Ira

Corbyn confronted by his past

Jeremy Corbyn first became an MP 30-odd years ago. Until he became Labour leader, Corbyn was a relatively unknown figure with all sorts of fringe views. Corbyn said, and did, a lot of things with minimal scrutiny because no one thought he would ever be in a position of power. But Corbyn is now Labour’s candidate to be Prime Minister in a general election campaign in which the polls are tightening. Tonight, Andrew Neil confronted Corbyn with a lot of his past statements. When questioned over his past sympathy for the IRA, Corbyn had no answer to the specifics of any of the questions. When confronted with Seamus Mallon, of

Labour knew about Corbyn and the IRA. Now the country knows

The security services are a rum lot. All that intrigue gets to you eventually, and that’s not counting those who sign up with less than laudable intentions. Harold Wilson was paranoid but not necessarily wrong.  So when Jeremy Corbyn’s MI5 file finds its way onto the front page of the Daily Telegraph, even those not well-disposed to the Labour leader could be forgiven for arching an eyebrow. Are the spooks spooked by the possibility of Britain’s first Marxist prime minister?  For those who came up with Corbyn in 1970s and ‘80s, those heady days of the hard-Left when revolution was ever round the corner, this is obviously the case. Their

Killing time | 18 May 2017

Jez Butterworth’s new play The Ferryman is set in Armagh in 1981. Quinn, a former terrorist, has swapped the armed struggle for a farming career and now lives with his sick wife, their countless kids, his sister-in-law and her only son. But the IRA, who murdered his brother as punishment for his disloyalty, are due to pay a visit with unknown intentions. More violence, perhaps? Protection money? Or both. Well, neither, it turns out. They merely want Quinn to refrain from blaming his brother’s death on them. Rather a low price to ask. And yet Quinn is willing to defy them even though he knows they repay disobedience with murder,

Thucydides on McGuinness

When Gerry Adams rose to announce at his funeral that Martin McGuinness was no terrorist but a ‘freedom fighter’, the historian Thucydides probably allowed himself a grim smile. He knew all about these sort of people. In 427 BC, Corcyra (ancient Greek Kerkura, now Corfu) was in the grip of a ferocious civil war between oligarchic and democratic factions for control of the state. The feature that stood out for Thucydides was the reversal of all normal, civilised values on both sides of the divide. Most striking of all, ‘men reversed the usual evaluative force of words to suit their own assessment of the situation’. The result was that ‘cowardice’ was now

Of course we’re not cowed by terrorism – what other choice do we have?

Stay safe, London. Stay safe, everyone. It’s nice, isn’t it, as a sentiment, which is just as well because it is the motto du jour of every celebrity who has added his or her mite to what passes as debate on the terrorist attack last Wednesday. And, my goodness, they all piled in: JK Rowling, Katy Perry, James Corden, Neil Gaiman; every man and woman of them, you’ll be pleased to hear, against this sort of thing, and urging us all – especially those not actually resident in London – to ‘stay safe’. The other trope is that ‘nothing will divide us’, that this is what terrorists want – Stella

The Spectator’s notes | 23 March 2017

We keep being incited to find it heartwarming that Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley were known as the Chuckle Brothers. But what were they chuckling about? Their shared success at outwitting the British state. Both, though for opposite reasons, had made their careers out of harassing Britain, and both, in their later years, had acquired money, power and status by doing so. In the case of McGuinness and his gang, Britain greatly underplayed its hand. Having militarily beaten the IRA, successive British governments could have marginalised them, but instead they accepted them as authentic representatives of the Irish people who had to be included in any settlement. The process for

Jenny McCartney

Lest we forget | 23 March 2017

I never met Martin McGuinness, but I was certainly affected by him from an early age. His decisions, and those of his colleagues on the IRA Army Council, indelibly coloured my childhood. Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s was a grey, fortified city, compelling in many ways, but permanently charged with the unpredictable electricity of violence. Our local news steadily chronicled the shattering of families, in city streets and down winding border lanes that were full of birdsong before the bullets rang out. There were regular, respectful interviews with pallid widows and dazed widowers, and funerals attended by red-eyed, snuffling children tugged into stiff, smart clothes to pay formal respects

What Martin McGuinness’s eulogisers would like to forget

I never met Martin McGuinness, but I was certainly affected by him from an early age. His decisions, and those of his colleagues on the IRA Army Council, indelibly coloured my childhood. Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s was a grey, fortified city, compelling in many ways, but permanently charged with the unpredictable electricity of violence. Our local news steadily chronicled the shattering of families, in city streets and down winding border lanes that were full of birdsong before the bullets rang out. There were regular, respectful interviews with pallid widows and dazed widowers, and funerals attended by red-eyed, snuffling children tugged into stiff, smart clothes to pay formal respects

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Why we shouldn’t mourn Martin McGuinness

Martin McGuinness’s death has sparked a wave of fawning and fury in the obituaries. So: ‘man of war’, peacemaker or something in between? The Sun’s verdict is clear: the ‘pious praise’ for McGuinness is nothing short of ‘revolting’. It’s true, the paper says, that the ‘second part’ of his life differed from his early days. And it’s also the case that McGuinness ‘risked his own neck’ to help bring peace in the end. But to hear the likes of Tony Blair play down McGuinness’s role as an IRA commander ‘turns the stomach’. McGuinness might have fancied himself as a ‘folk hero’, but there was ‘nothing noble about this “struggle’, says

Douglas Murray

The morally illiterate obituaries to Martin McGuinness are just what he would have wanted

Well the obituaries for Martin McGuinness are in. And many are as morally illiterate as the man himself could have wished for. For instance, various obituarists have noted that the young McGuinness’s failure as a young man to get an apprenticeship as a mechanic started him off on the road to terror. Few of these eulogists have noted the many people across continents and generations who also failed to get apprenticeships (often for even more sectarian reasons) and yet strangely refused as a consequence to pick up some pliers and an Armalite and torture and kill their way to political power. Other obsequies have been even stranger. Alex Salmond, for

At least Martin McGuinness made old age. Many others didn’t

So Martin McGuinness has died. Already this is giving vent to the sort of ‘How McGuinness became a man of peace’ stories. Personally I have always thought the salient point about the man is not that he became a man of peace but that he was ever a man of violence. Over recent years a narrative has developed around the Troubles, that the people who ‘became men of peace’ are much to be admired. This narrative overlooks the fact that the real people to be admired are those from all sides who – despite sharing many or all of the same grievances as the ‘men of violence’ – never thought

Letting terror win

There is nothing a government in a remotely free country can do to stop a suicide bomber in a crowded space. As a weapon, he has the precision of a drone missile. The only preventive task open to the police and security service is to penetrate and destroy a terrorist cell in advance. This means assiduous intelligence. It has clearly held the key to disarming some 50 ‘terror plots’ known to the police over the past decade. Every lesson in counter-terrorism warns against overreaction. But David Cameron seems oblivious to this truth. He appears to have no faith in the police to protect British citizens from terrorism. His reaction to

Portrait of the week | 11 February 2016

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that if Britain left the European Union, France could stop allowing British officials to make immigration checks on the French side of the border, and, his spokesman predicted: ‘You have potentially thousands of asylum seekers camped out in northern France who could be here almost overnight.’ Mr Cameron denounced the way prisons are being run by his administration: ‘Current levels of prison violence, drug-taking and self-harm should shame us all.’ Junior doctors went on strike again for 24 hours. Twelve men of Pakistani heritage were jailed for up to 20 years for the rape and sexual abuse of a girl when she was

A step too far

Captain Robert Nairac was a Grenadier Guards officer serving in Northern Ireland when on 14 May 1977 he was abducted and murdered by the Provisional IRA. Mystery surrounding the circumstances of his abduction and the fact that his body has never been found have provoked a minor literary industry. This must be the most comprehensive account yet. Nairac was serving in South Armagh as a liaison officer between the army, the SAS and police Special Branch. He was not a member of the SAS but had vastly more freedom of action than most soldiers, able to travel where and when he chose in civilian clothes with a pistol under his

The Young Fabians have an impressive guest of honour this evening – and they’re lucky to have him

Some days the world is so stupid that getting out of bed seems to carry too many risks.  Today, thanks to the Independent, the bottom of the stupid-pool has been reached. The ‘paper’ has just run a piece by one George Greenwood headlined: ‘Labour-IRA attitude under scrutiny as Young Fabians invite former terror commander to be guest of honour at Christmas party.’ Which sounds very scary indeed until you read down, or look at the photo and discover that the former IRA commander in question is in fact Sean O’Callaghan – otherwise known as probably the most famous double-agent at the top of the IRA. A man who helped destroy the IRA’s

Colm Tóibín on priests, loss and the half-said thing

‘No matter what I’m writing,’ says Colm Tóibín, ‘someone ends up getting abandoned. Or someone goes. No matter what I’m trying to do it comes in.’ It’s a reflection, he says, of his own consciousness. It makes ‘its way into everything’. If Tóibín is on close terms with the ache of loss, few writers have put it to such elegant use. He is in the midst of a period of roaring success: we are sitting in a hotel in Soho, talking about the new film of his 2009 novel Brooklyn, which has the lure and pain of leaving Ireland and family at its heart. Its heroine is Eilis Lacey, a

Charles Moore

Charles Moore’s Notes: If we want to save the elephant, we must legalise the ivory trade

How good a deal for Britain is it that the president of China got a state visit and a nuclear power station and Prince William got the chance to go on Chinese television and complain about the ivory trade? The Prince was listened to politely, of course, but the Chinese will not give up their enthusiasm for the stuff. The elephant in the room, to misapply that expression, is that only a legal trade in ivory will save the species. Just as cows exist in any numbers only because we eat their flesh and drink their milk, so elephants have a future only if it is profitable to breed them.

Jenny McCartney

The ‘Stakeknife’ investigation and the dark reality of double agents

The decision by Barra McGrory, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland, to recommend an official investigation into the activities of Freddie Scappaticci – the alleged IRA enforcer and British agent known as ‘Stakeknife’ – seems likely to unearth some of the most painful, long-buried secrets of the ‘dirty war’ in Northern Ireland. In so doing it will raise difficult questions about the permissible limits of state intelligence-gathering which remain highly relevant today. Scappaticci, who denied being a British agent before departing Northern Ireland in 2003, is nonetheless widely reported to have been a longstanding head of the IRA’s ‘nutting squad’, or internal security unit, which was responsible for

John McDonnell’s slick performance on Question Time was worthy of Tony Blair

Hats off to John McDonnell. We’ve all been fretting about how the Corbyn gang would cope against the media slick Tories. We all think that, despite the appeal of conviction politics, a shadow chancellor such as McDonnell will be eaten alive by the Tory front bench. John McDonnell’s performance on BBC Question Time last night suggested otherwise. Question Time is a good test for politicians: they have to look and sound passionate while saying nothing much at all. McDonnell did exactly that, and with gusto. He masterfully shrugged off his ‘joke’ about killing Margaret Thatcher. When asked about his support for the IRA, he managed almost simultaneously to apologise and to

Douglas Murray

Why are people falling for John McDonnell’s Question Time ‘apology’?

John McDonnell’s Question Time ‘apology’ was no such thing and I am amazed to see anybody for fall for it. It was obviously insisted upon by Labour party spin-doctors. But as the words themselves show, it was not an apology. Sure, he apologised for causing any offence or upset, but not for the fact that he was wholly and utterly wrong. And wrong not only to have praised people who spent three decades shooting people and planting bombs in public places but wrong on the facts too. I cannot think how he can get away with this, but it seems like he will, not least because his boss has done so