As Enniskillen bomb relative says Sinn Fein and IRA are same, Pat Cullen is urged to be clear about her view on republican violence

The former head of the Royal College of Nursing, now Sinn Fein election candidate for Westminster, gave an interview to the Impartial Reporter newspaper in Fermanagh in which she said that during the violent years her support was for “the people that I was treating”.

It is not clear in the interview if Ms Cullen was challenged on this point but the News Letter recently asked her view on IRA violence and she did not reply (‘Erstwhile leader of the UK's 500,000 nurses declines to say if it was wrong for the IRA to blow people up and shoot them after revealing she is standing for Sinn Fein’).

Tom Elliott, the former Ulster Unionist MP for the constituency in which she is running, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, said that for most people “the two sides were the innocent victims and the perpetrators of violence” and said the situation “certainly was not the same for both of these groups of people”.

And in the News Letter today, Aileen Quinton – whose mother Alberta, a retired nursing sister, was murdered in the republican terrorist atrocity – explains in a letter why she deliberately continues to use the phrase Sinn Fein/IRA when referring to the party for which Ms Cullen is now standing, given the links between the two.

Mr Elliott said in relation to his own two categories of Troubles groups: “One was an innocent section of people who went about their daily lives, assisting and helping in the community, with many of those innocent people being victims of the troubles, some murdered or seriously injured.”

Mr Elliott said: “Contrast that with the perpetrators, the terrorists who went around shooting and bombing those innocent victims, destroying lives and families.

He said: “I’d be interested to know what the Sinn Fein candidate feels about the difference in those two groups? I’m surprised that she is saying that no-one is asking her how she feels about the past, I know lots of people in Fermanagh & South Tyrone who are very interested to know how Ms Cullen feels about the past, how she feels about the many health workers who were murdered by the IRA, a number who were murdered in the 1997 Enniskillen Remembrance Day bomb.

“It would be good to hear from Ms Cullen on her view if the IRA campaign of murder and destruction was right and supported by her?”

Sinn Fein has been approached for a response to Mr Elliott’s comments.

Ms Cullen was a former UK head of the Royal College of Nursing, before announcing her bid to become an MP who will not take her seat.

The single unionist candidate in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency is the UUP’s Diana Armstrong – who has received the backing of DUP and TUV who will not contest the seat.

Every vote will count in a seat won by Sinn Fein in 2010 by just four votes.