And my point from the start has alot more to do with how they are acting now.
A real hard line apology and acceptance and even expla ation of how it was then from the GAA Club could be a huge move. Show they are moving on and have learned from a tragic set of events. Hold their hands up âmaybe we could have done moreâ.
Iâm telling you there would be immediate kudos from all moderates on both sides. And thats what you want. I have heard Brolly explain that in moderate/middle class Belfast cross community life is going quite well.
I put it to Brolly on twitter could he have approached club first and let both parties reconcile for same objective ---- Anything the club said post article, apologize or deny, would lead to ridicule and an opportunity to move on was lost⌠Brolly merely said club ignored him for 15 years in his reply - fair enough - but a lesson could have been forced on them 9Club) and wider society instead of online clicks. Too late now.
I would say he is a person like myself that to the outside world some decisions or comments seem sudden, but are from a collective of thoughts and experiences over a long period of time. And i would also say i am similar in the âyou need to break a few eggs to make an omletteâ approach. So i get a feel for where he is coming from*
i am only likening myself to Joe. Not trying to say i am as smart or clever as him.
âHe suspectsâ. So, no evidence whatsoever. Yet you eulogise the article. The whole article is a vilification of the club and attempts to associate them with the bombing. If you donât get this thereâs no point arguing with you, because youâre clearly content to stick your fingers in your ears and whistle away to yourself.
What a lame response to an exchange where you attempted to go down a rabbit hole and got stuck with your head down it and with your arse in the air and your legs flailing.
And itâs still hilarious, apart from you defending the anti-semitism and racism, which isnât very funny at all.
Again, the whole article identifies the club with the bombing. Itâs a malicious hatchet job. This is a basic comprehension failing on your part.
Why would it be contested by people who were actually there and know what happened, and by people who actually spoke out in support of Peadar Heffronâs decision to join the PSNI?
Oh, perhaps because they know that the story has been heavily embellished, because they were actually there?
Why would somebody make stuff up abut a club they previously played for? Well, work it out. Because he felt slighted at some people in the club not supporting him in joining the PSNI, which was an entirely legitimate opinion on the part of those people. Because, as he says himself, heâs bitter.
The PSNI fucked up big time in protecting Peadar Heffron. Why is that not mentioned in the article? Because the article is not designed to give the full story. Itâs designed to be a hatchet job, written by a man who has taken advantage of a victim and designed to project his understandable anger at losing his legs onto an entity that is not responsible for the crime committed.
Why is it up to the club to fundraise for a non-member and issue a statement?
What have the PSNI done for Peadar Heffron, apart from their shameful lack of warning to him that he could be a target?
The onus is on the PSNI to provide for a serving officer who has been the victim of a serious crime and suffered a resulting serious disability.
So, you donât have to support it. Because itâs a legitimate opinion. In a free society, people are allowed to behave any way they want within the law.
Again, Chris Patten stated specifically âwe are not disbanding the RUC, we are transforming itâ.
And still you canât work why the CNR community was suspicious of the PSNI in 2002.
Individuals deciding they cannot support somebody in a decision does not equal a campaign against them.
What Peadar Heffron wanted was a campaign from the club to support him in his decision. That would have been a political stance on the part of the club. Given that there was a significant body of opinion within the club and the local community that could not support Peadar Heffronâs decision, it was entirely reasonable on the part of the club to adopt no stance either way.
Stating that âsome individuals in the club might have been involvedâ in the attack on him is a serious criminal allegation based on nothing but conjecture.
What have the PSNI done to investigate the crime?
What a load of bollocks. Catholics are still wary of joining the PSNI because of almost 100 years of the northern statelet being a cold house for them. And theyâre wary of joining because of things like Peadar Heffron not even being informed by his own force that he was a potential target.
What exactly are the club supposed to do against intruders from another area unexpectedly barging into a dressing room after a training session and handing out leaflets? An incident that happened and was all over within a couple of minutes?
Complain to the public relations or customer service departments of the Real IRA?
Youâve already used that line. Try not repeating yourself, it makes for better debate.
Sinn Fein are and were then the biggest CNR party in the six counties. They were entirely within their rights to hold off on supporting the new police force until that fore had proved their bona fides.
Attitudes to the PSNI within the CNR community are still, quite reasonably, coloured by Unionist intransigence and the disgraceful behaviour of the DUP, and the disgraceful behaviour around marching season from Loyalists. When the DUP have vetoed something as basic as an Irish language act for 15 years, and their leader calls the CNR community âcrocodilesâ, that is entirely understandable.
20 years after the Good Friday Agreement, itâs still clear that much of Unionism believes some should be more equal than others.
That the 50/50 rule has been abolished is clear statement that the northern state is not serious enough about making the PSNI fully representative of the community as a whole.
And things like Peadar Heffron not being informed by his own force that he was a target will not help.
Sinn Fein was the largest CNR party in 2001. They got more votes than the SDLP at the 2001 Westminster elections.
Sinn Fein did not vote to support the PSNI until 2007.
I think youâre just being stupid for the sake of it here.
The PSNI barely existed in January 2002 and was made up of the same personnel as the RUC had been.
It was quite reasonable for Republicans to adopt a wait and see approach to see how the reforms worked out in practice and it was up to the PSNI to win trust given that they had been effectively born out of the RUC.
Supporting the concept of reforms is one thing. Seeing how it works out in practice is an entirely different thing.
Iâd respond to this if it made any sense and wasnât written in gibberish, but alas, it is written in gibberish.
That you compare the DUP vetoing an Irish language act in 2017, legislation regarding a cultural issue which should have been an uncontentious formality, with Sinn Fein adopting a wait and see attitude to policing in 2002, policing having been an absolutely key element of the systematic discrimination against the CNR community, shows how out of touch you are.
There is no onus on a GAA club to make public statements about a non-member. Again the notion that there was no support for the Heffron family from within club and the Creggan community is heavily disputed.
You say it was most likely somebody in his community. Funny how you stopped short of saying somebody from within his club was involved. Yet thatâs the narrative youâre more than happy to go along with as regards the attack on Peadar Heffron. Quite obviously because your narrative demands that the club be vilified at every turn.
They didnât, not until 2007.
You lumped the GAA in with the DUP and the Orange Order as being responsible for having âbackwards attitudesâ and ânot living up to the spirit of the agreementâ. Thatâs how it reads, anyway.
The Orange Orderâs version of âcultureâ is rather less benign than the GAAâs.
Club members and club are indivisible according to this article. You still donât get that thatâs what the article is saying.
Joe brings his kids to a GAA club called Kevin Lynchâs. Joe supports GAA clubs being named after dead IRA volunteers.
Joe has now seen an opportunity to jump on the vilification bandwagon that he was railing against only a few days previously and has put that GAA club firmly in the firing line of Loyalist thugs.
Basically, Joe is talking out of his arse on this subject.
And fools like you think thatâs grand, because you love nothing better than to have a go at northern Catholics and the GAA whenever you can. And to hell with reality and actually dealing honestly with nuanced issues.
And still @Tim_Riggins wonders why members of the CNR community might still not have total trust in the PSNI. Apparently thatâs the fault of the CNR community, not the PSNI, at least according to Tim.
Joe Brolly has written about Eugene Reavey before. Maybe Joe should ask Eugene Reavey whether he has total trust in the PSNI?
The PSNI is breaching the human rights of families of victims of a Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) murder gang in the 1970s, the High Court has ruled.
The families took legal action against the PSNI for failing to complete an overarching review of the activities of the so-called Glenanne gang.
The judicial review was conducted at the request of Edward Barnard, whose 13-year-old brother Patrick, was killed in the bombing of the Hillcrest Bar in Dungannon in County Tyrone in 1976.
Relatives have called for the PSNI to complete an unfinished report into the Glenanne gang by the defunct Historical Enquiries Team (HET) and publish its findings.
The judge said that in replacing the HET with the Legacy Investigations branch, the PSNI had frustrated âany possibility of an effective investigationâ.
Eugene Reavey, whose three brothers were murdered by the gang in 1976, described the alleged collusion as a âwar crimeâ.
âThe judge repeated collusion, collusion, collusion all day,â he said.
"There is no other word for it than a war crime - thatâs how big it is.
"We have been humiliated, we have been abused by everybody in every part of the journey but today we have been vindicated."
So, in 2017, the PSNI attempted to obstruct the investigation into the Glennane gang, who murdered Eugene Reaveyâs three brothers, a crime Joe Brolly wrote about.
And yet now Joe is vilifying a GAA club and members of the CNR community for not coming out in support of the PSNI. In 2002.
the principle of shared policing had been agreed by all sides as part of Good Friday
Patten had made his recommendations
The British Government had introduced many of these reforms
The GGA as a whole had scrapped Rule 21, one of the recommendations of the report
the main Nationalist party supported policing
This was not 1975.
If someone said to you that the DUP were wrong for dragging their heels over Good Friday because they didnât want to sit in government with the Provisional IRAâs leaders then you would have fully agreed. You would have said that they were being backwards.
One might not fully embrace the police in 2002, you could still want more reforms, but there was no excuse for what happened to this guy.
No one is saying it should have happened the guy â we went through this yesterday, mate - Do you expect people to just flick a switch? Itâs called a process for a reason âŚ
Heâe entitled to his opinion. Again, the Real IRA did not just pick up a phonebook and find Catholic PSNI member beside it. That comes from people he knows.
You failed to make any form of coherent point, you just went back to something that has been bugging you for a while. Fully flesh out your point and I can respond.
Iâm not here to defend the PSNIâs treatment of him. Thatâs a separate issue.
This was a story about a man and his GGA club, the above is more desperate deflection on your part.
More deflection onto the PSNI. The man was a member of the community. He played for them for years from a young age. By 2010, SF had accepted policing. You know well what the lack of the support from the club means, but choose to put your head in your hands.
Rule 21 was gone. One of the points of the GGA is letting all play. There was no rule against what he chose to do - if someone was gay and received the same treatment this guy did you would have been up in arms.
The Patten Report was comprehensive. You are picking out a quote here. What SF signed up to in 2007 was the bones of what Patten proposed. By 2002, many of the reforms had gone through.
This comes down to you defending some nationalist elements for dragging their heels, but moaning about Unionists doing the same thing.
Ah here ⌠Ireland is a small place and word on anything spreads like wildfire â His own wouldnât have had to âgive him upâ, it would have spread like everything does in Ireland.
The Patten Report laid down some very specific recommendations for reforms of policing. ALL SIDES agreed to a shared police force in 1998. Many of those recommendations had been brought over the line.
The main nationalist side had joined the police board.
Like the IRA, I donât expect that all problems or issues would have been sorted by 2002, however what happened to him was not on.