You said it, Clare (Tape saying IRA never targeted civilians)

Firebrand MP Clare Short DID claim the IRA had never targeted civilians despite her furious denial, it emerged today.

The Ladywood Labour MP had insisted she had not made the comment during an interview with a newspaper reporter from the Dubai-based Gulf News.

But the Evening Mail has had exclusive access to a tape of the interview in which Ms Short said: "I think it's always wrong to target civilians.

"I think that's, because even when you understood the IRA, they never targeted civilians."

Ms Short could not be contacted for further comment today but the release of the transcript blows apart her claim that the IRA quotation was "completely false".

Yesterday she claimed she had told the newspaper: "We are seeing a moral deterioration with the deliberate targeting of large numbers of civilians."

She added: "The claim I said the IRA didn't target civilians is completely false."

The interview sparked anger among survivors of the Birmingham pub bombings as they prepared to mark the 30th anniversary of the atrocities which left 21 people dead and 170 injured.

One of the injured, Ian Lord, from Acocks Green, said he believed Ms Short would never apologise. "Does she know her constituency? Does she know what happened in Birmingham that night? Because I'll never forget that night."

The Labour Party also distanced itself from her remarks, branding them "inaccurate and insensitive".

Amazing, No mention of the B Specials terrorizing catholic families for thirty years, no mention of the collusion between the prod terror groups and the British Army and Intelligence agencies (supergrasses). No mention of the Para Regiment shooting unarmed civilians in the back on Bloody Sunday and getting away with it, no mention of internment, where if you were young and male and catholic, you ended up in the H blocks or cages of Long Kesh. Do you think its right to live in a system where districts are so gerrymandered that a 90% catholic population ended up returning a UNIONIST to Stormont and Parliament? Do you think it's right to live in a society where only property owners get the vote? You better turn in your Orange Sash and flute and stop hating your catholic heritage!!

See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1240494/posts?page=11

A brief history of the IRA:

21 July 1972 Bloody Friday. 22 bombs killed 9 and seriously injured 130. 30 years later the IRA officially apologised for this set of attacks.
1974 Guildford pub bombing killed 19 and injured 182. Four people, dubbed the Guildford Four, were convicted for this and were imprisoned with life sentences. 15 years later Lord Lane of the Court of Appeal overturned their convictions noting "the [investigating] officers must have lied".
1974 Birmingham Pub Bombings. Bombs in two pubs killed 19. The Birmingham Six were tried for this and convicted. Many years later, after new evidence of police fabrication and suppression of evidence, their convictions were quashed. Appeals by the Birmingham Six that the read IRA bombers admit their responsibility were ignored.
1975 Balcombe Street siege
1976 The IRA blew up the newly appointed British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, resulting in a State of Emergency being declared in the Republic. The IRA also threatened to kidnap or kill Irish cabinet ministers and the President of Ireland.
1979 The IRA blow up Earl Mountbatten of Burma, members of his family and a local child off the Irish coast. An appeal by Pope John Paul II during his Irish visit that their campaign of violence end was ignored.
1981 IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, imprisoned in connection with his involvement in a military strike involving a bomb and subsequent gun battle, was elected Member of Parliament in the Northern Ireland constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, after the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party decided not to run a candidate, leaving Sands as the main nationalist candidate in the by-election. He had been on a hunger strike for 'Prisoner of War' status for 41 days prior to being elected. He died 23 days later.
1981 The IRA killed Ulster Unionist Party Belfast MP Rev Robert Bradford along with the caretaker of a community centre. Irish Taoiseach Dr. Garret FitzGerald and former taoiseach Charles Haughey condemned the killings in Dáil Éireann. SDLP party leader John Hume accused the Provisional IRA of waging a campaign of "sectarian genocide".
1982 Hyde Park. 2 bombs killed 8 members of the Household Cavalry and Royal Green jackets units performing ceremonial duties in one of the few mainland attacks which targeted soldiers. 7 of their horses were also killed.
1983 Harrods department store bomb during Christmas shopping season killed 6 (3 police) and wounded 90.
1984 Brighton hotel bombing: a bomb in the Grand Hotel killed 5 in a failed attempt to kill members of the British cabinet, including Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister.
1987 Enniskillen massacre. Bombing of a Remembrance Day parade killed 11 civilians (including nurse Marie Wilson, whose father Gordon Wilson went on to become a leading campaigner for an end to violence in Northern Ireland) and injured 63. The IRA later claimed that their target was a colour guard of British soldiers. On Remembrance Day 1997, the leader of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, formally apologised for the bombing.
1989 10 Royal Marines bandsmen were killed and 22 injured in a bombing of their base in Deal, Kent.
1990 Car bombings in Northern Ireland killed 7 and wounded 37.
1991 2 IRA members were killed by their own bomb in St Albans.
1992 8 Protestant builders killed by an IRA bomb on their way to work at an Army base near Omagh.
1993 IRA bomb in Warrington killed 2 children.
1993 IRA detonated a huge truck bomb in the City of London at Bishopsgate, which killed 2 and caused approximately £350m of damage, including the near destruction of St. Ethelburga's Bishopsgate.
1993 A bomb at a fish and chip shop underneath a UDA office on the Protestant Shankill Road, Belfast went off prematurely and killed 10 people, including 2 children and the bomber.
1996 IRA broke their cease-fire and kill two in a bomb at the Canary Wharf towers in London.
15 June 1996 Manchester bombing by IRA was a 5,000lb bomb which injured 206 people and damaged 70,000 square meters of retail and office space.

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