STARMER AND THE BOMBER

Keir Starmer and Martina Anderson

There was one thing that symbolised Jeremy Corbyn for many right-minded Brits.  It was his long association with both the IRA and its political wing Sinn Fein.  As fellow Marxists with a shared hatred of Britain, Corbyn and the IRA were a match made in ideological Heaven.  Their association was no secret and when Martin McGuinness died in 2017, Corbyn paid warm tribute to his old comrade.  Corbyn was Labour leader at that time and naturally he provoked a furious backlash from veterans and relatives of IRA victims.

Corbyn's successor has gone to great lengths to distance himself from his predecessor, ejecting him permanently from the party earlier this year.  However, what the British public don't know is that Keir Starmer himself also has an ongoing relationship with the Marxists of Sinn Fein-IRA.

When Starmer won the Labour leadership election in 2020, one of those congratulating him was his friend Martina Anderson.  Who is Martina Anderson?  Well, as a young woman in the 1980s she was an IRA terrorist with multiple convictions, culminating in a life sentence in 1986 for conspiring to cause explosions.  Six years earlier she was arrested at the scene of a bombing in Londonderry and later convicted of possessing a firearm and causing an explosion.

In June 1985 she was arrested at a makeshift bomb factory in Glasgow, along with four other terrorists that included the Brighton bomber Patrick Magee.  Only Magee was convicted in relation to Brighton, but Anderson and the others were convicted of conspiring to cause explosions.  She was released from her English prison thanks to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Around that time a young socialist lawyer by the name of Keir Starmer took on the role of human rights advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board.  He was still in that role when Anderson - now a Sinn Fein Assembly Member - was appointed a member of the policing board.  With peace in Northern Ireland still relatively new, it was a highly controversial appointment given the IRA's murder of more than 300 police officers.  Starmer didn't seem to mind, and he bonded with Anderson.

Their friendship was exposed for the world to see when Starmer was elected Labour leader in 2020.  Anderson publicly congratulated Starmer and also praised Corbyn, sharing photos of her with the respective Labour leaders (see Facebook post below).  The photo with Starmer was taken in January 2018 when he was Corbyn's Brexit spokesman.  Sinn Fein were also opposed to Brexit and campaigned to keep Northern Ireland inside the EU, which thanks to the fudged Tory Brexit it still technically is.

Anderson has not toned down her Republican rhetoric and describes herself as a 'former PoW' on her social media profiles.  While in prison she formed a close friendship with another female IRA convict, Ellie O'Dwyer.  O'Dwyer died earlier this month and photos of her and her coffin currently adorn Anderson's social media profiles (see X screenshot below).

In order to distance himself from Corbyn and present himself as a moderate, even patriotic leader, Starmer does not want to publicise his links to Sinn Fein.  Anderson's public endorsement in 2020 was a huge embarrassment to him.  Starmer tried to keep subsequent Sinn Fein meetings under wraps, in 2021 and 2022, but again came unstuck when Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald tweeted about their 'very constructive meeting'.  Oops.

Labour hasn't changed.  Starmer's embrace of the Union flag is disingenuous at best and earlier this year a former colleague alleged that as a young man, Starmer supported a united Ireland.  With Sinn Fein now at the helm in Northern Ireland, how safe can the Union be under our next Prime Minister?