Which quote about Margaret Thatcher is from the Irish republican, which from the Ulster loyalist?
“Oh God, in wrath take vengeance upon this wicked, treacherous, lying woman.”
OR
“It’s a pity we didn’t kill her 30-plus years ago.”
The first quote is from Ian Paisley Sr., or Lord Bannside as he’s known in his dotage. He said it 25 years ago, days after Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Norman Hamill writes in the Derry Journal.
The second quote is from Willie Gallagher, an Irish National Liberation Army prisoner during the Troubles. He said it this week during an unseemly Thatcher funeral “celebration“ in Derry’s Bogside.
The Irish Examiner linked events of the past to what happened this week in London, Derry and Boston:
Margaret Thatcher has not been fondly remembered in this country. She was a very British politician who essentially did not like the Irish, and if we are fair, it is hard to blame her.
Irish people killed her advisor, Airey Neave, with a car bomb within the precincts of the British parliament in 1979. He was a British war hero, as was Louis Mountbatten, who was murdered the same year while boating in Sligo with his grandchildren. That was as savage an affront to humanity as the outrage in Boston.
So enough killing for this week. God knows there was too much in the past. And let the dead, no matter who they are, rest in peace.