In 2000 this magazine ran a piece by Stephen Glover which identified ‘a pro-Republican cell within the Guardian’. Those identified included the open IRA supporter Ronan Bennett and Roy Greenslade. At the time the article brought down furious denunciations on The Spectator. The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, expressed outrage at the suggestion that his paper harboured IRA sympathisers. He condemned the then editor of this magazine, Boris Johnson, and called for an apology. A subsequent Guardian leader column criticised any suggestion that Greenslade had sympathies for the IRA.
Happily, Greenslade has now closed this debate himself. In a piece republished in the Sunday Times last weekend, Greenslade came clean. The impetus, he explained, came from the fact that he has given up journalism and now has grandsons and he wants them to be able to understand how he came to the views he did.
Even now Greenslade shows himself to be a fool as well as a coward. In his piece he explains that he got into supporting the IRA after the briefest possible introduction to the Troubles. Greenslade admits to being wholly ignorant of Irish politics and history until, as a young journalist, he was given a couple of whistle-stop tours, including a couple of hours in Londonderry. The historically warped account he was given immediately persuaded this sleuth to throw in his lot in with the worst Republican para-military group. If Greenslade would only read a book such as Professor Liam Kennedy’s excellent recent Who Was Responsible for the Troubles? he would recognise that he wasted his own life as well as helping to waste the lives of so many others. But like all fanatics, Greenslade is a man of only partial intelligence, who ignores things if they do not accord with his own prejudices.
He now admits that he was supporting the IRA and writing for the group’s propaganda paper under a pseudonym. But he explains that he decided to live this double life while working inside a range of papers because ‘I was on the verge of taking on a mortgage’. He presents this as though it is the most understandable thing. Whereas when I needed a mortgage I went with the Woolwich, Roy Greenslade went to the IRA. But he chose ‘to button my lip and carry on’.
He also buttoned up whatever conscience he ever had. He admits now that he always believed that the IRA’s slaughter of innocent civilians as well as RUC policemen and British soldiers was entirely justified. It was justified to shoot farmers in the back of the head. It was justified to turn the La Mon hotel into a charnel house. All of it was justified: Enniskillen, Harrods, Warrington — the whole long and bloody alphabet of IRA depravity. Yet even now, like all cowards, Greenslade cannot look honestly at the actions of his friends or himself. He acknowledges that after the Birmingham pub bombings he had ‘concerns’ about the ‘bombing tactics’. But what he condemns most is ‘the deliberate failure of the authorities to act quickly enough in response to phone calls warning of bomb placements’. That’s right — Roy’s friends just put bombs into trash cans, pubs, shopping centres, pubs, cars, etc. How disgraceful of the authorities to not always find them in time. Especially on the numberless occasions when — as with Hyde Park — the IRA called in no warning at all.
h/t Chris
Re: ” But like all fanatics, Greenslade is a man of only partial intelligence, who ignores things if they do not accord with his own prejudices.”
We could be talking about the various Social Justice Warriors (including BLM, Antifa, etc.) in this statement.
Good point, well said.
Everything this Greenslade man said was self-serving.
Typical leftist. He is incapable of imagining anyone outside himself.
Great job, Kate.
Solves a lot a problems, actually, which explains quite a lot about why Boris is now thirteen (13) points ahead in the YouGov poll: eight (8) point gain in one week (something about everybody associated with school-aged children having a rapid at-home test, twice per week).
Greenslade, a hack working for a leftist rag, aided IRA propaganda efforts secretly.
The supposedly objective BBC did it openly. So did Independent Television News, their main competitor. Both quoted IRA leaders on the Ulster question so frequently and extensively that the Thatcher government finally had to make it an offence to broadcast the voices of IRA men over British airwaves.
British elites liked the idea of cutting Ulster loose, and of allowing a Soviet Ireland to ethnically cleanse the Ulster Protestants, a people regarded in England as a pack of antediluvian deplorables that Britain and the world would be well rid of—people who still believed in God and took that guff about British liberty seriously.
(A bit like the Rhodesians, except Rhodie girls wore far less clothing.)
Not to mention that the Provos were for most of the Eighties the British left’s only realistic chance of ridding themselves of Maggie Thatcher.
So yes, the British media supported the IRA at every opportunity. Because of course they did.
So a Grauniad hack is finally admitting he wrote Provo propaganda. Get back to us when he tells us something the world doesn’t know—like the name of a Grauniadista who DIDN’T support the Provos.
Douglas Murray in the Telegraph (paywalled)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/05/nasty-ignorant-snp-has-unmasked/
Scottish nationalists cheered when Nazi bombs fell on London.
No regret for being a liar.
No regret for building a career in journalism by lying.
U.S. Congressman Peter King has defended his support for the IRA in front of the British Parliament
Labor Party representative David Winnick challenged King when he said: “There’s been some surprise in the United States but also in Britain that you have a job looking into and investigating into terrorism.”
Winnick then quoted a King speech in support of the IRA from the 80s when he said: “We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.”
In 1985, King said: “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.”
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/congressman-peter-king-defends-his-pro-ira-position-to-british-parliament-129788933-237411711
Yeah, King has always been bugbear of mine, can’t stand the tool!
ditto! – Samantha