Why?

Why run a twitter feed detailing PIRA murders on a daily basis? Who would even think of such a thing?

Allow me to explain the genesis of the project. The seed which became @OnThisDayPIRA

I am aware that I have built up an audience outside of Northern Ireland so I will detail events at some length which will already be familiar to people with even a passing interest in current affairs in Northern Ireland.

In a way it all started with a loaf of bread in Omagh one night.

On Friday 5th January this year the Sinn Fein MP for West Tyrone went into a garage and filmed a video of himself with something on his head. That may strike you as strange but stay with me.

Of all the things he could have picked to put on his head he picked a loaf of bread. And of all the brands of bread on the shelves he chose a brand called Kingsmill. He then asked the camera where the shop kept the bread.

Odd? Certainly. But this was much more than an MP with a bizarre sense of humour. You see Kingsmill is not just a brand of bread. It is also a place. A place which will live in infamy.

Kingsmill is a village in South Armagh. On 5th January 1976 a man dressed in combat clothing stopped a red minibus with a torch near Kingsmill. Assuming it was the Army the bus came to a halt. As it did so 11 men in combat dress emerged from the hedges. The workers - they were employed in a textile factory - got out and were ordered to line up facing the minibus with their hands on the roof. A gunman then asked “Who is the Catholic?” Once the single Catholic of the group identified himself (and there is a rather touching story about that) he was told to get down the road.

The 11 remaining men - all Protestant - were shot at close range with automatic weapons. A total of 136 shots were fired in less than a minute. Once the shooting finished a murderer shot each man in the head with a pistol as they lay on the ground.

Incredibly one of the men - a then 32 year old Alan Black - survived in spite of being shot 18 times.

The controversy ultimately led to the resignation of the Sinn Fein MP for West Tyrone, something which followed an incredibly powerful interview with Mr Black broadcast on RTE Radio (RTE is the state broadcaster in the Republic). You can watch the interview here.

Around the same time DUP MLA Edwin Poots and Sinn Fein MLA John O’Dowd appeared on BBC NI TV.

Shortly after the program was broadcast - possibly the next day - there was a discussion about it on BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback program. The presenter, William Crawley, suggested that it was "significant” that John O’Dowd had used the word murder to describe what happened the 10 men at Kingsmill. 

He made no mention of the fact that the IRA and Sinn Fein to this day maintain that the IRA were not involved in Kingsmill - even though a gun used in the attack was used in other IRA attacks which the group claimed and another gun used in the murders was recovered from Raymond McCreesh when he was arrested, he of Newry play park fame.

Mr Crawley’s comments got me thinking about the use of language in Northern Ireland and how it has been perverted. 

Specifically about how the word murder is seldom used when it comes to the murder of people murdered by the IRA because of fear of offending the new establishment in Northern Ireland - Sinn Fein.

A few days after I heard the discussion on Talkback I saw a Facebook post about the anniversary of an IRA murder and it got me thinking about how many IRA murders are forgotten and how many people in Northern Ireland would like them to be forgotten.

And so the Twitter account was born.

It was once famously said that "Treason doth never prosper? / What's the Reason? / For if it prosper none dare call it treason”.

In Northern Ireland the campaign of murder has prospered and, as a result, we are reaching a point where none dare call it murder.

In my tweets I want to state that ALL those I remember were murdered and often times I will use the word murderer even if that leads to slightly awkward phrasing.

Why? Because I am someone who dares to call murder murder.