Corbyn and the IRA
A Telegraph investigation finds:
The true extent of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s links with the IRA is revealed by a Telegraph investigation.
It can be disclosed that for seven years running, while the IRA “armed struggle” was at its height, Mr Corbyn attended and spoke at official republican commemorations to honour dead IRA terrorists, IRA “prisoners of war” and the active “soldiers of the IRA.”
The official programme for the 1988 event, held one week after the IRA murdered three British servicemen in the Netherlands, states that “force of arms is the only method capable of bringing about a free and united Socialist Ireland.” Mr Corbyn used the event to attack the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the precursor of the peace process.
He said it had resulted in no improvement in the lives of the people of Northern Ireland, adding: “It strengthens rather than weakens the border between the six and the 26 counties, and those of us who wish to see a united Ireland oppose the agreement for that reason.”
The editorial board of a hard-Left magazine, of which Mr Corbyn was a member, wrote an article praising the Brighton bombing. In its article on the IRA attack, which almost wiped out Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, the editorial board of London Labour Briefing said the atrocity showed that “the British only sit up and take notice [of Ireland] when they are bombed into it.”
I doubt he will be leader by the time of the next election, but if he is the advertising campaign against him will be brutal – and all just quoting his own words.
In fact, however, Mr McDonnell told the IRA’s official newspaper that he opposed the peace process negotiations to create a power-sharing assembly in what became the Good Friday Agreement.
He said: “An assembly is not what people have laid down their lives for over thirty years…the settlement must be for a united Ireland.”
So these two people now running the Labour Party were less willing to settle for peace than even the IRA was!