Ms Cahill’s Appeal

Which philosopher made the comment that what does not kill us makes us stronger, is not as important as the sagacity it embodies. It is a wisdom very much on display in the resilient human spirit of Ms Cahill, the young Belfast woman, who stepped into the breach and virtually sacrificed her anonymity to ensure her rapist did not maintain his. She has emerged from her experience very much alive and stronger and despite strong resistance to her efforts is fast blazing a trail deep into the conspiracy of silence that for so long has allowed abusers to go unidentified and unaccountable.

In taking the very public stance that she did it is hoped that she has become a source of great inspiration to those many bearers of the effects of double torture; first tortured by what happened to them and tortured for a second time by the silence they have been forced to undergo.

In her appeal to the wider republican community to dismantle the protective wall of silence that rapists and paedophiles have sheltered behind she has again stepped into the breach. Forcing the issue into the open makes it harder for any conspiratorial cabal to deal with to its own advantage and to the disadvantage of those who have been attacked by sexual predators.

Ms Cahill’s appeal, carried in a number of web outlets, is a very strong entreaty to people to do the right thing. In pointing out that ‘no one is blaming the republican movement for members of that movement who inflicted sexual abuse on others’ she is properly measured. As she states, the crux is ‘how the republican movement dealt with the issue’. What confronts the Provisional movement is not its involvement in systemic sexual abuse but its systemic cover up of sexual abuse. At the same time it cannot be denied that the systemic culture which gave rise to such cover ups was maintained from the top down by people who thought the poser of an awkward question was more of a threat than a molester.

The republicans I knew over the years and worked with struck me as despising rapists and paedophiles. But it seems that many of them were more ready to believe that one of their comrades might be an informer than to accept that he may have been a rapist. Ms Cahill’s attacker was hardly subject to the ‘South Armagh treatment’ - as a tough and often prolonged interrogation procedure was colloquially known within the Provisional movement. There was no sense of urgency to deal with the problem.

Like most other institutions, most notably the Catholic Church, the Provisional movement proved chronically incapable of properly investigating its own. This seems abundantly clear from the case of Ms Cahill and others who have recently emerged as having being attacked by abusers. The Louth TD, Arthur Morgan, alone seems to be the one party figure who despite a very shaky and inauspicious start has publicly stated that his party’s behaviour, and that of its leader, in respect of the Liam Adams case was somewhat less than glorious. Everyone else in the party, the leader included, seems to believe that both he and the party he presides over have done no wrong.

Almost certainly, Ms Cahill is right in suggesting that that there has been a lot more abuse inflicted by Provisional movement members either not properly addressed at the time or covered up since. Her call for this to be justly dealt with is one deserving of all backing.

However there has to be some concern about moving forward on the strength of ‘suspicion’ or what meanders through the ‘grapevine.’

The vagaries of suspicion for which the grapevine is fertile ground are not something that can be readily measured or easily categorised. Those of us who have had grounds to be suspicious of whoever for whatever reason over the years, only to find that our suspicions later proved as groundless as the grapevine was barren are mindful of a suspicion-based approach to anything. In today's climate members of Sinn Fein might just make an easy target. But where would it lead? A witch hunt of Sinn Fein members would be not only be wrong but also counter productive.

While there is nothing in Ms Cahill's appeal that would in itself necessarily serve as a catalyst for a witch hunt there remains a need when talking about a suspicion based approach to specify clearly what constitute grounds for suspicion. The bar must be raised very high. Too often suspicion has been indivisible from dislike.

No person who was ever abused should sit silent. Theirs is an evidence based claim, the evidence being their own experience at the hands of their attacker. They deserve justice. But justice is only secured when the case against those accused of abuse is justly made.

Ms Cahill is proving her emotional resolve and stamina by providing real leadership in the battle against systemic cover up of wide ranging sexual abuse. She has the determination to excise this malignancy from republican culture. If she is successful she will give a fresh impetus to the laughter of our children and scourge those who laughed at them.

An Open Appeal to All Republicans

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer Ms Cahill

An Open Appeal to All Republicans
Ms Cahill

Over the last number of weeks, there have been several allegations circulating – alleged to have been perpetrated by members of the Republican Movement.

There has been mixed reaction to this within the Republican Community, but particularly those within the Provisional republican movement, and those within Sinn Fein Circles. This reaction ranges from outright disgust, horror, condemnation, to the very damaging “turn a blind eye and say nothing” approach. There are obviously people understandably angry as a result – not least the victims. There is a lot of hurt within this community also, hurt which has been compounded by recent contradictions, mistruths, outright denials and certain media spin, which has the potential to deflect away from the real issue – the alleged cover up of paedophilia within certain quarters. Whatever that hurt, there are also families hurting too, people who are trying to come to terms with their lives right across this island, and trying to deal with the fact that members of these families were abused.

There are also parents, rightly angry and worried about their children. People are now backtracking through the years, wondering if their children have come into contact with perpetrators - and they are also rightly questioning if they trust the people they know now. This is a massive issue, and it is a disgrace that alleged child abusers have had free reign to have access to other children. Collectively, we now know more about the issue of sex offenders and reoffending rates. It is likely that perpetrators do not rehabilitate by just simply moving on somewhere else. We know as republicans of a number of cases being discussed at present – is this just the tip of the iceberg? How many more children have been put at risk as a result of mishandling, and in some cases planned facilitation of moving people around the country?

I also want to make it clear, paedophilia is not restricted to members of the Republican Movement. Unfortunately, paedophiles ingratiate themselves in all walks of life. In some instances they are our relatives, friends, priests, professionals, community and youth workers, lawyers, teachers, doctors – the list is endless. No one is blaming the republican movement for members of that movement who inflicted sexual abuse on others.

The blame, however is rightly centred around how the republican movement dealt with the issue, in several cases. It is clear from these cases that not once did the people involved either in so called investigating or in listening, directly report to any of the authorities. They also retraumatised victims of sexual abuse by either their chosen action, or inaction. It is also abundantly clear, for anyone who wishes to take the blinkers off, that paedophiles have been able to move around the country and further afield. In some cases they continued to masquerade as republicans, which in turn afforded them protection, or at the very least a degree of trust, which then also in turn made it easier for them to do what they did, unchecked. That is disgraceful, and brings a deep sense of shame on anyone who continues to support the republican ideology. The fault for this lies squarely with those in positions of power who espoused themselves as the epitome of republicanism, individuals who were looked up to by some, and who now feel tarnished by that association.

There are people out there now who have knowledge in different parts of Ireland on similar allegations of sexual abuse. Are you one of them? There are also people who have heard things on the grapevine about similar alleged cover-ups. Again, does this apply to you?

By not speaking out, you allow yourself to become complicit in the same alleged collective cover-up. I am appealing directly to all republicans from all persuasions to tell what you know. No perpetrator should be allowed to continue to abuse. No movement should give them succour by shielding them. And no republican should sit on the fence on this issue, waiting on other victims to come forward in the hope that the full story should start to emerge.

Be proactive. Do not continue with the legacy of silence. Out all the cases of child and adult sexual abuse. Highlight any suspicion, or knowledge of cover ups. Do this through whatever channel is comfortable for you. An email has been set up, by myself to deal with this issue. If this is an avenue you feel comfortable with using, use it.

I also want to directly appeal to those still within Sinn Fein. I am aware that some of you refuse to believe that this happened at all. People will make up their own minds on the issue. However, as a human, there has to be a shadow of doubt in your mind. Ask the hard questions, and demand an answer. If you are not happy, demand again. No one can afford to put politics over the safety of children. As a human being, you cannot afford to stay silent on this issue. Do the right thing.

Email: exposethetruth2010@hotmail.com

Is mise le meas

Ms Cahill

Short Straw

It is not certain why the short straw ends up in the hands of Mary Lou McDonald on the issue of Sinn Fein’s handling of sex abuse cases carried out by party members or those with inextricable links to the party.

On the three occasions that she has faced Suzanne Breen of the Sunday Tribune, the paper's Northern editor has mauled her. Were McDonald playing professional soccer her performances would see her on a free transfer to a team well down the lower divisions by now. In these public exchanges she is emulating her track record in elections – losing.

On a number of points throughout last week’s Breen-McDonald mismatch on RTE’s Pat Kenny radio show McDonald displayed considerable weakness and showed signs of not having been adequately briefed as to what Suzanne Breen might say. She stumbled when Breen informed her that Killian Forde who had only defected from Sinn Fein to Labour had his profile removed from the party website but that the councillor against whom the allegations of abuse in Ardoyne still featured on it. When she criticised Breen for not having first gone to Sinn Fein about complaints of rape Breen pointed out that one of the the victims, Ms Cahill, had expressly asked that Sinn Fein not be told in case the party cranked up the intimidation machine. The reading out on air of Mairtin Og Meehan’s e mail to Breen confirming that Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams had been informed about the abuse of his sister left her reeling.

A former IRA leader with no love for journalists rang me immediately after the exchange on Kenny. He said it was like listening to Albert Einstein debating with the village idiot. McDonald’s performance was not as bad as that but it certainly was not good.

Mary Lou McDonald is an intelligent woman. She is capable of much better than her performances would suggest. But she has been dealt a very weak hand by her party leader and she is instructed to play with it to the bitter end in the ethical Stalingrad to which she has been sent in the middle of January without any winter clothing. In that pitiless theatre any party spokesperson thrown to the front without the proper apparel is immediately taken out with clinical accuracy.

When Mary Lou McDonald pontificates that the Sunday Tribune and its Northern editor are engaging in evasions and mistruths any gravitas she might have laid claim to prior to opening her mouth evaporates. There are few if any other papers in the country willing to week after week - including elevating the status of the allegations to the editorial - label the leader of one of the countries political parties an unmitigated liar in the absolute certainty that the leader accused of brazenly lying lacks the fortitude to have his day in court. That the paper is utterly confident in the making of such assertions is down to one very simple matter: the party of which Mary Lou McDonald is vice president has no standing when it comes to matters of political honesty.

She is further handicapped by having previously publicly expressed a belief in the one lie Sinn Fein without fail continues to tell about Gerry Adams – that he was never a member of the IRA.

Mary Lou McDonald can only play with the hand she has been given. Why it should be so underhand and ineffective is something she should seriously consider putting to the dealer. Failing that she can claim as many free tickets as she wants for her ride into irreversible negative political equity.

Disappeared

I didn’t go out to get this morning’s Sunday Tribune. My wife bought it in Belfast before it was scooped up by either the censors or the interested. So I will read it tonight when she returns or alternatively get it online. In parts of West Belfast it seems to have been going quickly enough. A journalist friend sent me a text message around 9am saying ‘Trib sold out.’ A friend in Louth also sent me a text saying Gerry Adams will be like Houdini if he manages to escape this time. The two texts combined suggest today’s story is another strong one. Probably why the paper is sold out in some places and read before the first coffee of the day is out of the pot.

I suppose it being sold out rather than blacked out is something to be welcomed. People can access it and then make their minds up rather than being told by the censors that they alone read it and have deemed it unfit for human consumption. Whether the Shinners have actually been grabbing it hot from the printing press or are victims of a wind up I don’t know. Neither would surprise me. With the party’s fondness for thought control it is so easy for the mind’s eye to visualise its members running around newsagents in the fashion that they come out with their paint brushes to daub over graffiti they don’t like. At the same time their incessant mendacity is a comedian’s wet dream so it is easy to caricature them.

While sitting in a relaxed state of amusement courtesy of the image of censors running through West Belfast grabbing papers by the armful, a comment came through to The Pensive Quill from yet another female former republican prisoner claiming that:

there is more than an element of truth in what the ex-prisoner told you about Sinn Fein censoring the Sunday Tribune. For the third week in a row we have been unable to purchase a copy of this paper anywhere on the Falls Road.

There is reason to be grateful that the paper rather than the journalist is all that has been disappeared. Same place, different time, things might just have turned out very different.

Whatever the reason for the disappearing paper the quality of its journalism is forging its way to all corners of the island leaving the mark of authenticity faster than any censor can blot it out. A spotlight is being thrust into the midst of some of the most sustained but shallow dissembling in any political party in the county. Its unremitting probing is now causing Sinn Fein no small measure of grief, casting it as the Billy Liar of Irish politics. The blunders Sinn Fein has made along its journey away from republicanism would never have acquired the same significance were it not for the manner in which its leaders have explained away those blunders in terms which nobody really believes.

With each new explanation sounder dafter than the last, it is becoming evident that the party of war is incapable of becoming the party of peace. Peaceful politics requires an acumen best not acquired on the battlefield. The strategic lies of war make an ill fit in conditions of peace. The Man of War can take his party no further. He needs to make way for the leader of peace.

Beadle’s About

Suzanne Breen and the Sunday Tribune are to be complimented for the sterling investigative journalism they are conducting. Tonight, as every Saturday night, is filled with a sense of expectation that tomorrow’s paper will be awash with new revelations. Belfast readers will have to be up earlier than usual. A former republican prisoner laughed as she told me Sinn Fein members were spotted buying the paper in bulk so that nobody else would get a chance to read them. If true, they must envy the Chinese for internet censorship. She read hers on-line.

Good investigative journalism always stimulates the mind. The sillier the responses of those being investigated the greater the whetting of the appetite for even more insights. Hiding the papers is as bad as having concealed the abuse issue to begin with.

Now if people were waiting on their curiosity to be assuaged by the BBC they will wait a long time. It seems to think the less society knows about contentious issues the better for it. Having hidden out in Haiti for almost a week, BBC television yielded to public interest and finally noticed the elephant charging through the news room. Even then the instinct was to feed the beast rather than corner it. The beast in question was not the Sinn Fein President per se but the issue of cover up and denial that growing numbers of people now suspect he was involved in. A queue of abuse victims is beginning to form outside his door demanding the justice they feel he has long denied them in his desire to place party before people and his own extended career before everything else. As James McErlean was fond of saying in the jail. ‘Lord pity me and screw the rest.’

Not that the BBC did a particularly good job in its handing of the matter. Rendered anaemic by the plague of the peace process which has suffocated all its vital signs it now flounders in the same news league as the doddering old Irish Times. The once proud paper of record just about manages to shuffle along in an advanced state of senility and timidity seemingly terrified of dropping any clangers about the peace process. Clumped together, BBC Northern Ireland and the Old Lady of D'Olier Street make a rare pair. Debilitated by investigative Alzheimer’s each forgets what it came for when they arrive on the door to ask the probing question. It is like watching a car being pushed with a rope.

During his televised interview Adams looked rattled as he was gently put through allegations of inertia in response to separate acts of serial rape and torture against a teenage girl and a ten year old child committed by his colleagues in the Provisional movement. Rather than give a plausible account of his role, whatever it was, he fell back on the hoary old defence that the paper tearing shreds from his credibility, the Sunday Tribune, was engaged in a campaign of untruths against him and the party he leads.

Whatever the strength of Sinn Fein’s case when it resorts to allegations of untruths and evasions its leaders invariably fail to get their well burst credibility ball over the line of believability. They are stopped short every single time. People just think they are being winded up when listening to Sinn Fein. They half expect the late Jeremy Beadle to jump out at the end of each Sinn Fein interview.

In a country of 5 million people, it is easy to find six million who don’t believe a word Sinn Fein says.

Hannibal Lechter Cumann

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Ardoyne Assault & Battery

Throughout the course of the Northern conflict Ardoyne was a reluctant host community to serious acts of political violence. It was so rich in source material that one of the outstanding early academic works providing serious insight into the mindset of the IRA and the relationship between it and the community centred on ‘the district’ as its inhabitants fondly term it. Frank Burton for some now incomprehensible reason called Ardoyne ‘Anro’ in his book The Politics of Legitimacy.

The political violence that afflicted Ardoyne, and which is often documented on the ‘Ardoyne Republican’ blog, was a violence of the streets. People with a fair measure of justification often claimed that some violent act happened right on their front door.

But behind some of those front doors a different type of violence occurred; a violence that was at the same time terrifying and concealed. Occasionally the twitch of a curtain or a muffled scream revealed its existence but more often than not it was conducted out of both sight and earshot of the public.

These days it is hard enough to get the Sunday Tribune. Shop after shop informs its customers ‘all gone’. One friend told us they tried three newsagents only to be told the same thing in each. The early bird gets the worm. Last Sunday I wormed my way out of bed just early enough to get a copy, having learned my lesson from the week before where the usual outlet had run out of copies. I am not quite sure I am happy about my successful acquisition. It is not possible for me to read what Martin Og Meehan has called the ‘great investigative journalism from Suzanne Breen ...’ and put the paper down satisfied at a good read. Breen’s story on the horrific abuse of an Ardoyne child is anything but a good read; it is simply horrifying.

The article is well written; in fact too well written. It places the reader in the position where they can almost smell the fear of a tortured child and sense its terror as the abuser returns for another round. Suzanne Breen’s brilliance as a journalist is that she does not bring the story to you but brings you to it; mentally places you at the scene of the crime; leaves you feeling that you want to shower after visiting the chamber of horrors so that you can be cleansed of the terrible knowledge that has seeped into the pores of your mind. For me the horror is accentuated due to the long standing friendship and comradeship I shared with the survivor’s father, one of the true republican greats, the late Martin Meehan. The only sense of relief I could draw from it all was that Martin died before he ever found out, rather than dying much earlier from finding out. How could he have survived the following account of what his daughter was forced to endure at the hands of her abuser who she referred to as X?

I was so scared that I wet the bed. X wouldn't let me change the sheets. I had to sleep in the ones soaked with my own urine. The mattress became infested with maggots. The smell from the bucket, and the bed, was overpowering. It made me throw up ... When I cried or screamed to get out of that room, X clasped my mouth shut. Then, X beat me with their hand and a belt [and] made me drink my own urine. This happened many times ... If I didn't finish my dinner, X left it there for days and I wasn't allowed to eat anything until I ate that food. Once, X filled the bath and held my head under the water until I passed out. Another time X cut off all my hair with a razor blade ... Sometimes, I cried so hard during a beating that I could hardly breathe. X monitored my every move. When X sent me to the shops, X timed me. If I was back one minute late, X beat me. X made me come into the living room at night when everyone else was in bed. X lay on the sofa naked and drunk. I was forced to touch X sexually. "X threatened to kill me if I didn't. X said if I was killed nobody would miss me because nobody cared about me. When I refused to touch X sexually, I was beaten until I did. X sexually violated me, using wine bottles ... I didn't tell anyone X was responsible for my injuries because I was terrified of X. I was a child of 10 living in total fear.

And on it goes. A story of sordid sadism inflicted on a ten year old girl.

There is too much independent evidence supporting the claims of abuse to allow any other interpretation of what this child went through. She was tormented and tortured, bullied and battered, neglected and humiliated, denied love and told no one would care because no one loved her.

There should be a special type of offence created for certain crimes against children. It should not be used for every wrong that happens to a child. That would devalue its purpose and give it a mundane feel that would fail to allow it to register in our minds when we hear of it. Too liberally applied it would not stop us in our tracks and jolt us out of our complacency. It should be used only against a particular type of person, which would not include the standard but loathsome paedophile, the school or playground bully, the parent or sibling who lashes out in anger. Crimes against Children should resonate in the public mind and create the same sense of revulsion as Crimes against Humanity. It would apply to those who tortured and murdered Baby Peter in London; it should also be used against the monster who made this Ardoyne child’s life a hell on earth, the only place there is a hell – and like heaven, all man made.

Crimes against Children – no forgiveness, no forgetfulness. Chase those culpable to the ends of the earth.

Ballymurphy Rape

the man who raped me, was nearly 40 and a prominent west Belfast IRA member ... I was frightened because of his position in the IRA and I didn't want to cause pain to my family. When I didn't speak out the first time, it set a pattern which I now deeply regret, but I was only 16 then – Ms Cahill.

It made for harrowing reading. A young woman from West Belfast narrated to the Sunday Tribune her account of the persistent sexual violence she was subjected to by a serial rapist who was also a member of the Provisional IRA and a former republican prisoner in West Belfast’s Ballymurphy. While his membership of the IRA did not prompt him to rape, it did, however, effectively allow him to get away with it.

For long enough I thought I was the republican facing the most problems in Ballymurphy for having the temerity to suggest that Sinn Fein would end up just about where they are now. On my side I had the benefit of experience and was prepared to mix it with my detractors in public. I could always draw public attention to my situation. Here was a teenage girl whose torment went on in the shadows; who because of the anonymous pressure of the group coupled with a sense of loyalty to the movement which her family had given so much to, was forced to undergo much more than I ever had to put up with. Unlike me she felt unable to speak out. A teenager being repeatedly raped by a prominent local IRA member and she had to suffer in silence, alone, in order to maintain the pretence demanded by ‘the Movement’ that it was without blemish. There was nothing in my experience that comes close to the pain and misery that this young woman was put through. Her attacker would later go on to sexually assault two relatives of the raped woman, one aged 17 the other 14. Like fellow rapist, Liam Adams, he was shunted off to Donegal.

What makes this crime all the worse is that the rapist was a member of Community Restorative Justice. Although it can’t be held culpable for his behaviour, people were encouraged to go to that body rather than the RUC. Yet here we had one of its key officials showing that he could inflict more harm and injustice on this young republican than the RUC ever would. The raped woman’s great uncle, Joe Cahill, who served as the second Provisional IRA chief of staff, recognised this much when he asserted she should have gone to the RUC about her experience.

Ms Cahill is all we can refer to her as out of respect for her wishes not to have her first name put out in the public sphere. She was a member of Ogra Sinn Fein at the time she underwent these horrendous acts of sexual violence. Despite her experience she remained in Sinn Fein and carried out a number of party functions. That took tremendous courage for which she deserves admiration. This young woman, on occasion reduced to tears by the nonchalant response of members of ‘the Movement’ to her plight, faced greater challenges in her bid to remain a member than they ever did. Carrying on against British state repression may be one thing but to carry on when those supposed to be your comrades and colleagues were the oppressors took some doing.

It also took equal amounts of real courage - not the ‘imaginative’ phoney courage we often hear mentioned in association with the endless summersaults of the peace process – to emerge into the public spotlight and tell her story. It is no easy task to stand in the national press speaking to the best investigative journalist in the country, Suzanne Breen, and bare it all. It took her five hours because of the emotional trauma involved.

The attacks on Ms Cahill are not the only allegation of rape to have been made against a member of the Ballymurphy IRA in which the survivor claimed there was a cover up or a fobbing off. Others have complained of having been violently sexually assaulted only to be given the run around when they raised their complaint to Sinn Fein.

It is brave talented people like Ms Cahill that a once principled movement has lost because ‘a few powerful individuals put the preservation of the movement and their own position above the safety of children’.

Pantomime Politics

Keeping the best wine to the last was not what Peter Robinson had in mind as the Christmas season drew to a close and the best political pantomime in years took to the stage, a little late but no less funny despite its lack of seasonality. Sinn Fein, in pursuit of parity of esteem, has not been willing to allow the DUP to have the silly season all to itself. It sent Mary Lou McDonald out to stumble and stagger along the airwaves so that it too could for once make a genuine claim that it is a co-equal in the ministry of something. The Ministry of Clowns might not have been agreed as part of either the Good Friday or St Andrew’s Agreement but sure it’s the peace process and most don’t seem to mind if things inside the package don’t always match up to the label.

Can Peter Robinson survive? Most people I talk to profess to think not. There is said to be huge dissatisfaction smouldering within the DUP over its leader who while once a major strategic asset is now sailing close to the wind of electoral liability. But things are not so sure. Although the DUP has considerably more talent in reserve than Sinn Fein, Robinson would still be hard to replace. The party pulled a master stroke in bringing in Arleen Foster to manage the first ministry. Robinson was able to step aside rather than step down. The party, buffeted and battered, has created space in which to regroup and consider its options. Robinson put in a solid performance in his interview in today’s Sunday Times with Liam Clarke and if nothing further emerges about irregularities of one sort or another he might well survive.

BBC Spotlight nailed Iris Robinson, easily depicting her as a crook. It laboured, however to get Peter into the dock. BBC Panorama did no better. Establishing a prima facie case means little other than ‘at first glance’ something isn’t right. The financial irregularities allegations against Peter Robinson looked weak when compared to the much more serious case made against his fellow party leader in Sinn Fein who stands accused of having covered for and promoted within the party a man he believed to be a child rapist. In fact the equality agenda meant that once the press pack snapped and bit at Robinson, it had little choice but to remove the muzzle and turn its attention towards Gerry Adams otherwise face charges of undiluted bias.

What Robinson now needs to overcome is the ridicule that his wife’s shenanigans have served up to him in US size portions. While the DUP has cleverly moved to insulate itself from ridicule ingress by creating the quarantine for Robinson to deal with it himself, the outcome is by no mean assured. Were this a serious thriller Robinson could easily weather the storm and steady the ship. But this has more of the circus than the thriller to it. A figure of controversy can continue to lead even if walking precariously and perilously if he manages to keep his balance. But a figure of ridicule who slips on every banana skin or takes every cream pie right up the face is going to have his work cut out. Forcing Iris to walk the plank by no means assures him that calm seas lie ahead once the storm is weathered. But for now the political weathervane must be blowing his way.

Lying For the Big Lad

While we might all wait on the latest Iris Robinson joke doing the rounds, in the case of Sinn Fein what we wait on is the next lie. They are as funny as Iris jokes, being as stupidly constructed as they are instantly beyond belief. Gerry Adams didn’t know his brother was in Andersonstown Sinn Fein until two days ago. Just as he didn’t know Niall Connolly of the Colombia 3 was a party member until somebody in Cuba told him. We might have been born at night Gerry but it wasn’t last night.

Last night, you see, was for something else, a death rather than a birth; the death of Mary Lou McDonald’s credibility. On BBC Radio Ulster when grilled by Seamus McKee, the Sinn Fein Vice President did not quite say her boss Gerry Adams had no way of knowing Liam Adams was his brother; but she almost did and most certainly would have were she instructed to.

It was embarrassing to listen to. Seamus McKee in his robust handling of the electoral flop has restored some credibility to the BBC which up until he took the bull by the horns had been verging on sheer cowardice in its handling of what is surely a very serious news matter. In any other Western European country the corresponding state broadcasting corporation would have long since been out of the traps providing the public with the information that they need to have in order to make informed decisions and choices in relation to their politicians. Until McKee stepped into the breach the BBC was not for going there. Lest we forget the North is the land of the peace process and as we know there are some things that are not afforded the protection of the peace process, a raped child being the latest to be cast into the ‘excluded from concern’ category. Whatever else, the BBC must always defend the process.

Seamus McKee is the radio interviewer par excellence. Anybody being questioned by him – as I have been – can expect no quarter. He is neither ignorant nor bullish, just methodical, forensic and unrelentingly persistent. And he brought all of it to bear on the less than illustrious Mary Lou McDonald. He never once humiliated her; she managed that all by herself.

Liam Adams, the brother Gerry Adams has long believed to be a child rapist, was this week uncovered by the Sunday Tribune as having served as a chairperson of a Sinn Fein cumann in West Belfast some time after Gerry Adams claimed to have expelled him from the party. In response to Seamus McKee’s suggestion that the party far from having expelled Liam Adams merely moved him, in the cavalier manner of the Catholic Church, about the country, McDonald angrily responded that Gerry Adams was unaware that the brother he believed to be a rapist was in Sinn Fein in West Belfast. The reason for this, McDonald claimed, was that Liam knew just how angry brother Gerry would be if he found out so decided not to promote himself. We are expected to believe that he hid himself out of view in the capacity of cumann chair; that maybe he wore a mask to meetings and had his words spoken through an actor’s voice; that meetings were held in attics and alleyways. All so the Big Lad would not find out.

We can confidently expect that in the North there will be an appeal made through the ‘I Love my Leader’ column in Thursday’s Irish News for a choir to be formed that will render verse after verse of ‘Come Let Us Adore Him’. But in the South of the country where Sinn Fein retains some semblance of radicalism and where debate is not avoided like swine flu, it has to be demoralising for activists on the ground that key members of the Southern public face of the party have allowed themselves to be compromised by the party president and the party support subsequently exposed to further haemorrhaging. Arthur Morgan up until this scandal was a plausible voice of critique of much of what is wrong in Southern society. Mary Lou McDonald too could manage to appear credible when she cut to the chase on issues like the Lisbon Treaty. Now, those hard won profiles have been deflated by the party leader who demands other senior colleagues bat at the crease for him.

But without any bat they are cruelly exposed to every hard ball hurled their way.

A Helping Hand

There are some terrible scenes appearing on our TV screens from Haiti where an earthquake, the worst to hit the country in over 200 years, has devastated the capital Port au Prince. It seems the poorest countries or the poorest regions within rich countries suffer most from earthquakes, once termed class quakes because of how focussed they were. We know of course that earth quakes as natural phenomena don’t discriminate in the sense of going after one person more than another. But the affluent build structures that make quakes less likely to inflict the type of devastation that we have witnessed in Haiti.

Strangely enough the one piece of footage to send a shudder through me was of black males running through the streets wielding machetes. It conjures up frightening images of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Then the thugs of Hutu Power stood at roadblocks hacking people to death. Against that there was the uplifting image of a two year old Haitian child being rescued and returned to the arms of his relieved mother. There is a ‘hospital of horrors’ where no medical staff are available and citizen doctors equipped only with the medicine of goodwill labour to keep others alive or make them comfortable as they slip out of life. In a world of plenty the prevalence of deprivation reminds us that our imaginary god who loves us all equally certainly didn’t have equality in mind when he created us.

Haiti has a terrible history. Those of us who remember the despotic Pap Doc regime and the reign of the Ton Ton Macoute murder gang recall the country for its brutality and as being one of the poorest in the world. There many children had orange hair, the result of a disease called Kkwashiorkor which was present in the malnourished.

When my wife and I sat discussing what charity or aid agency we should make a contribution to our eight year old daughter interjected to say that she wanted to send her savings. We were unaware that she was even taking any interest in the story. We discussed the matter with her and told her she could send 5 euro. We thought that would assuage her but she was having none of it and insisted on sending all her savings. Eventually we settled on 15 euro. Even then she protested that it was insufficient. We were so proud of her that at eight years of age she wanted to reach out to her fellow human beings and help them. It was evidence of a deep moral sense that did not need the myth of religion to drive it. Subject to no religious indoctrination, instructed only to care about her fellow human beings regardless of race or creed, she finds the idea of gods and heaven absurd.

Somewhere in a far off country a black child of eight will benefit because a white child of eight at the other side of the world cared enough to reach into her savings and reach out with her love.

Futile Contempt

Despite repeated assurances by the Provisional IRA that it would never surrender, would never quit, would never give up one bullet or one ounce of explosive, would never be defeated, and that the armed struggle would continue so long as the goal of a united independent Ireland remain unrealised, it finally capitulated – Timothy Shanahan

A week ago today in a gratuitous act of political violence a member of the British Police Service of Northern Ireland was targeted by Irish republicans. A booby trap device was attached to his car and he was critically injured when it exploded near Randalstown in County Antrim. Today it was revealed that he had a leg amputated and has yet to regain consciousness. That violence might have a political motivation makes it no less brutal.

The bomb attack employed the type of modus operandi that the latest IRA has inherited from the former IRA which specialised in such operations. Indeed it was the type of attack that paid the best dividends on the Semtex explosive shipped into the country by the former IRA at the height of its campaign. Rather than explosives shipments adding a qualitative new dimension to the campaign they merely allowed an old tactic to be upgraded which delivered in terms of operational results without in anyway offsetting the eventual defeat that the former IRA would sustain.

Unfortunately there are some who cannot come to terms with that defeat and will continue trying to reverse the irreversible by resorting to the methods of the defeated IRA, a consequence of failing to realise that those methods could never lead to success. The former IRA targeted and on occasion killed Catholic police officers and achieved nothing for it.

The type of operation that critically injured Peadar Heffron, an Irish speaking GAA player, is what the IRA does and will continue to do. It is unlikely to change as a result of people who at one time directed operations against Catholic police officers in pursuit of a united Ireland, screaming traitors at those who have opted to continue with the same operations in pursuit of a united Ireland. It at the same time demonstrates both the durability and futility of republican political violence.

It is an exercise which will do nothing to lessen the resolve of the British state to remain in Ireland. It has brutally maimed another human being who did not see his role as one of beating the nationalist community into submission. In fact he seriously promoted Irish nationalist culture. There may be no shortage of good reasons for criticising Peadar Heffron for joining the British police but not one for trying to kill him. This is what designating people as enemies rather than opponents tends to lead to.

The leader of the Alliance Party, David Ford, professed outrage ‘that a very small number of people still believe that using violence will achieve anything.’ Yet it is not necessary for the people who carry out these attacks to think that they can achieve anything. The tradition they belong to places emphasis on the right to resist British rule militarily. That action alone is achievement enough for many of its adherents. Theirs is a tradition violently fuelled for years by those who now call them traitors and who continued to wage a campaign ostensibly for a united Ireland long after they realised there were no prospects of that goal being achieved.

When the former IRA formally announced the capitulation mentioned by Timothy Shanahan in his probing book The Provisional Irish Republican Army And The Morality Of Terrorism, it stated that ‘we reiterate our view that the armed struggle was entirely legitimate.’ Yet its armed struggle was supported only by a minority of northern nationalists, themselves a minority within the north and an even smaller minority within Ireland. Much like today’s IRAs; the real difference between them and the former IRA boils down to one being supported by a bigger minority than the other. Not really the type of thing ‘entire legitimacy’ is grounded in.

Wars are things to be avoided just short of all costs. The right of the Irish people not to wage war is a right they value and are currently exercising. Their right not to wage war is stronger than the supposed right of any group to wage war in their name. The right of the Irish people to choose to avoid war is a right others do not want them to have and in monarchical fashion – monarchies are so antithetical to republicanism – are trying to usurp that right by imposing war upon them. The very contempt for the rights of Irish people that physical force republicans accuse the British state of displaying is itself a property of that brand of republicanism. The claim that they are fighting to prevent the British usurping the rights of the Irish people is made a nonsense of by armed campaigning. Whatever the raison d’etre of their political violence defending the rights of the Irish people hardly figures within it.

The End of the Adams Era

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer Tommy McKearney

The End of the Adams Era by Tommy McKearney

However reluctant he may be to go, Gerry Adams’s leadership of Sinn Fein is surely coming to an end. Having survived perilous times for over four decades, the Sinn Fein president is being brought down unexpectedly by a domestic issue not strictly of his own making. The Adams presidency will end under a cloud of disquiet generated by a failure to deal adequately with allegations made by his niece against her father.

During the years he led Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams accomplished much and his achievements remain significant. Under his influence, republicans began to emerge from a sullen sense of inferiority that too willingly accepted suppression and ill treatment as their natural lot. Crucially, he understood the imperative of gaining political influence and that this did not always grow from the barrel of a gun. Even before the public emergence of an electoral policy during the 1980s’s hunger strikes, Adams strongly advocated the need for his movement to extend its scope. He insisted that republicanism proactively assert itself as a bone fide component of Irish society and that its adherents and agenda be accepted as such.

His personality and presence was the decisive element in creating modern Sinn Fein. Under his dominating influence, an often sceptical and sometimes fractious movement was forged into a formidable and disciplined political machine. That he was able to do so without precipitating a major split or fratricidal bloodletting was little short of miraculous. And it was his towering personality that allowed for the development of a highly regimented organisation that could contemplate making a series of difficult decisions over a protracted period of time.

There is little doubt that Gerry Adams was instrumental in bringing about an end to the Provisional IRA campaign. Nor is there any reason to question that his was the decisive voice guiding Sinn Fein through a process that eventually had his colleague Martin McGuinness elected Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. An astonishing journey that saw his party move from applauding the attempted assassination of a British Prime Minister in 1984 to sipping tea thirteen years later in Number 10 Downing Street.

Although criticised by traditionalists for compromising on what was seen as bedrock principles, Adams’s role in bringing and end to the IRA’s armed campaign was welcomed by a majority of northern republicans. After a quarter century of pitiless struggle, there was a feeling in those communities that the war had run its course and its end was timely. Also appreciated by activists and supporters alike was the view that the IRA campaign had not ended as on previous occasions, in dejection and defeat. The Peace Process did not remove partition or the union but the hard-pressed republican grassroots believed Sinn Fein’s president had delivered a tolerable démarche.

Gerry Adams has taken his party to a position of real significance over the past twenty-five years. Few would seriously deny any longer that Adams and his party have played a large part in undermining the old Orange state. Sinn Fein is now the major voice within the North’s nationalist population. The party’s view has to be taken into account on all matters in the 6-Counties and in many instances the party exercises real influence over the direction of local affairs.

Such remarkable achievements came, though, at a price to the party. In order to maintain a unanimous position on all major issues, iron discipline was imposed throughout the movement. Although required to prevent rupture around divisive issues, this has led to intellectual and political rigidity, giving way in time to obedience and eventually acquiescence. Under Gerry Adams Sinn Fein has developed as a hierarchical party, a trend reinforced by his constant referral to ‘leadership’ and ‘leadership led initiatives’. The ability to impose his will on his party has been a double-edged weapon. Although facilitating difficult political manoeuvring, a dominant leadership culture has undermined many old ideological certainties substituting political managerialism in their place. This has brought about a situation that actively discourages political debate within the party and prevents the cultivation of alternative positions and personalities.

As with so many other powerful politicians, Gerry Adams has remained in office too long. As a consequence he has failed to provide for a successor or even for a process that would allow one to emerge naturally. He has moreover, due to his very tight hands-on style of managerial leadership, left the party ill equipped ideologically. It is almost impossible to tell what the party holds as non-negotiable any longer. Such pragmatic flexibility can be advantageous but only for so long as the leader knows where he is going and how to get there. It is, though, a risky strategy when the pilot falters or if he is forced to depart.

The end of the Adams era will not of course mean the demise of Sinn Fein although the nature of his going will cost the party much of the authority it has enjoyed through his presence. Who or what will emerge to fill the vacuum and from where or indeed from which constituency is an intriguing question.

Tommy McKearney, 7 January 2010

Booted Out

Iris Robinson has been booted out of the DUP. The horny old hypocrite was given the chop by the party in extra swift time once her financial corruption was exposed through BBC Spotlight. No claims by the leadership that it had only discovered she was a member; straight out on her hoop.

Outside of the puritanical religious circles she floats in her horniness will be forgiven if not forgotten. She will always be remembered and ridiculed, with no great degree of solemnity attached, as the Randy Mandy of Northern Irish political life. It is the hypocritical side of the equation that will pull more frowns than cocked eyebrows and really damn her. The abuse she dished out to gay people on biblical grounds while she was in blatant contravention of the same bible sticks in the craw a hell of a lot more than her boy banging penchant.

Danny Morrison once said of the DUP’s crooner Willie McCrea that he was as close to god as he was to the bottom of a coal pit. I suppose by that Bangers meant god as a concept associated with good, otherwise we fail to understand what is meant by his suggestion. The singing bigot and his ilk are inseparably close to the despotic violent god of the Old Testament and as far removed from a god of love as a bishop is from child protection. Much the same can be said of Iris the Virus. The evangelical religion, types like her love to beat other people over the head with, is not rooted in any notion of love but is hate filled and aimed at keeping people down. Watch any of those god channels on satellite TV; brimming over with bile and bullshit, homing in on the darkest fears and doubts of humanity in a bid to shake it down for cash. They don’t believe any of the biblical bollix themselves but value its effectiveness as an instrument of bullying for the purposes of exercising social control. Their stern faces, hectoring tones and admonishing fingers masking lusts, lies and licentiousness, all attributes they forever accuse only the ‘sinners’ of possessing. Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Iris Robinson, damnable crooks the lot of them.

While the commentariat dissect it all with varying degrees of analytical skill most of us are sitting back waiting on the next text message to come through. One great spin off from the whole matter has been the joke industry. There have been some great quips doing the rounds about the Robinson affair. The pick of the bunch has to be the one that has Peter Robinson at the opticians complaining that his eyes have been watering since March. The optician explains that he has found the cause of the problem: ‘something is stuck in your iris.’

It is amazing how they do it but for opportunistic speed you have to give it to the joke manufacturers. As soon as something breaks and captures their imagination the texts are soaring. There is nothing sacred, no protected species, no discrimination. The Adams family got it in the neck as soon as their own misfortunes made it into the public domain. It goes with the turf, funny as hell when directed at the things we mock, terrible when it rakes the things we cherish. Those who draw ridicule like a magnet are those who hate it most, the sanctimonious.

And there were few more sanctimonious than Iris Robinson.

The Iris Virus

Just finished watching the Spotlight investigation into the financial and other affairs of Iris Robinson, presented by Darragh MacIntyre. As is well known by now Mrs Robinson had an 'inappropriate relationship' as her husband phrased it with Kirk McCambley, 40 years her junior. That is her business and what draws consenting adults together in a sexual tryst is not for the rest of us to be judgemental about. She may be an extortionist gangster but that is for another day. Her affair is just that, her own affair. Robinson is not the first MLA to have had an extra marital fling and she most certainly will not be the last. Stormont reps are probably a representative sample of the rest of society in that regard, no better, no worse than anybody else.

Hardly the greatest crime in the world, it is her high political profile alone that makes the matter newsworthy. Embarrassing for her husband, but on its own hardly something that should capture our minds for long. What drove her away from Peter’s hands and into the arms of another we may never know. These things happen in life every day of the week. Not illegal, the vast bulk of them never make it beyond the local neighbourhood or club. Celebrities, not so fortunate, find their affairs thrust into the red top tabloids where they are injected with a good dose of smut to keep the readership titillated.

Of more importance, as Darragh MacIntyre points out, is the extent to which the transparency and accountability of the democratic system has been eroded by Iris Robinson’s corruption. She may not be the first MLA to have been corrupt nor the last but unlike her affair society has the right to demand answers of her regarding the choices she made.

Iris Robinson can do what she likes with her life but what many people, without passing moral judgement on her liaison, will find nauseating in this story is that not too long ago Iris Robinson made the headlines for her views on gay people. She pilloried them as abominations who should be viewed with anathema or treated by a psychiatrist. This attitude was borne of religious prejudice, worse, hatred. In some societies her fellow religious devotees view adultery pretty much as they do homosexuality. In Somalia, she might find herself stoned to death. Her own party might wish to see her in sackcloth and ashes. The love of god comes to us all in mysterious ways, not always peaceful or tolerant.

As for her young beau in all of this, in tackling Iris Robinson, Kirk McCambley might not have been imaginative but he was certainly courageous.

Stoned for God

Not that long ago I came across one of those pieces that almost prove the existence of the devil. Almost, but not quite. That is so because the presence of sheer malevolence in itself is never sufficient cause to offset the certain knowledge that the concept of a devil is every bit as ludicrous as its complementary concept of a god.

A young woman of twenty living in Somalia was stoned to death by the merciful men of faith for the heinous crime of having an affair with a man almost ten years her senior. He received 100 lashes. Those of us not brimming with the joyousness of god might fail to understand what was so terrible about that; her crime not the stoning. We need to contemplate a bit more and get in touch with our spiritual selves. Then the spectre of the divine might just lead us to conclude that she did not follow the prophet’s example and marry a child. And for that fall from grace she was showered in the love of Allah as the paradisaical stones rained down upon her in a bid to aid her purification.

What the young woman had already endured must have been traumatic enough. As a result of her relationship with the man she fell pregnant and a still born child was the outcome. The compassionate men of Allah considering this a minor detail stoned her anyway. While the young woman sought her sexual pleasure in a normal human way Allah’s men could only get theirs though bloodletting, each rock hurled an act of sexual prowess. There is I suppose a Marxist explanation for it out there somewhere in the midst of Trot town; Islam, the religion of the poor, found a solution to sexual need that was culturally specific and cheaper than condoms.

No matter how this is twisted the young victim was not butchered out of any sense of love. The cretins of Allah created for themselves a hateful god in order to legitimise their own hate filled behaviour. This is not a creator being worshipped but a creation, manufactured by the hate mob, being utilised to maintain status and social control. Domination theology, no more, no less, in the endless pursuit of submission. As debased and debauched as the mob who made him, the limit of his heavenly intelligence is projected by the type of solution he provides for the non-crime of sex outside marriage. We would imagine that the all knowing, all powerful, all merciful could come up with something much more sophisticated than stoning for those judged as wayward women.

In a country where a leading cleric can call for Muslims to be stoned to death if they fail to pray five times daily, and where only last year a 13 year old girl was reported to have been stoned to death for having been raped, none of this should surprise. The cleric in question probably feared there were not enough adulteresses who could be stoned, so made contingency plans for his thrills.

Whether it is child rape in Ireland or stoning women in Somalia, the thugs of god have struck again.

Cynical Versus Clinical

Today, as last Sunday and the Sunday before that, Suzanne Breen, the Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune, has been clinically tearing to shreds the protective web of deceit that Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has been cynically weaving around himself since it was first suggested that he played a major role in promoting and covering for his brother Liam. Liam Adams has been at the centre of a public controversy over charges that he raped his daughter for a number of years, commencing when she was an infant. Gerry Adams has publicly stated that he believes Liam is a paedophile who did seriously sexually assault his own daughter but has denied either covering for him or promoting him within the party structure.

Each week Breen brings new knowledge to public light. Each week Adams is found scurrying for the nearest fig leaf which immediately becomes translucent the minute he touches it, leaving what he seeks to conceal exposed. His parrying simply does not bear up to the thrusts from Breen, his explanations increasingly seen as self serving; more to do with safeguarding his political career while displaying haughty indifference to the rape victim at the centre of the story. Like an old champion, long past it, but desperately trying to hold onto his title by foul means not fair, he flails under the withering assault of a determined investigative reporter. She nimbly scores with each punch; he clumsily hopes he can gouge her in the eye on the blind side of the audience.

There is no doubt whatsoever that contrary to what Gerry Adams has maintained, his brother Liam was a reasonably senior official within Sinn Fein for an extended tenure in the period after Gerry Adams, the party’s national leader, concluded that Liam was a child rapist. Far from being made a persona non grata he was made the person in charge of Sinn Fein in County Louth. Breen’s coverage of the matter is one firm bulwark against investigative journalism in Ireland going for its swansong. If society depended on the Irish Times to keep it informed of major anomalies in the accounts of leading politicians it would quickly discover the ‘paper of record’ to have a pauper’s record – poor.

Last week the Observer columnist Nick Cohen made the chilling observation that in speaking publicly about his own family background of sexual abuse and physical violence Gerry Adams had bared a soul few thought he possessed. That Cohen strikes a chord with what he says and Adams does not is down to the Catholic politician’s long history of soulless political dishonesty which has been routinely employed to mask any flaw which might call into question the great leader’s greatness. The ruthless jettisoning of all principle to facilitate organised lying now means that as much credence is being given to the Sinn Fein president’s denials of cover up as it is to his gainsaying of IRA membership.

There is little to be surprised at in the Adams stance. As the song goes about the tree at the waterside, he shall not be moved. What began as a long war strategy has become a long leader phenomenon, without parallel in Western Europe according to press reports. The strong man of African and Central American politics is the model that most resembles the Adams reign.

It is beyond question that he has demonstrated a tenacious ability to hold on to the reins of power in a changing world where virtually every thing else has changed except the leader of Sinn Fein. Most other party leaders across the globe have moved off the scene to make way for fresh faces and new ideas. But not in Sinn Fein where permanent leadership seems to be an article of faith.

The cult of personality in Sinn Fein, assiduously cultivated over the years, is so strong that not a mute of discord has been heard from within the ranks. Its senior officials including elected representatives seem prepared to go down in history, not as activists who for political-strategic reasons defended the IRA against allegations of robbing banks ok killing and kidnapping those it took umbrage to, but as swindlers on a par with Irish bishops who thought that safeguarding the political career of one man should trump the need of a raped and tormented woman for justice.

It is understandable that the party president, lacking any moral compass, is quite willing to sacrifice what remains of the party’s credibility and the reputations of many of his colleagues in his bid to ensure that ‘I’m alright Jack.’ Their fate matters not to him. Why the indifference is not reciprocated from those with so much to lose is something that cult researchers will ply their trade to.