At the end of 2022, the 50th anniversary of the bombings in Belturbet, Clones and Pettigo on December 28 1972, An Garda Síochána announced that they were reopening their investigations into those three attacks. The no-warning bombings on that night showed evidence of the professional technical ability available to loyalist paramilitaries in Co Fermanagh and was a warning that they would be capable of continuing a bombing campaign in border villages and towns. Their bombing campaign did continue over many years. The important questions that remain after five decades are, why was the loyalist bombing campaign successful and who had assisted the loyalists paramilitaries in their deadly campaign south of the British border?
The answers to these questions may expose the level of collusion between the loyalists involved and the British security forces. The loyalists had used top-level security information to avoid detection. Is this why not a single loyalist paramilitary was apprehended either going to or returning from a bombing mission in the south. All of the communications between An Garda Síochána and the RUC were available to the UDR/UVF bombers. The Miami Showband massacre on July 31 1975 was clear and proven evidence of that dangerous alliance.
The British government legacy bill soon to become law at Westminster has nothing to do with Bloody Sunday, the Ballymurphy Massacre or many other British dirty war activities in the occupied six counties during the years of the Troubles. The sole purpose of this law is to prevent any of the information available on British security files being forensically examined and possibly exposing British involvement in the bombing attacks on the civilians of a neighbouring sovereign territory. The British government will do everything possible to hide the evidence of their involvement and their active support of illegal activity on our island. The Legacy Bill when passed would permanently hide the detailed information on the organisations responsible and the identities of the individuals that authorised all of the bombing attacks.
The victims of no-warning car bombs in Dublin, Monaghan, Belturbet, Dundalk, Castleblaney, Pettigo, Clones, Swanlinbar and Blacklion will not be silenced and will not forget. The wonderful organisation Justice for the Forgotten came into existence to offer help and assistance to us. They have asked questions that others did not want to ask. They have investigated what others did not want to investigate. They listened to what others did not want to hear and they have revealed the truth which others tried to hide. Justice for the Forgotten with hard work, genuine commitment and unbelievable dedication have revealed many hidden truths. Their excellent research exposed details which appeared to have been ignored by the political establishment south of the British border. Their investigations explored the depth of collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the British security forces on both sides of the border on our divided island. The victims of these bombings do not want revenge but they do want the full truth.
The Legacy Bill in Westminster is essential for the British to bury and to forever hide their bloody deeds on our island during the conflict. After half a century of burying the truth, the British Government would be well advised that when trapped in a hole, stop digging.
JOSEPH REID
Termonfeckin, Co Louth
We have the tools to forge a better future
While Brexit and its consequences for Northern Ireland (NI) have brought to a head the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the demand for a border poll, a democratically acceptable result of such a poll, in either direction, would not be 100 per cent consensual. There would be many disaffected people. The Belfast/Good-Friday Agreement (GFA) was not 100 per cent consensual and 25 years on, its provisions have not yet been fully implemented. How long would it take to implement, and/or deal with, the outcome of a border poll, whatever the result?
There will in any circumstance, with or without a poll, be a ‘newer’ Ireland (there is presently a ‘new’ post-Brexit Ireland), but there will not in the near future be a ‘united’ Ireland unless circumstances leave no other option.
Meanwhile, unionists and nationalists, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English, must come to realise that the UK as a unitary parliamentary concept came to an end in 1921 with devolution from Westminster to what effectively became autonomous parliaments in Dublin and Belfast. Devolution in 1999 to parliaments in Scotland and Wales, and provision in the GFA for further devolution, implicitly to an English parliament, signalled the final demise of the UK.
Like other provisions in the GFA, it has not yet happened, but self-inflicted, protracted suicide-by-Brexit may now have put the UK in a terminal phase. The debate on Northern Ireland’s future and/or Irish unity cannot be confined to this island. We need to look before and beyond that to prepare a new pan-islands set of mutually beneficial and mutually supportive relationships that are not dominated by the larger population or historic dominance of one constituent; relationships that, among other things, accommodate membership and non-membership of the EU without divisive borders between constituents.
Like the UK union, the European union and any other formal union will not last forever. Union with some means disunity and potential conflict with others. We need consensual mutual co-operation and support across Europe and these islands (and ideally worldwide) while accommodating independence.
Prior to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 there had been talk of a ‘Council of the Isles’, a concept perhaps taken from the 1998 GFA concept of the ‘British-Irish Council’ (BIC) which had not then been, and still has not been implemented to its full potential as the co-ordinating forum for these islands.
Had the BIC been fully functional would Brexit have taken its present form, if
at all? We have the tools to forge a better future. Why don’t we use them properly?
DENNIS GOLDEN
Strabane, Co Tyrone
Perfect time to petition for united Ireland
Surely the time has come to exert maximum pressure on the Dublin government to co-ordinate work that presents the detailed case for Irish unity. There are 2024 local and European and 2025 (if not earlier) Dáil elections so now would be the perfect time to petition them. This would put the unity issue at the heart of the political agenda and demand answers from politicians to the electorate and wider Irish nation. It would be best if a non-party group organised a mass 32-county-wide petition, therefore taking a decisive step at a decisive period in electoral and national politics.
DR BILLY LEONARD
Kilkee, Co Clare
Guns at Mass? Cop On, Gerry
I read with dismay the recommendation by Gerry Murray that PSNI officers should bring their guns to Mass. Cop on.
FR JOE McVEIGH
Co Fermanagh
