Swinney's embrace of apologists for terrorism won't win over many Scots to independence – John McLellan
Scotland’s unionists keep their distance from Northern Irish parties that once associated with loyalist paramilitaries
I doubt most readers will recall Dougald McCaughey, John McCaig and his brother Joseph. Or Douglas Richmond, William McIntyre and Duncan McPhee.
I know I didn’t, but the first three were off-duty Royal Highland Fusiliers when they were shot dead by the IRA in 1971. Their killers were never caught. The second three were Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders blown up by an IRA landmine in County Tyrone in 1972.
But if their names are not instantly recognisable then First Minister John Swinney might well approve, having stood by his advice earlier this year that “people should move on” from The Troubles and IRA violence. However, I am unaware of him instructing SNP MPs to oppose the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill currently going through Westminster, legislation which will expand powers to hold investigations and public inquiries into the past actions of the security services, and remove immunity from prosecution for soldiers.
Paisley and McGuinness’s Chuckle Brothers act
For Mr Swinney, it seems that moving on is not a two-way street, but a one-way system into the clear for terrorists and years of legal persecution for ex-servicemen.
Supporters of the appeasement of Irish Republican terror point to pictures of Her Late Majesty the Queen smiling as she shook hands with IRA commander Martin McGuinness on her state visit to Ireland in 2012, but as royal biographer Robert Hardman pointed out in his recent best-selling account of her life, she was accustomed to meeting objectionable people if the politics of the moment dictated it.
So too has Mr Swinney decided that the politics of the moment are right for him to seek common cause with fellow separatists in Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru. And if the late Rev Ian Paisley could perform his infamous Chuckle Brothers act with Mr McGuinness when they were First Minister and deputy of the Northern Irish Assembly – although he refused to shake hands with Gerry Adams, the most famous IRA coffin carrier who wasn’t in the IRA − then surely Mr Swinney can cosy up to Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald and the deputy leader Michelle O'Neill?
The difference is that Mr Swinney is not Mr Paisley, and Mr McGuinness had his own murderous pride to swallow in presenting a smiling face to his erstwhile enemies. Mr Swinney just looks like a fan boy while Sinn Fein continues to lionise IRA killers.
In keeping with its tradition of maintaining the rejection of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, Sinn Fein has never repudiated its role as the front for the Provisional IRA as it wreaked havoc across most of Britain − with the notable exception of Glasgow, where it didn’t want to hamper its fundraising activities − for the best part of 40 years.
READ MORE: Why nationalists should be concerned by Swinney's latest outlandish claim about independence
Irish Taoiseach’s criticism of Sinn Fein
It is against that background that Mr Swinney’s one-sided “move on” instruction should be seen, clearing the way for a closer relationship with a political organisation with its roots firmly in violent opposition to the British state and to a settlement which the Irish Free State, and then the Republic of Ireland, accepted after the Irish Civil War ended in 1923.
Just as Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin this week claimed that Sinn Fein had set back Irish unity by trying to force the issue by aligning with separatists here, such an overt association with an organisation which remains an apologist for terror is hardly the best way to win over wavering voters who might be tempted to support Scottish independence.
And when the Scottish government should be prioritising a looming £5 billion budgetary chasm, or indeed addressing the continued plunge in standards of education, to name but two urgent pieces of business on his desk, the average Scottish voter isn’t going to be impressed by the First Minister taking time out in Cardiff for a pointless stunt to sign a pompous and meaningless “Memorandum of Understanding” that declares “Westminster's time is coming to an end”.
In the early stages of the referendum campaign, the Better Together campaign made it clear there would be no place for invoking Ulster unionism and the strategy would focus entirely on the economic strength from being part of the United Kingdom, and Mr Swinney has just done the reverse. Caveats in the MoU about a nation determining its future "in its own way and in its own time" cannot remove the association with a party inextricably linked to the politics of the gun.
Burnham can’t just wing it
Meanwhile, separation anxiety has tied Prime Minister Andy Burnham in knots, first seeming to be unaware of the contents of the Good Friday Agreement by arbitrarily ruling out an Irish border poll, subsequently retracted, then making the same blunder in reverse by appearing to set conditions for a second Scottish independence referendum in an answer to SNP MP Chris Laws earlier this month. Another hasty clarification ensued.
Contrary to the instructions of the separatist MoU, Mr Burnham does not have to “prepare” for constitutional change unless the parliament in Westminster votes for it, but it has been a salutary lesson that winging it on constitutional politics is a very dangerous game.
Having been brought up with sectarian division, average Scots and Irish people have a better understanding of the subtleties and traps, which is why Mr Swinney’s enthusiasm for getting up close to Sinn Fein is all the more surprising. Sure, it will delight quite a few, like pro-Hamas protestors and those who draw the grossly false equivalence with Nelson Mandela to justify association with Irish terror.
More than 3,500 people were killed in The Troubles and loyalist paramilitaries were responsible for the majority of civilian deaths, so no wonder unionist parties here keep their distance from their associates. Mr Swinney is not so squeamish, something to remember when he lays a wreath at the Cenotaph.
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