One wonders what the people of the United States of America will make of the British media’s barely contained gloating over the recent twin terrorist bomb blasts in the city of Boston? Oh yes, the sentiments were wrapped in some cosy words of sympathy and understanding but through all the woolly camouflage the obvious satisfaction at seeing an “Irish-American city” struck by terror, men, women and children killed or maimed, was all too evident. The British, however irrationally, blame the United States and Irish-Americans in particular for the historic armed struggle of the Irish Republican Army during the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In their view without Irish-American money, guns, explosives and technical knowhow – not to mention political and diplomatic support – the IRA would have succumbed to the British war machine in a matter of months. Without the succour of Irish-America, so runs the myth, Britain would never have been defeated – or at least forced to make a distasteful peace.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the language of the British propaganda machine is couched in the same language of the “International Zionist conspiracy”. If people thought the anti-Semites made hay with the “power of the Israelis lobby” In Congress that is nothing to how the British present the power of the “Irish murder lobby”. For the British news media (and the newspapers in particular) Irish-Americans are: “ignorant”, “bigoted”, “hate-filled”, “fanatical”, “zealous”, “murder-loving”, “terrorist-coddling” and worse of all “English-hating”. But then this simply reflects wider historic British views about the Irish in general and the remnants of the “global Irish conspiracy” that so obsessed British imperial minds in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Of course this bigotry applies to British journalists and commentators from across the political spectrum, Right to Left. But then many of Britain’s chattering classes still bear a grudge for losing the War of Independence (both the Irish and the American one).
Oh well. At least an end to the (full scale) war in the north-east of Ireland has put an end to forty years of British newspaper fantasies of former US Special Forces’ soldiers joining the Irish Republican Army (“Deadly IRA Sniper Is Ex-US Ranger!”), of IRA Volunteers attending secret training courses in Massachusetts run by US Marines (“IRA Trained In American Boot-Camps”) and of Irish-American spies in the FBI and CIA (“FBI Sympathisers Protect IRA Bombers”).
Now we just have the bitter and twisted joy of a bitter and twisted people to contend with.
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AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Even if Irish-America did supply 50% of the Arms and Explosives to the Provisional IRA that still means 50% came from elsewhere. You never see any real investigation into that. Okay a certain Libyan leader was involved in supplying certain amounts of gear but I doubt he was the only one. Remember the talk around the time the IRA decommissioned its arms of them having a lot of very heavy gear that British Intelligence had not told the Canadian General about.
I also remember reading in Eamonn Mallie’s and Patrick Bishop’s book on the Provisional IRA that two IRA members in the early 1980’s visited PLO training camps in the Lebanon and were shocked by the powerful weapons put on display for them. Far to powerful to be used in Irish conditions. I am pretty sure it would be just as easy for the IRA to purchase guns in Canada for example as in Pittsburgh or Boston. I was once told that Boston has quite strict gun laws by American standards and that it would be easier to purchase a gun in neighbouring New Hampshire.
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Absolutely. The level of American support for the IRA was grossly exaggerated. If it truly approached the levels claimed in the British media the British would have seen a complete withdrawal from the north-east of the country along the lines of the War of Independence. One notices that the British newspapers rarely focus on “rogue” British soldiers selling off ammunition, uniforms, flak jackets and radios to the local Volunteers in Belfast and Derry in the early 1970s.
As it was the majority of IRA munitions were sourced outside the United States (AK47s and AKMs) or produced internally (various improvised mortars). This is as good a source as any.
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I think it was Tim Pat Coogan who wrote in his book the IRA that the Provisional IRA used a version of the Armalite rifle that was manufactured under licence in factories in England. So British made weaponary was in fact used to kill British soldiers. You don’t read that in British tabloids I wonder why?
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Most British Security sources said towards the end it was the Semtex that gave the IRA the cutting edge. I believe the RPG-7 rocket launchers came from Algeria. But there was so much weaponary available back then in Europe and elsewhere that someone was always going to supply what ever you needed. Didn’t they even find guns on their way to the IRA hidden on the QE2 liner once?
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Yep, it was used for weapons from the northern US, smuggled on-board and off-board by sympathetic crew (most of whom were British-born Liverpudlians and Cockneys).
One strike on the Baltic Exchange was worth a thousand Europas.
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Perhaps you could give an example of the British media gloating?
I didn’t see any.
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This is typically moronic (not to mention counter-historical) or this in the odious Daily Mail, or for local views then this snide “what goes around comes around” insinuation masquerading as a plea for understanding. There are many other examples if you look for them. British radio stations have been replete with gloating and a serves them right attitude.
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