Prosecutions Untenable

The mere fact that Chris Ward was a Catholic from Poleglass and charged with this offence was enough to seal his guilt in the eyes of some people … Mr Ward has been rescued from the appalling vista of a miscarriage of justice but there is no guarantee that this will prevail on every occasion. There must be a root-and-branch analysis of how some high-profile criminal cases are prosecuted – Niall Murphy, solicitor for Chris Ward

Of course Chris Ward, earlier this month, beat the charge of robbing the Northern Bank in Belfast in December 2004. Why wouldn’t he? His trial was a farce, a Kafkaesque one in the view of his solicitor. On the basis of the evidence presented the case should never have made it to the trial stage. Moreover, from the outset, Chris Ward’s rights were seriously undermined when he was detained for more than seven days in 2005 after being arrested on suspicion of involvement in the robbery. It was an abuse of process which should have resulted in the immediate release of the Poleglass man. He should never have set foot in court.

Sinn Fein will of course by its actions cast doubt on the worth of the acquittal. Despite the robbery being firmly laid at the door of the Provisionals, ‘a position still almost universally held to this day’, the party’s tripe talk asserts that the heist was all a plot to wreck the peace process. Take Sinn Fein’s favourite columnist. His leader-worship weekly produced only mirth when it claimed that republicans would not be happy with Brian Rowan’s latest book on the grounds that it laid responsibility for the Northern Bank robbery at the door of the Provisionals.

While disbelieved by ten out of every nine people asked, linked to its protestations of Chris Ward’s non-involvement, rubbish like this will merely serve to put the thought in people’s minds that the former Northern Bank employee escaped justice by some quirk of the legal system rather than because there was no evidence against him.

If Hugh Orde is still wrong after all these years, has been sending detectives off in pursuit of penumbra, why has the woeful one in his column or his party cohorts not called for the chief constable’s removal? If Orde does go off to take up the top cop spot in London as head of the Met his successor will continue to blame the IRA. How can Sinn Fein continue to support a force that got it so wrong and continues to get it so wrong, and in the course of getting it so wrong seriously damaged Sinn Fein’s reputation? Why has the party not called for a public inquiry into the robbery? There will be little else heard from Sinn Fein about it. The can of worms can be shaken a little but not opened.

That aside, a very worrying development is that Hugh Orde, with seeming foreknowledge of the Ward verdict, in the days prior to its delivery had been moving to forestall any advance in human rights legislation and legal protections that might make policing more accountable:

We have got so constrained because of the legal process that is in behind us now … we are almost policing with both eyes looking behind us as to what happens if it goes wrong rather than doing the right thing at the right time.

This is a reaffirmation of a long time perspective rather than inconsistency which reveals an essentially conservative chief constable rather than the liberal construct that had been strategically manufactured for the purpose of making Sinn Fein’s sucking the truncheon more palatable. When he first arrived in the North Hugh Orde told the Irish Times of his fears that:

there's Stevens the Oversight Commissioner; there's some major crime advisers; there's her majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary about to look at us in relation to Special Branch and into how we manage crime. We'll have eight, nine, 10 groups of people looking, pulling us apart, while we are trying to get ourselves organised.

In January last year he reiterated his misgivings: ‘at some stage a question needs to be asked of when does oversight become dysfunctional?’

Orde’s reasoning is simple and his job is done. The onetime sole adversary of British policing in the North, Sinn Fein, has now been co-opted and is firmly boxed in. Police chiefs know that the likelihood of the Catholic party waging a robust critique of British policing policy fades with time. There is no longer any need from the point of view of Hugh Orde for the force to accede to demands for it to remain shackled by accountability mechanisms. With the possible exception of the SDLP no party with elected representatives will raise a fuss when the PSNI engages in human rights abuses. If pushed, Sinn Fein would agree to the introduction of internment without blushing; one more summersault to add to its extensive acrobatic repertoire.

The PSNI counteroffensive against the broadening and deepening of a human rights culture is being fuelled by the concern of officialdom at the failure to turn prosecution into conviction in high profile cases. From the point of view of those tasked with managing the North’s repressive state apparatuses, never mind the evidence, however it was attained or falsified: less accountability means more convictions which, implicit in Orde’s discourse, are lacking at present because of excessive regulation.

David Mamet once said that ‘policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.’

All the more reason in the Northern context to question them relentlessly.

An Abuse of Process

This letter was sent to the Irish News at the time Chris Ward was in PSNI custody. It was not published.

The ongoing detention of Chris Ward, the first person in the North to be held in police custody for longer than seven days, portends poorly for human rights. After more than a decade of a peace process it seems that the rights of a long abused citizenry have been weakened vis a vis the power of a long abusive police.

Regardless of what stage the investigation into the robbery at the Northern Bank has been reached, the threat to the civil liberties currently enjoyed by society is such that Chris Ward should be released immediately. The PSNI have carried on their investigation for almost a year. Doubtless they will be able to continue it without having to hold Chris Ward.

Those who have been in police custody know that it is demoralising experience. The purpose of extending the initial three day detention to seven days in the 1970s was to increase the stress level of the detained. Quite often the amount of time spent by interviewing detectives could easily have been fitted into one day.

Being isolated from family and friends is a psychological mechanism of attrition aimed at wearing down the fortitude of the individual. It can produce a true confession, but as experience here has shown it has also produced confessions from numerous people who had nothing to confess but did so anyway to escape the isolation. Prolonged detention and associated isolation is merely a means of legalising duress.

The PSNI have had more than enough time to question Chris Ward. He is now the recipient of police duress. Any information extracted under such circumstances should have no place in a court of law. His continued detention is an abuse of process.

Anthony McIntyre
Kevin McQuillan
Tommy Gorman
December 2005

Protesting and Politicking

Britain has a long imperial tradition of celebrating foreign wars with the homecoming tramp of military feet, after Johnny Foreigner has been given a jolly good thrashing – Patrick Murphy

Where I now live there is an intense lack of interest in or awareness about the North. ‘Intense’ is not an adjective normally associated with a lack of interest. But it is an appropriate term because lack of interest here does not amount to mere indifference but active avoidance. People don’t merely switch off when the North comes up but pull the fuse completely and hurriedly bin it. Non-interest can be infectious. The less the North comes up in discussion the more pronounced is the ignorance of the issues associated with it. When a republican friend living in Belfast commented that he had expected to see something written in the Pensive Quill on the RIR return from Afghanistan parade due through the city centre on November 2, it took me a minute or two to grasp what he was talking about. RIR down here, where taxation not partition is of infinitely greater concern, would more readily pass for an abbreviation of Rapacious Inland Revenue than for some regiment of the British Army.

The Royal Irish Regiment, formerly known as the Ulster Defence Regiment, has a long history of violence including murder which it perpetrated against many nationalists since its formation in 1970. So bigotedly sectarian was the regiment that when I thought about its time in Iraq, I imagined it roaming through the streets of Basra, or hanging about roadblocks, looking for Iraqi Catholics to harass rather than being concerned with oppressing Muslims or any other denomination.

The group my friend in Belfast belongs to, Eirigi, is organising a protest against the march. The protest venue, Divis Tower, is in the west of the city which for decades was subject to many British Army attacks, invasions, incursions and infringements. We have come to expect this type of thing from Eirigi. It is consistent with what they profess to believe and they can hardly be accused of being on the wrong side of the barricades on this one. Nor has the group asked for permission to protest, believing that it is a fundamental right of Irish republicans, not a privilege subject to British state approval.

Par for the Eirigi course, more newsworthy then is the spectacle of finding Sinn Fein on the right side of the barricades alongside the protestors. It applied for and was granted permission to protest in Donegal Place. As the Parades Commission determination stated, ‘Sinn Fein's willingness to co-operate and engage with the Commission and the PSNI has been a positive contribution to the planning for the event.’

Patrick Murphy in his Irish News column was somewhat less flattering.

Sinn Fein’s cosy relationship with Bush does little to justify their protest. They do not appear to have raised the issue with him during several meetings. Martin McGuinness has offered advice on peace-building in Iraq but it is difficult to find examples of where he advocated American withdrawal. Do they oppose only British involvement?

Observers of the party’s rightward drift over the years would hardly feign surprise if they found Sinn Fein, not protesting but actually leading the RIR parade carrying a banner emblazoned with the words, ‘It’s our Royal Irish Regiment too, you know.’ After all it has been tripping over itself to attend British Army commemorations in various parts of the world. In such a scenario those falling in behind the Catholic party in support of the RIR are the same people who would just as readily turn out for the protest against the regiment. It is simply a matter of chasing after whatever line is cast from on high. No thinking, just following. It takes minimum effort to visualise a float carrying the lord mayor of Belfast, Uncle Tom Hartley, him pompously waving at all the British subjects along the route, proud as punch that they are as British as himself. And then the following Thursday in the Irish News Sinn Fein’s favourite columnist would regale us all with tales of wee women, long since deceased and unable to confirm or deny it, who had dead relatives in the RIR whom they grieved for but with no peace process could not be open about it. Their loss should be respected as well. Those that don’t quite see it that way would be advised by the woeful one to meditate on the true genius of Gerry Adams and move on.

Truth is, Sinn Fein have long since given up on being a party of protest. Their actions here are about politicking not protesting. It is seizing an opportunity to send smoke signals reminiscent of the old stage managed ‘angry voices and marching feet’ that commentators used to take seriously but now treat with derision. The party is frustrated that its shouts of ‘boo’ at the DUP have induced no sense of fright. The unionist horses have not been scared into bolting away from the exaggerated size of the fence they supposedly face by not giving into Sinn Fein demands for devolution of policing and justice. Sinn Fein calculates that rubbing some irritable ginger called anti-RIR into their rumps might just produce the bolt effect. It is a transparent effort to apply political pressure on the policing and justice issue in the wake of Martin McGuinness having been exposed as effectively granting unionism a monopoly over the ministry when it eventually does come; in the wake of Peter Robinson belittling Gerry Adams over his discourse in relation to the pseudo-crisis, saying the Sinn Fein boss was more to be pitied than scorned; in the wake of the British moving to ensure that no prospective justice minister will ever have access to informer files.

Truth is, the RIR is as much the army of Sinn Fein as the PSNI is its police force. Sinn Fein is an integral part of the British administration in Ireland, an administration buttressed by a British army and a British police. It is this which makes Sinn Fein’s position bizarre as can be seen from a quick glance at the comments of Paul Maskey:

We made the commission aware of the fact that the protest rally will highlight the legacy of the RIR and their predecessors the UDR here in Ireland as well as opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where thousands of civilians have been killed.

That the PSNI predecessors were the RUC, with a legacy equal to that of the RIR, coupled with varying degrees of PSNI involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan seems not to have been factored into Sinn Fein’s thinking for the very reason that it would require being consistent.

The Sinn Fein ‘protest’ is an action which serves to trivialise serious international conflict by reining it into the sectarian corral that constitutes the high politics of the North. The Eirigi protest is the only one of the two that makes sense. Not approved by the Parades Commission, and the organisers threatened by Roger Poole, there is a genuine opposition amongst its activists to wars that place it on the streets regardless of what shenanigans are taxing the minds of the ‘folks on Stormont hill.’

A Pitbull with Lipstick

It's hard to make a reasoned and fair judgment about the Alaska Governor because she has been the victim of one of the nastiest, most sustained and comprehensive slime-jobs ever performed by a hyper-partisan national and global media – Gerard Baker

It is certainly difficult to take her seriously when reading that she was filmed being blessed by a pastor Thomas Muthee as he asked god to protect her from ‘every form of witchcraft’, excepting of course the type of witchcraft he believes in. ‘We declare save her from Satan.’ It is the type of stuff to make you laugh until you realise the woman in question has an outside chance of at some point stepping in as President of the US if the roll of the electoral dice were to go the Republican Party’s way. Since being picked by John McCain as his vice presidential running mate her critics have sharpened their knives in anticipation of an easy kill. A woman without a passport up until a year ago could hardly claim to know much about the world. So the joke ‘I can see Russia from my house’ has come to sum up her knowledge of foreign issues. And the attitude she was said to have held about the origins of the world seem to have cast her as something from the era of Wilma Flintstone. At times I half expected her to be introduced as the front woman for the Stone Age heavy metal group Dinah and the Dinosaurs.

It is not an easy task to pin down ownership or origins of the positions Sarah Palin has had ascribed to her. When Christopher Hitchens and a myriad of writers pour scorn on her they are invariably pushed back by original sources. But rather than hunt these sources out it seems a lot less work to play on her ‘redneck’ lifestyle, hope it becomes mistaken for stupidity, reinforce it with innuendo and suddenly an effective political campaigning weapon is created. It has struck me that if limitations on knowledge were to be a hindrance in US politics much flak would be directed the way of Joe Biden, Barak Obama’s running mate. He has made more than his fair share of Dan Quayle-type gaffes but for some reason has escaped downloading the amount of ridicule hurled Palin’s way.

Not having any great passion for the US election, I only picked up Sarah by Kaylene Johnson because it was lying about the house at a time when she had just emerged at the epicentre of public interest. My wife had just finished the book and said that it would be something I could read on a bus. Which is precisely where I did go through it, on the road to Dublin one autumn afternoon. I thought it would be worth my while to find what was being written about her before she made the transition from a relatively unknown Alaskan moose hunter to a figure of global scrutiny.

Sarah is not a heavy duty book. For that reason its lack of gravitas will be prised open by opponents eager to reinforce her lightweight depiction. But the book is no different from many other local history books anywhere and there is little point in having it evaluated through any other prism.

What emerges from Kaylene Johnson’s biography is that from an early age Sarah Palin was a bookworm who devoured newspapers as voraciously as books which sits somewhat uneasily with the view that she has led only a hillbilly kind of existence. At college she studied journalism and political science, not fishing or hunting, although her main interests lay in sports. She eventually graduated in 1987 from the University of Idaho with a degree in journalism rather than moose hunting.

Although baptised a Catholic her mother soon moved her to the Wasilla Assembly of God. She displayed a strong religious bent, signing the college year book with verses from the bible. It is this biblical leaning that has allowed her critics considerable latitude in attacking her, depicting her as someone who thinks the world was created about six thousand years ago. Whatever her views on the matter two years ago she did state that ‘I won't have religion as a litmus test, or anybody's personal opinion on evolution or creationism’.

Palin first ran for public office in 1992 securing a seat on Wasilla council. Although a city of less than 10,000 residents, what made her election interesting was her claim, ‘right away I knew it was a good old boys network’ which she resolved to break. She promised ‘fresh ideas and energy’ and vowed to remove the city’s ‘stale leadership.’ In her later campaign for the governorship of Alaska she became known as the outsider ‘shunned by the Republican Party leaders’ because of her stance against the oil tycoons and city corruption.

There is nothing in the book that would recommend Sarah Palin as a serious contender for the vice presidency. She is portrayed as worthy but essentially local. But if the intellectually limited George Bush can lead the US for 8 years then Palin’s supposed lack of acumen in the cerebral world of the scientific is a manufactured concern, reflecting only the need of opponents to attack the perceived weakest link.

Ultimately, I don’t really care who wins the US election. I don’t believe it will seriously lessen the threat posed by the country to world peace. McCain/Palin value the supremacy of the free market whereas Obama/Biden would place some cosmetic curbs on it. After the result the poor will stay at the bottom and the rich at the top. The charge that Obama is a Marxist is nonsense but only in economic and philosophical terms. There is a disturbing dictatorial style to the Democrats’ campaigning so in tune with the Marxist mind. The character maligning, censorship, vote rigging, the cult of the personality are all reasons to feel alienated from Obama. And there is the hope that McCain, because he was a victim of it, if elected, will put an end to the disgraceful torture policy effected by the current US administration against many foreign nationals in its custody.

Will Sarah Palin be Vice President? I doubt it. Nevertheless, one thing seems certain. While this book offers only a limited and surface scratching of the political character of Sarah Palin there will be more written about her.

Sarah by Kaylene Johnson. Epicentre Press: Alaska. 2008

Reminder - Save the Date

● Wednesday, 5th of November, 6-8pm ●
Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism will be launched at the Linenhall Library in Belfast.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Guest Speaker: Tommy Gorman
Please confirm attendance: publicity@ausubopress.com

Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
ask them to order it for you!

Al Jazeera: Justice & Robert McCartney

People & Power: Justice & Robert McCartney is a documentary by Al Jazeera takes a closer look at the murder of Robert McCartney in Belfast in 2005.






See also: The Walls of Silence Still Stand

Secular Sunday

In his book the God Delusion Richard Dawkins comments to the effect that serious belief in divine intervention, although not in a deity per se, largely petered out in the 19th century. Not in the part of this country, fronted up until a matter of months ago by a theocrat, where belief in it is worthy of front page coverage. In the case of Mickey Harte, the Tyrone football manager there is at least something of the serene saviour about his god: a merciful deity who responded to prayer and saved the life of the petitioner trapped in his car after a road accident.

Looking elsewhere it is not too long before another type of interventionist god is discovered. One embraced not for his mercy but for the lack of it. Take a look at that big bollix Ian Paisley. He has been writing about a different type of intervening god, one as hateful as himself. One who far from professing love prefers to mutter ‘I hate them with a perfect hatred.’

In Free Presbyterian rubbish sheet the Revivalist Paisley gleefully wrote that god has been punishing the banks as of late, although when the Provisionals punished the banks the good reverend was not so approving. Not a lot wrong with god if that amounted to the full extent of his meddling in worldly affairs. But there is a self serving reason for his heavenly involvement in the world of finance. According to big Paisley, ‘God gives man six days in which he can work and play. God demands from us one day for his work and worship.’ A scriptural revelation from the gospel according to Ian has god mightily displeased that the bankers, rather than spend Sunday massaging his god’s huge ego, have decided to work for themselves instead.

Now that the wrath of Paisley’s vengeful god has been visited on bankers I am reminded of other instances where this baleful old god has been punishing those unfortunate enough not to have fitted in with his intelligent design. Paisley’s fellow bigot, Councillor Maurice Mills of the DUP was in no doubt that ‘Asia was hit by the tsunami because of the continent's people not being Christian ... God had marked their cards.’ Cards, always the devil’s game. US evangelist Pat Robertson professed to believe that Hurricane Katrina was despatched to New Orleans as punishment for legalised abortion. Perhaps a sound theological reason underpinning a clerical fondness for young boys – a natural contraception, no pregnancies there. The 9/11 attacks on American were said by the late Jerry Falwell to have happened because ‘the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians’ had been seeking to have America go secular. It was not attacked oddly enough by the heavenly hand when it confined itself to being segregationist; saints here sinners there type separation, all theologically sound.

A hateful lot, they confirm Nietzsche’s admonishment to ‘beware of those in whom the will to punish is strong.’ Evidently, an all-merciful god doesn’t seem attractive to the frothing at the mouth fundamentalists who prefer the punitive old despot rather the forgiving one.

In the Revivalist we also learn from ‘God’s anointed leader’ that ‘the world without Sunday properly sanctified is a pagan world.’ That excludes me then from membership of the pagan community. I certainly sanctify Sunday - with beer, watching a football match, or taking the kids to the park. Different from years ago when the big bigot and his clerical gang would deter kids from going to parks by having the swings chained up. It is always the problem with puritans. As Mencken observed they suffer from the ‘haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.’ Besides, clerics often have other ideas for children on Sundays not to mention every other day as well.

Sunday is a day of rest and as such should be free from the pestilence of religious mania and the indignity of paying homage to the belligerent brute that is Paisley’s deity. If either Paisley or his god do not like it they can both stick their heads where the sun don’t shine, up one of those many black holes that are dispersed throughout our universe. Not an easy task for a head the size of Paisley’s. Worse still, imagine the wrath of god having spent the best part of a Sunday trying to squeeze that dome in.

The Walls of Silence Still Stand

There will always be a gap between those who take the political goals seriously and those who are drawn to the cause because it offers glamour, violence, money and power – Michael Ignatieff.

The 6 women at the forefront of the campaign to achieve justice for their loved one Robert McCartney, murdered by Belfast thugs in January 2005, along the way pushed levers and pressed buttons in the nerve centres of top political institutions from Europe to the US. Against the odds, and on occasion advice, they followed their instinct wherever it took them. As they viewed it there was little choice: ‘the gang in Market Street had the protection of the political and military organisations … we had no one; and Robert had only us.’ Determined not to be battered into silence or submission by the peace process they pulled out every stop to secure for him the justice he deserved. By the year’s end they had given ‘thousands’ of interviews and had received ten awards in acknowledgement of their campaigning. Ultimately, however, as Catherine McCartney, a sister of the murdered man, protests in her book Walls Of Silence, justice may have danced seductively, pregnant with the promise of delivery, but still not one conviction secured in court. The killers today prowl the streets of Belfast free and the women are no further on in legal terms than they were three years ago.

Cartoon by John Kennedy

Imagine the scene that thrust these women onto the international stage: an IRA/Sinn Fein member with a recognisable psychopathic bent for gratuitous violence, aided and abetted by other IRA and Sinn Fein activists, carved up two men in a street for, in his own words, ‘no reason’ other than the presumably orgasmic-like pleasure he derived from the sensation of cold steel tearing its way through warm flesh. The murder was a brutal one. It conjured up all the imagery of killings by the Shankill Butchers in alley ways and pubs back in the 1970s: defenceless victims knifed and hacked in front of an audience. And like the Butcher killings, out of all those to emerge from the pub at the end of the evening, not a witness in their midst.

I read Walls Of Silence before the Robert McCartney murder trial and then again after it. The anguish of the author read as potently each time. The acquittals did not place Catherine McCartney’s writing in some new light. There was not the slightest possibility of a murder conviction in this case. The evidence was not there and like some other cases in very recent Northern Irish legal history this one should never have been placed before a judge so prematurely. The short term expedient of silencing criticism rather than the longer term one of securing a just result governed the decisions made. The gravest indictment that can be levelled at the authorities in their handling of the McCartney murder is that by the spring of 2005 they had decided this was a case they wanted closed rather than solved.

Catherine McCartney would seem to have put her finger on it when she raises the question of informers being protected. ‘There had been up to thirty Provisionals involved that night and it stood to reason that there were informers amongst them.’ When every other possible explanation as to why a conviction has not been secured has been exhausted in terms of its plausibility little else makes sense.

In the days after the murder of her brother Robert, Catherine describes how a rearguard action was fought by the Provisional movement. Rather than immediately move to put clear blue sea between itself and the knife gang, ‘the movement’ dallied and parried, retreating behind a protective shield of a whisper campaign, hissing out allegations that the slain man had been a scumbag, a dissident or drug dealer. The execrable Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein MLA, some of whose party colleagues were involved in the violence and subsequent cover up, decided to hit out at the PSNI pursuit of the killers. Maskey did nothing that we are aware of to proactively assist the gang but his preferences in the immediate aftermath of the murder suggest a politician motivated primarily by the need to divert any political flak likely to come his party’s way. His demands of British officials the day after the killing were that they curb PSNI raids, not that they throw more resources and manpower into finding the killers.

Later when Catherine McCartney confronted Gerry Kelly about the stance of Maskey and other party representatives the response she got was that they were unaware of all the events. Really? In this book the author is unrelenting in giving absolutely no credence to such an unspirited defence. Time and again she returns to the theme of cover up and post-event complicity. The senior IRA commander that both the McCartney women and the PSNI believe ordered the alleyway attack on Robert McCartney and his drinking partner Brendan Devine, emerges throughout the book as having the patronage of senior IRA figures long after he was supposed to have been expelled from the organisation and sent to Coventry. In the book Catherine McCartney gives vent to a sentiment that taxed the minds of many observing events as they unfolded:

We couldn’t understand why Adams would put the Republican Movement through hell to protect the likes of Davison and co … the IRA and Sinn Fein were taking a stance of protection for some reason no one seemed able to understand … Sinn Fein was adopting a dual strategy, showing public support but working hard on the ground to ensure impunity and operating a whispering campaign against the family.

While Martin McGuinness would later describe the assailants as ‘low life’ a central charge in this book is that his party did next to nothing to turn them in.

Once the campaign had kicked in and Sinn Fein began to feel the heat the same whisper weasels that were set on the murdered man’s reputation were unleashed against the McCartney women.

At grassroots level we found ourselves at the receiving end of a well oiled rumour mill and ostracism exercise … some in the community treated us as if we were the guilty party, and we found ourselves shunned, vilified and demonised, accused of being attention seekers or drama queens. Anonymous messengers who claimed to know us well declared that we were harlots, thieves and prostitutes … ‘You’re not the only one this happened to’ became a familiar mantra. An illogical resentment set in. Such people forgot about the sick act of murder and our campaign came to be the bigger crime …

As the campaign wore on graffiti appeared on the walls where the murdered man had lived, his home now housing his partner and children was picketed by a mob. While originally a means of community protest, the picket had evolved into a party political weapon of intimidation. ‘Women who had once been welcomed into our home now stood outside it demanding the exile of Robert’s children.’ Death threats arrived and the editor of a local West Belfast newspaper labelled the campaigning women as ‘unionism on tour’ after their visit to the White House. Obviously incensed by the shunning of Gerry Adams and the public gutting the Sinn Fein leader received from current presidential candidate John McCain, he lashed out in a bid to discredit those he blamed for causing the discomfort. The great leader would not be embarrassed by mere mortals, particularly female ones.

In the course of their campaign the McCartney women found themselves in clandestine meetings with the IRA in Belfast, well publicised meetings with the president of the USA, surreal ‘guests’ at the Sinn Fein ard fheis where the party president unsuccessfully sought to depict party and women as being on the same side. It also gave them face to face access with the Irish Taoiseach and British Prime Minister as well as carrying them into the heart of the European parliament.

And yet, as this poignant book distressingly shows there was no happy ending. Although written from the perspective of a family seeking answers, explanations, honesty and ultimately justice, Walls Of Silence atmospherically conveys the odour of decay emitted from the decadence creeping into the crevices and gaps exposed by the withdrawal from the Provisional project of a more ideological republicanism. It has been said that it is really only when the tide goes out can we see who is naked. When the tide of republicanism ebbed away some of those submersed in it were left without any cover. From active service unit to the ‘do you know who I am gang?’ the order of things had been reversed. The butterfly, to borrow a term, had morphed into a slug. Robert McCartney lies cold in his grave and his family have not obtained justice. The slug slithers the streets of Belfast impervious to the humanity it leeches onto.

Walls Of Silence by Catherine McCartney, 2007. Gill & McMillan. Dublin

The Sacred Harte

Mickey Harte is a competent guy. His accomplishments as the manager of three times all Ireland champions Tyrone are the stuff of legends. To be successful at that level in the sporting bear pit suggests an uncommon toughness. It was the type of steely resolve that would have stood by him when his car crashed into a field last week having flipped over, at one point being 20 feet off the ground. Fortunately, this footballing great lived to tell the tale. Another death from the particular sporting fraternity that makes up the legendary Tyrone squad following that of the late Cormac McAnallen would have been devastating for the county.

For a person who must apply acute logic to outwitting Tyrone’s adversaries on the field of play, it was strange to read his lack of reasoning as to why he survived the crash. His explanation - god was responsible for divinely intervening and saving his life.

I often say the Rosary when I am travelling alone and I had my Rosary ring on my finger and I had a relic of Padre Pio in my pocket and I prayed and I think that saved me. I just called to God and he heard.

I wondered how this might have worked; how god sometimes hears and at other times does not. I can never quite fathom the decision making processes at work in the mysterious mind of god. It has always puzzled me how god, presuming he has heard, decides to answer one prayer rather than another. Saints are at times supposed to intercede on behalf of supplicants; something like god’s PA filtering out any of the less worthy before their entreaties make their way up to the top. I still don’t know if god refuses any beseechment made prayerfully. Nor if, for those put at the bottom of the prayer tray for later consideration only to be overlooked, the blame can be conveniently laid at the door of the saints for not passing them on to begin with. The king is alright style of thing but he has these scheming advisors. Alternatively, god may have saints he listens to and saints he doesn’t. How those ignored might feel they are not allowed to say. No dissent up there in the world of he who wants praised 24/7.

This notion of a god that has to reason and make decisions as to who he might listen to, grant in part or maybe in full, suggests that out of everything god is supposed to have done in the six thousand years or so since he created the world - long after the dinosaurs were somehow on it, courtesy of a Satanic illusion - making man in his own image was not amongst them. Men made him in their image, even giving him a man’s face.

The saved-by-prayer angle ran as the major news story in the Irish News the day after the accident. If Mickey had claimed to have been saved by the god Thor or Beano the spinning jelly bean monster it is likely the paper would have spared him his blushes. But Catholicism being the belief system of choice among the bulk of readers, saints and deities interceding and intervening don’t invite the same amount of ridicule.

But look at it like this. When the philosopher Dan Dennett had a near death experience well wishers and friends told him after his recovery that they had been praying for him. He is reported to have replied ‘did you sacrifice a goat as well?’ Kind of puts things in a more sober perspective.

It strikes me that a god who is omnipotent must at the same time be immutable. As the theologians say he must be utterly unchangeable. And immutability precludes any notion of an interventionist god. An immutable god cannot be persuaded to change its mind. So if god was of a mind to let Mickey Harte go to his death then no amount of praying could possibly change it. Mickey may just as well have grabbed a goat from the field he crashed in, slit its throat and offered it up as a sacrifice.

Micky Harte’s god is benign and benevolent. But this is less than helpful when confronted with the irreconcilability between benevolence and callous indifference. That god might answer the prayer of Mickey Harte and ignore the pleas of two young children, Lewis and Taylor Goldsmith who died in a house fire in Surrey just a week before Mickey’s crash, suggests a moody inconsistent god. Even if they did not understand prayer surely an all knowing god would have interpreted their anguish while they smothered as a plea for assistance. God was asleep, the pleas fell on deaf ears, the all-merciful is one cruel dude indeed – or he is a Tyrone supporter.

Mickey Harte survived because the physical and empirically measurable combination of elements that would have taken his life simply did not click into place. The only reason, no other.

Recovering the Truth

Eight years ago today Joe O’Connor was shot dead in a West Belfast street by armed Provisionals. It was a clinical execution carried out in broad daylight with scant regard for anything witnesses might say or do. O’Connor was a prominent member of the Real IRA in Belfast and had a history of friction with local Provisionals. Four days later the Provisional leadership denied any involvement in the killing and offered sympathy to the dead man’s family. This was widely seen at the time as a cynical ploy. While, eight years ago there were some who believed the IRA leadership, the body not yet having demonstrated its capacity for in-your-face lying, today only the terminally stupid or irredeemably obstinate maintain the pretence.

Although in their defence of the killing those Provisionals willing to discuss it sans protestations of innocence would point to the earlier friction, claiming that Joe O’Connor had been threatening their colleagues, this would seem a lame justification for the killing. Earlier a prominent Provisional had been shot and wounded by a hood in a Glen Road night club. It was an act much more grievous than any activity O’Connor had been pursuing against the Provisionals. The Glen Road assailant was subject to a punishment shooting, his life spared. Joe O’Connor was shot dead as a strategic strike against the Real IRA in the city, warning it to desist from an increase in its military activity at a time when the Provisionals were winding down their own. Any challenger to the throne would be ruthlessly dealt with.

Shortly after the shooting I and another former blanket prisoner Tommy Gorman penned an article in the Irish News laying the blame for O’Connor’s killing firmly with the Provisionals. This was done after much discussion with O’Connor’s family, witnesses to the attack and – although not disclosed by us at the time – with members of the Provisional IRA opposed to the killing in particular and the violent intimidation of dissident republicans in general.

The Provisional Movement, outraged that its writ would be challenged, moved to break us. Our homes were picketed by Sinn Fein organised mobs. The person who fronted the mob at each home is now a Sinn Fein councillor. Our own home was visited by the leadership of the Provisional IRA who sought to coerce our silence. A bad tempered exchange took place in the kitchen, loud enough to be audible to Brendan Hughes who sat in the living room with a US journalist.

After the first picket we travelled to Madrid where I was scheduled to launch a book for a Spanish friend. At Heathrow Airport, British police moved to separate me from my travelling companion on the pretext of examining his lap top. I knew instantly that something was amiss. A woman rapidly approached me, introduced herself as ‘Olivia from the Foreign Office’, and tried to thrust a piece of paper into my hand. She recoiled in embarrassment to a tirade of expletives exploding from my mouth. My friend, amazed at my outburst, and aware of my disdain for religion, asked if some biblical bigot had tried to pass me a religious tract. I merely told him it was a spook trying to turn me, nothing to get excited about; which left him wondering why I was so excitable. The spooks had been watching events, thought I might be under pressure and made their move. They were wasting their time.

On our return our house was picketed again. I was in Cookstown, at a political conference with another ex-prisoner. My wife, heavily pregnant, was left to face the gang alone. A neighbour crossed the street, jumped the fence and stood at her side. It was an act of courage in a difficult situation.

Although much ostracism was to follow, some of those involved in the picket saw it as political rather than personal. On occasion one of those most vociferous at our home would stop his car and ask me if I wanted a lift. He was always civil and would banter me about my political views. I was never sure if his friendliness or brazen effrontery impressed me most. I only declined the lift because I didn’t need one, not because I bore him any ill will.

Today we no longer live in West Belfast, having moved to a part of Ireland not subject to British rule. There remains a misconception popular amongst republicans that political Catholics hounded us out of Ballymurphy because of our willingness to dissent from their strategic project. It didn’t happen. Within a year of Joe O’Connor being butchered the worst of the pressure had abated, although tension could still be ramped up at times. Decommissioning took place in October 2001 and our critique no longer looked off the wall, while the word of the Provisional leadership had considerably depreciated. Today, they rather than we stand accused of authoring unremitting falsities. The hostility from Sinn Fein never disappeared but by the time we moved some of those most hostile in 2000 were back on speaking terms.

Looking back eight years, the killing of Joe O’Connor has not diminished in its characterisation as an act of brutal suppression against an alternative republican body. It was wanton violence - avoidable and counter productive. The tensions between him and the Provisional IRA could have been neutralised by means other than murder.

In a thoughtful piece written by a friend of the late Joe O’Connor to mark his eighth anniversary a call was made for the Provisionals to afford his family ‘the same values as they afford to others in the nationalist community, they should allow them the truth, admit their role in Joe O'Connor’s death and explain their actions.’

If the family of Joe O’Connor continue to be denied access to a true account of his slaying from those who perpetrated it, truth marches up the Falls Road and proclamations of support for truth recovery processes will be interpreted as something Sinn Fein is not genuine about and can thus be ignored. Nobody heeds demands for half the truth.

The Book of Genitals

I have no objection to all kinds of daft ideas being taught in comparative religion classes but in science what we should teach is what there is evidence for and children should be encouraged to examine evidence – Richard Dawkins

Bobby is not the only Storey to have made the news in recent times. Also considered newsworthy was the DUP politician Mervyn Storey. Given that political differences between the two men are no longer what they used to be, it should hardly surprise us that the news teams will home in on a similar area of activity – escapes. In the case of Bobby the media have reminded us of his escape from the H Blocks; for Mervyn it has been an escape from reality.

Mervyn Storey is one of these people who think nonsense should be tarted up in educational attire and then inflicted upon our children. It is called creationism, a ridiculous religious perspective which holds that the earth is only a few thousand years old and anyone doubting it should go and read the bible. Now the bible always made a good smoke during the blanket protest for those who enjoyed a puff but as reading material it would not have been highly sought after, its status being that of any port in a storm. Empty cell, bored stiff, nothing to read but the hate filled bible. Some succumbed.

Those sceptics that join Sam Harris in experiencing incredulity that the world was created ‘a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue’ are met with the type of response Richard Dawkins received in his documentary The Genius of Charles Darwin when he queried the basis of a science teacher’s assertion that the world was less than ten thousand year’s old: something to the effect that ‘I believe God because he was there and you were not and he knows better than you when he created the world.’

Listening to Mervyn Storey on BBC Radio Ulster attempt to describe the evolution process as being on a par with the immediate result of a massive bomb blast being the construction of a beautiful cathedral, the thought struck me that the man was indeed clueless. It is an old favourite plucked from the fundamentalist guide to stupidity which reveals a no-nothing approach to the world of science and evolution. No evolutionist bases their case against creationism on such a spurious contention. Conversely it is the illogic of creationism which rests on comparably intellectually indefensible founds. The biggest flaw in the Storey argument is that it merely raises all over again the problem it claims to have solved: how did an entity much more complex than any exquisite cathedral come into being? We are denied even the big bang theory to explain that. The absurd answer is that it was always there, was never created, never evolved. On the other hand what we scientifically know to have been there for billions of years is dismissed rather than explained away - explanation rarely figures in the non-thinking of the faithful - as having been there for only a few thousand years. There is something upside down, inside out, back to front about that.

Richard Dawkins is surely right in describing as sad the fact that ‘flat earthers’ are elected to power. ‘I think it's sad that people with ridiculous views do get elected because it suggests that the electorate is not sufficiently well-educated to see through them.’ Even worse when they become chair of the Education Committee. We would not want our children taught in school that the earth was flat – why should they be taught that the world is less than ten thousand years old?

Mervyn Storey thinks it would be an ideal situation that evolution not be taught at all. Moreover, he takes the view that creationism should be taught in the science class. Along with fellow DUP Assembly Member David Simpson, he pressed Catriona Ruane to include creationism in the science curriculum. ‘Creationism is not for the RE class because I believe that it can stand scientific scrutiny and that is a debate which I am quite happy to encourage and be part of.’ His Ballymoney Free Presbyterian church plans to bring speakers over from England to refute the views of Dawkins. Probably of the same quality that Paisley used to bring over such as former Spanish priest Juan Arrien to perform mock masses for the titillation of bible thumping eejits.

There is a place for creationism in schools. It should be stuck in the Religious Education class alongside other perspectives, none of which should be postulated as possessing any truth value whatsoever but simply studied as a social phenomenon much the same as witchcraft and superstition. Children should not be taught it but about it.

Thankfully there are enough people still around who take the view of blogger Johnny Guitar that

Had Mervyn Storey been born anywhere else in these islands it is unlikely that he would have been known for anything other than being the local buffoon who tried to spoil everyone's Saturday night by distributing peculiar Christian leaflets outside bars. Or perhaps he would have been that lone chap who ruins everyone's shopping trip on a Saturday afternoon by standing in a town centre shouting out lines from the book of Revelations into a loud hailer. But this is Northern Ireland and unfortunately here a halfwit can carve out a career for himself as a reputable member of the political establishment with relative ease.

Amen to that.

Fallout

Since the broadcasting of the Breakout documentary promoting one version of the 1983 escape from the H Blocks, there has been a flurry of discussion probing the wisdom behind televising a seriously divisive topic in a manner that for many was indistinguishable from propaganda. Whatever the motives of the Hot Shot producers in making it or the BBC in showing it they could not have expected an easy ride in the court of public opinion. They took a chance and it remains to be seen if over time it will work out for them. We will see either a situation where a partisan approach to documentary production flows more freely, or a tightening of the reins where nothing can be made without everyone being appeased; a bit like the appointment of the four victim commissioners.

There is little doubt that the programme makers traded in all objectivity for interviews and a camera positioned on the approved inside track. Bobby Storey speaking at length on TV in the wake of the many allegations that have linked him to a spate of Provisional operations would carry major appeal, even for the Peeping Tom Free Presbyterians watching from behind their fingers while convincing themselves that Storey’s horns must be hidden in the same place as Northern Bank notes.

The narrative of the escape was moulded almost entirely by the prisoners. Given that any perspective other than their own would have been anathema to at least two of the escapees interviewed, the price of their participation was always going to be a heavily tendentious piece of work. Few outside Sinn Fein – where delusion is the done thing - fool themselves that the three escapees appointed by Sinn Fein to speak are not completely on message cogs in the party machine. When it turns they turn. It is inconceivable that they would have assented to being interviewed were the final product going to challenge their narrative.

The sheer preponderance of the prisoner perspective meant that Hot Shot could never seriously have purported to tell the complete story of the 1983 escape, but merely to have told one of the stories associated with the escape. Not much wrong with that if it is stated as such and not spun as something else. And because that story is a crucially important one it remains a precious contribution to public understanding.

‘Kelly shoots Adams’ would make a great news line in radically different circumstances. But the shooting of prison officer John Adams was never going to scale those heights in terms of newsworthiness. Since the documentary I have read repeatedly that Gerry Kelly described how he fired the shots that felled Adams in the control room of H7 shortly after the prisoners seized control of the block. It is possible I missed something through being momentarily distracted but I do not recall Kelly making any such admission. I came away feeling that this was where careful narratorial management of the shooting showed the extent to which the programme makers were complicit in presenting the prisoners’ account. If my recollection is right Kelly’s account was punctuated by the intervention of the documentary’s narrator who made the admission of firing the two shots on his behalf and then Kelly picked up again almost seamlessly from where the narrator left off.

This is not to say the programme makers were wholly opportunistic in what they did. They may well believe that a multiplicity of voices is needed to explain any social phenomenon, although not necessarily to be voiced at the one time; that it was essential to public understanding that the whole story be told even if in incremental fashion where societal knowledge is increased broadcast by broadcast; that any previous gaps be filled hole by hole; that no event can be adequately explained without the input of those who made it happen.

Where such an ethos has been undermined is in the decision of Hot Shot to solicit prison officer Campbell Courtney to participate. It is not that his contribution was less authentic than that of the escapees. He was there on the day, bravely pursued armed prisoners on foot from the tally lodge, himself unarmed, and was shot in the leg for his troubles. Although he spoke very well his role was always going to be a cameo one. He did not appear as the phantom purposefully picked to inject a sour note into the opera. His was a harmonising chord which accentuated the performance of the three virtuosi. Subsequently the cover of objectivity which it afforded those who constructed Breakout was at best threadbare.

Better had they pleaded special circumstance and then moved to carry it off through simply stating from the outset that they were not searching for objectivity but instead were going down the dangerous route of allowing the escape to be told though the eyes of those who pulled it off. Their task was to add to public understanding by ensuring that the voices which helped shape a major event in recent Irish history were vented. What those tasked with frustrating the escape thought was material for another day.

The success of Breakout lay in its presentation of the escapees in no light other than their own. Where it failed was that through the inclusion of a token voice as an also-ran it sought to depict balance rather than inject any.

Backlash

Breakout, the story of the 1983 great escape has certainly produced the great backlash. The day after it was broadcast I spoke to a number of people of broadly unionist persuasion. They were not without considerable anger. In their view it was a very one sided presentation of an event which had such devastating human consequences for prison officers and their families as well as members of the wider public who had their homes taken over and their cars hijacked. Elsewhere, the voices – the type that would find it beneath themselves to speak with me - were more strident, demanding that those involved in the escape be denied any platform to hawk their version of events.

On watching the programme little of what might annoy unionists occurred to me. I was simply engrossed in it. It was indeed a very biased construction – in favour of the escapees. That was why I liked it. Outside of a totalitarian mindset there is no one-size-fits-all method for broadcasting. At times it is useful to hear a perspective rattled out uncluttered by trip wires and challenging contextualisation. It allows the narrative to flow puncture free. If Michael Stone were invited to give his account of the Milltown Massacre, skewed as it might well be, it should be acknowledged that without his recorded recollection we are denied a fuller understanding of events on the day. Where such presentations do occur the inquests and cross examinations can come later. The important thing is that when they do come they be allowed to go unhindered.

It is hardly as if the situation the makers of Breakout faced was one which urgently demanded that all possible angles be considered as might be expected with a current affairs documentary or news feature where all manner of deep searching questions need to be asked and a range of competing perspectives weaved in. This was cold case stuff about an escape a quarter of a century ago rather than hot off the press revelations about the latest agent to be outed.

Despite the censorious attitudes that plague northern intellectual life, society there is sufficiently porous to avoid being the prisoner of only one narrative. The escapees did get a free run but the coverage given to the outcry from their critics shows that no narrative goes uncontested. The more blatantly one sided an account is the more vociferous the response is likely to be. Like snakes and ladders matters tend to even out over the board.

For long, those involved in republican activity were denied the ability to make any case at all. It cannot be said that public understanding benefited from that. Arguably, a most serious indictment of modern broadcasting practices in Britain’s little Republic of ‘Absurdistan’ is that despite having the technology to make it possible not one piece of footage exists of Bobby Sands, one of the great figures of 20th Century Irish history. Posterity for ever and a day has been deprived of truly momentous archival material because of the type of sentiment expressed in response to Breakout. And here they are again trying to impose the same noxious regime of silence on the voices of Storey et al.

Some of those who were critical of the documentary pointed out that the prisoners showed no remorse nor did the programme makers tell their audience what the interviewees were serving time for. They felt it would have put the escape in a different light. But this is precisely their objection – the light in which the escapees are presented. That being the issue, rather than extinguish the light flick a different switch and throw a new light on it all.

This was the IRA’s story. It can be believed, it can be challenged. It most certainly should not be censored.