'It was horror, pure and simple — Claudy

BY Jonathan Trigg, Belfast Telegraph, May 10th, 2025

NEW BOOK REVEALS DETAILS OF THE 1972 ATROCITY WHICH SAW THREE CAR BOMBS TAKE NINE LIVES.

The sleepy village of Claudy in Co Londonderry had a population of just 620 in July 1972. A mixed community, it was the kind of place where everybody knew each other's business.

Derek Wilson — a former B-Special — was living there at the time. “It was a quiet place, you know. It was majority Protestant, but there were lots of Catholics too, and everyone rubbed along, you know what I mean.”

Be that as it may, Claudy had not escaped the unfolding Troubles, having suffered two bomb attacks that year alone, with the first in mid-February destroying its telephone exchange.

As Wilson admitted: “I think Claudy was seen as an easy target. It'd been bombed before, nothing like that day of course, but it was definitely a target.”

What he meant by “nothing like that day” was horror, pure and simple.

Response to Motorman

As soon as the Army began Operation Motorman on the morning of July 31 to clear the no-go areas in Derry and Belfast, Martin McGuinness gave the 'go' order and one of the largest operations South Derry PIRA had ever mounted swung into action.

Three stolen cars — two from The Loup and one from Dungiven — were driven to a deserted farmhouse in the tiny hamlet of Craigavole some 20 miles from Claudy.

The farm was a PIRA bomb factory, and each car was loaded with 100lb of homemade explosives.

Shane Paul O'Doherty — himself a Derry Brigade Explosives Officer [an EO] at the time — explained the set-up for the operation.

“To plant three car bombs… necessitated at least two people — sometimes three — in each car. The front seats needed to look 'normal' with a driver and passenger — preferably a female in the front to easier get through any unexpected checkpoints that might arise on the way to the target… The front passenger seat occupant often carried a weapon,” he said.

South Derry had used this modus operandi back in December 1971 when a premature explosion had killed three volunteers in Magherafelt.

O'Doherty continued: “With car bombs that are going to be left at the target, you suddenly need double the number of cars — the car bombs you are leaving behind plus the cars to ferry away the bomb teams. You may also need 'scout' cars to try to ensure that the route to the target is clear… It's possible that the getaway cars might have been used as scout cars on the way to the target, so requiring fewer cars in total.”

Female adornments and clerical auxiliaries

It was clear just how big the operation was: “Counting the car thieves, the car drivers, the bomb makers and planters, the female adornments and the overarching brigade OC [Officer Commanding] and adjutant who gave the orders, not forgetting the quartermasters who provided the various types of explosives, detonators, clocks, batteries and guns, the finance officers who paid for the petrol and expenses, the intelligence officers who supplied information… you are looking in the region of 30 or more South Derry IRA who participated in Claudy.”

That meant pretty much all South Derry PIRA including Father James Chesney — a local priest who was an active member of the movement and would provide alibis for the key volunteers involved.

That morning the Provos acted fast. The three stolen cars were parked up in Claudy village before 10am, and the bomb teams were out and clear.

Then things started to go wrong. The designated warning man stopped in the nearby village of Feeny to make the call so an evacuation could take place, but the telephone box was out of order.

Time was now ticking down.

The volunteers raced up the road to Dungiven and two of them ran into separate shops on Main Street to use their phones, but they weren't working either as South Derry PIRA itself had recently blown up the local exchange and it hadn't been rebuilt as yet.

Panic set in.

The volunteers shouted at the shop workers to run to the RUC station up the road and tell them there were three bombs in Claudy. It was just after 10.15am and it was too late.

Back in Claudy, eight-year-old Kathryn Eakin was washing the windows of her father's grocery store, opposite McElhinney's pub on Main Street, when the Ford Cortina across the road exploded. She was killed instantly.

Elizabeth McElhinney was serving a customer at her husband's garage next to the Eakin's store opposite the family pub and was also killed in the blast.

Main Street had been busy with shoppers, and as the smoke cleared, the body of 38-year-old Joseph McCluskey was found lying in the rubble.

Screaming for help

People were screaming and crying for help, many wounded by shrapnel and flying glass; three — Rose McLaughlin, Arthur Hone and 15-year-old Patrick Connolly — were very seriously injured and were rushed to hospital.

Given its size, Claudy had very little in the way of police presence, but an RUC constable who was there thought a Mini Traveller parked up outside the Post Office on Main Street looked suspicious and directed stunned shoppers away from the area towards Church Street off the village crossroads.

A stream of terrified people — many of them injured — stumbled away, thankful to be alive. At 10.30am a Morris Mini Van parked outside the Beaufort Hotel on Church Street exploded.

Two workmen, David Miller and James McClelland, were killed, as was 16-year-old William Temple. William was a milkman's assistant and had been on his delivery rounds at the time.

The Mini Traveller outside the Post Office blew up seconds later, but thankfully the area was clear.

In hospital, medical teams fought to save the lives of the injured, but Rose McLaughlin died on August 3, Arthur Hone on the eighth, and Patrick Connolly on the 15th.

They were all Catholics.

Final death toll

Their deaths brought the final toll to nine dead: six adults, three children, five Catholics and four Protestants.

Even after all the horrors already visited on the people of Northern Ireland in what had been a blood-stained year, Claudy sparked revulsion.

The Provisionals immediately circled the wagons.

The former head of IRA intelligence, Kieran Conway, explained their reaction: “The IRA denied the bombings and the by now usual charge was made of British intelligence complicity… though the denials must have been less than convincing since an internal court of inquiry was established [by PIRA] to investigate it.”

Nevertheless, the Provisionals continued to deny responsibility for decades, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

As for James Chesney, a cover-up between the Church and the British authorities saw him 'exiled' to a remote post in Donegal until his death from stomach cancer years later.

Death in Derry: Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA's War Against the British by Jonathan Trigg is published by Merrion Press and on sale now for £17.99

Comment

The Claudy bombing was among the closest to me. The little girl Katherine Eakin was a cousin of a cousin. She was buried from their home. The sight of a child with the temple of her head slightly disguised but looking like a crushed grape will never leave me. I knew her parents who never recovered, utterly destroyed.  Named responsibility by a local priest happened quickly- the late Ivan Cooper, SDLP man, early  civil righter, ex unionist shared it within a week. All the local phone boxes were inoperative. Willie Whitelaw and Cardinal Conway consulted over his removal to Malin Head, but this version is disputed. 

Danny Morrison - Rebel, writer and occasional reconciler

John Manley, Political Correspondent, Irish News, May 10th, 2025

Former Sinn Féin director of publicity Danny Morrison speaks to political correspondent John Manley about decades of republican activism, the search for peace and unionism’s decline

THE coining of the now infamous phrase “ballot box in one hand… Armalite in the other” wasn’t rehearsed, according to its author Danny Morrison. It came to him just as he reached the podium to speak at Sinn Féin’s 1981 ard fheis.

Those words came to represent a key juncture in the republican movement’s history. The policy of abstentionism was jettisoned soon after by Sinn Féin – then widely described as the political wing of the IRA – as it sought to emulate the electoral successes witnessed during the Hunger Strike.

For Morrison, then aged 28 and Sinn Féin’s director of publicity, his imprisoned comrades’ campaign for political status, which saw 10 young men die over a two-and-a-half-month period in 1981, including three INLA inmates, was “pivotal” and “the most astonishing event of the conflict”.

What he doesn’t countenance, however, is that the end of abstentionism was part of a premeditated strategy, led by Gerry Adams, that aimed to supersede armed struggle with politics.

“I wanted to convince people to adopt an electoral strategy that wouldn’t affect the IRA’s resources or a diminution in the IRA’s effectiveness

“I wanted to convince people to adopt an electoral strategy that wouldn’t affect the IRA’s resources or a diminution in the IRA’s effectiveness,” he says.

“The war was going on for a very long time, even at that stage we’re talking 10 years, and we needed to give something back to the people, even if it was just a constituency service on very little resources. It was designed to complement the armed struggle.”

Profile soared

The rise of Sinn Féin in the 1980s saw Morrison’s profile soar.

Along with Adams, he became the public face of the republican movement, and a hate figure to many. He was also one of the first from the party to be elected, representing Mid Ulster in the Northern Ireland assembly.

Now 72 and retired, he spends much of his time revising his memoir, cycling, or editing books that will be published on the Greenisland Press imprint.

He is also secretary of the Bobby Sands Trust, a post he’s held for the past three decades, and is therefore kept busy by a stream of requests from across the world for information or permission to use archive material.

As a teenager, Morrison recorded his determination to be a writer in his diary. He has fulfilled that aim to a reasonably successful degree, whether in spite of or because of his eventful past, writing four novels and a number of non-fiction books on recent Irish history.

His first novel, West Belfast, was published in 1990, just before he was arrested. “I never even got a book launch,” he recalls.

These days he’s also involved in reconciliation, meeting loyalists and former members of the RUC for coffee or a walk over the Belfast Hills in an effort to find common ground.

He admits there’s been occasions when there’s been no meeting of minds, but he regards the overall endeavour as worthwhile.

“You just have to accept that the other person has their beliefs, and the most important thing about these meetings is that we are friends, there’s no aggro,” he says.

“The really interesting thing is we more or less agree about every conflict outside Ireland and what unites us is that it should never happen again. We must use as much influence as we have amongst people for that purpose.”

Despite Wikipedia’s assertion that he joined Sinn Féin in 1966, aged 13, the man himself says his involvement with the republican cause came later, and that it initially involved some deliberation.

‘Reluctant convert’

He terms himself a “reluctant convert” and concedes he had “moral issues” about the use of violence but once he’d made the decision, he would “defend the republican movement in very difficult circumstances”.

However, he didn’t support every IRA operation.

“A lot of people think that if you’re a republican supporter, you believe everything that the IRA did was right – that’s absolutely not true,” he says.

“You can have massive reservations over things that are going on and things that have happened.”

He cites the 1987 Enniskillen bomb and Bloody Friday, when more than 20 IRA bombs exploded across Belfast in less than 90 minutes, killing nine people, as two operations with which he had serious misgivings.

“It was clear to me at the time that it was too much IRA activity in a short space of time,” he says of the July 1972 attacks.

“But that didn’t preclude the fact that the state also acted maliciously.”

When tracing the origins of his activism, he speaks of the “humiliated and vanquished nationalist community” that he was brought up among in west Belfast, where harassment by the RUC was commonplace and unemployment rife, forcing men like his father to seek work in England.

“Had there been a Good Friday Agreement in Easter 1969 not one person would have lost their life, but the unionists weren’t for it,” he says.

“You can still see the nonsense over the Irish language signs at Grand Central Station. They’ve no idea when to stop. For me, armed struggle was almost inevitable, because you could only go so far with street protests.”

He highlights the early casualties of the conflict and stresses that it was “nationalists, not British soldiers, not RUC men” who were killed.

“It was people beaten to death in Unity Flats, beaten to death in Dungiven, John Gallagher shot at the civil rights march in Armagh, nineyear-old Patrick Rooney killed in his bed in Divis Flats by heavy machine gun fire; the first soldier to be killed, Trooper Hugh McCabe, home visiting his family in the Falls Road…”

“The violence starts,” he says ironically, “when the IRA fires the first shot.

“Everything that preceded it is ignored. Like in Palestine, it all happened on October 7 and what happened before is overlooked.”

Rewarding intransigence

Unionists, he argues, could’ve been more flexible but historically they had been rewarded for a determination not to compromise, what he terms the “not an inch; what we have, we hold” mentality, dating back to partition.

“That has informed their whole political culture ever since – don’t give anything because once you start giving, you’re on a slippery slope.

“The tragedy is they could have acted differently in 1969/70 – that’s when it became inevitable.”

He is aware that for constitutional nationalism, there was no inevitability or justification in violence.

“People will quote John Hume and the Catholic Church but the bulk of the conflict was in working class areas,” he says.

“The majority of prisoners didn’t come from middle-class areas. They came from the poor parts of Tyrone, the Bogside, Ballymurphy, Ardoyne, so you can’t just write it off.

“It maybe wasn’t justified to the SDLP or the Church but they didn’t speak for me, and they didn’t speak for my generation.”

The Provisional IRA’s logic, he says, was that civil rights wouldn’t be secured without national rights.

Morrison believes the IRA’s campaign gave the SDLP “incredible negotiating muscle”, evident from the minor concessions unionists afforded nationalists in 1971 compared to the potential for power-sharing in the Sunningdale Agreement two years later, with a cross-border Council of Ireland and the SDLP’s Gerry Fitt as deputy to Brian Faulkner.

“That’s the only explanation: unionists didn’t suddenly turn around and decide to give the SDLP concessions,” he says.

After Sunningdale was derailed, not by the IRA but by the more extreme elements of unionism, led by the then DUP leader Ian Paisley with the backing of paramilitaries, it would be a further 25 years before a peace deal was agreed that had buy-in from unionists, nationalists, republicans and loyalists.

Some would argue that the seeds of the process that culminated in 1998’s Good Friday Agreement date back to the Hunger Strike and the subsequent ending of Sinn Féin’s policy of abstentionism from the Dáil and the northern institutions.

Morrison, who many may assume was a long-time supporter and even an architect of the peace strategy, is dismissive of the notion, insisting that the manoeuvring that resulted in the IRA’s first ceasefire happened only in the years immediately preceding 1994.

He says he was “quite dismissive” of Sinn Féin’s engagement with the SDLP in the late 1980s, a process separate from what would later become known as Hume-Adams .

“I was of the view that the British government would only come to us when it had exhausted all its other political options, otherwise it was going to go on,” he says.

“The SDLP, as far as I was concerned, were adopting these holding positions – the six counties were reformable, that we have to have reconciliation and power-sharing [before constitutional change], so I was quite dismissive of the talks with the SDLP.

“I felt then that the SDLP’s convictions were based on wishful thinking, believing everybody had good intentions when they hadn’t – the Brits were still trying to defeat the republican movement; we were all still in our trenches.”

The Sinn Féin director of publicity’s change of heart came after he was imprisoned in 1990, the third time in 20 years, on charges that included conspiracy to murder.

“I was out of things, had no responsibility, so I started to study what everybody was saying, trying to assess our own position in terms of how long it should go on.”

H Blocks letter

He cites a letter he wrote in October 1991 from the H-Blocks to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams in which he argues that the IRA can “fight on forever and can’t be defeated”.

“But, of course, that isn’t the same as winning or showing something for all the sacrifices,” the letter adds.

Morrison also penned an article for An Phoblacht in which he argued in the wake of Gerry Adams losing his West Belfast parliamentary seat that the republican movement should not abandon its political project.

“I was seriously concerned that it would lead to a shift and towards militarism, the idea that ‘Well, we tried that and it didn’t work’ – I thought that would be a disaster.”

However, its publication was vetoed by either Morrison’s successor at the title he’d once edited, or what he terms “the paper’s owners”.

“They probably didn’t agree with a person of my stature saying something of that nature, or if it appears in An Phoblacht then it looks like it’s been flagged up by the leadership, and they hadn’t got all of their ducks in a line at that stage,” he says.

“They probably saw it as a premature.”

Despite the rejection of his submission to the republican newspaper, Morrison remained of the same mind.

“It was almost approaching a moral position, wherein if you were saying there’s a military stalemate and the Brits were saying that as well, then you’re fighting for the same position to come back round again, and in the meantime, people would have died.”

When he came out of prison in 1995 aged 42, having served a six year sentence for a conviction that was later overturned, he stepped back from activism.

“As far as I was concerned, the war was over and we were on the home straight in terms of resolving the conflict. It was all going to be untangled, politically and constitutionally.

“I still wanted to be a writer but it was agonising, because all my friends were still in jail, like my brother was still in jail, serving a long sentence.”

Prompted to reflect, Morrison first cites the 3,000-plus death toll and notes that “the resolution, in a sense, was there from the beginning, that is a huge tragedy”.

“Of course, as republicans who took part in the struggle, we all have a moral responsibility for those killings as well,

“I’m 72 years of age now, so I’m very philosophical about the situation, because I know the direction of travel.

“When I was young, the Orangemen marched up the Falls Road while we weren’t even allowed to walk in the city centre on St Patrick’s Day. All that’s gone now.”

Bryson can challenge plans to erect Irish signs at Grand Central Station

Alan Erwin, Belfast Telegraph and Irish News, May 10th, 2025

HIGH COURT GRANTS LEAVE TO SEEK JUDICIAL REVIEW OF SINN FEIN MINISTER'S DECISION

Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson has secured High Court permission to challenge plans to have Irish language signage installed at Grand Central Station in Belfast.

He was granted leave to seek a judicial review into Sinn Fein Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins' decision to approve the £150,000 scheme at the city's new public transport hub.

A judge ruled yesterday that Mr Bryson has established an arguable case the move was so controversial that it required agreement from the entire Stormont Executive.

Mr Justice Scoffield listed the case for a full hearing in September.

Proceedings were issued after Ms Kimmins announced in March that Irish signage is to be installed at Grand Central and on ticket vending machines. She said the decision was based on a commitment to promotion of the language and the importance of the station reflecting all citizens.

Representing himself in the case, Mr Bryson contended that she unlawfully breached the Ministerial Code by failing to refer the issue to the Executive Committee for discussion and agreement.

Under Stormont rules any controversial or cross-cutting decision should be tabled for consideration by the full power-sharing cabinet.

Mr Bryson argued that the test was met based on publicly expressed views by a number of senior unionist politicians.

United Unionist Front claim

The high-profile campaigner provided a letter from DUP leader Gavin Robinson which stated his party's opinion that erecting Irish language signs at the station is “manifestly” controversial.

Emma Little-Pengelly, the DUP deputy First Minister, has also described any alternative view as “bizarre”, the court heard.

Further correspondence from UUP, TUV, PUP and Orange Order representatives were heard to back Mr Bryson's claims of unionist unity on the issue.

He insisted that the challenge clearly crossed the legal standard for the decision to be subjected to further judicial scrutiny. “We have the deputy First Minister of the country saying this is controversial… and Mr Robinson could not be clearer that the views of his ministers and party are that this is controversial,” he submitted.

“For the purpose of obtaining leave (to apply for judicial review) this pole vaults over the threshold.”

Disputing that assessment, Counsel for the minister said a TUV petition in the Assembly against the dual language signage attracted no signatures of support from any other MLAs.

Tony McGleenan KC told the court that the mechanism deployed by Timothy Gaston in an attempt to have the issue referred to the Executive “registered a nil return”.

He contended: “Taking the most relevant indicator, and the one enshrined in statute, the outcome is that there isn't a flicker of controversy about this.”

But according to Mr Bryson, the petition could not have achieved anything more than a discussion about the planned Irish signage.

Mr Justice Scoffield was told that the issue has already been raised at an Executive meeting last month under any other business. “It's clear that the minister is not for turning,” he added.

Granting leave following submissions, Mr Justice Scoffield held that there was sufficient merit in Mr Bryson's arguments to distinguish it from other “hopeless cases”.

“There is one key point; whether this was a decision made by the minister which was controversial under the meaning of the Northern Ireland Act and therefore ought to have been referred to the Executive for discussion and approval,” he said.

“There is enough to cross the arguability threshold. I'm thinking in particular of the public comments made by the deputy First Minister and the fact that the matter was raised again at another Executive committee meeting by DUP ministers.”

With no planned work to install Irish language signage at the station set to begin for at least six months, the case was listed for a full hearing in September.

Speaking outside court, Mr Bryson stated: “This is an important milestone in the case.

“It is unfortunate that so defiant is this Sinn Fein minister that it's going to require the court to uphold the law and her legal responsibilities which she has not complied with in this case.”

He added: “The end result, it is hoped, is that Irish language (signs) will not feature at Grand Central Station.”

‘Puzzlement’ voiced over allegations of police sectarianism by former officer 'Sean'

By Adam Kula, Belfast News Letter, May 9th, 2025

​The ex-PSNI head of discipline has welcomed the chief constable’s statement that a former officer did not face anti-Catholic sectarianism – but said that aspects of the case remain “puzzling”.

​Jon Burrows was reacting to the chief constable’s comments to the Policing Board this week concerning allegations from a former riot squad (or Tactical Support Group TSG) member known as ‘Sean’.

Sean had claimed that he encountered sectarianism in the force, though scores of his former colleagues have since spoken out against his allegations, which were originally aired in a newspaper.

Chief constable Jon Boutcher also told the Policing Board that “there is no legal case or ongoing investigation” concerning the sectarianism claims. It had previously been reported that Sean was suing the force for damages.

Having now met Sean, Mr Boutcher said: “I've no concerns that the blacks [his TSG unit], the officers, his colleagues, acted in a sectarian way towards him.”

Mr Burrows said: "The chief constable’s statement is to be welcomed on one hand because he stated clearly that Sean had dropped his legal claim and that he had satisfied himself that there was no sectarian behaviour whatsoever in this TSG.”

But he added there remains a “puzzling” aspect – namely, the fact Sean’s lawyer has been quoted as indicating that his client stands by his claims, yet that there had been “no evidence of any overt sectarianism”; rather, it had been “very much nuanced and understated”.

Mr Burrows said “this makes no sense because Sean had alleged extremely blatant overt sectarianism”, including use of the term “fenian b******s”.

"The retired TSG officers and myself will not rest until this matter is dealt with properly and will complete clarity,” he concluded.

– LATEST TWIST CAME AT POLICING BOARD –

Chief constable Boucher was present at the Policing Board on Thursday.

He revealed that he has now met the officer at the centre of the story - 'Sean' - to discuss his claims, which were first aired in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, published on March 8.

Sean was reported as saying that people had said "who the f**k does he think he is coming in with ash on his head?" on Ash Wednesday, and that "I was hearing boys saying ‘Fenian b******s, who do they think they are?’".

After the article was published, scores of retired officers who served in the same unit then came forward to voice "our utter rejection that any sectarian or bullying behaviour occurred in our team".

At April's meeting of the Policing Board, chief constable Boutcher said the accusations from Sean had been investigated "and there was no finding of any wrongdoing".

Now, at the May meeting of the Policing Board, the chief constable said he has met Sean directly, alongside Sean's solicitor. "It was a really positive meeting. He is a decent, decent man, and he was an exemplary police officer," said the chief constable.

"I'm not going to go into details of the meeting but what I want to assure this board is I am absolutely satisfied that the concerns that you may have had from the article I've no concerns that the blacks [the nickname for the unit concerned], the officers, his colleagues, acted in a sectarian way towards him.

"I've also met with the blacks team who were concerned and hurt by what had been said. And actually were very concerned about Sean, as an officer and ex-colleague who some of them are still very much in touch with and friends.

"I'm reassured by a number of measures we've taken, not least of which me going to speak to the inspector sergeants and all of the team, that there has not been sectarianism towards anybody on that team."

Although it had been reported that Sean was pursuing damages from the police, the chief constable further told the meeting "there is no legal case or ongoing investigation".

He went on to stress twice more that Sean is "thoroughly decent", and added that "I cannot explain the article in the newspaper".

Asked directly if Sean had "disassociated himself" from the allegations made in the newspaper article, Mr Boutcher said: "It was a private meeting, I'm not going to discuss it any further than I already have in public. And I'm going to draw a line under it."

The Belfast Telegraph has since quoted Sean's lawyer, Kevin Winters of KRW Law, as saying that Sean does still "stand by every word" of his accusations.

Mr Winters was quoted as saying that the sectarianism he faced was "nuanced" and "understated".

DUP MLA avoids reply on need for guarantee over sectarian band tunes

Paul Ainsworth, Irish News, May 10th, 2025

A DUP MLA has refused to say if his party colleagues should receive guarantees from loyalist bands that they will not play sectarian tunes before attending their parades.

North Belfast MLA Philip Brett was asked to clarify whether members of his party should seek such a guarantee in the wake of his attendance at a band parade in Co Antrim, during which the ‘No Pope of Rome’ tune was played by bandsmen.

The parade was held last Saturday in Newtownabbey to mark the 40th anniversary of Carnmoney’s Pride of the Hill Flute Band.

It is unclear if Mr Brett was present when the tune was played. His attendance followed Stormont Education Minister Paul Givan, Assembly speaker Edwin Poots, and MLA Jonathan Buckley being present when a loyalist band played sectarian tunes at an Apprentice Boys parade in Lisburn on Easter Monday. Footage emerged of the DUP MLAs looking on as bands played ‘No Pope of Rome’ on the day Pope Francis died.

The tune is often accompanied by onlookers singing the lyrics “oh give me a home where there’s no Pope of Rome, where there’s nothing but Protestants stay, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and flute bands play The Sash every day”. Bands also played the Billy Boys tune at the parade, the lyrics of which contain the line “up to our necks in fenian blood”.

There is no suggestion that the DUP MLAs took part in any singing at either parade.

In a statement following the Easter Monday parade, a DUP spokesperson said the “distasteful actions by a few should not taint the entire event nor everyone there”.

The issue was raised during Thursday’s episode of BBC NI’s The View, when host Mark Carruthers asked Mr Brett about DUP attendance at such parades, highlighting The Irish News article about the Newtownabbey event.

Sectarianism ‘totally wrong’

Mr Brett said he wanted to “pay tribute” to band parade organisers for organising the events.

“Any song that demeans anyone, attacks anyone’s religion or infers sectarianism in any way is totally wrong. It was a small minority who partook in that, but those who did took away from the great event… they should be called out for doing it,” he said,

Mr Carruthers asked him: “I’m wondering, should DUP elected representatives say ‘we will not go to these events unless we receive guarantees from the bands participating that they won’t play tunes like that? That would be simple enough, would it not?”

The MLA replied: “Thousands of people attend these parades, thousands of people take part in these parades, and a small minority of people engage in unacceptable behaviour.”

He compared the actions of some parade participants to a small number of soccer fans who took part in “sectarian activity” following last week’s Irish Cup final between Cliftonville FC and Dungannon Swifts.

Mr Brett said that playing sectarian tunes was “completely wrong”.

When told by the host that there were “no consequences” for bands or those attending when sectarian tunes were played at parades, Mr Brett added: “I’m a huge supporter of the band scene in Northern Ireland and my message to them is those songs should not be played because they detract from the great role that they play right across Northern Ireland.”

It’s not anti-semitic to condemn Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza

Patrick Murphy, Irish News, May 10th, 2025

KARL Marx said that religion was the opium of the people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes even further. He believes that religion can be used to fool the whole world.

Netanyahu’s defence of his genocide in Gaza is that any criticism of it can be dismissed as anti-semitic.

Condemnation of his actions, he claims, comes from those who are prejudiced against the Jewish religion.

The best reply has come from President Michael D Higgins.

He has said that it was “outrageous” to suggest that someone is anti-semitic if they “criticise a prime minister who is directing an army that is in breach of international humanitarian law”.

Unlike the Free Presbyterian Minister of Moneyslane, Co Down, who recently described the Pope as the anti-Christ, Netanyahu does not use a theological argument to defend his statements.

Instead he simply claims that those who criticise him are prejudiced against his beliefs and are therefore anti-semitic.

However, were he Christian, Muslim, Hindu or atheist, the same criticism would apply.

His claim that condemnation of Israeli genocide in Gaza is anti-semitic is no more rational than, for example, Micheál Martin claiming that criticisms of Ireland’s foreign policy are anti-Catholic.

Hamas has never accused critics of its terrorism on October 7 2023 of being anti-Islamic. Vladimir Putin has not defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by claiming that critics of it are anti-Russian Orthodox. Even Donald Trump has never said that opponents of his policies are anti-Protestant.

So Netanyahu is on his own in claiming that those who condemn his policies are religious bigots.

While the Hebrew Bible is open to interpretation, it is largely peaceful in content and intent and it is hard to imagine that it contains a passage justifying the mass starvation of children.

Netanyahu’s claim is made even more ridiculous by the increasing criticism of his genocide in Gaza from within Israel.

Over 250 former members of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, have written an open letter criticising Netanyahu’s conduct of the war. It ended with the words, “The sanctity of life, Mr Prime Minister, takes precedence over ‘God of Revenge’.”

It followed similar letters from some Israeli Air Force active service personnel and members of signals intelligence branch of Israel’s Defence Forces. Ronen Bar, the head of the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), has accused Netanyahu of asking it to spy on those “involved in legal protest activities and demonstrations against the government”.

“ Criticism of Israel’s policy of mass starvation is a political criticism of the state, not an attack on the religion of those who live there

Are those current and former members of Israel’s forces anti-semitic? Many (and maybe all) of them are of the Jewish faith.

Is Netanyahu seriously claiming that Jews can be bigoted against the Jewish religion in the same way that the Nazis were during the Holocaust?

Netanyahu’s accusation that his critics are prejudiced against Judaism is further undermined by the facts that only 73% of Israel’s population is Jewish and that most of the world’s Jews live outside Israel.

So criticism of Israel’s policy of mass starvation is a political criticism of the state, not an attack on the religion of those who live there.

The motivation for Netanyahu’s war crimes is not hard to find. He is facing criminal charges of corruption, bribery, fraud and breach of trust, for which he could receive up to 10 years in prison.

He could not appear in court on March 18, for example, because Israel had just launched another attack on Gaza and he needed to have “an urgent security consultation” with his military leaders.

He could not attend court because he had to engage in the mass starvation of children.

He brands those who condemn his use of genocide as anti-semitic, thereby using religion as a shield to protect him from the courts (and we have seen examples of that in this country too).

Meanwhile, the US Senate has been vetting Edward Walsh, who is Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Ireland. Walsh said President Trump has made it very clear that “anti-semitism has no place in the entire world”.

Trump (the world’s only Protestant who wants to be Pope) is hiding the United States behind that same shield of religion to justify genocide.

In attempting to defend his actions, Netanyahu is associating the Jewish religion with the immorality of using famine as a weapon in an invasion of savage inhumanity.

This is a slur on the world’s Jews – which means that the only anti-semite in all of this is Netanyahu himself.

President Higgins could do worse than write to him and tell him that.