Ed Moloney - The belief was that the old RUC danced to political tunes. The PSNI was supposed to be different and better. But is it?
Ed Moloney wrote on his blog:
“On April 29th, 2014, the day before Gerry Adams was arrested by the PSNI and held for questioning for a week about the murder and ‘disappearance’ of Jean McConville, Thomas P O’Neill III published an Op-Ed in The Boston Globe asking critical and pertinent questions about British motives for invading the Belfast Project oral history archives at Boston College.
In the course of that commentary he wrote this sentence:
"…..why, when both sides in the Troubles were guilty of so much wrongdoing, is the British prosecution seemingly intent on only pursuing crimes allegedly committed by only one side?”
“…..the investigation smacks of political motivation. Of the scores of murders committed during the Troubles, the British government is seeking only to investigate that of Jean McConville in what can be construed as an attempt to implicate Gerry Adams and jeopardize his current position within the Irish parliament….. Is the British demand for documents, and its search for alleged wrongdoing, driven as much by the politics of Ireland today as it is by the search for justice for past crimes?”“
"I must confess to having mixed feelings about his Op-Ed. There is much about it to be liked. He praises the Belfast project for its candour and relevance and correctly identifies the exposing of Dolours Price as a BC interviewee – done by Ciaran Barnes in The Sunday Life c/o Allison Morris in The Irish News – as the spark for the British/PSNI subpoenas.
But his criticism of the one-sided nature of the PSNI action – aimed only at the IRA figures allegedly involved in the McConville disappearance – filled me with concern, as did the depiction of the conflict as being between ‘two sides’, as if the British did not have a dog in the fight.
It was a criticism I had heard frequently from Irish-America, where there is a tendency to paint issues in Ireland in simple, clashing sectarian colours and it led to a conclusion that further endangered the archive – and that I could not accept.”
“What O’Neill was saying was this: ‘…the British are only going for Adams and ignoring the Loyalists’. This was a common refrain in Irish-America from the outset and the answer to their concern was disarmingly simple: ‘If the PSNI would only go for Loyalists and something other than the McConville affair then we’d be okay with this thing.’
A day after the O’Neill Op-Ed appeared in The Boston Globe, Gerry Adams was arrested and, as horrified supporters of the new dispensation on both sides of the Atlantic watched helplessly, the Good Friday Agreement teetered at the edge of a long drop.
In the days following Adams’ release, the PSNI announced a radical change of direction. With Thomas P O’Neill’s criticism ringing in their ears the force let it be known that its detectives would now try to obtain all the interviews lodged at Boston College.
And then they moved against Winston ‘Winkie’ Rea, the first Loyalist targeted in this saga. This, it should be noted, was some four years after Dolours Price was targeted by a PSNI subpoena.”
“Now the PSNI are aiming at the lead IRA researcher, Anthony McIntyre. This is a man who has never hid or lied about his paramilitary past (he describes himself on his own blog as ‘a former IRA Volunteer’, for goodness sake! Will this now be cited as supporting evidence if prosecutors bring a membership charge against him?). His often biting criticism of the Provos rests not at all on their abandonment of violence but rather their political dishonesty and all the wasted, blighted lives they had fostered.
I cannot remember a great deal about his interviews with BC (except I know they do not at all warrant a British seal of secrecy!) but one thing did lodge in my memory, and that was the several times that he passionately abhorred and rejected the use of violence for political ends. He didn’t have to do that but he wanted future historians to hear his words.
So what message is the PSNI sending by pursuing Anthony McIntyre? Is it this: ‘Even if you reject violence and argue against those who insist on its use, like the dissidents, as McIntyre has, that doesn’t matter, we’re still coming for you’? Is this the PSNI’s contribution to the new Northern Ireland? And for what purpose?
Another troubling question demands a more immediate answer: ‘Did the PSNI pursue ‘Winkie’ Rea and then Anthony McIntyre not for conventional policing reasons, not because some long standing investigation demanded it, but for political convenience, viz. in order to mollify powerful & influential Irish-Americans concerned that the force was unduly targeting Gerry Adams and harming the Good Friday Agreement?’
The Troubles in Northern Ireland had many parents. Among them was a belief that the old RUC danced to political tunes. The PSNI was supposed to be different and better. But is it?”
See in full here:
https://thebrokenelbow.com/
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