At the cenotaph in Belfast on Sunday, members of the armed forces gathered as usual alongside the Northern Irish public, to remember the war dead, as well as service-people killed in more recent conflicts. This year, there was an interloper in their midst. 

Fresh from a series of scandals at Stormont, Northern Ireland’s first minister, Michelle O’Neill, laid a green laurel wreath at the memorial bearing the words, “As First Minister I wish to take our society beyond old limits, to build bridges, and to a shared future together.  Today I remember all lives lost in the horror of war and conflict — past and present.”

This self-congratulatory message from Sinn Fein’s “northern leader” was soon prompting grave newspaper columns and tweets about the province’s “complicated past”. Some journalists praised O’Neill, as she became the most senior member of the party to participate in a Remembrance event. The self-styled “first minister for all”, in this telling, risked provoking hard-liners within her own community, by reaching out to unionists and participating in a ceremony that Irish republicans regard as a celebration of British militarism.

That interpretation was bolstered when a banner at O’Neill’s constituency office in Cookstown accused Sinn Fein of being “traitors”. This crudely daubed bedsheet allowed her to pose as a victim, bravely standing up to extremists while getting out of her comfort zone for reconciliation. Indeed, more than one hundred relatives of dead IRA terrorists and civilians from O’Neill’s home county signed a letter bitterly criticising her decision. “It is beyond belief,” they said in a statement to the Irish News, “that any so-called Tyrone republican would wish to lay a wreath in honour of those forces who caused mayhem and murder on hamlets, hills, villages and towns.”

This slur on the British military, which helped prevent the IRA from tipping Northern Ireland into outright civil war during the 70s and 80s, was not in the least surprising. That is because it repeated lies told incessantly by Sinn Fein, and perpetuated faithfully by Michelle O’Neill, in the decades since republicans abandoned their campaign to shoot and bomb the province into an all-Ireland state. This was, after all, the woman who claimed only two years ago that there was “no alternative” to the violence of the IRA.

The incessant propaganda from O’Neill and her like … allowed the past to be distorted beyond recognition

During the Troubles, most Irish nationalists remained resolutely opposed to the paramilitaries. But by 2022, 70 per cent agreed that “violent resistance to British rule” was “the only option”, according to an opinion poll conducted in the wake of her comments. The incessant propaganda from O’Neill and her like, coupled with a lack of proper resistance from London, and resignation from many Ulster unionists, allowed the past to be distorted beyond recognition. 

Indeed, governments at Westminster issued repeated apologies for the supposed misconduct of the army in Northern Ireland. That was despite the fact that the security forces overwhelmingly protected lives and property and acted within the law, with a few well-publicised exceptions. In contrast, Sinn Fein has never reciprocated by showing the least contrition for the IRA’s crimes, and in truth it was never seriously asked to say sorry or make amends for its movement’s conduct. 

Instead, successive UK administrations pandered to republicans, providing them with effective amnesties, letters of comfort and royal pardons that gave them space to whitewash their past. Sinn Fein and republican-friendly lawyers used this latitude to twist the history of the Troubles, portraying themselves as victims of a violent and rapacious state. In fact, just weeks ago the new Labour government granted yet another investigation into the murder of IRA-linked lawyer Pat Finucane, at the urging of Sinn Fein and republican campaigners, while the vast majority of victims remain forgotten by the justice system. 

Against that backdrop, O’Neill’s involvement in Remembrance Sunday was not only a cynical ruse, but an attempt to provoke unionists into a reaction that could be ridiculed and condemned. The first minister was, before this weekend, engaged chiefly in fending off awkward questions about Sinn Fein’s handling of recent child sex scandals, its culture of secrecy and its attitude to the rule of law. The party is about to contest an election in the Irish republic, where it is expected to lose multiple seats, because in southern Ireland, unlike Northern Ireland, political opponents are still prepared to challenge Sinn Fein’s links to terrorism, crime and abuse.  

Two days before the ceremony at the Belfast cenotaph, car loads of republicans taunted mourners at a memorial service in Enniskillen marking the Remembrance Day bombing, by shouting pro-IRA slogans. This abuse was aimed at people remembering one of the terrorist group’s most notorious atrocities, which, like so many of its crimes, resulted in no convictions. Survivors have repeatedly asked senior members of Sinn Fein to reveal what they know about the bombing, to no avail. Meanwhile, the rap group, Kneecap, flaunts IRA imagery across the world to critical acclaim, and the Wolfe Tones celebrate terrorism in front of tens of thousands of Irish young people. This is all part of a culture that has been created, normalised and sustained by Sinn Fein.

In Belfast, Remembrance Sunday is attended every year by families of servicemen and women who were killed brutally by the IRA. Most of those murders remain unsolved and there is no realistic prospect of the perpetrators being held to account.  It was these innocent victims who showed grace and forbearance last weekend, by tolerating an apologist for terrorism like Michelle O’Neill in their midst.