Duffy tweet

[Wellesley]

Let's go all hypothetical here for a minute. Let's just say my footballing abilities put me, not as last pick for the pub 5th XI but as a pro. Let's say, even more improbably, I ended up playing in Argentina. And let's also say Simon Weston died. A hero to most Brits, including me, but a murderer to Argentinians.

Now I'd have choices here both in social media and in informal discussions. Maybe it would be better just to keep my admiration to myself, certainly more tactful and better for my physical and mental health. Or I could just mumble something benign and deflecting if questioned, otherwise not, and hope that did. It might well. But people are contacting me from the UK, my Facebook is filling up with tributes and the media are wondering what this English footballer living in Argentina thinks of it all. So I could then go full nuclear and get it out of the way with.

That last option takes balls. It would upset a lot of people, possibly draw that phase of my career to a close and put me in danger but my hope would be to simply ride it out and hope all was forgiven the next time I scored a goal or set up a winner against the local rivals or whatever.

I don't think Duffy's right in what he says in any way but I do admire his balls for saying it. Those are the same balls that have carried us through some of the biggest games this season and may well do again next. I can separate his football and his politics. I can admire his sticking to his own opinion without agreeing with a word of it. And I can also muse that those who've wished harm on him today are no better than the terrorists they seek to condemn.

I was unaware that Simon Weston had murdered innocent civilians including women and children. I certainly haven't wished harm on him, I just don't want him at our club.

 

[Bold Seagull]

No, all of those people have the right to speak out as they were directly affected and not someone who wishes to take the moral high ground just because they can.

Indeed. Shane Duffy had to live with it, brought up in fear of that violence. I can't pretend to know what families and ordinary people felt during that time in Ulster, but I can imagine that whomever bought peace was considered with some reverence from either side.

 

[Beach Hut]

It is very difficult for anyone to make a judgement call on this unless perhaps directly involved in the evil the IRA perpetrated.

I cannot understand though how anyone who was definitely directly involved in the IRA cannot even acknowledge what they did was so horrific but there is a generational issue here where some only saw him in one light as a peace maker whereas others saw the dark side as well.

 

[jakarta]

No, all of those people have the right to speak out as they were directly affected and not someone who wishes to take the moral high ground just because they can.

Of course I was directly affected as my brother and sister in law were in the town centre that day. I spent most of the day trying to get hold of them while the news broke about the bombing.

I don't know what your agenda is and frankly I no longer care, you are going on my Ignore List

 

[jakarta]

And why would/did they do that? Why did the IRA exist?

A group like that won't exist without conditions that over a long period of time drive regular people to do terrible things out of desperation and frustration.

The way you're painting the picture you'd think no Irish child ever died at the hands of the foreign soldiers that were stationed in their native land.

That's right the British Army placed bombs in Litter bins all over Ireland and detonated them in order to murder children.

 

[darkwolf666]

So please don't just quote Colin Parry as the voice for all victims' families as you have been trying to imply.

Edit - and the speed of your response rather suggests you didn't google any names. Trust me, their stories deserve to be heard. What they went through and are still suffering is horrific.

Excuse me! Jakarta brought up Tim Parrys name, not me - I simply mentioned that his father had met MM and had some understanding for his reasoning... no forgiveness, but understanding!

And no I didnt Google those you mentioned. There would be a thousand stories just like theirs - on both sides!

 

[Eeyore]

That is because you are evidently are a yoghurt knitting lefty appeaser.

Getting back to the substance of the thread it is also because you never had to take bits of people out of trees and put them in body bags which a mate of mine had to do in Ulster, the bombing having been done at the behest of Martin McGuinness and his buddies.

I don't understand your point. Are you suggesting that I somehow condone what he did ? I don't recall stating any opinion concerning him. I simply defended Duffy's right to offer his condolences if he saw fit. As I stated, McGuinness, in later life, divided opinion. My view of him is closer to Colin Parry's more than anyone else's.

 

[darkwolf666]

Of course I was directly affected as my brother and sister in law were in the town centre that day. I spent most of the day trying to get hold of them while the news broke about the bombing.

I don't know what your agenda is and frankly I no longer care, you are going on my Ignore List

That's a shame you feel like that. It's only opinion and my feeling is there are two sides to every story, but obviously you won't see this as I am ignored, shame that really is...

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

I assume Duffy is acknowledging his part in bringing peace to his country. Fair enough, he was a key part of the journey. I doubt he is celebrating his time as killer. Might be wrong but I would need to hear that from him. May peace continue.

Player's an Irish Catholic, born and bred in Derry. Would have heard the name Martin McGuinness endlessly talked about and possibly revered by his own friends, family and community sector for his entire life. We'll never know. Why on earth would he not personally respect the man and give a nod to his passing. Two sides to every story. Exactly the same divide as would apply to, say, Nelson Mandela or Menachem Begin. It's a cliche but it's utterly true: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. In our safe Southern England homes, we have absolutely no idea of the passions of others that lead them to extreme acts.

 

[Buzzer]

Excuse me! Jakarta brought up Tim Parrys name, not me - I simply mentioned that his father had met MM and had some understanding for his reasoning... no forgiveness, but understanding!

And no I didnt Google those you mentioned. There would be a thousand stories just like theirs - on both sides!

No, you didn't just mention his father. You held his father up as the standard we should all hold to because he was directly affected. The other names I gave are a counterpoint to that.

There may be a thousand stories like theirs but those names are pertinent though because they all point the finger at McGuinness as complicit in the murder of their loved ones. Some still want closure which McGuinness could have given by saying where the victims' bodies lay or how they died. Without taking anything away from the horror that Colin Parry went through, I suggest it's easier to understand someone when they aren't hiding how your loved one died and where they now lie.

 

[Guinness Boy]

I was unaware that Simon Weston had murdered innocent civilians including women and children

You're choosing to score cheap points instead of understanding a fairly basic analogy, put together in 5 minutes on a message board to try to show why character is as important as politics, A working class Catholic from Derry and an English football fan from the scene of one of the IRA's atrocities are never going to agree, just never. But if you want to split hairs then the British forces in the Falklands killed and many of the dead were conscripts, not people who'd signed up by themselves.

I certainly haven't wished harm on him, I just don't want him at our club.

Others have though. Who else shouldn't we have? Communists? Muslims? South American players whose relatives might be involved with FARC or the Shining Path? Black South Africans? People who were born in Croydon?

Shane Duffy's sent a tweet out today that I'd guess 99% of Brighton fans disagree with strongly yet he's been the guy putting his body on the line all season including playing with a broken nose. When have you done that?

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

That's right the British Army placed bombs in Litter bins all over Ireland and detonated them in order to murder children.

As I already asked, what would drive people to do such a thing?

Eleven-year-old Stephen McConomy was playing with friends in the Bogside when he was shot in the head by a British soldier. There was no justice for that child.

 

[darkwolf666]

No, you didn't just mention his father. You held his father up as the standard we should all hold to because he was directly affected. The other names I gave are a counterpoint to that.

There may be a thousand stories like theirs but those names are pertinent though because they all point the finger at McGuinness as complicit in the murder of their loved ones. Some still want closure which McGuinness could have given by saying where the victims' bodies lay or how they died. Without taking anything away from the horror that Colin Parry went through, I suggest it's easier to understand someone when they aren't hiding how your loved one died and where they now lie.

Agree, I can't argue with your point. Simply to say different times, different man. None of which makes his previous life right I know!

 

[LamieRobertson]

And why would/did they do that? Why did the IRA exist?

A group like that won't exist without conditions that over a long period of time drive regular people to do terrible things out of desperation and frustration.

The way you're painting the picture you'd think no Irish child ever died at the hands of the foreign soldiers that were stationed in their native land.

The whole history of the 'troubles' seems to have been conveniently pushed to one side in the rush to protest there indignation

 

[The Merry Prankster]

This from Jonathan Powell, perhaps some of the no surrender wing of NSC should read it.


The first time I met Martin McGuinness was in October 1997, in Castle Buildings at Stormont together with Tony Blair. We had arranged the meeting in a small windowless room in the drab government block to avoid TV cameras filming the meeting as they had a previous meeting with Mo Mowlam, our Northern Ireland Secretary. This was the first meeting between a British prime minister and Republican leaders for 75 years. Alastair Campbell and I declined to shake hands with him as a terrorist—a decision I regret now—but Tony Blair far more sensibly shook his hand as he would any other human being.

I didn’t feel warm and cuddly about the IRA. They had shot and injured my father in an ambush in 1940 and put my brother, who worked for Margaret Thatcher, on a death list for eight years. But shortly after that meeting I got a call from McGuinness asking me to come and meet him in Derry incognito. I was not to tell the “securocrats.” After consulting Tony I agreed and flew to Belfast and took a taxi to Derry. I stood on a street corner feeling foolish until two men with shaved heads approached me, saying “Martin sent us,” and pushed me into the back of a taxi. They drove me around for an hour until I was completely lost and dropped me outside a neat little house on the edge of a modern estate. Martin McGuinness answered the door on crutches making an unfunny joke about kneecapping, the IRA’s favored way of punishing people. I spent three hours in the house trying to find a way around the key problem of the IRA decommissioning its weapons. We didn’t make any breakthroughs, but it became clear to me during that meeting that if we were going to achieve peace we were going to have to talk to our enemies and build some trust.

Over the next nine years I would cross the Irish Sea on a regular basis to meet Gerry Adams and McGuinness in safe houses in Belfast, Dublin, and elsewhere, and I grew to like McGuinness. I didn't forget that he was an IRA leader and that innocent people had died because of the choices he made. But I did see his commitment to making peace, and I saw the human side of the man. Martin McGuinness popped up every time peace was discussed with the British government. He was part of an IRA delegation flown by the government to meet Willie Whitelaw in Cheyne Walk in 1972; he was at the end of a secret channel between the IRA and Prime Minister John Major in 1991 negotiating to end the war; and he was Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator with John Major’s government in 1995 and with Tony Blair’s from 1997. He played a crucial role, risking his life in doing so, to bring about peace in Northern Ireland. And in those negotiations he was always warm and friendly. He didn’t hide his emotions and could fly off the handle into a long tirade over some point of Republican theology. But he could equally ask about your wife’s birthday or after your dying mother.

Now that McGuinness has gone a new generation in Northern Ireland has to make the peace process work.
Even more remarkably than making peace, McGuinness made peace work in Northern Ireland as deputy first minister, sharing power with his sworn enemy, the Unionist firebrand, Ian Paisley. I remember sitting in Paisley’s office the day they were sworn in looking in amazement at the two of them trying to out do each other with jokes as the “chuckle brothers” were born. McGuinness wisely decided to show respect to Paisley’s age and seniority and made an effort to forge a partnership with him. The moment I realized the peace process was going to work was when one morning in May 2007 I got a call from a Northern Ireland Office official who told me that Paisley was in a terrible mood. I was depressed, thinking the whole thing was unravelling, but the official reassured me that no, no there wasn’t a problem. It was just that Adams and Paisley had been up late Scottish Irish dancing and the old man was tired.

Now that McGuinness has gone a new generation in Northern Ireland has to make the peace process work. The new leaders of the Unionists and the Republicans were too young to have been directly involved in the Troubles. And yet it looks as though following the recent elections in the province they are not going to be able to reconstitute the power-sharing executive. I hope that McGuinness’s death and the memory of all that he achieved will make them think again. It would be ridiculous that if Paisley and McGuinness could sit alongside each other in harmony after all that had gone before, the new leaders cannot do so now.

Whatever I thought of Martin McGuinness when I first met him, I will now miss his warmth and his humor. And Britain and Ireland will long remember his contribution both to making peace and to making that peace agreement work in practice.

 

[drew]

I'll always support the Albion, but I will be a lot happier once Duffy has f#cked off. He is entitled to his views, but so am I and I find his support for a murdering terrorist b@stard that indiscriminately killed OUR fellow countrymen, women and children, more than disgusting. He called him a f#cking hero! Scumbag.

And the loyalists never did a bad thing and even the British Army have been involved in a few over the centuries. By all accounts from all sides of the political divide in NI they seem to accept that he had chosen a path to peace rather than violence.

Not sure anyone here, possibly even SD, is condoning his violent past but would the current level of peace have been achieved without him.

Perhaps if you feel as strongly as you claim then you should stand by your views and not attend when SD is around!!!

 

[BN9 BHA]

Shane Duffy's sent a tweet out today that I'd guess 99% of Brighton fans disagree with strongly yet he's been the guy putting his body on the line all season including playing with a broken nose. When have you done that?

And he gets paid thousands of pounds for doing so, it's his job.

 

[Wellesley]

You're choosing to score cheap points instead of understanding a fairly basic analogy, put together in 5 minutes on a message board to try to show why character is as important as politics, A working class Catholic from Derry and an English football fan from the scene of one of the IRA's atrocities are never going to agree, just never. But if you want to split hairs then the British forces in the Falklands killed and many of the dead were conscripts, not people who'd signed up by themselves.



Others have though. Who else shouldn't we have? Communists? Muslims? South American players whose relatives might be involved with FARC or the Shining Path? Black South Africans? People who were born in Croydon?

Shane Duffy's sent a tweet out today that I'd guess 99% of Brighton fans disagree with strongly yet he's been the guy putting his body on the line all season including playing with a broken nose. When have you done that?

It's hardly a cheap point is it. You were comparing Simon Weston to a terrorist that plotted to kill innocent British civilians. If you can't see the difference between that and our forces fighting an army containing conscripts, then you are hardly worth arguing with. He put his body on the line for Brighton! well that puts those terrorist atrocities into perspective. He's paid a huge wedge to play football. Anyway, you have your opinion and I have mine and we both have the right to state them. If we argue all night, I guarantee neither of us will change our minds. So have a lovely evening. Up The Albion. (except that **** Duffy!)

 

[Guinness Boy]

It's hardly a cheap point is it. You were comparing Simon Weston to a terrorist that plotted to kill innocent British civilians.

No I wasn't, you were. I was merely illustrating how people from different places would view the same person differently.


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[Wellesley]

And the loyalists never did a bad thing and even the British Army have been involved in a few over the centuries. By all accounts from all sides of the political divide in NI they seem to accept that he had chosen a path to peace rather than violence.

Not sure anyone here, possibly even SD, is condoning his violent past but would the current level of peace have been achieved without him.

Perhaps if you feel as strongly as you claim then you should stand by your views and not attend when SD is around!!!

Yeah, I should stop supporting the club I've been supporting for over forty years, because of one player who will move on the minute he gets a better offer. Brilliant.