Can’t Take A Hint…
Some families just can’t take a hint. In 1988, three IRA terrorists came here to Gibraltar with the aim of murdering members of a military band at the weekly Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Governor’s Residence. And the civilian bystanders, locals and tourists who were watching the band play that day.
Everyone knows the score – SAS: 3, IRA: 0
Good result, lads.
It appears, though, that the Farrells may have been keeping the family business going.
A brother of an IRA woman shot dead by British Special Forces in Gibraltar appeared in court yesterday (26th) charged with a bomb attack in Northern Ireland.
Ciaran Farrell, whose sister Mairead was one of three republicans gunned down by the SAS in 1988, stood in the dock of the same magistrates’ court in Newry that he is accused of blowing up.
The 51-year-old, arrested in Dunmurry in greater Belfast on Monday, is charged with the dissident republican car bombing that caused substantial damage to the outside of the court in February. A police detective said there was “strong circumstantial” evidence linking the defendant to the bombing.
A lawyer for the
PublicCrown Prosecution Service said: “This accused is a member of a dissident republican organisation, in particular the police view, and the Crown view concurs, that it is the Real IRA.”
If Mairead Farrell (then 31), Sean Savage (24), and Daniel McCann (30) had left their 64kg of Semtex at home then they’d probably be in Government in Northern Ireland by now. But they didn’t, and the outcome was richly deserved.
It seems now that Ciaran Farrell could soon find himself on the wrong page of history too. Oh dear. What a shame that the bomb plotters in this case will be kept alive at our expense…a result they didn’t plan for their innocent victims. And unlike Farrell’s unlamented evil sister.
Excellent and endorsed by ATW! 🙂
From the British security services POV, this is one of my subjects, and one of the main reasons why I hate Blair so much. I had a lot of experience of NI securioty from an army perspective in the late eighties and what was going on was a delibrate policy, rightly, of allowing the IRA, Real IRA and various other Republicans to make the noose for their own necks. They would be allowed to plan and make preparations for an attack and then would be ambushed and killed, not taken, but killed, delibarately. It was a great, good and effective policy.
So good and effective that the IRA and most others were effectively shit scared of doing anything and were in terminal decline by the end of the eighties. This is also why clever and truly courageous Major made the IRA the offer of peace…or else. They accepted it but Blair then fucked it up by appeasing them to the point where he had nothing left to appease them with except for Government.
We should have carried on the policy until none of the fuckers were left alive.
Houdini
Quite right. Killing IRA terrorists was the only successful approach. The appeasement process has allowed them to present themselves as heroes when in fact they are the lowest form of vermin imaginable.
The 1996 Docklands & Manchester bombings caused extensive economic damage; I think the direct costs alone were around £500m. Isn’t it far more likely that HMG recognised that the UK could not continue to sustain economic loss on such a scale and that is why Major made the peace offer?