Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade has revealed his support for Irish Republicanism and his support for the IRA.
Roy Greenslade is a freelance journalist and a former professor of journalism. He has worked for various national newspapers.
The Sunday Times published a lengthy piece by Greenslade, taken from a journalism quarterly, in which he unapologetically admitted his lifelong support for the IRA and its violent methods.
Mr Greenslade said he secretly supported Irish Republicanism and has “come out of hiding” to explain why he believes the IRA bombing campaigns of the 1970s to 1990s were “justified”.
The former Editor of The Daily Mirror said he chose to “button his lip” and continue working in order to pay his mortgage.
Greenslade stated: “I came to accept that the fight between the forces of the state and a group of insurgents was unequal and therefore could not be fought on conventional terms. In other words, I supported the use of physical force.”
Continuing, he said he was “in complete agreement about the right of the Irish people to engage in armed struggle”. He had also provided bail surety for an IRA man accused of participating in the Hyde Park bombing in 1982.
An IRA bomb was detonated at The Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party’s conference that year, killing five and injuring dozens of others.
He advised he “did nothing more than the scores of journalists who keep their political views to themselves.”
The news prompted former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan to tweet his views on the matter, calling The Guardian‘s silence “cowardly”:
Two days since The Guardian's long-time media commentator Roy Greenslade exposed himself as an IRA terror supporter, and still silence from the paper or any of its fearless 'we must hold journalists to account' staff.
Their silence is as cowardly as his shameful duplicity. pic.twitter.com/H2B3xLxkHO— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 2, 2021
Dawn Barnett, Conservative Councillor for Hangleton and Knoll, said: “I remember it well. I was busy bringing up my family at the time and we went along there while taking the dog for a run – I’ll never forget. This was such a terrible thing; to say it was justified is just really sick.”
Ms Barnett expressed her disgust with Mr Greenslade’s comments, adding: “I think what he has said is terrible – violence breeds violence.”
A former Editor of The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, was even more outspoken on Twitter: “I always knew Roy Greenslade was a sh*t. I didn’t know he was a pro-violence, IRA-supporting sh*t. In The Sunday Times, he reveals that while working for me at The Sun, editing The Mirror and being a media critic, he backed IRA scum killing our people. A complete c***.”
