We all knew perfectly well that the billionaire right-wing press barons and their lackeys in the Tory party would attempt to smear the hell out of Jeremy Corbyn during this election campaign.
They hate his policies of standing up for ordinary people and repatriating vital British infrastructure and services out of the hands of profiteering corporations and foreign government like China and Qatar.
They hate his policies so much they're absolutely fixated on trying to destroy his reputation with anything they've got, and his early involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process is seriously the best attack line they can come up with, because they know it feeds into the hateful anti-Irish bigotry that still unfortunately exists in Great Britain.
In this article I'm going to set the record straight by detailing 9 things that every single voter should know about the Corbyn-IRA smear campaign.
1. Condemning the IRA bombings (part one)
When Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by Sophy Ridge during the 2017 election campaign he clearly condemned the IRA bombings, but the Tories outright lied that he didn't.
The right-wing propagandists really seem to believe that people will mindlessly lap up their reality-reversing lies rather than quickly checking things for themselves (see video)
2. Condemning the IRA bombings (part two)
Anyone who says that Jeremy Corbyn has "never" condemned the IRA bombings is lying through their teeth. In 1994 Corbyn signed a parliamentary motion on the 20th anniversary of the IRA pub bombing in Birmingham which described the attack as a deplorable terrorist atrocity.
It's on the parliamentary record here for all to see.
3. Misrepresentations (Sinn Féin are not the IRA)
Anyone sharing pictures of Jeremy Corbyn with people like Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness to "prove" that he met the IRA is either being thick, or totally disingenuous.
Adams and McGuinness were not the IRA, they were leaders of the democratic political party Sinn Féin, which is the political wing of the Irish Republican movement, not the now-disbanded terrorist faction.
People who share these pictures are either so blinded by anti-Irish bigotry that they can't differentiate between a political party and a terrorist organisation, or they know the difference perfectly well, but they're sharing the pictures in order to feed into the anti-Irish bigotry of people they consider to gullible and easily led.
4. Peacemaker
In 2013 Jeremy Corbyn was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for his efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
You can read his acceptance speech here.
5. The Loyalists
The right-wing smear merchants are always desperate to bring up the fact that Corbyn met with Irish republicans, but they're a lot more reticent about the fact he also met plenty of loyalists too in his campaign for peace.
Corbyn met with Gary McMichael and David Ervine (Ervine was a jailed loyalist terrorist turned politician for the PUP), and he also spoke regularly with Ian Paisley who, according to his widow Eileen, considered Corbyn to be "likeable", "courteous", "polite" and "a gentleman".
In light of the indisputable fact that Ian Paisley was a fierce opponent of Irish republicanism, why on earth would he say such things about a guy, who according to the Tory smears, was undermining the loyalist cause by promoting a peaceful solution to the conflict?
6. Openness vs Secrecy
Corbyn spoke openly to Irish republicans and Ulster Loyalists during the 1980s. Nobody is denying that.
The problem for the Tories is that declassified records prove that Margaret Thatcher was secretly negotiating direct with the IRA terrorists at the time. The shocking thing isn't that she was negotiating with terrorists though, it's the fact that she outright lied to the British public over and again every time she repeated her "we do not negotiate with terrorists" phrase.
People who attack Corbyn for openly talking peace, whilst refusing to condemn Thatcher's secret negotiations with the IRA, or the succession of lies she told to the British public are clearly as happy with secrecy and lies from right-wingers as they are furious with openness and honesty from left-wingers.
7. Abject Tory hypocrisy (that councillor)
If right-wingers really honestly cared about criticising politicians with links to the IRA, why is it that they're perfectly happy to have an ex-IRA terrorist and arms smuggler serving as a Tory councillor in Croydon?
You can find more details on this ex-IRA Tory politician in this article, or by Googling "Maria Gatland" for yourself.
8. Boris Johnson's super-hypocrisy
Of all the people resorting to IRA-Corbyn smears, the crap-haired buffoon Boris Johnson surely has to be the most hypocritical.
Not only did Boris share a picture of Corbyn with a member of Sinn Féin to "prove" that he met the IRA (refer back to point three and draw your own conclusions about whether Boris is being intensely thick or sickeningly disingenuous) he also claimed that this picture of Corbyn and McGuinness in the 1990s (while the peace process was really beginning to move forward) was proof that Corbyn is untrustworthy!
An accusation of untrustworthiness from a man who repeatedly lied that the NHS would get £350 million a week extra after Brexit!
Even if you agree with Brexit, only the worst kind of political tribalist could possibly try to argue that Boris brazenly lying to the British public like that in order to swing the vote was acceptable and trustworthy conduct.
9. Sheer bloody desperation
Perhaps the most important point of all is the sheer desperation that these Tory-IRA smears demonstrate.
They don't have any positive policies of their own to promote. They don't have any coherent criticisms of Corbyn's policies. So all they have left is a sickening smear campaign in the desperate hope that a combination of public fact aversion and anti-Irish bigotry is enough to put people off voting in favour of Labour's transformational manifesto.
They don't have a single legitimate argument in favour of themselves, or against Labour's policies so they're resorting to the dirtiest muck-slinging tactics possible.
I'll leave you with a quote from Margaret Thatcher about that kind of politics:
"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left." - Margaret Thatcher
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Now I know I've pissed off a lot of people by pointing out that people on the extreme Remain fringe are every bit as toxic as the Brextremists, but I'm going to have to address the subject again.
And again I'll include a massive disclaimer that I'm not generalising about all Brexit-sceptics - which would be stupid because I'm a Brexit-sceptic myself - but highlighting the ridiculous and counter-productive behaviour of some people on the polar fringe of the debate.
And again a load of Remainers will turn up in the comments to cry victim and cynically pretend that I'm generalising about all Remainers in order to discredit the argument that some people on the Remain side are just awful strategically inept people who do far more harm to the cause than good.
We all know the routine by now.
A.C. Grayling
Anyone who is on Twitter will be familiar with AC Grayling's lamentable output, which consists mainly of intense Remain fanaticism, burning Corbyn-hate, relentless Lib-Dem apologism, endless refusal to address the actual causes of Brexit, and seething contempt for people with different views to his own.
In short Grayling is exactly the kind of smug, insular, arrogant, sneering Remainer that breathes so much life into the Brexiteer caricature of all Remainers being aloof out-of-touch metropolitan elitists.
Sinn Féin
The Irish independence party Sinn Féin have repeatedly warned that a chaotic "no deal" Tory-administered Brexit would ruin the Good Friday peace agreement.
I'm sure we can all see how the re-imposition of a hard border in Northern Ireland is both against the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, and risks inflaming sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
But instead of simply agreeing with the warning, AC Grayling went a lot further in an extraordinary Tweet, demanding that Sinn Féin MPs take up their seats in parliament, and twice referring to the fight for Irish independence as a "fetish".
Remanier Unicorns
One of the favourite endlessly-repeated tropes in Remainer echo-chambers is to refer to pretty much anything to do with Brexit as "chasing unicorns" or "unicornism".
Of course a lot of the stuff Brexiteers come out with, like Boris Johnson's Gatt 24 nonsense, or the absurd idea of an "orderly "no deal" are flagrant nonsense that absolutely deserves to be ridiculed and derided.
The problem of course occurs when one of the most high-profile Remain campaigners on social media proposes an absolutely ridiculous "unicorn" solution to Brexit.
Sinn Féin will never ever take their seats in Westminster because to do so would involve swearing allegiance to the Queen, and sitting in the parliament of a what they consider to be an illegitimate and hostile occupying power.
Ireland was brutally repressed by the mainly-English aristocracy for Centuries, including the savage execution of the Easter Rising revolutionaries, and avowed Irish republicans certainly aren't ever going to legitimise London-rule by pledging allegiance to the Queen and taking up their seats in Westminster.
Respect them or loathe them, at least they stick to their principles and stay out of the parliament they want to be rid of, unlike the Brexiteers who turn up in ever larger numbers in the European Parliament in order to laze around collecting salaries and expenses for doing absolutely bollocks all beside displays of grandstanding gesture politics for the "stick it to Johnny Foreigner" mob.
Once again. Just to be absolutely clear: Sinn Féin will never take their seats in Westminster.
Never.
Anyone who proposes this nonsense as a solution to the Brexit mess is just as guilty of wildly unrealistic unicornism as any Brexiteer.
Strategic ineptitude
The idiocy of calling for the impossible isn't even the worst of it. The worst of it is the decision to twice portray the fight for Irish independence as some kind of disgusting "fetish", rather than a legitimate political stance.
The use of such language absolutely reeks of entitled British-nationalist imperialism.
It implies that the long fight for Irish independence from London-rule was illegitimate and depraved, and that the entire existence of Ireland as an independent sovereign state is some kind of ungodly perversion.
It should be absolutely obvious that, when asking people to help you out by breaking their own firmly-held principles, it's an impossibly weak strategy to grossly insult their beliefs and the very existence of their nation.
And it's obviously not just Sinn Féin members that Grayling is insulting by delegitimising the fight for Irish independence, and the very existence of Ireland as an independent state, it's all Irish people, and everyone with Irish ancestry too.
When Brexit-sceptics need to form as many alliances as possible with our European neighbours, here we have a very high-profile English Remainer resorting to displays of toxic British nationalism against the Irish, and literally thousands of Remainers liking and retweeting his bile-laden nonsense.
Unionism and Irish reunification
A recent poll of Tory party members revealed that an overwhelming majority of them would gladly give up Britain's claim on Northern Ireland in return for their beloved Brexit.
So that's members of the Conservative and Unionist Party supporting Irish reunification because they're so obsessed with Brexit, but instead of criticising this extraordinary state of affairs, Grayling is trying to get Irish republicans to step in and save his beloved Union by ... errr ... insulting the very existence of their country as some kind of perverted abomination!
The irony and logical incoherence is extraordinary. He doesn't seem to care that avowed Unionists have given up on his beloved Union, but he's going to insult Irish republicans in the hope that makes them step in and save it!
And this guy is supposed to be a public intellectual!
Consequences
Just imagine if the impossible did come true and Sinn Féin politicians did decide to dishonestly pledge allegiance to the Queen in order to enter the British parliament and put a stop to Brexit.
How do you think that would pay in the mainstream media?
You'd have to be utterly delusional to think this wouldn't be portrayed as a nasty bunch of hostile Irish infiltrators sneaking in to ruin our beloved patriotic Brexit, or to think that such a move wouldn't be immensely detrimental to the Brexit-sceptic cause.
Conclusion
Not all Brexit-sceptics are toxic and delusional, but the enduring popularity of AC Grayling, and the fact that even the most delusional, counter-productive, and downright offensive of his Tweets garner thousands of likes and retweets is an indicator that the "dick head quotient" is actually pretty high.
The problem is of course that just because somebody holds the same view as you do on an important issue like Brexit, doesn't mean that they're an ally of yours to be uncritically retweet whatever nonsense they come out with, and tribalistically defended because you see them as fellow members of your tribe.
Once you see people resort to delusional and offensive nonsense it's really important to think about how much damage it actually does to the cause you support.
Any legitimate political movement needs internal criticism and debate, otherwise the loudest and most toxic attention seekers end up forcing their way to the forefront.
And to see a very high-profile Remainer proposing ridiculous unicornism and spitting undiluted British nationalist hate at the Irish, and getting masses of support and retweets is compelling evidence that the anti-Brexit movement is allowing toxic attention seekers like AC Grayling to do exactly that.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
After seven years of the Tories endlessly using their ludicrous "not enough money" rhetoric as justification for continual cuts in infrastructure investment, education spending, emergency services, public sector wages, in-work social security, child welfare, disability welfare, the NHS, local government budgets and more ... they've suddenly found £1 billion out of nowhere to bribe the DUP into helping Theresa May maintain her tenuous grip on political power.
Of course the £1 billion isn't going to cost the Tories anything directly because they're brazenly using public funds for their own personal benefit, but as is so often the case with the Tories, they've only considered the deal in cash terms, with no consideration of the wider socio-political implications of what they've done.
Ideological ammunition
"If she can find £1 billion to save her own job, why can't she find £1 billion for ..." is an argument that is going to come back and haunt Theresa May and the Tories every single time they try to continue their ruinous austerity agenda.
Every time they vote to slash wages, in-work social security for the working poor, cut infrastructure spending or defund public services people will rightly ask why these cuts are necessary when there's plenty of cash to be found to save Theresa May's bacon by buying votes from the DUP.
This buying votes from the DUP theme is going to hammer the Tory austerity narrative to pieces which will leave them with the impossible choice of carrying on regardless and taking the repeated hits to their reputation or abandoning austerity and implicitly admitting that their critics were right all along and seven years of ruinous Tory dogma was imposed purely by choice.
The orange order millstone
Another cost that Theresa May seems to have neglected is the fact that her fellow Tories are going to have to wear a reeking orange order millstone around their necks as long as this outrageous vote-buying deal lasts, and likely a hell of a lot longer.
The Tories are standing on a demographic trapdoor because the younger generations are repulsed by their hard-right ultra-nationalist posturing, their depraved smearmongering tactics, their divisive anti-immigrant posturing, and their determination to make the lives of the majority of us worse in order to fund ever more handouts for corporations and the mega-rich.
The younger generations are very much more likely to see feminism, environmentalism, and liberal social values as positive things, so hanging the orange order millstone of gay-hating, women's rights-opposing, climate change-denying DUP extremism around their own necks is only going to hasten their fall through the already creaking demographic trapdoor.
Give them an inch
Now that the DUP have established that the Tories are willing to lob vast amounts of cash at them (£100 million per Westminster vote) does anyone seriously believe that they won't be coming back demanding more and more?
The DUP are not a bunch of spineless strategically-inept power-hungry wimps like the Lib-Dems. They've not bound themselves into any kind of five year deal or agreed to completely shaft their own core demographics (the anti-Tory Lib-Dem vote, students, anti-imperialists, political modernisers ...) for a tiny taste of second hand Tory power.
Does anyone seriously believe that the DUP will gladly settle for what they've already blagged, and won't seek to hold the Tory government to ransom whenever they see that they hold the balance of power?
Peace in Northern Ireland
Perhaps the biggest price of all from Theresa May's outrageous vote-buying deal with the DUP is the way it is jeopardising the Northern Ireland peace process.
Theresa May and the Tories can't say that they weren't warned. Even the former Tory Prime Minister John Major spoke of the dangers of siding with the DUP, especially at a time when Northern Irish politics is as unstable and secularised as at any time since the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998.
The Northern Ireland Assembly was already paralysed by deadlock, then there was the eradication of all of the middle-ground parties in Theresa May's vanity election (10 DUP, 7 Sinn Féin, 1 Independent) meaning Northern Ireland is in a tinderbox situation. The UK government demonstrably favouring one side over the other can only possibly make the situation worse.
The fact that Theresa May has decided to lob peace in Northern Ireland onto her bonfire of vanity in order to salvage her own political career is absolutely despicable.
If her dodgy vote-buying deal comes at the cost of rising sectarian violence, then the Tories must be held accountable for putting Theresa May's self-interest above maintaining peace, and selfishly wrecking one of the greatest cross-party achievements Westminster politics ever managed.
Conclusion
Theresa May and the Tories decided to use public cash to buy the votes of the DUP bigots under the delusion that the it would be the taxpayer who bears the cost, not the Tory party.
In cash terms they're correct. They have used public cash for their own narrow party-political benefit, but the Tories are notorious for knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing, which means they've ignored (or at best seriously underestimated) the wider socio-political costs of what they've done, not just to themselves, but potentially to the people of the United Kingdom and Ireland who will suffer enormously if this move ends up collapsing the delicately balanced peace process in Northern Ireland.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
The mainstream media is decaying terribly. If they ever were the public guardians who hold the powerful to account they imagine themselves to be, they are no longer.
Vast swathes of the print media are nothing more than smear-mongering pro-establishment Tory propaganda sheets.
The BBC is an absolute joke with their transparently fake "impartiality" that sees monstoring Diane Abbott for getting her numbers mixed up as worthy being lead item on the TV news for an entire day, but Theresa May's deliberate calculated lie about Labour's immigration policies as nothing more than a tiny footnote in their coverage.
Once respected publications of the left (Guardian, New Internationalist) and right (Telegraph, Economist) have been sliding inexorably towards the political gutter as they pursue website clicks with absolute clickbait tat, rather than pursuing the powerful establishment elites (that most of their journalists went to the same private schools and Oxbridge colleges as).
Thus the onus has fallen ever more onto a small band of independent media sites and citizen journalists to hold the powerful to account.
The following Twitter thread is from the comedian and script writer Jack Bernhardt. He openly admits to being "no expert" but in one Twitter thread he's given a clearer description of the absolute mess in Northern Irish politics than anything I've seen in the mainstream media (before or after Theresa May's vanity election).
I'm sure that you'll agree that that's far a more informative and engaging description of the absolute mess that is brewing in Northern Ireland under Theresa May's negligent and self-serving leadership than most of the gubbins in the mainstream press.
The only significant correction to make is the fact that Sinn Féin demanded that Arlene Foster resign as First Minister of Northern Ireland, not as head of her own party. But then the guy openly admits to not being an expert, so he's perfectly entitled to a relatively insignificant error in a tide of the kind of factual information and cogent analysis the mainstream media has failed to deliver.
I'd love to see what percentage of the mainstream media of Northern Ireland during Theresa May's vanity election was Corbyn-smearing, and what percentage was on the chaotic politician situation there. May guess would be well above 90% smearmongering & counter-smearmongering, and lstt than 10% proper political analysis.
In subsequent Twitter comments Jack Bernhardt said that it was "seriously scary" that English politicians and journalists were quote Tweeting his thread saying they didn't know about the details of the situation in Northern Ireland.
It's not his job to explain this stuff, but somehow he's done it so much better than the people whose job it actually is (journalists and politicians) that they're quote Tweeting him!
You can follow Jack Bernhardt on Twitter here: Jack Bernhardt
You can follow the Northern Ireland expert he suggests here: Siobhan Fenton
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
We all knew perfectly well that the billionaire right-wing press barons and their lackeys in the Tory party would attempt to smear the hell out of Jeremy Corbyn during this election campaign.
They hate his policies of standing up for ordinary people and repatriating vital British infrastructure and services out of the hands of multinational corporations and foreign government like China and Qatar.
They hate his policies so much they're absolutely fixated on trying to destroy his reputation with anything they've got, and his early involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process is seriously the best they can come up with, because they know it feeds into the anti-Irish bigotry that still unfortunately exists in Great Britain.
In this article I'm going to set the record straight by detailing 9 things that every voter should know about the Corbyn-IRA smear campaign.
1. Condemning the IRA bombings (part one)
When Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by Sophy Ridge during the 2017 election campaign he clearly condemned the IRA bombings, but the Tories outright lied that he didn't.
The right-wing propagandists really seem to believe that people will mindlessly lap up their reality-reversing lies rather than quickly checking things for themselves (see video)
2. Condemning the IRA bombings (part two)
Anyone who says that Jeremy Corbyn has "never" condemned the IRA bombings is lying through their teeth. In 1994 Corbyn signed a parliamentary motion on the 20th anniversary of the IRA pub bombing in Birmingham which described the attack as a deplorable terrorist atrocity.
It's on the parliamentary record here for all to see.
3. Misrepresentations (Sinn Féin are not the IRA)
Anyone sharing pictures of Jeremy Corbyn with people like Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness to "prove" that he met the IRA is either being thick, or totally disingenuous.
Adams and McGuinness were not the IRA, they were leaders of the democratic political party Sinn Féin, which is the political wing of the Irish Republican movement, not the now-disbanded terrorist faction.
People who share these pictures are either so blinded by anti-Irish bigotry that they can't differentiate between a political party and a terrorist organisation, or they know the difference perfectly well, but they're sharing the pictures in order to feed into the anti-Irish bigotry of people they consider to gullible and easily led.
4. Peacemaker
In 2013 Jeremy Corbyn was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for his efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
You can read his acceptance speech here.
5. The Loyalists
The right-wing smear merchants are always desperate to bring up the fact that Corbyn met with Irish republicans, but they're a lot more reticent about the fact he also met plenty of Loyalists too in his campaign for peace.
Corbyn met with Gary McMichael and David Ervine (Ervine was a jailed loyalist terrorist turned politician for the PUP), and he also spoke regularly with Ian Paisley who, according to his widow Eileen, considered Corbyn to be "likeable", "courteous", "polite" and "a gentleman".
In light of the indisputable fact that Ian Paisley was a fierce opponent of Irish republicanism, why on earth would he say such things about a guy, who according to the Tory smears, was undermining the loyalist cause by promoting a peaceful solution to the conflict?
6. Openness vs Secrecy
Corbyn spoke openly to Irish republicans and Ulster Loyalists during the 1980s. Nobody is denying that.
The problem for the Tories is that declassified records prove that Margaret Thatcher was secretly negotiating direct with the IRA terrorists at the time. The shocking thing isn't that she was negotiating with terrorists though, it's the fact that she outright lied to the British public over and again every time she repeated her "we do not negotiate with terrorists" phrase.
People who attack Corbyn for openly talking peace, whilst refusing to condemn Thatcher's secret negotiations with the IRA, or the succession of lies she told to the British public are clearly as happy with secrecy and lies from right-wingers as they are furious with openness and honesty from left-wingers.
7. Abject Tory hypocrisy (that councillor)
If right-wingers really honestly cared about criticising politicians with links to the IRA, why is it that they're perfectly happy to have an ex-IRA terrorist and arms smuggler serving as a Tory councillor in Croydon?
You can find more details on this ex-IRA Tory politician in this article, or by Googling "Maria Gatland" for yourself.
8. Boris Johnson's super-hypocrisy
Of all the people resorting to IRA-Corbyn smears, the crap-haired buffoon Boris Johnson surely has to be the most hypocritical.
Not only did Boris share a picture of Corbyn with a member of Sinn Féin to "prove" that he met the IRA (refer back to point three and draw your own conclusions about whether Boris is being intensely thick or sickeningly disingenuous) he also claimed that this picture of Corbyn and McGuinness in the 1990s (while the peace process was really beginning to move forward) was proof that Corbyn is untrustworthy!
An accusation of untrustworthiness from a man who repeatedly lied that the NHS would get £350 million a week extra after Brexit!
Even if you agree with Brexit, only the worst kind of political tribalist could possibly try to argue that Boris brazenly lying to the British public like that in order to swing the vote was acceptable and trustworthy conduct.
9. Sheer bloody desperation
Perhaps the most important point of all is the sheer desperation that these Tory-IRA smears demonstrate.
They don't have any positive policies of their own to promote. They don't have any coherent criticisms of Corbyn's policies. So all they have left is a sickening smear campaign in the desperate hope that a combination of public fact aversion and anti-Irish bigotry is enough to put people off voting in favour of Labour's transformational manifesto.
They don't have a single legitimate argument in favour of themselves, or against Labour's policies so they're resorting to the dirtiest muck-slinging tactics possible.
I'll leave you with a quote from Margaret Thatcher about that kind of politics:
"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left." - Margaret Thatcher
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
On the day that the death of Martin McGuinness was announced, the unelected Tory peer Norman Tebbit was given an awful lot of airplay and column inches to spit his bile.
Tebbit wished McGuinness an "eternity in hell", blabbered a load of conspiracy theory nonsense about how McGuinness was a "coward" because he sought peace instead of continuing the deadly civil war, and claimed that the world is "a sweeter place" for the fact that McGuinness has died of a rare genetic disease.
Of course Tebbit's comments should be seen in the context of the Brighton IRA bombing in which his wife was crippled, but they still come across as the ramblings of a bitter old man, especially when compared to the comments of Jo Berry, the daughter of the Tory MP Anthony Berry who actually died in the Brighton bombing.
She said that McGuinness' legacy was one of "reconciliation and peace-building", that he "showed us how to move forward and showed us a way where former enemies can work together for the peace of the whole ... what we have now is so much better than what I grew up in. What we have now is peace".
Another factor to consider when it comes to Tebbit's furious hate-driven bile against one of his recently deceased political adversaries is the wave of staggeringly hypocritical right-wing political correctness that washed over the UK after Margaret Thatcher died. How dare people criticise a recently deceased politician the right-wingers wailed back then, but here we have one of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet ministers spewing abuse at a recently deceased politician and right-wingers are lapping it up like manna from heaven.
Just in case you're not quite convinced that Tebbit's comments are not the distasteful ramblings of a bitter and extremely right-wing man, here's an extraordinary Norman Tebbit quote about his old friend Jimmy Savile to illustrate how much of a good judge of character he isn't:
"I've got no doubt Jimmy Savile was a very odd fellow, and I'm pretty sure he was in breach of the law on a number of matters. But I do not know that it's possible, 40 years on, to do justice in the sense of knowing just how many of those allegations are complete and true." [source]
So in the mind of Norman Tebbit the guy who sat down with his sworn enemies to bring peace to Northern Ireland (something that seemed impossible in the 1970s and 80s) is some kind of monster who is beyond redemption, but Jimmy Savile is the kind of man you make excuses for by casting doubt on the testimony of his victims.
It's clear that Tebbit's rotten worldview is almost completely determined by his allegiance to the Tory party of the 1980s.
It doesn't matter how disgusting the crimes that were committed, if the guy was sympathetic to the Thatcher regime Tebbit will make excuses for him, but if they were an enemy of Thatcher's, then he hates them with an furious passion, even if they renounced violence and became one of the main players in bringing the deadly civil war in Northern Ireland to an end!
What a bitter, paedophile-excusing old Tory.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Not only did Boris share a picture of Corbyn with a member of Sinn Féin to "prove" that he met the IRA (refer back to point three and draw your own conclusions about whether Boris is being intensely thick or sickeningly disingenuous) he also claimed that this picture of Corbyn and McGuinness in the 1990s (while the peace process was really beginning to move forward) was proof that Corbyn is untrustworthy!
