Corbyn fails five times to condemn IRA attacks
JEREMY Corbyn has provoked outrage after five times sidestepping the chance to condemn the IRA for its bombing campaign.
The Labour leadership frontrunner was repeatedly asked by BBC Radio Ulster if he wanted to criticise the atrocities carried out during the Troubles.
Instead he appeared to equate the actions of the British Army on Bloody Sunday with those of the terrorists.
Mr Corbyn caused fury in 1984 when he invited members of Sinn Fein, including Gerry Adams, into the Commons a fortnight after the IRA’s Brighton bomb attack on the Conservative Cabinet. He also reportedly observed a minute’s silence for eight IRA members killed in an SAS ambush in 1987.
Yesterday the hard- Left MP angered relatives of victims when he was repeatedly challenged during a telephone interview to condemn the terror group’s actions – but refused to do so. When asked directly, the Islington North MP said: ‘I condemn all bombing, it is not a good idea, and it is terrible what happened.’
The presenter then said: ‘The question is, do you condemn what the IRA did?’ In his response, Mr Corbyn spoke of the actions of British forces on Bloody Sunday, saying: ‘ Look, I condemn what was done by the British Army as well as the other sides... What happened in Derry in 1972 was pretty devastating as well.’
Put to him a third time, he pointed to ceasefires that had brought about the peace process, pleading: ‘Can we take the thing forward rather than backward?’ Mr Corbyn then said he could not hear because he was on a train and responded to a fifth question by saying: ‘I feel we will have to do this later you know’, before the line went dead.
The MP later told the show’s presenter following Wednesday’s broadcast that he believed the interview was unnecessarily ‘ rude’. Relatives of IRA victims criticised Mr Corbyn.
Ann Travers, whose 22-year-old sister was shot dead, told the Belfast Telegraph it was an ‘insult to all our dead loved ones’. Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim was killed by an IRA bomb in Warrington in 1993, said nobody with a ‘balanced view’ would agree with him.
Mr Corbyn yesterday attended a London event to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima and revived his call for nuclear disarmament. He also refused to condemn the Tube strikes that brought the capital a standstill.
He told Channel 4 News that striking drivers – many with unions that fund his leadership campaign – had ‘every right’ to walk out.
‘We will have to do this later’