Jeremy Corbyn might not have planted a bomb but he made it easier for those who did, says former IRA man

JOHN McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn were treasured by the IRA as unambiguous supporters of the armed struggle.

I know this to be true from my own experience.

In fact, it would have come as a great shock to members of the IRA if they were told that they did NOT support them.

That support, in their case, ticked every box.

Useful idiots, agents of influence and fellow travellers.

As Bobby Sands said: “Everyone has their own particular part to play.”

Those two certainly played their part.

And it was a despicable part. As cheerleaders, they had a grand old time.

Wallowing in the "whiff of cordite" and infantile revolutionary glee at publicly rubbing shoulders with the "hard men" of the IRA.

Of course because of the nature of the IRA there is much that is unknown.

One fact that is known concerns one extremely close comrade, Redmond O’Neill.

Corbyn and McDonnell both paid glowing tributes to this former senior employee of London Mayor Ken Livingstone on his death.

As Diane Abbot wept copiously at his memorial service, a convicted IRA leader provided the musical accompaniment.

O’Neill was a direct, trusted contact to the IRA leadership for many years.

IRA men and women, many young and hopelessly politically naive, derived great encouragement from the solidarity openly displayed by Corbyn, McDonnell and their associates. I know. I was there. I witnessed the effect.

They might not have pulled a trigger or planted a bomb but they certainly made it easier for those who did.

By boosting our morale, they prolonged the violence and without a doubt for that, have blood on their own hands.

As British and Irish trade unionists were attacked and murdered, as working class children were mutilated and tortured for "anti-social activities", these two loathsome people prolonged the agony.

They can hardly claim ignorance.

The record over 20 years is stark and clear beyond any reasonable doubt.

Not once did any of them ever condemn any action by the IRA.

Not Enniskillen or Warrington, Canary Wharf, or Birmingham, where they focused on a miscarriage of justice, of course (after all they had THEIR part to play) instead of the slaughter of the Birmingham innocent.

Senior IRA people said, in my presence, that the murder of “innocent people” in Britain made it harder for the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell to publicly support “us”.

“Innocent people” obviously did not include Members of Parliament, soldiers, policemen, postmen, census takers, construction workers, delivery drivers — all, and many others, so called legitimate targets.

McDonnell told us publicly in 2003 that “it was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice” of the IRA that made Britain talk.

He was wrong about that too.

It was the superb work of the security forces which brought the IRA to its knees.

What the guns and bombs of the IRA did was maim, murder and prolong a brutal, immoral and illogical slaughter.

Yet that did not cost those two fine revolutionaries a moment’s doubt.

Like all of their ilk, they were prepared to fight to the last drop of someone else’s blood.

And then there is their pathetic and ludicrous attempts to paint themselves as peacemakers.

To be clear: they played no part ever, at any time, in promoting peace in Northern Ireland.

Not one person that played any part in that process, no matter how small, has ever mentioned them in that context.

It is a lie, a cowardly, self-serving lie.

A pathetic attempt to distance themselves from the blood of the innocent.

To watch them try to rewrite history is a disgusting spectacle and a slur on all who fought and died defending democracy.

McDonnell and Corbyn were clearly opposed to the Good Friday Agreement.

The “peace” they sought was a victory for the IRA.

If the British and Irish people were not so tolerant, they would have been locked up for subversion for the duration of The Troubles.

The very least they should do now before they ask the UK electorate to trust them is to apologise unreservedly for the murder and torture they encouraged and thereby prolonged, and they should do so immediately without reservation or cant.

Justice and truth demand no less.

• Sean O’Callaghan is the author of ‘The Informer’ and ‘James Connolly — My Search for the Man, the Myth and his Legacy’.