God Rest Albert Reynolds

Posted By: August 21, 2014

CAPITOL HILL. Thursday, August 21, 2014 — The president of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus has paid tribute to former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds who died on August 21, 2014.
 
Fr. Sean Mc Manus said : ” God rest the noble Irish soul of Albert Reynolds. Just when one had given up hope that the Dublin Government would ever do the right thing on The North, Albert came along like a breath of fresh air and helped to make the Irish peace -process possible. As I document in my Memoirs, My American Struggle for Justice in Northern Ireland, I knew Albert was a different type of Taoiseach by the way he responded to the meeting a group of us had with presidential candidate Bill Clinton in New York city on April 5, 1992. Clinton promised to support our main demands. Albert immediately welcomed Clinton’s expressed interest … and the rest is history.

Contrast that with the way Garret Fitz Gerald reacted to the meeting I had arranged with presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in Pittsburgh, PA, October 27, 1976 : Carter give us an excellent statement on the Irish issue, and just six days before he was elected President. Instead of welcoming it, Fitz Gerald set out to sabotage Carter’s interest, demanding Carter prove he was not supporting violence, thereby assisting the British Government in forcing Carter to back off. As I say in my Memoirs, ‘ I am haunted by this thought: had Fitz Gerald welcomed Carter’s statement, how much sooner the peace-process could have started, how many lives could have been saved and how much suffering could have been spared.’ (Page128).

Fr. Mc Manus concluded with: ” And now it appears that Taoiseach Enda Kenny — by his studied indifference to The North — is determined to undo the good work of Albert Reynolds, and repeat the bad work of Garret Fitz Gerald.”
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