Published on Wednesday 30 March 2011 News Letter

By Philip Bradfield
A BBC TV documentary on the Shankill Butchers has heightened unionist fears that the IRA’s responsibility for more Troubles murders than any other group is being overlooked.
While there was universal agreement yesterday that the butchers were savage murderers — branded by the BBC as “the most prolific gang of serial killers in UK history” — there was concern that republican brutality also needed scrutiny.

On air yesterday, east Belfast community worker Jim Wilson told Stephen Nolan —who presented the documentary — that he had got it wrong.

“Those murders cannot be justified,” he said. “But the biggest mass murderers we have had were the IRA.”
During the Troubles, republicans claimed 2,148 lives, loyalists 1,071 and the security forces 365.
Mr Wilson said that despite atrocities such the Enniskillen, La Mon and Bloody Friday bombs, republicans had progressed to respectability at Stormont “and not a word is being said about them”.
He added: “And it is now my community that is being demonised.”
Stephen Nolan described his comments as worthy of consideration.

Former victims’ commissioner and UUP member Mike Nesbitt told the News Letter there was a perception that the review processes currently in place do not represent a level playing field.
“The prime minister apologised for Bloody Sunday, the secretary of state apologised for Claudy, the previous NI Secretary expressed regret regarding the shooting of Aidan McAnespie, this week Owen Paterson is apologising again,” he said. “The problem is there have been no apologies from republicans in reply in relation to the likes of the murder of Jean McConville, Bloody Friday, the La Mon bombing, and Enniskillen.”
Mr Nesbitt said that there had been silence over “events like the murder of a young mother, Joanne Mathers, shot dead by the IRA in 1981 whilst collecting census forms in Londonderry”.

DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson branded the Shankill Butchers as “deplorable”.
“But the Northern Ireland media needs to be careful it does not rewrite history so we forget that the most prolific murderers were the IRA,” he said. “The IRA killed as many Catholics as loyalists did. And the Dublin government has never fulfilled promises to hold inquiries about its collusion with the IRA throughout the Troubles.”

PUP leader Brian Ervine said what the butchers did was “horrible and vicious. But it is as if the Provos didn’t do anything — and now they are sitting in government”.
“Loyalists have apologised for the murders they committed but republicans have never reciprocated. They always justify themselves.”

Victims campaigner Willie Frazer also said a small gang of IRA men were responsible for around 100 murders, but that this had never been highlighted.
“This was the same small gang of IRA men who were responsible for the 15 murders at Kingsmills in 1976 and Tullyvallen in 1975,” he said. “About 40 bodies were dumped along the border like confetti.
“They would use a blow torch on your feet, smash your hands with a lump hammer, smash your kneecaps, partially drown you and then start all over again. This would go on for three to five days without sleep. Then they would shoot you in the back of the head and dump you on a road somewhere.”

Chris McGimpsey, a former Belfast councillor who knows the Shankill well, described the Nolan documentary as “a very good programme — it got to the depth of the problem and the horror of it”.
But he added: “I thought it should have linked the whole thing into what was happening in Northern Ireland. There were other Protestant gangs and other Catholic gangs roaming around killing people. You would think from the programme the worst sectarian killers came from the Shankill, so I think overall it did a disservice to the Shankill community. I thought Baroness May spoke well for the community.”
Mr McGimpsey added: “You understand the anger and upset of the victims. There were Protestant victims of the Butchers too, and the programme didn’t make any effort to expose their pain.”

The BBC responded that the documentary asked important questions of one of the most distressing periods in Northern Ireland and was set within the wider context of the time.
“We believe the programme captures some of the difficulties faced by all communities in Northern Ireland and importantly the distressing legacy left by these horrific events on everyone affected,” a spokeswoman said. “The documentary makers made every effort to ensure the difficult subject matter within the programme was presented factually and in a sensitive manner with a broad range of views and opinions sought from both sides of the community to ensure balance.”
It was one of a portfolio of BBC programmes which ask questions about the past, she said, including the Poppy Day Bomb, Bloody Sunday, Omagh.

What-ever one thinks about the butchers, the reality is at that time Protestants were abducted and given horrible deaths at the hands of republicans and all the disappeared and the torture handed out to people suspected of informing to the security forces within the republican movement etc. Yet there isn’t a level playing field on how the murders are classed, is there really a difference between stabbing someone to death and the horrible deaths suffered by those who carried out acts like La Mon?

Some might say there is, how ever the reality is those who supported or carried out acts like La Mon, Kingsmill, Bloody Friday are now elected and paid representatives of the majority of the Roman Catholic community in this part of the United Kingdom.

As much as the butchers were certainly barbaric. One only has to go up the Shankill and see the various memorials located up the road to see just how much in that particular time period that the Shankill area suffered at the hands of Irish republicans, mostly indiscriminate sectarian slaughter of members of our community. Attacks on your own people, over a period of time would indeed breed hatred inside you of the other kind.

Loyalists come across as a bunch of of 'gangsters' with no legitmate cause at all and are only wreckers,drug merchants,boozers etc etc.. Granted the media has had a lot to do with this but outside of Davy Ervine I haven't seen any one articulate enough to counter this sort of propaganda. And I say that as one who would disagree with DE on many points. Now they seemed to have ditched the one thing that might have gave them some legitmacy...Ulster.

Compare 'Sons of the Father' with 'Nothing Personal' etc and I think that sums it up.

Nationalist slogans like Britain for the British or Ireland for the Irish, they are easy for everybody to understand and accept as a legitimate stance to take.