Walk On To Nowhere

Not much to say about it. Liverpool have flopped badly this season and played well beneath their station of old. The team knows it, the fans know it, as do the Liverpudlian dogs on the street. Last night’s display against Athletico Madrid in the Europa League, hardly the Spanish capital’s most illustrious side, just about summed up their season’s performance. Athletico, despite a pedestrian display over two legs, still managed to stroll fast enough to avoid being caught by the Scousers.

That’s the Pool’s season well and truly over. They might still come fourth in the English Premier League and I might still fly to France yesterday. They have stumbled and stuttered their way through from last August, never rising to the expectations many of their fans had. Points squandered when victories seemed easier achieved, seemed be infectious as the club slipped one rung after another down the ladder of soccer respectability. Jamie Carragher might well argue that the team needs at least three new players but there was little in the way of acknowledgement that he should go to make way for at least one of them. A great player in his day who has since gone to seed, his first team future should maybe lie elsewhere while he has still the pace to make it in the top flight. If Liverpool continue to build around him and Steven Gerrard they won’t be a top flight team for long.

A few seasons back Gerrard was an influential and inspirational captain. Now he seems to go through the motions. The power diminished, the hunger no longer there, the highlight of his playing career will remain the Istanbul Champion’s League victory over AC Milan five years ago. He will certainly pick up no silverware in an England shirt. That he is likely to finish his career without a league title is something for him to rue but he should be philosophical. The Reds under his leadership have missed their chance. Not one title has been greeted from the Kop for 20 years. Then Glenn Hysen was one of the stars of the side. Who remembers him today? Long time ago.

Earlier this season Graham Souness, one of the Anfield Greats who for no reason other than timing failed to play for the greatest Liverpool side ever – the 1976-77 team – raised fears that the current Kop side might end up like Leeds United. It sounded alarmist then but not so much now. How is Liverpool to improve on its current position? The core of the team is past it, no new money is coming in, the manager’s choice in the transfer market has been questionable, Xabi Alonso, more crucial to success than anyone other than Torres was let go to ply his flairs in warmer climes. Liverpool FC is a team with a great past but a bleak future. Things can only get worse.

For her 8th birthday I had considered taking my daughter to Anfield. I ended up refusing to fork out the eight or nine hundred Euro the travel agency was looking for the trip. My love for my daughter is absolute but for Liverpool it is conditional. That sort of money demands quality in return. Liverpool simply have little on offer. Making the expensive journey to be rewarded with a good display from Sunderland was hardly the birthday present I wanted for her.

Last night’s defeat was different from the others throughout this sorry season. For the first time in twenty years there is sense that the reversal in fortunes may itself be irreversible.

Skullduggery

Today the Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer Helen McClafferty detailing state skullduggery in the case of Irish republican Gerry McGeough

April 20, 2010

Following a number of hearings at the High Court in Belfast, Gerry's trial has now been adjourned until after May 14th.

The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) has been given until that date to produce material it has prior denied existed.

The delay is significant in that it means that there will be no media coverage of Gerry's case until after the May 6th British General Election.

Given the volcano of information pertaining to secret deals and backroom arrangements that is now beginning to emerge because of the trial, both Sinn Féin and the British government are eager to have the matter kept quiet during the campaign for election.

This de facto censorship has been the hallmark of the entire proceedings against Gerry McGeough since his arrest at a polling station during the 2007 elections in which he stood as a political candidate.

Were the material that is now becoming available be made public prior to the election, Sinn Féin would find itself struggling for votes in several areas.

This collusion at the highest levels once again underscores the totally political nature of the proceedings against Gerry.


April 24th, 2010

Once again Gerry's lawyers have been put in the position whereby they have to lodge a protest with the British over the childish antics of their so-called "intelligence" services.

The most recent stunt has involved the tiresome old trick of live wire tapping. This entails loud clicking on the telephone during conversations indicating that members of British Intelligence are at that very moment tuned into the conversation as opposed to the regular electronic recording of discussions.

As it is no state secret (indeed) that Gerry's phone is under constant surveillance, the only purpose behind live wire tapping is that of petty harrassment.

The well paid functionaries within the British Intelligence system clearly have a lot of time on their hands.

Battle of the Memoirs

Just got my copy of the book about Gerry Bradley’s life in the IRA returned to me. A friend who had borrowed it dropped it back in when he had finished. His view: worth the reading. For those who don’t know Bradley, a former IRA prisoner, is the subject of a biography by Brian Feeney. How reliable the book is I cannot say, not yet having read it. Never a wise move to judge a book by its cover or the clowns it provokes. Feeney is no fool and would be unlikely to produce work that failed to stand up. Having written a lengthy history of Sinn Fein, he has a fair understanding of the subject matter.

My wife bought me the book as a present when it was first published. That I had no intention of reading it any time soon was not down to failing to appreciate her choice of books for me; they are always good. Just too much in front of me to be ploughed through for now. On top of that I have overdosed on republican historiography this past while back including engaging works by Kevin Bean, Rogelio Alonso, Timothy Shanahan and Martyn Frampton, all of which I intend to review at some point. Having not yet managed to finish reviewing Jonathan Powell’s memoirs, I wonder from where the time can be plucked.

As for Gerry Bradley, I never met him although I did attend the closing day of his trial back in the mid 1990s. My reason – I was friends with two of his co accused, having spent much time in prison with both. Watching them go down for big time was irritating. Why they were ever sent out on an operation as part of a war that the leadership had by then decided to abandon didn’t rest easy with me.

When Feeney’s book on Bradley was first published it was said to be clearing the shelves like fresh cream. A bit like the type of thing we are hearing in relation to the rate at which Ed Moloney’s Voices From The Grave is moving. Books like that shift so quickly because they offer something the officially approved narrative does not. If you like your history fictionalised go flick through the authorised pages. They will provide you with lots of what never happened. If you prefer something closer to the bone look elsewhere.

I will read the book on Bradley as soon as. What prompts me to pick it up rather than put it on the long finger is the bitter opposition in some quarters to it being read at all. Irate censors have reportedly taken to making it difficult for Bradley. Potential book burners were approaching him to vent their anger over his refusal to submit to censorship. I recall reading that the censors were daubing ‘tout’ on the wall in North Belfast beside his name. The same sort of smear tactic that was put in use outside the home of Blanketmen author Richard O’Rawe. The peace in the peace process is not to be afforded to republicans like Gerry Bradley.

The censors are irony-blind considering the current penchant for touting among many of Gerry Bradley’s former comrades. Going directly to the British police with information on republicans seems to be the limit of the revolutionary imagination these days. If Bradley were to take part in an armed republican assault on armed British police today in East Belfast the mob would be scrawling ‘traitor’ on the walls. And any modern day Kevin Fulton who ran to the nearest cop shop to squeal on him would be lauded as a hero of the peace process.

Moreover, in an interview with The Independent, the Sinn Fein president was said by interviewer Johan Hari to have claimed ‘that several figures in the Real IRA – again, he names them, but for legal reasons I can't – are in the pay of the British.’ While not touting as such it is hardly any different from what Bradley is alleged to have done.

The upshot of it all is that Bradley at some point supposedly headed for Dublin to escape the hassle. But from the outset he could hardly have remained oblivious to censorship being par for the course in the stable he hails from. Independent comment frightens the horses. When Richard O’Rawe first published his mould breaking work Blanketmen the professional growlers stalked everywhere but the libraries or bookshops. O’Rawe was determined and they failed to have their censorious way with him. It will be likewise for Bradley if he continues to hold his nerve. Given the amount of dissatisfaction amongst republicans at the Sinn Fein managed collapse of the republican project, he will hardy be doing solitary.

At the end of the day there is nothing like the good old censor to ensure the forbidden book is sought after and digested like no other. Words from a recent film spring to mind: sometimes we meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it. The more a work is censored the more it is likely to be read.

It would be a sad subversion of history if the memoirs of those involved were not to make it to the surface at some point. Coalface participants in any conflict who remain unashamed of their involvement will always serve the historical narrative much better than those leaders embarrassed into pretending they had no part in it all.

In his great work on the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, The Road To Stalingrad, John Erickson referred to the post war ‘battle of the memoirs.’ What happened, why it happened, who decided it would happen are all questions that invariably and relentlessly drain the censor’s blotter in the wake of any serious conflict. The role of the censor is to prevent people arriving at informed judgements about events that impacted on their lives. Those who seek to blot out what we wish to read can fume and rail all they want but the chips will fall where they will and readers shall make up their own minds.

Face To Face

Today the Pensive Quill carries a piece from guest writer Helen McClafferty describing yesterday's face to face confrontation between the republican Gerry McGeough and the Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams got an unexpected introduction to local
political issues in South Tyrone after 10am Mass at Eglish church this morning (25 April).

Adams was canvassing with with Michelle Gildernew who is currently struggling to hold on to the Fermanagh/South Tyrone Westminster seat. The pair, along with about ten members of the extended Gildernew family who now provide the rump of what's left of Sinn Féin in South Tyrone, were bunched at the gate entrance to the church, about four miles from Dungannon, giving out flyers to Mass-goers emerging from the country chapel.

One such parishoner was Gerry McGeough who is currently on trial in a Diplock Court on Troubles related charges dating back to 1981. McGeough is also charged with being a member of the IRA in 1975 when he was about 16-years-old. He was famously arrested outside a count center in Omagh following the 2007 Assembly elections in which he had stood as a candidate.

Unable to get past Adams and the phalanx of shinners, McGeough asked the Sinn Féin president why he was not speaking out against the use of Diplock Courts in 2010. A smirking Adams told McGeough to go away whereupon Gerry McGeough, standing in his own parish, told him to go away. An intense and loud five minute exchange followed during which Gerry Adams was left in no doubt about the local mood as regards Diplock Courts and Sinn Féin's refusal to speak out against them and the on-going harrassment of the McGeough family.

Adams eventually retreated from the face to face confrontation and was later seen being cuddled by Michelle Gildernew.

Several of Gerry McGeough's neighbours later praised him for his courage and congratulated him for standing up and saying what needed to be said.

New Hit from the Shinners' Waterworks

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Cahal Daly

When Cahal Daly died in the closing days of last year I felt a formless sense of something. It was not emptiness, just something indefinable. While unable to put my finger on the nebulous sensation, it was related to the fact that one of the fellow passengers who had travelled with us on the not so good ship conflict, had finally disembarked. For long enough it seemed that wherever we went Cahal Daly went too, although for entirely different reasons; ours for armed activity, his for admonishment of such actions.

While having no time for Catholicism, its myths and rituals, I have been struck positively over the years by certain figures within the Catholic Church structure who for one reason or another made me sit up and take notice. Denis Faul was one, Des Wilson another. There were Tom O Fiaich and Raymond Murray as well. Such was my respect for Denis Faul that at the time of his funeral I wrote I felt we had come to bury an old comrade. Denis was not an old comrade in the truest sense of the word but he proved himself more loyal to the prisoners than many who technically could call themselves comrades. Cahal Daly did not fit into any mould that would allow me to describe him in terms comparable to Denis. Yet there was something about him that roused my curiosity.

It was many years ago that I met Cahal Daly for the first and only time. It was around 1984 or ’85 and he was on a visit to the H Blocks of Long Kesh. The prisoners assembled in the canteen circled around him as he took his seat to discuss matters with us. Then the Catholic Church was in much healthier shape than it was today. Certainly, not morally better as there were so many child rapists within its ranks who were sodomising their way to hell on a handcart. They just had not been exposed to the same degree of scrutiny that exists today. That lack of public awareness of the crimes of the Church combined with outrage gave Cathal Daly a status and authority today’s bishops certainly do not have.

At the time of his visit to the prison Cahal Daly had a well established reputation as the leading church critic of the IRA. Many of us despised him, although sans good reason, because of it. He was erudite and could make his case very strongly, always able to sound emphatic without spitting out his words. A doctor of divinity who had also lectured in scholastic philosophy his philosophical bent made him an engaging conversationalist and the most formidable of intellectual adversaries for those inclined to take him on. Such was his influence that it has been suggested that he wrote the pope’s 1979 Drogheda speech which was widely interpreted as a strong rebuke for the IRA from the Vatican boss.

Moreover, he seemed not to bring the arrogance of his colleagues to the table. There is not much that I can recall from our exchanges other than his insistence that the British presence we wished to expunge through military means was nothing other than the Protestants of the North. He assured us that our task was unachievable. Only once was there a flash of anger from him and it was when someone either cited or referred to a unionist politician who was promoting himself as the champion of the unionist downtrodden. Cahal Daly with considerable passion informed us that the man was a bigot. Great, we thought, that can go to the press. The IRA leadership in the jail however, made it clear that whatever was said was on the basis of Chatham House Rules. The story stayed where it was.

I found him a puzzling man. Around September 1976 while bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, he had commented that the Provisional IRA leaders were honourable men. Coming from a prominent leader of what a 1973 edition of Republican News termed a nest of ecclesiastical vipers this seemed to be a remarkably generous statement although it seemed not to have been repeated. Needless to say it drove the unionists mad. But he would also argue that the leaders of the Provisional movement had dragged republicanism into the gutter and had made it a ‘synonym of shame'.

Even before he began questioning the morality of the IRA he was known as one of the Irish Catholic Church’s leading intellectuals. The Irish Times referred to him ‘producing addresses on subjects as varied as emigration, industrial disputes, socialism, abortion, education and the gap between rich and poor.’ In these matters he took the side of conservative Catholic orthodoxy.

In November 1994 when the child abuse issue was escaping the suffocating smoke of Vatican incense Cahal Daly spoke of a painful, worrying and distressing time. ‘We feel the hurt of all those who have suffered, who have been hurt, and all those whose trust in priests or religious has been abused.’ Although he did push for the case of the child rapist Brendan Smyth to be fast tracked to the RUC, it appears he had no idea of what lay ahead for the Church in Ireland, predicting only that it would experience 2 or 3 difficult years. It has now stretched into almost 2 decades and shows little sign of abating. While there is nothing to suggest he was a devious scheming chancer a la the current pope he like so many other was out of sync with the public mood on matters of Catholic clerics raping children. An appearance of the Late Late show saw him hissed and hackled by some members of the audience because of a failure to convincingly respond to criticisms made by Brain Darcy.

With the Church under justifiable scrutiny like never before it seems almost certain that the role of Cahal Daly will be revisited and revised. His successor as the leader of the Church in Ireland has not escaped such probing. What has been unearthed has been deeply unpleasant for Cardinal Brady. Unfortunately, child rape by Catholic clerics and the deviously planned cover ups long predates the current cardinal. It seems unlikely that Cahal Daly, along with his colleagues of the time, will escape unscathed when history passes a more settled judgement on how the Church in both its entirety and longevity handled the protection of those raped by the priests within its midst.

That said, ET, as he was jokingly referred to, completed his earthly sojourn as a dignified figure. Unfortunately, for the Church there seems no one in his wake with enough cerebral strength to lift the blazing intellectual torch he sought to pass on to his flock.

Obsession For Revenge

Today the Pensive Quill carries an update by guest writer Helen McClafferty
written at various ponts this month drawing attention to high level political
intervention against Gerry McGeough and the lack of interest in the case
from Sinn Fein

April 2, 2010

On the twelfth anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the Belfast Telegraph newspaper has confirmed Gerry McGeough's claim that Royal Pardons were issued to select "On-the-run" republican activists.

In a front page report, today's Belfast Telegraph has provided incontovertible evidence that the British government gave special amnesty status to wanted IRA personnel in 2000. The paper has revealed a copy of one such parchment, bearing the English queen's royal crest, granting a pardon to an on-the-run IRA man.

This comes just weeks after Shaun Woodward, the British government Secretary of State for the North of Ireland, publicly denounced Gerry's claims as "nonsense". The development proves that Gerry has been discriminated against for purely political reasons and that there is a determined effort to railroad him into prison at the highest political level.


April 13, 2010

After an adjournment period of almost a month, a fresh set of hearings relating to Gerry's case is about to start in a few days.

Already, it is becoming apparent that the British are trying to stonewall and avoid disclosure of information.

It has also become apparent that a policy of not prosecuting people for pre-1998 troubles related incidents had been agreed between the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), the Prosecution Service and the PSNI/RUC. This policy was implemented for about a decade up until Gerry's arrest.

Clearly, the British obsession for revenge against Gerry has turned that policy on its head.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin is in full canvassing mode for the British General election. The party is campaigning on the basis that it has achieved equality for nationalists in the North of Ireland and that the days of discrimination are over.

Sinn Féin still refuses to utter a word of protest against the use of Diplock Courts or make any mention of the nightmare that the British State in Ireland has put Gerry and his family through over the past three years.

Sinn Féin boasts of retaining its five Westminster seats and even increasing on that number in the May 6th poll.

Home Defence

Nobody is talking about killing people, although you would certainly feel like doing it under certain circumstances, but simply having the right to protect yourself, your family, your property, your goods, without having to worry about the so-called ‘rights’ of the criminal … Should we be allowed ‘defend’ ourselves in our own home? Shouldn’t a burglar be responsible for what happens to him when he illegally enters somebody’s property? Would it go some way to making them think twice before they carried out a robbery if they knew they might end up his hospital? - Blogger Twenty Major

Some time back the following headline on a BBC news website caught my eye: ‘Burglars threaten 87-year-old man in Craigavon.’ It did so because even earlier again I had noticed the re-emergence of the Castle Doctrine debate which has been attempting to increase the rights of citizens against those who might seek to break into their homes and assault, rob or rape them. The doctrine, as old as castles themselves, seems to have the origins of its new form in the National Rifle Association of America which has long argued for a reversal of ‘the pendulum that for too long has swung in the direction of protecting the rights of criminals over the rights of their victims.’ The NRA, well to the right of the political spectrum, has managed to have the Castle Doctrine legislated into law in numerous US states.

In Ireland, like elsewhere, there is widespread concern that the law has become so misshapen that it demands of citizenry that home dwellers must ensure that their property is sufficiently safe so that an intruder will not be injured in the event of going about his egregious trade.

The amount of force householders may lawfully use when confronted by a thug in their homes is at some point to be codified in new legislation popularly known as the Home Defence Law. The intellectual, and indeed emotive, founds on which it rests were articulated in 2007 by Michael McDowell who in proposing legislative changes said:

It is my contention that an attack in the home has unique characteristics given the emotive nature of an encounter between the occupant and an unwelcome intruder … I believe the law should have regard to the unique circumstances which prevail in a situation where an intruder is being dealt with in one's own home, the place we all have a right to consider to be a place of safety.

Agree with McDowell more generally or not, it is hard to dispute his particular point that people attach significance to their homes that may be alloyed in respect of other matters. Fear of being attacked in the last citadel of privacy and psychological security is always going to increase the likelihood of a violent defence being mounted. Now we find growing numbers seeking to mount a legal defence of that violent defence.

Passions are all too easily inflated and inflamed, on the matter. Observing animated discussion it would seem that in respect of their homes, many householders view them as a woman would her body – the intruder is reviled a la the rapist, meriting whatever the aggrieved householder doles out.

The debate around the issues the proposed new law is meant to address has intensified since the Padraig Nally case. Nally was eventually acquitted of the unlawful killing of John Frog Ward, an incorrigible criminal, who appeared intent on robbing Nally, but who at the time of his death was trying to escape from Nally’s property.

In the case of the Ward death it is difficult to work out what act of defence was being furthered other than defending the right to kill Ward before he escaped and made his way on to the next house so that he could try his hand at robbing that. Hardly a crime that merits the sanction of death. Nally, in the words of Vincent Browne, had ‘brutally beaten an intruder and then followed him up a laneway and shot him dead while his victim was crouched down in a defensive position underneath him.’ At the time, there seemed little public sympathy for Ward. His extensive criminal background and his history of preying on the vulnerable meant that the well of sympathy was long since dry by the time he came to rob it.

It is hard to see Nally ever having been hauled before the courts had he killed Ward face on. But because Ward was shot from behind when he was in no position to defend himself or behave aggressively toward his attacker the case had to be tried. There are many of us who would frown on the suggestion that a fleeing unarmed man poses an immediate threat to the life of the person from whom he is fleeing and on whom his back is turned. In that respect, Nally won more in terms of leniency than he was due. This has helped cloud the issue.

At the time of the discussion a few months back I noticed some discord between two groups I would normally find myself on the same side as. Not being a politician I can’t now be on the same said as both when each is on opposite side to the other. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties attacked the Home Defence proposals while the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has welcomed them.

Ellen O’Malley Dunlop of the Rape Crisis Centre said the new legislation would give women confronted by a rapist in their home ‘the right to protect themselves without the worry of being prosecuted.’ In sharp contrast Mark Kelly of the ICCL argued that ‘as the state itself does not impose capital punishment for burglars it certainly cannot issue householders with a licence to carry out extra-judicial executions of burglars.

The ICCL logic on this matter is skewed. As the state does not impose the death penalty for rape, the terminus of Kelly’s argument, if his logic route is followed, is that a woman must submit to rape rather than kill her attacker. This seems absurd because implicit in it is the suggestion that woman’s right not to be raped is weaker than the rapist’s right not to be killed by his victim in the commissioning of his act. If a woman needs to kill her attacker as the only means to prevent her being raped it is hard to muster any argument other than a formal one against it. For those who advise the attacked woman to lie back and think of Ireland, they shall be remembered in the attacker’s thanksgiving prayers.

If we accept this then there exists a firm discontinuity between killing as execution and killing intruders during the act of intrusion. It also invites the question: short of intent to murder is it only rape a person should use lethal force against to either prevent or terminate during its commissioning?

The courtroom is the stage at which the legal niceties of what a person’s intent may be when resisting an intruder is fine tuned, leaving the jury the power to determine culpability and the judiciary the discretion to impose a sentence to fit. But to say that the legal finery of courtroom procedure should apply in the family home when the occupant is confronted by an intruder with no right to be there and whose only intent is malign, is to stretch the argument too far. Mark Kelly with eminently good but flawed intent, ends up not protecting civil liberties but criminal liberties.

No one should be executed regardless of their crime. But defending one’s home and all who live in it against intruders is hardly on a par with deliberate, pre-planned execution by the state. A more salient concern should be whether ‘having ago’ is likely to produce the scare effect which would cause the aggressor to flee the scene. Some US surveys have shown that more injuries and fatalities are sustained by home occupants who attack the intruder.

If correct such arguments offer a salutary lesson which should be considered before embarking on a course that may produce an effect opposite to what it is intended to achieve. It real strength however lies in its focus on protecting the aggrieved rather than the aggressor.

Undermining The Momentum

Today the Pensive Quill carries a short piece from March written by guest writer Helen McClafferty. It should help keep people informed of the serious and substantive political overtones in the show trial of Irish republican Gerry McGeough.

There has been yet another incredible twist in the saga of Gerry's trial. Amid deepening intrigue, the presiding judge in the Belfast Diplock Court today halted the proceedings until April 19th.

The move comes in order to allow the NIO time to present documentation that has been requested of it by a seperate court order. The NIO has until April 16th to comply.

Some observers have wondered at why so much time is required to retrieve data that must be relatively readily available. This has given rise to speculation that the British government is trying to undermine the growing momentum of support for Gerry. A break of this length is also being seen as an attempt to diffuse the anger of people who are increasingly outraged that this trial has been allowed to start in the first place.

Meanwhile, more and more voices are being raised in disgust at Sinn Féin's total silence on the issue.

Echos Of Prison Struggle

Today, the Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, Gerard Hodgins

The echo of prison struggles down through our history came to the fore again on Easter Sunday while we stood and remembered those who died, and were reminded that prisoners in Maghaberry Prison were under siege.

Republican prisoners took control of a canteen area in protest at a continuing campaign of harassment from the screws and continuing erosion of their living conditions and rights.

In the British prison system, rights are privileges, to be earned. That may sound innocent enough on paper but what it means is that if you are not some screw’s performing poodle you don’t “earn” any “privileges”: therefore your life in prison is going to be a bit harder. Some may think that overly-harsh and an unfair blot on those few individuals who join the prison service and don’t treat prisoners unfairly or harshly. And they would be right: there are decent screws.

I know some people will say: let them rot. I don’t. I understand the prison system from the inside; beyond the textbooks of university educated people who have never spent so much as a day in prison yet structure penal policy and oversee its daily administration for the political system.

For the first five years of my own prison life, rights were privileges, to be earned. We done what any republican would do, and what republicans are doing today in Maghaberry, told the British: no they are not!

Having come through such a history and still living with the consequences of it to this day, thirty years on, it is totally perplexing to me that those in positions of political power who built their powerbases on the backs of prisoners have allowed a situation to develop where the same old, deeply sectarian screws have a freehand in trying to criminalise republican prisoners. Agree or disagree with them, they remain republican prisoners; and we, as republicans, should never be instruments of maltreatment of any prisoner. If anybody truly understands the power and significance of prisoners being held under harsh conditions in our history it has to be us.


Sinn Fein are one half of our local government; they are in power, they run the show and either do, or influence, the hiring and firing. That’s part of political power; having a big influence upon how the show is run.

Maghaberry prison is not being run anywhere near standard. Maghaberry prison is not fit for purpose even under government standards. Psychiatric care is a screw in a white coat, treatment is solitary isolation. Maghaberry prison is every bit the cesspit the H-Blocks were - the H-Blocks were a series of concrete cells where men were isolated and told they were not political prisoners, Maghaberry is a series of concrete cells where men are being held in isolation and told they are not political prisoners.

The false pretenders to the legacy of Bobby Sands do him the utmost treachery by running a prison system which attempts to criminalise republicans today, as it tried with Bobby before them.

Nothing But A Date

It cannot be easy being a republican political prisoner in the North these days. So few in number those unfortunate enough to find themselves on the inside are up against it. The prison system is desperate not to cede any ground and will draw on the accumulated experience of vindictiveness to keep the political prisoners in check. Prison management is also aware that it is unlikely to be held to account. Sinn Fein, who benefited most from the anti-criminalisation campaign of the 1970s and 80s, has crossed the line to stand beside the British and tag the label ‘criminal’ onto republican prisoners. The party’s current position has it implementing British policy to the hilt as it finds itself, seemingly without shame, standing shoulder to shoulder with the DUP, criminalising republicans and legitimising Paisleyism. Small wonder the prison authorities proceed with impunity to implement a harsh regime.

Not everybody has bought into the repressive perspective. This is evident from a noticeable increase in numbers attending white line pickets in support of jailed republicans. This failure to forget manifested itself in Sunday’s protest in support of republican prisoners being held at Maghaberry prison in Co Antrim. While estimates vary, and everyone shades it their own way, there have been suggestions that the gathering was around 300. Impressive enough for a Sunday afternoon outside a prison.

People travelled from throughout the North. Many were stopped and searched by an aggressive PSNI. Car numbers were taken and people were photographed.

Recently Sam Millar made the comment, ‘regardless of what our political differences are - and there are plenty - we should always be behind the prisoners/ex-prisoners one hundred percent. No ifs ands or buts.’ It is an unambiguous call that seems to be resonating throughout the minds of many others including men who were at one time republican prisoners and know only too well just what being banged up in the custody of Her British Majesty’s prisons entails. At yesterday’s protest were some who I had been in prison with including former Blanket men like Alex McCrory and Gerard Hodgins. Clearly they have not forgotten or conveniently ignored what the prolonged prison protests and hunger strikes of three decades ago were all about.

Willie Gallagher who along with me was one of a small number of 16 year olds in A Wing Crumlin Road Prison was present also. Forced by constant brutality into a prolonged hunger strike in 1978 he knows the danger prisoners are in if public attention is deflected from their situation.

Also lending their support were people who I first had the pleasure of meeting 35 or 36 years ago in circumstances which were anything but pleasurable, the jangling of screws’ keys sometimes the only music we heard. Danny McBrearty from Derry and Tony Catney from Belfast: men astutely aware of the criminal negligence involved in labelling republican prisoners as criminals. These two have come through everything from imprisonment, harassment, the deaths of family members at the hands of SAS and UVF death squads. Tony Catney, a republican of unassailable credentials, also endured a recent smear campaign aimed at undermining his long established status within the republican community. These people and more, undeterred by the distorting effects of selective amnesia, gathered to state the simple difference between the republican prisoners of today and yesteryear – a date.

Because when it is distilled down a date is all that separates the current crop of republican prisoners and those of us who preceded them and enjoyed the benefits of politic status both de jure and de facto. Just the same as the date that separated Bobby Sands, Mickey Devine et al from those who went before them. There is no difference between those behind the walls today and those who wore the blanket in defiance of the British state. Motivation, method, ideology all remain the same. Their jailers too remain the same – the British state.

There is no need whatsoever to support the armed activities of those imprisoned republicans in order to defend them against charges of criminality. Indeed there are many compelling reasons to oppose the use of physical force. Enough lessons have been learned to demonstrate the implausibility of armed republicanism securing an end to British rule in Ireland. But it is a lesson that could have been learned in our own time. Those former republicans most vociferous in their condemnation of other republicans who follow the very methods the erstwhile republicans once prescribed bear a huge measure of responsibility for that lesson having gone unlearned.

If the armed republicans of today are common criminals then every one of us who took part in the blanket protest including Bobby Sands was a common criminal. The logic of criminalising today’s republicans can lead to no other conclusion.

There are many reasons that can be given as to why today’s armed republicans are wrong. Being criminal does not figure among them.

The Fourth Red Stained Green Field

Fortnight Magazine

The closing lines of this book are arguably the most contentious: ‘the roots of the Provisional movement are to be found primarily in the abject failure of the 1956-1962 border campaign.’ It is an interesting thesis because there is nothing in the preceding two hundred pages that would lend itself to such a conclusion. What emerges from Barry Flynn’s readable study of Operation Harvest is the deep rooted and almost instinctual ideological opposition of republicans to the British presence in Ireland. In terms of removing that presence the IRA’s border campaign was as great a failure as that of the Provisional IRA. But the terms on which the republicans of half a century ago ended their six year armed struggle were vastly different from the manner in which the Provisionals settled up.

Unlike the Provisional IRA the volunteers of Operation Harvest did not acquiesce in British rule nor did they seek a junior role in administering it. Ideologically driven they were opposed to the British presence which in their view was responsible for the partition of the country. The Provisionals for their part were the crystallization of an insurrectionary energy more opposed to how the British behaved while in Ireland than they were to the fact that the British were in Ireland. The British did not have to leave but merely change to bring the Provisionals in from their republican cold. No Operation Harvest republican that I am aware of has been recorded as saying that they did not know Britain was responsible for whatever problems the North faced. There is no shortage of activists from the Provisional IRA’s formative years willing to confess that they had little knowledge of Britain’s role.

Nevertheless, the questionable comparison in the concluding page does nothing to take away from the usefulness of Soldiers of Folly. Barry Flynn has produced a work that focuses entirely on the IRA border campaign of 1956-62 and goes some way to addressing a deficiency in a seriously under researched area of IRA history. Usually Operation Harvest constitutes a chapter in a book tracing the contours of a wider IRA existence. By contrast with the Provisional IRA, which has captured a massive amount of bookish attention, the IRA of the border campaign seems almost like a footnote.

In Soldiers Of Folly Flynn brings no new perspective to bear, concluding like most others who have looked at the era that the campaign proved to be an abysmal failure. He finds little disagreeable in the reasons outlined by Sean Cronin for that failure although he totally rejects the premise of Cronin that the campaign was justified to begin with.

Cronin served as IRA chief of staff for part of the border campaign. He was largely responsible for drawing up the master plan that governed the strategic management and implementation of Operation Harvest. His strategic limitations coupled with the fact that he was equipped with a formal rather than a formidable military mind meant that he was more versed in militarist deficiency than military efficiency. Flynn afforded him no dark corners when it came to turning the spotlight on the failures in IRA leadership personnel.

It would have been more fruitful had Flynn been able to access internal IRA documents of the time that had not already fallen into the hands of the authorities. Had he managed this, more knowledge about debates and difference of opinions at leadership level would have been forthcoming. But he tackled an era from which little in the way of memoirs has managed to escape republican omerta and make their way into the public domain. Posterity will never know as much about the IRA of the border campaign as it will about the Provisional IRA.

Yet Flynn puts flesh on the activities of Operation Harvest and provides his reader with a more rounded account than others who have told the story of the Harvest only as part of a more elongated IRA history.

While rejecting the armed violence, ethos and tactics of the volunteers the author is dispassionate in his analysis without being disparaging of those who took up arms. For the most part he seeks to humanize volunteers rather than excise their basic integrity by acquiescing in the facile ‘terrorist profile’ model. The dead of the IRA are never demonized and are often shown through the window of the families who loved and mourned them. Much detail is provided about the funerals of volunteers and the public emotion they engendered. And while he does not dwell on it Flynn says enough to show that he was not blinkered to the use of state violence particularly that of the B-Specials.

There is much in this book that the reader with a strong attachment to republican history will identify with. But the lesson that Flynn is at pains to point out is one that no republican should allow to drift over their heads unpalatable as it may seem to those who still believe that the physical force tradition should be nourished by their own blood and that of others, and who remember Operation Harvest for the fervor rather than the folly. Simply, there is no violent republican solution to the existence of partition or the administrative and political involvement of a British state whose terms of engagement are endorsed by the overwhelming majority of Irish citizens North and South. Whatever else partition might divide it does not fragment opposition to the use of political violence as a means to resolve the long standing issue of the fourth red stained green field.

Soldiers Of Folly: The IRA Border Campaign 1956-1962 by Barry Flynn. Collins Press. ISBN 978 – 1 84889 – 016 - 9

The Real Prison Break

Prisoner 1082 - Escape From Crumlin Road, Europe’s Alcatraz
Dónal Donnelly

… An impenetrable prison …
… A desperate man …
… A daring escape …

The Real Prison Break

It sounds like the plot for a Hollywood movie or TV show. But this is a true story. With the 50th anniversary of his escape from the prison known as ‘Europe’s Alcatraz’ fast approaching, Dónal Donnelly – Prisoner 1082 – tells his story.

On 26 December 1960, using hack-saw blades, torn sheets and electric flex, Dónal broke out of Crumlin Road Prison, running the gauntlet of searchlights, alarms and machine guns. As 12,000 Ulster police and B Specials pursued him in the cold, wintry days after his escape, nationalists and republicans gave him shelter and support.

Three years earlier, the then teenage Dónal had been convicted of membership of the IRA in the first year of ‘Operation Harvest’, the 1956–1962 republican campaign in Northern Ireland. He was sentenced to ten years.

Here Dónal reflects on how he came to be on top of a prison wall risking his life. He outlines the penal conditions in the UK and Northern Ireland and gives a graphic description of how the IRA operated in that period.

Whatever happened to Prisoner 1082?

’To answer this question, Dónal charts his later involvement in business, his search for justice for the marginalised and his friendship with the republican agitator and author Peadar O’Donnell. This is the story of a man who overcame the hurdles of his early years to live a successful, happy life.

Dónal Donnelly, born in Omagh, County Tyrone, came from a Gaelic and republican family. After his escape he lived in Cork, settled in Dublin, and was active in campaigns for social justice. He became a buyer and planner for a multi-national company and a Fellow of the Irish Institute of Purchasing & Materials Management.

Published in March 2010 • Price: €12.99/£11.99 • ISBN: 978-1-84889-031-2 • 210 pp • Pbk • 198 x 128 mm • B&w photos
Publish Reject

No Laughter From Our Children

In a piece penned before Patrick's Day Guest writer Helen McClafferty commenting on the turmoil in the life of a chld whose father, Irish Republican Gerry McGeough, is currently facing a political show trial.

Gerry has shared a small family experience which people are describing as "heartbreaking". Apparently, his 7-year-old son got up at 6.30 one morning during the week just as his father was getting ready to leave for the court in Belfast, some fifty miles away.

In a serious and studied manner the child explained that he had come up with an idea. He said that he was going to dig a hole in one of the fields and put planks over it so that it could be used as a den where "Daddy could hide". That way they wouldn't be able to put him in jail.

The real victims in this sadistic saga are the young children whose lives have been plunged into turmoil because of what the British forces in Ireland are doing to their father.

Meanwhile Sinn Féin leaders are excitedly packing their bags this weekend as they prepare to fly off to the United States for the St.Patrick's Day celebrations. There they will be wined and dined while they tell audiences that things have improved in the North of Ireland and that the "Nationalist nightmare is over".

One of Sinn Féin's party slogans is "cherish the children of the Nation equally". Clearly, this does not apply to Gerry McGeough's children, given that not one single Sinn Féin leader has uttered a sound of protest about the outrage that is being perpetrated upon Gerry and his family by the British state in Ireland.