Good Friday Review: A Critical and Different Look at the Belfast Agreement

Manuel Frau Ramos reviews Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism for El Sol Latino.

"One of the most outstanding contributions of this book is the fact that it constitutes a well-document chronology of the events leading to the Good Friday Agreement. It is an excellent, critical, and detailed historical insider’s analysis of the Irish peace process from a dissident’s point of view. McIntyre concludes that the revolution and the principles of Irish Republicanism were betrayed, providing a new interpretation to the “official” version presented in the mainstream media."

A Critical and Different Look at the Belfast Agreement

Manuel Frau Ramos, Editor, El Sol Latino

Ausubo Press announced the publishing of its new book Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism by Anthony McIntyre. It is an anthology of McIntyre’s articles published in newspapers, magazines and mainly in The Blanket, a website online magazine. His writings cover the period from the signing of The Agreement, most often referred to as The Belfast Agreement or the Good Friday Agreement, in April 1998, to shortly prior to the shared power agreement announcement by Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley in March 2007.

The topics included in this collection touch important subjects such as The Good Friday Agreement, The Colombia Three, the hunger strikers, the murder of Robert McCartney, and the Northern Bank robbery, among others.

Anthony McIntyre, a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and political prisoner, historian and journalist, has been one of the most consistent, long-time critics of the Sinn Fein’s peace accord. In the book, McIntyre portrays a peace process that he, as well as other Irish Republican voices, regard as a twenty-year journey that brought the gradual abandonment of the Republican ideology by the IRA under the guidance of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

McIntyre indicts both Adam and McGuinness for designing and later carefully executing a strategy that eventually transformed the IRA from an armed insurrectionist to a docile reformist movement during the long peace process.

McIntyre was not against the peace process. What really angered and bothered him were the secrecy, lies, and deception surrounding the peace negotiations. He had already concluded that the armed strategy was leading nowhere. McIntyre argued that the Republican rank and file base was not ever consulted and most of the time was left in the dark about how the development of the discussions and negotiations. In addition, he points out how the pressure from the top leadership, “usually discrete but often forceful”, was felt by those who dared to question or raise concerns about the negotiations.

One of the most outstanding contributions of this book is the fact that it constitutes a well-document chronology of the events leading to the Good Friday Agreement. It is an excellent, critical, and detailed historical insider’s analysis of the Irish peace process from a dissident’s point of view. McIntyre concludes that the revolution and the principles of Irish Republicanism were betrayed, providing a new interpretation to the “official” version presented in the mainstream media.

By providing a valuable different historical point of view, McIntyre has, in turn, provided plenty of material for political analysts and historians regarding what can be considered an astonishing and complex ideological transformation inside one of the most well known pro-independence revolutionary movements in the world.

Review by Manuel Frau Ramos
Editor of El Sol Latino

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:
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Researching Censorship

Niall Meehan, head of the Journalism & Media Faculty, Griffith College, Dublin, is said to be researching censorship in Ireland. This is a worthy exercise and I am hardly alone in looking forward to the finished product. Of all the obituaries penned for the grand censor Conor Cruise O’Brien, Meehan more than most provided a very robust account of the life of the late writer. He stripped away the layers of liberalism that Cruise O’Brien had become swathed in and depicted a figure much more draconian than the short term political memory of obituarists would ever retain.

Elsewhere Meehan has been busy pursuing the historian Peter Hart. This pursuit is much less about censorship but a belief on the part of Meehan that Hart has been guilty of serious errors in his history constructions. In each case the overall point of Meehan’s concern is his professed objection to the truth being revised, filtered, refracted or simply suppressed. Whether through distortion or censorship, for Meehan the issue is ‘how Irish history was turned into propaganda.’

The challenge for Meehan is of course to avoid being led onto the blind spots that so often limit the vision of those flushing out the censor. It would be a disservice to his anti-censorship ethos if for any reason he were to succumb to the darkness, thereby failing to find that censorship is much more pervasive in Irish society than any probing of Conor Cruise O’Brien and his cohorts might reveal.

For both the neutral and hostile observer the interest will be on the degree to which Niall Meehan pursues all censors with the same vigour. It has already been alleged by one of his critics, a former student of his, that ‘Meehan's notes on censorship - his specialist subject - lacked balance.’ The neutral will be disappointed and the hostile delighted if he simply chases the censors that pollute his political space while dropping his vigilance when it comes to scrutinising practices closer to home. Given Niall Meehan’s iconoclast stance against Cruise O’Brien, his scepticism towards the work of Harte, and again the refrain from his former student that he is a ‘prolific letter writer on Sinn Fein-linked subjects’ there will hover a suspicion that his focus on censorship will confine itself to those who have made the journey of Sinn Fein a turbulent ride. There were certainly enough of them doing just that. And Meehan would be wholly justified in taking umbrage at the draconian policies practiced against the party.

Yet such a narrow focus would lift the lid on only some of the censorious policies and practices that have turned history into propaganda. There is enough evidence out there, easy to find with little effort, which would show how the poacher often turns game keeper. Sinn Fein, for example, has routinely practiced the censorship it ostensibly set its face against. Regrettably, suppression of alternative viewpoints is a key component of a more pervasive anti-intellectualism that has featured so strongly within republicanism in Ireland. Professor Tom Garvin once pointed out that republicans can end up being the most enthusiastic of censors. Garvin’s observation only stings on first hearing. A quick follow up usually suffices to confirm the validity of his charge.

If Niall Meehan’s goal is to research only some of the censorship that plagued Ireland there is nothing wrong with that although he should state that to be so. It is important that we know something about censorship rather than nothing. If, on the other hand, his goal is to take the censorious beast by both horns rather than only one, then it is inconceivable that the range of epistemological areas gored by the horns would not be investigated with equal rigour.

History is propaganda when it is falsified in the service of some political goal. How the question of Gerry Adams’ relationship to the IRA will be handled by Niall Meehan will be instructive in respect of this. There is a widespread view that this is an issue deliberately clouded by Sinn Fein for the purpose of allowing propaganda to trump history. Moreover, is there a single recorded case where any journalist or academic has stated that Adams has never been a member of the IRA? Whether he was or not is hardly the point. It is the manner in which Meehan’s research methodology approaches the issue that shall determine the seriousness with which his conclusions will be treated.

Another area that would prove most revealing for Niall Meehan’s research is one where the issues of truth distortion and censorship dovetailed perfectly when in 2003 Sinn Fein angrily accused the media of being involved in a securocrat plot to undermine the peace process when it revealed the identity of the senior British agent Stakeknife as one, Freddie Scappaticci. A former leading member of the Provisional IRA’s security department, Scappaticci had wreaked havoc within the ranks of the organisation for decades. His exposure was a serious embarrassment to the Sinn Fein leadership. There was indeed a concerted attack on the truth at the time in which some elements of the media to their shame were involved. In An Phoblacht/Republican News, for instance, one Dublin journalist writing under the nom de guerre Adam O’Toole battled valiantly but vainly to stop readers reaching an honest conclusion.

There are many people out there who wish Niall Meehan well in his endeavour. They would not want to see him stumble in his quest to expose all the censorious elements within Irish society. Many of them were targets for the censors. They will assist him in identifying both the practices and the practitioners. They will even inform him of the real identity of Adam O’Toole.

Israel And Rape

Israeli murderous assaults on Gaza promoted some rummaging around in the forgot about folder. The article below is what was uncovered from spring 2004

Benny Morris is indeed an objectionable writer when he presents a case for Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities from their own lands: ‘there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing … even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians.’

Lurking within his overall logic must lie some bridge to the Nazi belief that the Third Reich could not have been created and sustained for the projected 1000 years without the annihilation of the Jews. Power driven ideologies make for strange bedfellows.

Such an outlook begs the question: if he is not a racist then who is? Morris himself provides the answer:

I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries: The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it … the Arab world as it is today is barbarian … A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy.

Even were none of this true, Morris had elsewhere done enough to enrage those Palestinians who had not already arrived at a firm view of Yasser Arafats’ mendacity, by labelling the then Palestinian leader an inveterate liar. Still, he benefits from the right to offend being necessarily stronger from a democratic perspective than the right not to be offended. Moreover, at the heel of the hunt, it is much harder to argue that Arafat was a pretty straight sort of guy.

This, however, has done little to protect Morris from the effects of his abrasive manner and outspoken commentary, both of which have made him enemies in many quarters. Seems that a dislike of people pursuing the sense of Voltairean satisfaction that comes with speaking their mind makes for strange bedfellows also. Arab and Israeli alike have found common cause in disliking Benny Morris, albeit for different reasons.

The historian Avi Shlaim, while mindful of his trail blazing creation of a new historiography which usurped the traditionalist Zionist one by exploding national myths and slaughtering sacred cows, all the same concluded that the U-turns Morris had performed had led to a situation where ‘instead of evidence we are treated to a rambling and self-pitying monologue, seething with contempt and hatred for the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular.’

A historian whose findings have made many Israelis uncomfortable, his views have brought him into conflict with powerful lobbies inside Israel and for long enough he ploughed a lonely furrow, unable, in spite of his academic ability, to find a professorial post in Israeli universities. When he eventually struck gold and was accepted on the teaching staff at Ben-Gurion University, Ben-Gurion's son campaigned for his dismissal. Although he managed to retain his post some of his professional colleagues at the university ostracised him.

The crime of Benny Morris in this instance has been what some term revisionism. More appropriately, he has done what any serious historian should do. He rolled up his sleeves and took to the archives with a little archaeological scraping and probing, to emerge with material which leaves a nail on the seat of those who contend that Israeli history is wholesome. In his 1987 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, he detailed the violence, murder and rapes perpetrated against Palestinians in 1948 which drove up to three quarters of a million of them from their homes and land. He poured copious amounts of intellectual scorn on the idea that Palestinians left their homeland voluntarily.

In a revised edition of this work he has used material from the Israeli Defence Force archive which shows ‘that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape.’

When asked by Counterpunch to outline the war crime of rape inflicted on Palestinian women he responded:

In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer in the Ramle area, there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder … They are just the tip of the iceberg.

Barely three years after the Holocaust, it was evident then that not all war criminals faced the wrath of Nuremburg.

Slaughter from the Skies

The despicable Israeli aggressors are at it again, doing what they do best, murdering from the safety of the skies Palestinian civilians or people engaged in maintaining the societal infrastructure in Gaza. Latest reports from the Gaza Strip indicate that almost 300 people have now died in the latest bout of Israeli terror. 900 people have been injured, 180 of whom are said to be in a serious condition. Having today viewed footage of what Jewish people underwent as the Nazi Operation Barbarosa swept through the Soviet Union from the summer of 1941, it seems a bitter irony that a people steeped in such a violent history should either direct or permit the same thing being hurled at another civilian population.

The disproportionate nature of the Israeli response to what it claims are attacks on its territory from the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip is evident in figures provided by the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem. 9 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza since Israeli occupiers withdrew from the territory in September 2005. In the same period around 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The upsurge in Israeli violence comes after the collapse of a truce between Hamas and Israel a week before Xmas. There are grounds for suspecting that Israel was waiting the opportunity given that a general election is due to be held in the country in February and the government does not want to be seen to be going soft on Hamas. Clearly it is still playing to the most militaristic and aggressive elements within Israeli society. Given the pounding it took in Lebanon 2 years ago, the government of Ehud Olmert was reluctant to send in ground troops opting for a slaughter from the air policy which it considered would minimize its own casualties and by extension enhance its chances in the electoral contest.

The Arab world is in uproar after the murderous assault. For once there seems to have been a remarkable display of unity. Egypt, which often negotiates between Israel and Hamas, has summoned the Israel Ambassador in Cairo. Syria condemned the attacks as a heinous crime and convicted terrorist act.’ The Libyan Foreign Ministry exhorted Arabs to act ‘in response to the Israeli brutality.’ Fouad Seniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, a country pounded by Israeli Einsatzgruppen two years ago before being repulsed by Hezbollah, denounced Israeli attacks as ‘tragic and criminal.’ He called for a ‘united Arab stand to face the aggression’ and for the United Nations to adopt ‘deterrent and necessary measures against Israel for it's continuous violations of Palestinian and Arab human rights.’ Little chance of that happening. The UN has abdicated responsibility time and time again. Whatever moral standing it could lay claim to was completely devalued after it stood and scratched its nuts while genocide unfolded in front of its eyes in Rwanda 14 years ago. The UN stands for the particularism of Western hegemony and aggression not the universalism of human rights.

Elsewhere, Finland, Argentina, Brazil and Switzerland hit out at the murderous assault. Typically, the US backed the Tel Aviv death squads it has sustained for decades. Hamas was blamed for the violence by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza.

And when US citizens are made to pay a terrible price for the heinous stance of their government Condi will stand mouth agape wondering why. Does she really have to compete with the country’s president for the dunce’s hat?

Owen Farrell

On occasion it happens. Someone who once figured importantly in our lives many years ago is laid to rest before we even learn of his death. It happened a few years ago when I took a phone call telling me that the writer Brian Campbell had been buried the previous day. With Owen Farrell from the Lower Falls I knew he had been suffering from terminal illness. I had not seen him in 12 years and like so many from the ex-prisoner community battling a similar state, often the progress of their condition slips off the radar. When I learned that he had been cremated a heaviness descended upon me. ‘Farley’ was a character whose warmth was infectious.

In the early 1970s Owen Farrell was a young republican activist in the ranks of D Company in the Lower Falls; the same battling ‘dogs’ that Brendan Hughes and Frank McGreevy belonged to, both of whom predeceased him earlier in the year. He was also a contemporary of Kieran Nugent, the first republican blanket man. As teenagers both were on remand in Crumlin Road Prison in 1974. It was then from ‘Farley’ that I first learned of the significance of Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes, when the then leader of the Belfast IRA was captured in the affluent Malone Road area, an arrest that was heralded to a fanfare of publicity.

Owen Farrell was released having beaten whatever charge he was held on but the following year after a brutal battering at the hands of his RUC interrogators he was back in ‘the Crum’ charged with having shot dead Samuel Llewellyn in what became known as the ‘Good Samaritan’ killing. After a loyalist bomb attack on the Falls Road Llewellyn, a Protestant, had been sent to the area to carry out repairs from where he was abducted, held captive and then killed by an IRA unit. The death provoked ‘widespread revulsion’ and many sympathy notices from the Lower Falls appeared in the Irish News. In that atmosphere few were going to make waves about the torture claims of a young West Belfast republican who stood accused of killing the ‘Good Samaritan.’ Eventually Owen Farrell came to be acquitted of the killing.

I was approaching the end of a short sentence in Magilligan Prison at this time and had the same intentions as Farley when he had left prison the year before – to go straight back into the ranks of the IRA. I followed him in more than intent, ending up in the Crum alongside him a mere four months after my release.

A further two months would elapse before events would throw the two of us together creating one of those bonds that would forever see me cherishing him for the source of strength and friendship he proved to be. While on remand in A Wing both he and I received short sentences which because of their brevity could not be served in sentenced republican wings but in B Wing of the Crum. He crossed over first, having appeared in court a few days in front of me. B Wing was not a place any republican prisoner wanted to be. There was a fear that once there the screws would make life a misery for isolated republicans. My first steps down the wing were hesitant and apprehensive. Summoned to the class office the screw in charge laid down the law in stern language before sending me out into the body of the wing. Immediately Farley approached me full of smiles. Sensing my misgivings in my new surroundings he asked what the screw had said. I explained, to which he replied that I had no need to worry, the screws were actually sound and would give no hassle. After the first few days the accuracy of his assessment became evident. The B Wing screws wanted a quiet time. They had a live and let live attitude. Often they would share their lunch with us and would never see us stuck for a cigarette.

Still, without the companionship of other republican prisoners it was a lonely experience. Farley was brilliant throughout, always there, forever at my back when we crossed to D Wing for recreation or meals where I was frequently subjected to verbal abuse by a small number of South Belfast loyalists held there who had reason not to warm to me. They never tried anything physical as there were enough of us backed up by prisoners from Ballymurphy, the New Lodge and Lower Falls to ward off anything serious. A great companion, he was an inveterate raconteur who regaled me with stories about his exploits, life in the Lower Falls, his fondness for women, his nights on the gargle.

By the time Farley had returned to A Wing, while not completely at ease in my new abode I had mastered it. He had been a strong stanchion of support. Later in Cage 13, I shared a cubicle with him, the late Frank McGreevy and Danny O’Connor, all from the Dogs.

I only ever met him once after release from prison. It was in difficult circumstances for both of us but as always he was chirpy, funny and absolutely determined to be philosophical about the challenges he faced. For the few short hours we were together we may as well have been back in the Crum.

Owen Farrell was a good guy whose human decency and selfless solidarity stand out more than thirty years later. My time spent with him was short and our paths in later life were rarely to cross. His funeral was organised by his old D Company comrades. It was fitting for a man whose name never blazed with the neon lights of celebrity but whose contribution to republicanism caused him no small measure of deprivation.

Xmas Musings

Xmas, kids fighting and arguing no matter how much they get. I muse on when they might discard the toys and sit in the boxes they were packaged in. All part of the season. Boxing gloves might be the thing to get them next year. It would go with their irrepressible pugilistic spirit.

Still, overall a laid back sort of day punctuated by an afternoon sleep, which is not just the residue of an old jail habit. Yesterday most of the day was spent up north visiting family and friends. It exhausted all of us. Hauling two fighting kids all over a crowded Belfast induces severe chid lag in adults. A day in bed would hardly compensate for it or replenish the lost reserves of energy. The slow down that is Xmas day seems a just reward for the stress undergone in the run up to it. Every year I think ‘this has to stop’ but it never does.

Today I also took the time to write to a very close friend who lost her son a couple of months ago. He took his own life. I refrained from sending her a Xmas card. I simply did not know what to say in it. Good tidings and all that seem so awkward and short of the mark in times of grief. Better to write something on the day and hope that in some small way it will bring a touch of comfort to her no matter how minuscule or fleeting. Any respite from the burden of unbearable grief must always be welcome. When we lived in Belfast, each Xmas Eve I would visit her and her children. Gifts would be exchanged. For her son it started out as toy, then sports books and in the last years of his life it was a bottle of his choice. It is a present that marks a coming of age. The age of innocence is gone to be replaced by other things. In his case, sadly, the age of old was to elude him. He never made it past his twenties. And now that empty place at the dinner table leaves a gaping vacuum that simply will not be plugged no matter how the chairs are rearranged or guests assembled.

How she gets through today is beyond me. There is no replacing the loss of a child and Christmas becomes something else altogether once it happens. As much as mine fight and squabble they are there in front of me flowing along in perfect rhythm with the natural order of things.

Then there are others who fail to appreciate their children at all, who in fact torture and kill them. Few and far between such parents may well be, but it seems certain that for some kids today was a nightmare. No toys, maybe not even food. Much of this is related to the dire poverty experienced by loving parents. For others when an absence of love is thrown in with the rest of the emptiness it is the result of brutal parents who place their own pleasure above that of their children. In some cases their greatest disappointment is that they have to spend Xmas day in jail, punishment for the unspeakable acts they have inflicted on their children. A happy Xmas for them is one spent at home breaking a child’s rib or two, smearing their faces in the contents of a selection box to fool any flibbertigibbet of a social worker who might happen by.

Settling down with my wife for the remainder of the evening, glasses in hand, fire blazing, TV in front of us, the bickering and hollering fading in the background, I reflect mundanely that Xmas like much else in life amounts to different things for different people. Yesterday in Belfast people were spending as if there were no tomorrow. Those who stayed at home for the most part had little or nothing to spend. The consumer culture reaches its zenith as society celebrates the birth of a Christ whose abhorrence of affluence and materialism it has long since forgotten.

The point in raising it is that there is no point in raising it. It will be the same again next year.

Lillian Ladele and Discrimination

one gay member of staff felt that she was discriminating against homosexuals … I had staff who felt like second-class citizens because of the beliefs that Lillian had expressed’ - Lillian Ladele's manager, Helen Mendez-Child

Lillian Ladele has finally lost her case against Islington Council which had appealed an earlier decision that it had unlawfully discriminated against her when she refused as a public servant to administer her duties for same sex couples wanting to celebrate ‘gay weddings.’ In its judgement the Employment Appeals Tribunal found that:

The council were not taking disciplinary action against Ms Ladele for holding her religious beliefs. They did so because she was refusing to carry out civil partnership ceremonies and this involved discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

While the success of Islington Council is to be welcomed Ladele intends to try her luck in the Court of Appeal where she hopes a judicial figure with scant regard for secular space will side with her against the council and uphold her prejudice against gays.

In July in a display of arrant nonsense an Employment Tribunal found that Islington Council had illegally discriminated against Ladele. This was in effect giving license to some other would-be devotee of religious prejudice being able to discriminate in favour of those who like to mutilate the genitalia of their children on the grounds of religious quackery. Labour MP Diane Abbott immediately hit out against the decision, arguing that public servants should not be allowed to discriminate because of their personal prejudices and ‘self-defined religious beliefs.’ She then tabled a motion urging government ministers to amend the law so that the arbitrary power to exercise bias would be removed from people like Ladele.

After being gifted the favourable outcome by the Employment Tribunal, Ladele proclaimed a ‘victory for religious liberty.’ In truth it amounted to little more than legitimacy for a religious assault on the liberty of others.

Ladele had defended her own stance on the grounds of ‘religious conscience.’ What she really meant is that on the basis of her own religious bias she should have the right to decide what members of the public can be deemed unworthy of the public services she was paid £31 000 a year out of the public purse to provide to all without prejudice; that she should have the right enshrined in law to discriminate against others who did not subscribe to her own narrow mindedness. The subjects of this bias are people who in all good reason expect to be able to exercise freedom of choice underpinned by the Enlightenment value of freedom from religion. What right has Ladele or any other religious dictator to abrogate that freedom?

The Christian Institute’s appropriately named Mike Judge backed Ladele, judgementally claiming the course followed by Islington Council was about ‘wanting to get rid of Lillian Ladele because of her religious beliefs … it was not personal but ideological. Christians have rights too.’ True. The right to discriminate however in public life is not one of those rights. Public space is a level playing field where people of all religious denominations or none should go unhindered by the personal prejudices of others.

Ladele had claimed to have suffered ridicule and bullying because of the position she had taken. Bullying has no place in the workplace and it is on that practice that the Employment Tribunal should have directed its focus not on ridicule per se. If ridicule is used to bully then its bullying properties should be stripped from it. Ridicule on its own – that goes with the turf. Hold what others regard as ridiculous beliefs and ridicule is what you get. None of us should be protected from that. The positive benefits of ridicule were so demonstrable in Ireland where it played a major part in undermining the dictatorship of the bishops and winning substantial freedoms for Irish citizenry. Because of their behaviour clerics get more ridicule than reverence these days. As a result they and their allies would like to see ridicule banned and have the boundaries of secular freedom pushed back. At times British society sails precariously close to the wind on these matters. In February 2006 the Blair government came very close to having a Religious Hatred Law passed that would have seriously diminished the quality of British intellectual and cultural life.

In a feeble attempt to disguise what was at the heart of this case her solicitor claimed that Ladele at no time brought the case in ‘an attempt to undermine the rights of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender communities.’ Yes – and god came on a donkey.

Hee haw hee haw – there’s a bit of ridicule for you.

Lava

Justice protests for Baby P took place last Saturday in almost 20 venues including London, Plymouth, Leeds, Newcastle, Coventry, Blackpool and Edinburgh. Initially I had intended going to London for the event. When the marches were first announced I told my wife that I would go out with my 7 year old daughter. I spoke with a friend from Plumstead Common and he invited us to stay with him if we should choose to go over. I particularly wanted to take my child to Islington and St Pancras Cemeteries where a mountain of teddy bears and other cuddly toys have shot up round the site where the ashes of the murdered infant were spread. At the site a tribute from one father of three perfectly captured the sentiment that runs through the minds of many fathers disconcerted that no one moved to save this child:

When I look at that last picture of you, you look in so much pain, I just want to pick you up and give you a hug and make you feel better. If I knew what was happening to you, I would have come down there and kicked the front door open and rescued you myself.

The child was always within reach of safety. He was unable to reach out and not one person associated with the case reached in.

As it happened other things intervened and we were unable to make the trip. We will some day. It is simply part of the common purpose that has been forged by the terrible suffering and death of this little boy. It affects people in different ways. Shortly after news of the convictions of his torture killers I found myself behaving in a manner I was a stranger to. I have no religious belief whatsoever; not as much as a doubt or a sentimental hankering for an afterlife. That did not deter me one cold, dark morning on my way to work, from stopping at a chapel I had not been near in over 30 years. Once inside I didn’t pray, listen to the words of the priest saying mass, pay the slightest attention to anyone else who happened to be there, or light any candles. I merely stood there in quiet reflection trying to comprehend the incomprehensible; how people labelled human beings could torment, torture and butcher a defenceless baby. On my way out I filled in a space in the petition book detailing my humanist conviction and my reason for being there. As Malachi O Doherty points out in his book Empty Pulpits about churches people ‘go there because there is something that they want to do and because that is the place in which it is done.’ For me it was the quietist place in town.

18 years ago when Sean Bateson died suddenly walking along a prison wing I wrote that we would remember him in the quiet recesses of our minds. Quiet recesses are where we retreat to in times of stress. In the days immediately after the facts of the Baby P case became public my mind was anything but quiet. I wanted to escape from not retreat into it. Anger flowed like lava as molten as anything that had previously coursed through me, including the aftermaths of the death of Bobby Sands and the Hillsborough Stadium disaster.

I left no more religious than I entered but slightly more relaxed. The belief that a benign god existed who would allow such a thing to happen repulsed me. That would make him as guilty as those convicted of killing or allowing Baby P to die. What reasonable, reasoning jury could fail to convict god on those grounds?

Some time after the visit to the church I read a young woman expressing the view that she wished there was an afterlife so that Baby P could experience something joyous, that the totality of his existence had not been confined to a torture chamber. Despair feeds that sort of sentiment. It comes with the terrible knowledge that in a universe without heaven the child knew only hell.

Later I thought a chapel a most inappropriate choice of venue in which to reflect on a murdered child given the range of abuses inflicted on children by the people who run such places. In the end I rationalised it as an act of communion. Not the holy type. I believe in none of that. Simply an act of communion with other people elsewhere whose peace of mind had been ruptured by a form of violence we thought had stepped off the gallows at Nuremburg.

The Ghost of Violence Past

Given the Provisional IRA’s penchant for large bombs a blast from the past is a description rich with meaning when applied to the re-emergence of former member Maria McGuire. The then young Dublin graduate and multi-linguist was a member of the Provisional IRA long before it ceased to be a republican body. Her book To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA can occasionally be picked up in second hand bookshelves. On a recent occasion I saw two in the one shop. This is rare given that many books on the IRA from that era have become valued collectors’ items. It was certainly the first insider account of the Provisional IRA and in my view was ‘the story of the year as regards Provisional historiography.’

Others don’t see it that way. In a recent interview the former IRA volunteer Marian Price, having read the book while reconnoitring England in preparation for a bombing operation, said ‘the material was so embarrassing we laughed as we read it.’ Others dismissed it but found little to laugh about while they did so. The IRA leaders from the era that I interviewed over the years always appeared ill at ease when her name came up. Given that she had some of them plotting to overthrow or assassinate others this can hardly come packaged as a surprise. Some of her colleagues of the day claimed that she had never been a member of the IRA. Sean MacStiofain tersely said ‘McGuire is a liar’. Ruairi O’Bradaigh dismissed her knowledge as ‘office gossip.’ Whatever the truth she proved highly controversial.

Her escape from Dutch authorities alongside the army council member Dave O’Conaill after Dutch police found a large arms cache at Schiphol Airport was sensational news. Instantly she and O’Conaill became republican icons. For the next four years O’Conaill became the most consistent public face of the Provisional IRA. McGuire for her part jumped ship, gave a detailed interview to the Observer, went on to write her book and allowed her name to slip into a blind spot. As O’Bradaigh put it ‘Maria McGuire just disappeared. I hadn’t heard anything about her until now. But I’m not surprised where she ended up.’ She went forgotten about outside history aficionados. Obscurity, however, had plucked only her identity from the public eye. Her person was anything but obscure as her exposure as a councillor in the Croydon Tory Party demonstrated.

That she should re-emerge as Gatland rather than McGuire in what for her were the most inauspicious of circumstances was as newsworthy as her defection was more than three and a half decades ago. For a week or two the press whisked us back to the early 1970s as we were regaled with tales of bombs and hot pants. All that was missing was a touch of Slade and T Rex providing some background mood music.

The political reaction was knee jerk par for the course. A spokeswoman for Croydon Council said: ‘The council has been advised that Maria Gatland has resigned as cabinet member for children, young people and learners. This follows emerging news of her connection to the Provisional IRA - which has come as a complete shock to Croydon.’ They were probably not half as shocked as the former Maria McGuire.

The leader of the Croydon Labour party, Tony Newman said: ‘The question that must be answered is what did the Croydon and national Tory Party know or not know about this issue.’ Even more strange is that British security services seemed not to know.

Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith broke the mould in being somewhat generous about the matter, expressing the view that McGuire was on no wanted list and that given the security implications it was understandable that she did not disclose her past.

Viewing it all from a different perch Malachi O Doherty points out ‘that people should not suffer for what they did in youth, if they have themselves reassessed those things and moved on from them. There are many others who were in the IRA in the early seventies and went on to distinguish themselves in other ways. Why should they be harassed now?’

That the Conservative Party should no longer want her as a member needs explained. Provisional Sinn Fein is a very conservative party where some former IRA members are made welcome as councillors. So much for parity of esteem!

Where The Sun Don't Shine

There is little room for doubting the extent of professional negligence displayed by Sharon Shoesmith in her management of the child protection scheme in Haringey. The helpless and vulnerable were abandoned to the perverse designs of their tormentors. The Baby P case demonstrated that prisoners have a greater degree of protection than children at risk. It is inconceivable that someone detained in Belmarsh would be visited 60 times by professionals supposedly concerned about allegations of ill treatment at the hands of prison staff only for the prisoner to be later murdered by the same staff. And if, four days before he died, prison officers were to present him to professional visitors unconscious, his face smeared in chocolate, claiming that he was only asleep, it would be just as inconceivable that the professionals would walk away after a cursory wave.

Because of the endemic incompetence that reigned under her leadership the dismissal of Sharon Shoesmith from her post as director of children’s services is to be robustly defended. That she may feel unfairly treated because up to now she alone out of all the culpable has been forced to walk the plank is no reason to sympathise with her predicament. That others should make the same journey is indisputable. Yet, if the other five, six or whatever who should go, manage to avoid that fate, there is no reason for her to be spared. The uneven distribution of justice is no reason for withholding its application. Absolving her would only accentuate the injustice of allowing others to get off the hook.

Sharon Shoesmith’s punishment is all the more severe for her having incurred public wrath through an incredibly myopic defence of her record articulated with such arrogance that it had all the resonance of ‘let them eat cake.’ That she should use her strident voice in her own defence but failed to use it on behalf of a voiceless baby undergoing unimaginable suffering drove the public apoplectic. Through her actions she powered the voices already baying for her blood; the author of her own wretched denouement. Whether she realises it or not she will forever carry the brand of Baby P. If she possesses the slightest humility her anguish will be great.

Currently Sharon Shoesmith is subject to a witch hunt by the Sun. Since the trial of those involved in torturing and murdering Baby P the redtop has manufactured a duck shoot, igniting incandescent societal rage beneath her feet. Not satisfied with having mobilised intensely hostile public opinion against her, the paper is intent on kicking her when she is down. She is unable to walk to an Italian restaurant in the company of three friends without her picture being emblazoned in the paper. As far as the Sun is concerned she should be allowed neither to eat nor have friends; sackcloth and ashes her lot until the end of time. The public is being urged to hound her. There have been claims that her life is under threat and that one of her children has also received threats.

Such behaviour mirrors the activity it ostensibly opposes. It is the injustice that poisons and pollutes any justice campaign. Most assuredly, it will contribute nothing to the enhancement of a public understanding without which the type of systemic failings that condemned Baby P to his fate are unlikely to be eradicated.

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Devastating

He had known nothing but violence in the last eight months of his life. He had been treated worse than a dog and lived in indescribable squalor. On the night he died, he had been punched so hard in the face that he had swallowed a tooth. It was one of many acts of violence carried out on the child … one of the most worrying aspects of Baby P's case was that he was seen by so many different people. In a dossier of evidence released last month, there are lists of different doctors, social workers, health advisors and police officers who dealt with him - Caroline Gammell

Since last week’s ‘independent report’ into the death of Haringey torture murder victim Baby P came out there has been a flurry of public discussion mirrored in the print media. According to one report almost every page had one of the following words to describe Haringey Council’s child protection service: "inadequate", "unacceptable", "poor" and "unreliable".

A team of seven inspectors from Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Inspectorate of Constabulary delivered its report after two weeks of deliberation. Its main findings were outlined in the Guardian as:

• Failure to identify those children and young people at immediate risk of harm and to act on evidence.
• Agencies generally working in isolation from one another and without effective coordination.
• Poor gathering, recording and sharing of information.
• Inconsistent quality of frontline procedures and insufficient evidence of supervision by senior management.
• Inconsistent management oversight of the assistant director of children's services by the director of children's services and the chief executive.
• Incomplete reporting of the management audit report by senior officials to elected councillors.
• Insufficient challenge by the local safeguarding children board to council members and frontline staff.
• Over-dependence on performance data, which was not always accurate.

The report stated that ‘Baby P had been subject to a child protection plan from 22 December 2006, following concerns that he had been abused and neglected. He was still subject to this plan when he died.’ If ever there was a more damning statement of the uselessness of a plan it is this.

Not surprisingly political reaction was swift. Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democratic MP in whose constituency the borough of Haringey is situated was scathing:

I have never seen such a damning and devastating criticism of an authority as this litany of failure – both systemic and personal, and at every level and, more or less, in every agency. But particularly singled out for special damnation: Haringey council.

The Family Minister Ed Balls who commissioned the fast track report stated:

the whole nation has been shocked and moved by the tragic and horrific death of Baby P. All of us find it impossible to comprehend how adults could commit such terrible acts of evil against this little boy. And the public is angry that nobody stepped in to prevent this tragedy from happening.

Balls’ immediate response to the report was to dismiss Sharon Shoesmith from her post. Shoesmith had earlier outraged many when she misread the pubic mood and adopted a cavalier and brazen attitude to suggestions that her leadership had been a major factor in the circumstances that led to the child not being adequately protected from his three killers.

Consequently there is little doubt that Sharon Shoesmith’s removal was the proper course of action for the British government to pursue. At the same time if London Metropolitan University lecturer Liz Davies is right in her Guardian piece, child protection policy has systemically failed. The remedy is unlikely to be found in the sacking or removal of social workers. She argues that the reforms put in place in the wake of the torture killing of eight year old Victoria Climbié in 2000 ‘have been imposed at the expense of protecting children from harm … there is high risk of children remaining unprotected and perpetrators being hidden from professional view.’

Support for Davies’ perspective came yesterday in front of the Children’s, Schools and Families Committee when Christine Gilbert, Ofsted’s chief inspector failed to convince MPs that real progress was being made. Barry Sheerman the MP for Huddersfield commentated afterwards that ‘this session made me less confident rather than more confident that there isn’t going to be another Haringey waiting.’

What an ‘appalling vista.’

Disgraceful

Sharon Shoesmith has been dismissed from Haringey Council with immediate effect. The decision was taken today by a panel of councilors. Ms Shoesmith will not be returning to work in Haringey. She will not receive any compensation package. She will not receive any payment in lieu of notice - Haringey Council statement.

There seems to have been no end to which Haringey Council would not have gone to buff up the tarnished image of its most incompetent operatives. £19 000 of public money - that could have been used to initiate five separate care proceedings in order to protect children at risk was instead last year wasted on media training to help enhance the public image of those who demonstrably failed children. The beneficiaries of the generosity of the officials of Haringey Council were Sharon Shoesmith and other senior officials involved in the management shambles that allowed three torture killers prolonged and unlimited access to Baby P. All a spokesperson for Hopeless Haringey could say was ‘it is reasonable for any employer to ensure that staff in the full glare of the media spotlight are given some training to help them deal with this sort of unusual situation.’

Its about as much as we can expect from a council that only last week saw its leader and another key official, Liz Santry, resign in the wake of an ‘independent report’ into its failings in the area of child protection. Santry had also received media training. People who in the words of British Family Secretary Ed Balls were ‘not fit for Office’ were having considerable amounts of the British taxpayers money spent on keeping them firmly in position.

The Liberal Democrat councilor David Winskill who was responsible for forcing the council into releasing the figures hit the nail on the head when he said that the money had been spent so that Haringey Council could avoid being brought to book. His party colleague the Liberal Democratic MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, Lynne Featherstone, was blunter: ‘it is absolutely outrageous that this money has been wasted on spin doctors. Every single penny of this cash would have been better spent on improving our children’s service.’ As so often there is a pungent odor emitted which is best labeled cover up.

The gross absurdity of Hopeless Haringey's thinking has been accentuated in that it thought that what this case needed was a spin doctor when the drastic failings of a medical doctor had wrought such fatal consequences. Where treatment fails, apparently, cover it up with a little spin, or £19, 000 worth.

A Ministry In Need Of a Little Education

Watching the Scannal programme as I write, staring at me from the screen is an old newspaper headline ‘The scandal of our schools’ with the by-line of Pat Holmes. As I am not paying any great attention, merely making use of the opportunity it provides to kick-start an article, I don’t know the date of the piece. But it sure helps to create a feel that the way education is promoted in Ireland has long been scandalous and not just a recent phenomenon foist upon the sector nationwide by Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail.

If we didn’t know them any better we might be gasping in bewilderment at Sinn Fein kicking up a fuss over the current state of the education system in the Republic. Senator Pearse Doherty and MEP Mary Lou McDonald have been at the forefront of the party’s charge against Fianna Fail and the Greens who between them have hacked away at the intellectual future of the Republic in Budget 2009.

In warning the government parties that there would be an electoral price to pay for their refusal to reduce classroom sizes, Senator Pearse Doherty predicted: ‘It is my view that Fianna Fáil and the Green Party will be punished for their savage attack on pupils, teachers, parents and the entire education sector at future polls.’

Sinn Fein criticising any party for breaking promises is a bit rich, but that failed to dissuade MEP Mary Lou McDonald from hitting the chutzpah bull’s-eye with her comment that:

In advance of Budget 2009 Fianna Fáil and the Green Party promised to protect the vulnerable and frontline health and education services. But they have in fact delivered is one of the most inequitable budgets in recent memory.

Absolutely true but how easily does any of it actually sit with party colleague Catriona Ruane serving as British micro minister for education in the North with a most undistinguished record on the very things her southern colleagues complain about? Pearse Doherty may indeed make calls for ‘the public to continue in their support for the teachers, the unions and the education partners and not to support a wage cap on teachers' salaries’ but it tends to look ludicrous when it is considered that his party with Catriona Ruane at the helm shafted the classroom assistants in the North only a year ago because Peter Robinson’s budget demanded it. A very partitionist approach to budgets is it not? A right wing assault on education facilities in the North and left wing resistance in the South.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that Sinn Fein’s sabre rattling all amounts to a bit of envy, really, that Fianna Fail and the Greens rather than their own lot are in a position to shaft our schoolchildren. Par for the course with Sinn Fein: do a lot of shouting about policy when all it is they really want changed is people. Their people in, other people out, the type of change that means things remain as they were. Careerist politics, no more, no less. This gives the critique of Fianna Fail and the Greens a vacuous ring, meaning it will most likely wither on the vine rather than bloom into electoral success for Sinn Fein.

Given that, in terms of its own self image as both the cutting edge of Northern nationalism and the driving force behind any movement in the direction of a united Ireland, calamity follows back to back on debacle, there is a view that Sinn Fein has lost its way, is devoid of all strategic direction and flails around hopelessly waiting for some unspecified cavalry to ride over the hill and pull it out of the hole it has dug for itself. Those of this view find no shortage of material for their critique in the North’s ministry of education.

At no point in her ministerial career has Catriona Ruane scaled the heights of Mount Competence. In the North the education minister and her advisors are widely regarded, even by British officials, as being inept bunglers who think acumen is an alien body that must be zapped at all costs. Ruane’s handling of the academic selection controversy is a case in point. Her determination to end the 11 plus may indeed be laudable but nobody seems to know what it is she wants to replace it with. And because of indecisiveness she has allowed a head of steam to build up which is causing much of the turbulence her ministerial flight is experiencing.

Writing in his own blog a northern Protestant nationalist blogger claimed that ‘Catriona Ruane seems to know absolutely nothing about education.’ It is a challenge to find evidence to contradict him. She seems concerned more with finding scapegoats than solutions. Last year she hit out at radical proposals for improvements in the education system on the grounds that there was not enough finance. Her opponents on the matter were accused being ‘ostriches with their heads in the sand’. The British who were responsible for the amount of money given to the department seemed to have not been subject to her opprobrium. Ruane takes the view that the media is behind the difficulties faced by her department. ‘Look at who controls the media and in whose interest the media works … there is, and I am putting this in inverted commas, the old boys’ network and I think that is what you are seeing.’

Mediocrats out to destroy the education process. Aye, right. It might be more plausible to argue that because of the nepotism that saturates the Stormont career structure she sits astride a jobs-for-the-boys network and as a result has been denied the input of competent advisors.

Despite the intellectual emaciation of the Sinn Fein body politic Ruane’s policies paradoxically would make any future merger between it and Fianna Fail much easier to implement. And the more disastrous education policy becomes in the South who better to run it than Ruane and her advisors? They can hardly claim lack of experience.

First published in Fourthwrite Winter 2008 Issue 34

Missing

Being neither an admirer of the British Empire or fan of the award given out to those who are, I usually pass on expressing any interest in the bestowment of OBEs. On occasion in the past I have held my nose while people who claimed to be Irish nationalists seemingly scurried off to London for the paternalistic pat on the head received only by those invariably innocent of a rebellious thought. Unionists getting it or something similar never much bothered me. They enjoyed their status of being British, and obtaining British honours is what the British do.

Reading a day or two ago that the former RUC man Michael Paterson had received an OBE made me think that here was somebody who deserves awards by the bucketful yet no matter how many he will get from now to the end of his life the aggregate total will never compensate him for what he has lost; both his arms during an IRA rocket attack in 1981. Of his honour at Buckingham Palace he said ‘I'm thrilled to be at the palace to receive my award and have really enjoyed the very special occasion as I've been able to share it with my wife Hazel and two of my children, Natalie and Byron.’ The heartless alone would deny him his sense of achievement.

It strikes me that out of all the victims of the North’s armed conflict amputees live with their loss more than any other generic set of victims. Not that we hear all that much about them. Victimhood apparently is a more restricted field than the plethora of victims commissioners would lead us to believe. The bereaved, displaced, traumatised, former combatants, political prisoners, people wrongly jailed, those kidnapped, householders who were held at gun point or drivers who had their car hijacked are for the most part able to put their experiences, if not behind them, then to the side so that they can get on with the task of organising their lives much the same as the rest of society. The families of the disappeared who have suffered unimaginable cruelty and in some cases continue to suffer run a close second to the amputees. In a sense they have undergone a psychological amputation whereby, because they had no sense of laying their loved ones to rest, they are haunted by the phantom pains of loss in a way that others whose loved ones were buried from home are not. They like the amputees are confronted daily with the missing.

I met Michael Paterson once. It was during a BBC Radio Ulster broadcast when both of us were on the interview panel. The situation was uncomfortable in the extreme. I attempted a handshake. He was quite relaxed in his response but the turbulent thought was racing through my mind that I was trying to shake hands with a man who had no hands. After broadcasting had finished I spoke with him and asked if he was not gripped by bitterness. He related an account of being on a social experiment in South Africa a number of years back alongside former republican and loyalist activists. They slept in shifts so each had to look after the other. Trust was essential. He later explained to the press, ‘it helped me arrive at my present state of mind, which is to see the person first, and their political beliefs last.’ I told him I would not be so philosophical were both my hands missing. An intelligent genial man his attitude seemed to be that he was not alone in having suffered. True, but few have undergone such horrendous experiences.

After surgery and convalescence Michael Paterson gave real meaning to the term ‘courageous and imaginative’. He did not succumb to feelings of uselessness or hopelessness. Described as ‘an expert at helping victims of trauma leave behind their disturbing memories and rebuild their lives’ his courage enabled him to improve not only the quality of his own life but to enhance the value others derive from theirs. His imagination was evident in his ability to overcome the challenges posed by the composition of a doctoral thesis and his qualification as a clinical psychologist.

The value of human experience is irreplaceable, even when that experience has been terrible. Despite the advances in technology, take away human knowledge, experience and drive, and it loses both its cutting edge and utility value. Michael Paterson in turning his disability into something powerfully enabling confirms the thought of Elbert Hubbart that ‘one machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.’

Secrecy, Silence and Shame

For weeks it has been one of the most talked about issues in the British media. Yet the amplification of discourse about the baby P case serves to conceal just how much of it remains hidden from public view. Although the 17 month old toddler had been done to death by the three adults he was forced to share an abode with in August of last year the real nature of the horrible regime that prevailed in the Haringey house of Horrors where he suffered unto death only became public knowledge last month.

It took a murder trial to occur before the wider public had any inkling of what was going on in its midst. Today after a brief hiatus the story is headline grabbing once again consequent to the joint report into the child’s death delivered by Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary. A child victim of a killing as cruel as anything from the Hindley-Brady era and few for a full year knew anything about it. The politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the bungling that abandoned the baby to his fate were given the precious time to get their stories in order, behind the backs of an unsuspecting public and free from any pressure that the public would certainly have brought to bear. That they may have messed up as badly on this as they did on the provision of adequate protection for the child at risk merely accentuates their general incompetence.

It was my wife who first pointed out to me a quirk afflicting the role of the British media. On the one hand they are able to bombard their audiences with raging rivers of detail pertaining to heinous abuse including murder perpetrated by the Austrian Josef Fritzl in the cellar where he imprisoned his daughter and the children he had raped into existence. On the other it has been much more circumspect in what it is prepared to say about the torture murder of Baby P in Haringey.

Although the father of the child victim would claim that ‘those who systematically tortured P and killed him kept it a secret’ their behaviour was reinforced by a much wider culture of secrecy governing discussion of the case. Newsweek in a piece covering the issue may not have filled in the silences that pepper the Baby P case but it can hardly stand accused of leaving its readers uninformed about the degree of secrecy surrounding it.

It is against the law for us to tell you who killed Baby P, although we know, and even though they have now been convicted of the crime in the British courts. One of them is his own mother, a 27-year-old from north London, but we cannot legally identify her any further. Another is his mother's boyfriend, a 32-year-old who lived with her in their publicly provided house in the Haringey Council area, but we cannot identify him any further, either. The third, like the others convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child, is another man, age 36. He at least can legally be identified as Jason Owen, but we cannot disclose why he lived in the house or what exactly his relationship was to the other people in the house, or even whether Jason Owen is his real or only name, although we know. We cannot even disclose Baby P's real name, even his first name, although we know that too. Baby P's sister was also subjected to abuse in the house, serious abuse, although no further details are allowed about that whatsoever. Nor can we tell you how many other children Mother of Baby P had, although it is known that she gave birth to one in jail after her arrest, and authorities took it away from her. Finally, we can't even legally tell you why we can't tell you any of this information, because to do any of this would be to violate a contempt-of-court order issued by the judge in the case, Stephen Kramer QC at the Old Bailey Central Criminal Court.

It is clear that today’s ‘devastating’ report commissioned on November 12 came as a result of the mushrooming public outcry in response to the convictions of those responsible for baby P’s death a day earlier. It would most certainly never have happened had the proponents of monumental secrecy succeeded in keeping things as they were.

Even now despite the trial having concluded, the culture of secrecy is at play. Who or what is being protected? There seems no good reason for it. It is hardly for the welfare of any remaining children. Anybody wishing to know the identities of both Baby P and his group of killers is merely a couple of computer clicks from accessing that information.

Secrecy helped kill this child. Six months before Baby P died former social worker Nevres Kemal persuaded her lawyer Lawrence Davies to write to the then Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and three other government ministers complaining that children in Haringey were being left with their abusers. The council took out an injunction against her ‘banning her from speaking about child care in Haringey.’ Sadly now we know the result of that imposed secrecy, with Lawrence Davies convincingly arguing that it seriously diminished the chances of intervening to save the life of Baby P.