Tag Archives: IRA

Guest post: Outrage over inclusion of IRA in new video game

Timothy Plum has been traveling to Ireland for more than 20 years on business, academic and personal reasons. His last guest post for this blog was about Brexit. MH

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The latest iteration of the “Mafia” video game series, which references IRA violence, is drawing criticism in Northern Ireland for trivializing the Troubles.

“Mafia III” is set in 1968 in a recreation of New Orleans. The player is on a quest to build a new crime organization to confront the Italian mob over the killings of his friends. Players game through the third-person perspective of fictional orphan and Vietnam War vet Lincoln Clay.

In a segment titled “The IRA Don’t Ask,” Clay’s mission includes stealing cars for an Irish underboss named Thomas Burke. The cars are destined for use as car bombs meant to “keep the Belfast law guessing.” The game also includes a Northern Ireland flag defaced with the word “traitor.”

Screen grab from "Mafia III" by 2K Games.

Screen grab from “Mafia III” by 2K Games.

The game uses stereotypes to glorify the IRA, including drunkenness, rowdiness and extreme violence. Using a time period as fresh and raw as 1960’s Northern Ireland, in my opinion, is a disservice to gamers–most of whom will have no idea of the actual events–and the public at large.

Unionist politicians have condemned the game. DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson told The Irish News that he is “very concerned” about the impact the game could have on “impressionable” minds. “The IRA were a terrorist organisation that murdered very many innocent men, women and children in Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK.”

As of 15 October, news coverage from the North has not included any reaction to the game from Sinn Féin or other nationalists.

So far, “Mafia III” has been poorly received by the gaming community, so perhaps the damage of misunderstanding and myth perpetuation will be tamped down by poor sales. But it is sad to have the past dredged up in such a poor fashion that only perpetuates stereotypes and does not further discussion.

British MP’s killing recalls earlier IRA assassinations

The shooting/stabbing death of Labour Party MP Jo Cox on 16 June is the first killing of a British politician since Conservative MP Ian Gow was assassinated by the IRA in a 1990 car bombing.

Four other British politicians in addition to Gow were killed by militant Irish republicans since 1979, according to a timeline in The Guardian. The list includes the 1984 bombing at the Brighton hotel, which targeted then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet attending a political conference. Thatcher escaped, but Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry and four others were killed.

The IRA claimed responsibility for killing Gow because of his close association with Thatcher and his role in developing British policy on Northern Ireland. In a 2010 remembrance in The Telegraph, Bruce Anderson wrote:

In October 1984, the IRA came close to assassinating her. In 1990, by murdering Ian, they helped to bring her down. If Ian Gow had been slain while protecting Margaret Thatcher, he would have died with a smile on his face. But when she most had need of him, her enemies had ensured that he would not be available.

Ian Gow and Margaret Thatcher in 1984. He was assassinated by the IRA six years later.

Ian Gow follows Margaret Thatcher in 1984. He was assassinated by the IRA six years later.

IRA of the Troubles “well beyond recall” report says

A special three-member panel reviewing paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland released its report 20 October 2015.

The report found the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) “remains in existence in a much reduced form” and that an IRA army council is still operating, The Irish Times reports. More coverage from The New York Times.

“PIRA of the Troubles is well beyond recall,” the report says. “It is our firm assessment that PIRA’s leadership remains committed to the peace process and its aim of achieving a united Ireland by political means. … The group is not involved in targeting or conducting terrorist attacks against the state or its representatives.”

Read the report.

Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers commissioned the independent assessment of paramilitary organisations and organized crime in the six-county province in September to avert the collapse of the power-sharing government at Stormont.

Peace and politics on edge in Northern Ireland

The power-sharing government in Northern Ireland is going though yet another crisis. Whether this round, largely driven by police and government statements about the IRA remaining an active organization, is enough to unravel Stormont remains to be seen.

Scotland-based journalist Peter Geoghegan published this 28 August roundup piece in Politico‘s European Edition. The theme is captured by this quote from a unionist political commentator:

“…There is a general sense of despondency with the [power-sharing] assembly. People don’t hate each other, but Sinn Féin and the DUP hate each other.”

In a 30 August editorial, The Guardian says “everything possible must be done to prevent the collapse of a devolved system that, for all its limitations, has helped bring genuine security and has restored growth to Northern Ireland after long decades of conflict which revealed the bankruptcy of both unionist hegemony and republican violence.”

The gun in Irish politics and revolution, 1914-1923

John Dorney at The Irish Story blog has produced a three-part series about “the decade of the gun.” It explores the hardware of Ireland’s revolutionary period, now the subject of centennial reflections. Up to 5,000 people were killed in armed conflict during this stretch, which Dorney describes as “a number of discrete episodes with different combatants arrayed against each other.” He continues:

Partisan debate raged at the time about whether the ‘Trouble’ amounted to political violence or warfare. The point has been made that it was not so much the quantity or quality of weapons that caused deaths and injuries as the willingness to use them.

Here’s the series:

Part 1, 1914-1916, looks at the run up to the Rising.

Part 2, 1919-1921, explores the War of Independence.

Part 3, 1922-1923, concludes with Ireland’s Civil War.

Anti-treaty IRA on Grafton Street in Dublin, 1922.

Anti-treaty IRA on Grafton Street in Dublin, 1922.

Adams: “I was not a member of the IRA”

The CBS News program 60 Minutes has landed a rare interview with Gerry Adams. It airs Easter Sunday, 5 April.

Adams2Feb14_Swf

Snippets of the interview are being released early to drive interest in the broadcast and have already generated news headlines, such as this story in the Irish Independent. Here’s the 60 Minutes website and video clip.

“I don’t disassociate myself from the IRA,” Adams says. “I think the IRA was a legitimate response to what was happening here. I never will [disassociate himself from the IRA]. But I was not a member of the IRA.”

Cardinal Dolan’s comparison of ISIS and IRA draws criticism

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York has sparked outrage among some Irish republicans and their supporters for comparing the violent Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq to the late 20th century IRA in Northern Ireland.

“The IRA claimed to be Catholic,” Dolan said on CNN. “They were baptized. They had a Catholic identity. But what they were doing was a perversion of everything the church stood for.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan in a 2013 "Today" show appearance. (Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire)

Cardinal Timothy Dolan in a 2013 “Today” show appearance. (Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire)

Dolan insisted that Islamic State extremists “do not represent genuine Islamic thought” but are “a particularly perverted form of Islam.”

IrishCentral published a roundup of harrumphs from republican sympathizers. Father Sean McManus, leader of the Irish National Caucus, which lobbies for the North in Congress, said Dolan’s remarks were “profoundly ignorant, totally irresponsible and lacking all credibility.”

As Religion News Service noted, “Some Catholic leaders [in Ireland, north and south] strongly denounced the IRA and sought to downplay the religious aspects of the violence, but the IRA also found support among many clergy and the faithful.”

So far no prominent Irish, Irish-American or Catholic leaders have come to Dolan’s defense. It will be interesting to see if this tempest in a teapot cools off before he leads the annual St. Patrick’s Day in New York later this month.

Bill O’ in the no-go zone. Oh no!

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said he saw “Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs.”

Bill-O’Reilly

But it turns out he only saw photographs shown by police while on a freelance reporting trip to Northern Ireland in 1984, for a book he never finished, according to reporting by the Washington Post.

Liberal watchdog group Media Matters For America further reports that a similar claim about witnessing IRA killings, made in a 2013 book that O’Reilly did get to print, will not be corrected by the publisher.

O’Reilly’s paternal ancestors lived in County Cavan since the early eighteenth century, and his mother’s side were from the north, according to Wikipedia.

More troubles about the past for Adams; Hart named envoy

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has new troubles with the past not six months since being released from police questioning about the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville.

This time around Adams and republicans are facing harsh accusations about how they handled, or mishandled, allegations of rape by members of the IRA. Adams claims the charges are being politicized by opponents.

For perspective on IRA justice during the Troubles and the political implications of this scandal, in the North and the Republic, read this piece by Brian Feeney. He is head of history at St Mary’s University College in Belfast, and the author of Sinn Féin: A Hundred Turbulent Years and Insider: Life in the IRA.

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An additional note about the North: former U.S. Senator and two-time presidential candidate Gary Hart has appointed to help jump-start political negotiations in Northern Ireland. As the Belfast Telegraph says with a sigh, Hart is “the latest in a decades-long parade of special U.S. peace process envoys — and a man long off the radar of mainstream American political life.”

But the story also contains this reality check:

One Washington insider with long-time involvement in Irish affairs said that Belfast’s politicians shouldn’t take high-level US governmental attention for granted. “Northern Ireland, like lots of places around the world, tends to think that their problems are the biggest on the board. And they aren’t,” he said.

Can Hart finish the work on “flags, parades and the past” that Richard Haas nearly concluded at the end of 2013? Let’s see.

Historic IRA ceasefire hits 20th anniversary

Recognising the potential of the current situation and in order to enhance the democratic process and underlying our definitive commitment to its success, the leadership of the IRA have decided that as of midnight, August 31, there will be a complete cessation of military operations. All our units have been instructed accordingly.

— Irish Republican Army ceasefire statement of August 1994

Some great coverage of this historic event is emerging from Irish and British media outlets.

Writing for the BBC, Vincent Kearney recounts obtaining the ceasefire statement through a republican source as a reporter for the Belfast Telegraph. He tells the back story leading up to the deal, such as the secret meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume facilitated by a Catholic priest at Clonard Monastery.

Kearney recalls the violence preceding the Downing Street Declaration between prime ministers John Major of Britain and the recently deceased Albert Reynolds of Ireland. He also quotes republican leader and now Deputy First Minster Martin McGuinness:

People make a mistake if they think that the engagement that took place between ourselves and the British government back channel, for want of a better word, was the motivating factor in bringing about the IRA ceasefire of 1994, that’s not the way the process worked. What brought about the IRA ceasefire was the coming together of Irish America, support from the White House, the Albert Reynolds input and, of course, the initiative led by Gerry Adams and by John Hume, with the support of Father Alec Reid.

Adams, Reynolds and Hume shortly after the IRA ceasefire. Belfast Telegraph image.

Adams, Reynolds and Hume shortly after the IRA ceasefire. Belfast Telegraph image.

The Irish Times has a couple of pieces by two insiders. Nancy Soderberg, a foreign policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, details the persistence of Reynolds and others to obtain a visa for IRA man Joe Cahill to sell the ceasefire to republican hardliners in the U.S. Former Reynolds press secretary Seán Duignan tells the same story from the Irish side.