A new IRA group wants to threaten the peace process.


Yesterday the widely respected Guardian newspaper led with a story that an organization calling itself the IRA, composed of different factions of dissidents, has come together and is intent on threatening the Irish peace process.

The group is a sick joke.

The new grouping, which simply calls themselves the IRA, came together in Derry and told a Guardian journalist that a new and combined campaign against British rule would begin.

To which I say horse droppings.

For over a decade various dissident groups have tried to reignite war in Northern Ireland and failed spectacularly.

The war is over, the troubles are part of history, the new political order has the overwhelming support of the majority of all the people of Ireland.

Clearly some of the dissident groups have developed delusions of grandeur that they can change all the facts on the ground.

Maybe these new Desperate Dans need reality checks, or should try Viagra to prove their manhood if they need to threaten to kill fellow nationalists as well as unionists to prove their macho muscle.

Someone needs to tell the new and disimproved version of the IRA that they are fighting a lost war, that the train left the station some time around 1998 with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

The GFA is an attempt to find an agreed Ireland where every group and party can find access to power and be part of.

The power sharing government of Northern Ireland has smany problems but when you consder the alternative – IE this new “IRA” then you realize we have a lot to be thankful for.

Gerry Kelly former IRA leader and now a Northern Ireland Minister puts it best.

“This is further evidence that they have no strategy and their aims are as clear as mud. RAAD, for example, have claimed to be an anti-drugs group who have now joined a larger ‘dissident’ group with different aims. This move appears to be more to do with egos and personal fiefdoms than anything else.

“That is not to say that they cannot be dangerous,” Gerry Kelly cautioned.

“They have in the past killed people, the majority of whom have been from the nationalist community. However, these actions can take us nowhere.

"Meanwhile, they are happy to risk the lives and liberty of young, impressionable people to achieve nothing.

“There is no community support for these groups. They need to desist and they need to realise that they cannot achieve a united Ireland in this way

Amen to all that.