Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1188

Tainted & Toxic: Supergrass Evidence

A piece by Kevin Braney, a republican prisoner in Portlaoise, being held on evidence of the most toxic type.



Since my release in July 2015, my family and I have been subjected to daily harassment, abuse and threats, from the “Special Detective Unit” of the Gardai. My mere attendance at Saoradh and IRPWA meetings would result in serious attempts to intimidate me, by the “Special Detective Unit”, including personal abuse of my family and friends. Some of these threats/abuse, I suffered, involved attempts of “felon setting”, of me by the “Special Detective Unit” in public in my own area.

I was arrested in my own home at 6am, on the 3rd of August 2017, and charged again with membership of the Irish Republican Army. I have been refused bail and currently being held in Portlaoise Gaol. After almost six weeks in custody, I was informed by my solicitor that I would be brought to court on the 14th of September, to face more charges. However this time it is prompted by the word of the “Supergrass” Dave Cullen, who had a murder charge against him dropped by the state after he agreed to give evidence against Republicans. He has since entered the witness protection programme, in doing so abandoning his children and family, and is in receipt of monthly payments.

Throughout the 1980’s, the British government used “Supergrass" evidence extensively against Republicans, but all of those cases ultimately failed when scrutinised by international observers and human right activists. Difficult and all as it is for me or any Republican to prove innocence in the non-jury “Special Criminal Court”, it becomes nigh on impossible when you add a paid perjurer/supergrass to the mix. I call upon all Republicans and anybody interested in human rights and natural justice to publically oppose this sinister development.


“End Political Policing”,
“End Political Trials”,
“End Interment By Remand”,
“Abolish The Special Criminal Courts”,
“End Super Grass Trials Now”.
"End The Extradition Of Republicans"

Democracy! ..... When It Suits

Finnian O Domhnaill thinks the DUP has a very cynical view of democracy. Finnian O Donnell is political writer from Donegal, currently living in Derry. He is the creator of the political page No Bones About It. 
The Democratic Unionist Party pride themselves on being democratic. However, democracy has only suited the DUP when it's swung in their favour. Since the Union Act 1801, which the Orange Order were opposed to, the Home Rule bill 1912, the 1918 general elections, right up to the present rejection of equal marriage, democracy was put to one side by unionists.


As seen below on the map of Ireland during the 1918 general election, the over whelming majority of the people in the 32 counties voted for Sinn Fein, in effect voting for independence from Britain. Unionism at this time was a far cry from democracy. As far a cry as it is today. As partition came into effect only then did unionism have a overwhelming majority over republicanism and that seemed to suit unionism just fine.

1918 General ElectionAs the tide has changed now in the north and nationalist parties are on the rise and level pegging with the DUP, it seems like the so called democrats are not so democratic at all. The majority of parties in the north support equal marriage, The majority of parties support an Irish language act but the DUP are battening down the hatches and once again are holding their ground because of their religious beliefs.

Let's not beat around the bush here. Unionism has held Ireland back. Our island has been carved up and divided for one hundred years now due to a minority on this island that were granted this carving up of Ireland by the British government. Separate laws, jurisdictions, legislation, border customs stops, the conflict, sectarianism, fear mongering, geographical isolation and exclusion from the 26 counties has only made things worse for people, communities and different societies. If the DUP had any back bone it would at least drop the Democratic in their name and simply call themselves the DUP (Disillusioned Unionist Party).

It is a slap in the face of democracy and only blackens its name when the unDemocratic Unionist Party uses it only as a tool to hold on to it's strangle hold in Ireland and Ireland's divided island to keep them in power. The DUP are no more democratic than the Israeli government is towards Palestine and its people. I do not see any difference between the two as regards of occupation, division and oppressing is concerned. A minority that is some how allowed to carve up a country by the approval of British Imperialist forces. A minority that is a self proclaimed superior people over those who they oppress. A minority that sees no other viewpoint but their own and only recognises other cultures and identities only when there is international pressure put on them.

To put the Irish Patriots of old to one side and to remove the 'up da ra' mentality of those who have been looked down upon by liberals and the 'haves' and speak to today’s Irish people in southern Ireland who believe in fairness and equality I ask this: would you or do you protest against Israel's occupation of Palestine and its brutal regime against the Palestinian people while turning your back on the north?


No I am not sectarian. No I do not hate Protestants, loyalists or even unionists. No I do not wish to see the erosion of anyone's culture or heritage as it is every single person's inalienable right to practice their culture, religion etc. No I do not hate British people and all things British. No I do not support the IRA and it's armed struggle. I see it how it is and call it for what it is. I am not obligated nor pressured to sugar coat anyone or any organisation. Once you remove the gloss and glimmer that the oppressor had covered over your eyes you begin to see truth in its raw form.

For too long now, there has been a vail put over peoples eyes. A fake news story running for centuries that the Queen of England has a deep affiliation with the people of Carrickfergus, Ballymena, Strangford, Shankhill and all over unionist areas in the north. People seem to be happy to place themselves lower than someone else born into riches and greed and corruption. They want to be subjected, they want to be a servant to a crown or a family claiming to be British but are actually German. They want to hail a Dutchman and reject all things Irish. To a hard line Orange man, Loyalist or staunch unionist this makes sense but to a republican or anyone else at that matter it boggles the mind completely.

When a person has been denied their culture, their identity, when they are not allowed to be part of a society because of the jersey they wear, the language they speak, when they are told no you can't marry that man because my beliefs say you cannot, then democracy has been completely thrown out the window and you are only looking at fascist.


Equality To The Privileged Is Seen As Oppression

The issue in Ireland is whether the Irish people or the UK Parliament is sovereign. Achieve our freedom and build from there. Arguably, the position republicans should assume, with Brexit speeding down the tracks, is that national sovereignty remains our right and that the All-Ireland Republic should thus be restored. It is for the Irish people - acting as one unit and without external impediment - to freely determine the form and specifics of the 'New Ireland'. From there, socioeconomic change can be effected within the Republic should the people desire it be so' @ Sean Bresnahan - Chairman, Thomas Ashe Society Omagh

Inconvenience Of Conviction

Via The Transcripts, William Crawley speaks to journalist, broadcaster and author, Malachi O’Doherty, about his new book, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life.
Malachi O’Doherty BBC Talkback Radio Ulster 4 September 2017
BBC Radio Ulster Where’s the Audio? This interview is not available for download. Please click here to listen as you read along to get the full effect of the interview.  (begins time stamp ~ 5:22)

William:   Many people regard Gerry Adams as an enigma – a mystery wrapped up in a political personality. Few could argue with his success as a politician. He has outlived generations of politicians in Britain, in Ireland and in America and he enjoys a rock star reputation amongst Irish Republicans. But who is he? What makes him tick? And how has his personality played a role in his survival as a political leader? In his new book Malachi O’Doherty tries to get under the skin of the Sinn Féin president through a detailed life-narrative from his childhood in West Belfast to his current role as leader of ‘an all-Ireland party’ with an international name recognition. It’s a fascinating book about an intriguing life, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life, and Malachi O’Doherty is with us in the Talkback studio. Good Afternoon to you!
Malachi:  Good Afternoon, William.
William:  (William announces programme’s telephone number.) And I’ll get this kind of question out of the way first of all: We’ve got a small shelf of books now, gathering, about Sinn Féin and about Gerry Adams…
Malachi:  …Yeah, I’ve got a whole ton of them.
William:   There you go!  Why another one?
Malachi:   Why another one? Well there hasn’t been a biography of him since Mark Devenport and David Sharrock did one in the ’90’s. He’s done his own, now – some of his own have come out – and he has another one I believe coming out even in November with Mercier. So you know, I think there – and there has been a ton of journalism done about him, which I’ve contributed to as well, and of course you’ve had him on the programme so we all have a sense that we know him because we see him in the screens, we know his devices of dissembling, we know his convictions, we know his achievements and we know what we believe of what he says and what we don’t believe of what he says.
William:   We think we know him…
Malachi:   We think we know him, you know…
William:   …But it’s one of the themes throughout your book. You quote a lot of people saying there could be two Gerry Adamses. There’s a public and there’s a private Gerry Adams. Who is Gerry Adams?
Malachi:   (laughs) Who is Gerry Adams? Well Gerry Adams is nearly seventy years old. He was born in West Belfast. He grew up – well he grew up in various places – he grew up first of all with his in North Abercorn Street as was on the Falls Road and the family moved up to Ballymurphy after his sister, Margaret, was born – I think Paddy was born by then as well. And then he lived away from the family mostly in the Lower Falls and went to St. Finnian's. He was an active Republican by, I think, the age of sixteen…
William:  …It was in the family DNA.
Malachi:  That was in the family DNA. I think Margaret, his sister, was even involved before he was – she stayed with ‘the Stickies’ – he went with the Provos during the split in ’70. His closest friend as a young man was Joe McCann. There were others, one of them was a classmate of mine at school, I don’t mention him in the book. And you know the interesting thing is that I suppose the division within in the IRA put him at odds with people that he’d been very, very close to. He showed himself at that time to be a man with I think quite extraordinary chutzpah, if you like, you know that even during the negotiations on the split in late ’69 you know where it was known that he would go with the Provos actually turning up at a meeting and confronting O’Sullivan and the others you know and them kind of looking at him and saying: Well, what the hell’s he doing here? So you know, he had that kind of personal nerve to go at things. And…
William:  …Whatever you think of Gerry Adams, whether people loathe him, whether people love him, when you read this book you get the very clear idea that he’s a very canny operator, a strategist:  someone who can be quite calculating, someone who knows what he wants and he goes for it. Where does that come from in his story? Because you spend a lot of time there at the beginning of the book on his backstory, the family.
Malachi:  Yeah. Well you know, I don’t know. How did he become such a, such a deft dissembler, if you like…
William:  …Or strategist? If you want to put it more positively…
Malachi: Or strategist, yeah. I mean part of the thing is when you grow up in a large family, as I did myself, you have to make yourself heard and that’s it. But I mean he came out of a family in which there was, we now know, sexual abuse of children. We don’t know to what extent that was or who was particularly and individually affected by it but that was a family with secrets, you know? So maybe a family with secrets, a man with secrets – it extends out into the real world.
Available everywhere. In paperback and as an eBook.
The question with Gerry Adams when you look at him and you see the trajectory that he took and the trajectory which he took Sinn Féin on is: To what extent was this foreseen, you know? At what point did Gerry Adams realise that the IRA and Sinn Féin would be incompatible with each other and that the baton would have to pass from the IRA to Sinn Féin? I mean it became absolutely clear in 1992 when Danny Morrison wrote to him, and would tell us from prison to say, look, after Joe Hendron had got West Belfast and Adams had lost it, that you know the political project and the military – well they call it military, I wouldn’t – the armed campaign, the campaign of protest through murder and sabotage – that that could not continue, these could not continue. The IRA was costing Sinn Féin votes, you know? There might have been an earlier stage at which Gerry and others were saying: Well, the IRA is the ‘cutting edge’ – I think Danny Morrison was the one to use that phrase and you know – and the rewards or the opportunities would be reaped by the party and the two could, in some sense, be synchronous or symbiotic. I think at a certain point it became obviously clear they could not be synchronous, they could not be symbiotic. The question is when you see Gerry moving to build the party from the very early years, say you know round the time of the hunger strike and immediately after, are you looking at somebody who’s a brilliant strategist who knows that one day he will have to separate these two or are we looking at somebody who’s just unraveling the game as it unfolds?
William:  More of a pragmatist responding to events. (Williams invites listener comments and gives programme call in/contact information.) When in your life were you first, personally, aware of Gerry Adams?
Malachi:   I don’t think I heard the name until I came back from India in 1979, you know. I mean I go back to the old newspapers that I worked on in the early ’70’s and there are the occasional story about him in the Sunday news in reference to him there at the time that I was working there but I wasn’t all that conscious of it then. I didn’t know – I knew a man in Na Fianna in the 1960’s at school who’d come back to do, you know to repeat exams, and I knew that he was a man inside a disciplined organisation. I didn’t know at the time that he was a friend of Gerry Adams. This is a man who took me into the Felons Club, who was active in some measure in August 1969. But I didn’t know Adams himself and I didn’t have any clear notion of the man or the family at any stage until, really, the ’80’s.
William:  John in Portadown straight in with a question a lot of people are asking and it’s a text question – but it’s a question I guess you had to deal with and you deal with it pretty much throughout the book but also in the last chapter of the book: Was he in the IRA? How, as a biographer, do you deal with that kind of legally fraught question actually?
Malachi:  Well it is a legally fraught question. I mean if I state an honest opinion that he was a senior member of the IRA for many years and that he was a decisive operator within the IRA in bringing the IRA away from armed struggle into politics then you will have to add the legally required…
William:  ….Gerry Adams always denies it.
Malachi:  Gerry Adams always denies it. And I’ve had to do that through the book. The book has been ‘legal’ to the kind of standard that the BBC uses all the time you know, so…
William:  …You do look at evidence to try to deal with that question.
Malachi:  …I summarise. Well I mean the Special Branch thought he was in the IRA. The de Silva report into the murder of Pat Finucane refers to Gerry Adams as a member of the IRA. Jonathan Powell told Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness that he didn’t believe for a minute that they weren’t in the IRA. So there’s tons of that stuff. But actually you know, there’s qualifiers to this and one of them is when I spoke to John Bruton, you know? And I said: You know well he was in the IRA, wasn’t he? He said he was representing the IRA. And he says: Well, I wouldn’t say that. And I said: Well, you had access to the intelligence. And you know Michael McDowell, the Justice Minister, said plainly: Gerry Adams is a liar. He was a senior member of the IRA. Bruton said: Well you know sometimes the intelligence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Bill Clinton, in a communication to Tony Blair, said it would help if we knew Gerry’s game with the IRA, you know? So, and, and…
William:  …George W. Bush you quote as well.
Malachi:  Well George W. Bush said to Bertie Ahern: You know, your guy’s a murdering thief, isn’t he? So George W. Bush had the understanding that Gerry Adams was a killer and a thief.
William:  And what about the story of Liam McParland? Just go through that with us.
Malachi:  Liam McParland – you know again, this is ‘legal’ – but essentially Gerry Adams was involved in a car crash in 1969, the Autumn of 1969, on the M1 coming back into Belfast with Liam McParland. Liam Parland was injured in the crash and died in hospital two weeks later. The Tírghrá, which is the Provisional IRA’s record of its dead, attributes, names, McParland as one of their dead – even though the Provisional IRA had not even been formed at that stage, the split had not taken place, but they accord him the stature of a fallen comrade if you like. And the record says that he was on active service. So when he was in that car, whatever they were doing, they were on active service and Gerry Adams was in that car with him.
William:  His personality – I mentioned at the start…
Malachi:  …Can I just make one point in response to that text about the question of whether he was in the IRA? I met members of the IRA who were saying: You know, Gerry wasn’t really one of us – do you know?
William:  He had a different role.
Malachi:  Well, not that he had a different role but he wasn’t – for instance in Ballymurphy in 1970 Gerry was undoubtedly involved in organising protests against the Army – there was that whole series, you would remember it as well as I did, I was up there, but there was that whole, those weeks of rioting at the top of the Springfield Road you know and Gerry was involved there as was my friend from school. And you know, IRA men said: Look, we wanted to go up there. We wanted to bring guns into that situation and it was Gerry who stopped us. And they didn’t like him for that. And there’s another incident in the book which where Gerry’s in Long Kesh, interned, and there’s a workshop on how to strip, I think, an Armalite or an AK-47 and Gerry arrives into the workshop for this exercise and they laugh at him and say: What are you doing here? And he says: Oh, I’m just keeping my hand in, you know. And he gets laughed at. You know, he’s still being mocked by certain members of the IRA for not having really been a militarist. Now, that’s not to say – and I don’t know that he never had a gun in his hand or whatever and it’s not to say that he lacked personal courage in dangerous situations but certainly there were senior members of the, or very, very active gunmen and bombers within the IRA, who would say: You know, he wasn’t really like us. He was working moves, he had these political theories, he was going somewhere else with this. And they would say, ultimately, he sold us out.
William:   Talk to us about his relationship with Martin McGuinness – two very different personalities – one often hears that suggested.
Malachi:  Yeah, yeah I know and it is and you would like to know who was the senior party there. I remember one day up during the talks at Stormont and I had published an article that day in the (Belfast) Telegraph which was very, very critical of Adams and Sinn Féin and I’d basically forgotten about it – because you write the article the day or two days before and I had forgotten it was in there – and I saw Gerry and Martin going towards the stairs and I walked over to basically to put a question to them. And they had the article in their minds, I think, because Gerry looked at me with this kind of scowl and Martin looked like the wee schoolboy checking with Gerry whether it was okay to speak to me. That’s what it looked like to me. Now, that’s me reading a lot into body language at a moment but it just gave me the instant impression that the senior person between the two was Gerry. And we saw, later, indications of that when McGuinness had to withdraw his whole decision to approve the welfare reform procedures up at Stormont – you know he went to the Ard Fheis in Doire, he comes back and then he changed his mind and the whole thing’s off, you know? And again, I think last year when McGuinness was ill it was very much when Gerry Adams came back into the scene and I think what happened then was Gerry looked at the situation and he said: Look, we’re losing a share of vote as a party here. We’re being laughed at in the street because you’re posing beside portraits of the Queen and shaking her hand every chance you get and we’re taking a slagging for this. And I think that was, I think it was very much illustrative of Adams’ seniority to McGuinness there.
William:  (William takes a listener’s call.)
Caller John:  I have a question for Malachi. Some time ago, some years ago I remember a reporter asking on the television: Was Martin McGuinness an informer? I wonder would Malachi maybe say if Adams could have been an informer and this is why he mightn't been lifted by the authorities long ago?
William:  Incidentally, I need to point out that no one from Sinn Féin was available to come onto the programme this morning…
Malachi:  …No one’s available today, yeah…
William:  …They said they didn’t want to discuss your new book with you and, of course, that’s been denied over the years by both gentlemen…
Malachi:  …And when Adams – of course it’s being denied. And when Adams came out of Antrim custody suite in 2014 after his arrest there he said actually that the police there had put it to him that he had been an informer, that he’d been recruited by Special Branch as far back as into the 1970’s. I have no insight into that but I do think that he’s lived a charmed life, you know. When you look at, for instance, when you look at the court case which was brought against him for membership of the IRA in 1977 – a most extraordinary management of that case, you know? Paddy McGrory, the lawyer for Adams, before the case could even proceed, did something which had not had been done before, and I’m going to try to get my legal terminology round, but he looked for an order of ‘no bill ‘ – he wanted the judge to determine before the case was even heard, before anyone was charged or asked to plead guilty or not guilty, he wanted the judge to determine on the basis of evidence that there was no case to be made. Now the evidence was, and the charge was membership of the IRA, the evidence was that Gerry Adams had been seen in Long Kesh receiving a salute, an Easter salute from massed ranks, from an assembled rank of IRA men, you know. That they lowered their flags and saluted Gerry Adams, right? Who was the OC (Officer Commanding) later of the prisoners in Cage 11. Another part of the evidence was that Gerry Adams had, at an Ard Fheis in Dublin, said words to the effect of: ‘We’ would get nowhere but for the people lending us their homes and giving us support and so on. And another…
William:  …Well let’s just say that salute, you mention this in the book, Lord Justice Lowry ruled that that was not an indication of membership of the IRA…
Malachi:  …That was not an indication of membership of the IRA. Well…
William:  …that was the judicial reading of it.
Malachi:  That’s the judicial reading of it. We have to accept that. And another item of evidence of it was that he had been involved, while in detention, in a ceremony in remembrance of two IRA members who’d been killed. So I think that’s extraordinarily fortunate that Adams had such – that the judge had such a benign reading of the circumstance. Another case, the case after Adams had been tried for disorderly behaviour in the Magistrates’ Court by Tom Travers, Travers – he asked at lunch time if – Adams, Gerry Adams asked Travers if it would be okay for them to stay in the court building ’til after lunch because they had their own security to consider. I personally think that was a very reasonable request and Tom Travers probably should have said: Well actually, yes, why not? But he didn’t. He refused to allow them to stay in the building. They left the building, they traveled up Howard Street in a car which was opened fired on and they were wounded. So Gerry Adams was wounded in that – there’s all kinds of questions about collusion and so on around that – but essentially he was wounded, therefore, he could not return to court that afternoon for the rest of the hearing.
Tom Travers went home and had lunch with his daughter, Ann, told Ann that he was going back that afternoon to send Gerry Adams down for three months, right? The case is rescheduled for when Adams is fit enough to go back into court and days before that Tom Travers and his family are coming out of church in Derryvolgie Avenue and two IRA men open fire on them and they wound Tom Travers badly, they kill his daughter, Mary, and they attempt to shoot his wife and the gun jams, right? Then Tom Travers goes to hospital and when Tom Travers comes out of hospital says: What happened to that case against Gerry Adams? No file – nothing – the case doesn’t proceed. It’s simply forgotten about. Now that’s, you know, that’s indicative of a charmed life on behalf of…
William:  …What do you conclude from that, from those episodes, what do you conclude?
Malachi:  I don’t conclude anything from them. Do you conclude anything from them?
William:  What? You don’t conclude anything or you don’t share your conclusions? Because we’re talking about someone who’s still alive and there are legal questions around all of that.
Malachi:  Yeah. Well I mean it does kind of look like somebody was looking after him, you know? Now that would be, I would have thought, a reasonable inference, you know. But whether that’s true or not I don’t know with absolute certainty that it is true. He says himself that the suspicion that he was an informer is one which was actually put to him by the police under interrogation. It may be that he was simply lucky a few times. It may be that there were smart heads in the British Establishment who were saying: You know, you have to look after this guy, you know? He is somebody with a ‘political nous’ who could take this movement somewhere.
William:  Again I have to reiterate, we have invited Sinn Féin to be on the programme or to put on a representative and they’ve declined our invitation. Are you a hostile biographer of Gerry Adams?
Malachi:  I don’t think so I mean I was quite pleased when one of the reviewers yesterday said that one of the strengths of the book was that was its fairness. When I was writing the book, an earlier draft of it, I had a meeting with an editor at Faber and we went for lunch and he said: Look, this book – there’s two way this book could go. You can write a j’accuse – I attack Gerry Adams – here it is – here’s the goods, throw it at him and hammer it, you know? Or you can stand back from it. He said I had basically seemed, as a writer, not to have quite made up my mind at that draft stage. Or you can go the other way. You can stand back from this, you can be more measured. You can allow for the other point of view. You can show some respect for the man and allow for the fact that people who have regard for him and do respect him and do follow him might read your book as well. And that’s the way I went.
William:  (William takes another listener’s call.)
transcript pauses  (at time stamp~26:21)
Audio:  Caller Jim from West Belfast, Malachi and William.transcript resumes (at time stamp ~31:06)
William:  Malachi, speaking of money, you do say in here that you think Gerry Adams is a millionaire.
Malachi:  Yeah. I surmised that from the…
William:  …Any evidence to back that up?
Malachi:  Well I didn’t do the research into his account or his records or anything like that. But basically the allowances that he received from Westminster adding up to a million pound, the two properties, the return on books, the salaries – you know if he’s not, he’s not invested his money very well but I don’t have the – it’s not something I dig investigatively into.
William:  Have you come to a respect for him as a politician?
Malachi:  I see him as somebody who has resources that I don’t have, put it that way, you know? I see him as somebody who came out of a background fairly similar to my own. I see him as somebody whose vocation in life might have been very similar to my own in different circumstances. I mean I think he is quite naturally a journalist, you know? I think if he wasn’t a politician he would be a journalist. I think politics spoils him as a writer – spoils him as a journalist. I think that’s inevitable, I suppose, you see that in some of the wee yarns that he tells and the kind of vanity in his writing and the way in which his writing is always tilted towards serving a political agenda, a political project. But yeah, I think in another…
William:  …Isn’t that the inconvenience of conviction?
Malachi:  (laughs) Is that what you call it? But I do think that in another…
William:  …Not everybody wants to be a journalist. Some people actually want to do something else with their lives – driven by a political perspective.
Malachi:  Yeah. But I think he’s driven to write as well – I do think he is, in his DNA, is a writer, as am I, and I think in another world – as are various others around that whole scene, you know?
William:   How do you explain the endurance of Gerry Adams over so many generations?
Malachi:   Incredible, you know? It is incredible. I mean one possibility is that he simply had so much to trade with in terms with, you know, he could go to the governments and say: Look, the IRA is ‘deliverable’, you know. And the governments are going to do a lot for that, you know? And I think he built Sinn Féin up to the point where Sinn Féin became a veto on change to the extent that the IRA previously had been and the IRA became expendable at that point.
William:   What do yo think Sinn Fein’s strategy is now as it’s been, presumably, directed principally by Gerry Adams?
Malachi:   A lot of it is if you go back to Gerry Adams and his whole account of his strategy or of his thinking you could interpret it in two ways. Essentially what Gerry Adams says over and over again is the Northern Ireland state is irreformable. (Well he doesn’t call it the Northern Ireland state, the Six County state) But it is irreformable. It is constituted to oppress Nationalists. If you – the old theology of the IRA, before Adams, was: Don’t be looking for reform. Don’t be getting caught up in issues like equality or rights for women or housing or anything. Stick to the point. Free Ireland. And do it by the gun. Adams comes along and says: No, there is a point to going for reform. The point in going for reform is that the Northern Ireland state cannot bear it. That if you go for reform you will break the state. And that is a point he repeats over and over again in his writing. Now, you can interpret that two ways: You can say he actually believes that, he believes that Northern Ireland is irreformable and the more you push for reform the more inevitably you just break that state and bring a united Ireland closer. Or you can say, because we don’t know the man, that this was the line that he was spinning to his followers to get them to move away from armed struggle towards politics. But there is an incredible parallel today with the events of the 1960’s when he was involved in the civil rights movement.
And you get a lot of people saying: Oh, Gerry wasn’t in the civil rights movement. Gerry was in the civil rights movement. That whole argument when he said he was one of the founding members well, he mightn't been one of the founding committee but he was in the room, under IRA instructions on how to vote, when they were appointing members of the Civil Rights committee with Liam McMillen and Betty Sinclair and others. But there is an interesting parallel between those days and the present day because you’ve got an equality issue being used as the wedge to push the thing forward. Most of the people in the civil rights movement, like myself involved in protests in the streets, were only interested in civil rights. But there were people there who thought they were using this as a wedge to produce a Republican revolution. And you have the question mark over whether the equality issue today is ‘about what it’s about’ or whether it has that deeper meaning.
William:  As a coda to all of this we should say, probably, Gerry Adams would deny most of what you’ve said in this interview…
Malachi:  …deny? He wouldn’t deny that…
William:  …No, not the factual, in-public domain details but some of the interpretations. Do you think he’s ever likely to read your book?
Malachi:   I think he’s probably read it already. (laughs) I mean, we are talking about a man with a big ego, you know? Takes one to know one.
William:   Well I mean, is he the kind of person, from what you know – having been through his life from primary sources and secondary sources I guess – is he the kind of person who would see a book published about him and would find it impossible not to read it?
Malachi:  Well…
William:  …Because there are some people who just – Tony Blair said he just doesn’t read books about him.
Malachi:   He has, he has, you know he has self-discipline. He has self-discipline you know I would say if he thought – yeah, I suppose if he looked at it and said: That’s only going to annoy me. I think he’s got the power of concentration and the self-discipline to put it aside. But there are times when this man is, in his own estimation, the centre of the known universe with one shaggy dog story after another about how wonderful he is.
William:  Though you do say he’s impervious to criticism – that way it wouldn’t annoy him. He would just say: Well what do you want? That’s Malachi O’Doherty writing a book…
Malachi:  …Yeah, or the old line that you’ve got an agenda, as Malachi, always…
William:  …That’s what a lot of people say about Malachi O’Doherty writing a book…
Malachi:  …no love lost – you know, the assumption that Malachi’s got an agenda, too.
William:   Well look, thank you very much for coming in – really fascinating book, really interesting backstories and novelistic detail across many of the incidents that you relate to us there. The book is entitled: Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life – there may be a double meaning for all I know…
Malachi:  …(laughs) Never even thought of that. All my other titles are awful – I don’t have another book with that title.
William:  Well it’s straight to the point, isn’t it? And the author is, of course, Malachi O’Doherty – thank you very much.
(end time stamp ~ 37:27)

Big Wheels Keep On Turning….

Steven Are reports on a recent visit back to the North.




Travelling around this planet to various far-flung places I have developed a barometer of sorts to gauge the economic health of the city/state I am visiting. I can usually tell if the place is prospering or not by the amount of construction going on, specifically, the amount of cranes erecting new buildings on the skyline. Forget the austerity crap that the MSM try to sell you: if there is profit to be made Capital will sniff it out and, like a shark with blood in the water, be ruthless in its pursuit.

So it was with some pleasant surprise to see Belfast had changed quite dramatically in the almost twenty years I’d been away. I can still remember the waste land that used to sit behind the Oxford Street bus station, which has now long gone, and which has now been replaced with multi-national Tech companies. The Law Courts are unrecognisable from what I remember them to be, which was basically heavily fortified army sangers on either side.

But it was the little things that really stuck out. I took a dander with my wife and weans around the City to find restaurants with table and chairs sitting outside for patrons. This seems innocuous and is commonplace most everywhere else but it sure as hell wasn’t an option in the 80’s!

My wife who is not a native was a bit bemused at my wandering around like a lost tourist gawking at everything. Can’t blame her: this was not the Belfast I was expecting. The demography appears to have changed somewhat too. When I left the population was 99% Anglo with 1% Chinese and I still have Chinese schoolmates I keep in touch with. Now Belfast is becoming in keeping with most other European cities and the diversity of ethnicities is on show.

Never more apparent than when we stopped for lunch on the Dublin Road. As we walked past a ‘European Café’ we were greeted by the sight of three elderly possible Greek guys smoking roll ups and drinking coffee. They gave me the evil eye as if I was the interloper and I couldn’t help but let out a snort of laughter. They definitely weren’t about back in the day!

But it is the Fear Factor or rather the lack of it which surprised me the most. I spoke to several taxi drivers who were known as “Dial a victim” in my youth. They all reported that no longer are they afraid for their lives, and that the young of Belfast are much more interested in just getting on with enjoying life than was the case over a decade ago.

This was clear to me by a soppy feel-good moment, when I took my kids to a park and noticed GAA tops mingling happily with NI tops. I’m not naive enough to think that all the ills of the past have just evaporated, but I did have a moment of reflection when I noticed young teenagers of the opposite sex and political persuasion flirting with each other. Undoubtedly a great thing in my eyes.

This chain of events led me wonder about the future. With an expanding middle class becoming obvious is a “United Ireland” closer?

I can honestly say I did not notice any border whatsoever between Down and Louth. I can say the road was bloody busy though.

The Loyalists I spoke to seemed to speak fondly of visiting the South and how they had even made friends down there while on holiday in Spain, going so far as to arrange catch ups when back home.

Perhaps time mellows even the fiercest of beasts. It is very uncertain times we live in but I can foresee no situation where the UK wants a ‘Hard Border’ with the Republic. And with the gradual mingling of the youth perhaps a ‘United Ireland’ will exist in everything but name.

After all, what good would come if the people are divided?

British State Not To Be Trusted

How much should Unionists trust the London Establishment when it says there will never be joint authority between Westminster and the Dail over Northern Ireland? Political commentator, Dr John Coulter, uses his Fearless Flying Column to express his fears that Unionism has had its fingers badly burned politically before when it put its trust in a London Establishment.
It was with a shiver of fear up my spine rather than a warm glow of comfort when the heard the London Establishment had supposedly poured cold water over Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney’s plea for joint rule should Stormont collapse.

As a life-long Unionist, you would think I’d be dancing in the streets at London giving the ‘two fingers’ to Minister Coveney’s Dail General Election spin stunt.

But then I’m off a vintage to recall the late British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher’s notorious ‘out, out, out’ speech in which joint rule was condemned to the political dustbin. And then what happened? The November 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.

That specific Belfast accord spawned the Maryfield Secretariat near Belfast, which gave Southern Ireland its first major say in the running of Northern Ireland since partition in the 1920s.

Unionism was caught with its pants well and truly round its ankles. For months, Unionists tramped the cold streets of the state with their Ulster Says No and Ulster Still Says No campaigns. But still the Anglo-Irish Agreement held sway. There would be no caving in to Unionist demands as happened in 1974 when the Sunningdale institutions were collapsed.

The London Establishment had learned its bitter political lesson from the fallout from the 1974 Ulster Workers Council strike. The message was simple in 1985 – beat the Unionists on the streets, and you can bully them into anything.

Given Thatcher’s U-turn when she penned the November ’85 agreement, why is joint rule not on the agenda? Simple, the London Establishment doesn’t want to pick up the bill because the Celtic Tiger has gone bust.

Coveney’s sabre rattling over joint rule is clever electioneering for Fine Gael, which wants to avoid a coalition with Sinn Fein at all costs after the next Dail General Election. But it makes me wonder, how could the London Establishment con Unionism into thinking there is no joint rule, yet implement joint authority via a political back door?

It makes me also wonder what else has been implemented on the ‘QT’ without it being openly noticed?

For example, could Provo priest Father James Chesney have been murdered by British spooks who made his death, at only 46 in 1980, look like a sudden bout of cancer?

Yes, I know it’s still a few weeks until the nursery rhyme ‘Gunpowder, treason and plot’ is uttered for 5 November to mark the failed coup by Catholic militant Guy Fawkes to bomb the Protestant dominated Houses of Parliament in London.

And before you start yelling ‘conspiracy theory nutter’ at me, the Police Ombudsman’s reports in the past unmasked evidence of collusion, firstly between police and loyalist death squads, and then between the RUC and the Catholic Church leadership.

Dissident republicans have in the past been branded as ‘traitors’ and ‘faceless people from faceless organisations’ who are clearly out of step with modern nationalist thinking.

But one senior source within the dissident group, Oglaigh na hEireann ONH), once suggested to me that Father Chesney may have been the victim of a British intelligence hit team.

Equally, Unionist sources have maintained Father Chesney continued with his IRA activities in spite of being conveniently shifted out of his South Derry command and into the Donegal backwoods.

This, along with the fact that loyalist death squads became deeply suspicious in the late 1970s of Father Chesney’s role in the Claudy massacre a few years earlier prompted British spooks to act before Protestant hardliners publicly claimed his scalp.

My ONH source said:

It was clear Claudy was used to take the heat away from Derry. But the target should have been Coleraine. County Derry had to co-operate with Derry to do something. Claudy was a silly thing to start with. Father Chesney was sacrificed as he was one of 20 people involved.

The ONH source said he could not rule out that the priest had been murdered by British intelligence when he supposedly died very suddenly of cancer in 1980.

The ONH source claimed another priest had been secretly murdered by British intelligence because he was suspected of being an IRA member, and an innocent person was murdered in a hospital bed by British intelligence who mistook the person for an IRA operative lying in another bed.

During the course of the Troubles, a number of prominent people were murdered in what are now very mysterious circumstances.

They include Unionist MP Robert Bradford, loyalist terror bosses John McKeague, Robin ‘The Jackal’ Jackson and Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright, as well as INLA chief Ronnie Bunting.

Perhaps the biggest question hangs over the Loughgall massacre in Co Armagh in 1987 in which eight leading members of the Provos’ feared East Tyrone Brigade were shot dead by the SAS.

It was believed the ambush was based either on high level surveillance of the IRA team, or a Tyrone tout.

But former top Belfast Provo and 1980 hunger striker, the late Brendan Hughes, had a more sinister solution for Loughgall.

Asked if the East Tyrone Brigade was allowed to be ‘taken out’ by the SAS because its members could pose a threat to both a future IRA ceasefire and Sinn Fein peace process, Hughes gave a rather telling answer.

I suspect that to be the case now; I didn’t then. I thought then it was a mistake, that we had thrown caution to the wind. Now looking at the way things have developed, I suspect that there may well have been a great deal of collusion there, a great deal of conspiring.

I just wonder who else had to die to ensure peace is maintained in Ireland?


Follow John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

Not Letting Go

Anthony McIntyre writing for the Belfast Telegraph takes the view that Gerry Adams is intent on extending his political career rather than truncating it.

When Richard Blevins of Sky News tweeted Tuesday morning that Gerry Adams was due to make a significant statement at a party gathering in Meath, my terse tweet of a response was “he will not lead Sinn Fein into the 2050 general election”. It was a flippant but candid remark forged by decades of having observed both the political and military odyssey of Adams. 
Despite his dexterous yoking of the two Provisional horses, he has never shirked from cracking the whip in ruthless furtherance of his own longevity coupled with a relentless drive to the top of the greasy pole.

It would have been truly stunning had yesterday’s statement been of authentic significance, the occasion used by the corrosive old caudillo to usher in a creative young leader. Instead he primed the media with the announcement of something significant to come and then leapt onto the podium eagerly provided from where he stamped the party presidential imprimatur on an extension of his political career.

Yesterday’s speech was never about heralding any change at the top. It was simply spun that way with language like “planned process of generational change." The thing about Adams and processes is that they can take quite a long time coming to fruition and they are always conducive to his political career.

There has been no Sinn Fein policy shift in thirty-four years that was not at the same time advantageous to his political fortunes. His leadership skill rests in persuading his followers that his career interests are indistinguishable from the party’s. Somewhere in there lies Karl Kraus’s secret of the demagogue which is “to make himself as stupid as his audience, so they believe they are as clever as he."

Moreover, an iron grip on power is concomitant with the pleasure of command. People do not build up the type of political stamina that Gerry Adams has just for someone else to steal the thunder. In thirteen months’ time, when he shall be 70, he will have led Sinn Fein for half his lifetime.

Democratic parties where power is routinely transferred do not accommodate such uninhibited ambition. A plurality of thinking and interests, egos and sleights, invariably give rise to leadership challenges. The last leadership bid was made three and half decades ago by Adams. Since then, zippo. A party is in a state of torpor if it believes it is so talentless that only one person can lead it for almost forty years. 
Adams facilitated by such deference will see no advantage in standing aside. He has never yet addressed the underachievement of the IRA armed struggle, feigning in one newspaper interview that the Provisional IRA’s was the only campaign not to have ended in failure. His strategising has resulted in republicanism rather than the Northern state achieving the status of “failed political entity.”

To manipulate the historical record, tart up the republican failure as a success, and have his career placed on a victory plinth, no matter how poxy, Adams needs to showcase Sinn Fein in government North and South. In that way, he can spin it as some form of united Ireland, just not the one traditionally envisioned. Such chicanery is best served if Adams, the clandestine revolutionary, is Tánaiste rather than some former Fianna Fail member, like Mary Lou McDonald.

A gamble but not an unwise one. The likely calculation is that come the next election, given Sinn Fein’s willingness to play prop-up, Micheal Martin will come under intense internal pressure within Fianna Fail to row back on his no-coalition-with-Sinn-Fein stance. Presented with the tantalizing prospect of leading the government opposition to Sinn Fein will be much weaker than opposition to the Opposition benches.

At such a juncture, Adams would be foolish not to chance another spin on the merry-go-round. Sinn Fein might do better under another leader, but Adams does not need Sinn Fein to do very well, just well enough to get into coalition with him at its head. 

Wrong Colour

A Statement from Roe 4 Republican Prisoners, Maghaberry accuses prison management of inflicting hardship on both prisoners and their families. 
A two-year-old child was denied access to his father because the jail claimed that the colour of the child’s footwear was unacceptable.

This comes just two weeks after the Stormont Justice Department issued an apology to the family of the five-year-old child of another Republican Prisoner after the jail had forced him to remove his T- shirt during a visit because of its colour.

Other visitors, who had travelled from Dublin, were also stopped today by the heavily criticised and ineffective passive drug dog. These dogs have consistently been used to disrupt the visits of Republican Prisoners despite the fact that NIPS have conceded that there is no issue with drugs on the Republican Wing and objective bodies have encouraged them to exercise discretion in cases involving our visitors. They insultingly claim that they offer closed visits in such circumstances as a means of deflecting criticism, yet these are a degrading draconian arrangement involving a Perspex screen dividing prisoners and visitors.

These incidents follow in a long line of attacks on families by NIPS as a means of harassing Republican Prisoners and it is clear that NIPS believe it can continue this trend with impunity.

Radio Free Eireann Broadcasting 9 September 2017

Martin Galvin with details of this weekend's broadcast from Radio Free Eireann.
Radio Free Eirean will broadcast this Saturday September 9th on WBAI 99.5 FM radio or wbai.org at 12noon New York time; or 5 pm-6pm Irish time; or listen any time after the broadcast on wbai.org/archives.
Author, former political prisoner and writer Anthony McIntyre will explain the announcement by Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams about his future leadership of the party and update us on talks at Stormont. 
We will have the latest on the suspension of the protest at the Free Derry Museum and the interim agreement for mediation.

John McDonagh will report on his appearance last week in Ireland.

John McDonagh and Martin Galvin co- host.

Radio Free Eireann is heard Saturdays at 12 Noon New York time on wbai 99.5 FM and wbai.org.

It can be heard at wbai.org in Ireland from 5pm to 6pm or anytime after the program concludes on wbai.org/archives.

Check our website rfe123.org.

Gauntlet Thrown Down To Custodians Of Arts In Northern Ireland

In the following piece lifted from  EamonnMallie.com,  Winston Irvine, having participated Feile An Phobail, writes on the inaccessibility of the Arts. Winston Irvine is a loyalist political activist. 
Add caption
I was involved in an event at Feile An Phobail last week, principally about marching bands and understanding Unionist and loyalist marching culture, to which people from both communities in West Belfast were in attendance.

The success of the event, unexpected to some, was that different perspectives were presented to allow things to be seen differently, increasing awareness and empathy, opening understanding and positively affecting attitudes and changing the tone of engagement.

A short film, Traditions and Transitions, (was shown at the event, which engages with different aspects of culture associated with Protestant and loyalist marching bands – band practice, music tuition, instrument making, banner painting, community development, story-telling and heritage and history.

The film documents the social and economic impact that marching band culture makes locally, from engaging mainly working-class people, to exporting instruments internationally, and the indisputable economic and cultural benefits of The Twelfth.

Art forms such as theatre and drama help to better explore controversial issues without tearing off the scab of past injuries – delicately treating unhealed historical wounds, as well as engaging with people’s hopes and fears.

The Easter Rising and Somme re-enactments allowed for the non-threatening expression of strong feelings of national pride and national sacrifice as opposed to simply organising mass rallies.
Another event at Feile an Phobail 2017 saw the playwright Beano Niblock and painter George Morrow, both former loyalist combatants, read poetry and exhibit.

The use of documentary with Traditions and Transitions helped to demystify some of the negative myths around marching band culture, and to counter the stigmatisation and vilification of a large section of the community.

There are many other examples, on a small scale, of where the arts have contributed to increased understanding and improved relations between working-class communities and people affected by the conflict.

A number of recent dramatic productions such as Phil Orr’s Halfway House, engaging with two women’s reflections on the events of 1916, and Laurence McKeown’s play Green and Blue, about An Garda Siochana and the RUC policing border areas, show the ability of the arts to accommodate complex and competing narratives.

They also provide a space and opportunity to bring people together and provide an arena in which individuals and groups can encounter one another in discussion, and conversation helping to develop new reference points for better and clearer understanding.

Given the complexity of conflict and its legacy, our approaches to building relationships, addressing the past and embedding peace must be equally complex.

We must be able to accommodate competing narratives of the past, countless stories of hurt, loss and disruption, as well as supporting those who feel they have no voice or are unable to properly articulate or convey what they have to say.

The creative arts have a significant and undoubted role to play in achieving this – saying this is nothing new, the arts have been used in our recent context here for decades, and globally for centuries after countless conflicts and wars.

Who can fail to be touched by Colin Davidson’s powerful and haunting portraits as part of his Silent Testimony series, capturing the loss and suffering of victims of the conflict.

Regardless of the background of the victim or the observer, the portraits succeed in uniting people in an understanding of the pain and despair of so many.

Colin Davidson perfectly demonstrates the power of the arts to unite.

However, before we can talk about the power of the arts to unite, we must also consider that for many people, particularly from working-class communities, there are significant barriers to accessing the arts.

Again, saying this is nothing new. If we want to fully realise the potential for the arts to unite communities that have been divided by conflict, then we must firstly address the social inequalities that marginalise people from the arts in the first place.

How we achieve this is multi-faceted and both strategic and practical – it is about providing support, recognising people’s rights, and allowing for the legitimisation of art forms that are important to a large section of the community.

This should include representation from working-class communities on statutory or public bodies responsible for the arts as well as properly resourcing art forms that reflect and represent the authenticity of the lives of communities.

Only in this way can truly open up the arts (especially in working-class communities) as a way to assist society in recovering from conflict, division and hurt.

While people feel they do not have ownership of the arts, they are unlikely to engage with exhibitions such as Colin Davidson’s Silent Testimony in major arts venues.

Because of this something important is being lost – art forms, like Davidson’s paintings, mediate a power that sometimes discussion alone cannot achieve, providing an alternative language through which new relationships can be developed and new ideas discussed and explored.

The complexity of art forms, whether they be film, drama, painting, story-telling, music, literature allow for complex issues to be articulated, shared, analysed and interrogated.

The documentary short film shown at Feile an Phobail is evidence of this.

Here we had authentic voices engaging with their own history, their own participation in culture and the importance of that culture to their community.

Just as importantly, this experience was shared with people from other backgrounds and traditions, encouraging mutual understanding and respect – the foundations of any lasting resolution to conflict.
Engaging in the arts alone will not transform conflict and sustain peace.  However, the arts can act as an incubator for ideas, new connections, networking and relationships and stimulate new ways of thinking and talking about difficult issues.

They can also help to develop a new fabric across communities, a fabric that makes them more robust and interconnected, particularly as challenges may appear unexpectedly in the future.

Healing is a difficult and convoluted process which involves many stages and which takes many forms.

The arts should be an integral part of this process, open, accessible and available to all.  It should also be a process through which everyone’s experience is recognised as valid and their chosen form of expression tolerated, encouraged and given the legitimacy that is afforded to others.

We all bore witness to the legacy of intolerance, exclusion and cycles of violence.

The arts can help us to create and bear witness to a better future.

Interpreting people’s experiences and stories is vital to healing trauma and mending communities.

The arts can give voice to marginalised and stigmatised groups and help to foster empathy and tolerance.

Arts provide a positive mode of expression and an alternative to threatening and destabilising actions. They humanise rather than dehumanise and provide a language that we all can share in.

Returning to the showing of the short-film at Feile an Phobail, and the unprecedented presence of loyalist bandsmen from around the Shankill and its surrounding areas in the room, one couldn’t help but notice the nervous energy of everyone there.

Yet at the same time there was an atmosphere of respect, an atmosphere in which people wanted to understand and learn more, and a kind of co-operation for mutual and equal benefit.

Art has the power to transcend division and become an agent for change, enhancing peace building efforts and contributing positively to reconciliation and lasting peace.

Emerging peace building approaches must embrace the opportunity to develop new forms of artistic expression which explore questions of identity, culture and the Past – embracing these as inclusive as opposed to divisive and controversial.

The Polish poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska in her biographical poem, The End and the Beginning, provides an illuminating example of wisdom and meaning through her artistry:

After every war someone has to clean up.
Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all…
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way
for those who know little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blades of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

Regardless of our differences and histories and aspirations, the one thing we all share in common is the desire to ensure that we create something better for our children, our families, our community and the society in which we live in.

So let us ponder what role the arts can play in helping us overcome our ancient quarrels, present difficulties and future challenges and realise a future that we can all prosper and equally share in.

Tom Oliver Killing Split A Community

Via The Transcripts Michael Reade is joined in studio by Louth Fine Gael TD Peter Fitzpatrick and Louth Fianna Fáil TD Declan Breathnach about the newly re-opened investigation into the 1991 IRA execution/murder of Co. Louth farmer, Tom Oliver. Both TDs make an urgent and emotional appeal to certain local people to come forward with information.
The Michael Reade Show
LMFM Radio LouthAudio Player(begins time stamp ~ 1:01)
Peter Fitzpatrick & Declan Breathnach The Michael Reade Show 28 August 2017

Michael: Now we’ll begin this morning with the news last week that Gardaí have re-opened the investigation into the murder of Tom Oliver in Co. Louth in 1991. We’re joined by some local TDs: Declan Breathnach of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s Peter Fitzpatrick to appeal for information on this killing. And a very good morning to both of you and thank you, indeed, for joining us here this morning. Obviously there’s not just a lot of interest about the killing of Tom Oliver but I imagine there’s a lot of knowledge about who was involved in the killing of Tom Oliver and that there’s local people who have information that they could make known to the Gardaí.
Deputy Fitzpatrick: Well first of all, Michael, my condolences to the family. Tom Oliver was forty-two years of age. He was the father of seven. He was murdered by the IRA on the eighteenth of July 1991. He left his home that evening, there was a cow calving, he went to a neighbour, he asked for the loan of jacks and the next thing he was abducted, he was tortured and he was murdered. Tom Oliver was a farmer. I feel he was a very vulnerable farmer because he worked on his own. People in the area – to think about it – when you’re a farmer you tend to do the same thing repeatedly day after day after day – and I’m a firm believer that somebody, some person in Cooley, or some persons in Cooley, know exactly what happened to Tom Oliver. And I think it’s very, very important now – last year his daughter was buried – buried – didn’t know who murdered her father. I’m a father myself. I’m also a grandfather. And there’s one thing: Nobody has the right, no matter what happened, to take anybody’s life.

Michael: And he was executed by the IRA. It’s been reported that he was brought to his executioners by two men, known locally, whose business was snubbed as a result. So those who snubbed the business have suspicions about who was involved and undoubtedly there’s names going around and have been going around for years. Have you heard any of those names?

Deputy Fitzpatrick: Well, Michael, what happened in the community – it actually split the whole community down (inaudible). At the time I played a lot of GAA football and what it actually done to the GAA clubs and the entire community – it actually split it up. Now the thing that really, really annoys me is that trying to suggest that Tom Oliver was an informer. Tom Oliver was no informer. And Tom Oliver’s family, his friends the Garda, like the Garda have no reason to tell lies about this. At the time Tom Oliver was murdered there was a lot of talk about ammunition being hidden in the area, that the IRA was training in the area and the Gards were doing an investigation in the area. And to me, what they done was, the reason why Tom Oliver was murdered, was to intimidate the people in the area. I’ll tell you, but I will be honest with you…

Michael: …Have you heard any names, though, that have been linked to the killing of Tom Oliver?

Deputy Fitzpatrick: Michael, I have heard names of people who’ve been linked to Tom Oliver. It’s the same names for the last twenty-five, twenty-six – now the Garda are doing their best at the moment. I am pleading with the people in the area. Someone has to know something. Like how could someone look at Tom Oliver’s wife and his children and his family? And you know, this was a very, very decent man. Like I’m not coming on your programe and pretending that I knew Tom Oliver. I knew Tom Oliver to say hello and at the time he might come into my business and buy a bit of electric stuff. I knew Tom Oliver and to me he seemed a very, very decent person. And all I’m pleading at the moment – this has gone on far, far, far too long and I’m delighted that the Gardaí have opened a new line of inquiries. I hope that they have new information. I hope that somebody has come forward and I hope that that happens ASAP.

Michael: Alright. Declan Breathnach, I’m sure you could relate to everything that’s just been said there.

Deputy Breathnach: Well, I’m glad you said that, Michael, I want to concur absolutely with everything that Peter Fitzpatrick has said and I’m not going to be repetitive on that. My recollection of 1991 was I had just been elected for the first time on Louth County Council.

McEvoy Park STOP Rally
Independent.ieIn fact, the STOP (Stop Terror Oppression and Pain) rally that was organised by the community at that time was my first public engagement and indeed my attendance was in support of the people in the Cooley Peninsula who were incensed and angered and indeed the silence at that particular rally of over four thousand people who attended was palpable and everything Peter said is correct and I’m not going to go over that.
Whether it was the death of Tony Golden, Adrian Donohoe, indeed Captain Robert Nairac, Tom Oliver, Seamus Ludlow or Hugh Watters in the Crowe Street bombing – families are entitled to closure, entitled to know what happened and I would equally appeal that with the re-opening and the re-examination of this particular murder of Tom Oliver that families be given the opportunity to heal. They’re still grieving and the families that I mentioned also are grieving because they need answers and they need to know what happened.
And from my point of view we hear a lot of talk about truth and reconciliation and providing closure and the ultimate issue here is: That this was a cowardly act perpetrated on an innocent man and the family are entitled to, and I certainly, like Peter and I’m sure, most Oireachtas members and most public representatives, would seek justice for them.
Michael: And you’re referring to the IRA’s involvement in this and Tom Oliver was killed by the IRA and I suppose the question that is being answered differently by some people is as to whether this was an IRA execution or if it was a cold-blooded murder. And just to remind people, if I may just for a second, Declan, that the An Phoblacht newspaper, Sinn Féin propaganda paper I suppose you could say, on the twenty-fifth of July 1991 – this is according to Wikipedia at least, ran a headline: ‘IRA Executes Informer‘ and the story read:

The IRA has a duty to protect its organisation, its Volunteers and the back-up provided by its supporters. Tom Oliver’s death was due to his willingness to act as an agent for the Dublin government Special Branch.

Now that’s how it was reported in An Phoblacht and there’s also reports that when he was working on drainage work in 1989 he discovered a barrel. He didn’t know what was in that barrel, reported it to the Gardaí and it turned out to be IRA guns and that that may have led to this killing – whether that was known to the IRA at the time that he didn’t know what was in the barrel or not?

Deputy Breathnach: Well Michael, let’s be very clear on this: You read what was in An Phoblacht. It is clearly acknowledged that the IRA accepted responsibility for this and you know the issue of labeling anybody with the term ‘informer’ – all you do is look it at the dictionary you will see it’s somebody who informs against another especially for money or reward. Tom Oliver was no informer. Tom Oliver, the same as you or I, if you discovered explosives or guns on your property people – whether it was 1991 or today or 1971 – have a civic duty to speak with the Garda Síochána, who are the protectors of this state, in order to ensure that those products are not used to the detriment of people. Now there is an element here that has crept into this whole issue in terms of his death and that is the issue of the involvement of the Garda Síochána. And as part of this investigation, there’s no question in my mind or indeed from speaking to members of the family, that Tom Oliver was under serious pressure in the run in to his abduction and brutal murder. Clearly pressure was being put on him to provide additional information and that needs to be looked at in terms of how those who perpetrated the crime in the cowardly way could even justify that he was speaking to Gards. But I want to make it very clear: civic duty. Tom Oliver was not an informer. And if there were criticism and there is criticism out there of how the Garda handled their dealings with Tom Oliver that also needs to be brought to the fore. But could I just say that it is everybody’s civic duty – I have heard too much talk about truth and reconciliation and people not stepping up to the mark. The leadership of Sinn Féin have called, many times in the past – when it suits – on their members to give information to An Garda Síochána. I know that those people who come forward are not informers. They would be doing their civic duty. And like Peter Fitzpatrick said this morning and I, I’d call on anybody who has information that would bring closure and help to a grieving family

Michael: Okay. Well let’s talk a little bit about Sinn Féin which I’m sure will be of interest to a lot people because Sinn Féin’s position on this killing is unclear. And in 2002 in the general election campaign, the sitting TD or the Councillor, Arthur Morgan, who went on to become a TD, was asked by Tom Oliver’s son, Eugene, in a letter that he wrote to The Argus at the time – What’s the difference between the murders of Seamus Ludlow and Tom Oliver? Because as you say, Declan Breathnach, Sinn Féin have campaigned for a long period of time for information into the wrongful killing of Seamus Ludlow and he wanted a similar statement from that political party at that time. I don’t think Sinn Féin has ever taken a public position on the killing of Tom Oliver other than the one that I read from An Phoblacht earlier on this morning. Just to mention to our listeners as well: We did seek to speak with Gerry Adams about this on the programme last week when Gardaí announced that they were re-opening the investigation. Mr. Adams has been on holidays. I think he’s returned this week and perhaps he’ll speak to us at some stage this week about this new investigation. In his absence we sought to speak with the other TD for the constituency, Imelda Munster, who told us on Wednesday that she would hope to speak to us on Friday but on Thursday she said she wouldn’t be speaking on the matter to us. So we returned then to the Sinn Féin Press Office and we asked that they would issue us with a statement on the killing of Tom Oliver and as yet we have not heard from Sinn Féin. Peter Fitzpatrick, do you remember any statement from Sinn Féin in relation to the killing of Tom Oliver?

Deputy Fitzpatrick: No, Michael, I never remember Sinn Féin making any kind of statements. My big concern although, Michael, is that I do believe that the IRA are still in the Cooley Peninsula area. I still believe that there’s people in the area knows exactly what happened to Tom Oliver. I do believe that people in the area would want to come forward but they do fear for their life. I’m not coming onto your programme to criticise Sinn Féin. I do believe that Sinn Féin knows something about Tom Oliver’s murder. And I would plead with Deputy Gerry Adams and Deputy Imelda Munster to please have a chat with your organisation. Please find out exactly what happened to Tom Oliver. Whether they know or don’t know there is people in the organisation I do believe – like go back to 1998 to the Good Friday Agreement – I think that was one of the best things to ever happen in this country. But to get the Cooley Peninsula back to the way it was it’s so, so important that the Tom Oliver murder – and it is murder because the man was abducted, he was tortured, he was murdered – a priest went in afterwards to have a look at the body and he could not recognise the body! Now I will be honest – I was talking to members of Tom Oliver’s family over the weekend and I have to be very careful because in fairness – the family – this is taking the whole thing back up again and like you know and I believe that his wife has only found out recently what actually happened to her husband you know so I don’t want to start going on and on. But I do plead with people in the areas. And listen, whether or not you want to go to see the Garda Síochána, you can either go to see Declan or myself, we’re making ourselves available there at the moment as it is but I think we need clarity and I think for the Cooley Peninsula and in fairness it has come a long, long, long way at the moment but there is still something wrong right at the moment – there is. Like twenty-six years later no matter whether you go to Carlingford or Omeath or any part of the Cooley Peninsula the name of Tom Oliver is there. And also I can see the fear of people at the moment is. This one thing is – like it’s bad enough doing harm but when you actually cold-blooded murder the person. I’m an ex-soldier. I was a member of the 27th Battalion and I know a little bit about weapons and shooting and I’ll tell you, it takes an awful lot for a person to put a bullet, to shoot somebody, but this man Tom Oliver was tortured first…

Michael: …But that’s it and I must say, I know that the family are listening and I’m acutely aware of that and we do have to be sensitive to that but we also have to be realistic about the conversation if we’re to appeal to other people who might have information as to whether they should come forward with that information or not because you describe it as a cold-blooded murder but there are, undoubtedly, others who would see this as an act of war, if you like – that this was an execution and that whether Tom Oliver was, or was not, an informer the perception was that he had informed and there was a line of command and the command was to execute this man.

Deputy Fitzpatrick: Well I’m a firm believer that the people in the Cooley and Peninsula area wanted peace – that’s to me what is was, peace. And what was happening was the Cooley area in the ’90’s was being used for training, for holding ammunition and, in fairness, like what happening was people were fed of it and what the IRA was a wee bit afraid of – I’m a firm believer – this was a plot by the IRA. I believe they used Tom Oliver as a scapegoat. I think they used Tom Oliver’s shooting to intimidate people in the area. And now listen – people listen: Let’s stand up. The IRA are still in the Cooley area. We have to get rid of the IRA. The 1998 peace process has taken us a long way but until we (inaudible) and get rid of it once and for all and I might, before I finish up talking, Michael, I want to reiterate: I want Gerry Adams and Imelda Munster to come out here now and say honestly either they know who killed Tom Oliver or they don’t know who killed Tom Oliver because I am fed up to the teeth here at the moment listening to this. I do believe there’s people in the Cooley area that actually was either involved or know who killed Tom Oliver and I’m pleading with people to come to see Declan, myself or the Gards – whatever they want. Listen, let’s get it sorted once and for all.

Michael: Okay, let me go back to Declan Breathnach because if there are people listening to us who have information about the killing of Tom Oliver it’s quite possible that they would have been supporters of the IRA campaign. Is it possible to envisage them coming forward with information that might result in a prison sentence for people who carried out what they believed to have been an act of war?

Deputy Breathnach: Whether you’re a member of Sinn Féin, a member/former member of the IRA or had been involved in both, my definition of true Republicanism is respect for everybody and no death or murder can be justified. My difficulty in all of this is that there’s been too much fudge when it suits, people say certain things and when it doesn’t it ignores or refuse to participate. The reality, and it’s known and history will write, that people who have been involved, whether they have ‘left the stage’, as I think is the phrase that was used by Sinn Féin, and the orders from the IRA for people to desist, the reality is that some people have come in to the democratic process, there are others on the fringes of it and we have that even in the Dáil Éireann to this day and right across the country. People have to – I’ve been described more recently on your programme, Mike, as a ‘dinosaur’. I’m not a dinosaur. The reality here, and people know it, press reporters know it – that there are people who want to ride two and three horses and will continue to put unnecessary pressure to deliver a united Ireland and unnecessary upset to families and that has to stop. And the way that that can stop is by people coming forward and giving the information and bringing closure to an ever-grieving family – until the family’s name is cleared. Tom Oliver was doing his civic duty – no more nor less.

Michael: And would that in itself be enough that there would be a statement from the IRA, in other words to that effect, rather than people being brought before the courts?

Deputy Breathnach: I think in the whole issue of – I’m not going to second guess what Gerry Adams or the organisations involved or are no longer involved want to do…

Michael: …No, but I go back to the question that I put to you about asking people to come forward and inform on members of the IRA if they are people who supported the IRA campaign – it’s not a realistic proposition I wouldn’t think.

Deputy Breathnach: I do think that it would go some way for the family to hear that Tom Oliver was a decent farmer going about his business rearing and trying to rear his family in a difficult time and that he was doing his civic duty. After that, if somebody has murdered somebody, as they have, I certainly believe – and if it was my dad or your dad, Mike, I think we would want to see justice in people being brought to trial. We had the whole issue of getting repatriation of people, not having to serve sentences as result of the Good Friday Agreement – murder is murder in my language and it’s up to people to examine their conscience and, indeed, to be truthful in relation to the past and that can be done through truth and reconciliation but let the people listening to this programme be under no illusion – Tom Oliver was doing nothing more than his civic duty in any communication he had with An Garda Síochána.

Michael: Okay. And you’ve both been speaking with the Oliver Family. It’s your understanding, certainly Peter Fitzpatrick, that the family would take some sort of satisfaction from a statement to that effect which would indicate that it was wrong to suggest that Tom Oliver was an informer.

Deputy Fitzpatrick: Oh, yes! Like as you said straightaway, the IRA Press Office came out and stated that Tom Oliver was an informer. Tom Oliver was no informer. Basically what the family wants is closure as I say at this moment is the family want to know what actually happened to their father. They want to know who actually murdered their father in cold blood. Like Tom Oliver went, he was abducted, he was murdered – he was tortured! And like, you imagine, Michael, that was your father. You imagine your father being abducted, being tortured, then he’s shot in the head, being left on the side of a road. This can’t go on! But my main trouble at the moment is in the Cooley area, I know in my heart and my soul there is people in the Cooley area knows exactly what happened to Tom Oliver. I know in my heart and my soul that they want to come forward but it’s a fear factor. And I’m telling you – this new investigation – please contact your local Garda. Please contact either the police or a politician.


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Like when Tom Oliver was murdered there was four or five thousand people that attended the funeral – like the Archbishop, the Cardinal – all political parties condemned it. I just do believe that there is someone in the area that knows what happened. Let’s get this family, after all this length of time, let’s get them some kind of closure. As I said to you, one of his daughters was buried there last year and she went to her grave and didn’t realise what happened to her father. All the family want is closure. All the family want is whoever knows what happen to their father – let them know what happened to their father over that period of twenty-four hours.

Michael: Okay, we’ll leave it there for the moment. Thank you both for joining us here on the programme this morning. Peter Fitzpatrick is a Fine Gael TD in Louth and we were also speaking with Declan Breathnach who’s a Fianna Fáil TD for Louth.

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