The Pensive Quill

Jorge Videla

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:48:00 +0000

As many people as is necessary will die in Argentina to protect the hemisphere from the international communist conspiracy - Jorge Videla 1975.

Being a former prisoner I tend never to derive pleasure from learning of anyone being compelled to live out the remainder of their days in jail. It is no place to die, far removed from family and friends and invariably in the company of people not disposed toward compassion for prisoner. It is how I felt when the Nazi leader Rudolph ended his days in Spandau.
When news emerged that the military dictator who presided over the 1976 coup in Argentina and subsequent Dirty War had breathed his last in Marcos Paz Prison in Buenos Aires at the age of 87, any feeling of empathy completely eluded me. Jorge Videla had been serving a life sentence for his role in the mass killings of Argentine citizens and foreign nationals. Under his presidency many thousands died in custody quite often as a result of torture. Others were simply taken by navy helicopter and thrown into the River Plate estuary, never to be seen or heard of again.

Videla was also convicted and sentenced to fifty years for kidnapping babies from parents he later had murdered. Women detainees who were pregnant would be kept alive long enough to deliver a child before being murdered. ‘After the babies were pulled away, the mothers were removed to another site for their executions. Some were put aboard death flights and pushed out of military planes over open water.’

A prison death such as that underwent by Videla, that was not the result of either torture or execution, was merciful by the standards he employed.

Videla had been sentenced to life for his crimes in 1985 but served only five years, benefitting from President Menem’s amnesty law. With increasing public hostility to the amnesty a judge placed him under house arrest in 1998 where he remained for ten years before being sent down for life again in 2008.

The armed forces coup, although widely reported to be a reaction to the political violence of leftist groups like the Montoneros and ERP, coupled to the incompetence of the government of Isabel Peron, fitted into a long history of assaults by the military on the country’s democratic institutions. What followed wa salmost without precedent in the region. Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Latin America for US-based Human Rights Watch, said:

Videla presided over a government that engaged in one of the most cruel repressions that we have seen in Latin America in modern times. He was arrogant to the end and unwilling to acknowledge his responsibility for the massive atrocities committed in Argentina. Many of the secrets of the repression will die with him.

There are some who no doubt hope that is true, including perhaps the current pope whose own behaviour during the military dictatorship has been subject to much scrutiny.

Yet it is misleading to claim that Videla did not acknowledge responsibility. Videla’s arrogance lay not in him denying responsibility but in failing to acknowledge anything wrong in what he did. 'I accept the responsibility as the highest military authority during the internal war. My subordinates followed my orders.’

Few will express regret if thesame subodinates are to follw his fate.

‘A curse on those who let him die’

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Tue, 21 May 2013 07:48:00 +0000

Aidan Ferguson with an address he gave at Milltown Cemetery on the 11th of May. It was delivered on behalf of the Sean MacDairmada Society Belfast on the 67th anniversary of Oglach Sean McCaughey ... Volunteer Sean McCaughey

As most here today will know Sean McCaughey was born in Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, and moved to Ardoyne, Belfast, at 5 years of age. As a youth he was active in the GAA, an enthusiastic speaker of Irish and a member of Na Fianna Eireann and later, the IRA. McCaughey’s rise through the ranks was quite remarkable and testament to the regard he was held in within the Republican Movement. In 1941 he was captured and imprisoned by the Gardaí. By that time he was adjutant general of the army. The Free State authorities charged him with the attempted execution of Stephen Hayes, an IRA informer.

He arrived in Portlaoise Gaol in September 1941. The measure of McCaughey’s character was to become clear when his prison record is examined. He displayed his unwavering commitment to his republican beliefs throughout his time in gaol. During this period the Free State prison authorities had been insisting on serving prisoners wearing criminal uniforms. McCaughey, immediately refused outright to be criminalised when Free State authorities instructed him to wear a prison garb. This led to a substantial period where McCaughey was clad in nothing but a blanket. He endured horrific conditions during this period where he was held in solitary confinement and refused any visits whatsoever for nearly 5 years. As no resolution was forthcoming from the state authorities McCaughey commenced a hunger strike to secure his freedom. In the most horrific circumstances he intensified his hunger strike and would refuse not just food but also water, undoubtedly speeding up his own demise. McCaughey passed away on the 11th of May 1946. The Free State government of this time tragically ignored him.

It should be remembered that the Free State administration directly culpable for his death was Fianna Fáil. This is the same political machine that now wishes to extend its political base to the six counties, only 87 years after the implementation of partition.

As has been widely predicted the closer we will see towards 2016, Fianna Fail like other constitutional nationalist parties will attempt to claim the legacy of the 1916 revolutionaries; these are the same people who ignored 1916 when it didn’t suit.

There hypocritical approach and opportunism will not fool anyone. Most outrageously it must be also remembered that it was another Free State government in the 1970s who actually arrested some veterans of 1916 and the tan war for their participation in Easter commemorations in Dublin.

Jumping on the republican bandwagon at important times such as 2016 to score political capital is a blatant opportunistic attempt to gather votes. The republican people from across Ireland will not be fooled however. Fianna Fail's false posturing as Irish republicans will not cut it.

The only truly fitting way to commemorate the republican dead is work for the realisation of republican aspirations now, namely the establishment of a socialist republic on a 32 county basis.

In Ireland today the integrity of our nation is consistently undermined by a media backed and government funded normalisation offensive. The appointment of Derry as the UK’s city of culture underlines this. In addition, the holding of the G8 in picturesque rural Fermanagh is another flank of the attack on Ireland’s right to nationhood.

The stark reality is the top table of western capitalism and the representatives of the super rich internationally will wine and dine in British occupied Ireland without a single thought for the continued illegal subvention of Irish democracy that comes with partition. This summit should be opposed by all republicans. The obvious flouting of our nations sovereignty in such tactical fashion outlines the scale of work republicans need to apply themselves too. McCaugheys prison struggle echoes today in Maghaberry where forced strip searching and beatings of prisoners are a reality of Britain’s continued criminalisation policy. The personal integrity he personally upheld remains an inspiration to contemporary republicans.

The prison struggle continues. Men on Roe 3 and Roe 4 continue to fight their own criminalisation and we extend our solidarity greetings to them today. The prison issue is accompanied by the state internment of steadfast republicans such as Stephen Murney, Martin Corey and Marian Price. All is not rosy in the manufactured statelet however. Behind Stormont backed PR stunts and silhouettes of the Titanic Irish republicans are sent to jail with no evidence against them or framed and then criminalised and beaten in jail.

All is not lost however.

Genuine Irish republicanism is rebuilding and steadily re-gaining momentum to restore honour and pride to the nation as we approach the centenary of 2016. We will achieve the genuine objectives and wishes as laid out by our martyred dead and that is a 32 county socialist republic and nothing less.

A Maze of 'cut through' alleyways and entries.

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Guest writer Davy Carlin takes us through the maze of streets that made up the Ballymurphy of his childhood

The Carlin family was a large family like many in those days. One of my uncles was killed though when he was a child. For me I was lucky even to be born. I was the result of a vacuum birth where a large dent covered by hair remains in my skull. I had less than a 5% chance of living. I had always thought though that I had been born in the Royal Victoria Hospital in West Belfast like the rest of my stepbrothers and sisters but in fact I was actually born in the Belfast City Hospital in South Belfast.

Having been born into the Murph I am still considered by some a ‘Murph man’ Today books, articles and songs have been written about the Murph with many more stories of daring, of courage, and of resistance handed down from word of mouth. The Ballymurphy estate pre-war {the recent conflict} was an area like many other Nationalist working class estates that suffered socio and economic deprivation, poor housing, discrimination and much more at the hands of the Unionist dominated state. For that reason the establishment of a local Tenants Association took place in the early 1960’s. Its first meeting was held in St Bernadette’s school almost directly across the road from me. St Bernadette’s was a school where as a child I had used to climb over its gates with other kids, as so to go and play handball against its walls. My grandfather, Jim Carlin, was in the Ballymurphy Tenants Association {BTA} along with Hugh McCormick, one of its founders. I used to as a child knock around in those days with one of his grandkids, Kieran Mc Cormick, who frequented his home, which was directly across from ours. Also in the tenants association was Frank Cahill the brother of veteran Republican Joe Cahill. At times the BTA had held its meetings in our home where my mum would serve up tea and biscuits and would also have helped out at some of the social functions etc. organised by the BTA. The BTA went on to have a huge impact for the betterment of the community and was a testament to the skills, commitment and determination of its activists that they had achieved so much. This more especially against the backdrop of the overt discrimination and state barriers erected against them.

The Murph itself was a maze of the ‘‘cut through’’ alleyways and entry’s. Perfect for the IRA volunteers to take on the Brits in the urban territory before the redrawing of the eventual new estates that took such a situation into account. The Murph although at the forefront of the Irish War was a community not only of resistance but a community that also cared and embraced each other. Of course there were the various splits and disagreements within and between various organisations. Which when feuding, took those feuds at times brutal and bloody onto the Murph’s surrounding areas streets. Nevertheless at times of need, the community stood firm as one, and resisted whatever was thrown against them.

As a kid I knocked about with many on the street with many more on the street having been related to me. In those days extended families lived very close to each other and so the maze of streets in the Murph had many families related to me. Therefore seeing the number of relatives houses actually running well into double figures from my mums and stepfathers sides of the family. Their homes stretched from Glenalina Road right round to the Ballymurphy road and within the surrounding area.

Visiting such homes always was a delight with being handed sweets and biscuits as I made my rounds from home to home. Yet such was the times that all homes that I frequented were open and welcoming. In those days doors where left open not only as so to be open and welcoming for visitors but in many occasions as so those being chased by the Peelers or Brits could run through the front door and out the back. Something I had availed of on many occasions as a child with the Brits in tow chasing after me, to words of the effect, ‘there’s the wee Black Bastard’. Ballymurphy in those days was an estate that was at the forefront of the conflict with every family and household affected by it and participant in various ways within it. Even today the stories I hear within conversations shows up not only the discrimination and the brutality of the state but of the resolute willingness of such citizens to stand firm against it.

Yet while I was being born into the Murph on the 4th of Oct 1970 a hand full of doors down the bottom of our street was the house of the Adams family. On that adjourning street of Divismore Park, within that house, was a young man who would go on to become infamous in the annals of the recent conflict. His name was Gerry Adams and he was to go on to become the President of Sinn Fein {SF}. Yet such was the nature of Ballymurphy and West Belfast in general, many such persons now recognised within the recent conflict had lived or still live there.

When I had moved to Sevastopol Street I had witnessed the shooting of Ronnie Bunting. Ronnie Bunting was the founding member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party {IRSP} and once Belfast commander and a senior chief of staff of the Irish National Liberation Army {INLA}. The house that I had actually moved into in 6 Sevastopol Street in the early seventies, the person that had lived there previous to me was another whose name is now famous in the annals of our recent conflict. His name was Seamus Twomey, the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s {PIRA} Chief of Staff. Then when I had moved to Twinbrook, John Lowry, who had gone on to become the General Secretary of the Workers Party {WP} who were allied with Official Irish Republican Army {OIRA} had lived in my street there in Twinbrook. So such was the nature of the times that most streets had a history that has already be written within the history books detailing various incidents and movements, or indeed of those involved within them.

For me though as a six year old such things were not part of my understanding, but such times were though indeed exciting. In those days the streets of the Murph as a community held their own ‘get togethers’ and entertainment. As I kid I remember bringing out the kitchen chairs in those long hot summers onto the streets of the late seventies and playing street bingo or having a street party. The games of yesteryear in the Murph for the girls and at times the boys where hop scotch and skips. Skips was a rope turned and we skipped over it while all sang the various songs to accompany it. I remember I also had these toy soldiers and Brit jeeps, which I mercilessly attacked in pretend ambushes or threw against the wall to see them smash into smithereens.

As a kid and teenager I knocked around with my cousins Patrick, Martin, John, Ian and Seamus. I also hung around with my neighbour whose house was a first aid centre during some of the worst days of the troubles This when volunteers where having gun battles with the Brits from the back alley ways, from side streets or from within the gardens of the Murph. Or when the Brits where attempting to run riot and to dish out their brutality throughout the Murph, and so seeing the Murph residents of all ages getting wired into them in running street battles.

Yet looking back on those days although a kid I can remember nearly every surname in that street. Such was those days; I believe many of similar and older age can. Today though many things are different, with the street games all but gone and home computers, motorbikes, mini quad bikes, and even mini jeeps the interest of many such kids today. Also seeing the extended family in most cases not existing, to and in the same extent, as many of the now generation of my age tending to move further and further away. This, as many more are now able to find jobs and some financial stability. Yet in those days of yesteryear although we had little in the material sense we nevertheless had much within that sense of community and solidarity. This was indeed intensified within the collective forms of struggle and resistance.

55 Hours: Wednesday 8 July 1981

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:55:00 +0000

Tonight the Pensive Quill carries the last of a four part series by guest writer Carrie Twomey that takes readers through a day-by-day account of the events of early July, 1981.

Sunday ● Monday ● Tuesday ● Wednesday

“I accept in a situation like that there has to be secret talks, has to be secrecy of some sorts, but when you are talking about men's lives that are just dwindling away, they were entitled to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” - Brendan Hughes

PART FOUR: WEDNESDAY 8 JULY 1981

Early Morning

Death's Brother, Sleep

Gerry Adams decided he needed some rest. He explains in Before the Dawn that he 'started cat-napping during the day in order to be relatively fresh for negotiations at night'. Ten Men Dead details that Adams 'had taken a break Tuesday evening' and did not return to the safe house where the channel communications were conducted until 'the early hours of the morning'.

A Time for Many Words and A Time for Sleep

According to Danny Morrison, at this point "Republican monitors [were] still waiting confirmation from Mountain Climber," and he claims that "[t]he call does not come." This is repeated in Ten Men Dead, where a member of the Adams Group in the safe house tells Adams upon his return from his cat-nap that nothing has come through. The impression is that the channel line had gone dead and the British were done with the communications.

Brendan Duddy's notes, however, offer a radically different perspective. In his diary, he has a series of times listed:

11:58

11:59

12:00 midnight

1:00 am

1:33 am

2:10 am

These times are then followed in the diary by the details of the offer made by Thatcher that could have ended the hunger strike.

It is unlikely that those times are a record of attempts made by the Adams Group to contact Thatcher, given they were waiting for her response to their 8pm messages, and Adams was not available.

Could it be that the list is an accounting of the amount of times Duddy had attempted to contact the Adams Group with Thatcher's offer before Adams returned from his nap?

The calls from the Mountain Climber did come, it seems, numerous times, while Joe McDonnell was breathing his last four hours. Adams was not there to receive them until after 2 in the morning.

When he had finally been contacted, the British were still hopeful. The NIO telegraphed Thatcher:

The statement has now been read and we await provo reactions (we would be willing to allow them a sight of the document just before it is given to the prisoners and released to the press). It has been made clear (as the draft itself states) that it is not a basis for negotiation.

The choreography was in place. Everything the Adams Group had asked for was there, such as the rephrasing on Work and Association. They were even given their added demand of the veto of sight before the prisoners were to be given the agreed statement and it was released publicly.

All that was needed was for the Adams Group to say it was enough to end the strike, and the process of saving the men's lives would begin.

Offer

The offer sent to the Adams Group on the eve of Joe McDonnell's death was as follows:

[British] The management will ensure that as substantial part of the work will consist of domestic tasks inside and outside the wings necessary for servicing the prisoners, such as cleaning and in the laundry and kitchen, construction work for example on building projects or making toys for charitable bodies and studying for Open University or other courses. The factory authority will be responsible for supervision.
The aim of the authority will be that prisoners should do the kind of work for which they are suited. But this will not always be possible and the authorities will retain responsibility for decisions.
“Little advance is possible on Association”
It (Association) will be permitted within each wing under supervision of factory staff.
(English language you can’t do any more than give freedom in a wing)

Statement by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

In the light of discussions which Mr Michael Alison has had recently with the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, during which a statement was issued on 4 July on behalf of the protesting prisoners in the Maze Prison, HMG have come to the following conclusions.
When the hunger strike and the protest is brought to an end (and not before), the Government will:

extend to all male prisoners in Northern Ireland the clothing regime at present available to female prisoners in Armagh Prison (i.e. subject to the prison governor’s approval);
make available to all prisoners in Northern Ireland the allowance of letters, parcels and visits at present available to conforming prisoners;
allow the restoration of forfeited remission at the discretion of the responsible disciplinary authority, as indicated in my statement of 30 June, which hitherto has meant the restoration of up to one-fifth of remission lost subject to a satisfactory period of good behaviour;
ensure that a substantial part of the work will consist of domestic tasks inside and outside the wings necessary for servicing of the prison (such as cleaning and in the laundries and kitchens), constructive work, e.g. on building projects or making toys for charitable bodies, and study for Open University or other courses. The prison authorities will be responsible for supervision. The aim of the authorities will be that prisoners should do the kinds of work for which they are suited, but this will not always be possible and the authorities will retain responsibility for decisions about allocation.

Little advance is possible on association. It will be permitted within each wing, under supervision of the prison staff.
Protesting prisoners have been segregated from the rest. Other prisoners are not segregated by religious or any other affiliation. If there were no protest the only reason for segregating some prisoners from others would be the judgment of the prison authorities, not the prisoners, that this was the best way to avoid trouble between groups.
This statement is not a negotiating position. But it is further evidence of the Government’s desire to maintain and where possible to improve a humanitarian regime in the prisons. The Government earnestly hopes that the hunger strikers and the other protesters will cease their protest.

It would be two hours until the Adams Group came back with any answer, and it was not the one anyone had hoped for.

Bad Faith

At 4am in the morning, the Adams Group send their first response to Thatcher's latest offer through the channel. A request is made for Adams to go into the prison.

The purpose is listed as '1. To ensure success 2. To achieve' — the notation in the diary is brief and vague, but asking for Adams to go in at that point — knowing the British had repeatedly rejected him when he was previously suggested was a bold request. Was it really necessary for Adams personally to go in for the strike to end? Would that be something worth rejecting the offer over?

At 5am, the Adams Group sends a further new demand through the channel. In addition to the public document that Thatcher has drafted, they now want a private document to be drawn up as well. This private document, they demand, should be a 'detailed nitty-gritty' of work, association, and the rest of the prisoners' demands.

They had already agreed that these details would be worked out after the hunger strike was called off. Now, at the exact moment while in the prison hospital Joe McDonnell's sister Maura was shaking his still-warm body crying for him to not be dead, the Adams Group demanded even more upfront before they would consider ordering an end to the strike.

The Ante Raised

The British response to the new demands was not long in coming. The communication on the channel was over.

Adams imbues an air of mystery to the termination of the channel communication in Before the Dawn:

“Very early one morning I and another member of our committee were in mid-discussion with the British in a living room in a house in Andersonstown when, all of a sudden, they cut the conversation, which we thought was quite strange.”

Perhaps it was not so strange. Duddy's diary contains the British reaction to the new demand — and the explanation for why the contact ended when it did. The response, which according to Adams came at 5:30am, is terse:

The management cannot contemplate the proposal for two documents set out in your last communication and now therefore the exchange on this channel to be ended.

At the last minute, acting in bad faith, the Adams Group demanded too much.

The Death of Joe McDonnell

Danny Morrison gives the time of Joe McDonnell's death as 4:50am; that is when Father Murphy woke up Joe's family, who were sleeping in the prison hospital, to tell them he had died, and his sister Maura, shouting and shaking him, desperately tried to bring him back.

Word confirming his death was slow in getting out, and somewhat confused. Duddy's diary puts Joe's death 17 minutes later, at 5:07, though it was not known he had died until the morning news broadcast; the Bobby Sands Trust as well as various other websites including the Sinn Fein bookshop, list his death at 5:11am; Padraig O'Malley writes that Joe died at 5:40am.

The Adams Group and the British, unaware he had died, were in discussions until 5:30am, and did not hear of his death immediately; it was a number of hours before they knew: "We first heard it on the 7:00am news," Duddy records.

Adams' autobiography confirms they did not know Joe had died while they were conducting the channel discussions: "Then, later, when we turned on the first news broadcast of the morning, we heard that Joe McDonnell was dead."

Without divulging that at the time Joe was dying he was inserting another new demand into the process of settlement, Adams lets his readers believe the reason the British had ended their communication was because they had been informed of Joe's death. But the times noted in Duddy's diary, combined with the Adams Group's new demand and the British reaction, make this impossible.

It was not Joe's death that caused the British to end the channel discussion; it was the new, bad faith demand for more detailed documentation; details that the British believed had already been agreed could be worked out once the men had come off their strike, in order to save their lives.

By 6:30am the NIO finally sent in an official to read a statement of the British position to the prisoners.

As promised, given the rejection by the Adams Group of Thatcher's offer, the statement was absent of any indication of the strides made in either the ICJP or Adams Group discussions.

According to Garrett Fitzgerald, Adams contacted the ICJP fifteen minutes after the NIO went into the prison, and immediately blamed the British. He 'rang the commission to say that at 5:30am the contact with London had been terminated without explanation'.

Garrett Fitzgerald:

When we heard the news of Joe McDonnell’s death and of the last-minute hardening of the British position, we were shattered. We had been quite unprepared for this volte-face, for we, of course, had known nothing whatever of the disastrous British approach to Adams and Morrison. Nor had we known of the IRA’s attempts – regardless of the threat this posed to the lives of the prisoners, and especially to that of Joe McDonnell – to raise the ante by seeking concessions beyond what the prisoners had said they could accept.

The Fatal Wings of Time

"Don't you worry about Joe McDonnell," he said to Bik McFarlane in the canteen after Danny Morrison's Sunday visit.

It was the first time Bik and Joe had ever met each other. Joe was 'confined to a wheelchair', his 'head crouched low to one side', and he 'could barely hear' what was said. He was in 'an appalling condition'.

Yet he shook Bik's hand despite immense pain.

"I might only last a few days but I'll hang on as long as I can and buy all the time we need."

Previously: Tuesday 7 July 1981

Pushing Al Qaeda to Take on Hezbollah

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Sat, 18 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Franklin Lamb in Beirut with a piece that first featured on OEN.

'This is one damn fine idea, what took us so long to see a simple solution that was right in front of our eyes for Christ's sake', Senator John McCain of "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" and "no-fly zones for Syria" notoriety, reportedly demanded to know from Dennis Ross during a recent Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) brain storming session in Washington DC.

Ross, a founder of WINEP with Israeli government start up cash (presumably reimbursed unknowingly by American taxpayers) and currently WINEP's "Counselor", reportedly responded to the idea of facilitating Al Qeada to wage jihad against Hezbollah with the comment:

Shiites aren't the only ones seeking death to demonstrate their "resistance' to whatever. Plenty of other Muslims also want to die as we saw last week in Boston. Let "em all go at it and Israel can sweep out theirs - when it's over.

One Congressional staffer attending the WINEP event emailed me, 'Dennis spoke in jest - well I assumed he did - but who nows anymore? Things are getting ever crazier inside some of these pro-Israel think-tanks around here.'

Featured on the front page of its April 25 edition, the Israelit-compliant New York Times writes that the Assad regime is apparently recovering but, 'it must be understood that for all of the justified worries about the (al Qaeda affiliated) rebels Assad remains an ally of Iran and Hezbollah.'

The Times adopts the views of Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, who recommends that the US try to keep the two sides in Syria fighting as long as possible until they destroy each other. Pipes, now serving as an advisor to John McClain, wrote in the Washington Times on April 11:

Evil forces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. This keeps them focused locally, and it prevents either one from emerging victorious and thereby posing a greater danger. Western powers should guide enemies to a stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their debilitating conflict.

Both Jeffrey Feltman, U.N. Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs and Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N, have at a minimum impliedly joined in the intriguing idea of siccing Jabhat al Nusra on the Party of God. This scheme, if launched, would be Feltman's 14th attempt to topple Hezbollah and defeat the Lebanese National Resistance to the occupation of Palestine since he first arrived in Beirut from Tel Aviv in 2005 to become US Ambassador to Lebanon. This observer, among others in this region sense that given the aura still enveloping the American Embassy here, that Jeffrey never really left his Lebanese ambassadorial post and continues to occupy this position from his new UN office. Isn't Hezbollah the Lebanese National Resistance to the occupation of Lebanon?

This week Feltman warned that the spillover of Syria's war continues to be felt in Lebanon as Susan Rice, echoed him and condemned Hezbollah for "undermining the country's "dissociation policy." The latter being a bit obscure in meaning but connoting something like sitting around doing nothing while this country is being shelled by jihadists from among the 23 countries currently fighting in Syria. Feltman informed the media on 4/22/13 that:

The Secretary-General is concerned by reports that Lebanese are fighting in Syria both on the side of the regime and on the side of the opposition, hopes that the new government will find ways to promote better compliance by all sides in Lebanon with the "disassociation policy."

Given current divisions in Lebanon that will not happen anymore than Lebanon's June 9th Parliamentary elections will be held on time.

For her part, Susan lectured the UN Security Council that 'Hezbollah actively enables Assad to wage war on the Syrian people by providing money, weapons, and expertise to the regime in close coordination with Iran.' This position was expressed also through a statement by US. State Department spokesman , Patrick Ventrell, who said that Washington 'has always been clear concerning Hezbollah's shameful role and the support it is providing for the Syrian regime and the violence it is inducing in Syria.' Ventrell added: 'We were clear from the start concerning the destructive role played by Iran as well as the Iranian role.'

Several Israeli agents in Congress are today promoting a Jabhat el Nusra-Hezbollah war even as the Obama administration terror-lists the jihadist group. Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), McCain's neocon Islamaphobe acolyte, goes a bit further and explains to Fox News, once Assad falls and Hezbollah is out of the picture 'We can deal with these (jihadist) fellas.

Recent history in Libya instructs otherwise. As Turkish commentator Cihan Celik recently noted: 'A divorce with al-Nusra will not be easy in Syria.'

The past two years in Libya, that shadow of a country, reveals countless examples, three witnessed firsthand by this observer, during the long hot summer of 2011. What we saw was Gulf sponsors and funders offering young men, often unemployed, $100 per month, free cigarettes, and a Kalashnikov to do jihad. Plenty down and out lads still accept these offers in Libya, as they do in Syria. One reason why the militias proliferated so quickly in Libya and never melted away was the phenomenon of a wannabe jihadists deciding to be a leader and recruiting perhaps a brother or two, maybe a few cousins or tribe members, and presto, they have created a militia with power they never dreamed of. Their new life can offer many perceived benefits from running rough shod over the civilian populations and setting up myriad mini but potent criminal enterprises specializing in kidnappings, robberies, drugs, trafficking in women, and assassinations for cash. How many of these young men have turned in their weapons in Libya and returned to their former lives? Or will do so when instructed by the likes of McCain or Graham?

On 4/24/13 Jabhat Al-Nusra Front intensified its threats to officials here including the Lebanese president by releasing a challenge from its media office:

We inform you - and you may think of that as a warning or an ultimatum - that you must take immediate measures to restrain Hezbollah, otherwise, the fire will reach Beirut. If you do not abide by this within 24 hours, we will consider that you are taking part in the massacres committed by the Hezbollah members and we will unfortunately have to burn everything in Beirut.

In addition they are calling for Jihad and the establishment of the 'Resistance Factions for Jihad against the Regime in Syria' and also in Saida and Tripoli, Lebanon.

Israeli officials appear to be in agreement with the Ross/Pipes proposal to arrange for Al Qeada to launch a war against Hezbollah. The Director for External Affairs at:

the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, repeatedly claimed that the Shia are the real threat to Israel, not the Sunni and with the least threat coming from the Gulf monarchs. He offered the view recently that "Israel is now a partner of the Sunni Arab states.

Indeed, Israel hopes that Hezbollah will forget Israel when tasked with trying repel Al Nusra and other al Qaeda affiliate attacks.

According to various Israel officials who have issued statements on the subject, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan and several other members of the Arab League constitute an "alliance of anxiety for Israel" because they claim that 'Sunni Arabs are not as competent as the Shia and Iran and as a result they express doubts that Israel can rely on the Sunni states in the same way that the Sunni states can rely on Israel.'

In a documentary about the Iraq war, an American soldier explains:

Actually, we don't really have much of a problem with the Sunnis. It's the Shias who we are afraid of. The problem has something to do with their leader who was killed centuries ago and these fellas are willing to lay their life down for the guy. Anyhow, that is what they told us in Special Ops class.

Al Nusra fighters currently occupying parts the south west areas of Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in south Damascus, recently expressed eagerness to fight Hezbollah which they claim would give them credibility with Sunni Muslims and, oddly, in this observers view, "credibility with western countries", who supposedly are al Qaeda's sworn enemies. It's sometimes hard to know who precisely is whose enemy these days in Syria as the rebels continue using areas east and southwest of Damascus as rear bases and as gateways into the capital.

Despite boasts to the contrary from Jihadist types in Syria and Lebanon, it is not clear to this observer if Jihadist and al Qaeda-affiliated groups living among Hezbollah communities in Lebanon like Fatah al Islam, Jund al Sham or Osbat al Ansar which have been here for years would actually join the Zionist promoted anti-Hezbollah jihad.

But it is evident that some Lebanese Islamists and jihadists directly connected to al Qaeda do have the ability to target Hezbollah. Elements from each of these groups are startling to associate and identify with Jabhat al Nusra, inspired partly by their successful military operations in Syria.

Again, we saw the same thing in Libya. Enthusiastic, ambitious young men who want to improve their lot in life try to go with a winner. According to sources in the Ain al Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, jihadist leaders such as Haytham and Mohammed al Saadi, Tawfic Taha, Oussama al Shehabi and Majed al Majed are recruiting followers and fighters in Lebanon and offer a ticket out the the squalid army-surrounded, Syrian-refugee-inflated camp.

Homs-based media activist Mohammad Radwan Raad claims that the embattled residents of the rebel-controlled Homs province town of Al-Qusayr welcome Saida, Lebanon-based Sunni Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir's call for Jihad in Syria. Claims Raad: 'Al-Qusayr residents welcome Assir's call and hope the Lebanese people help kick out Hezbollah members in the area ... We need anyone who can get rid of them.' This week Assir urged his followers to join Syrian rebels fighting troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. Al-Qusayr has been under rebel control for more than a year and on the scene reports indicate that it is about to be returned to central government control.

In response, two Salafist Sunni Lebanese sheikhs urged their followers to go to Syria to fight a jihad (religious war) in defense of Qusayr's Sunni residents. 'There is a religious duty on every Muslim who is able to do so... to enter into Syria in order to defend its people, its mosques and religious shrines, especially in Qusayr and Homs,' Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir told his followers. For now, experts say, such calls on the part of Lebanon's Salafists are largely bluster because the movement is far from able to wield either the arsenal or the fighting forces of Hezbollah.

Local analysts like Qassem Kassir argue that Jabhat al Nusra and friends are not organized enough to fight against Hezbollah in a conventional war, but they could cause great damage by organizing bomb attacks against the Party of God's bases and militants. The latter would be enough initially for Ross and WINEP and their Zionist handlers. Creating chaos in Lebanon being one of their goals but more importantly weakening the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah and also challenging Syria and Iran.

In a recent speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah offered his party's view about a Western-promoted Sunni-Shia clash, with Al-Nusra, AlQaida and all the groups which flocked to Syria, saying that what was wanted of them was to kill and get killed in Syria, in a massacre which will only serve the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims.

The coming months will reveal to us if the several pro-Israeli Arab regimes as well as Islamophobes, including those at WINEP and other Israel-first think-tanks, are delusional in believing that John McCain's "simple solution" to those resisting the Zionist occupation of Palestine, would be to assist Jabhat el Nusra type jihadists to make war against Hezbollah.

Whether they could defeat Hezbollah is uncertain but whether Jabhat al Nusra and friends are capable of igniting yet another catastrophe in this region is the looming question.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and Syria and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

Chris Bray: Belfast Project - Boston Prosecuting Irish Politics

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

This piece initially featured on Letters Blogatory on 6th May 2013. It can also be read at Boston College Subpoena News.

The Supreme Court has turned aside a legal appeal from Belfast Project researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, and IRA interviews will likely soon be transferred from the archives at Boston College to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. (A more limited appeal from BC, still pending, relates to only some of the subpoenaed interviews.)

The Irish press has been busy covering this development, and the stories tell you everything you need to know about the federal subpoenas of confidential academic research materials. They all center on Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein politician alleged to have ordered Jean McConville’s murder in 1972.

“Like his hero, Fidel Castro, Adams plans to go on and on,” reads an April 27 editorial in the Herald, a Dublin newspaper. “Until now many of us have given him the benefit of the doubt on both counts.”

But not anymore, the newspaper concludes:

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein goes from strength to strength. As long as a growing number of voters conveniently forget about the hell that Jean McConville suffered, few among the Sinn Fein ranks will challenge their leader for life.

This is the point of the effort to breach the Boston College archives, openly discussed in the Irish press as the object of the investigation: to stop Sinn Fein from going “from strength to strength,” preventing voters from conveniently forgetting the actions of the IRA,and convincing party members to challenge their leader.

This is not law enforcement.

Similarly, many of the Irish news stories about the pending release of the tapes say that the move could lead to the “downfall” of Gerry Adams. Here are some words and phrases you will not find in any of those stories:

“prosecution”
“murder charges”
“arrest”

Because none of that is the point. The Herald does refer to the possibility that Adams will face “a case,” but everyone involved knows what case that is. The McConville family is likely to sue the Sinn Fein leader in civil court. This, too, has already been reported.

“We owe it to McConville to reveal IRA interviews and tackle Adams,” the Herald headline reads.

Gerry Adams is to be tackled, challenged, sued, unmasked before an audience of voters, and weakened before the members of his political party. He is not going to be convicted in a court of law on murder charges, and no one—no one, period—believes that he will be.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston is using federal subpoenas to intervene in Irish politics, not to assist in a British murder investigation. I have been saying this for two years. Now the Irish press is saying it too.

Will anyone bother to notice this act of political malfeasance? Or do we simply accept that federal prosecutors should loan their authority to foreign political causes?

Bloody Murdah

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:27:00 +0000

We have never accepted or used the word murder. We would regard it as legislative language and aggressive language. It was the sort of language was always used against us. It would be like acknowledging that we were ‘criminals’ or ‘terrorists.’ - Michael Culbert, Irish News, 4th October 2011.

Frank Hughes’s 32nd anniversary took place on Sunday. The second of ten hunger strikers to die Big Frank, as his comrades from South Derry referred to him, although only 22 at the time of his arrest on St Patrick’s Day 1978, had already established a formidable reputation as one of the IRA’s most militarily efficient volunteers. His ability to emerge alive, although wounded, the same day from a British Army ambush and also kill a special forces member of the ambush team set him apart from many of his comrades who died in the course of similar encounters. It said something about his field craft and military instincts. A year earlier he had been named as one of the North‘s 3 most wanted men while he was evading the largest British security cordon yet seen in South Derry. The Repressive Security Apparatus of the British state feared Frank but he didn’t fear it.

The evening of his death after 59 days on hunger strike saw a silence descend upon the wing where I was held. If we didn’t know it already we realised it then that the British had successfully weathered the storm that followed the death of Bobby Sands and would give no quarter to either Patsy O’Hara or Raymond McCreesh, the two volunteers remaining on the strike after Frank’s death. It would take a strategic hiatus after the first four deaths to create the conditions in which the British were forced off their one track approach. The fate of Patsy and Raymond was as certain as the setting of the sun. They would as surely go down with it.

In one of the Sunday papers after Frank’s burial a member of the RUC was quoted as saying ‘Frankie was a murderer’ before going on to grudgingly acknowledge Frank’s efficiency at plying his armed craft. The RUC man’s comment was an attempt to state what was very much not obvious to many people the length and breadth of Ireland. He sought to criminalise Frank. There is nothing to suggest that Frank could not have lived with the description of him as a killer. Killing is what military personnel do. He killed the British soldier who engaged him in armed combat. He did not die disputing that he killed people but did so to make the point that he was not a common murderer and to have that recognised as a war right, an intrinsic but much fought over component in the war between the British state and the IRA.

The image of Frank Hughes in a military crawl as he, gravely injured by British Army gunfire, made his way to some form of shelter is far removed from the undignified crawl that the public witnessed Gerry Adams make during his Prime Time debacle with Miriam O Callaghan. There Adams, trying to slither away from a politically violent past he helped create, fallaciously argued that all killings are murder.

That is all very well if we wish to make an abstract philosophical point that war is murder on stilts even where stilts haul lethal war driven actions above the level of commonality; where the primary focus is on the violence sustained rather than inflicted, on what it means to be killed rather than to be killing, where the horrors of war in all its savagery are thrown up without the legal niceties and moral theorising.

Adams was not making his point out of any philosophical conviction. It was made on grounds of pure pragmatic opportunism. In his own peculiarly serpentine way of doing business, he is meeting the establishment demand for the IRA’s armed struggle to be defined as a murder campaign. Crooked step by crooked step the IRA Adjutant General at the time of Frank Hughes’s death is moving toward the consummation of the Thatcher logic that crime is crime is crime.

There is nothing new in this approach. When Martin McGuinness in furtherance of his own political career during the Irish presidential campaign insisted that some IRA killings could be regarded as murder, it was clear that the thin edge of the stake was being pressed against, although not quite yet thrust into, the heart of the values of Ten Men Dead. Michael Colbert, currently aligned to Sinn Fein, convicted for killing a member of the RUC, objected. Having spent years on protest denying that the action for which he was convicted and sentenced to life was criminal, he complained that it was a step too far.

Is Gerry Adams willing to tell the family of the IRA hunger striker Frank Hughes, convicted for killing a British soldier in an armed exchange, that Frank was a murderer? Will he attend a hunger strike commemoration in Bellaghy’s graveyard and announce ‘we gather here today to honour this murderer’?

It is as blunt as this: if we, the IRA volunteers, who killed on the orders of people like Adams, are murderers, he then is a mass murderer better suited to stand in The Hague rather than sit in the Dail.

55 Hours: Tuesday 7 July 1981

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:09:00 +0000

Tonight the Pensive Quill carries the third of a four part series by guest writer Carrie Twomey that takes readers through a day-by-day account of the events of early July, 1981.

Sunday ● Monday ● Tuesday ● Wednesday

PART THREE: TUESDAY 7 JULY 1981

Early Morning

Spanner in the Works

The Adams Group spent a considerable amount of the time the previous two days attempting to derail the ICJP effort. They had thrown a wobbler over the ICJP to the British, instructed the prisoners to freeze the ICJP out, and told the ICJP in no uncertain terms to back off after letting them know that they were in their own, more senior, talks with the British themselves.

The effect of telling the ICJP about their own secret talks was a spanner in the works, meant to slow things down. Certainly the ICJP reaction to the news meant their afternoon and evening were taken up with stunned confrontations and clarifications - valuable time wasted.

What More Was Needed

After getting the 'general gist' of the proposals the ICJP were given, the Adams Group prepared their response to Thatcher's 11:30pm statement. Their reply, sent at 3:30am, backtracked on what they had previously indicated, and echoed the comm sent in to the prisoners Monday afternoon.

Previously, their position had been that 'demands dealing with work and association could be subject to a series of discussions after the ending of the hunger strike'.

Now, however, the Adams Group were demanding that work and association must be dealt with immediately before they would make any decision on whether to accept the offer or not:

To assist us in taking a ?(firm)? decision on your proposals, elaboration on Point C – Remission, Point D – Work, Point E – Association is necessary. These are obviously the major points of contention which need to be resolved if the prison protests are to be permanently ended. The position outlined by you is not sufficient to achieve this.

On Work, the Adams Group wanted emphasis on 'Self education'. For Association, “We believe there should be wing visits”. Full remission continued to be pushed for.

They wanted fuller detail put into the statement before agreeing to agree: “We and the prisoners need an outline of the specific improvements envisaged by you. We also require your attitude to the detailed proposals outlined by the prisoners”.

NIO Stalled

Asking at 3:30 in the morning for more detail, and pressing for clarification to happen before the sequence they had already agreed to, meant it would be impossible for anyone from the NIO to come in to speak with the prisoners at 9am, as the ICJP had thought they arranged.

By 11:40am, the ICJP, unaware that their agreement with the NIO was being thrown off course by the secret Adams-Thatcher talks, begged Alison to send the official in to the prisoners as promised. Alison, constrained by the channel discussions, could only stall for time, and promised the official would go in later in the afternoon.

Afternoon

The NIO was unable to conclude anything with the ICJP as the secret talks between Thatcher and the Adams Group were ongoing.

Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison also met again with members of the ICJP, according to Garrett Fitzgerald.

“On Tuesday afternoon, Gerry Adams rang to say that the British had now made an offer but that it was not enough. Three members of the commission then met Adams and Morrison, who produced their version of the offer that they said had been made to them. The commission saw this as almost a replica of their own proposals but with an additional provision about access to Open University courses.”

Were the Adams Group working towards achieving more than the ICJP, or were they working on delaying any settlement? Either way, as David Beresford in Ten Men Dead put it, “they desperately needed to get the commission out of the way”.

When to Hold and When to Fold

Humphrey Atkins continued to argue his position of standing firm with Thatcher, although like his earlier advice, Thatcher did not take it. Given what is evident in the record of channel communication, she believed if a settlement were to be achieved, and the hunger strike brought to an end, the opportunity lay with the Adams Group talks; standing firm in private with them would achieve nothing. As Adams described her in his autobiography Before the Dawn, “she was no stranger to expediency”.

She was no fool, either. In a letter containing a proposed draft statement which echoed his 30 June stance, Atkins observed the early morning rejection of the Adams Group: “Following the sending of the message which you approved last night, we have received, as you will know, an unsatisfactory response. That particular channel of activity is therefore now no longer active.”

Thatcher's response to the Adams Group's rejection simultaneously gave the Adams Group what they wanted - the demise of the ICJP initative - while at the same time appeared to close the channel.

Receiving a Rocket

The Mountain Climber channel with the Adams Group was temporarily closed in response to the 3:30am reply demanding more. Beresford writes that the British were

“'deeply disturbed' by the abuse of confidence by which Alison had become involved. The message said that the line of contact was unknown to 'the most senior of their people' and if the confidentiality was abused the secret initiative must be put at risk.”

Adams and Morrison's revelations to the ICJP had indeed been a spanner thrown into the works on a number of levels. Not only that, their response to the British offer was seen as a rejection and the British were appalled.

Mag cannot move
1. From the 30th June principle
2. Position of June went to the limits that we could do in our P?????
3. By suggesting that we do more, the SS [Adams Group] are inviting us to abandon our principles.
This we cannot do.
Their response amounts to a rejection.
We are appalled by this decision.
Our discussions with CJ have come to an end and they will have no further parts in our efforts to resolve the problem.
We are sorry if the problem has been ex. hopes raised false because of any false impression given by C. Jenkins Union
We are also deeply disturbed as we were told June by the SS abuse of knowledge of the channel. C Jenkins as pre(vious??)=Krugs??? Has clearly been told of its existence and involved to activate it.
C Jenkins Union put it ?the? Mr A last night that this was a possibility open to many in a room full of people.
This must be in question, the future of the channels.

In keeping with the workplace code, where the Adams Group were the Shop Stewards, the prisoners the Union Membership and so on, the ICJP was aptly named as a competitor to Adams Group's Shop Stewards, seeking to represent the prisoners. Their code name was the 'C Jenkins Union'.

The British did not appreciate that the ICJP had been told of the existence of the secret talks and were less than pleased that the ICJP had then confronted Alison about them 'in a room full of people'. The ICJP initiative was now dead in the water.

An Apology and the Ending of the ICJP

While the British were appalled by the rejection of their offer, the Adams Group does appear to have achieved their primary objective of sidelining the ICJP, and, remarkably, received an apology from the British. Both Adams and Morrison's tantrums over the involvement of the ICJP and the breach of the confidentiality of their talks with Thatcher were effective.

Even better for the Adams Group, they now had a scapegoat to blame for the breakdown of any possible deal that would have delivered a settlement, and for explaining the prolonging of the hunger strike. The secrecy of their talks with Thatcher gave cover to both the British and the Adams Group, for reasons beneficial to each own's agendas of self interest.

Late Afternoon

Left Hanging

By 4pm the ICJP were still waiting for the NIO official to come to speak to the prisoners. They were told 'the official would be going in, but the document was still being drafted.' Padraig O'Malley writes that “David Wyatt, a senior NIO official who had sat in on most of the discussions, rang to explain the delay: a lot of redrafting was going on and it had to be cleared with London”. At 6pm the ICJP contacted Alison again with concern; the Dublin government was also putting pressure on London to send someone in, to no avail.

Despair in the Dark

Danny Morrison, in his contemporary timeline, places this comm from Richard O'Rawe as a statement delivered late in the afternoon on Tuesday:

“We are very depressed at the fact that our comrade, Joe McDonnell, is virtually on the brink of death, especially when the solution to the issue is there for the taking. The urgency of the situation dictates that the British act on our statement of July 4 now.”

The prisoners would have been expecting the NIO to send an official in regarding the ICJP initiative that morning. They had been told by Adams that "more was needed" from the channel talks. They most likely did not know that it was those channel talks causing the delay; they definitely did not know that Thatcher was working on a draft that would have been acceptable to them.

Blanketman Thomas 'Locky' Loughlin describes the prisoners' experience of the afternoon in the book, Nor Meekly Serve My Time:

[A]s it became clear [the ICJP] were making progress, we were led to believe by everyone except those most closely involved that a settlement was imminent. Even the Deputy Secretary of State Michael Alison indicated that the hunger strike was about to be resolved and that he would be sending in a message to wrap the whole thing up. This was the feedback most of us were getting at the time.

He continues,

“So morale was sky-high in the knowledge that it would soon be over and that no one else would die ... it really appeared to us that it was over. ... We felt like that because it seemed a settlement was really on the cards. The ICJP had been talking to the Brits for quite a while and to our knowledge were getting a very positive response. ... [W]e knew that a messenger from the NIO was due in at any time with the necessary documents that would offer a solution.”

Evening

False Impression

By 7pm the Adams Group sent the first of two responses to Thatcher. She had extended an apology for 'any false impression' given by the ICJP's initiative and taken the ICJP off the scene in response to the Adams Group's complaints, and the breach of the confidentiality of the secret talks. The Adams Group, however, pressed on. It wasn't the fault of the ICJP after all - it was the fault of the British: “If false impressions are given, they are contained in the very parameters set down by you”. The threat of closing off the channel discussions completely had upset them.

Shameless

However, the Adams Group was no stranger to the art of brinkmanship, either. They held the impending death of Joe McDonnell over the end of their message, questioning the commitment of the British:

Does your last communication mean that you are breaking with the original criteria you set or do you wish to continue? Joe McDonnell is pledged to die unless he achieves the conditions required by the prisoners for a settlement.

Less than an hour later, a second, follow-up message was sent through the channel to Thatcher.

We are fully aware of Joe McDonnell’s position and his commitment to the prison demands. We have stressed this on many occasions. We cannot and will not intervene in the Hunger Strikes unless satisfied are met to their collective satisfaction.

The Adams Group were content to use Joe McDonnell's commitment and the facade of the prisoners being in control as leverage - although the prisoners knew little to nothing of what was being done in their name, if they had any idea at all.

Tone Not Content

The Adams Group's 3:30am rejection had been based on Remission, Work and Association; they were holding out for full remission, an emphasis on self-education, and wing visits. After hiding behind the condition and commitment of Joe McDonnell and the prisoners, they ended their evening communication settling for a 're-phrasing of D [Work] & E [Association]'.

Anger

The second communication asking for the rephrasing of Thatcher's offer had been sent at 7:50pm. Immediately after sending off that message, according to Garrett Fitzgerald, at 8:30pm Danny Morrison and another person arrived without notice at the ICJP's hotel, and 'their attitude was threatening'.

Despite being told that as a result of their complaints the ICJP was now out of the picture, the Adams Group were angry and blamed the ICJP for endangering their secret talks:

“Morrison said their contact had been put in jeopardy as a result of the commission revealing its existence at its meeting with Allison; the officials present with Allison had not known of the contact.”

Morrison also demanded that the ICJP keep him informed of what they were doing, but the ICJP refused to cooperate. They viewed his visit as an 'onslaught'.

Enough to Call Off the Strike

While Morrison was threatening the ICJP, the British were debating the draft settlement they were preparing to send. Earlier, Humphrey Atkins had sent a draft statement that retained a firm line. This was not the position Thatcher decided on going with, however; she continued to revise the offer sent down the channel at 11:30pm the previous evening.

If the Adams Group accepted the offer and ordered the hunger strikers to end the protest, 'the statement would be issued immediately'. Otherwise, the British would revert back to their position of June 30th and their discussions with the ICJP. And if the Adams Group leaked anything about their secret talks again, the British would deny everything.

The British believed that their revised statement 'would be enough to get the PIRA to instruct the prisoners to call off the hunger strike' and had prepared the procedures that would follow once they did. Thatcher personally approved it all, the statement and the sequence, and directed the offer to be sent to the Adams Group.

Late Evening

Out of the Loop

The ICJP had no idea the extent of which they'd been sidelined, and continued to press Alison to send an official in to the prisoners. At 9pm Alison told the ICJP that someone would be going in shortly. Both Morrison's timeline, which is based upon Ten Men Dead, and Garret Fitzgerald agree that by 10pm, Alison contacted the ICJP to tell them no one would be coming in that night after all, but that between 7 and 8 in the morning, an official would go in, and 'this delay would be to the prisoners’ benefit'. Tellingly, when Alison was asked by the ICJP why no one had gone in yet, 'Alison replied, “Frankly, I was not a sufficient plenipotentiary.”'.

Thatcher's authority obviously superseded the NIO's and her secret talks with Adams rendered the NIO-ICJP initiative pointless.

Bad Stick

That evening at 10pm, Bik McFarlane sends a comm out to Gerry Adams:

“…I don’t know if you’ve thought on this line, but I have been thinking that if we don’t pull this off and Joe dies then the RA are going to come under some bad stick from all quarters. Everyone is crying the place down that a settlement is there and those Commission chappies are convinced that they have breached Brit principles. Anyway we’ll sit tight and see what comes…”

Continued in Part Four: Wednesday 8 July 1981 ● Previously: Monday 6 July 1981

Sorry Initiatives and Prime Time Apologies

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Martin Galvin with a letter to the Irish News on the emergence of the Margaret Thatcher papers. It featured on the 14th May 2013 under the title 'Sinn Fein should walk away from hard won privileges.'

A chara,

From beyond the grave, Thatcher’s just released papers leave no doubt about the magnitude of the Hunger Strikers’ victory over her efforts to use them to criminalise the struggle against British rule. We always knew that the Hunger Strikers had won where it mattered most in hearts and minds. Now we have the Iron Lady’s own hand written notes giving up sweeping concessions in July of 1981 that she wanted hidden until her death.

No beatings, deprivation or naked brutality could make these brave Republican prisoners dress up in convict costumes, so that the British might brand them as another chapter in “800 years of crime.”

Sadly, the British never gave up on criminalisation, but merely shifted tactics to get it. If as Thatcher learned, they could not bully or break Republicans why not try to blandish and bribe them with important sounding titles and comfortably paid jobs so long as they were tightly reined-in by a British colonial secretary?

Fifteen years on the British must think they succeeded complete with ‘Sorry initiatives’ and ‘Prime Time apologies’. Today the British need not answer for their own misdeeds. They can mete out injustice, and then pass the buck to the justice minister or constabulary chief, who the British will happily add were picked with Sinn Fein’s blessing. Party members on constabulary boards are touted by the British as a cosmetic stamp of approval on British policies. No one believes Republicans entered Stormont or constabulary boards to become cheerleaders for the crown. No one should be surprised that the crown would scheme to use and housetrain those they took inside.

At its recent Ard Fheis, the party challenged Labour to walk away from its hard-won privileges and perks in government. It is wrong, Sinn Fein said for the party of Connolly and Larkin to remain complicit junior partners propping up Fine Gael’s policies.

Are Republicans not entitled to stand by the principles of our patriots and ask Sinn Fein to do what Sinn Fein asked of Labour? Has the party been so hobbled by a few Stormont titles and jobs that it cannot free itself from being junior partners in British injustice? If the British want to mistreat Republicans, let them do it without the reluctant complicity of other Republicans!

GARC calls on Loyal Orders to Cease Unwelcome Marches Through Nationalist Communities

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective steering committee held a meeting on Friday May 10th 2013 in relation to the proposed/leaked talks in Cardiff, Wales to be held sometime next week organised by O.F.M.D.F.M and the PSNI re: contentious parades/protests and flag issues. We in GARC after lenghthy discussion around the above development.

We wish to make our position crystal clear: No representitives of our residents group will be present whether it be in Wales, or New South Wales in Oz, as we deem this a cosmetic farce organised solely on the grounds of attempting to garner support and acceptance of the failed and discredited PSNI, which we in the Catholic, Nationalist and Republicann communities view as nothing more than a Political Police Force ran by MI5 and its Masters in the British Government and their direct involvement around issues including unwelcome and equally unessasary sectarian parading through several areas of contention ie; Carrickhill, Springfield Rd, Rasharkin, Garvaghy Rd and Newtownbutler which our people clearly oppose as blatant acts of naked bigotry masked as religious and cultural celebrations.

To conclude GARC as the largest single-issue residents residents group in the Greater Ardoyne area, our sole aim is total opposition to all with regards to the Loyal Orders whom by their continued insistence on marching where they are clearly not welcome and equally the PSNI who facilitate such bigotry with every means at their disposal.

We make this direct appeal to the above, if they are genuinely serious about entering into a shared future with their Catholic, Nationalist and Republican neighbours. They must take a bold step up to the mark and desist from treating our communities as Second Class Citizens and lets build together, a real and genuine island of equals in which a shared future can exist, one in which we and ALL our children deserve. Then and only then, can we together realistically consider looking at bringing walls & barriers that divide our communities down, once and for all.

National Republicanism and the International Stage

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Guest writer Dr John Coulter is a Radical Unionist commentator and a former columnist with The Blanket. He is currently writing an e-book about republicanism as an outsider looking in. The e-book is entitled ‘An Saise Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism.’ The chapters are being published exclusively on The Pensive Quill. In this latest chapter, he examines how republicanism can build a new international basis to its ideology rather than simply the old, out-dated concept of raising funds to buy guns and explosives. The chapter is entitled ‘National Republicanism and the International Stage’ and develops the concept of a pro-active foreign policy for republicanism.

Mention the term ‘foreign policy’ to Irish republicans, and they largely either look blankly at you or talk about raising cash for guns in the United States by trying to present a romantic image of fighting the British as if they were re-creating a scene from the John Wayne masterpiece, The Quiet Man.

Had it not been for the millions of Irish-American dollars, republicans’ war of terror against the British would have run out of steam long before the official 1994 ceasefire which set the scene for the Good Friday Agreement four years later.

National Republicanism will seek to explode the romantic myth that everyone becomes an honorary Irishman and Irishwoman each 17th March to commemorate St Patrick’s Day. Travel anywhere in the globe, and you will find an Irish community, whether that community is linked to nationalism or unionism.

Tragically, the Emerald Isle’s greatest export has been its people. This reality was accelerated with the notorious potato famine of the 19th century, which not only killed tens of thousands of Irish people, it forced many thousands others to abandon Ireland

A second blight occurred from 2010 onwards with the collapse of the Celtic Tiger in the South of Ireland. Again, the people export – mainly to Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas – began again.

Such has been the desperation and depth of the current economic crisis, the Southern administration has invented an innovative initiative called The Gathering to try and encourage people with Irish ancestry to return to the island and re-discover their Irish roots.

2013 has been a tremendous year of centenaries for Ireland, and especially republicanism. In 1913, two major militias were formed – the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers, both the forerunners of the Irish Republican Army.

Unfortunately, these centenaries of the ICA and IV have perpetuated the myth that republicanism’s foreign policy is merely to link up with violent groups around the globe who have expressed sympathy in Irish republicans’ campaign of terror to force the British and unionist establishment out of Ireland.

In the past, the Provisional and republican socialist movements have linked up with various Palestinian groups, such as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation; the Marxist FARC group in Columbia; the Red Army Faction terror group in the former West Germany, and the modern Hamas group in the Middle East.

According to the intelligence community in the United States, dissident republicans have been teaming up in an ‘unholy alliance’ with Islamic militants to share resources and targets. The republican tradition in Australia has been boosted because of the number of Irish criminals who were deported to these far reaches of the British Empire in the 19th century.

Irish republicans have traditionally tended to adopt a foreign policy of ‘Britain’s enemy is my friend’, hence the IRA’s flirtation with Adolf Hitler’s Nazis during the Second World War.

The IRA in the 1940s was living in a fantasy world that if it helped Hitler invade mainland Britain via the backdoor of Northern Ireland, the Nazis would return the ‘compliment’ by implementing a united Ireland.

Even in the Great War, British traitor and closet Irish republican Sir Roger Casement negotiated with Imperial Germany to get guns and ammunition for the Easter Rising.

National Republicanism would be pro-active rather than reactive in pushing the concept of republicanism as a respectable political ideology. Republicans have only been interested in linking up with foreign governments merely to put pressure on the United Kingdom to formally declare a date when it would leave Northern Ireland.

National Republicanism would organize a series of Republican Embassies in every country recognized by the United Nations. National Republicanism would also restore Ireland’s national sovereignty by formally leaving the European Union.

Admittedly, for many years, Ireland benefitted from EU membership in terms of grants for developments across the 26 Counties. But with even more Eastern European nations set to join the rapidly expanding EU, it is only a matter of time before Ireland becomes a giver rather than a receiver of European aid.

National Republicanism would restore the Irish pound as its currency. Already, some establishments along the border have taken the wise decision of abandoning the flawed euro in favour of sterling. There was always a strong Eurosceptic tradition in the republic, as witnessed in the Lisbon Treaty votes.

Britain is enjoying its own Eurosceptic revolution with the electoral success of the vehemently anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party. Given its British links, there is no way UKIP could gain any electoral credibility in the republic, even though many Southern voters would agree with its anti-EU stance.

The established parties in the South need to negotiate the republic’s withdrawal from the EU. They may be reluctant to do so because that would be tantamount to admitting that joining the EU in the first place was a bad move in the long-term.

National Republicanism clearly recognizes that the EU cow has been milked bone dry so far as funding is concerned. National Republicanism, therefore, would re-launch the 1970s Irish Independence Party as an Irish equivalent of UKIP.

The IIP was formed by republicans who felt the moderate Catholic SDLP was not tough enough on its campaign to achieve a united Ireland. One of its key strategists was former British Army officer and Protestant, John Turnly, a Larne IIP councillor who was murdered by the UDA in 1980.

Had the republican hunger strikes not happened in 1980 and 1981, the IIP could have replaced the SDLP in the same way as the SDLP replaced the Irish Nationalist Party, and Sinn Fein later replaced the SDLP itself as the leading voice for nationalism in Northern Ireland.

However, National Republicanism also equally recognizes that Ireland has to become to a major global power block. It can become a colony again, teaming up with significant global nations such as the United States, Russia or China. While this aspiration would be beneficial for the people of Ireland, would the Irish nation want to be a servant to another empire?

National Republicanism will take Ireland into the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. The CPA represents more than 50 national and regional parliaments across the globe. While many of them were part of the British Empire, not all CPA members were former British colonies.

Ireland was a founder member of the CPA in 1911 when it was launched as the Empire Parliamentary Association. In rejoining the CPA, Ireland would once again become a member of a significant global and financial institution as an equal partner, not a subservient colony.

National Republicanism’s network of Republican Embassies would become an example of how democratic dominion status would work in nations. It would recreate the original thinking of Sinn Fein founder, Arthur Griffith, who was more of a separatist than a dyed in the wool republican like Eamon de Valera or Michael Collins.

The network of Republican Embassies would not become a rival to Dail Eireann. Certainly, it would not deteriorate into a Sinn Fein alternative to the Dail, or Sinn Fein under another name.

The Republican Embassies would be about promoting all that is best in Ireland regarding tourism and international investment. While funding raising would be an important role for the Republican Embassies, that cash is not to buy guns, support ex-republican prisoners, or help the children and families of ex-combatants.

The existing republican movement has already established a network of support organisations to fulfill this role. The money would be used for educational and health projects in Ireland, and promoting the concept of republicanism as a non-violent ideology.

The Republican Embassies would also play a major part in establishing contact between the various elements of the Irish Diaspora across the globe.

National Republicanism would also develop the concept of imperialism within the Irish nation. In Chapter Two of this publication, I outlined the concept of how National Republicanism would restore Biblical Christian standards into the republican ideology.

The Beatitudes, or Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, would become a central core of National Republicanism. National Republicanism would become an ideology of social action. This would take place not just in Ireland itself, but would reinvigorate the culture of Christian teaching which missionaries from Ireland have instilled in many nations across the world.

Given the sad state of affairs in the African continent, National Republicanism’s imperial philosophy would be to use its Christian missionaries to recolonize Africa and restore democratic principles and practical help to these starvation battered nations.

Clearly, National Republicanism with the promotion of Christian principles as its core will have to radically change its attitude towards Israel. Traditional republicanism has tended to adopt support for the various violent Palestinian causes.

This was mainly to gain weapons to arm the IRA, or to attend terrorist training camps. This attitude will end with National Republicanism and if republicanism as an ideology is to become a globally credible ideology, it will have to abandon its support for militant Islamic terror groups, especially those trying to eradicate the Biblical state of Israel.

The Christian faith is central to National Republicanism, and you cannot be a National Republican and want to see Israel literally blown to bits by Islamic militants.

Youth development is also central to National Republicanism. The cultivating of a new generation of young republican is a priority. National Republicanism will see the development of a new youth movement which can be promoted throughout the world, in the same way the scouting and Boys’ Brigade movements are global organisations.

Earlier this year, I commemorated the May Day Holiday by formally launching a new all-island youth movement, Saighdiuiri oga na hEireann De (The Young Irish Soldiers of Ireland). This will be National Republicanism’s globally recognised youth movement.

Known as ‘Sonhed’ for short, it will seek to make amends for the historical disaster and cultural embarrassment which nationalism’s traditional youth wing, Fianna na hEireann has deteriorated into.

Sonhed’s spark has been created by deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness’ confusing, amusing and bemusing speech at this year’s Provisional Sinn Fein ard fheis in the South.

What was supposed to be a wise-cracking broadside against dissident terrorists turned into a pondering session of ‘what age can someone actually join the IRA given that TD Gerry Adams once stated – they haven’t gone away, you know?’

One of the major problems for mainstream republicans is that the peace process has thrown up a new generation of Sinn Fein ‘draft dodgers’ who have never traditionally cut their political teeth in the Provisional IRA.

Would-be IRA terrorists were not sworn in and given their Green Book of rules until they were 17.

In reality, all the Fianna did was take groups of young republican hardmen off to the bogs of Ireland to teach them how to throw stones properly.

The loyalists had their cultural and historical heritage drummed into them at a much earlier age with groups such as the Junior Orange Order, Young Militants (UDA youth wing) and the Young Citizen Volunteers (junior UVF).

And in the Seventies, primary and secondary school age loyalists formed Tartan Gangs,
named after three Scottish squaddies murdered in an IRA ‘honey trap.’

The Tartans rampaged through the peace lines kicking the living daylights out of any Catholics they found.

Top Stormont Sinn Fein MLA Martin McGuinness has always maintained he quit the Provos in the early Seventies. But his jibe against dissidents at the Sinn Fein ard fheis has sent many republicans into confusion over his sums. They simply don’t add up!

McGuinness told the conference:

Every now and again, you’ll see these so-called republicans parading. And I look and I see these 50-year-olds, and I see these 40-year-olds, and I see these 45-year-olds, and I don’t recognise most of them. You know what I wonder; I wonder where they were when there was a war.

Taking McGuinness’ analysis, and when he claims he resigned from the Provisionals, some of “these 50-year-olds” must have been primary school pupils aged 11 when they were supposed to be active IRA members!

But if you can’t become an IRA terrorist until 17, how could they have been in the Provisionals at 11? Someone in the republican movement has seriously screwed up their recruitment figures, or else someone has not got it correct when they quit the IRA.

My new organisation, Sonhed, will seek to rectify this problem by recruiting young nationalists as soon as they able to walk and talk.

It will restore pride into the term republican, so that it is not another word for bomber, gunman and murderer.

Sonhed will be a uniformed organisation like the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade movements, but will combine Christian teaching with Irish cultural and historical identity.

The ethos will be that never again must republicans ever resort to the gun as a means of settling political quarrels.

Republicans mouth off that their victory will be the laughter of their children. How can they say this if they don’t have an effective youth organisation to channel this laughter?

My new movement, Saighdiuiri oga na hEireann De, is that solution.

In the next chapter, I will explore in more depth how National Republicanism will redefine the relationship with the British Commonwealth and the European Union.

55 Hours: Monday 6 July 1981

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Mon, 13 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Today the Pensive Quill carries the second of a four part series by guest writer Carrie Twomey that takes readers through a day-by-day account of the events of early July, 1981.

Sunday ● Monday ● Tuesday ● Wednesday

PART TWO: MONDAY 6 JULY 1981

PROVISIONAL VIEW

Early Morning

Tantrum to Tacks

At 1am Monday morning, an hour after the tantrum the Adams Group had thrown to weaken the position of the ICJP with the British, the channel resumed track. The British had been waiting on the result of Morrison’s visit to the hunger strikers to be briefed on the resulting position – would their initial offer be the basis for crafting a settlement?

ESSENTIAL

What the Adams Group communicated through the channel shows that Morrison’s visit was completely unnecessary in regards to being able to give the British their true position. They added nothing new to what they had earlier conveyed to the British while Morrison was in the prison.

As suggested during communications earlier in the afternoon, the Adams Group wanted a veto over the prisoners: “it is essential that a copy of the draft be in the hands of the SS [Shop Stewards, code for the Adams Group] before it is made public to enable the SS to approve or point out any difficulty before publication. If it is published without prior sight and agreement, the SS would have to disapprove it.”

In other words, if the British go behind the Adams Group's back, either via the ICJP or some other means of communicating with the prisoners, the Adams Group would veto any such agreement. Kept in the dark and denied the ability to agree to any offer, the prisoners clearly were not in control of their protest.

The British were not blind to the stalling tactics being employed by the Adams Group. The brief summary of the channel communications provided at 9am that morning is pointed: “While we appreciate that it has taken a long time to obtain the Provisionals’ view,” the summary starts out noting. It quickly concludes, “We would also point out that there is little difference between the final view and that which Soon predicted earlier in the weekend.”

In terms of finding an agreed form of words that would bring an end to the hunger strike, Morrison’s visit to the prison was utterly pointless and, given the status of Joe McDonnell’s conditition, a waste of valuable time.

For the Adams Group, however, his visit was not time wasted. It achieved their objective of stopping the ICJP from getting the hunger strikers to agree to any offer from the British and ending the protest.

By derailing the ICJP initiative and insisting on a veto to any final agreement with the British, the Adams Group was ensuring they alone had total control over the prison protest – to use to their own ends – and would not be surprised or usurped by the prisoners again.

Monday Afternoon

More Was Needed

Bik McFarlane says in Nor Meekly Serve My Time:

“Back in the block I waited for news that would end the nightmare, but the comms I received from the Army Council showed the Brits still hadn't gone beyond the position we had agreed and reaffirmed on Sunday in the hospital.”

Richard O’Rawe, in Blanketmen writes:

“On the afternoon of 6 July, a comm came in from the Army Council saying that it did not think the Mountain Climber’s proposals provided the basis for a resolution and that more was needed. The message said that the right to free association was vital to an overall settlement and that its exclusion from the proposals, along with ambiguity on the issue of what constituted prison work, made the deal unacceptable. The Council was hopeful, though, that the Mountain Climber could be pushed into making further concessions. As usual, the comm had come from Gerry Adams, who had taken on the unenviable role of transmitting the Army Council’s views to the prison leadership.”

This is a complete change from what the Adams Group had told the British late on Saturday night. Only a few hours ago their stated position was that the ‘demands dealing with work and association could be subject to a series of discussions after the ending of the hunger strike’.

Stunning the ICJP

Adams and Morrison spent the afternoon informing the ICJP of their secret talks with the British, and demanding that the ICJP cancel their upcoming meeting with the NIO.

The fallout from this was predictable enough – the ICJP was ‘stunned by disclosure’, and ‘confronts [Michael] Alison [NIO contact]’. According to Garrett Fitzgerald, the ICJP were ‘furious at this development’.

When they confronted Alison about the secret talks, however, he was so obviously astonished that the ICJP were convinced ‘that he didn't know the second line of contact’ was opened and was ‘as much in the dark’ as the ICJP had been.

Jake Jackson's comments to author Padraig O'Malley in Biting at the Grave on who exactly did know about the secret talks between the Adams Group and Thatcher are illuminating. Jackson was a prisoner in McFarlane and O'Rawe's circle:

[T]he only people [Jackson] could say knew for sure about the Mountain Climber initiative at that point were himself, McFarlane, block OCs Pat McGeown and Sid Walsh and the PRO Richard O'Rawe, and the hunger striker, Joe McDonnell. As for the rest, [Jackson] says, it would have been on "a need to know basis": the closer a hunger striker got to dying the more likely he was to know. Mickey Devine and Kevin Lynch, the INLA members, wouldn't have been informed, one way or the other, nor would the hunger strikers who were still on the blocks.

The rest of the ICJP's afternoon and evening were spent pushing Alison on their proposal to end the strike, and they secured an agreement that the NIO ‘would see the prisoners with the governor by mid-morning the following day, Tuesday’.

A Third Party Trusted by the Top

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, kept Thatcher updated on developments. While detailing the status of the ICJP talks with Michael Alison, in a minute report sent on Monday afternoon before a 7pm briefing, he notes:

In parallel with these discussions we have been approached by a third party who is trusted by the top Provisional leadership. Again, no negotiations have been taking place but it is obviously only sensible that if the Provisional leadership wish to communicate something to us indirectly about this critical problem, we should not refuse to listen. They have set out the kind of approach which they would find acceptable as a way of bringing both the strike and the protest to an end – and their views are important because so far they seem to be largely in control of the strikers.

Their position is that they support the statement issued on behalf of the prisoners on Saturday, and would seem to be as follows:

(a) They are no longer pressing for differential treatment for “their” prisoners.

(b) HMG should make a public statement indicating that, after the hunger strike and protest has ended,

(i) all prisoners would be allowed to wear their own clothes all the time (but they accept that the authorities should control the type of clothing allowed sufficiently to avoid, eg all PIRA prisoners wearing a uniform);

(ii) all prisoners should have visits, parcels and letters on a scale similar to that now available to conforming prisoners;

(iii) discussions would be held with the prisoners about the precise nature and extent of

(a) the work they should undertake, and

(b) the degree of association they would be allowed.

(c) The statement would also have to be more precise (and it is suggested, but not insisted upon, more generous) about the arrangements for restoring lost remission.

(d) That statement would have to be shown to, and be acceptable to, the Provisional leaders before it was published.

This position is in keeping with Brendan Duddy's assessment of the Adams Group position articulated through the channel throughout Sunday. Was Atkins reporting the detail of the channel communications, or was someone else from, or close to, the Adams Group talking to someone from the NIO?

The detail in his minute report is remarkably similar to the Adams Group position described in the channel records.

However, according to statements he made to author Padraig O'Malley published in 1990, Atkins appears to be yet another person who at the time was completely in the dark about the secret talks.

“I had no personal knowledge,” he said, in a statement to be echoed by Gerry Adams a over a decade later when he would be queried about the Thatcher offers, “I've never heard of the Mountain Climber as such. You've just mentioned the name, it's the first time I've ever heard it.”

Atkins does make clear to O'Malley that 'any contact with HMG' would not have been under his control –  so it is unlikely he would have been privy to the full details of the secret talks. This makes his knowledge of the detail of the Adams Group position more intriguing, and may also account for his recommending 'standing firm' as the preferred course of action in the minute report.

As it was, Thatcher was already pursuing an alternative suggestion of his, which was to use a combination of the ICJP and direct, "channel" negotiations with the PIRA as represented by the Adams' Group.

Who Exactly Was Leading Who?

Atkins' observation that the views of the Provisional leadership  –  the Adams Group – were “important” because “they seem to be largely in control of the strikers” shows an awareness by the British that the prisoners themselves were not in control of their protest.

This perception accounts for why he considers “simultaneously showing the terms to the Provisionals” as a course of action  –  to his thinking, the objective would be “to try to swing their leadership behind the strikers”. In other words, at this point it was the outside leadership – the Adams Group – keeping the hunger strike from ending, not the prisoners themselves.

Longer Term Interests

Other key observations by Atkins in this report are worth noting. As he outlines the various courses of action open to the British as a response to ongoing developments, he demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the emerging leadership from the Adams Group and the pitfalls the outcome of the hunger strike holds.

This understanding is important for the British because they have already identified that the Adams Group wants to lead the Republican Movement away from armed struggle and into politics, and it is in their interests, obviously, to support or at least not get in the way of that change.

He notes that if “the hunger strikers give up their fast in spite of the instructions of the Provisional leaders” it would “be a severe blow” to the Adams Group –  again underlining the balance of control of the protest; he reiterates this later, saying that if the hunger strike collapses, it can “leave the Provisional leadership humiliated ”.

He is also aware that the Adams Group “regard the ICJP as an intrusion' and would “be looking for a way of claiming a “victory””.

The Provisionals need to the settle the prisons problem on terms they can represent as acceptable to them if they are to go on – as we know some of them wish to do – to consider an end of the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has “lost” on the prisons is in no position to do this.

While Atkins' recommendation to Thatcher is to stand firm, he is keenly aware that such a stance would be counterproductive to their own longer-term self interests. If they took the course of standing firm, it would only end up “discouraging the Provisionals from switching from terrorist to political activity at the very moment when we know that they have begun to find political action attractive ”.

Monday Evening

Thatcher’s Draft Offer

HANDWRITTEN ANNOTATIONS

The British end of the channel, meanwhile, was working on the draft statement. Thatcher's input, handwritten on the British copy, informed the statement that went down the channel as a reply to the Adams Group at 11:30 that night.

It was a clear and unambiguous statement, and Brendan Duddy’s notes closely follow the annotated version available from the Thatcher Foundation archives:

The British Government is prepared to issue a statement only if there is an immediate end to the Hunger Strike.

1. Prison regime in Armagh would become general in NI prisons i.e. civilian clothing.

2. Visits as for conforming prisons.

3. Remission as stated on June 30th by Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins.

4. On work – the prison administration must maintain the right to decide what work should be done. Within that rule, further kinds of work are added from time to time, i.e. Open University, Build a Church (O’Fiach’s idea), Toys for spastic children.

5. Little advance is possible on Association as laid out on June Statement of 30th.

If we receive a satisfactory reply by 9:00am Tuesday 07/07/81 we will provide full text of the full statement.

If the reply is negative or if there is any public reference to this exchange we will deny it took place.

Silence will be taken as an unsatisfactory reply.

Hedged Bets

The Adams Group wanted to be sure they weren't going to be undermined by the ICJP.

Morrison, according to Fitzgerald, phoned requesting a meeting with the ICJP. Despite their refusal, the Adams Group's determination to keep abreast of the ICJP's diplomacy meant he arrived at their hotel anyway. The Adams Group's own “contacts with the British were continuing through the night”, Morrison is reported to have told them, and “he needed to see the actual commission proposals”. The ICJP gave him a run-down of their discussions with Alison, which included the ‘general gist’ of the proposals between them and the NIO. They also inform Morrison ‘that a guarantor will go in at 9am the following morning, Tuesday, 7 July’.

The morning deadline – given in the British offer and confirmed by Morrison's double checking the ICJP’s arrangement with the NIO – sets the agenda for the next hours to come.

To Be Continued in Part Three: Tuesday 7 July 1981 ● Previously: Sunday 5 July 1981

The Nightmare of the H Blocks: What the British Knew in 1981

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Sun, 12 May 2013 17:30:00 +0000

Former blanket man Thomas Dixie Elliot with a letter that featured in the Irish News on the 9th May under the title 'Nightmare of the H Blocks' and in the Derry Journal on the 10th May under the title 'What The British Knew in 81'.

The recently released Thatcher Foundation Papers reveal that Humphrey Atkins in a communiqué to Thatcher on July 6th, two days before the death of Joe McDonnell, indicated that:

The Provisionals need to settle the prisons problem on terms they can represent as acceptable to them if they are to go on – as we know some of them wish to do – to consider an end of the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has ‘lost’ on the prisons is in no position to do this.

Clearly the British were correct in July 1981 given that those running the Hunger Strike from the outside, Adams, McGuinness, Morrison, Hartley and Gibney were later to the fore in the Peace Process. And clearly they knew then what the Hunger Strikers and volunteers of the IRA didn’t know, that an eventual ceasefire and movement towards politics was in the minds of those trusted to find a solution to the nightmare of the H-Blocks.

Would anyone have willingly died had they known what the British knew?

Ardoyne White Line Vigil

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Sun, 12 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Jim McAllister

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Sat, 11 May 2013 20:15:00 +0000

Tonight there was a month’s mind mass due to be held for Jim McAllister. I did not attend. Taking something of a surreal view I am sure had Jim been alive he would not have turned up either, preferring instead some acerbic comment about the hocus-pocus of religion. Nevertheless, it is heartening to know that those who have a religious belief, perhaps even none but turn out anyway, gather to honour and remember him in their own way.

The day of his burial last month I made my way up to Cullyhanna in South Armagh. It is not that often I am there. The last journey I made also took me to a cemetery, where I paused for a while to reflect at the grave of Raymond McCreesh, one of the ten republican hunger strikers to die on peaceful protest in 1981. Embodied in the graves of republican dead is an emotional centre of gravity which draws us to them. The people in them lost so much while some of their leaders gained quite a lot for themselves alone.

Before Jim died we had been in touch via e mail. I promised to call up and see him. He welcomed it but had sisters over visiting from London at the time so a week or two down the line would just fine. ‘I'm in good form and intend to stay that way, no point getting grumpy about it’, is what he told me. Despite the oncologist having explained to him there was nothing more to be done for his condition he was focussing on the imprisonment of his son Turloch and discussed a letter writing campaign he hoped to kick start shortly with a submission to the Irish News. He was furious at the games played by the British penal administration.

They refused Turloch parole saying that he needs to have served 6 years which will be the day he is released and that I am terminal, not critical. When I am critical I will be so doped up that I won't know what is going on.

Unfortunately within a week or two of our email exchange his situation worsened and death called on him before I did.

I had attended meetings with Jim in Belfast while we worked together for a while on one of Sinn Fein’s many barren committees that seemed to be sterilised against ideas. I think like myself he had a belief that nothing was impossible until given to a committee. His irreverent wit kept us going during some pretty boring sessions.

He was a regular speaker at events and often gave funeral orations. I have a memory of him delivering an oration at Milltown Cemetery. I believe it was for the IRA volunteer Thomas Begley who died during the Shankill bombing in October 1993. But memory not being what it once was I decline to commit myself to it with any degree of certainty.

I first met him at the end of 1992 while on 'work out' from Maghaberry Prison in the final weeks of a life sentence. While 'working out' one evening saw me off to assist a former prisoner work out the bars of Dublin. A driver from the AP/RN was giving me a lift back to Belfast early the following morning, and so we called in with a batch of papers to Jim’s council house. I was proud to meet him as I had often heard him on radio and watched him on television where he was an adept performer: taking no nonsense, infuriating the bigots and disturbing the political peace. It impressed me that as a politician he seemed to live like the social class he represented. A council house much like my mother’s in Twinbrook adorned with nothing but the essentials and books.

As well as serving on Newry and Mourne Council he had been elected to the Assembly of 1982 where with the others he abstained from taking his seat. Not one of those party colleagues elected at the same time turned up for his funeral. This is to be expected from people who traded in their republican ethos and who sought shelter from the elements of radical politics within the British administrative camp. One of them openly called people like Jim’s son traitors. Jim would hardly have wanted that type at his funeral. Not one of them would have had the moral strength to bear his remains.

His political work seemed to reflect his frugal lifestyle. As Pat McNamee said during his funeral oration:

I spoke to an Irish News journalist recently and he told me that they had a file on Jim containing press statements issued by him during his time as a councillor. One of those statements was a handwritten piece of paper that Jim had posted in. There was no fancy office, no typewriter and no fax machine. There was no secretary, no computers and there was no special advisor.

Having once claimed that anybody who said that the Good Friday Agreement would lead to a united Ireland was guilty of talking bollix he left Sinn Fein because of its abandonment of republicanism. Yet he continued to immerse himself in the defence of the people he had fought for as an elected representative. He had led the campaign for justice for the family of Paul Quinn, a young man ‘brutally beaten to death in a barn in Co Monaghan by the Provisional IRA in 2007.’ Setting fear of intimidation or worse to the side he also ‘spoke out against smugglers and fuel-launderers in South Armagh who had made millions of pounds for themselves personally in the name of the IRA.’

Pat McNamee delivered a fitting oration during which he told us that Jim could tell a great yarn. The thought crossed my mind that Jim, with his wit, might have claimed to have learned the trade from the leader of the party he had once belonged to. In truth Jim’s yarns were descriptive rather than deceitful.

The words I found most significant came when Pat referred to Jim’s independent mind:

and he didn’t just go with the flow. Jim issued his press statements from his heart based on his republican principles. The peace process was sprouting and some of Jim’s statements were too strong for the Sinn Féin agenda. Jim hadn’t changed his position but others had changed theirs. Jim was told not to issue any further statements unless they were approved by the six-county office. Jim wasn’t going to be gagged or have his comments sanitised. He was ostracised and isolated by some of those who had been his former comrades. He was forgotten by so many that he had helped over the years. Some people go with the flow. Jim stood to his republican principles.

Sinn Fein have written Jim McAllister out of history, refusing to even identify him by name when referring to him in a book about the late IRA volunteers Brendan Moley and Brendan Burns whose funeral oration Jim had delivered. But those of us who believe in People Before Peter will very much place him where he belongs – at the heart of the narrative of republicanism in South Armagh.

55 Hours: Sunday 5 July 1981

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Sat, 11 May 2013 08:04:00 +0000

Tonight the Pensive Quill carries the start of a four part series by guest writer Carrie Twomey that takes readers through a day-by-day account of the events of early July, 1981.

Sunday ● Monday ● Tuesday ● Wednesday

Using the timeline created with documents from ‘Mountain Climber’ Brendan Duddy’s diary of ‘channel’ communications, official papers from the Thatcher Foundation Archive, excerpts from former Taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald’s autobiography, David Beresford's Ten Men Dead, Padraig O’Malley’s book Biting at the Grave, and INLA: Deadly Divisions by Jack Holland and Henry McDonald, Danny Morrison’s published timelines, as well as first person accounts and the books of Richard O’Rawe and Gerry Adams, the fifty-five hours of secret negotiations between British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Gerry Adams’ emerging IRA leadership group are examined day by day.

In the run up to this period of communication, the IRA prisoners on protest issued a statement that made clear it would be acceptable to apply the demands they were seeking to all prisoners – in other words, the issue of special category status would be set aside or fudged. This broke the logjam; the impending death of hunger striker Joe McDonnell added urgency to communications seeking an end to the protest.

PART ONE: SUNDAY 5 JULY 1981

BEGINS

Early Morning

Parameters set

The first documentation of "the channel" communication shows reaction to IRA prisoners' 4 July statement is immediate, as the timing of Brendan Duddy’s conversation with the British starts between 10 and 11pm late on the 4th, resumes at 2:39 in the morning and continues until 5 AM. Duddy was the channel's middle-man facilitating the conversation between the Adams Group and Thatcher’s representatives; he is alternatively referred to as “Soon” and the “Mountain Climber.”

The Adams Group consists primarily of Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, and Martin McGuinness, and also includes Jim Gibney, Tom Hartley, and Ted Howell.

This early morning conversation sets parameters for channel communication.

First, it is clear the Adams Group is worried about the ICJP: “a great deal of confusion has arisen in Provisional circles from the impression given by the ICJP that there is every indication of movement by HMG”. Not only are the Adams Group concerned about the ICJP being facilitated in ending the hunger strike by the British, they were caught on the hop by the release of the statement from the prisoners that broke the logjam keeping a solution from being found. It ‘had been issued independently by the prisoners in the Maze and the timing came as a surprise to Senior Provisionals outside’.

The British were informed that ‘a meeting of the Senior Provisionals had taken place on 26 June’ – presumably the Adams Group – ‘at which what they considered realistic conditions for the ending of the hunger had been discussed’, and their position was laid out:

“Immediately following the ending of the Hunger Strike, concessions would be required on own clothes, parcels and visit. This, [Duddy] said, would provide the Provisionals with a face saving way out. The remaining demands dealing with work and association could be subject to a series of discussions after the ending of the hunger strike. [Duddy] stressed that the Provisionals' position was, in his opinion, represented by the Prisoners’ Statement. Thus, if the arrangements detailed in this statement were acceptable to HMG and immediate concessions could be made on clothing, parcels and visit, he was optimistic.”

This is extremely important. The opening position of the Adams Group led the British to believe that if concessions on clothes, parcels and visits would immediately follow the ending of the Hunger Strike, the remaining demands could be worked out in the aftermath. The British offer in response met those conditions in good faith. Later, we will see the hunger strikers holding out for the ‘Five Demands’, completely unaware that their statement of the 4th had resulted in an offer that met the bulk of their demands – and that it was being repeatedly rejected in bad faith by the Adams Group on their behalf.

Another important position communicated by the Adams Group to the British is that the ending of the first hunger strike was not an issue for them – they believed that the British were sincere. This effectively ends the lie about the British reneging on any offer made; a fiction that has been used since 2005 to justify the Adams Group rejection of Thatcher’s offers.

Opening Offer

The British starting position – their offer to end the hunger strike – is substantial and has immediate implementation plans.

By mid-morning on the 5th of July, it is clearly established that the Adams Group are keeping everyone else in the Provisional Movement leadership at all levels in the dark about the communication with the British. This was not an Army Council sanctioned initiative and in fact contradicts the Green Book on a number of points.

It is also clear that the Adams Group are intent on attempting to neutralize the ICJP.

Sunday Afternoon

Morrison’s Visit to the Prison

The afternoon of the 5th is taken up with arrangements to send Danny Morrison into the prison to sound out the prisoners and report back with a further position for the British to work with. The British are clear that they cannot come up with a draft statement without knowing what the Adams Group's resulting position is first.

The purpose of Morrison's visit, therefore, was meant to give the parameters of the offer to the prisoners in order to see if they would accept it. If the Adams Group then indicated that a settlement was indeed possible, the British would draft their statement.

Morrison’s actual objective for the prison visit was not to find out what the prisoners wanted, but to make sure that the prisoners did not agree to anything the ICJP did. The ICJP were working on ending the strike, with similar proposals from the British that the hunger strikers would have accepted. They had the support of the Irish government and would have been able to stand as guarantors over any finalised deal agreed to.

Morrison did not tell the hunger strikers the details of the offer coming through the channel. He only briefed them that they were in the channel talks and warned them that the ICJP “could be settling for less than what they had the potential for achieving.”

The Adams Group also saw Morrison’s visit as a means of assessing the value of the channel. In the words of Garrett Fitzgerald, “This visit was later described by the IRA as a test of the authority of the British government representative in touch with them to bypass the NIO.”

Morrison met with Bik McFarlane separately from the hunger strikers, and did inform him of the details of the channel offer; McFarlane would have needed to know the details of the offer the Adams Group were working on in order to combat anything the ICJP were proposing. Morrison makes sure Bik knows the line to push on the hunger strikers not to accept anything from the ICJP.

Channel Discussions Ongoing

While Morrison is at the prison, the channel discussions continued. The Adams Group is fully aware that the hunger strike would have to be called off first before any settlement was implemented, and had indicated this sequence of events would be acceptable.

The Adams Group then added a caveat that before anything was set in motion, the Adams Group wanted to see the final British statement. The British wanted to know whether there was any potential to end the hunger strike based upon the offer that they believed went into the prison with Morrison; once the Adams Group gave their assessment of the prisoners’ position and if a settlement were truly on the cards, they would consider the request. (As it turns out, they were prepared to show the Adams Group the final statement before giving it to the prisoners, and prior to publication.)

Morrison’s prison visit comes to an end after he phones Gerry Adams and tells him that the “prisoners will not take anything on trust, and prisoners want offers confirmed and seek to improve them”. Presumably Adams' response kept Morrison waiting for Bik McFarlane to return from instructing the hunger strikers to shun the ICJP. While waiting to regroup with McFarlane, he is ordered out of the prison.

Hunger Strikers and INLA Kept in the Dark – Despite NIO Attempt to Clarify

Someone at the NIO, no doubt made aware of Morrison’s visit to the prison, contacted IRSP Councillor Flynn – whose party represented the INLA hunger strikers – and instructed him to go to the prison as “there are developments”. Flynn and Seamus Ruddy met the NIO official who enabled Flynn to visit the INLA hunger strikers Kevin Lynch and Mickey Devine in the prison, after telling him that “there had been discussions between Sinn Fein and the government and that it looked like they might settle”. From what Lynch and Devine told Flynn, it was clear they were not given the details of what was on offer from the channel by Morrison.

When Flynn confronted the Provisionals about the offer it was denied that they were involved in any secret talks. This may be because of who Flynn spoke to, as the knowledge of the talks was restricted to the Adams Group. It may also be, given the description in Holland & McDonald’s book, if it was someone in the Adams Group Flynn spoke to, the answer was Jesuitical – a denial they were “engaged in any secret talks with the NIO”. That much was true; they were in talks with Thatcher directly.

Offer Accepted by Prisoners

McFarlane returns to his cell, and informs the PRO, Richard O’Rawe, of the offer from the channel. It is a fairly comprehensive offer. He later described it as “a huge opportunity” and believed “there [was] a potential here to end this.” O’Rawe and McFarlane agreed the offer was acceptable; McFarlane indicated that he would send a comm letting the leadership know. Crucially, this conversation has been confirmed by other prisoners on the wing who overheard it.

The Army Council – Or Adams Alone?

A further crucial point is that at the time, the prisoners – McFarlane, O’Rawe, and the general IRA population, believed that their comms were going to the IRA Army Council – that replies from the Adams Group were directives from the Army Council. The prisoners were under the impression that the channel talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the full council and according to the Green Book. It may be that McFarlane understood the restricted nature of the channel talks and the directives coming in from the Adams Group but it is certain the rest of the prisoners, including the hunger strikers, did not know this, and viewed comms and directives from Gerry Adams as having the imprimatur of the Army Council.

The Evening of Sunday the 5th of July

Blocking the ICJP

After the departure of Danny Morrison from the prison – where the hunger strikers and Bik McFarlane had been instructed to freeze out the Irish Commission on Justice and Peace – ICJP representatives Bishop O’Mahony, Father Crilly, and Hugh Logue visited the hunger strikers. The hunger strikers followed Morrison’s instructions, and their discussion with the ICJP revolved around mediators and guarantees, and emphasised that McFarlane, and what they believed was the Army Council, the Adams Group, would have to be consulted before they agreed to anything. They insisted that they had to hear any offer from the British themselves – but the main point was that even if anything was acceptable to them, they would have to “square any settlement” with McFarlane.

Far from the hunger strikers and prisoners being in control of their destiny, and the IRA structure following their wishes, the prisoners were subjugated to the control of the Adams Group – who were using the authority of the Army Council without sanction to impose their will.

The difference between the hunger strikers' position and that of McFarlane and the Adams Group is starkly described in Padraig O’Malley’s book, Biting at the Grave:

McFarlane was down the corridor in his bed – he had been brought into the hospital wing that evening and provided with a bed there so he could stay over and be available for consultation with the commissioners if the need arose. O’Mahony and Logue went down to talk to him. “He listened to us for about two minutes,” says Logue, “and turned around and went back to sleep and Joe McDonnell was going to be dead within thirty-six hours and I never forgave him for that. He was not in the business of trying to get a solution.”
Nevertheless, the commissioners left in a hopeful state. Before they left, Kieran Doherty spoke briefly in Gaelic to Oliver Crilly. Doherty, Crilly told Logue, had told him that if somebody came in and read the terms out to the hunger strikers, they would accept them.

The contrast between the two men's responses shows the desperate gulf: Doherty seems to have realised the worth of the ICJP initiative. McFarlane, as a good soldier following the instructions given via Morrison's visit, in his behaviour towards the ICJP demonstrated that he was intent on cutting them out from “the business of trying to get a solution”. The hunger strikers themselves – if only they were told the terms of what was on offer – would accept one.

Midnight Morrison Report Causes Alarm

The channel discussions resumed upon Morrison’s return from his visit to the prison, and the report he delivered was “alarming”: “the situation was now so bad the possibility of any settlement was seriously in doubt”.

The Adams Group informed the British that the prisoners were completely hostile to the ICJP. Duddy was met with anger and abuse – most likely a show designed to get the British to stop their concurrent discussions with the ICJP. Morrison must have sensed the hunger strikers were close to accepting what the ICJP were proposing, and this panicked the Adams Group. Their strategy was to tell the British that they were too upset by the “Bully Boy” tactics of the ICJP to give them their response. The British had been waiting on the response from Morrison’s visit to the prison in order to complete their draft statement. This temper tantrum by the Adams Group was nothing but a tactic to keep the British and the hunger strikers from ending their protest on the ICJP’s initiative.

To Be Continued in Part Two: Monday 6 July 1981

Keep Radio Radio Free Eireann on Air

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Fri, 10 May 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Sandy Boyer with a a plug for Radio Free Eireann, a New York based radio station which has been a valuable site of information and a bastion of anti censorship. For years it has helped keep the Irish American community informed of the facts on the ground in the North. Many of the interviews its presenters have conducted have featured on The Pensive Quill courtesy of the efforts of our transcriber who endeavours to ensure that the important work of Radio Free Eireann reaches a wider audience.

Radio Free Eireann will be on the air tomorrow, Saturday May 11, from 1-3 pm New York time on WBAI 99.5 FM or wbai.org. We will be asking people to donate to keep WBAI and Radio Free Eireann on the air.

We will be interviewing Gerry McGeough whose appeal was denied this week and Gerry Conlon of the Guildford 4 who will describe the case of the Craigavon 2, Brendan McConville and John Paul Wooten, who are appealing their life sentence for the killing of a member of the British security
forces.

We will also be playing excerpts from our Irish Wake for Thatcher including parts of the presentations by Fr. Pat Moloney and Randy Credico. We will be offering a dvd of the complete Irish Wake for Thatcher as a thank you gift for those who can contribute $75 or more.

Even by the Standards of British Justice in Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Fri, 10 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Radio Free Éireann
WBAI 99.5FM Pacifica Radio
New York City
4 May 2013

Guest Host Martin Galvin (MG) interviews via telephone from Belfast Tony Catney (TC), an Irish Republican prisoner support constituency campaigner, who provides updates on this week's events in the courts in Ireland.

MG: With us on the line we have Tony Catney. Tony Catney, from Belfast, served a sixteen year sentence as an Irish Republican prisoner. He's also a campaigner for a group, Justice for the Craigavon Two , as well as (his) involvements for justice as a campaigner for a number of other cases that are now on-going in the North of Ireland. Welcome, Tony!

TC: Thank you, Martin. It's good to talk to you again.

MG: Tony, what is The Craigavon Two?

TC: The Craigavon Two are two people who were sentenced almost a year ago for the shooting of Constable Carroll in Craigavon.

The two people involved were at the time a seventeen year old, John Paul Wootton, and a forty-one year old and former Sinn Féin Councillor, Brendan McConville.

The circumstances around the case were just so obviously a miscarriage of justice that once the initial trial had taken place and both had been found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment family members and campaigners felt that they could not allow such a miscarriage of justice to just carry forward into, for example, the courts of appeals without campaigning around the issue.

I'll go on to explain some of the issues once we get into it more, Martin.

MG: Last week I noticed on Irish television you had Gerry Conlon, who was one of The Guildford Four, the subject of the movie, In the Name of the Father, you had somebody from The Birmingham Six, again another famous miscarriage of justice. They were outside the Court of Appeal with family members of The Craigavon Two. Could you tell us what happened?

TC: Even by the standards of British justice in Ireland, it shocked even Paddy Hill of The Birmingham Six and Gerry Conlon of The Guildford Four.

The case against both men rested entirely on circumstantial evidence. The vast bulk of it coming from someone who was only known as Witness M.

The circumstances of Witness M were that he didn't even come forward to give evidence until eleven months after the incident had taken place.

Then the evidence that he gave was literally torn apart in court due to the fact the person, Witness M, has an eyesight problem - which means that he is shortsighted - and couldn't have seen either of the the two accused at the distance that he claimed he had seen them.

Not only did his eyesight belie the fact that he couldn't have seen them but the description of the attire that, for example that Brendan McConville was wearing, was completely different than that which was retrieved from the car at the scene of the offence.

So on Monday of this week, the first day of the appeal, it was brought out in court that a family member of Witness M had come forward to give evidence stating that what Witness M had said about his movements on the night were a tissue of lies.

That as a family member he had the reputation of being unable to tell the truth. They point that his family nickname was Walter Mitty and that he kept making things up.

This witness was then visited by the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) who forced their way into his house through his door. Then verbally intimidated and threatened him, telling him that if he carried on and gave evidence to state that his family member was shortsighted and couldn't have been where he said he was on the night, that they would discredit him in court.

Then twenty-four hours later they went back and arrested this new witness and held him for forty-eight hours, all of the time telling him that if he went to court he would be discredited.

So in this instance, not only was the state not prepared to allow evidence to go to court but they actively, actively went out of their way to subvert the course of justice to the extent that the defence counsel have now asked that the matter needs to be investigated by someone other than the RUC.

As the result of that the three trial judges had no option but to adjourn the trial which means that the appeal cannot take place until at least October.

By October the two men involved will have spent four and a half years in prison which is the equivalent of a nine year sentence. And we are quite confident that on the basis of the evidence that they will be acquitted. So they will have done a nine year sentence on nothing other than the word of a shortsighted eyewitness.

MG: Tony, we want to ask you about a couple of other cases – there's been a number of other important legal developments this week and we just want to go through those with you.

First of all there's been some further action in the case of Martin Corey and Marian Price. Could you tell us about that?

TC: Martin and Marian are both former life sentence prisoners.

MG: Tony, now you know a little bit about life sentence licences, don't you?

TC: Yes, I do indeed, Martin, unfortunately.

MG: What does a licence mean?

TC: What it means is the terms of your licence are: that for the rest of your days the Secretary of State can decide on what will be the terms of your imprisonment.

At this moment in time the terms of my imprisonment are sitting here with the ability to make this phone call.

But if the Secretary of State decided tomorrow that she wanted to change those conditions then she could do that at the stroke of a pen. Which means that I could be put back into a prison, taken over to England and put in a prison in England, almost anything that falls under her jurisdiction she could do that because I'm a life sentence prisoner.

MG: Would they have to reveal any evidence that they had against you? The reasons for bringing you back to prison? What would be the procedure for you to challenge that?

TC: There is no procedure to challenge it first of all. And secondly there is no judicial process whatsoever.

The entire process is executive. The Secretary of State doesn't have to answer to the Lord Chief Justice, to the Attorney General - to anyone.

The Secretary of State can just make that decision arbitrarily. There is then no judicial process through which you can challenge it.

All of the evidence that is given against you is given in secret.

You are allowed a legal representative to attend the hearing where this secret information will be given. However, the legal representative is not a legal representative of your choosing. The state chooses who the legal representative is. And then the legal representative is prohibited from informing you or anyone else what the reasons for your re-incarceration are.

In other words, a closed shop.

MG: I don't understand. Suppose you were accused of, instead of being on the radio right now, calling from your home. Let's say they accuse you of being at an IRA meeting right at this time in Dublin.

How would you ... obviously if that was made known to you you could bring in a broadcast of this radio, I could show the phone records to show that you were actually at home at this time. How would you be able to find that out? And how would you be able...

You'd have indisputable proof that you were innocent. How would you be able to find that out and how would you be able to challenge it?

TC: You wouldn't. It would be completely impossible.

Because you would never be told that that's the reason why your licence had been revoked in the first place.

In other words, it's a completely secretive process that is non-judicial. It is completely executive. In other words, Martin Corey has now been in prison for over three years and to this moment he has no idea what he is in prison for or what any possible charges ... well ... no charges have ever been leveled against him.

So technically he is, for the past three years and a month, has been a political hostage held at the whim of the Secretary of State by the British state.

MG: Martin Corey went to challenge this in Supreme Court. Could you tell us what happened this week in that attempt to give a legal challenge to the way in which he has been imprisoned?

TC: Unfortunately he has lost that challenge in that the secret procedure has been upheld.

It is a clear example where the judicial process has absolutely no writ over the executive process.

And certainly in my opinion, Martin, the only thing that will make any difference with both Marian and Martin is feet on streets. People going out and protesting and saying: No! Not in our name.

This is a complete travesty of justice and it needs to be ended now.

MG: Marian Price has been before the Parole Commissioners, there has been that type of campaign in the United States. In fact, Sandy Boyer, who is on this radio programme, is one of the key figures in the campaign in the United States, as well as campaigning ... you've been involved in it and others across Ireland.

When is she supposed to hear the result of the latest parole re-evaluation?

TC: She should get some word next week, within the next five or six days, Martin.

And obviously everybody is hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

Marian's case I suppose is even more complicated than Martin's in that Marian has been held for the entire period in isolation because she was then the only female Republican prisoner and did not associate with the ordinary prisoners on the wing. And she was held in isolation.   As a result of that both her physical and her psychological well being suffered.

So Marian has not only has lost her freedom but is also in fairly urgent need of the type of respite that you will only get when you're with your own family and in your own home. It is a clear case of victimisation by the British state. And how anyone can do that and claim they have the right to call themselves a state living in democracy - it just defies belief.

MG: Lastly, we want to ask you, there was a development in the case of Brian Shivers yesterday. Brian was one of the two people who was originally charged with the killings of British troopers at Massereene. Colin Duffy was previously acquitted. Brian Shivers was initially convicted, served time in prison and then was put on re-trial. Can you tell us what happened with that case?

TC: Yes, that was on Friday; just yesterday of this week, Martin.

The week began with a roar with The Craigavon Two and then ended with a bang with Brian Shivers.

And what happened there is Brian Shivers was sentences purely on forensic evidence. The forensic evidence were on three matches.

And it was shown in the course of the appeal and then the re-trial, because Brian had to go through three legal processes, that not only was the initial forensic examination wrong but that it is quite likely that the initial forensic scientist lied and lied under oath about the DNA that was found at the car that allegedly was used in the shooting at Masseerene.

The extent of that was, and Brian gave this in his defence, that the matches that were found at the scene could have been from any one of a number of people and that there should be multiple samples of DNA on the matches. This wasn't the evidence that was given by the state and the prosecution at the initial trial.

However, at the re-trial and under close scrutiny from the defence barrister, it came out that in fact what Brian had been saying was the fact.

There were multiple traces of DNA on the matches which showed that it could not be tied to Brian Shivers. And as a result of that the judge threw the entire case out.

Now Brian is also an MS sufferer who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. And they put Brian through all the rigours of imprisonment, of strip searching, of controlled movement, they held back his medication from him – they've done everything they could to make his life as hard as it possibly was only to have been now have found out to have been the perpetrators of a crime as opposed to the people who are upholding law and order.

And what will happen over it? Absolutely nothing!

That's the sort of two-tiered system that we now have to live under in the North of Ireland.

MG: And Tony, the last thing we want to mention: there was an agreement in August of 2010 to end the strip searching practice – you've mentioned it a couple of times - what is the current status of strip searching? Will that be ended at any time soon on Republican political prisoners in Maghaberry?

TC: It doesn't look like it will be ended any time soon, Martin.

What I will say first of all is the morale among the prisoners is very, very high at the moment. They know that they have the moral high ground on this issue because the agreement that was broken in 2010 was vouchsafed by independents rather than just the prison administration.

And to that extent they know that it is clear who it is that are dragging their feet in terms of the implementation of the agreement. The people who are dragging their feet are the NIO (Northern Ireland Office) and the Executive up at Stormont - primarily David Ford as the Minister of Justice - but the entire Executive up in Stormont has the ability to end what has now become the completely discredited and archaic practice of strip searching and controlled movement.

I mean, controlled movement within a secure block is completely unnecessary as is strip searching between two secure units. I mean, if nothing else comes in why would you want to be strip searching somebody?

So will it end any time soon?

There doesn't seem to be a break coming any time soon. But the prisoners are adamant that they will maintain their position until they have the implementation of the 2010 agreement.

MG: Tony, why do you think the British prison officials at Maghaberry are strip searching and using this type of brutality against Republican prisoners?

TC: As a form of control. Pure and simple - as a form of control.

We have now the ubiquitous situation - right there at the North of Ireland – where after 2000 and the introduction of the RIPA Act and the use of covert human (intelligence) sources (CHIS) we have a parallel system of policing and imprisonment.

Where the people who look after Republicans are not answerable the judiciary, the Executive or anybody else here. They're answerable only to the NIO and by extension, the Secretary of State.

All other offences are dealt with in a completely different fashion.

But because Republicans are subject to this more severe, more harsh parallel prison and policing regime then Republicans will always be in the position where the state will try to control everything that they do and then use that control to try and break or criminalise the Republicans.

MG: Alright Tony, I want to thank you for bringing us up to date on all of these legal matters that are still forms of injustice within the North of Ireland.

TC: It's always a pleasure to speak to you soon, Martin, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon with hopefully some more good news.

MG: Hopefully it will be good news about Marian Price in the immediate future.

TC: Yeah, yeah, yeah ... that would be great.

MG: Thank you, Tony.

Getting Stopped

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:40:00 +0000

I was in Belfast shortly before Christmas sorting out those last minute things with family before the great man began his earthward descent. I had deposited the kids with their aunt on the side of town I had grown up in and met up with friends, sampling the city’s Guinness in one of my old down town haunts. The following morning I got picked up by a close family friend who is also somebody I had been in the H Blocks with. He suggested we go out for breakfast before I headed off to pick up the kids and make the train journey home to Drogheda.

My friend has held onto his traditionalist republican beliefs long after the Provos went Stater and learned to love what they had for long professed to hate. It hasn’t made him the friend of those who turned the Provos. He and I disagree on quite a bit but as he pointed out recently there are people who are not going to let something as disreputable as politics ruin friendships of many years standing.

When he picked me up I asked him was he still getting hassle from the cops. ‘Every day’ was his terse response while I hoped this day would be an exception. Like many things I have hoped for this too would elude me. On our way down the Andersonstown Road the blue light started flashing and the siren blared. I knew instinctively it was not an emergency seeking our vehicle to give way; that it was going to be one of those everyday events my friend experienced. We drifted down the road for a few hundred yards before pulling into the side. A cop came up from behind and opened my door. He asked my friend for his licence which was passed to him with a fair measure of contempt and returned in mutual fashion. That was the sum of the conversation between the British cop and the Irish republican which I was getting a ringside view of. The tension thickened the air. The cop then asked for my details. The Drogheda address seemed to surprise him as a frown descended over his features.

Being a British cop he would see Drogheda as being part of a foreign country. He walked off and came back a minute or two later with a few more questions, obviously verification ones, addresses where I had previously lived in the city. He also asked me to display a tattoo, before telling us we could go on our way.

It was all very formal and lacking in overt aggression but I sensed the situation was never more than a second away from being ugly. Nobody likes getting pulled to the side by the cops. That they did not search either of us or the vehicle confirmed they were on a fishing expedition. They knew who my friend was but wanted to find out who was in the car with him.

It was low level stuff for sure but if you are getting it day in day out it becomes intrusive and is bound to increase resentment. We have arrived at a situation where the cop views somebody challenging the Provo narrative as undermining the British state position and therefore in need of being dealt with. It is pretty clear that Gerry McGeough was the target of political policing. He was one of those unwanted members of the public that the law disposed of because he was proving too articulate in his critique of Sinn Fein and the roll of his electoral stone had to be halted before it began to gather voting moss. In more recent times we have witnessed the malevolent and vindictive PSNI handling of Alan Lundy’s dissent from the Stater position of the Provos.

Meanwhile, former republicans in Sinn Fein don’t get stopped or hassled They don’t have their homes raided - apart from the odd 12th of July incursion just to remind them who really is Mayor of Derry - or get set up like Stephen Murney or Alan Lundy. Once you go Stater the state will for the most part give you a bye ball, even look the other way when a bit of illegality is engaged in and on occasion allow you to stand in fine portly posture to be photographed alongside the chief constable as if you are auditioning for a prize pig competition. That you were convicted for killing two British soldiers, suggesting that the Casement killings were somehow okay in a way that the Masserene ones were not, seems just something in passing. I wonder what Pamela Brankin - the mother of Mark Quinsey - who Suzanne Breen wrote both poignantly and brilliantly about, made of all that prior to her untimely death.

While the Belfast experience was at the lower end of the scale, and for me little to complain about, for others it is part of an overall campaign of harassment visited on them daily, in their homes, on the streets, at work, shopping, driving, picking their kids up from school. I can return to Drogheda where I have to stop the Gardai if I want their attention rather than them stopping me.

Back in 1997 during a RUC search of my home the inspector in charge, being of the more polite variety, asked if he could sit on a chair. Once planted there he began a conversation about policing, asking me if I felt the police would ever be accepted. I told him that indifference was about as much as he could hope for which prompted the philosophical response that he could live with that. But where indifference or lack of enthusiasm may have kicked in for a few years after the name change, the traditional republican resentment towards the PSNI is being bulked out with serious resentment that seemed to have ebbed away when I lived in Belfast.

Nor can it be argued with any plausibility that the hostility towards the cops is the residue of a supposedly recalcitrant and diminishing band of implacable republicans unable to adjust to the post conflict world. Even Sinn Fein, so eager to suck the truncheon in 2007, now finds that it has been sold a pig in a poke; something Gerry Kelly seemed to confirm in his speech at the party's recent ard fheis.

Some months back Matt Baggott indicated publicly that he wanted to attend a Sinn Féin ard fheis. He then followed that up by tasking the PSNI to facilitate illegal loyalist parades and by his action, left the Short Strand area open to continuous sectarian abuse and physical attack ... You might note his absence from our gathering here today. He has lost the confidence of the republican and nationalist people and if he is in any doubt about that, let him hear it from this ardfheis ... The old guard interfering with the ombudsman’s office; the refusal to give crucial evidence to inquests; the scandal of rehiring retired officers on huge financial severance packages; the different approaches to civilians and those with military backgrounds in HET investigations; the different approaches in policing between loyalist and republican demonstrations as witnessed in the so-called flag protests.

The state of affairs Sinn Fein complains about is one that Sinn Fein brought about in its lust for power without principle. Its decision to politically endorse an armed British police force with the same powers, even more, than it had when called the RUC has made possible what many gave their lives trying to make impossible.

Justice Department Assaults Northern Ireland’s Peace Process and First Amendment

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Dustin Slaughter with a piece on the Boston College Subpoena case. The article first featured on Open Salon

Oral histories of political movements give us glimpses of the participants who helped shape the world we know today. They often provide raw, personal first-hand accounts of peoples’ struggles. These projects also help to maintain historical truths that are often tainted by government revisionism and lost to cultural amnesia.

Tacit confidentiality agreements between historians and interviewees are naturally crucial to the birth of these histories.

So what happens when the Department of Justice and the Police Service of Northern Ireland decide to violate the spirit of a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom by subpoenaing a confidential collection of taped interviews detailing Northern Ireland’s militant past?

The purity of historical record, as well as fundamental First Amendment issues like freedom of the press, and more specifically source confidentiality, are now under attack by none other than US prosecutor Carmen Ortiz – the same district attorney criticized for what many people called overzealous prosecution that likely led to activist Aaron Swartz committing suicide – and the DOJ, at the behest of Northern Ireland’s police forces. These parties apparently see fit to enflame a tenuous peace in Northern Ireland by tearing open historical wounds through their desire to prosecute former Irish Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries for unsolved crimes.

Beginning three years after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, heralded by some as the beginning of a new – and peaceful – chapter between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, journalists Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre began tape recording interviews with members of Irish paramilitaries and their Loyalist foes. Their objective was to contribute a better academic understanding of what motivated otherwise ordinary individuals to join the armed conflict, as well as document the turbulent and important history known as The Troubles. They concluded their interviews in 2006 and the Belfast Project is stored today in Boston College’s Burns Library.

The lynchpin of the project was the confidentiality agreement McIntyre and Moloney forged with participants – from both sides of the conflict – some of whom divulged the names of militants. The stories were not to be released without their written consent or until their death.

Fast forward to 2011, when the Department of Justice, by way of a Clinton-era initiative called the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), attempted to force Boston College to release the tapes by recklessly (and improperly, as I’ll address below) subpoenaing these confidential interviews at the behest of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Authorities claim that Belfast Project interviews will assist in investigating the re-opened case of Jean McConville, who was kidnapped and murdered by the Provisional IRA in 1972. Current Sinn Fein leader and Irish president Gerry Adams, among others, have been implicated in the crime. Republican militants admitted their culpability some 20 years later.

Some, like Anthony McIntyre — a writer, historian and former IRA member who was jailed for 18 years in Northern Ireland’s infamous Long Kesh prison and was released in 1996, believe the motivation for the subpoena is more complicated — and sinister — than a mere desire to solve a horrible crime that happened in 1972 however.

“[The justice angle] does not have much traction, given that the PSNI was heavily involved in using law enforcement to break the law and immerse itself as a player in the conflict [during the Troubles],” he tells me through email.

It is certainly not interested in solving homicides per se. It is interested in the selective solving of some homicides. Hence we have killings involving state agents not being pursued but others involving people opposed to the state pursued.

The checkered history of Northern Ireland’s security forces supports McIntyre’s suspicion that the subpoena is politically motivated. The former incarnation of the PSNI, from 1922 until 2001, was the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

This law enforcement organization has a storied history of human rights transgressions, as detailed in a number of reports, including one issued in 1991 by Human Rights Watch, which cite a wide range of abuses against Irish nationalists and which also point out numerous instances of RUC collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries.

Most notably, two members of a special anti-terrorist unit within the RUC known as the Special Patrol Group were convicted in 1980 of giving aid to Loyalist forces in the form of transportation, kidnappings, shootings and bombing attacks.

Besides these two Special Patrol Group members, no RUC or PSNI officers have ever been charged with crimes.

But it is what McIntyre calls the “retire and rehire” phenomenon taking place within the RUC-turned-PSNI that gives him the greatest doubt that Good Friday Agreement reforms have changed the police force’s apparent anti-nationalist leanings. A watchdog audit of the PSNI in 2011 found that almost 20% of the over 5,000 RUC officers laid off under reforms were rehired. The report describes the organization’s apparent reversion to its RUC roots as “out of control,” according to the Guardian, which ran the story in October 2011. The push to enter more Irish Catholics into the police force, a key reform from Good Friday, is clearly being rolled back.

And the Boston College subpoena, in light of all this, may very well be a political fishing expedition designed, at least in part, on hunting down old enemies of the British state.
Two plausible scenarios could emerge if the DOJ and PSNI are successful in accessing the Belfast Project interviews: Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams will face prosecution for his alleged involvement in Jean McConville’s murder. Irish nationalist rage would likely spill out into the streets of Belfast.

Conversely, the PSNI may do nothing with the archive. If that happens, McIntyre tells me:

the British government decides it is too politically sensitive – not least for what may be revealed about their own knowledge and activities – to bring forward any criminal prosecution. Loyalist reaction to this will be, predictably, outrage. They will hardly accept, especially given the lengths that the British are going to obtain this material, that it was worthless.

Clearly, either outcome could set off the tinderbox — and the two journalists who created the project have, since 2011, been consumed with preventing the potential unraveling of Northern Ireland’s peace process.

They’ve also rushed to protect what they correctly perceive as an erosion of journalistic freedoms enshrined by the First Amendment here in the U.S. More on this latter point shortly.

Anthony McIntyre and Ed Moloney began their protracted legal battle with prosecutor Ortiz after Boston College refused to appeal a lower court’s decision that the DOJ’s grab at the archives was legitimate. The two men found support from the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Irish American Coalition, all of which added amicus briefs to the case.

After two years of overturned appeals, McIntyre and Moloney finally kicked the case up to the Supreme Court – only to have the High Court refuse to hear it last week.

With that final blow, every legal avenue is now exhausted.

This leaves only a political redress through a newly-minted Secretary of State John Kerry who, before taking the new post this year, served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In a January 2012 letter to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Kerry expressed concern ”about the impact that [the subpoena] may have on the continued success of the Northern Ireland peace process.”

Senator Kerry added: “It is possible that some former parties to the conflict may perceive the effort by the U.K. authorities to obtain this information as contravening the spirit of the Good Friday Accords.”

As noted earlier, the DOJ’s actions most certainly violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the U.S. – U.K. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. In a report submitted by Senator Richard Luger in September 2006, Luger states:

The Senate’s understanding [is] that the purpose of the Treaty is to strengthen law enforcement cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom by modernizing the extradition process for all serious offenses and that it is not intended to reopen issues addressed in the Belfast Agreement or to impede any further efforts to resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Kerry and Luger were not alone in their concern.

New York Senator Charles Schumer expressed consternation that the DOJ’s subpoena not only threatened to destroy a fragile peace across the Atlantic, but that it targeted freedom of the press. In a letter sent to both Secretary of State Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder, Schumer stated:

There are significant issues of journalistic confidentiality and academic freedom that are called into question as a result of this legal maneuver that make it dubious … I have always been a champion of protecting sensitive source material that is gathered by researchers – journalists and academics alike—and I am concerned that this action presents an infringement on that underpinning of the First Amendment.

One need only look at the DOJ’s dogged pursuit of activists, such as the late Aaron Swartz, to see how far the Justice Department will go to score wins in court. It is not a stretch to believe they could use subpoenas to violate journalist-source confidentiality in future cases.

With over 100 similar bilateral assistance treaties between the U.S. and other countries in existence today, the threat this subpoena poses may have far-reaching – and unimaginable – consequences for international political movements, freedom of dissent and our own First Amendment.

This article is now cross-posted at The Public Record and Boston College Subpoena News.

Saighdiuiri oga na hEireann

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:42:00 +0000

Former Blanket columnist, Dr John Coulter, has used the May Day Bank Holiday to launch a new evangelical Christian and uniformed youth movement, Saighdiuiri oga na hEireann De (The Young Irish Soldiers of Ireland). It's launch was unveiled in his Irish Daily Star column, 'Coulter's Fearless Flying Column'.

I'm commemorating this May Day Holiday by launching an all-island youth movement, Saighdiuiri oga na hEireann De (The Young Irish Soldiers of Ireland).

Sonhed will seek to make amends for the historical disaster and cultural embarrassment which nationalism’s traditional youth wing, Fianna na hEireann has deteriorated into.

Sonhed’s spark has been created by deputy First Minister Marty McGuinness’ confusing, amusing and bemusing speech at this year’s Shinner shindig in the South.

An intended wise-cracking broadside against dissident terrorists turned into a pondering session of ‘what age can someone actually join the IRA given that TD Gerry Adams once stated – they haven’t gone away, you know?’

One of the major problems for mainstream republicans is that the peace process has thrown up a new generation of Sinn Fein ‘draft dodgers’ who have never traditionally cut their political teeth in the Provos.

Would-be IRA terrorists were not sworn in and given their notorious wee green book of rules until they hit 17.

In reality, all the Fianna did was take groups of young republican hardmen off to the bogs of Ireland to teach them how to throw stones properly.

The loyalists had their cultural and historical heritage drummed into them at a much earlier age with groups such as the Junior Orange Order, Young Militants (UDA youth wing) and the Young Citizen Volunteers (junior UVF).

And in the Seventies, primary and secondary school age loyalists formed Tartan Gangs, named after three Scottish squaddies murdered in an IRA ‘honey trap.’

The Tartans rampaged through the peace lines kicking the crap out of any Catholics they found.

Top Stormont Shinner Marty has always maintained he quit the Provos in the early Seventies. But his dissidents jibe at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis has sent many republicans into confusion over his sums. They simply don’t add up!

Marty bellowed at the conference:

Every now and again, you’ll see these so-called republicans parading. And I look and I see these 50-year-olds, and I see these 40-year-olds, and I see these 45-year-olds, and I don’t recognise most of them. You know what I wonder; I wonder where they were when there was a war.

Taking McGuinness’ analysis, and when he claims he resigned from the Provos, some of “these 50-year-olds” must have been primary school kids aged 11 when they were supposed to be active IRA members!

But if you can’t become an IRA terrorist until 17, how could they have been in the Provos at 11? Someone in the republican movement has seriously screwed up their recruitment figures, or else someone has not got it correct when they quit the IRA.

My new organisation, Sonhed, will seek to rectify this problem by recruiting young nationalists as soon as they able to walk and talk.

It will restore pride into the term republican, so that it is not another word for bomber, gunman and murderer.

Sonhed will be a uniformed organisation like the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade movements, but will combine Christian teaching with Irish cultural and historical identity.

The ethos will be that never again must republicans ever resort to the gun as a means of settling political quarrels.

Republicans mouth off that their victory will be the laughter of their children. How can they say this if they don’t have an effective youth organisation to channel this laughter?

Sonhed is that solution.

Making a Mockery of Truth

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

A piece by guest writer Jim McIlmurray, spokesperson for Martin Corey, which was written on the 3rd of May highlighting the injustice being endured by the Lurgan internee.

At 4:50 pm yesterday, May 2, 2013, I received the news that the High Court had overruled the application to take Martin’s case to the Supreme Court in London.

This devastating news came without warning. Martin's legal team has spent months building his case with such strong conviction that I feel it would have ensured his immediate release under the European Convention on Human Rights.

In July 2012, a Belfast High Court judge ordered Martin’s immediate release, which was overturned within hours by the then unelected Secretary of State, Owen Paterson.

This decision was challenged in the High Court and the case concluded unsuccessfully in December 2012 with the three-man panel of judges upholding the directive of Owen Paterson. At that stage, an application was made to appeal the High Court's decision in the highest court in the country, the Supreme Court in London.

I spoke with Martin this evening and informed him of the news. Martin has come to expect little, and often accept less, when it comes to the justice system in the North of Ireland.

Our attendance at the Supreme Court in London would have given us the opportunity to expose many aspects of this case which I feel would not be found acceptable in any English court. The fact that the Secretary of State could hand out directives, dismissing decisions by High Court judges, would have been highlighted in the Supreme Court in London, exposing the fact that politicians in the north of Ireland rule the judiciary.

The biggest disappointment has to be the fact that had we not received justice in the Supreme Court in London, we would have had the opening to bring Martin’s case to the European Court of Human Rights. This is an avenue we can still explore, but without having exhausted every domestic court in the country due to our denial to attend the Supreme Court, it will be somewhat harder to achieve a hearing within a realistic timescale.

Martin has now been in Maghaberry Prison for over three years. The course of the law states, as I understand it, if you have committed a crime, you are: questioned, charged, tried in court, sentenced, and then imprisoned. Within the past three years, Martin has never been questioned, charged, or sentenced. He has served what amounts to a six year sentence.

We are currently awaiting a confirmed date for a parole hearing. Martin is entitled to an annual Parole Board Review. In February of this year the European Court of Human Rights stated that 13 months was an unacceptable period of time for a prisoner to wait for a parole hearing. Martin has now waited 19 months without a parole review.

Today’s announcement of the High Court ruling has been a bitter blow to the campaign for his release, but it will not undermine my determination in seeking his release. If anything, it will harden my resolve for justice.

We need to expose this continuing tyranny. British government officials are quick enough to state that the world’s worst human rights abusers are Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, North Korea, and Sudan. Over the past three years I have witnessed first hand everything these officials have done to Martin and I feel the British government is making a mockery of truth by not including its own name on the list above.

Heads Up

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Jo Nesbo is an engaging novelist, a plot builder but not so lost in intricacies as to make the leader lose the thread if not their interest, something I found a deficiency in Robert Ludlum works. A magnetising story teller he pulls the reader close even when discoursing on what seems the most mundane of matters.

I had watched the film that had emerged from this book and was engrossed by it in a way that I didn’t think I would be. Part of the Scandinavian crime fiction genre that I have grown to love, there is something very Americanised about his writing style. Despite the first person narrative reflecting and explaining, there is not the same sense of moodiness and brooding that often comes with the more Nordic writers.

Roger Brown is a very driven character. He needs to be to keep the woman he loves in the style that she has become accustomed to. Since meeting her in London where he also got married, he has been on a mission to keep her happy. But there is a certain tension. She wants a child and he knows he cannot afford it. As it is, she has no idea of the risks he takes to finance the lavish life style she lives, thinking he is just a head hunter for a recruitment agency. She is in the world of art but so is he. She sells it and he steals it, not to or from one another. He also worries about his height and is absolutely in love with his own hair, which almost proved the end of him. Narrated in the first person through the eyes of Roger Brown the reader need not expect much in the way of self criticism.

But in a world of prickly characters Roger Brown grows on the reader. The more reflective and less impulsive he becomes the more he burrows under the surface of the imagination. While he comes over as a bit of a rotter (not the In The Flesh type) in the earlier stages, events strip away the smug self assuredness. Ruthless necessity usurps greedy opportunism, and all done in a good cause – saving Roger’s neck. The humour oils the wheels of the narrative but is sufficiently black not to compromise the seriousness of the plot.

Clas Greve the one time Dutch Special Forces soldier assumes Roger is there for the taking. Roger thinks initially that Greve’s painting is there for the taking and so the two are thrust into a battle on terrain more suitable to Greve’s experience and training than Roger’s. Because most of the characters in this novel offer something that makes them smell, they irritate the reader, so sympathy hardly abounds when they meet the range of fates that awaits them.

A book that contains much violence, the gratuitous nature of it, if situated in real life, does not make it look out of place in the world of fiction. If Roger Brown is a successful headhunter, so too is his creator. Jo Nesbo has successfully recruited me to his literature, a small shelf of it now waiting to be devoured.

Jo Nesbo, 2011, Headhunters. Harvill Secker: London. ISBN 978-1-846-55593-0

Documentary: The Hunger Strikes

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Press.TV Documentaries

Broadcast Date: 2012-11-03

In the early 1980s, several Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoners went on hunger strikes demanding to be treated as political prisoners. This program explores the reasons behind those events.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Danny Morrison
Pat Sheehan MLA
Bik McFarlane
Gerry Adams
Raymond McCartney MLA
Richard O'Rawe

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Ahmed Alizadeh
ASSISTANT PRODUCER
Shadi Alizadeh
RESEARCHER
Rebeca Narváez Román
PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR
Ed Augustin

Marian Price - One of Us

noreply@blogger.com (AM) — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Guest writer Sean Bresnahan with a piece on Marian Price

Marian Price first entered my consciousness many years ago when I heard the famous ballad Bring them home, probably on a cassette stored in my Father's private collection, supposedly kept away from young, prying eyes along with political memorabilia from the Hungerstrikes of 1981 and wood-crafts made by my Mum's brother during time spent in Long Kesh in the 70's. I think it may have been the Wolfe Tones who recorded it though I don't recall for sure. For a young, inquisitive soul such as myself 'the tapes' wouldn't stay hidden for long and thus my parent's best efforts to keep at a remove from their first-born the terrible political events afflicting our country came to nothing as I heard for the first time the powerful message that "the IRA will set them free!" It was a poignant but inspiring song written of Marian and her sister Dolours, two women forever known in the republican lexicon as 'the Price sisters', two women I immediately developed an affinity for along with the cause they served so well. But who would ever have thought that all these years later we would be calling yet again for the release of one of those poor, long-suffering women from the wretched gaols of England?

721 days and counting...

Incredible as it may seem Marian Price has now spent two full years effectively interned by the British state. What's worse is there is no end in sight to her terrible ordeal. What questions does this ask of us as a society, especially given that we have supposedly entered a new era where the conflict of the past can be resolved through the political process? What does it say about that process itself given that a woman can be held in this manner without recourse to natural justice while those who administer the state fail or refuse to take onboard the gravity of the situation? These are serious questions to be reflected on if our imperfect peace is to prove sustainable rather than for a new generation of Irish men and women to form the opinion that there's no recourse but to lift the gun to once more "set them free". Level-headed people will agree that this is the last thing we need but while Marian Price remains imprisoned against all principles of natural justice then it becomes harder to argue otherwise.

So what kind of society and what kind of political system is this where those like Marian are taken out of circulation on the say-so of a colonial overlord and his faceless spooks, to be locked up without appeal to anything resembling justice? Marian Price is being interned because she has been deemed a threat to the Stormont status quo and as such is to be silenced - just as Gerry McGeough and Martin Corey were silenced in the same manner by those who continue to control Ireland. Martin of course remains imprisoned to this very day, over three years since first they came for him; Gerry thankfully is at home now with his wife and children but not before time.

It should be glaringly obvious that this is unacceptable. It's surely as plain as day that we continue to live in a warped society despite protestations to the contrary that things have moved on and we're living in a 'new dispensation'. The illegal imprisonment of Marian Price, among other things, tells us different. It tells us that when you scratch the surface of the seemingly reformed Northern Ireland state it remains overtly capable of the same repression against those it considers hostile to its aims and objectives. It's fine to use political means to further your goals but only so long as they remain consistent with those of the state. And that is a fundamental wrong and contravenes even the most basic of civil rights.

We rarely hear mention of Marian's plight in the mainstream media, it's as if someone doesn't want us to know just what's going on. But wait a minute, when you stop and think about it they don't! Control of the media is one of the most powerful weapon's in the state's arsenal - a compliant media prepared to tolerate and ignore injustice is a God-send for those who carry out or abide repressive acts such as the ongoing isolation and torture of Marian Price.

Given the distinct lack of attention paid in the mainstream media to the legal processes involving both Brian Shivers, who returned to Roe House to shouts of "innocent man on the wing" despite having his conviction quashed but thankfully has been found innocent of all charges and finally set free this afternoon, and the so-called 'Craigavon Two', who's case, now under appeal, has drawn comparisons to the notorious convictions of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, we can determine that the state has an interest in limiting knowledge about what goes on inside our society where required to further its own corrupt ends.

It's high time those in positions of power spoke out to smash this media blackout and to challenge the very injustices once so rigorously opposed and condemned in the past, particularly after the damning vindication today of Brian Shivers, who in all likelihood has had years taken of his life by his experience of the British 'justice' system. Party politics just can't come into such an important aspect of public representation. If the media refuses to do its job properly, if it compromises its independence and integrity for fear of coming into conflict with the state, then there is an onus on those who claim to represent us to make a loud enough case so that the issues that matter cannot be brushed aside and ignored.

If this is the foundation of the post-1998 'justice' system in the occupied six counties then it is beyond what is acceptable by even the most minimal democratic standard. The fact of the matter is Marian's imprisonment is not only undemocratic, it is illegal. Yet despite the best efforts of those who campaign tirelessly on her behalf to expose all of this nothing ever seems to change, it seems as though we're banging our heads of a brick wall. And all while those republicans with real political influence, in those positions of power mentioned above, seem like they're just playing to the gallery.

If only the likes of Nuala Perry and the others who work so hard alongside her had access to the kind of power readily available to former comrades of Marian's such as Gerry Kelly or Martin McGuinness - no way in hell would she have been in prison for two weeks never mind two years. Despite a few Council resolutions, and the odd call for her release at a party Ard Fheis here and there, for all our political representatives really seem to care Marian Price could spend another two years interned by the British, then another two, then another. At least that's how it appears, because actions speak louder than words and the one thing we've yet to see here is action.

We can call for Marian's release 'till we're blue in the face, we can burn the candle at both ends behind the scenes, we can pass resolution after resolution after resolution. But it's there for all to see that the Brits simply don't care, they're determined to carry on regardless. Because there's no real compunction for them to seriously address this situation, there's no political pressure of significance being applied to make them seriously reconsider their actions. Is this something we as a society should be prepared to tolerate? What kind of a political system is this when it accepts the silencing of political opponents and buries away reality to keep up the pretence that all is well and normal?

Not one we should feel obliged to give any allegiance to, that's for sure.

I feel if Sinn Fein, both as the largest Nationalist party and as a constituent element of the government here, really believed the situation to be as serious as they say then a much stronger course of action would be pursued, just as we saw upon the arrest of Padraig Wilson. We would see the full exercise of their power for to bring about justice. Imagine the spectacle of Martin McGuinness using his position as Joint-First Minister to draw awareness to Marian's plight; imagine if Gerry Kelly offered to resign his seat in protest at the continuing failure of the state to resolve the unjust situation relating to the imprisonment of a one-time comrade; imagine if Sinn Fein said it would resign all its seats if this was not dealt with immediately because it could not in all conscience continue to prop up a regime that regards internment as a viable policy to deal with political opponents.

The fact that Marian Price or internment does not feature in the conversations between the First and Deputy-First Ministers regarding the 'roadmap' for the way ahead tells its own story. But what kind of 'shared future' is it anyway if it has at the level of its foundation an innocent woman being held without charge or trial for years on end against even the most basic concept of justice?

Whether it's 1971 or 2013 internment is wrong and an indictment on any society that claims to be 'normal'. Because there is nothing normal about internment, there is nothing normal about what is happening to Marian Price.

The politicians at Stormont would do well to remember they are supposedly there to represent us all, regardless of political persuasion. After all in any fair society both human and civil rights should be universal and not selective. If some of those aptly named 'folks on the hill' had the courage of their private convictions they'd be pressing for an immediate, unconditional resolution to this sad, sad situation and they would not take no for an answer. That they can't or won't do so invites accusations that they just don't care. Do they care? At times its very hard to know. What's for sure is that, just like the media, their continuing silence can rightly be considered as complicity whether they choose to accept this or not, whether they do genuinely care or not. By choosing to effectively ignore all that's happening, despite being in full possession of the facts, by continuing to prop up a system that interns and tortures and victimises the likes of Marian Price, then they share in the guilt of the state that has brought all this about. They would do well to remember the famous words of Martin Niemoiller in his poem 'First they came' - for God only knows where this will end. The likes of Marian Price, Gerry McGeough, Martin Corey and Tony Taylor may be among the first but it's unlikely they'll be the last if Britain is allowed to roll out its modern version of internment unopposed.

Somewhere along the line our representatives must decide are they prepared to tolerate this, to stand still for this; somewhere along the line Sinn Fein and the SDLP are going to have to decide where it is they stand - for a role in government at all costs or for human rights and justice no matter the consequences.

We have to remember - we must never forget - that Marian Price, this true and unstinting republican who never once in all her long years of struggle let us down, is in there for us. She could easily have walked away from this fight years ago and no-one would ever have suggested she'd let anyone down or failed to play her part. But she didn't; she played her part and more. She continued to stand up for the oppressed people of Ireland, those 'wretched of the earth'. She continued to give voice to their rightful demands for freedom, justice and peace. And so we must be out there for her.

It's incumbent on us all that from this day on we do more, that we renew and redouble our efforts to draw attention to this shameful situation and put yet more pressure on those with political power or influence to demand that something is done, to demand and to secure the release of our comrade. We know what her response would be if this were done to you or I because ultimately and at the end of the day, no matter how iconic the name, no matter how high she may be held in our esteem, Marian Price, our very own Aung San Suu Kyi, remains and will always be simply 'one of us'.