Sinn Fein both politically and economically suckled on the corpses of the hunger strikers like vampirian demons. They had and have a voracious appetite for individual material gain. When the Hunger Strikers died they had nothing, they left this world as they entered it, the same cannot be said of the Sinners Coven now seated in Leinster House, Stormont and the deep piled carpeted offices in New York.
A FORMER IRA hunger striker has said that a united Ireland is now little more than a “distant aspiration”.
Tommy McKearney, who was convicted of murdering part-time UDR man Stanley Adams in 1976 while he was working as a postman, said that even many republicans now have little interest in removing the border.
In a book launched in west Belfast, he argues that the only way for republicans to now remove the border is for them to work with working class Protestants in an attempt to create a socialist Ireland.
Well, Well, Tommy now living in the leafy green lanes of Monaghan and selling his wares in the News Letter, I think that Tommy has some valid points, in that effectively Sinn Fein are simply another middle-class nationalist party eating and drinking out of the same trough as their socio-economic colleagues in the SDLP, DUP and what is left of the UUP, however, we knew that. Tommy is less factual about the 'dissidents' Tommy knows well that when Michael Mc Kevitt and others walked away with PIRA semtex, guns and personnel he should have faced a court-martial, however, he did not. When the RIRA bombed Bandbridge 3 weeks before Omagh, the Sinners remained silent. The truth is that the Sinners thought a bomb here and there would help focus the minds of the Governments and Unionism, the Sinners only realised that this could back-fire following the Omagh murders. I think Tommy fails miserably to address these key issues, issues still costing lives, a more honest account of Sinn Fein/IRA is to be found in a FREE e-Book irishrepublicanarmy-ira.blogspot.com......those who do not set out to make money from their knowledge of the IRA are able to tell it exactly as it was.
In his book, The Provisional IRA, From Insurrection to Parliament, he says: “Irish unity remains an aspiration for many – but only an aspiration.
“A pleasant thought, but not something in which most people are prepared to invest time or energy.”
He argues that although Sinn Fein still pays lip-service to the claim that the 1998 Agreement “would hasten the day of Irish unity”, over a decade since that point there has been no significant erosion of support for Sinn Fein, despite no movement towards a united Ireland.
That, he suggests, shows that most Sinn Fein supporters understand — and accept — the reality that the agreement actually cemented partition.
Mr McKearney is equally withering about the attempts of today’s armed republicans to bomb their way to a united Ireland, describing them as “anachronistic irrelevance”.
He dismisses armed dissident groups — such as the Real IRA and Continuity IRA — as unfocussed individuals with an “arms fetish” and claims that they have created “one of the great paradoxes in contemporary Northern Ireland”, by diverting attention from the failures of Sinn Fein.
And, he says, that “no matter how peeved” those republicans who continue to bomb and shoot may be, their influence is “minimal”.
The ardent socialist, who now organises the Independent Workers’ Union, says that Sinn Fein has become increasingly right wing as it has gone further and further into government at Stormont, where, he argues, “contrary to talk of power-sharing, the [Stormont] administration is almost powerless” because it lacks control over the economy.
He says that the deal between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness ended ‘the Irish national question’ for most.
“Difficult though it was for some to accept, it was clear that no significant section of Irish society was prepared at that time to contest in any determined fashion the constitutional arrangements on the island.
“Irish people had voted in huge numbers for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and have stayed loyal to its promoters at each election since.
“There remains, of course, a widely-shared but not intensely sought-after aspiration that the Six Counties might one day come under Dublin’s jurisdiction.
“For the vast majority, though, it is a distant aspiration that fails to motivate anything other than occasional nostalgia.”
He argues that republicans now need to actively engaged with working class Protestants to build support for a socialist Ireland as “a one-plank republican platform confined to breaking the Union and ending partition is not capable of mobilising sufficient support to bring about the type of fundamental change required”.
He also says that Ian Paisley’s claims that the 1998 Belfast Agreement were a “sell-out” helped Sinn Fein delude more hardline IRA members into believing that they were on the path to a united Ireland.
“The republican leadership was greatly helped by the hysterical reaction of the DUP who, for its own tactical reasons, was insisting that the agreement was a betrayal of the Union.
“In contrast, it was the Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble who described the situation most accurately.
“He reminded everyone that accepting the constitutional status quo could only be changed by a majority vote in the six counties meant that the Good Friday Agreement in reality had secured the future of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.”
However, despite the failure of the IRA to secure a united Ireland, the former gunman insists that they partially succeeded by ending unionist dominance of Northern Ireland.
“The armed insurgency was successful in so far as it made transparent the nature and purpose of the Orange state’s repressive and oppressive political life...this was a transformative war”.
The index of Mr McKearney’s book records no references to his victim.
But the book Lost Lives recounts that in a 1994 BBC programme McKearney defended his actions in murdering the young postman.
He said then: “An off-duty UDR man is a member of the British Army. Now it is very naive and stretching credulity to breaking point to suggest that a man delivering the milk, delivering the mail or driving the school bus sets aside his [military] role while delivering or driving…”
