not move on. You are the ones who perpetuate hurt and promote your brand of hatred. You are the ones who fear the truth. What are you scared of, now you no longer have your guns?”

The Remembrance Day Bombing

On 8th November 1987 a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb exploded near the Enniskillen’s war memorial during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony, which was being held to commemorate British military war dead. Eleven people (ten civilians and a police officer), many of them old age pensioners, were killed and 63 were injured. The IRA said it had made a mistake and that its target had been the British soldiers parading to the memorial. It blew out the wall of the Reading Rooms—where many of the victims were standing, burying them under rubble and hurling masonry towards the gathered crowd.

Eleven people were killed by the Provisional IRA that day, including three married couples. The dead were Wesley and Bertha Armstrong, Kitchener and Jessie Johnston, William and Agnes Mullan, John Megaw, Georgina Quinton, Marie Wilson, Samuel Gault and Edward Armstrong Edward Armstrong was a serving Royal Ulster Constabulary officer and Gault had recently left the force. Gordon Wilson, whose daughter Marie died in the blast and who was himself injured, went on to become a peace campaigner and member of Seanad Éireann. The twelfth fatality, Ronnie Hill, died after spending 13 years in a coma. Sixty-three people were injured, including thirteen children.

The Murder of Gillian Johnston

Gillian Johnston was a 21-year-old chemist and shop worker from Tonaghgorm She was engaged for two years, having dated her fiancé since she was fifteen. On March 18th 1988 Johnston and her fiance were sitting in her father’s car, outside her home, when members of the IRA murdered her by firing 47 bullets into Gillian, killing her and wounding her fiance.

The IRA later claimed the murder was a mistake and that the intended target had been Johnston’s brother, whom they had claimed was a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). The IRA later stated it had been mistaken about Johnston’s brother as well

The Murders of Nick Spanos and Stephen Melrose

Nick Spanos (28) and Stephen Melrose (24) were Australian lawyers, based in London. They were in the Netherlands on a four-day holiday with Vicky Coss (Spanos’s girlfriend) and Lyndal Melrose (Stephen’s wife). On the night of 27 May 1990, the two couples had a meal at a restaurant in the town of Roermond, near the border with Germany. The town was popular with off-duty British servicemen stationed in Germany; the Royal Air Force (RAF) bases of RAF Wildenrath, RAF Bruggen and JHQ Rheindahlen are nearby. As they returned to their car, at about 11pm, Spanos and Melrose were shot dead by two men clad in black with automatic weapons. The women were unhurt. The car used by the gunmen was found burnt-out in Belgium. The IRA claimed responsibility, but had mistaken the target.

In August 2010, Stephen Melrose’s parents and sister visited Stormont to “find answers about his murder”. They were greeted by Ulster Unionist Party MLA, David McNarry, but denied a meeting by both deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness and Sinn Féin President, Gerry Adams. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Melrose’s sister, Helen Jackson, said the refusals of McGuinness and Adams “spoke volumes.” She went on to say that:

“We feel that, basically, justice was never done. The people who killed Stephen are walking the street, living life, like us. How can that happen? We are just wondering how the system works, that that can be allowed to happen. Stephen was a lawyer, he deserves justice, everybody does.”

Eighty-year-old Roy Melrose stated:

“We just wanted to find out if we could get any answers as to why the murderers of our son were let off. We feel that time heals a lot. We’ve looked at it that our son is a hero, that helps us a lot, thinking that way. He is a hero. I think there seems to be a lot of forgotten victims.”

The Second Warrington Bomb

At 12:25, 20th of March 1993, two bombs exploded on Bridge Street in Warrington, about 100 yards apart. The blasts happened within a minute of each other. One exploded outside Boots and McDonald’s, and one outside the Argos catalogue store. The area was crowded with shoppers. Witnesses said that shoppers fled from the first explosion into the path of the second. It was later found that the bombs had been placed inside cast-iron litter bins, causing large amounts of shrapnel. Buses were organised to ferry people away from the scene and 20 paramedics and crews from 17 ambulances were sent to deal with the aftermath.

Three-year-old Johnathan Ball died at the scene. He had been in town with his babysitter, shopping for a Mother’s Day card. The second victim, 12-year-old Tim Parry, was gravely wounded. He died on 25 March 1993 when doctors switched his life support machine off, having asked permission to do so from his family, after tests had found minimal brain activity. Fifty-four other people were injured, four of them seriously.

Jonathan Ball’s dying words to his father were, “Goodbye Daddy, I’ll be a good boy.”

We will remember

The Troubles was a dark, dirty, petty and traumatising time in Northern Ireland. No one engaged in the conflict did so with clean hands and unblemished records. There are countless loyalist atrocities we could chalk up alongside this small portion of IRA ones. But today Martin McGuinness is being held up as a ‘peacemaker’. The sad truth is that in pursuit of a story of ‘redemption’, the rebel who became a law maker, we are ignoring the painful and blood soaked truth. Peace had to be made because Martin McGuinness, people like him and his colleagues in the ‘armed struggle’ ensured that there was a conflict from which peace had to be made. He helped brutalise the society he went on to supposedly save from people just like himself.

The people left out of the popular narrative today are the victims and their families. I can’t comprehend what they must be going through now.  My thoughts are of and with the victims and their families. Not the victim creators.