Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1208

Establishment Never Get Touched

Via The Transcripts, last month before it went off the air for a short break Radio Free Eireann's Martin Galvin speaks to Kate Nash of the Bloody Sunday March for Justice via telephone from Co. Doire about how the British government may invoke a statute of limitations to protect former British Army soldiers from prosecutions.
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Martin: We’re sorry. We didn’t know you were with us. Welcome back to Radio Free Éireann.

Kate: Well, thank you very much!

Martin: Kate, since we’ve had you on – the last time you were on you were giving us an update and you said there was just on the eve of a decision from the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) all of the evidence was in, the Constabulary investigation was completed and it was imminent whether and which British troops would be charged for the unjustifiable and unjustified killings of your brother and others on Bloody Sunday. Where are we at now in terms of that decision?

Kate: Well we did have a meeting with the Public Prosecution Service a couple of weeks ago and at that meeting they had told us that although they made no significant progress they actually just wanted to introduce themselves. They did say by the end of the summer they would be able to, they think they would be able to give us a time frame for when they might make that decision. But I’m afraid I rather got the impression that we could be talking a few years yet.

Martin: Now these are an incident which was the focus of the Saville Inquiry, it was the focus originally of the Widgery Report whitewash, you had the whole Saville Inquiry, you had a full Constabulary investigation since that – all of that information has been out there, it’s been completed a number of years ago. You know, usually when the police make a decision or present evidence to a prosecutor you can make a decision right away. You’ve had enough where a British Prime Minister could say that those killings on Bloody Sunday in 1972 were ‘unjustified and unjustifiable’. What more, at this point, do they need?


Kate: Well they have everything they need. What they don’t want to do is they don’t want to prosecute soldiers. That’s the, I’m afraid that’s the bare facts. They simply don’t want to prosecute soldiers because, I think, that if that begins, if prosecuting soldiers becomes the norm then, a lot of what they did during this dirty war in Ireland will be exposed. Obviously these soldiers will get angry and start talking. There’s a big, there’s a big – the British propaganda machine is very much at work at the moment and has been for a number of months. We have it coming from different sources about amnesty for soldiers, about how these soldiers were only doing their duty over here protecting people and defending our country and now all these years later there’s a ‘witch hunt‘, that people are looking to prosecute them even though the IRA are not saying what they did. So in effect, are making out these soldiers actually did nothing. But of course, the IRA actually, the IRA actually go through the courts – twenty-five thousand of them have gone through the courts and a great many thousand of Loyalist paramilitaries have gone through the court, too. But only a handful of soldiers over all these years of deaths. They simply don’t want to admit to the state killings and how many they actually did.

Martin: I’m going to read from a report by Connla Young in the Irish News. He quoted a chairman of a Westminster defence committee, a Dr. Julian Lewis, who said:

To subject former soldiers to legal pursuit under the current arrangements is wholly oppressive and a denial of natural justice. The Parliament has it entirely within its power to enact a statute of limitations in this matter.

Now what would that mean if Westminster enacted a statute of limitations and said you couldn’t prosecute British troopers or members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) for any acts that occurred more than twenty years ago? What would that do to all of the fight that you’ve had for justice for your brother, for the others killed on Bloody Sunday and for many people been killed by British troops or by people hired by British troops or by the Royal Ulster Constabulary?
Kate: Martin, if something like that happened it would be truly shocking. After all the years we have struggled – forty-five years we have struggled for justice – to think that these killers could get off – people who slaughtered innocent people on the streets of Doire – and we’re talking about people who were running away – unarmed people. We’re talking about Ballymurphy. What about all the children that were killed by rubber bullets at point-blank range?

Manus Deery Photo: The Derry Journal
My own friend, my good friend who’s in my sitting room at the moment, her brother, fifteen year old brother was shot from the Doire walls for nothing – he was doing absolutely nothing. She just has had an inquest, just recently, where they said that the death was – well it was unjustified although the soldier responsible is dead but he apparently – you know the way soldiers have these ‘yellow card rules’ and he broke those yellow card rules about how and when you would use a gun. But that was to kill a fifteen year old boy. I know many other children who were shot at point-blank range by rubber bullets and gas canisters deliberately. Are you telling me that all these men can actually walk away?

Can I also say about Bloody Sunday, for instance? One of the soldiers there actually is believed to have killed up to five people! He’s actually meant to have killed up to five people! How can you let somebody like that walk away who shot all those unarmed people deliberately? It’s just – it would be unbelievable. It would be the most utter disgrace if that was allowed to happen – these soldiers were allowed to walk away.

Martin: Well for years we’ve heard British officials say – in fact Doug Beattie was on a radio programme with me talking about Gerry McGeough, it was on a few months ago on BBC Talkback, and you always hear them say: If anybody committed a crime, whether they’re British trooper, member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ulster Defence Regiment – they should face a court and have evidence presented. And what happened was they were saying that for years when they knew there’d be like a Widgery Tribunal where they knew the British royal military police would just whitewash it or a Widgery Tribunal would whitewash it and because you pushed them through the Saville Enquiry, because other families have pushed through – like Ballymurphy Massacre Families have demanded inquests or like the person in your sitting room demanded an inquest – there now is coming out, when these inquests, when these proceedings do happen, you see that the killings were unjustifiable, you see that people were murdered, and you see that there is real evidence that British troopers, members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), should face a court. These are their courts that they support, that they believe in, that they think bring justice – why is it that they’re so afraid to put their members before a British court? If they think they’re innocent of murder why not let them be exonerated and prove them right under British rule?

Kate: Because there’s too much evidence against them. Can I tell you about Doug Beattie? Doug Beattie is an MLA, a Unionist MLA. The man spent his life in the Army. He joined the Army in 1980. Before him his father was in the Army and when he left the Army, when he was pensioned out of the Army, he actually joined the UDR. This man is not objective. He’s simply not objective.

Martin: Well I don’t know how he can march in front of Belfast City Hall talking about ‘Frankenstein justice‘ and how people who, British troopers, should not face courts and then at the same time he’s going around talking about how great British justice is, how great British courts are, how anybody who’s guilty of anything should face a court and not realise that it’s total hypocrisy.

Kate: Well that’s what he is. He’s a total hypocrite and a sectarian – a sectarian one at that.

Martin: What do you think in terms of will there be a statute of limitations? You now and even – someone told me a long time ago if you ever doubt that the British have a great sense of humour – the English have a great sense of humour: Just look at the way, the titles, they’ve put on legislation they used in Ireland. They’ll abolish Diplock courts, the non-jury courts, which means they use them now in civil proceedings as well as criminal proceedings. They used – they want to terrify everybody in England, or they want to terrify people they’ll say it’s the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Now if you want something to last for thirty or forty years called it a Temporary Provisions Act. They’re saying: We’re not going to have an amnesty, we’re not going to have a blanket immunity but we’ll have a statute of limitations. What would that statute of limitations mean in view of the people that you’ve been fighting to bring to courts for Bloody Sunday for so many years? The Iconic Image by Fulvio Grimaldi
Kate: I would imagine that that would just – the slate would be wiped clean for them. They’d be able to walk away. That’s exactly what would happen. And I think that’s what they’re attempting to do at the moment. They’re trying to have it that these soldiers can actually walk away. The British have an awful lot to cover-up – the stuff they did here in this country – and they just don’t want it known. And the soldiers, if they go to court, the soldiers may become angry and it affects morale with the Army today if they would see soldiers, former soldiers, going to court and that’s what it’s really all about – you know, to cover-up what the British themselves did in this country.

And they committed some terrible acts. They had the Military Reaction Force (MRF) they had FRU (Force Reaction Unit), they had all these undercover units that actually I always believed perpetuated the war in this country. I believe they kept it going. This should have ended at least 1974. We should have had justice then. These soldiers should have been taken to court then or whatever but you may know also, Martin, we know these soldiers didn’t act on their own. We know their officers sent them in and we know that. We know for a fact that that came from government level from the office of the Prime Minister himself, Ted Heath. We know that. And these people obviously, The Establishment, never get touched when you’re talking about criminal charges. But these people all should be standing in court. Every one of them – with these soldiers. We are determined, we are determined that they will go to court. We will keep the fight going. I don’t know what we’ll do if this statute of limitations come in. I don’t how how that’ll work. We’ll probably have to look into it…

Martin: …you’ll probably have to the European Court if they’re still involved with the European Bill of Rights you may be able to have some way to get…

Kate: …well there is – I mean they’re signed up to certain things in Europe and even if Brexit, even if they leave Europe, there’s still some things that they’re actually signed up to even outside of that that they still have to adhere to.

Martin: We’re talking to Kate Nash whose brother was one of the people killed on Bloody Sunday – her father was also wounded at that time. Kate, we have to leave you in a few minutes…

Kate: …I can’t hear, Martin.

Martin: We have to close this down. We have we’re – in this programme we’re raising money to keep us, this station and this programme, on the air. The station’ll be on the air but we have to show the station managers how important our programming is to listeners so people, while you’re on the air with us, are calling in pledging money, donations to the programme, to keep us on the air. And I just want to ask you before you leave: How important – I know you listen to Radio Free Éireann as well as being interviewed by us – how important is Radio Free Éireann, the interviews that we have, to you in Doire, to other people in the North of Ireland, to other people throughout Ireland to get views on Ireland, to get the truth about British rule which you don’t usually or may not get very readily in other news outlets in Ireland?

Kate: Can you hear me, Martin?

Martin: Yes.

John: There’s something wrong with the line.

Martin: I’m sorry. We didn’t hear you for a second.

Kate: No, I think it’s very important, Martin, and I do hope lots of people pledge money to keep that show on the road because it’s so important to us. Personally I had a conversation with Sandy Boyer a number of years ago, God rest his soul, and I told Sandy – I remember there was a story connected with the Bloody Sunday thing at that time and I said; You know, my local radio station isn’t even running with this story because of censorship here, you know, media censorship. That show, your show, is so important to me. Because it gives our side – it’s not just the British narrative. It gives our side – the victims’ families and you hear that and it gives us an opportunity to speak the truth to the American people, to Irish-American people, who hopefully would ring up their or email their governors and stuff like that and try to do something to help us but it’s so important to keep that show on the road because of that – because it gives us an opportunity to speak. It gives us a voice.

Martin: Alright. And Kate, we want to thank you for that endorsement.
(ends time stamp ~ 45:36)

Discrimination In Derry

Eamonn McCann with a meticulous piece detailing a discrimination case against Derry man, Gary McClean.


The Waterside Neighbourhood Partnership (WNP) has been ordered by a Fair Employment Tribunal to pay Gary McClean £10,000 compensation for denying him a job as a Community Development Officer (CDO) even though he’d been the only candidate to achieve the required score at interview.

The explanations for McClean’s rejection given by four directors of the WNP were dismissed by the Tribunal as “evasive,” “unconvincing,” “deliberately misleading,” “not credible,” “making absolutely no sense,” etc.

The Tribunal also criticised sharply the role of an official of the Department of Social Development (DSD - now the Department of Communities) who had been present as an observer during the short-listing and interview processes. The Tribunal characterised parts of her evidence as “evasive” and “not credible.”

The Tribunal heard from 10 witnesses over four days last December. The report, published on February 20th, runs to 59 close-spaced foolscap pages, totalling close on 30,000 words.

McClean has been a community worker in the North-West for a number of years, variously as a volunteer and on a full-time paid basis, mainly in the Waterside area, particularly in Curryneirin and Tullyally. Curryneirin is a Nationalist estate at the edge of the Waterside. It lies a short distance from Unionist Tullyally. Both are marked by palpable economic deprivation. Over the years, tension along the interface has occasionally flared into violence.

A decision of the DSD in March 2014 that funding for the Curryneirin CDO position would be routed through the WNP, rather than, as with previous funding for community positions in the area, through the Curryneirin Community Association, was to become and remains a bone of contention.

McClean insisted to the Tribunal that the DSD’s recognition of the WNP as the “official” representative of Curryneirin for funding purposes was part of the process of dividing disadvantaged areas between the two main parties.

Neighbourhood Partnerships were set up in 2004 across the most deprived 10 percent of wards in the North. The stated purpose was to improve the quality of life in the areas concerned. The DSD’s position from the outset was that:

It is neither possible nor appropriate for DSD to specify in detail what mechanisms should be put in place locally - the structure of the NP's (sic.) may differ from one Neighbourhood Renewal area to another and arrangements made at local level should reflect local needs and structures.

The structures and modes of operation of individual NPs are not always clear to outsiders. Approval by the Department doesn’t require conformity with any prescribed model.

The Tribunal reported that:

(McClean) describes himself as a socialist, who is critical of Sinn Fein and who is critical of what he alleges is an agenda between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party to carve up influence (and funding) between themselves in segregated areas.

The nub of McClean’s complaint was that it was on account of these views that he was rejected for the Curryneirin post.

The Tribunal heard that a year after the DSD’s decision to re-route funding for the Curryneirin position through the WNP, a report into relations between the WNP and the CCA was commissioned from St. Columb’s Park House (SCPH), a “peace-building” centre in the Waterside, into relations between the WNP and the CCA.

A former chairman of the CCA, Stephen Gallagher, told the Tribunal that community organisation in Curryneirin had managed to remain independent of “any political organisations” for the past 15 years. However, he said that he had felt “harassed” by Alison Wallace, strategy manager and director of the WNP, to invite representatives of Sinn Fein to CCA meetings.

The Tribunal quoted the SCPH report:

The Curryneirin Committee have felt powerless and that no one listens to them…Ms. Wallace is in a position of power with access to public money…This case raises the question about the centralisation of power with one person. Whoever this person is and however fair and consistent they are, it is questionable whether this amount of power should not (sic.) be held with one position and one person.

The WNP had advertised the Curryneirin job in April 2015. Three applicants were selected for interview. The interviews took place on 5 June 2015, before a panel comprising three WNP directors - strategy manager Wallace and WNP co-chairs Geraldine Doherty and William Lamrock. Lamrock chaired the panel. DSD official Geraldine Boggs sat in and took notes.

When the interview scores were totted up, only McClean had reached the set threshold of 59 marks from a possible 70. Each of the panel members signed a document recording the marks of each interviewee. The marks were then collated. The collated document referred to McClean as the “person appointed.” The following month, however, McClean was told that he had not been appointed, that the competition was being re-run and that he could apply again. McClean did not apply a second time but instead lodged the complaint which was to be the subject of the Tribunal hearing.

Both Wallace and fellow-panel member Geraldine Doherty suggested to the Tribunal that they had been pressurised by Lamrock into giving McClean higher marks than they otherwise would and that this had later made them uneasy about giving McClean the job. Doherty said that she had been made to feel “very uncomfortable” during the interviews. Wallace said that Lamrock “can be unpleasant at times … is very overbearing and … can cause difficulties for you.”

Both women also suggested that Lamrock had boosted his own marks for McClean because they had had a previous working relationship.

The Tribunal pointed out in its report that none of these complaints had been made at the time or in the course of the many exchanges between WNP directors in the period between the interviews and the commencement of the fair employment proceedings. The complaints had appeared for the first time in witness statements to the Tribunal.

This suggests that this allegation (of favouritism), like the allegation of bullying, is something that has only occurred to Ms. Wallace and Ms. Doherty relatively recently.

The Tribunal examined the marks awarded to McClean for each question by each panel member and concluded that there was “no startling difference” between Lamrock’s marks and those given by Wallace and Doherty. The Tribunal noted that it was Wallace who had written in McClean’s name as the “person appointed.”

Following signing of the collation sheet, the three panellists had continued discussion about the position. Lamrock was first to leave. He was explicit to the Tribunal that he had left in the clear, firm belief that the matter was finalised - McClean had been appointed.

Discussion continued in Lamrock’s absence for a further few minutes. It was at this point that Wallace and Doherty’s concerns appear to have emerged. The Tribunal reported:

It appears that despite the clear markings recorded by Ms. Doherty and Ms. Wallace and despite the clear terms of the collation sheet, those two interview panel members for some reason had decided that the claimant was not to be appointed.

DSD representative Boggs claimed that she had not been aware when she left the interview room that it had been decided and recorded that McClean had been appointed. She had not seen the individual scoring sheets or observed the compilation of the “collation” sheet noting McClean as the “person appointed.” When the signed sheet containing the phrase was put to her in cross-examination, she responded: “I can see that it is written there."

The Tribunal commented:

She had been sitting at the same table as the interview panel and yet claims not to have seen the completion and signing of the collation sheet. Completion and signing of that sheet must have taken some minutes.

The Tribunal described the DSD woman’s evidence on this point as “simply not credible.”

In relation to Wallace and Doherty’s claims of bullying, Boggs said that Lamrock had been “quite forthright,” “vocal” and “wanted a higher score.” In contrast, the “two girls were quieter.” Asked why she had not previously mentioned any of this if she’d thought it significant, she replied, “I did not think it was my role.”

The Tribunal commented:

Again, this evidence is not credible. Given the expenditure of public funds, her role had been to act as an observer on behalf of DSD. This had not simply been a matter of timekeeping and counting questions. If bullying or favouritism had taken place, it had been her role to report it. She did not. She did not even make any adverse comment in her notes, which she had then destroyed anyway.

None of Wallace, Doherty and Boggs had recorded any complaint about Lamrock’s allegedly “overbearing”, “bullying” etc. behaviour until giving evidence last December.

Asked whether there could be any interpretation of the signed collation sheet other than the obvious - that McClean had won top marks and it had been decided on this basis to appoint him - Boggs replied, “probably not.”

“That response was evasive,” said the Tribunal. “No other interpretation of the collation sheet was possible. Her answer should have been a straightforward ‘No.’”

Boggs said in evidence that she had destroyed her notes immediately after the interviews. The Tribunal noted that, “She was unable to explain the purpose of destroying the notes.”

Another WNP director, Karen Mullan, gave evidence that on the day of the interviews or the day afterwards, Doherty had told her in the course of an unminuted discussion that she had “concerns” about the interviews. The Tribunal noted that these concerns of Doherty’s had not been mentioned by Mullan in her witness statement, or referred to by her at all, until mentioned in cross-examination before the Tribunal.

Mullen is a member of Sinn Fein. She is also manager of the main community group in the Nationalist Top of the Hill area of the Waterside.

The weeks following the interviews saw a furry of emails about McClean and the Curryneirin job between the three panel members, Mullan and another WNP director, Linda Watson.

On June 12, Lamrock wrote to his fellow panel-members: “We need to call a meeting of the Company as there are risks and issues for us in this matter.” But no such meeting was held. The Tribunal commented that any such meeting would have involved only four individuals - Lamrock, Wallace, Doherty and Mullan.

It seems odd that a meeting of those four individuals proved impossible. If such a meeting had been held, there could have been a full discussion between Mr. Lamrock and the other two interview panel members.

Wallace wrote to Doherty and Lamrock on July 6, again making the point that “two of the panel had major concerns” and that one had suggested calling McClean back for a follow-on interview.

Lamrock replied later the same day:

It needs to be made clear that the recruitment was run and scoring completed…A threshold of 59 marks was set….Two candidates had scored below this and one had achieved 65 marks approx…The collation sheet was prepared and all three interviewers signed it…This brought an end to the process….WNP Company is opening itself to risk if we overturn a process based on perception and not hard facts from the interview.

On the following day, Mullan wrote to all parties suggesting again that, “If two out of three interviewers are not happy with the candidate I think we should go back out to re-advertisement.”

Wallace responded: “I agree we should not appoint someone that two out of three interview panel members believe based on the interview is not suitable for the job.”

Lamrock replied:

There was a successful candidate. Now for that decision to be overturned there must be a strong reason based on fact that will stand up to scrutiny. Otherwise the company would open itself to risk. I am not prepared to do that. This is public funds…

When told that he had not been appointed, McClean asked for feedback and for the interview notes. However, the Tribunal recorded, the notes forwarded to McClean by Wallace\;

had a significant part removed without any indication that that part had been removed. In particular, that part recording the setting of the threshold marking of 59 marks and the blank space where the interviewers would have completed their names…The only explanation that Ms. Wallace had put forward was that she had been advised that the names of the interviewers should not be related directly to each scoring sheet. However, since the place for the names had been blank in the original forms, there was absolutely no reason for the deletion other than the obvious reason of avoiding telling the claimant that the threshold marking had been set at 59 marks and that therefore he had exceeded the threshold mark.

The Tribunal described Wallace’s evidence as “unconvincing and evasive.”

Another WNP director, Linda Watson, told the Tribunal that she had been informed in an email from Wallace a few days after the interviews of the facts relating to McClean’s interview and non-appointment and of the concerns of Wallace and Doherty. But, the Tribunal recorded:

At no stage had she asked for sight of the collation sheet or for any of the documentation … She merely stated that she had taken it that ‘what Ms. Wallace told me was the truth.’

The Tribunal found that, “In short, Ms. Watson’s evidence was not credible.”

Watson is a prominent campaigner for the DUP in Derry. She works as coordinator of a community organisation in the Unionist Caw/Nelson Drive area.

Doherty accepted in cross-examination that she had been an active member of Sinn Fein in the Mountainview area of the Waterside, where McClean, too, lived. Both had worked in community positions in Mountainview.

She stated however that she knew very little about him. That was unconvincing. This had been a small area in a small city where both individuals had been involved in community work for lengthy periods.

One possible implication of Doherty knowing little about McClean was that she couldn’t, then, have held his political attitudes against him when considering his job application.

Doherty is a former secretary of the Sinn Fein branch which covers Mountainview. When asked whether she knew of any other Sinn Fein members in the small Mountainview estate she replied: “Not to my knowledge” and then that she “couldn’t possibly say.” The Tribunal remarked that this “seemed evasive.”

Doherty repeatedly insisted that she had no knowledge of the North West Social Forum (NWSF), of which McClean. itemising his experience in his job application, said he been coordinator. She was “absolutely sure” that she had never heard of this organisation. She was then shown a copy of McClean’s job application in which his employment by the NWSF between 2002 and 2005 was highlighted under the heading “relevant experience.” She explained that she had read “most of” the application, but “not in any real detail.” She agreed that she had had the application form in front of her during the interview.

The Tribunal found it:

not credible that Ms. Doherty had not read that part of the application form which referred to relevant experience…If she had taken the short-listing and interview processes seriously, she would have read the form in full.

It was “particularly implausible” that she had not read this section, given that “she now states that she had been concerned about the claimant’s experience.”

McClean believes that part at least of the reason his years with the NWSF had been ignored or discounted was that Sinn Fein at that time didn’t accept the PSNI as a legitimate police force and objected to the NWSF working and liaising with the force.

“They knew I couldn’t be counted on to fall in with the party line. That was the problem.”

The Grey Knight

Anthony McIntyre reviews a novel set in the era of the H Block hunger strike.


A wrenboy dances with Hazel while her mum is treated to a two-step by one of his companions. It is not what could be described as a dance with the devil but to the boys the dance floor was in the devil’s kitchen, although not the scenic small cave on the southwestern shore of Mackinac Island.

This was Larchfield House, situated just across the border from the politically violent North of Ireland. The master over “big house survivors” and family alike, not abiding by the standards of graphic correctness, came sans horns, tail and club foot but still ruled the roost. He was not averse to physically striking his wife just to reinforce the point.

The performance of the dance, because it was part of a social ritual in which wrenboys were not made to feel unwelcome even by those who did not exactly embrace them with open arms, was a cause of resentment to Edward Coote. He was a nose in the air chauvinist with a clear disdain for those he considered children of a lesser god. On occasion, he had taken to shooting at them, but not being short of the finances to reach an out of court settlement availed of justice for the wealthy.

The dance was never likely to balm the running sore that sat like a raised red weal on the map of relationships between Hugh’s family, the O’Connors, and the Cootes whose home Hugh O’Connor and his fellow wrenboys were now frolicking in. Contested rightful ownership of the painting, The Grey Knight, while at the heart of the dispute leaves little room for grey areas. The divide is black and white. That is until the budding romance complicates things with an infusion of colour.

The story is sculpted out of the tumultuous events of 1981 when a republican hunger strike in the H Blocks was a presence in almost every Irish home, sympathetic to the cause of the protesting prisoner or not. The setting is a rural society in Southern Ireland where the most pressing social concern is the problem of a shrinking religious congregation. Then the hunger strike intervenes, its effect made sharper due to local man Gerry Dowd being one of the prisoners refusing food.

The penumbra of the Provisional IRA always hovered but was deprived of salience. This novel included the Provos without allowing them poll position. Hawkishness had as much presence here as mawkishness. The shout of “Up The Provos” was emitted for the purpose of impressing the girls, not out of deep ideological commitment.

Although it is plugged as a story of love in troubled times, if Mills & Boon is what stimulates your bookish juices into full flow this novel is perhaps not for you. Neither schmaltzy nor contrived, it portentously suggests something other than a happy ending and holds the anticipation right to the end.

Nor is it written to conform to a peace process perspective whereby the supposed mutual hatred of each community for the other can by overcome if only everybody could follow the example of Hugh and Hazel by reaching out and indulging in a cross-community affaire de coeur. Like the Beatles song that the young lovebirds had a shared passion for, the author decided in respect of maudlin sentimentality and plastic narratives, to Let it be.

The atmospherics at work in this book took me back to the pages of Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn, first published in 1867, and recommended to me by a lawyer. I came away from that experience realising that lawyer’s advice is not always right. I would have read Phinneas Finn during the blanket protest on the grounds of “needs must” but these days being spoiled for choice, I choose my literature. The atmospherics of the Trollope work were the most endearing feature of Phineas Finn, which Patrick Devaney, most likely unknowingly, replicated in Grey Knight, seamlessly combining them with a good narrative rooted in the political tensions of 1981. Yet, notwithstanding Nigel’s use of Marijuana coupled with the image of modern motor vehicles the writing always conveyed the feel of life in the 19th Century. Having read World From Rough Stones during the hunger strikes while still wearing a rough blanket, The Grey Knight resonated in more ways than one. 

In contrast to the roughness of stones and blankets The Grey Knight is a gentle read in what some might consider an old-fashioned sense. It relies on the imagination and word craft of the author rather than being interspersed with expletives and titillating sex scenes. Hugh’s “sore arse” experience was as “smutty” as it got. 

Grey Knight is enthralling without being exciting. It soothes. Its page turning allure lies not in its gripping suspense but comes courtesy of its power to act as a calming salve for a mind in a state of restlessness. When I would put it down due to the intrusion of something or other not yearned for, I was pleased by the thought that I would pick it up again in an hour or two once time permitted. 

Now it being time to return my copy to its rightful owner, my friend Dee, the lyrics of a Devil Makes Three song appropriately flit around my mind: 

Goodbye old friend,
farewell it seems
We'll dance again
in my dreams

Patrick Devaney, 2017. The Grey Knight. Publisher AuthorHOUSE: ISBN: 978-1524676438

Never Say Never Again

Political commentator and former Blanket columnist, Dr John Coulter , examines how Northern Ireland’s 18 MPs can hold the solution to the hung parliament dilemma at Westminster following the snap General Election.

Never say never again! The spectre of Hollywood heart throb Sean Connery’s 1983 James Bond could well be the theme of forming the next Westminster Government after the snap General Election dumped a hung parliament on the British people.

Once again, a future British Prime Minister will have to look to Northern Ireland’s 18 MPs if he or she is to be handed the keys to Downing Street.

The Ulster result saw the Democratic Unionists romp home as the only Unionist Party in the Commons with 10 seats, followed by Sinn Fein on seven – the party’s best ever Westminster result since the 1918 General Election when Ireland was entirely under British rule.

The 18th seat was taken by Independent Sylvia Hermon, the widow of a former police chief constable, but she saw her supposedly safe seat majority slashed from just over 9,000 to just over 1,200.

But it was an election disaster for the Ulster Unionists, the party formed in 1905 to combat Home Rule and which dominated Stormont politics since partition in the 1920s until the fall of the original parliament in 1972.

It lost both its Commons seats, reducing it to the 2005 scenario with no Commons representation and merger with the DUP to form a single Unionist Party the only option to save it.

Merger is also the only option for the moderate nationalist SDLP as the three seats held by three former leaders were snapped up by Sinn Fein and the DUP, leaving Irish nationalism with no Commons representation on the so-called Westminster ‘green benches’ for a generation.

Sinn Fein is adamant its MPs will not take their Commons seats because of the oath to the monarch – a move which has not stopped Scottish and Welsh nationalists from taking their seats, or indeed anti-monarchist MPs within the British Labour Party.

Sinn Fein has inflicted on the SDLP what the latter dished out to the now defunct Irish Nationalist Party in the 1970s. To survive, the SDLP has only one option – a merger with Fianna Fail, the Irish Republic’s main opposition party.

Tory boss Theresa May is dogmatic she wants a Conservative Government, even though her snap election plan to give her a bigger Commons majority has backfired. This can only be achieved with the help of the DUP MPs.

While the DUP will be spending the weekend drawing up its wish list in exchange for propping up a Tory Government, the DUP will be wary of what happened to the Liberal Democrats and Ulster Unionists when they entered pacts with Tories. Both the UUP and LibDems suffered in future polls.

That’s, of course, assuming that May survives as Tory leader and Right-wingers like former London Mayor Boris Johnston don’t come biting at her heels in a leadership coup.

But don’t rule our Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to form a rainbow coalition against the Tories using the Scottish and Welsh nationalists. But that would also involve the unthinkable – getting Sinn Fein to ditch its abstentionist policy.

But Sinn Fein has done so in the past. It dumped abstentionism in the Dail and Stormont. Indeed, its Northern leadership is ready for talks to kick-start the Stormont power-sharing Executive.

Ian Paisley senior once boomed ‘never, never, never’ in relation to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, but he joined a power-sharing Executive with the late Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein may be dogmatic about abstentionism in the immediate aftermath of the hung parliament. But Irish politics is the art of the impossible, and every party has its price, especially with the Brexit clock ticking.


Follow John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

The People Who Get Up Early In The Morning

Tommy McKearney , writing in Socialist Voice , assesses the implications of Leo Varadker taking over the reins of Fine Gael.
The dilemma may not be quite so obvious everywhere, but the trend is nevertheless all too evident.
Nor should we in Ireland be complacent. There is not, at the moment, a significant ultra-right movement in this state, but we are certainly seeing the emergence of an increasingly authoritarian neo-liberal government.
There is no shortage of evidence of this imperiousness in action. We have the Jobstown trial, with its vindictive attempt to punish people in a working-class area who confronted the state; and equally ominous is the blatant attempt to curtail the right to protest.
Then there was the contemptuous treatment meted out to Bus Éireann workers as they struggled to retain hard-won terms and conditions. And then we, the people, had our queries brushed aside when we demanded to know how the Irish delegation had voted on Saudi Arabia’s membership of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

We could continue, but lack of space prevents us.
Just as we were beginning to think that things couldn’t get much worse, we are now faced with the nasty prospect of Leo “people who get up early in the morning” Varadkar becoming Taoiseach. During a pitch for the leadership of Fine Gael, he made his right-wing credentials crystal-clear, claiming that “unfortunately there are a group of people, very often supporters of the far left, that believe they shouldn’t pay anything and that Apple, bondholders or billionaires should pay . . .”
Adding to this crude piece of neo-liberal dogma, he stated that if selected as party boss he would curb the right to strike in certain circumstances, by introducing binding arbitration on trade unions—the thin end of a wedge designed to emasculate organised labour.
It would be unwise to treat these comments and proposals as mere electioneering. Varadkar is responding to the demands of a powerful section of Ireland’s capitalist class. They are an elite group within society determined to take every possible advantage from the confusion and demoralisation created by the financial crisis of 2010—a group that at the same time is fearful of the power displayed by working-class communities when they united around the anti-water tax campaign.
To meet the demands of this elite cabal, Enda Kenny’s probable successor is setting out his agenda, and it is frankly anti-working class.
Varadkar may well bob and weave in order to obfuscate his real intentions as he offers so-called clarifications. He now says, for example, that his reference to people who get up early in the morning should be understood to recognise those with long journeys to work, and that his proposal to curb strikes is merely an initiative to improve the Labour Court. 
In spite of this cynical play-acting, Varadkar’s aggressive neo-liberalism is ingrained and is as calculated as his headline-grabbing stunt ostensibly designed to counteract welfare fraud. Worth noting in this context is the absence of any suggestion of preventing white-collar crime, or replacing the discredited ODCE. 
The minister for social protection (an oxymoronic title if ever there was one) is moulded in the Fine Gael forge and will seek to ruthlessly protect the interests of capital. There can be little doubt that the next leader of the original corporatist party will ensure that it stays true to the ethos of its blue-shirted founding fathers. 
Under these circumstances, however, it is important to recognise that Leo Varadkar is not so much a personality as a product of his class. He may display certain irrelevant idiosyncrasies that set him apart, but in reality any other contender for the party leadership would follow a similar political and economic path. Ever since the Lehman Brothers crash of 2008, capitalism’s elite has sought to protect its position by forcing the working class to pay for the financial crisis through what is euphemistically called austerity. Therefore, so long as Ireland is governed by free-marketeers we will have to endure the consequences of being forced to live by the rules laid down by those forces and elements controlling the market.
In the first instance, this will mean making Ireland conform to directives emanating from those vested interests that manage the European Union. It is useful, therefore, to bear this in mind and consider the programme now advocated by Germany and France—the core powers within the union. The ruling class in both states is determined to intensify integration, reinforce the currency zone, and accelerate what they like to describe as liberalisation of the labour market.
In a nutshell, this means that fiscal control will be decided by French and German financiers via Brussels and thereafter implemented through regional parliaments performing the task of emasculating organised labour. Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach would be one of those peripheral satraps entrusted with the latter chore—presumably a labour of love for him. 
What, therefore, is to be done? From the outset, it’s important to recognise that we have entered an era in which old-style social democracy has become irrelevant and redundant, or sometimes even worse. The programmes being advocated by those parties that believe it possible to engage with and moderate neo-liberalism are offering a dangerous illusion. They have failed spectacularly everywhere and, just as has happened to the Labour Party, they are distrusted by a majority of working people and have been left floundering. 
Nor is this a matter of appearances and presentation, where the application of a slick marketing campaign coupled with clever spin-doctoring will facilitate their return to power. Neo-liberal capitalism has left little space for placating a compliant working class and has therefore rendered social democracy redundant. 
It is important, therefore, that we as a class understand that social democracy is in terminal decline, and not just in temporary retreat. Our choices are now limited, albeit not to those offered by capitalism. We should be absolutely clear that we do not have to settle for either neo-liberalism or fascism. There remains the only and perfectly viable option for working people: that is, a workers’ republic. 
To make this a reality requires, above all else, organisation and unity among the progressive currents in Irish society. The unthinkable alternative is a choice between socialism and barbarism. One option we cannot allow ourselves is to wait passively for events to dictate. We must continue to endeavour to build the people’s movement capable of transforming society into one fit for the working class.

The Worst Nightmare

Matt Treacey writing @ Brocaire Books feels that Sinn Fein's nuts are now in the hellfire of the DUP. Matt Treacy is author of the recently published A Tunnel To The Moon. Add caption
Party like it’s 1922, as Prince said.

After all the brouhaha of being on the verge of a united Ireland, what do we have?

Potentially the most right wing pro Unionist government since Lord Birkenhead was shooting grouse and boasting about putting the Zulus and miners and the Paddies back into their box.

Electoral facts are that the combined unionist v nationalist votes are more or less the same as they have ever been;: Between them, Sinn Féin and the SDLP took 41.1% and the unionist parties – and yes the Alliance Party are unionists – took 54.2%.

So what possesses anyone to believe that a border poll would be in favour of a united Ireland? In 1998 the combined Sinn Féin/SDLP vote was 38.7%. By such an exponential rate of progress, nationalist parties will have a majority in 2107. And that is assuming Catholics remain virile and fertile and that all the babies vote the right way.

The fact is that this is a beaten flush. Much as the shinners may celebrate the defeat of Corbyn, yes he lost,  the fact is that this is worst electoral outcome for Irish nationalism in a century.

Perhaps the proxy vote operation needs to be finessed.

In the meantime, the DUP are in their grannies, as Dubs say. It is the perfect storm for them. They don’t even need to go back into Stormont although the logistics of maintaining a party and its finances and workers probably means that they will.

For the shinners, do they bite the pillow again and return to Lord Carson, or do they tough it out and refuse to engage?

My money is on the pillow biting.

The Aliens Were Here

From Atheist Republic a piece on strange beliefs unsupported by any reasonable evidence.

Whenever we choose to believe in any proposition without supporting evidence to demonstrate the truth of that proposition, we must accept the fact that the proposition is probably wrong. Man is a curious species, and is always searching for the ‘reasons why’ things are the way they are and how they came to be that way. In the past, and without the benefit of scientific methodology, we have relied on speculation for answers, and in some cases accepted those answers as truth.

Accepting a belief that is based simply on speculation as true is the foundation of all modern religions, and is called belief through faith. Using scientific methodology we can now test many of the commonly held belief systems used by those who rely on faith for devising a world view, and when we do so we find virtually all of those belief systems fall far short of truth. We now look with ridicule on the belief that the sun was pulled by chariots across the sky, or that stars are the bonfires of our ancestors. With the tools brought to us through scientific methodology we can see that these faith based ideas were far from the truth. My point here is that none came close to the truth.

There was no religion that proposed as a basis for life the double helix self replicating molecule deoxyribonucleic acid. The mechanisms we devised for explaining the world as we found it were always extremely simplistic and very far from truth. The truth behind the actual mechanisms and forces that created the universe as we see it were until recently far beyond our ability to discern. Many religions claim knowledge of truth based on faith alone, and this fact has hindered progress in the discovery of actual forces and mechanisms that created the universe. If we today have an interest in discovering the truth about the origins of our universe and how we came to be, we must discard those belief systems based on speculation and insist that any knowledge we accept as true come to us through the use of scientific methodology. All speculation based belief including all faith based belief, belief in the supernatural, belief in alien visitation and any other belief systems based purely on speculation must be discarded or at least acknowledged as an unsupported speculation and probably profoundly wrong.

Of course one cannot prove evolution by attempting to disprove creation, and no one is trying to do so. The goal of scientific inquiry is the discovery of truth, and if that search leads us to god then so be it. But it does not. Certainly not to the god and young earth as described in the old testament, and certainly not to the Eucharist with transubstantiation, the ascension, virgin birth, etc. of the new testament. Evolution and creation as conceived by theists are not actually mutually exclusive concepts, and it could be argued that chaos may be a tool used by god if such an entity exists. But to assert that god exists at all is to start with a conclusion and work backwards. To start an inquiry with a conclusion, then justify that conclusion by looking for possible evidence is a flawed process that will not reliably lead to truth.

Science is not a belief or a doctrine, it is simply a method for discovering the truth about various processes including how the universe works. Science cannot provide insight into things that are beyond the scope of inquiry, and good scientific inquiry based on empirical evidence does not attempt to do so.

What are some other common claims you see people accept as fact without evidence?

Mural Unveiled In Memory Of Vol. George McBrearty

From the 1916 Societies John Crawley's speech at a  Derry commemoration for Vol George McBrearty. On Sunday 28th May a large crowd gathered to commemorate Vol. George McBrearty at an event which a mural was unveiled in his honour. The event was hosted by the family and supported by the Peadar ‘O’Donnell 1916 Society, other Republican groups and the community. The main speech was given by John Crawley.
We gather here to unveil a mural and honour the memory of Volunteer George McBrearty who 36 years ago today was killed in action along with his friend and comrade Volunteer Charles ‘Pop’ Maguire.

George McBrearty fought and died as a proud volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. Not the Irish ‘Equality’ Army or the Irish ‘Nationalist’ Army, not the ‘Agreed Ireland’ Army or the ‘Maximum Autonomy Britain Will Allow Us’ Army but the Republican Army. George believed, and had every right to expect, that the term ‘Republican’ was not merely a suggestion but a statement of intent.

George did not engage in armed struggle in order to slap some sense into the British government until they eventually agreed to allow nationalists to become stakeholders in a reformed Stormont. He did not fight the British army so that they would leave the streets of Derry and retire peacefully to their Irish garrisons. He did not resist the Crown Constabulary so that they would change their name and cap badge to something more benign and hire more Catholics. Don’t let anyone tell you that he did. Don’t let anyone commandeer his courage and commitment to conceal their own dishonourable agenda or hijack his strength to veil their weakness. George was an active and courageous IRA freedom fighter. He led, as only real leaders do, by example. His place was always to the fore, he stood resolutely at the tip of the spear engaging in active military operations directed toward removing the British gunman from Irish politics.
As a result of his unflinching valour he was killed in action by the British army and is consequently not alive today to explain his actions or defend his motives. No one can speak for the dead, though opportunists may try nonetheless. But George’s family, those who knew him best and loved him most, want you to know that they believe with all their hearts that George would never have wavered in his commitment to the Republic and would have never permitted his sacrifice to be marginalised or criminalised by those who ultimately proved themselves more determined to survive the struggle than to win the struggle.

George McBrearty fought to achieve the freedom and justice that could only be realised with the ending of the British occupation of Ireland and the establishment of a truly national democracy based upon popular sovereignty and social justice. He sacrificed his life in a struggle dedicated to the re-establishment of the Irish Republic declared in 1916, endorsed by a 32-County vote in 1918 and overthrown by a British armed and financed counter-revolution in 1922.

One of the outcomes of that counter-revolution was that the Irish people of the 26-Counties, who like to believe they won their freedom, actually bought whatever freedom they had by abandoning their fellow countrymen in the 6-Counties. They abandoned Irish Nationalists to second-class citizenship and they abandoned Irish Unionists to nurture the political culture of colonial squatters with its simmering supremacist, sectarian and siege mentalities. Of course, a Catholic supremacy developed in the Free State but none of this would have or could have taken place to the same extent within the context of a United Ireland. James Connolly had correctly predicted that partition would lead to ‘a carnival of reaction both North and South’.

As a result of partition, George and his comrades in the Derry Brigade had no national government to organise their resistance. In order to challenge the British occupation and to pursue Republican objectives they had no option but to volunteer as guerrilla fighters in the Irish Republican Army or Óglaigh na hÉireann. Not the Óglaigh na hÉireann of the 26-County Republic of Ireland which declared in 1949 that Ireland is Ireland without the Six-Counties, but the Óglaigh na hÉireann of the 32-County Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916 which asserted that ‘the unfettered control of Irish destinies’ must be ‘sovereign and indefeasible’. A Republic which positioned national unity and democracy as core values calling for a ‘National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland, and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women’. Words read every Easter by a Free State army officer in front of the GPO without a hint of irony. Volunteer George McBrearty joined the Óglaigh na hÉireann that did not stand idly by.

George didn’t have to volunteer for active service. In doing so he offered himself up to a life of hardship and poverty, extreme danger and enormous stress. Short of eventual victory the only things that could be looked forward to by any IRA Volunteer on active service in 1981 were death or almost certain imprisonment.

We often hear from people who refused to resist that they grew up under the same conditions as IRA Volunteers like George McBrearty and never lifted a rifle. They like to imply that their passive acquiesce, or at times outright collaboration, was the result of them inhabiting some higher moral plane or being possessed of some deeper or more nuanced insight. Everyone who lacks courage and conviction when courage and conviction are called for attempts to veil their reticence in some self-regarding posture that reflects favourably on themselves. But we’re not unveiling a mural to those people today. No country on earth unveils statues or murals to the vast majority who didn’t step up to the plate. We know why and deep in their hearts they know why. Today, we are honouring the bravery and commitment of a young Irishman who raised his head above the parapet while others chose to remain safe in its shadow. A young patriot who fought to obtain justice for his native city and who died in the national defence. A man whose actions spoke for themselves and who, 36 years after his death, continues to inspire young men and women not yet born when George paid the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of his country.

Courage and commitment are perishable commodities. One of the toughest aspects about being an Irish republican is that a republican has to be brave all the time. Brave enough to believe the truth, and sometimes act on it, despite all the pressure, threats and inducements to do otherwise. That truth was spoken by James Connolly at his court martial 101 years ago when he said, “…that the British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland…”

Excessive sacrifice, prolonged pressure and a hunger for normality can, in time, lure freedom fighters toward less dangerous and often more lucrative paths of less resistance. Some, who proved brave in the past, want to believe there is a safe and easy road to achieve their goals in the present. In time, the easy road becomes an end in itself and though the road may eventually prove to be going nowhere they can’t find it within themselves to change their direction and find it easier to change their goals. Others will eventually believe any lie that comes wrapped in a British pound note. That’s how a fight for freedom is morphed into a struggle for so called equality within the very state apparatus once resisted. Of course, the Brits are very happy to encourage, facilitate and finance the direction away from a struggle for national rights toward a struggle for exclusively civil rights. The former undermines British sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom while the latter can be managed within existing, or reformed, British state controlled institutions.

The British have a remarkable capacity for channelling Irish political trajectories in a particular direction, harnessing Irish leaderships to drive the strategy, and then making the Irish believe it was their own idea. James Connolly called it ‘ruling by fooling’.

The core principles of Irish republicanism are not difficult to understand but they are easy to forget.

While the Anglo-Irish treaty and the Good Friday Agreement are basically tribal settlements rooted in difference, Irish Republicanism is inspired by a proposition. That proposition was enunciated by Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen and further refined and articulated in the Proclamation of 1916. The proposition that Britain can be dispensed with and Irishmen and women of whatever persuasion and none could forge a common national citizenship based upon democracy, equality and fraternity.

We are told today that Ireland Unfree Shall Be At Peace because there exists a democratic way forward but one must bear in mind that even the definition of democracy is determined by the British government. For Republicans, democracy is the expression of a united and free people, fully informed and without outside interference or impediment. As far as the Brits are concerned democracy is reduced to ballot box mechanics or any exhibition of electoral theatre which, despite the use or threat of force, bribery, censorship, partition, gerrymander or sectarian interventions achieves a desired result.

In the South, under Section 31 censorship there was an attempt to ensure that there was no freedom of speech in Ireland if your speech was for Irish freedom. The Dublin government’s claim to inherit the authentic mantle of Irish republicanism is undermined by the contradictions in their attempt to claim ownership of the unmandated Easter rising as the foundation stone of their state with the contention that during the Civil War they were justified in accepting British arms to attack and destroy Republican forces as they had to defend the right of the Irish electorate to decide their own future. Notwithstanding this electorate only included Irish people in the 26-Counties voting under Britain’s threat of ‘immediate and terrible war’ if the Dáil rejected the treaty. In accepting that fact the Free State accepted they had to conform to Britain’s interpretation of the acceptable parameters of Irish democratic institutions. Today, the term ‘politically mature’ is often used by partitionists to describe Irish citizens who have internalised the British spin on Irish democracy.

Pádraig Pearse speaking at Wolfe Tone’s grave declared that Tone, ‘… has spoken for all time, and his voice resounds throughout Ireland, calling to us from this grave when we wander astray following other voices that ring less true.’

Today there are other voices that ring less true telling us that in order to respect Unionists we must respect the Union. That far from breaking the English connection we must work within it. That Irish republican objectives will be ultimately achieved through British legislation. That sectarianism, inequality and partition will gradually and eventually be tackled with the help of the government that invented them. That in order to develop a national democracy which is ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government…’ we should endorse the very mechanisms invented by Britain to harness these differences to British interests by acknowledging the Unionist veto and recognising as legitimate and lawful authority the artificial British state that nurtures the sectarian dynamic in Irish politics while becoming informers for the Crown constabulary that defends it.

A reformed Stormont supported by Unionists and a loyal Nationalist opposition, in tandem with British police primacy and Dublin government collaboration, have been the cornerstones of Britain’s counter-insurgency strategy. The Brits wanted the IRA depicted, not as patriots fighting a foreign presence, but as terrorists attacking their own democratic institutions.

You cannot depoliticise policing. A policeman is one of the primary symbols of state legitimacy and that state’s right to possess a monopoly on the lawful use of force. Every facet of a PSNI constable – from the British gun swinging on his hip to the Queen’s shilling jingling in his pocket – is a political statement. A peeler’s provenance is irrelevant. His or her nationality or religion a distraction. The RIC, at 80% Catholic, were the backbone of British rule in Ireland. Their successors in the PSNI stand in British armed and paid opposition to the democratic principles of the 1916 Proclamation, the democratic outcome of the 1918 General Election, the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil and that 32-County democratically elected government’s Declaration of Independence. They oppose with British arms every republican principle that IRA Volunteers risked life, limb and liberty to uphold. Principals for which George McBrearty died.

What’s the point of boasting you’d wear no convict’s uniform while agreeing to don a Crown constable’s? You cannot legitimise Her Majesty’s constabulary in Ireland without criminalising George McBrearty and Pete Ryan and Jim Lynagh and Bobby Sands.

If the formula for turning a British police force into an Irish police force was simply stocking it with Irishmen and administering it on Irish soil from a devolved parliament at Stormont then we’d be honouring the B-Specials as Irish patriots.

Republicans respect Unionists but we do not respect the Union. Our goal is to end the Union and for Unionists to join us as free and equal citizens in a united Ireland. The fact remains, however, that no planter political culture nurtured in any colonial system anywhere on earth has ever voluntarily relinquished its contrived supremacy or gerrymandered authority. The Unionist veto remains as long as Britain politically, economically and military underwrites it. Wolfe Tone believed the key to eventual unity lay in breaking the connection with England. Republicans believe that still. You do not break that connection by giving it democratic assent and title.

A ‘New and Agreed Ireland’ is the latest happy-clappy euphemism employed in an attempt to redefine the republican project and portray defeat as a veiled victory. Under this ‘New and Agreed Ireland’ reconciliation no longer means reconciling Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter to the idea of a united national citizenship but reconciling nationalists to the prospect of the continuation of the British connection in one guise or other.

The conspiracy to nurture a permanent British redoubt imprinted with Irish democratic assent to its political or cultural legitimacy must be recognised for what it is and resisted by republicans. Clearly this so-called ‘New’ Ireland is predicated on all the old divisions.

Don’t let those who are, in the words of Martin Luther King, ‘tranquilised by the heady drug of gradualism’ or mesmerised by the trappings of office convince you to look upon our national flag as a symbol of peaceful division. The tricolour does not represent an ‘Agreed Ireland’ where the two traditions agree to disagree in peace and harmony about the constitutional source of Irish sovereignty and the legitimacy and extent of British influence in constraining Irish democracy. It is a symbol of a national community of sovereign citizens comprised of all traditions and persuasions. It represents the republican vision of a United Ireland. Any situation where some Irishmen and women are deemed citizens of the sovereign republic but others recognised as wards of some concocted Crown dependency is a major defeat for Irish republicanism and a setback to the achievement of a national democracy.

Making Ireland British is an English project, keeping Ireland British can never be a republican one. The republican project is to end the British connection, not to remodel it. Our model of reconciliation lies in reconciling all Irishmen to the democratic ideal of equality and the republican concept of majority rule tempered by a protection of minority rights. Rights as Irish citizens, not as wards of a foreign power

There exists no national mechanism to advance Irish unity. The partitionist mechanisms that do exist, within the confines of the Belfast Agreement, are comprehensively ring-fenced by British constitutional constraints and conditions. A glaring example is the proposed Six County border poll under Britain’s Northern Ireland Act 1998 which permits the Secretary of State (presently an English politician without a single vote in Ireland) to determine if and when a poll may be called, to determine the wording of the poll and to determine who qualifies to vote and who does not. And just on the off-chance England should leave a single stone unturned in safeguarding their Irish national gerrymander, the final result of that poll must be ratified by the parliament of the United Kingdom in London.

The British have disposed of two national parliaments in Ireland in the past two hundred years. In 1800 the unrepresentative 32-County Irish Parliament at College Green was bribed out of existence in order to bring in the Act of Union. The Union Flag inspired by that Act still flies on Irish soil. In 1922 the 32-County Dáil Eireann, having existed as an illegal body under British law for most of its 2 ½ year history, voted itself out of existence by a narrow margin of 7 votes upon the British government’s threat of immediate and terrible war if the terms of the Anglo-Irish treaty were not accepted. Britain continues to ensure that U.K. parliamentary sovereignty in the Six-Counties is not superseded or eclipsed by 32-County popular sovereignty. Britain remains committed to underwriting and subsiding its colonial vanguard the Unionist veto.

It didn’t have to be this way. The Protestant reformation was an enormously beneficial and progressive movement in European and Irish history. Without the reformation, which broke the fossilised and hierarchical mindset of the Dark Ages the concept of man as an individual with autonomous rights could not have flourished and evolved into the contemporary models of democracy and republicanism. It is no accident that of the 28 founding members of the United Irishmen 26 were Presbyterian and 2 were Church of Ireland. Just a decade or so earlier the Irish Catholic hierarchy had been calling for fasting and prayers for a British victory against George Washington and the American republicans.

It was Britain, a term described as an imperial euphemism for England, which injected the sectarian dynamic into the mix by declaring a Protestant kingdom in which no Catholic could be head of state or marry the head of state. It made Protestantism the test for loyalty and patronage and, as a result of the Penal Laws, it gave Catholicism a far more commanding role in Irish society than it would otherwise have achieved by making Catholic priests, for generations of Irish peasants, the only persons of authority they could identify with or trust.

Structural and institutional divisions designed to keep Ireland politically weak and vulnerable to British manipulation have been an English strategy since the Tudor conquest. Queen Elizabeth’s I counsellors advised her on the Irish people saying, ‘Let us…connive at their disorder, for a weak and disordered people can never attempt to detach themselves from the Crown of England.’

What British Prime Minister Theresa May calls her ‘precious United Kingdom’ is built, in part, upon Irish sectarian divisions England either contrived or cultivated.

The British have divided us as part of a deliberate national strategy and their armed forces are not the agency to unite us. Don’t let the false flaggers lure you further into a British orbit by convincing you to take part in the pantomime of sentimentalising joint Nationalist and Unionist service in the British war effort of 1914-18 and pretending it’s a gesture of Irish reconciliation. Don’t let them condition you into becoming Croppies with poppies. Republicans won’t be conned by the hypocritical attempts of Britain or her Irish allies to forge a noble unity in death of Irishmen they treated as expendable hirelings while alive and cynically duped into becoming ‘accomplices in their own oppression’. As long as the British government claims sovereignty in Ireland Republicans will be honouring Irishmen and women who resisted their forces, not those who joined them.

Don’t let the limitations of any leadership become your limitations. Don’t believe your mission in life is to service the private political ambitions of any individual or clique. In the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.’

At the beginning of the so-called Peace Process we were assured that by 2016 there would be no border in Ireland. We now have two – one British and one European. We were assured there would be no veto on Irish unity. We now have two – one Unionist and, under the Belfast Agreement, the 26-County electorate have also been awarded a veto on unity.

A genuine and ideologically moored republican should trust his or her instincts to be able to tell the difference between political right and political wrong. They should have the moral courage to believe the truth and face the consequences whatever the outcome. A lie is still a lie, even when delivered with smirking condensation or unblinking Jesuitical intensity.

Remember Volunteer George McBrearty, who he was and what he really represented. Stay loyal to the Irish Republic and organise towards its re-establishment.”

Supping With The Devil Haters

Anthony McIntyre with his thoughts on the Theresa May election debacle.

"It is permitted in time of grave danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge," – Bulgarian Proverb ...

But only the devil, not his haters.

For her grave electoral miscalculation, British prime minister Theresa May has in the past 36 hours been drawing down ridicule faster than the speed of sound. The strident MSM criticism of May has nothing to do with the wrongfulness of harsh Tory policy per se. Toryism holds that the way to attack poverty is by creating more of it. May is the target of sound and fury because of bad predictions, not bad policy. 

Such is the brouhaha that May, if she were the sort of person who felt apologetic, might offer contrition by appearing at the House of Commons despatch box wearing a dunce’s hat. Rarely, if ever has a British Prime Minister turned up on the winner's podium wearing the attire of the mourner.

Excluding for now the Law of Lazarus, her long-term future as Tory leader and British Prime Minister is in serious doubt. She is being lambasted as a fool for having made what turned out to be an undeliverable strategic evaluation, followed by a series of calamitous tactical errors. Strategically, she called a general election aimed at an all round shoring up of the Tory hegemony. Sensible enough. Tactically the measures employed to secure the desired strategic outcome were hopelessly inept.

Despite the ex post facto volume of discourse about her risky venture, not too many in the MSM were saying such at the time. Then, she was hardly wrong to go for the election. She was streets ahead in the opinion polls. It seemed a master stroke that would achieve multiple objectives in one decisive move: more than decimate Labour; colonise the Ukip constituency; substantially increase the Tory majority to the point where a five-year term was virtually guaranteed; and enhance her negotiating hand in the Brexit talks. 

When she sprang her announcement of a June general election there was little to indicate that it would end as it did. She was odds on favourite to secure a substantial and comprehensive victory. Had May held off and possibly in the wake of Brexit negotiations felt compelled to go to the country only to sustain an even worse defeat than Thursday's, she would be facing the accusation that she should have gone in June 2017; and that by not doing so she failed to see the optimum strategic moment in which to entrench a five year term, one party government not dependent on the type of support Israeli leaders find themselves depending on – the rabid religious right.

With the Labour Party in seeming disarray May’s move made sense. The prospect of inflicting on Corbyn's Labour Party what Thatcher had done to the hapless Michael Foot's Labour in 1983 was alluring. May would not have it said of her, in that memorable Abba Eban phrase, that she never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. 

She could not have foreseen that her strategy of collapsing the Ukip vote would have resulted in the bulk of that party’s voters transferring to Labour: surely such people move to the right not the left. Most crucially, she was not to know-and few seemed to tell her regardless of what they now say - that cometh the hour cometh the Corbyn. The Blairites who favour a Tory Party called Labour had been such an impediment across the path of Corbyn, that the Tories must have felt “job done” before it had even started. With so many career politicians in the Labour parliamentary party enthusiastically cheered on by the Guardian, Corbyn seemed reduced to making the sound arguments without ever winning them. 

Then "events, dear boy, events" made their intervention. May handed Corbyn the law of unintended consequences and he transformed his fortunes with event after event. From a cameo role he emerged to become the star of the show, closing the gap in the opinion polls and working wonders for Labour's image.

The politics of campaign performance rather than the politics of pre-election promises and policies did it for Corbyn. Until he took to the hustings reaching an audience with a message not filtered by the Guardian few seemed to be listening. Then the great constituency of Slumberland awakened and a cavalry of young people rode over the hill.

It was a monumental achievement for the beleaguered and maligned Labour leader. So much so that the person who in real time lost the election, is very much regarded as being the winner in a contest where the formal winner gets to wear a dull and cracked crown.  

How long the DUP infused concoction being put together by May holds its taste is anybody’s guess. She has in her haze and daze looked for any port in a storm and saw one spouting a bigger union Jack than she will have seen anywhere on “the mainland” and ordered full speed ahead to have her engine room refuelled with Renewable Heat Incentive, courtesy of the pirates she is now parleying with. 

Down the line if she manages to survive long enough and calm her seas she might try feeling out the currently ideologically hostile Liberal Democrats. Their opposition to Brexit will make any marriage a slow affair. But the Lib Dems have shown an aptitude for betraying everything to get their jaxies on ministerial seats. The greatest dissolvent of ideological principle yet developed is "Ministeritis" and there is no short supply of it in the Lib Dems who may, like the Irish Labour Party, feign that they would be irresponsible not to curb the excesses of a right wing government: for the good of the nation  and all that guff. Having been there before, they know the drill.

Improbable, even imponderable. Still, it would provide more stability and longevity than her alliance with the devil haters.

Radio Free Eireann Broadcasting 10 June 2017

Martin Galvin announces the return to the airwaves of Radio Free Eireann.

We will feature up to the minute analysis of the Westminster Election where British Prime Minister Theresa May's snap election gambit for an increased majority has boomeranged and cost her the party's majority while in the six counties the DUP hope to align with May as kingmakers and both the Ulster Unionist Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party were shut out.

Kate Nash of the Bloody Sunday Justice March committee will talk about community anger at the Free Derry Museum's decision to memorialize the names of British crown forces up alongside their victims and protests demanding return of items including artwork which had been donated by our one time co-host Brian Mor.

Co-hosts John McDonagh and Martin Galvin will report on their recent news-making visits to Ireland, including Martin's speech in Derry at the unveiling of a mural for slain IRA Volunteer George McBrearty, joining Gerry McGeough for a protest by the Molly Maguire AOH Division against environmental and cultural destruction by a Canadian gold-mining company in the beautiful Sperrins Mountains, and John's receipt of a major award in Dublin.

Go to Radio Free Eireann's web site, rfe123.org,where you can read written transcripts of recent headline making interviews and get the latest programming information.

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.