Latest news with #loyalists
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
DAVID DAVIS: Which side is Labour on - the troops who defended this nation in Northern Ireland, or those who tried to destroy it?
British troops went to Northern Ireland to save lives. Today, prosecutors pursue them for doing just that. To understand how we reached this appalling state of affairs, we must return to the beginning. In 1969 the British Army deployed to Northern Ireland not as an occupying force but as a peacekeeping one. Their mission was to shield the Catholic community from loyalist mobs amid spiralling sectarian violence. The IRA and their supporters are now trying to cynically rewrite that basic truth. The early years of the Troubles did not feature unrest, but murder. It was Paramilitary killings, as opposed to arrests, which defined the conflict: take the Warrenpoint ambush in 1979, where 18 British soldiers were killed and over 20 more were wounded by IRA bombs. But the IRA's campaign was not just against soldiers: its terrorists slaughtered innocent civilians, too. In Omagh in 1998, a bomb planted by the so-called Real IRA killed 29 and injured 200. These were not military operations. They were cowardly attacks on the defenceless. And yet, astonishingly, those who perpetrated such atrocities now recast themselves as victims. The IRA peddles a grotesque inversion of the truth, downplaying the scale of its crimes, while promoting a narrative of 'state abuses' designed to paint terrorists as martyrs and soldiers as villains. The Troubles killed more than 3,500 people, and injured more than 50,000. Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries caused roughly 90 per cent of the deaths. In stark contrast, British soldiers operated under the strict constraints of Operation Banner, bound by the 'yellow card' rules of engagement, which required restraint, warnings and proportionality. Time and time again, we see examples of the British military displaying courageous restraint in their confrontations with the IRA. One such case is that of Captain Herbert Westmacott, an SAS officer who was killed in an IRA ambush. Having witnessed their commanding officer brutally gunned down, his patrol entered the house from which the terrorist had fired the shots that killed him – not to exact revenge, but to detain the gunman. These troops chose justice over vengeance. Meanwhile, 1,400 soldiers and police officers died, while the Army killed only 300 IRA terrorists: a stark indicator of the lethal, asymmetric war they faced. Our troops served with discipline and honour in near-impossible conditions. And the facts bear this out: more Catholics were killed by the IRA than by any other group during the Troubles. So much for their claims to be liberators. Which brings me to the Clonoe incident, now the subject of a politically loaded inquest. Readers may already be aware of some of the facts. In February 1992, Special Branch learnt that an IRA team, armed with a Soviet DShK ('Dushka') heavy machine gun, would attack the Coalisland police station. The intelligence indicated that the attack would be mounted from the Clonoe chapel car park, so the SAS commander's plan was to close in on the IRA operatives and arrest them there as they mounted the heavy machine gun on to their stolen lorry. At 7.40pm on that dark February night, 12 members of the SAS were in position on the boundary of the car park, behind the hedgerow. However, the intelligence briefing was wrong. Instead, at around 10.40pm, the DShK was used to attack the Coalisland police station. Sixty rounds were fired at close range from the DShK. The attackers' intent was clear: to kill police officers. The gunfire could clearly be heard, and the tracer bullets were observed by the SAS patrol. After a minute or two, the soldiers heard another burst of gunfire. They did not know that this was in fact IRA terrorists firing their guns in the air as a tribute to Tony Doris, another IRA man who had been killed in a firefight the previous year. For all they and their commander knew, hiding behind their hedge, the murder gang were engaging other soldiers or other policemen. Within a minute, the lorry appeared out of the darkness, driven at breakneck speed, lurching around corners and with its engine screaming in too low a gear. As it drove into the car park, headlights illuminated the SAS position behind the hedgerow. At that point, the soldiers did not know whether they had been spotted. Fearing they were about to be attacked, the soldiers stood up, advanced on the occupants of the lorry and the three other vehicles in the car park, and opened fire. Four IRA members were shot dead, one was wounded, arrested at the scene and, notably, given first aid by the soldiers, while others fled in the three cars. Like all counter-terrorism actions at the time, the operation was reviewed by the Director of Public Prosecutions and all soldiers involved were found to have behaved entirely properly. Now we fast forward to February 2025, when Mr Justice Michael Humphreys ruled that the use of lethal force by the SAS in this incident was unlawful. The ruling is demonstrably wrong and ignores the facts. I find it hard to imagine a more clear-cut situation that would allow firing without challenge. Clonoe is just one incident in which elderly veterans are being persecuted, there will be many more. Terrorists killed 722 British soldiers during the Troubles. Not one of those murders has led to a retrospective inquest, let alone a prosecution. But today, we witness a legal crusade against the men who risked everything in the service of peace. This is not justice. While the killers walk free, authorities hound the men who stopped them, like criminals. The Legacy Act, which created a new body known as the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) to take over all Troubles-era cases, was designed to put an end to this travesty. But the Government's dithering response has handed the initiative back to those who spent decades glorifying violence. Labour must decide whose side it is on: the defenders of this nation, or those who tried to destroy it? Our veterans, many now in their seventies, deserve peace in retirement, not a knock on the door and questions about a firefight in a chapel car park three decades ago, in which they were operating well within the law. Brave soldiers who served their country with honour, heroism and skill during the Troubles now have the Sword of Damocles hanging over them. I have repeatedly asked the Government to end this shameful campaign of retrospective justice. I have received no meaningful answer. That is why I support the petition calling for an end to these prosecutions – and the Mail's important new campaign, Stop the SAS Betrayal, to seek new legal safeguards for our troops. The petition has now passed 100,000 signatures, triggering a debate in Parliament. But that is just the start. This is not just massively important to our veterans. If this rewriting of history succeeds, this weapon of lawfare can be used against soldiers in any future conflict, destroying the efficacy of our troops when we need them most. The Rt Hon Sir David Davis is MP for Goole and Pocklington.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Northern Ireland nationalists fear focus on reconciliation stalling push for unity referendum
In Northern Ireland, it used to be the one goal that everyone could agree on: reconciliation. Whether the region stayed in the UK or united with Ireland, all sides acknowledged the need to heal wounds from the Troubles and to bridge differences between Catholics and Protestants. Even those who riled the other side invoked reconciliation. How could they not? It was self-evidently a good thing. Not any more. Increasing numbers of nationalists say the R-word has been hijacked and twisted to block their campaign for a referendum on unification. 'The goal of reconciliation is very worthy but it is being manipulated and bastardised,' said Kevin Rooney, the founder of Irish Border Poll, a group that lobbies for a referendum. 'It has become an undisguised unionist veto.' Rooney and others fear that an elusive, ill-defined rapprochement between Northern Ireland's two biggest blocs is morphing into a precondition that gives unionists and the Irish and British governments a pretext to dodge a referendum. For Rooney, such a precondition would entrench the status quo in an entity designed a century ago for unionist dominance – and paradoxically undermine reconciliation. 'It creates a perverse incentive for hardline loyalists to resist everything and threaten violence.' Under this scenario, tensions associated with the traditional summer marching season, or the Irish-language rap trio Kneecap's outspoken statements on British rule, or any number of controversies, can be harnessed as purported evidence that Northern Ireland is not ready for a vote on its constitutional future. Stalled momentum for unification compounds nationalist anxiety: in Northern Ireland, Catholic birthrates are dwindling, the Brexit shock has faded, and Sinn Féin faltered in Ireland's election last November, paving the way for a renewed Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael coalition government that is in no rush for a referendum. Simon Harris, the tánaiste, has said he does not expect a vote this decade and that it is not a priority. The taoiseach, Micheal Mártin, has emphasised not unification but the government's Shared Island Initiative, which promotes reconciliation and cross-border cooperation and infrastructure. Dublin, in other words, is not putting pressure on Keir Starmer's government for a referendum, which under the Good Friday agreement must be called if it appears that most people in Northern Ireland would vote to leave the UK. The combined vote share for Sinn Féin and the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) has hovered at about 40% since 1998, a stagnation that has persisted despite the number of Catholics overtaking Protestants, but dwindling support for unionist parties has tilted recent elections to pro-unification candidates. For nationalists who think the conditions for a referendum will soon be met, the focus on reconciliation has set off alarm bells. Colum Eastwood, an MP and former SDLP leader, criticised what he called a 'creeping normalisation' to make it a prerequisite. 'Reconciliation is a moral imperative for our whole society – the southern establishment can't use it to justify telling citizens in the north that we can't have a decent economy, jobs and public services,' he tweeted. Elaborating via email, Eastwood said creating a new, united Ireland could advance reconciliation. 'Will there be tension? Yes. Can we confront that in a way that promotes understanding and actually contributes to reconciliation? Absolutely. We shouldn't run away from that – we should be rushing into that space,' he said. Leo Varadkar, the former taoiseach, has urged the current Irish government to push for a referendum, saying the Irish state would not have been founded in 1922, nor would there have been a Good Friday agreement, if full reconciliation had been a precondition. A '50 plus one' vote in favour of unification would suffice, he told the Féile an Phobail festival in Belfast last week. 'A majority is a majority' but it would be better to have 'maximum consent', he said. Michelle O'Neill, Sinn Féin's Northern Ireland first minister, told a republican commemoration last weekend that the party remained 'laser focused' on unity and urged the Irish government to put the matter before a citizens' assembly. A report by Ireland's Future, a non-profit that advocates unification, notes that the Good Friday agreement does not insist on reconciliation before a referendum. 'Our view is that any such objective will only follow the transition to a new constitutional arrangement on our shared island. Reunification is a reconciliation project,' it says. However, others – unionists as well as some nationalists – say it would be reckless to call a vote for existential change unless and until Northern Ireland's sectarian tensions ease. 'Demands for a referendum will only add to communal polarisation and be entirely counter-productive,' said Liam Kennedy, a history professor at Queen's University Belfast. He cited the so-called peace walls that divide Catholic and Protestant areas and the region's 'unstable equilibrium' as warnings. 'We need a much higher degree of reconciliation to lay the foundations of a united Ireland that would work. It would be madness for the republic to take on the political and financial burdens of unification unless it was clear most people in Northern Ireland were either satisfied with or at least accepting of Irish unity.' David Adams, who helped to broker the loyalist paramilitary ceasefire in 1994, said segregated housing and education had 'corralled' Catholics and Protestants and embedded tribalism. 'There is no violence but we remain divided. Without some sign of reconciliation advancing I don't think the republic would touch this place with a barge pole.' Peter Shirlow, the director of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Irish Studies, said reconciliation had in fact progressed – he cited power-sharing at Stormont, integrated workplaces, mixed marriages – but that falling Catholic birthrates and static nationalist support had weakened the referendum push. 'There ain't going to be a border poll,' he said. Trevor Ringland, a former international rugby player and unionist politician who served on the Northern Ireland Policing Board, said some referendum advocates undermined reconciliation by legitimising IRA violence during the Troubles. 'They've been selling the message to young people that we had to kill our neighbours to achieve constitutional change.' Ringland said songs such as Get Your Brits Out by Kneecap – 'Brits out' was an IRA-era slogan – elided the British identity of many people in Northern Ireland. 'The kids think they're being edgy but edgy was being in the police, which meant you could get a bullet through you.' Northern Ireland needed more reconciliation before voting on constitutional change, Ringland said. 'Let's keep a focus on building relationships and future generations can decide where to take it.' Unity advocates, in contrast, believe constitutional change – to be achieved by winning elections in Northern Ireland and prodding the Irish government into action – is a task for the current generation. Rooney said: 'The Dublin establishment has been lukewarm about unity for quite a while – some basically want an easy life and don't want to think about the north at all. It's our job to win them over.'
Forbes
19-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Carnival Cruise Line's Loyalty Program Changes May Be A Costly Mistake
Carnival Cruise Line just made big changes to its loyalty program, moving from lifetime status to ... More just two years. Carnival Cruise Line, part of the Carnival Corporation family of cruise brands, is conducting a huge, real-time experiment in customer loyalty. And, it's not going to be pretty. The cruise line announced this week that it's scrapping its 13-year-old loyalty program in favor of a spend-based system that will require customers to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to maintain their elite status. Diamond members, the highest level in the program, will retain their status for six years. Then, the math becomes daunting: spend $33,334 every two years or lose your perks. Carnival loyalists knew a change was coming. Speculation ranged from a modest increase in nights required to reach each level to status matching with Carnival brands like Princess and Cunard. Nobody expected such a dramatic set of changes. The new policy is a fundamental shift from emotional loyalty to transactional loyalty. It's a transition from, 'We value your lifetime relationship with our brand,' to, 'What have you done for us in the last 24 months?' Here's what Carnival got wrong from a behavioral standpoint: they're taking away something customers already own. Under the old system, a cruiser who sailed frequently over many years earned lifetime Diamond status based on nights at sea. That status felt earned, permanent, and emotionally valuable. Behavioral economists call this the "endowment effect"—once we own something, losing it feels much worse than never having it at all. Now Carnival is essentially telling these customers: "Thanks for your loyalty, but you need to pay up or lose what you've earned." President Christine Duffy's rationale reveals the core problem: "When everyone is special, no one feels special." This has been a problem with lifetime status on cruise lines. But the solution to having too many loyal customers isn't to make loyalty harder (or impossible for some) to achieve. It's to create meaningful ways to recognize different types of value. Here's what Carnival is really asking. To maintain Diamond status after their 'lifetime' status expires in 2032, customers need to earn 100,000 "stars" every two years at three stars per dollar spent. That's $33,334 in cruise spending every 24 months, or roughly $16,667 annually. For context, a typical week-long Caribbean cruise for two in a balcony cabin runs about $2,000-4,000 total. To hit Diamond spending requirements, a couple would need to take premium suites on longer cruises, book more than a couple of trips per year, or spend massively on add-ons like specialty dining and excursions. This fundamentally changes who can be "loyal" to Carnival. Frequency and long-term engagement no longer matter. It's all about 24-month spend. Carnival justifies the change by comparing itself to airline loyalty programs, which reset annually. But this comparison misses a crucial difference: business necessity versus leisure choice. Most elite status flyers are business travelers. They must fly regularly and often don't pay their own bills. Their loyalty is driven by route networks, alliances and codeshares, schedules, and corporate contracts. As airline loyalty became transactional by shifting from miles flown to dollars spent, emotional attachment to the airline, if any, faded away. Cruise loyalty is entirely different. It's discretionary vacation spending driven by emotional connections to the experience, the brand, and, for some, the recognition that comes with status. When you make that recognition not only transactional but temporary, you risk severing the emotional bond entirely. To further underscore the change to a transactional relationship, Carnival is eliminating many of the emotional touchpoints that made status feel special. Gone are the Gold pins, VIFP logo gifts, luggage tags, and other small but tangible symbols of achievement. These items cost Carnival little to produce but carried significant emotional weight for many recipients. They replaced these with a complicated points system that feels more like a corporate credit card than a celebration of cruise enthusiasm. Indeed, spending on a Carnival-branded credit card is one way to earn status points. Ten years ago, Delta Airlines switched to basing its Skymiles points on dollars spent instead of miles flown. United and American quickly followed suit. Will other cruise lines copy Carnival's plan? Or, will they see this move as a gaffe that opens the door to stealing some of Carnival's most loyal customers? Notably, no other Carnival brand has announced a similar change. Perhaps Carnival wants to see what happens before adopting it corporate-wide. Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings are Carnival's biggest competitors. They could solve their own problem of increasing numbers of elite cruisers by following Carnival's lead. Or, they could view this as a rare opportunity to siphon off some of Carnival's highest value customers. Royal Caribbean and Norwegian are the entry level brands closest in cost and demographics to Carnival. They could offer status matches to unhappy Carnival elite members, likely with less daunting requirements than Carnival's. I'd also recommend the use emotional messaging emphasizing "true loyalty recognition." This will play well with customers who feel their loyalty hasn't been reciprocated by Carnival. Even the airlines play this game. When Southwest Airlines infuriated customers by changing their free checked bag policy, Delta and American offered special status matches to attract Southwest's most elite flyers. Every CMO with a loyalty program should be taking notes as this plays out. Carnival is essentially running a live experiment on several key questions: Will customers pay to maintain status? Diamond members face a choice: dramatically increase spending or accept lower-tier treatment. How many will choose to spend versus switching to competitors? Or will they grit their teeth and keep sailing Carnival? Does transactional loyalty create real loyalty? By shifting from time-based to spend-based qualification, Carnival is testing whether purchased loyalty can replace earned loyalty. What happens when you break the loyalty contract? Customers invested years, even decades, building status under one set of rules. Changing those rules retroactively tests the limits of customer forgiveness. Can you shrink your way to exclusivity? Rather than finding creative ways to serve more loyal customers, Carnival chose to reduce the number of people eligible for top-tier treatment. Will artificial scarcity create more value than broader recognition? Carnival's changes don't take effect until June 2026. That's not that far off - many cruisers have already booked 2026 and 2027 cruises. Diamond members have special rules that may let them hang onto their status for longer. Perhaps not much will change right away. But, the real test is whether customers remain emotionally invested in the Carnival brand. Loyalty programs aren't just about perks and points. They're about creating an emotional relationship that makes customers choose your brand even when competitors offer better deals. By making loyalty purely transactional, Carnival risks turning its most devoted customers into brand-agnostic comparison shoppers. The next two years will tell us whether cruisers are willing to buy loyalty, or whether loyalty, once lost, is gone forever.
CNN
19-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
How the Iran war debate is playing out in the MAGAverse
CNN's Donie O'Sullivan reports on President Donald Trump's loyalists being at odds over whether to go to war with Iran after Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson clashed in an explosive interview.
BreakingNews.ie
12-06-2025
- BreakingNews.ie
1989 police probe into murder of John Devine ‘seriously defective'
The 1989 police investigation into the murder of John Devine was 'seriously defective', Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman has found. The 37-year-old was murdered by loyalists on Fallswater Street in west Belfast on July 23rd, 1989. Advertisement The father-of-three died after armed men entered his home and shot him a number of times at close range. Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson has highlighted a 'series of failures' in the investigation. These include that a man prosecuted for Mr Devine's murder almost three decades later should have been arrested and interviewed as a suspect at the time. Mrs Anderson's report is also critical of the then police force, the RUC's wider suspect and arrest strategy, which she found resulted in police taking action against only two people on a list of 36 persons of interest, despite intelligence and other information which linked individuals to the murder. Advertisement The report identifies that house-to-house and witness inquiries were not adequately pursued and led to missed opportunities to gather evidence which may have assisted police to identify suspects or open up lines of inquiry, and that all available forensic opportunities were not fully exploited. The investigation also found no evidence that the RUC alerted Mr Devine to the fact that his date of birth had been linked to the name John Devine, in a document found in two separate loyalist paramilitary intelligence caches. Although the document contained a different address and photo, the police did not consider the potential risk presented to Mr Devine, including whether a 'threat to life' warning was appropriate. Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland Marie Anderson said she believed the family of John Devine had been 'failed' by police (Liam McBurney/PA) 'Given the available evidence and other information gathered during my investigation, I consider the original RUC investigation to be seriously defective, and not capable of leading to the identification of those responsible,' she said. Advertisement Ms Anderson acknowledged that the RUC investigation of the murder was conducted at a time when policing resources in Troubles-related incidents were stretched and under significant pressure in a year when 81 people died. She also found that there was no specific intelligence available to police that, if acted upon, could have prevented the murder of Mr Devine. The Ombudsman concluded that Mr Devine was the victim of a campaign of sectarian violence mounted against the nationalist community. 'Loyalist paramilitaries alone were responsible for his murder,' she said. Advertisement 'Given the significant failings in the RUC investigation, I believe that Mr Devine's family were failed by police in their search for the truth regarding the perpetration of his murder.' Solicitor Padraig O Muirigh (Rebecca Black/PA) Solicitor Padraig O Muirigh, who acts for Mr Devine's family, said they welcome the findings of the Ombudsmans' report. 'Mrs Anderson has concluded that the failings in the RUC investigation of Mr Devine's murder were so fundamental that the murder investigation was 'incapable of detecting potential offenders and supporting a prosecution',' he said. 'There were a litany of serious deficiencies identified in the Police Ombudsman investigation including a failure of RUC Special Branch to disseminate intelligence to the police investigation team, the failure to arrest and interview key suspects and multiple forensic shortcomings. Advertisement 'These findings are a damning indictment of the RUC investigation into John Devine's murder. 'The breadth and nature of these failings cannot be explained by mere incompetence. 'The Devine family have a long-held view that those involved in the murder were protected from prosecution by the RUC and that the security forces colluded with loyalist paramilitaries. 'That view has been reinforced by these findings. The Devine family commend Mrs Anderson and her staff for the diligent investigation they have conducted.'
