John McDonnell apologises for his 2003 IRA comments

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, apologised last night on Question Time for his 2003 comments suggesting that we should "honour" the IRA armed struggle.

He said last night

“I think my choice of words were wrong. I accept that. I should not have said the issue about the honouring, I actually said afterwards that there’s no cause that justifies the loss of life in this way… I accept it was a mistake to use those words, but actually if it contributed to saving one life or preventing someone else being maimed it was worth doing because we did hold onto the peace process… If I gave offense, and I clearly have, from the bottom of my heart I apologise, I apologise.”

You can see the apology last night on Guido Fawkes' blog at

http://order-order.com/2015/09/18/john-mcdonnell-apologises-for-praising-iras-bombs-and-bullets/#:KZeRLJMVngxwkA

Postscript:

And also on the Spectator website, with an acerbic response from Douglas Murray to which I will be sending the link to anyone who complains to me in future about the criticisms which have been made of John McDonnell, at

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/09/why-are-people-falling-for-john-mcdonnells-question-time-apology/

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