More on Northern Ireland

Two articles that I found most moving were on A Tangled Web recently - take a read of The La Mon atrocity remembered and An insult to the innocent. The first relates the story of "On the 17th February 1978, the IRA set off a bomb at the La Mon House Hotel, near Belfast. On that fateful evening members of the Irish Collie Dog club were holding a dinner dance function at the hotel. The IRA bomb was designed to cause carnage and it succeeded beyond the terrorists wildest dreams. It created a nightmare. A firestorm was created in the small hotel, incinerating 12 people. Those who were not incinerated were shredded with glass and brick."

The second informs us that the Irish Times reports that "Northern Ireland is to have four victims commissioners after the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness ditched a plan to appoint just one, it was disclosed today. It is understood the sister of an IRA man shot dead by the SAS and the widow of a policeman gunned down in Belfast have been offered posts on a panel which will represent families who lost relatives during 35 years of bloodshed." The sister mentioned is Patricia McBride, the sister of Tony McBride who was shot dead by the SAS in 1982 whilst he was on an active terrorist mission.