AN SDLP councillor has pulled out of an Ógra Shinn Féin weekend conference in Newcastle, Co Down, because he said it glorified “mass murder”.
Unionist politicians have also condemned a conference event described as a “visit to site of Warrenpoint ambush”. This is a visit to Narrow Water near Warrenpoint where, in 1979, two IRA bombs killed 18 British soldiers.
Minister for Education Caitríona Ruane and Mid-Ulster Assembly member Barry McElduff are among a number of Sinn Féin members who will speak at the conference, which will also deal with issues such as the H-Block hunger strikes and current politics.
The Ógra Shinn Féin website carries details of the conference and shows an aerial shot of Narrow Water with the caption “Visit to site of Warrenpoint Ambush”.
At Narrow Water in August 1979 – the same day that Lord Louis Mountbatten and three others were killed in an IRA bomb explosion in Mullaghmore, Co Sligo – 18 British soldiers, most of them members of the Paratroop Regiment, were killed in the IRA explosions.
The SDLP’s youngest councillor Matthew McDermott, who is on Lisburn Council, has withdrawn from a panel discussion tomorrow because of the Narrow Water reference. “The people of Ireland year after year democratically rejected the IRA,” Mr McDermott said. “IRA terrorism divided, not united, the people of Ireland.”
DUP South Down MLA Jim Wells said most people in the constituency would be appalled that the youth wing of Sinn Féin had on its conference programme “an outing to celebrate and gloat over one of the most dreadful events in Northern Ireland’s history”.
Ógra Shinn Féin Newcastle spokesman Fra Cochrane said the conference would include a number of historical tours.
“Mr Wells needs to realise that republicans fought a justifiable war against the British war machine here in Ireland, just as the Palestinian people are currently doing in Gaza,” Mr Cochrane added.
“The British Paratroop Regiment are notorious killers who, amongst a litany of other crimes in the six counties, murdered 13 innocent people in Derry on Bloody Sunday. The British soldiers killed at Narrow Water were combatants in a bloody conflict where all sides suffered.”
