Killing Ciaran Doherty

The killing of Ciaran Doherty by the Real IRA just outside of Derry City on Wednesday evening was laden with evocations of the ‘bad old days’ when bullet lacerated bodies, were left bound and gagged at the side of a road on full public display. Over the decades many Derry men met a similar a fate; Jock Lynch in 1974, Franko Hegarty in 1986, two of the names that spring to mind. Killings which look no different from the slaying of Ciaran Doherty: brutal, chilling and sordid. The likeness drew the following precise observation from Brian Rowan: ‘all of what the dissidents are doing comes from an IRA book.’

There has been much condemnation of the killing. The North’s British First Minister Peter Robinson and his deputy Martin McGuinness spoke on behalf of the Northern Executive when they repudiated the ‘dirty deed’. McGuinness made the point that the republicans responsible for the killing need to realise that the war is well truly over. It might have helped fortify his repudiation of the killers had he said the war is well and truly over because it was well and truly lost; that the lesson of the Provisional IRA campaign has been salutary – do not fight wars that are not winnable, achieve little and exact a price in gross excess of the purchase.

Martin McGuinness’s Assembly colleague Martina Anderson also criticised the killing in strong and forthright terms. She put a lot of visible energy into challenging the people who took Ciaran Doherty’s life: her judgement, how dare they bring this type of activity to the streets of Derry. She may well be genuinely sincere in her revulsion. But the background of her party always places a low hanging ceiling on the moral authority Sinn Fein representatives can reach when making such condemnations. Representatives of other parties which have no history of association with republican political violence sound all the more plausible in their rejection of events like that which took place on Wednesday evening. The condemnation issued by Mark Durkan of the SDLP sounded natural rather than forced.

The Real IRA in claiming responsibility for the killing of Ciaran Doherty, who was the one time commander of the group’s volunteers in Portlaoise, accused him of knowing the consequences of certain associations he had maintained. In its statement the republican military group alleged that Ciaran Doherty was a senior member who had relationships with a criminal gang linked to the drugs trade.

That is no reason for having killed him. There is no war or legitimate targets. The Real IRA might well think it is carrying on in the tradition of the Provisional IRA when it dispenses this type of brutal justice; that because an army council signs off on the action that it somehow becomes morally superior to any other killing that takes place on the streets. While Real IRA inflicted fatalities may differ from a criminal killing it can hardly be claimed in their defence that they are any more meritorious.

The growth of the Real IRA, despite it being effectively red carded after the Omagh bomb, is in part a consequence of a growing realisation that the Sinn Fein leadership negotiated a very poor return on the Provisional IRA campaign. Sinn Fein being able to sit in the middle of a British administration and label other republican traitors is not what any republican ever envisaged as a worthy objective.

This realisation that little in the way of republican objectives were secured should be extended to the point where it allows for an acknowledgement that the Provisional Movement did not sell out a campaign that could have been prosecuted successfully. The Provisional movement sell out lies not in the defeat it sustained but in the management of that defeat which saw it defect to the British side and has it body and soul now backing an armed British police force.

The logic is stunningly simple: unwinnable wars are invariably lost. The Real IRA in trying to reinvent the Provisional IRA wheel will do what wheels do – go round in circles. No matter how many bodies like that of Ciaran Doherty lie strewn on darkened roads, that circle of futility will not be broken – just hearts.

Gerry Does Jesus

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

The Gerry & Jesus Show

You would imagine that there would be no laughs left to squeeze out of the North’s politicians. Until Iris the Virus came along that is and caused much mirth for all but her husband and family. After that there could be nothing else to rouse the laughter and douse the ennui. Or so we thought. Step in St Gerry of Jerusalem.

Channel 4’s documentary The Bible: A History was billed to be hilarious. Big Percy Pompous gallivanting around the Holy Land, explaining the true Jesus to the hoards of Philistines. New insights were certain to abound. The origins of the peace process might just be traced to the Bible. Jesus supported it too you know. All but the bovine bunch cringed at the thought of it.

The amount of texts and phone calls I received from people thinking it would be like something out of Monty Python left me fed up and reluctant to answer the phone or even read messages. That takes nothing away from the fact that in the end The Life of Brian had more in the way of serious religious content and discussion. I waited hoping Gerry would burst out in song – ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ an appropriate ditty given the occasion. Besides, he knew the lines well, knew them before those that wrote them even did.

A man apart – great leaders have to be – Gerry seemed to warm to the idea of the tomb when he entered the crypt that had at one time contained a brace of bodies, even joking about how it resembled Long Kesh tunnels and making quips about Sinn Fein having previously been an underground movement. I wasn’t sure if that was a loose reference to the fact that the party had undertaken certain business that had been carried out beneath ground or if it was just a reference to its one time illegal status. Whether he, the only civilian to have served as O/C of Cage 11, was ever down a tunnel I don’t know. The tomb had only recently been discovered, having been secret for a long time; a bit like Ireland where he can’t seem to escape association with secret burial sites. Here they have the annoying tendency to make the headlines at awkward junctures.

The anticipated spoofing began early enough. He had negotiated the Good Friday agreement which led to the release of the people who shot him. They were actually out four years before the Good Friday Agreement. Nor did he negotiate the Good Friday Agreement. The SDLP and Irish government did that. As Paul Bew put it two years ago: 'Presented with a fait accompli which he could not alter, he moved rapidly to claim ownership of the deal which had, in fact, been created by others.'

I may not have sat down to view The Bible: A History exactly with popcorn and soda but the gravitas with which I plonked myself on the settee had no great weight to it. I arose – not from the dead, the documentary didn’t quite do that for me - feeling the same way.

I can hardly claim amazement to have heard Gerry Adams say he had no blood on his hands – blood spilt by the IRA was the work of others, not he. The thought did cross my mind as he sat peering at Alan McBride, who lost his wife in the Shankill bombing of 1993, whether the thought crossed Alan’s mind that the man in front of him was often reputed to have been a member of the army council which ordered the bombing in which his wife lost her life. If Alan put the question to him it was edited out of the finished product.

While Gerry Adams as much as anybody else has the right to discuss biblical interpretation – and he did introduce some interesting observations into the discussion which made his interlocutors seem less than surefooted - his appearance had less to do with the erudite biblical knowledge he would bring to bear on the subject and all to do with the controversy it would provoke – helps push the ratings up. Moreover, it has helped compound the image of the North as a place that played host to a conflict sustained by a bunch of religious cranks.

During The Bible: A History, Gerry Adams claimed that his friends viewed him as a staunch Catholic. He hardly disappointed them as they watched him receiving Holy Communion and praying. I came away from the show with the realisation that at last there was at least something I had in common with Gerry Adams after all these years. Neither of us believes in god.

Buried Secrets

In yesterday’s Irish News it was revealed that the former IRA hunger striker Dolours Price had stepped up to the plate and acknowledged her involvement in some of the Northern conflict’s most notorious incidents. It was a remarkable step made none the easier by an undoubted awareness on her part that there exists a widespread public revulsion towards disappearing people, some of whose remains have yet to be uncovered.

The group responsible for the bulk of the disappearances was the Provisional IRA. In some cases not only did it disappear its victims but it bestowed the status of double disappeared on them. The very act of their disappearance was itself disappeared. This disclosure, as made public in the case of the late Joe Lynskey, has thrust a dagger into the heart of the Provisional IRA’s earlier claims to have been doing all in its power to recover the bodies of people it had secretly interred. There is not the slightest intention of recovering a body of a person never revealed as having been disappeared to begin with.

Although Joe Lynskey would seem to have disappeared in the summer of 1972, when the late Seamus Twomey was commander of the Belfast IRA, the dark practice really came into its own under the leadership of Twomey’s successor in the city, a Pinochet type character who overruled the objections of his operations officer to the new policy. In a few short months at least three people had been spirited away never to be seen alive again.

Dolours Price was reported in the Irish News as having been the IRA operative who drove Lynskey across the border from the North days before he died and who remains buried in some hidden grave. Whether Price knew the fate that awaited Lynskey before she accompanied him on that journey has not been made clear. There is little doubt however that she has undergone severe trauma as a result of her IRA involvement.

That trauma was a subject addressed by Sinn Fein president, and former Provisional IRA chief of staff, Gerry Adams. Clearly pricked that one of his former volunteers would publicly identify him as the man who issued orders to her while she engaged in IRA activity, he has sought to defuse her charges by claiming that she is opposed to Sinn Fein and the peace process. He has also called on her to take responsibility for her own actions and for former combatants to be proud of their role in the IRA.

It very much seems, as reported in the Irish News, that Dolours Price is taking responsibility for her actions. What appears to have enhanced her trauma is that others have failed lamentably to accept responsibility for theirs. Her trauma has caused her to remember. Maybe others are not traumatised because they have conveniently managed to forget – that they were even in the IRA.

IRA volunteers have every right to look back on their role with pride. But it does not fall upon them to be proud of everything the IRA did. No volunteer can claim to derive pride from actions that were demonstrable war crimes. And if the IRA is something to be proud of, why does its one time chief of staff deny that he was ever in it?

Taking responsibility for our actions is indeed laudable and for which Dolours Price deserves praise. Taking action to avoid our responsibilities is shameful. The IRA did many wrong things but it was not so terrible that we need to be ashamed of it.

Did those most ashamed do the most terrible things?

Light From The Dark

During the Blanket protest the blanket men, most barely out of their teens or still in them, would sing a song: ‘we’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go, wherever he wants to go.’ It was a song that was really sung from the cells, not a spoof about a song being sung in the H-Blocks before the song was ever written as one well known Walter tried to dupe us into believing a while back. The ‘old man’ was Brendan Hughes who was in fact anything but an old man. Only 29 when he embarked upon the blanket protest, Brendan was in the prime of life and brimming over with radical vitality which he never allowed slip into fanaticism.

The Dark would laugh at the thought of us who were so willing to follow him as he led us through those daunting arduous years of prison protest, no longer being as eager today to follow him – quite prepared to wait our turn or put it off for as long as possible. ‘Such is life’ would be his summing up of our sense of contentment to remain where we are. We can face death when it comes – so long as it doesn’t come for a while.

A republican icon in those heady and challenging days he possessed charisma and charm in abundance but was never flash. He had an unassuming character which saw him shun the bright neon for the quietude of ordinary people.

Now dead two years, it is those same ordinary people who are flocking to his memory. On web forums, chat rooms, in bars, on the street and in the workplace Brendan Hughes and his views are discussed with more than a passing interest. An upcoming book about his role in the republican struggle by the journalist Ed Moloney is awaited with great anticipation.

In the final years of his life Brendan drifted to the margins of the political radar screen. That screen had been monopolised by the peace process lobby and if your face didn’t fit then you were shunted to the sidelines. Brendan was happy to sit on the margins because in his view of the world it was at the margins where the marginalised, whom he had always championed, were to be found. He did not hog the limelight but did not fear the spotlight when he felt compelled to say what had to be said.

That interest in his life and views is growing rather than diminishing is not because of the fact that he is no longer with us. Many republicans have died since the passing of The Dark but they are remembered for the most part in private and do not generate the public interest that he has. Brendan Hughes is achieving a centrality unfamiliar to him in the final years of his life because of the legacy he has left. His contribution to republicanism was an authenticity that is missing in the discourse of many with whom he served in the ranks of the IRA.

One of the most potent criticisms that can be levelled at his onetime mentor and fellow leader of the IRA in Belfast, Gerry Adams, is that the Sinn Fein leader has warped republicanism into one vast lie. The entire Sinn Fein project lurches embarrassingly from one lie to the next.

Brendan’s fellow hunger striker Tommy McKearney once observed that Sinn Fein’s bottom line is that there is no bottom line. This is because the party can be believed about virtually nothing.

The Dark is being lionised today because of the honesty he has brought to our understanding of republicanism. People have seen, as a result of his efforts, that the republican armed campaign which both inflicted and endured great misery was never about Catholics becoming junior partners to the British in the administration of partition. His philosophy was simple: if republicanism is an honest project to begin with it should be defended honestly. There is no need for the routine resort to lying.

The authenticity of Brendan Hughes against the mendacity of Gerry Adams will shape the contours of future discursive battlegrounds. It will become one of the major prisms through which the history of the republican struggle will be interpreted. A struggle between republican substance and Catholic spin. Strange that we had to look into the Dark to find light.

Responding To Seán Mór

Earlier today the former republican prisoner and current Irish language enthusiast ‘Seán Mór’ placed a comment on The Pensive Quill which while not addressed to anybody in particular, does merit something in the way of response from those of us who feel we can rule in or out of the republican court people on the basis of the views they profess to hold.

Thomas Paine’s notion might well have some purchase on the thinking of Seán Mór. If so, it is good company to be in.

It has always been the political craft of courtiers and court government to abuse something which they call republicanism but what that republicanism is or was they never attempt to explain.

There is already an interesting discussion prompted by the Seán Mór question. Because my response, although quickly written, is a bit long for a comment, I have opted to post it as an article on TPQ. This gives it no special status and others who feel they wish to make use of the same facility for a lengthy response can do so.

I have neither the time nor inclination to find the time to write a comprehensive piece detailing what republicanism includes and excludes. But there are some thoughts that struck me immediately upon mulling over Seán Mór’s question and which I wish to commit to print.

I see a difference between an Irish nationalist and a republican. Connolly was at pains to emphasise such a difference in his Labour In Irish History. He placed a demarcation line between conservative nationalism and radical nationalism. The latter was more complementary to and compatible with republicanism. So, there is history of differentiation that republicans might draw upon.

In 1995 I used a term to describe the SDLP at a public discussion in Derry - ‘partitionist nationalists.’ Mitchel McLaughlin bristled at its usage arguing that there was no such thing; to which I responded that a partitionist nationalist was a nationalist – very different from a unionist who valued the union and opposed any united Ireland outside of British rule - who wanted Irish unity but who was prepared to have such unity deferred in preference to the partition/consent principle. Now Mitchel knew quite well that I was actually critiquing the SF position-to-be in a shielded fashion and for that reason he tried to rubbish the suggestion. So while a nationalist can be a partitionist a republican never is. It is the primal ground a republican cannot abandon.

About three years ago in a review for Fourthwrite I wrote the following:

But if republicanism is viewed as a systematic history of ideas rather than a whatever you’re having yourself philosophy then at its heart are core tenets that it seeks to promote and which distance it from the other perspectives that seek to utilise its insights.

It stands apart from nationalism in that interdependence rather than commonality defines it … Republicanism poses a particular challenge to nationalism in that it is based on citizenship rather than commonality. The point is illuminated in the collection of essays by showing that Germans living in Russia could obtain German citizenship as soon as they arrived on German soil but Turks living for years in Germany were denied citizenship.

In other words republicanism embraces people, not just some people on the basis of their national identity. It champions citizenship rather than common background.

The type of republicanism we are discussing today however is the republicanism that moulded the bulk of us – Provisional republicanism. It was a hybrid ensemble and the Provisional part ditched all republican sentiment and jumped into the arms of the British administration. The core issue it ceded ground on was the partition principle. Accepting that a minority in the island have the right to exercise veto and keep the country divided is the antithesis of republicanism. And support for the consent principle is inseparable from acknowledging that minority right to veto the unity of the country.

Whether the consent/partition principle is a good or bad thing is not the point – what is the point is that it is not a republican thing in that it is alien to the republican primal ground.

Taking it down to its most basic level, is there any republican who would criminalise armed republican activity and side with the British police against it? I totally oppose the use of armed force and criticise it most strongly but never forget that the people using it are in the very same mould as those young men and women who resisted tenaciously the British criminalisation policy in the jails. The SF leadership is in the mould of Don Concannon, Roy Mason and all that British crowd that stood shoulder to shoulder with the British police shouting ‘criminal’ at the people wearing the blanket. It should be an easy matter for observers to judge for themselves on what side of that line republicanism is to be found.

Late Late

Arriving home from Dublin late in the day and tired to boot my idea of a relaxing end to the evening was hardly one of watching the Late Late Show which had earlier been billing an appearance by Gerry Adams as a significant feature. Watching Northern politicians waffle about the peace process might have some uses but as a means to keep awake it is pretty much redundant.

Listening to any of my former military leaders from the days when I was an IRA volunteer holding court on television is not something I have a penchant for. They never seem to say anything that would halt me in my tracks and cause me to think, ‘didn’t expect that.’ Nor are they ever able to announce the securing of anything remotely resembling the aims which the IRA promised to deliver while I was a member. So, as time passes, what leaders from my IRA days say does not send me scrambling for the paper or a TV remote control in the way that it once did. It makes absolutely no difference to anything whether I hear them or not.

I felt in advance of last evening’s chat show that there was nothing the Sinn Fein president would say that would shock or startle viewers. He was hardly going to reveal that he was the Provisional IRA’s chief of staff in 1977-78 or its Belfast commander in 1972-73. Secrets best left buried I suppose. Nor was he likely to announce a united Ireland for 2016. His colleague Martin McGuinness tried moving that ‘certain day’ forward to 2014 a year ago only to be scorned and sniggered at by the unionists. Try spinning that bollix to the electorate in the South and you are certain to be laughed back across the border. What it amounts to is simple: the Promised Land has been sent packing and in its place a greater public consideration of Brian Cowen’s more sober assessment that the country might be free from its economic woes by 2016. That is what taxes most people’s minds, not the endless peace process and nonsense about a united Ireland in 6 years time.

Still, tired as I was, I lay down on the settee wondering how Ryan Tubridy might handle the interview. He had demonstrated from the first Late Late show he hosted that while Brian Cowen might be Taoiseach of the country the Taoiseach of Late Late was Mr Tubridy and no other. He was hardly going to prove susceptible to the Adams ploy of bullying and hectoring. Nor would he allow his interviewee to drone on endlessly about the peace process. RTE can’t have the whole country sleeping during its big Friday night special.

All things considered, it had all the potential for no contest. Tubridy has always looked sharp and quick on his feet. Adams in recent years has seemed cumbersome and jaded, repeating the same old mantras, searching out some scapegoat onto whom his woes can be pinned. Moreover, I was of the view that his major Irish News interview alongside his slot on the Tubridy wheel was not coincidental. Both may have been timed to draw the sting from the upcoming book on IRA matters by the distinguished journalist Ed Moloney. What has filtered out from the book thus far seems to have frightened the Sinn Fein horses. If so, Adams rushed his fences and shot his wad too soon. The much anticipated book has not been released to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Brendan Hughes, the late Provisional IRA leader, whose testimony is said to form a crucial part of the Moloney story. When the book does come Adams will not have the same opportunities to defang it.

In all then the Late Late promised to be something to stay up for, no contest or otherwise. Yet the willpower deserted me. Not long after Samuel L Jackson appeared I drifted off. My wife, maybe not expecting a handsome enough Valentine’s treat, shook me from my slumber to tell me ‘it’ was on. ‘It’ indeed; through bleary peepers what ambled across the screen in front of me seemed like something from a Stephen King novel. Was it really Harold Shipman back from the grave beaming out from our screen? While relieved to realise that my eyes were focussing in on Gerry I could hardly feign joyousness at the knowledge that here was someone with even more accomplishments than Harold.

So how did it go? It was not one of the Sinn Fein president’s worst performances. He keeps them for election time down here. Yet he will get no bounce whatsoever out of it. Tubridy gave him little space to promote himself. Rapid fire questions which produced only banal responses prevented Adams taking control of the interview. His one attempt, when he made reference to the republican anti-Treaty credentials of Tubridy’s grandfather, quickly saw the initiative snatched away from him by the Late Late host’s fleetness of foot. The moment had passed and the opportunity was lost. Where other interviewers have let go off the reins when confronted by Adams ‘whataboutery’ Tubridy tightened his grip and cleared the fence.

Most things, even his evasions on the issue of his brother Liam’s inexcusable behaviour, might not have caused Adams any credibility problems. Tubridy for whatever reason chose not to press him hard enough. It was the silly old prevarication on the question of IRA membership that has disembowelled him time after time, which saw him limp out of the studio. If Tubridy failed to experience a Paxman moment when Adams denied ever having been a member of the organisation he once led as chief of staff, then many others registered it for him. Urban myth or not, Paxman is reported to have famously said that a thought that often crosses his mind when interviewing politicians is ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me.’

The answer is in the question.

Dis/topia [sic]ness

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, Mark McGregor

Distopia [sic]ness by Mark McGregor


The Provisional movement was a four decade long hegemony in Republicanism, other groups rarely featured in a narrative dominated by them. Political challenges were like gnats on a cow’s arse and competing militarists a whimper beside a bang.

Slowly from the 90s on as that ‘movement’ gradually retired itself from militant republicanism, both armed and political, a space should/could have opened for those that rejected the direction taken. Those opportunities were consistently missed. Various groups have managed to build and then neglect small globular clusters of dissent over years - none ever achieved a gravitational pull large enough to become the dominant voice of republican opposition. The discerning dissenter now has more options than a P7 child deciding on secondary education - but unlike them knows failure is almost always guaranteed.

Republicans have even been faced with a ‘Unity Network’ promoting a ‘Unity Forum’ that half the organised groups are ‘United’ in ignoring. The options of organisations to join has never been so vast, Republicans finally have real choices to make - on which futile organisation suits them best.

While this goes on, Republicanism retreats further into insignificancy. Fractured, competing and utterly irrelevant. Some groups build fiefdoms but nobody builds a head of steam or a broad base. Huge areas without a viable group of committed activists from one organisation are left with no republican organisation at all. In many instances nobody ends up taking a credible stand on issues that should matter.

Instead of a mirror being shown to the face of the British state and its supporters we have a shattered myriad of fragments blinding all and ensuring focus is impossible.

Priest Off

One certain to upset the humour haters. A friend sent it to me and I found it so funny. Follows after the jump. Enjoy.

The Borefast Agreement

The great bores of Ireland have been at it again in the North this past week or two. Not that I spend a lot of time following it. It reminds me of one of those movies my kids watch so often that they know the lines verbatim, being able to speak in sync with the characters word for word. For me, the ability to maintain interest in anything served up ad infinitum, food, films or fools, demands either an iron will or no imagination. I am neither gifted nor cursed with either.

Political commentators must feel the same; they know it’s all action replay from beginning to end. Whatever angle it is viewed from it remains the same. They could as easily run some old news reel from years ago and the public would hardly notice the difference. While Blair and Ahern have moved on, the idea that old faces should not be thrown at old problems seems not to have registered up in Borefast, the North’s political capital. That probably goes some way to explaining the seeming intractability and longevity of the contentious bone. The issue is less a problem than its supposed solvers. Same old, same old, desperate to remain in power all these decades later; operating on the simple basis that ‘with no new faces to zoom in on, the cameras will have to look at us peeking out at them like peeping Toms from behind doors or whatever, still clinging to the notion of being indispensable.’ A few years ago the Irish Times described one of the North’s chief negotiators as someone who goes rigid with excitement the moment a camera is in the vicinity. There are other products on the market that should do that for him without involving a long suffering public.

On Friday I took a call from a Northern journalist inviting me to do some radio commentary on ‘developments’. Another deal had apparently been struck and agreement had at last been reached on policing and justice, none of which will improve the lives of anybody one iota. I declined. I could have gone in cold and did it, easily drawing on experience of what has flowed under the same bridge from the same sources since long before the two children here were born. I saw no point. I had little interest in it and had no inclination to make any serious effort to find out. It will make no difference to the lives of my children, and the North will be just as British this week as it was last. I sensed the journalist I was speaking with had the same feeling. But it is her job to keep people alert. How to keep them awake I felt was the real challenge. I did not envy her having to scavenge through the political rubbish tip in the hope of finding some caffeine like substance rather than sleeping tablets. I felt like telling her that a public health warning should be broadcast in advance of any news items coming out of Stormont: something like ‘do not drive or handle machinery after watching the following: it is liable to make you drowsy.’ But we knew that anyway as both of us reached for our caffeine laced coffees the minute we stopped talking about it. That's how I imagined our response - we were divided by the partition line so I couldn't actualy see her.

Sunday, evening, two days after the new agreement, I have little idea what it is. Haven’t listened to the news, bought a paper, not even the Sunday Tribune, or browsed the net. I have hardly missed anything. A Belfast journalist sent me a few texts. He seemed to have as much interest as I had.

The ancient Chinese wish for their enemies came in the form of a curse that they should live in interesting times. Nobody in the North of Ireland has ever upset China.

Donegal Bag Man

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge