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‘Terror visited on innocents can’t be defended’ - Gregory Campbell

October 1993... Eight people were murdered by loyalist gunmen in the Rising Sun Bar in Greysteel.
October 1993... Eight people were murdered by loyalist gunmen in the Rising Sun Bar in Greysteel.

We have recently witnessed incredibly sad and poignant commemorations for a number of tragedies - among them the Shankill bomb and the Greysteel shootings. It’s hard to believe that, in October 1993, there were 28 people murdered.

Sadly, there have been attempts at creating another casualty during these times. The ‘truth’ has been targeted. Murder can never be condoned, justified or supported, whatever the reason behind it.

Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the ceasefires; most commentators identify 1969 as the effective start of the Troubles.

Whilst the killings continued after 1994 on a smaller scale, the main perpetrators declared their violence to be over in 1994.

There are those trying to superimpose a Hume/Adams blueprint as the catalyst behind the ceasefires. Some of these same people reject any notion that loyalist violence, reprehensible as it was, was a reaction to the murder campaign of the Provisional IRA and others. The facts, however, are clear.

In 1969/70, republican paramilitary groups murdered 19 people, while loyalist groups murdered three. Some republicans try to blame ‘Bloody Sunday’ for the upsurge in republican violence but these death totals were all long before ‘Bloody Sunday’.

By the time the endgame was being reached, the figures show a significant reversal.

In 1993/94, republican paramilitary groups had killed 64 people while loyalists had killed 90. At the beginning of the Troubles, the IRA and others were killing six times more people than loyalists; by the end, loyalists were killing more people than the IRA.

In the search for genuine truth, those who were in the IRA at that time should reveal just how much pressure they were under from their own community to call off their campaign - not just because of the crackdown on terror internationally but also because of their own community’s weariness at being targeted by loyalists in response.

None of the terror visited on innocent people can be defended, neither can those who repeatedly try to rewrite the facts of history be allowed to succeed. Murder and terror brought misery and pain to tens of thousands.

Let us ensure it is never allowed to return.