Sinn Fein criticise Irish Government Minister for interfering in UK internal affairs

pork99

Am I hallucinating?

Sinn Fein criticise Irish Government Minister for interfering in the internal affairs of the United Kingdom

I'm speechless.

foxybrowne

the name of the link is kinda misleading, isn't it.

pork99

No

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern has rebuffed a claim by Gerry Adams that he interfered in the Westminster election campaign.

Normally what you would expect to hear comng out of Paisley's bitter twisted Orange gob. (So maybe they will be able to sit down and do business with each other after all )

foxybrowne

yeah, there is a bit of a difference though, no matter.

Villain

FF supporting the SDLP? Well I'm not surprised by that but the fact that the Minister is getting involved is a little surprising. The SDLP will need all the support they can get, but if FF are so interested in northern politics why don't they run a few candidates up there?

Rock Climber

irish1 wrote:

FF supporting the SDLP? Well I'm not surprised by that but the fact that the Minister is getting involved is a little surprising.

Why? it just shows me what they must be thinking of Sinn Féin at the moment.
If they were happy with them,they'd be out canvassing for them.
It is actually part of Ireland in South Down isn't it, so what are Sinn Féin complaining about, Ahern is just taking an interest in an election in a part of his own country.Thats normal.

if FF are so interested in northern politics why don't they run a few candidates up there?

yeah like Sinn Féin(the all Ireland party) did in Kildare North you mean?

Villain

Rock Climber wrote:

yeah like Sinn Féin(the all Ireland party) did in Kildare North you mean?

lol What in the name of god has that got to do with anything :rolleyes:

Seriously all you can do is bash SF.

Rock Climber

irish1 wrote:

lol What in the name of god has that got to do with anything :rolleyes:

It's quite simple-you suggest FF should stand in the North, they dont because, it wouldnt be worth their while.
Sinn Féin didnt bother standing in Kildare North,I was just reminding you of that.
It wasnt worth their while apparently.
You see a little consistency in arguments never go astray.

Villain

Rock Climber wrote:

It's quite simple-you suggest FF should stand in the North, they dont because, it wouldnt be worth their while.
Sinn Féin didnt bother standing in Kildare North,I was just reminding you of that.
It wasnt worth their while apparently.
You see a little consistency in arguments never go astray.

How does SF not standing for a bye-election in one constituency down South compare to FF not standing for any election in any constituency up North???

Consistency :rolleyes:

cdebru

Rock Climber wrote:

It's quite simple-you suggest FF should stand in the North, they dont because, it wouldnt be worth their while.
Sinn Féin didnt bother standing in Kildare North,I was just reminding you of that.
It wasnt worth their while apparently.
You see a little consistency in arguments never go astray.

sinn fein did not stand a canidate in kildare north because the party is not organised enough in that area to run a successful campaign and they decided to concentrate on meath
presumably SF will run a canidate in that area when they have a suitable one

FF do not have an organisation in the six counties and have chosen to ignore that section of the country

not the same thing at all

Rock Climber

I was actually complaining that Irish1 proposes that FF run candidates in the North when his party Sinn Féin didnt bother to run one in Kildare North.
Sauce for the Goose is sauce for the Gander like.
Presumably they both thought along the same lines, ie it would be wastefull as they wouldnt get elected.
That part is the same thing.

I agree that at least SF have a presence in both juriudictions, but that wasnt the point I was tackling,I was tackling the point about running candidates.
I take it that Sinn Féin don't have a problem with, the fact that Ahern is entitled to travel to another part of his own country and do a constituency tour with the local representative.
I take it that their sole objection must be that it's election time and that this is moral support for an opposing candidate.

It wouldnt surprise me that in a different set of circumstances,if the election had been against the backdrop of a sucessfull conclusion to the peace process that Sinn Féin would be only delighted to bring Dublin Government ministers round on a contituency tour themselves at election time.

Villain

Rock Climber wrote:

I was actually complaining that Irish1 proposes that FF run candidates in the North when his party Sinn Féin didnt bother to run one in Kildare North.

IMO there is no comparison there, also I believe SF will run a candidate in Kildare in the future but I never much doubt we will see FF running for elections up North. Sorry Rock Climber but I really fail to see the comparison, just another attempt to bash SF.

Rock Climber

Sorry Rock Climber but I really fail to see the comparison, just another attempt to bash SF.

Nope, just pulling you up on what you said about running candidates,sauce for the goose should be sauce for the Gander.

but I never much doubt we will see FF running for elections up North.

Irish1 wheres your faith in a united Ireland?
Do you seriously think that when that comes about all the parties in the 26 counties wont either merge with the ones in the 6 counties where possible or run them selves.
I strongly reckon you are wrong there.

Villain

Rock Climber wrote:

Nope, just pulling you up on what you said about running candidates,sauce for the goose should be sauce for the Gander.

Irish1 wheres your faith in a united Ireland?
Do you seriously think that when that comes about all the parties in the 26 counties wont either merge with the ones in the 6 counties where possible or run them selves.
I strongly reckon you are wrong there.

Sorry I should have clarified that, when I was speaking in relation to the North I meant Northern Ireland, I can't see FF running while it is seperate State, when Ireland is United perhaps they will but still wouldn't be sure.

Cork

SF are being partitionist by saying that an Irish Government Minister cannot visit somebody in NI.

They make a song and dance about being an an all Ireland party but are unhappy that the Minister visited an SDLP canidate.

If SF ended their associations with the IRA they might even get a few visits from ministers themselves.

Sleepy

irish1 wrote:

Sorry I should have clarified that, when I was speaking in relation to the North I meant Northern Ireland, I can't see FF running while it is seperate State, when Ireland is United perhaps they will but still wouldn't be sure.

Don't you mean if?

cdebru

Cork wrote:

SF are being partitionist by saying that an Irish Government Minister cannot visit somebody in NI.

They make a song and dance about being an an all Ireland party but are unhappy that the Minister visited an SDLP canidate.
.

I have to agree with you i think it is absolutely stupid of the SF to be compaining

I mean if the northern assembly was up and running would they bar their own ministers from interfering in the 26 county election

i understand the complaint was that he was acting in his capacity as minister rather than as a FF member or private individual

cdebru

Sleepy wrote:

Don't you mean if?

no when

monument

irish1 wrote:

FF supporting the SDLP? Well I'm not surprised by that but the fact that the Minister is getting involved is a little surprising. The SDLP will need all the support they can get, but if FF are so interested in northern politics why don't they run a few candidates up there?

Well, why not? They are planning to merge the two parities (that is, if the SDLP do well).

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Sand

I see McDowell got greeted by anti racist action groups :rolleyes: and more SF/IRA sniping. They might as well give up trying to score points off McDowell, hes more than comftable dealing with them at this stage. He put Adams and Co back in their boxes by noting his vist in support was only opposed by partitionist parties, and that he wasnt being partisan in his association with the SDLP and not SF/IRA as he was there to support legitimate lawful parties standing up for democracy - which excludes SF/IRA.

He also highlighted the irony of SF/IRA lecturing on bigotry when their organisation seperated Protestant civillians from Catholics at Kingsmills and machinegunned the Protestants, killing 10 unarmed helpless men because of their faith.

MT

This reaction from Adams is entirely predictable. It simply reaffirms Sinn Féin’s contempt for democracy and their disgust with the parties and institutions of the ‘Free State’.

To get to the heart of this stance you have to examine how the Shinners view themselves in contrast to all things southern. In their warped worldview, they are the true heirs of republicanism (in truth they’re actually sectarian geographic nationalists), the only real Irish patriots and the group who should rightfully rule this island. In very sharp contrast, the southern state represents all that they see as rotten. It has betrayed the legacy of 1916 by accepting partition. Indeed, the southern state is viewed as week, craven and an abject lickspittle of perfidious Albion. And as a government in a democracy is a reflection of the society from which it’s drawn, the people of the south are seen in no less a damning light.

In Republican circles up here they’re talked of as soft, cowardly partitionists. Weak, languid and greedy mock-English capitalists. The sort of scum hardened, revolutionary and pugnacious ‘Ra boys in the north are brought up to view as little more than cowards. The south’s institutions are despised in a similar light. Hence, the almost casual slaying of Garda Gerry McCabe and SF’s subsequent lobbying on behalf of his killers. There’d be many more Garda murders too if they weren’t so damaging to political expansion in the Republic.

Just as Hitler regarded the German people before the collapse of the Reich as deserving nothing more than scorn, so to does the SF leadership hate the betrayal of their nationalistic vision that the southern state and its people represent.

Accordingly, the contemptible ‘Free State’ government is good for one thing, and for one thing only. Support Sinn Féin – the rightful leaders of Ireland’s destiny – unfalteringly until a united Ireland comes in existence and then shut up and hand the reins of power over to the brave ‘freedom fighters’. I mean how dare that ‘Free State’ quisling, Bertie Ahern, waver in his support of the only real Irish party. Who the hell does he think he is providing support for the SDLP? After all, that party never took part in the blood sacrifice of the armed struggle. They have no more right to power over Ireland than the filth representing the soft, effete southerners in that chamber of national sell-out and humiliation – Dáil Eireann. When will the people see their own folly and the damage they do to the purity of our ancestors legacy? When will they realise that the parties of the illegitimate southern state, the SDLP and all those who collude against Sinn Féin and the real army of Ireland must be forsaken?

One Ireland, one party, one army. Get ready for a thousand years of national purity where the stain of the Brit inspired ‘Free State’ will be cleansed forever.

MT

To highlight further this Republican contempt for the Irish Republic and its institutions have a look at this article in the Daily Provo... oops, Ireland. This, would you believe, was written by the previous editor of the Sunday Business Post and a presenter on Newstalk 106, Damien Kiberd. Really, I don't know why the Republican sympathiser Kiberd even bothers discussing current affairs on 106 in a state he clearly views with contempt.

The Stickie business of demonisation

The greatest virtue attaching to the statement of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams at the Conway Mill last Wednesday is that finally – eleven years after the IRA cessation of military actions against the British – it de-couples the process of change within Irish republicanism from the process of political negotiation and bartering, primarily with Britain but also with Ulster unionism.
Previously, the future direction of republicanism was the hostage of a process in which petty-minded individuals like David Trimble (a Nobel peace laureate) could “raise the bar” at the last moment after extracting concessions from Sinn Féin and/or the IRA. Trimble’s petulant behaviour scuppered the second last attempt by republicans to reach a settlement with Ulster unionism which might provide a permanent basis for peace.
Now Adams has chosen to make a unilateral appeal to the men and women of the IRA to choose an alternative road to the one upon which they embarked, most recently, in 1970. He does so with the authority of his office as Sinn Féin president. And he does so, while making the point that on previous occasions he has fully defended the right (in his opinion) of the IRA to wage war against the British occupiers of part of Ireland (this is, after all, the man who carried the coffin of the Shankill bomber a decade ago regardless of the public relations disaster that this meant for him and for his party).
There are a number of problems, however, associated with the Adams statement of last week, problems which will be familiar to its author. In the first place the process of dismantling the IRA’s military machine was supposed to take place in tandem with the dismantling of Britain’s military presence in the six counties. There is no particular evidence to show that Britain has taken this task seriously: even the Free State minister Dermot Ahern – who is no friend of Sinn Féin – drew attention to this problem in recent days.
Secondly, what will happen if loyalists attack Catholic districts in Belfast and elsewhere this summer or in 2006 and 2007? Clearly, members of the republican movement will try to defend their areas against attack, but if they do so will they not be accused of hypocrisy by the Dublin and London media? Even though your house might be about to be burned, this won't stop people in the media from demanding that you apply higher standards to your own behaviour than they would apply in their own lives.
The prize which Adams seeks to win for Sinn Féin is a continuation of the party’s political advance. But he must be aware that this process will continue to be obstructed by a massive campaign of falsification, regardless of whether or not the IRA is “stood down”. In other words, the IRA might agree to go away, but the people who depend for a living on their capacity to attack the IRA won’t. These are the people who staff the upper echelons of Independent News and Media, The Irish Times and RTÉ among other media organisations.
At the weekend the Free State justice minister, Michael McDowell, repeated his bizarre claim that the IRA was “well on the way” in creating a state within a state (presumably within the Free State). This is a line which has been faithfully trotted out by so-called investigative journalists within the Irish Independent and Sunday Tribune in recent weeks (who on earth was briefing them?). They apparently have swallowed the line that the buoyant southern economy with its two million workers and its perennial budget surpluses is about to be overwhelmed by what they call SF/IRA, even though Sinn Féin holds just five of the 166 seats in Dáil Éireann.
There is no evidence at all to support McDowell’s ludicrous rhetoric. The only people who have genuinely used the process that Marxists refer to as “entryism” to subvert the institutions of the Free State in recent decades are the old, now almost defunct, Workers’ Party who seized control of parts of The Irish Times, Independent News and Media, RTÉ and SIPTU (in the 1980s) and who now – lacking any obvious ideological mission – simply use their positions to provide jobs for their relatives and friends. Nell McCafferty, in her recent autobiography Nell, unwittingly provided a unique insight into the Workers' Party attitude to the mass media when she told of how she used to meet monthly with the Official IRA boss Cathal Goulding to talk about the situation in Derry after she was appointed as a reporter with The Irish Times in the 1970s (see page 252 of her recent book). I want to make it absolutely clear here that Nell herself was never a Stickie and never sought or received any favours from those who were Stickies, merely that meeting Goulding was then considered normal in the world in which she had to make a living.
The process of demonising Sinn Féin these days cannot be contained, regardless of whether or not Adams succeeds in his bid to wind-up the IRA as a fighting force. The reportage of criminal activity in Dublin in recent days proves that the opponents of the republican movement within the Dublin media have adopted a technique known as “the Big Lie”. Any murder – regardless of whether it is caused by a personal vendetta or by a dispute among criminals – will be attributed to republicans. Political activists working for Sinn Féin will be smeared by hack writers who appear to see part of their primary functions as a willingness to attack Sinn Féin.
This is a dirty business. As Adams tries to dismantle the IRA, the primary opposition to him is not coming from Britain or even from Ulster’s fragmented unionists. It is coming from Dublin where important people fear the advance of Sinn Féin. Neither state possesses a shred of evidence that Adams authorised the robbery of the Northern Bank in December (have you noticed the number of people arrested in connection with this event?). Yet McDowell’s leader Mary Harney felt confident enough to accuse Adams, and Martin McGuinness of complicity in this robbery on RTÉ radio and RTÉ saw fit to broadcast this piece of programming which essentially pre-judged the guilt or innocence of named persons in connection with a crime which dwarfed the Great Train Robbery in terms of its scale.
The Progressive Democrats seem to be obsessed with threats to Irish democracy. They should keep their eyes open. They are sitting around the cabinet table with people who signed blank cheques for Charlie Haughey. People who have forgotten what their parents believed in, and who are now embarked on a nihilist effort to wreck the peace process (to shore up their own political mandate) and who no longer have any interest in the pursuit of republican objectives. Shake hands with them, and count the fingers on your hand afterwards.

Damien Kiberd is a writer and broadcaster. A presenter for Newstalk 106 in Dublin, he was previously editor of the Sunday Business Post.

Daily Ireland

My emphasis on the frequent references to the Free State. This article has all the contempt, paranoia and whingeing we've come to expect from the RM when remonstrating against the Republic. Remember too, they view the southern electorate with similar disdain.

Mighty_Mouse

noone else sees a problem with the Irish government electioneering for SDLP so?

Nuttzz

Mighty_Mouse wrote:

noone else sees a problem with the Irish government electioneering for SDLP so?

No, none at all why? The SDLP and Irish Government have a similar agenda

Cork

Mighty_Mouse wrote:

noone else sees a problem with the Irish government electioneering for SDLP so?

The Irish government are not electioneering for SDLP.

The SF party are getting a cold sholder becaused of their links to the criminal IRA.

But instead of facing up to this - the shinners have a nerve criticising
Mc Dowell.

The IRA is still recruiting and training members and engaging in criminal activity, Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern told the Irish parliament today.

Link

A former IRA prisoner is believed to be among three men being questioned today about a major cocaine network on both sides of the Irish border.

Yet the shinners critisise the government.

monument

Mighty_Mouse wrote:

noone else sees a problem with the Irish government electioneering for SDLP so?

No. And I love it when the PDs or their members do!

MT wrote:

Really, I don't know why the Republican sympathiser Kiberd even bothers discussing current affairs on 106 in a state he clearly views with contempt.

It might be a good idea if you were to stop reading a newspaper you hold with such contempt.

Unlike my fellow ‘Republican sympathiser’ [that sounds so like 'Rebel sympathiser' ] I would not use the word 'free state', but can I take it there is some kind of reason baring you from talking about (or giving out about) the content of the article, and not the just the wording?

Cork

Sand wrote:

He also highlighted the irony of SF/IRA lecturing on bigotry when their organisation seperated Protestant civillians from Catholics at Kingsmills and machinegunned the Protestants, killing 10 unarmed helpless men because of their faith.

I think even exposing IRA criminality and exposing Michell McLoughlin on the death of the Jean McConville murder has also to be mentioned.

Sinn Fein criticise Irish Government Minister for interfering in UK internal affairs

SF have gone partitionist on us. The DUP used come out with this type of thing years ago.

As a republican - I welcome SF MPs to cross the boarder - where they can see that political partys such as FF, Lab, Fg and PD both support the police and the institutions of this state.

Mighty_Mouse

No, none at all why? The SDLP and Irish Government have a similar agenda

oh stop, stop!!!! Your support for getting an assembly in the north is killing me!

Lets all campaign for an alliance, greens, SDLP governement!! That will solve everything.

Also there is a difference when in comes to what capacity a minister is acting in. If he is acting as a representative of the government of ireland, then they should not be involved in politiking individual parties in the north.

Milo

Does anybody see the irony of a right wing party (fianna fail) and a party that makes fianna fail look communist (the PD's) canvessing for the Social and Democratic Labour Party??

Just a thought!

Nuttzz

Milo wrote:

Does anybody see the irony of a right wing party (fianna fail) and a party that makes fianna fail look communist (the PD's) canvessing for the Social and Democratic Labour Party??

Just a thought!

What is in a name?

Ever hear of the National Socialist German Workers' Party? Best socialists ever!