I didn’t admire Paisley or sympathise with Paisley but I understood what he stood for: he was the bulwark of loyalism. ibid.
I felt very exposed. ibid.
I’m not convinced he [Gerry Adams] was running the hunger strike at all. ibid.
I hadn’t realised until much later that it was a secret war, and it was this secret war that did most damage to the enemy. ibid.
I was even more shocked when I discovered that undercover the army had been actively helping Loyalists assassinate their Republican enemies. That’s when the secret war became the dirty war. ibid.
There was no military victory to be obtained … There had to be some kind of compromise if there was going to be peace.. ibid.
Collusion: It’s Not An Illusion! ‘An element of the UVF are covertly enlisted by the Ulster Government at a fee of ten shillings a day to promote a sectarian war ...’ UVF leader Gusty Spence. Approved on Behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. Wall art in West Belfast painted on side of house
I read War and an Irish Town by Eamonn McCann and saw how the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland had declared a ‘Protestant land for a Protestant people’. How the Catholics were effectively denied the vote. How the B Special Police had been formed from Protestant gangs. How the Special Powers Act was considered draconian even by President Vorster of South Africa. How the army interned hundreds of Catholics, breaking down doors and dragging men away in front of screaming kids, with no formal arrest and no trial. Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful
[Bobby] Sands spent most of his childhood in one area – the Rathcoole Estate. The UDA staged a march past his house. He was regularly pursued by loyalist gangs, who on one occasion caught and stabbed him. Demonstrators would stand outside the door chanting ‘Taigs out’, and eventually when a dustbin came through the window, they moved … He was a teenager through the B Special rampages, the curfews, internment and Bloody Sunday. So he joined the IRA. He was convicted of possessing a gun, which on the loyalist side carried an average sentence of five months, but he got fourteen years. ibid.
So what did they [Labour Party] say about the hunger strikes? On 1 May, four days before Bobby Sands died, Don Concannon, Labour’s spokesman for Northern Ireland, flew especially to Belfast and travelled to the H-Blocks to visit him. As Sands lay blind, Concannon told him the Labour Party firmly supported Thatcher on the issue of political status, and he’d come to tell him personally so there could be no doubt in any prisoner’s mind where Labour stood. ibid.
This is Derry - you’ve got murals everywhere - it’s like Rolf Harris has gone fucking mad. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s2e2, Channel 4 1998
At the heart of the politics in Northern Ireland is the twilight world of the Intelligence war, the deadly battle between the security forces and the IRA … in what both sides call the Long War. Panorama: The IRA: The Long War, BBC 1988
The Long War started 20 years ago with stones being thrown in Londonderry. ibid.
On 22nd October a French Customs aircraft spotted a boat off the west tip of Spain … on board was 150 tons of arms from Libya to the IRA. ibid.
‘Isn’t the Long War unwinnable?’ ibid. question to Gerry Adams
Last month the Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, announced that there would no prosecution of RAC officers in the interests of national security. ibid.
Unsolved, unresolved, terrible crimes from the Troubles in Northern Island. But these are no ordinary killings: this is the story of why the State is accused of standing in the way of truth and justice; it’s a story of how the State helped and protected killers, killers of innocent people. Panorama, Britain’s Secret Terror Deals, BBC 2015
There were murderers on the government’s payroll. ibid.
The police wouldn’t release crucial intelligence files; in fact, the police refused to hand over evidence to the Ombudsman in a total of sixty murders. All the killings had one thing in common: the State has been accused of involvement. ibid.
Today we celebrate National Stirring Up Trouble day. When we traditionally show our loyalty to Her Majesty the Queen by throwing stones. Spitting Image s3e7, Ian Paisley, ITV 1986
Few people in this country strike as much fear and terror as Johnny Mad Dog Adair. And yet he’s willing to risk it all just to humiliate his enemies. Over a 20-year reign Adair directed more than 40 killings and hundreds of attempted murders. Today he’s living in exile in Britain looking for a new place to call home. Macintyre’s Underworld: Mad Dog, 2010
Many believe he’s now operating as a gangster under the directing hand of a Scottish underworld godfather. ibid.
A murderous feud between different loyalist factions. Adair’s gang were run out of town. ibid.
Jonathan [son] went on to become a drug dealer. ibid.
Dresden: here in the former East Germany a group of ex-neo-Nazis have found a new spiritual leader. ibid.
‘I fucking loved it. I loved it.’ ibid. Adair
Kenneth has just picked up an emergency dose of Pregabalin from the chemist, a drug he’s prescribed to treat anxiety … In Northern Ireland prescriptions have increased by 27% in the last 6 years, and the drug is more widely prescribed here than any other region in the UK. Drugs Map of Britain: Belfast Buds, BBC 2017
Doctors have a history of prescribing drugs to people affected by the mental and physical trauma. ibid.
It is 1992: I’m the tourist curious about all I’ve heard about West Belfast. A British soldier stops me on the street; at gunpoint he tells me not to photograph his face and that if I see blood on the street it’s because he just shot somebody. Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, 1995
‘No way we can stop the killings and the shootings; God’s I think the only one can stop them.’ ibid. Shawna
‘Sitting watching TV and my mum heavily pregnant and a soldier standing at the window looking in at us, and then he shot CS gas canisters into the middle of the room.’ ibid. Carolyn
About 40% of the population is Catholic. ibid.
I see morality fade in the face of war but nobody here seems to notice. ibid.
After the general election one political party became the most Googled in Britain. Many people were alarmed at what they’d found out. The DUP are anti-abortion and anti-same-sex marriage. And now Theresa May’s government is relying on their votes to stay in power. Stacey Dooley, The Billion Pound Party, BBC 2017
Many people in Northern Ireland hate these bonfires and the anti-Catholic message they can carry. ibid.
I was really surprised when I found out about so-called punishment attacks in Northern Ireland. There are armed groups that go round saying that if you don’t behave in a way we see fit, we’re going to take it upon ourselves to shoot you, either through the kneecaps, flesh wounds, through the ankles, sometimes these people die. Stacey Dooley Investigates: Shot By My Neighbour, WI 2020
Did our secret services allow Northern Ireland’s deadliest single bomb attack to go ahead to protect their secret agent? Conspiracy s1e10: Pearl Harbor Cover-Up, Channel 5 2015
August 15th 1998: a five-hundred-pound car bomb exploded in the centre of the small Northern Irish town of Omagh – it killed 29 men, women and children … no-one has been convicted for it. ibid.
‘They wanted to protect sources.’ ibid.
1981 Belfast Northern Ireland: The conflict in Northern Ireland seems to be just on and on in a relentless cycle of violence, and then suddenly in 1981 it took the strangest darkest most dramatic twist when Bobby Sands and 9 of his young comrades insisted they be recognised as political prisoners went on hunger strike. Bobby Sands: 66 Days, BBC 2017
‘The march in West Belfast was the first test of public support for this second Republican hunger strike.’ ibid. television news
‘There was no-one to save us but the boys … At 18 and a half I joined the Provos.’ ibid. Sands
In 1920 Irish Republican Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, began a hunger strike against his imprisonment without trial by the British government. ibid.
After four years in the Long Kesh Internment Camp Bobby Sands was released in 1976. ibid.
By 1976 over 1,500 lives had been lost in the conflict. ibid.
When Bobby Sands returned in prison in 1976 special category status had been abolished. ibid.
‘The blanket protest was born.’ ibid.
‘There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed. ibid. Sands
Their Hunger Their Pain Our Struggle. ibid. wall art protest mural
‘The body fights back sure enough.’ ibid.