General Election 8th June

[pilninggas]

 

my issue with him, on the IRA matter, is that he rubbed shoulders with McGuinness and killer Adams, at the height of the troubles, long before they ceased fire, started a dialogue or decommission.

You don’t make peace with your friends.


I don’t see what the issue is.  It wasn’t long before it was government policy to speak to terrorists, and indeed that’s exactly what Mo Mowlam did.  Eventually through dialogue a cease fire and a peace agreement followed.


Mr Corbyn has always unequivocally condemned IRA violence, but he has (rightly I say) insisted on acknowledging the role of atrocities like Bloody Sunday and the treatment of IRA prisoners in precipitating radicalisation.

I can't see any valid defence of this.

The Thatcher government’s policy was an absolute utter failure.  And it cost a heck of a lot of lives.  Only when others adopted Mr Corbyn’s approach was progress made.


Mr Corbyn’s approach to the IRA is all the more reason to vote for him.

The government of John Major told the IRA via the back channels that no formal, open dialogue was possible until a ceasefire, hence the ceasefire of the early 90s. Unlike Corbyn there was no open discussion, until that happened. No one has ever adopted Corbyn's approach, there have always been conditions made. I wonder what Corbyn would have done differently with the Northern Ireland of the 80s?

I have no problem with those who met with IRA-Sinn Fein after the first ceasefire of the early 90s because a breakthrough was tangible and close, but someone who smiled with senior IRA commanders for photos when the mainland was being bombed makes me sick. I wonder if any Irish TD ever had his photo taken with a minor Unionist politician linked to UVF around the time Dublin was bombed in 1973? [don't think it's too likely do you?]