The Thorn in Sinn Fein's Side

Cartoon by John Kennedy

Ten years ago this month the Provisional IRA gunned down a member of the Real IRA, Joe O’Connor, in the West Belfast constituency of Gerry Adams, MP. It was a public execution designed to put manners on those deemed pretenders to the throne of Sinn Fein’s sponsored army. The organisation had just emerged on the losing side of a long war against the British state and had now accepted, through the Good Friday Agreement, the victor’s alternative to republicanism. It did not want any rival body feeding on the deficit or usurping its authority. As the writer Eamon McCann said at the time of the O’Connor killing it was an assertion by the Provisional IRA that it alone was the one true IRA and would have no false IRAs before it.

Ten years after the event it is evident just how ineffectual the Provisional IRA attempts to suppress its Real IRA rival were. This was made thunderously manifest in the recent bomb attack by the ‘Reals’ against the premises of the Ulster Bank in Derry, the home city of Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s deputy First Minister. The attack acquired added spice due to Derry having been recently named UK Capital of Culture for 2013.

Today’s republican political violence is the legacy of the failure of the Provisional IRA armed struggle. A vacuum has been created which some are striving to fill with explosives. The gap between the lofty objectives of the Provisional IRA campaign and its meagre achievements is becoming increasingly difficult to paper over. The political arrangement that now exists in British Northern Ireland possesses not the slightest resemblance to the British-free united Ireland the Provisional IRA waged its war to achieve. The comments by Prime Minister David Cameron at the Tory Party annual conference that the North of Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom, and has political-strategic value previously thought to be lacking, is grist to the armed republican mill.

In seeking to calm political jitters the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has released figures to underscore its claims to be coping with armed republicanism. The force has charged 59 people so far this year compared with 17 people last year. Their Garda Siochana counterparts in the Republic of Ireland have brought 22 suspected armed republicans before the courts. Yet according to the Irish Times:

security and intelligence sources estimate that there are now some 600 people linked to the dissident paramilitaries with a "small hard core" prepared to plant and detonate the bombs or carry out the gun attacks.

Perhaps more ominous for the peace is the degree of support for armed activities that appears to exist. The PSNI Derry’s commander mines the same vein of reasoning as his predecessors in the RUC did in their day when confronted by Martin McGuinness and his comrades: the ‘terrorists’ labour without either or support or legitimacy. Professor Jon Tonge casts doubt on this perspective with his survey based findings which point to a level of support substantive enough to sustain armed republicanism for some time to come. Writing in the Belfast daily, the News Letter, Professor Tonge said:

One of the mantras of the peace process is that 'dissident' republicans have no support ... Yet the assumption that dissidents have no support has been precisely that – an assumption, untroubled by actual evidence either way.

He found that 14 per cent of nationalists surveyed ‘have sympathy for the reasons why some republican groups continue to use violence.’

Today’s armed republicans are motivated to a large extent by an ideology inherited from the Provisional IRA. They employ all the tactics and discourses of the Provisionals. This has prompted the characterisation of them as ‘born again Provos’ from SDLP luminary Pat Ramsey.

This stings Sinn Fein who want no points of comparison to be drawn between the IRA it sponsored and the current crop of armed republicans. The party’s logic is weak. Martin McGuinness, a former Provisional IRA chief of staff, condemns the bombers as Neanderthals and conflict junkies determined to take Derry back to the past, forgetting in the process that it was a past he helped create. In earlier years he could be found bragging that:

we are prepared to bomb any building that will cause economic devastation and put pressure on the government. The aim of ‘our campaign is to cripple the city economically.

His party colleague, Martina Anderson, herself a former bomber, unpersuasively dismissed comparisons between today’s armed republicans and the Provisionals, arguing that it offered only ’a degree of comfort’ to those using her old methods. For her, the justification for the Provisional IRA campaign lay in structural inequality which has now been removed. Few buy into such a rationale, knowing only too well that the Provisional IRA justified its political violence on the same grounds as the Real IRA does its own. As Eamon McCann contends, ‘it's pointless demonising the dissidents as gangsters with no politics. There are clear parallels between their campaign and the Provos'. Seemingly, Sinn Fein make poor ambassadors for condemnation.

Exploiting the thread of continuity, armed republicans in directing their violence against the British state are aware that Sinn Fein gets uncomfortably trapped in the backwash. That Martin McGuinness should denounce them from the same Tory conference as David Cameron delighted the bombers. In a statement to the Sunday Tribune a Real IRA spokesperson said:

It was entirely appropriate that Martin McGuinness's condemnation of the IRA operation came from the Tory conference …The contrast between McGuinness and those still committed to the republican struggle couldn't have been greater.

And so it is likely to continue: armed republican violence more annoying to Sinn Fein than effectively subversive of British rule.

Article first published in Parliamentary Brief, 29th October

Oh Paddy, dear, and did ye hear

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Waste Disposal

Doubtless there are many punters unhappy about Pearse Doherty’s by-election win in Donegal South West. But they can hardly say it was a shock. It wasn’t even worthwhile betting on. People were queuing up to rub the noses of the dirty dogs who crapped on the country in their own mess. When the moment came they struck with a vengeance.

Doherty had won the grudging respect of a swathe of people at odds with his party when he forced the by-election which had previously been delayed by the Fianna Fail-Green Party Coalition. The government’s action was calculated political cynicism designed to ensure that democracy would not be allowed to infringe on the self interest of government parties. It was also sinister in that it allowed us to see that the democratic veneer covering the governing parties was in fact just that; a mere façade. The instinct was authoritarian and the intimation alarming: elections are something better avoided. The people as Brecht would have said must not be allowed to vote, ‘the bastards.’ The downside of that is that Fianna Fail was blitzed by a party demonstrably more authoritarian than itself. Ominous for the future.

The victory hardly signifies the reversal of Sin Fein fortunes although for now it should help stop the rot although it will not stop the Trot. Left wing thinking and discourse is now developing audibility throughout the island and sketches a future that Sinn Fein has not the slightest intention of delivering.

Sinn Fein now feels it has some credit in its pocket, rather than just a cap in its hand, with which it can go to Labour and discuss bidding for a deal that would keep Eamon Gilmore’s party out of government with Fine Gael, the likely composition of the next ruling bloc. Party leader Gerry Adams claimed the electorate had clearly rejected any Fine Gael Labour coalition. It had not and this will be evident from the soon to be general election.

Adding his now amplified voice to the party leader’s Pearse Doherty said:

I would call on Labour now to change direction. You cannot credibly argue that you are of the left when you go into bed with a party like Fine Gael who are of the right. This is a wake-up call for Eamon Gilmore and that party.

Pearse Doherty, equipped with a knowledge wider than platitudes and a good constituency worker by all accounts, deserved his electoral success on that basis alone. The margin of victory secured arguably lay in the voter saying ‘no more’ to Fianna Fail. That does not equate with saying ‘more’ to Sinn Fein who will promise more soup but served up in the same economic poor house.

As the party leader has persuasively demonstrated, when he gratuitously inserted his presence into the 2007 televised leader’s debate, he knows little of substance on economic matters, His rhetoric, cruelly exposed by Michael McDowell of all people – then the bete noir of Sinn Fein - has little appeal for people who think food first and political parties second. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that Sinn Fein would put an end to poor house economics or do anything to halt the Cromwellian economic spectre that is rapaciously haunting the country in the form of the IMF. Sinn Fein is the party of promise that has promised so much yet delivered so little

It makes little sense for Pearse Doherty to advise Labour to refrain from entering a coalition government with Fine Gael on the basis that the latter is a right wing party. It is no more right wing than Fianna Fail yet every dog in the street knows Sinn Fein was bursting to enter government with the Soldiers of Destiny before they waved the white flag of surrender to the IMF without reference to the people in case ‘the bastards’ might vote like they did previously on the Lisbon Treaty.

What is Pearse Doherty made of? Credit to him for an effective waste disposal strategy which saw Fianna Fail routed. An untested quantity at the uppermost political level, it remains to be seen if he and his more left leaning colleagues can prevent the party leadership entering a coalition with a right wing party. If Sinn Fein somehow managed to get a greater percentage of seats than Labour in the next general election, in which Fianna Fail should be sent packing, it will without doubt go into government with Fine Gael. Doherty will then be reminded of his own words about what left wing parties cannot credibly do. If he then fails to piss in the pot, Thursday’s trudge to the polling booth will for many have been a complete waste of time and a vote.

Halloween Card

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Public Debate and Radio Interview Available for Download

Two downloads to listen to, public debate and radio show.

Last night in Belfast, public debate hosted by Comhdháil Poblachtach Ollscoil Banríona, Irish republican socialist student society:

Is the cure for Ireland's ills a 32 County Socialist Republic?
25th November, Belfast



Speakers (in this order)
Daithí Mac An Mhaistír - Éirígí
Eoin O’Broin - Sinn Féin and author of , ‘Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism’
Brian Hanley - Author of ‘Lost Revolution- The story of the Official IRA and Workers Party’
Anthony McIntyre - Author of ‘Good Friday- The Death of Irish Republicanism’
Q & A session

Download here: http://www.archive.org/details/IsTheCureForIrelandsIllsA32CountySocialistRepublic

Right click save as: http://www.archive.org/download/IsTheCureForIrelandsIllsA32CountySocialistRepublic/SocialistRepublicDebate25.11.10.mp3

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Equal Time for Free Thought, WBAI:
Radio Free Eireann’s Sandy Boyer, and former IRA prisoner, Anthony McIntyre

To inaugurate Equal Time for Freethought’s new time and day, and move to a one-hour format, we have invited Sandy Boyer, producer and host of WBAI’s Radio Free Eireann (which will now air two hours before us on a regular basis) to talk with us about religion, politics, and humanist ethics concerning Ireland (past and present), and the lives of the Irish outside of Ireland (including here in the USA).

Joining Sandy will be a favorite guest of his, former IRA prisoner turned journalist. Anthony McIntyre. McIntyre spent 18 years in Long Kesh, 4 years on the blanket and no-wash/no work protests which led to the hunger strikes of the 80s. He completed a PhD at Queens upon release from prison, and left the Republican Movement at the endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement, going on to become a journalist. He is the Co-founder of The Blanket, an online magazine that critically analyzed the Irish peace process, and author of the book, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.

Download here: http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/2010/11/20/show-367-radio-free-eireanns-sandy-boyer-and-former-ira-prisoner-anthony-mcintyre/

Right click save as: http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/podpress_trac/web/549/0/101120_183001etff.mp3

South of the Border

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

I am a Dissident

I am a dissident and long have been. As such, I felt Gerry McGeough displayed too much sensitivity when he took umbrage at being described in that manner by Mairtin O Muilleoir. In a widely quoted blog piece the Andersonstown Newsgroup mogul hit out at the prosecution of McGeough.

the vindictive efforts to railroad dissident republican Gerry McGeough into jail for an IRA attack carried out a lifetime ago smacks of the worst actions of securocrats. How strange that anyone who raises the slaughter of civilians by the British Army is dismissed as living in the past while enormous resources are deployed to put Gerry McGeough behind bars in connection with an incident from those same dark days. When Mr McGeough's trial starts on 1 November, don't be surprised if it collapses swiftly. All the evidence is that while paper-thin cases were sufficient to imprison republicans in the seventies along the conveyor belt of Castlereagh and courts, things have tightened up considerably since then. Let's see.

It was a gracious enough comment from O Muilleoir who had previously been mauled by McGeough during a televised debate on the policing question and who in a fit of pique may well have been tempted to let his adversary stew in a juice brewed by the forces of political policing in the North.

McGeough is hardly alone in feeling aggrieved by having the term ‘dissident’ appended to them. Marian Price, recently interviewed by Steven Nolan, said she neither understood nor welcomed the term.

The reason for McGeough being irritated – the same for Price - while generally welcoming the O Muilleoir intervention is that post-Omagh the process of marginalising any alternative republican thought acquired a new dynamic. All oppositional republicans, those implacably opposed to armed campaigning included, were lumped into one camp against which a very focused and voluble discourse developed. At its core was the term ‘dissident’ which acquired an inflection all of its own, one immersed in political violence. No longer was the dissident the heroic figure of international folklore armed only with his voice which would make itself heard above the howling winds that swirled throughout the Gulag. That image was displaced by the inarticulate disciple of violence whose only word was ‘bang.’ Disagree with Sinn Fein and you suddenly became an Omagh bomber or fellow traveller as the Sinn Fein leader once took to describing those who challenged his version of events in his own West Belfast constituency.

Sinn Fein, who encouraged such a depiction of its republican critics were not without company. The media played a substantial role, the effects of which are still with us today and which have set Gerry McGeough’s defence radar pulsating. Dissident came to be indivisible from deviant.

Yet, if someone wanted to get into a terminological war they could plausibly contend that the deviants from republicanism are to be found in Sinn Fein and not within the ranks of the dissidents. As we have seen, there is no rush in the media to refer to Sinn Fein as deviant republicans. They have been strategic in their terminological separation of good republican from bad republican.

And it has worked. But it can also be undone. On one occasion having just debated republicanism at Oxford University with Danny Morrison, I was approached by an Israeli from the audience who made the point that up until then he had no idea that that there were republican dissidents who not only dissented from the peace process but also from the use of force as a means of dealing with the problems of the peace process.

The O Muilleoir comment did not strike me as specifically designed to label McGeough an advocate of armed force. Now, it may well be that O Muilleoir didn't have to explicitly associate Gerry McGeough with republican political violence. Because there is an unspoken assumption flowing from the term 'dissident' the damage can be inflicted by mere dint of its usage. One word instantly leads to word association without the need to mention another word: dissident equates with armed republicanism.

The framing of the issue shows how words and terms are fought over in the same way that territory is in a physical battle. Language is used to position and confer or deny legitimacy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dissenting from the political arrangements in the North. Republicans were long dissidents in that respect.

A republican in Ireland today is by definition dissident. Republicans dissent from British rule rather than seek to bolster up its administration. Dissident republican – wear it like a badge.

Old Time Religion

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Sheehan Selection

Pat Sheehan the former IRA prisoner and H-Block hunger striker has won the Sinn Fein nomination as the party’s replacement for Gerry Adams. Which really means he won the leadership’s approval. The vacuum he steps into was created by Adams’ announcement of his intention to ply his trade to Louth. Sheehan, who has accompanied Adams in public on some occasions including Roselawn for the cremation of the remains of the late Brendan Hughes, was always a serious contender for a MLA position. The only surprise is that he did not make it sooner, being much more talented and endowed with greater acuity than most of his party colleagues currently in Stormont.

His future as an MLA is certain to bring no radical change of direction. Strongly reformist in inclination, with little attachment to the strictures of ideology he will row the boat but not rock it. It is part of the quid pro quo: don’t speak ill of the leadership and it might promote rather than poison you. Sheehan has already made, as part of Sinn Fein’s lacklustre and unimaginative response, the obligatory leadership endorsed noises in relation to the narratives of Brendan Hughes and Richard O’Rawe.

In his defence, Pat Sheehan was articulating the need for some sort of peace strategy at a time when his less mentally agile colleagues in the H-Blocks were predicting a victory and castigating anyone with the savvy and prescience to forecast differently. On top of that he is no fool. One very likeable side of his character is that he is no bully either.

For a long time he and I were close friends, having first met during the blanket protest. He would visit me in prison after his release in 1987 and I would visit him after my own release in 1992. By that time he had found himself back on the wrong said of the wall. The friendship cooled after his release. He never rang or called to the house and that was long before the serious fall out between me and The Provisionals after they had killed Joe O’Connor. While I suspected that politics had intervened, that he had found my position awkward given the path he seemed set upon, he nevertheless was always sociable and friendly when we would bump into each other as we frequently did. He would never refrain from expressing his grave reservations about my take on events, but never sought to impose his view on me. Nor was he afraid to listen to my critique of his own perspective. Too intellectually capable to have to resort to ostracism of those who criticised whatever position he held, he brought a measure of civility and courtesy to the situation.

In the prison, well in advance of the nodding dogs, he knew the writing was on the wall for the IRA campaign and he was not behind the door in saying it. For his thought crime he was marginalised and made victim of a whispering campaign. On occasion some enterprising member of the republican jail staff would prevent me and him attending the prison’s central gym together. The gym was for the mindless pumping of iron, not the venting of sedition.

It was said by his critics he could not face the prospect of another long stretch in prison and for that reason wanted an end to the IRA’s campaign. Of course it was said by men who denounced him as wrong yet who can now be seen eagerly embracing everything they then despised. The innuendo against him was rubbish. Even before his arrest on the Grosvenor Road in April 1989 during an IRA operation against the RUC, he had expressed his views to me that the IRA would find the road increasingly difficult to travel. He didn’t say it outright but it seemed a serious compromise was what he saw on the strategic horizon. Yet he persevered with the IRA and paid the price. His views during his imprisonment were no different from those he expressed prior to coming into it. But there is always one muscle people with big muscles never seem to pump, so they couldn’t see that.

That independence of mind once displayed by Pat Sheehan cannot survive in a party like Sinn Fein where the dominant instinct is to hiss and spit at anyone not prostrating themselves at the leadership altar. Hopefully, his tolerance towards different strands of thought has not been abandoned along with his thinking autonomy.

While I can hardly say I cheered when I learned of his advance through the party, setting the politics aside, I felt a strong streak of admiration for an old friend and comrade who despite the death of his wife a few years ago, leaving him to bring up the son from their marriage, has managed to turn things around.
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Continuation of the McGeough/McAnespie Trial

Tonight the Pensive Quill carries an update by guest writer Helen McClafferty on the ongoing trial of Gerry McGeough. She concentrates on the Swedish angle.

November 4th

The Swedish Government Needs To Be Held Accountable For Their Disgraceful Collusion With The British Government. First time observers at Gerry's trial today said they were left stunned at the proceedings. One shocked on-looker even described it as a "pure political show-trial".

The main focus of attention today was Swedish Immigration official Helen Hedebris, who proved herself to be more British than the British themselves with her constant reference to "here in Britain" when speaking about the North of Ireland. At one point Hedebris, who was a prosecution witness, went into Margaret Thatcher mode when she called the shooting of British soldiers in the context of the Irish Troubles as nothing more than a crime and actions that couldn't be remotely described as "political".

Hedebris spent much of her time in the witness box reading out tracts from a 1983 Political Asylum application that was allegedly lodged by Gerry when he supposedly sought refugee status in Sweden.

Having heard the contents, the trial judge is now going to rule on whether or not they are admissible for his consideration. Only a Diplock court could provide such wondrous conflict of interest.

Ironically, under British law, Political Asylum applicants are guaranteed that their documents will be kept confidential and under no circumstances handed over to the authorities in the country they may be fleeing from. The prosecution argued that this doesn't apply to material from Sweden-and Hedebris showed herself eager to agree with them.

The Swedish woman was in her element in the Diplock Court setting. Visibly excited at being "one of the team", on-lookers said "she was beside herself as she mingled with RUC/PSNI detectives and prosecution functionaries".

Without this Swedish input, Gerry would now be a free man.

The Swedish Government's collusion with the British government to convict Gerry McGeough at any cost needs to be immediately condemned by everyone.

In their obsessive need to prosecute and imprison this Irishman, the British obviously were prepared to turn international political asylum refugee laws on their head. This move today now has widespread implications for the entire concept of political asylum and should now become a major Human Rights issue and we all have an obligation to make it such!

Swedish Civil Servant Helen Hedebris, believed to be fanatically pro-British, obviously has been working in close collaboration with the RUC/PSNI over the years and her testimony today for the prosecution, against Gerry in a Diplock trial, was disgraceful and the Swedish government should hang their head in shame today.

There should be worldwide outrage at the fact that confidential political asylum application papers were used as "evidence" in the discredited Diplock Court system in the North of Ireland. Today's action is a stain on Sweden's otherwise excellent record in the area of international Human Rights. The Swedish government must now be held accountable for this.

November 5, 2010

To no great surprise the Diplock Court trial judge today "ruled" that Political Asylum application papers from Sweden are admissible as "evidence" against Gerry.

The move by Judge Ben Stevens, an Englishman and reputed senior freemason, reflects the growing blatant determination by the British authorities to have Gerry convicted and railroaded into jail as soon as possible.

Gerry remains equally determined in his views that the British have no right to occupy any part of Ireland and that they should get out as soon as possible.

The Master Cometh

Out this morning on my way to meet an Austrian researcher whose project it was to write an essay on the Good Friday Agreement, I noticed a lot of activity at front doors of houses close to where I live. This part of County Louth is pretty quiet on a Sunday morning, especially before 9. There are few shops open and the small splattering of people out and about on their feet seemed to be mass goers. So the hustle bustle of activity puzzled me.

Having passed three or four doors I paused and approached a neighbour, who looked as if he too had caught the busy bug. I inquired of him why everybody was up so early attending to their front doors and windows. I didn’t think there had been overnight storms that had prompted a spontaneous collective inspection for water ingress. ‘Surely, you must have heard’, he said to me, ‘the Master is threatening to represent us in Louth so we are putting garlands of garlic bulbs around our windows and nailing crosses to our front doors to ward him off.’

I thought about that before commenting. It might have seemed novel in Louth but the Master had not been deterred from forced entry in the past by anything less robust than a drop bar. Crosses and garlic seemed no match for a sledge hammer. ‘The garlic might work if he doesn’t like French cuisine but forget about the crosses, that’s all superstition.’ Not in the mood for scepticism he barked that it was alright for me, the Master had bitten my neck so many times that I had grown immune to his nocturnal plundering. ‘There is something of the night about that fella. A man with family and young children can’t take chances.’ Certainly not if Brother Liam is on the canvassing team I thought.

Sensing how ill at ease he was I sought to reassure him. I explained that as there was a small stream at the back of his home, it would act like a moat, a sort of natural barrier. The Master’s type can’t cross running water. He looked at me, eyebrow raised, uncertain if I was being helpful or yanking his chain.

To lighten things I told him the Master might not turn out all that bad. He had been a public representative for quite a while, and might bring something to the constituency. ‘Folk dread he might represent us as well as he does West Belfast.’ Not much I could say to that. What the good people of Louth did to have that visited upon them is the stuff of vampire movies. As if he had read my mind he continued, ‘Folk say he will parachute Liam in and you know what that means.’ Not for the first time, I thought.

Still, every cloud has its silver lining. There seems to be no situation however dire, that some entrepreneurial spirit cannot turn it to their economic advantage. As I progressed further on my town bound journey a number of wooden notices hastily hammered into the ground were on display in front gardens: ‘Plot for sale.’ Not being discerning enough, I asked one man why so many plots were going on the market at the one time. ‘There’ll be a good price to be fetched for it once the Master arrives to solve the nation’s crisis.’

I knew the Master had recently told documentary makers he enjoyed gardening in his spare time but I failed to work out how he could tend to so many allotments at once. He could hardly do so given the time he would need to spend in the Dail. But then double jobbing was nothing new to him so maybe he could manage.

‘What sort of vegetables does he intend to grow?’ I knew he had an abundance of turnips in West Belfast Sinn Fein so Swedes had to be ruled out. The response was dismissive. ‘Ah, you Nordies are a quare lot. You lecture us down here about our backward ways and there’s you thinking we want to sell the Master plots for growing fruit and veg.’

Feeling sillier by the minute and not eager to put my ignorance on display, I just nodded and said ‘suppose you are right.’ I hastened on my way but had made only a few steps before the would-be plot seller, sensing he had one over me and not happy to let me escape his superior knowledge, called after me ,‘the Master might need a place or two to bury unwanted things. For the man that knows how to turn a penny a killing can be made in selling secret graves.’ Very much so I thought; literally too. Still, I couldn’t resist commenting, that ‘sure, if you advertise them in advance they won’t be all that secret.’ Evened the score with the smartass. We Nordies are not so stupid after all.

On that I sauntered into town, pondering on the make up of the next Coalition government. Depending on the electoral arithmetic Ireland might produce the EU’s first Minister for the Disappeared.

Allelujah

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Me and You and a Dog Named Boo

It is instinctive to say that the debate generated by Richard O’Rawe’s hunger strike narrative still continues. But it doesn’t. What has taken the place of the debate is a heavily one sided if deeply reasoned discourse that meets little in the way of serious opposition. The argument of force deployed against O’Rawe has been swept aside by the force of argument from him. A quick read of his book Afterlives – and that is what it is, a quick pulsating read – shows how well he has marshalled his defences, impenetrable echelon upon echelon. For long enough he defended in depth, ceding no ground and allowing his attackers to shake their fists without them ever landing a punch. Now he is on the move and at breakneck speed.

The tide has turned, gone out in fact, and we can all see who is naked. It is not O’Rawe. He is well covered by his blanket. For his critics there is nothing else to hide behind. Neither fig leaf nor flag. As he pursues with clinical efficiency those who had maligned, berated, derided and dismissed him as ‘the fool’ it is like watching a tank phalanx routing a regiment of donkeys. The braying means nothing. It neither intimidates nor inspires, merely invites contempt.

From the midst of the cacophony that often drowned the sound of reason one thing rarely heard was laughter. The charge and counter charge were too serious for lighter moments. Now that O’Rawe is so far in front and cannot be caught things have relaxed a bit. His flailing critics having run out of puff seem eager to demonstrate that they don’t even take themselves seriously any longer.

Yesterday I was told if I wanted a laugh I should visit the discussion about Afterlives being pursued on the Slugger O’Toole blog. These days I rarely get to visit Slugger despite its reputation as a blog without equal in terms of discussion of Irish political issues. But I was glad I found the time. Because in the midst of explaining where things were at in terms of interpreting the hunger strike one poster claimed that:

the protection of the peace process against embittered failed politicos such as McIntyre, O’Rawe and Twomey is an entirely different kettle of fish and a task well worth pursuing.

So this is what it has come down to – the peace process must be defended. That’s what O’Rawe is all about, wrecking the peace process, the dirty rotten scoundrel. He must be a Protestant. So he should be pursued and purged of anti-peace process thoughts. Catholics don’t have them.

There are many daft things that get written or said when people get a rush of blood to the head and for that reason I have never been one to take these things seriously. I remember arguing with my daughter when she was 7 and she shouted at me ‘you are a wee lesbian.’ I laughed so much tears came to my eyes. The comment on Slugger reminded me of that occasion but there is an excuse for a seven year old. I could barely resist chortling and chuckling upon discovering that once again I was an enemy of the peace process against which it must be defended. But why is it always defended by morons on a moony mission? Surely if I was such a threat an intelligent defence would be mounted with a fine tipped pen rather than courtesy of the fluency one gets from a pencil with a rubber at either end.

I turned to my wife and fellow threat to the peace process and said, ‘Me and you and a dog named Boo.’ Well, O’Rawe is not a dog but each time he shouts ‘Boo’ some Sinn Fein luminary jumps as if electrocuted.

And then the terrible discovery that his bite is worse than his bark.

Halloween Greetings

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Parliamentary Silence

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a piece by guest writer Helen McClafferty detailing the concerns of supporters of Gerry McGeough about the reticence of Michelle Gildernew to add her voice to calls for a halt to his political show trial.

The Pressure Group "Justice for the McGeough Family" have issued a statement
congratulating Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew on the recent High Court ruling
confirming her position as the Member of Parliament for Fermanagh/South Tyrone.

Ms. Gildernew secured the constituency by one vote, which prompted the Unionist opposition candidate to bring legal action, citing alleged electoral malpractice during the poll last May.

Now that she is the official MP for the area, the Pressure Group have asked that
she break her more than three-and-a-half year silence on the nightmare that the
McGeough family have been put through by the British authorities ever since
Gerry's arrest following the 2007 Assembly Elections in which he stood as a
candidate.

Not only is Ms Gildernew the local political representative, but she is also a
neighbor of the McGeough family living just a few fields away in the next
townland and their children attend the same school together.

The Pressure Group have described Ms. Gildernew's inability to speak out on
behalf of a fellow republican as "weird and inappropriate".

They add that there is no political rationale to her silence given that her
fellow Sinn Féin MP, Pat Doherty, who represents West Tyrone, has made a point of recently visiting Gerry at his home in South-East Tyrone in order to discuss the case and listen to the family's concerns. Mr. Doherty was warmly welcomed by the McGeough family and his visit has been applauded by people in the Brantry/Eglish area, who appreciate his decency in this matter.

Members of Sinn Féin have also travelled from as far away as Dublin to express
solidarity with Gerry and the Pressure Group are now asking why Michelle
Gildernew cannot make the two minute journey to the McGeough household in order to do likewise.

The Public and the Private

Richard O’Rawe has just published a new book. Its title is Afterlives and was launched in Belfast on Thursday evening. Due to last minute ‘ambushes’ I was dragged elsewhere and had to cancel my planned journey north. Much to my regret, because O’Rawe is a battler who has done much to protect free inquiry from book burners and censors. Each time I have tried to phone him since his line has been engaged. I somehow doubt if it was with callers telling him how upset they were at his new work. They would rather paint on walls.

I have still to get a copy but it is being said that Afterlives is a forensic destruction of the argument that that the then republican leadership has no case to answer over its management of the 1981 hunger strike. O’Rawe sets out his stall in relation to the heated debate generated in the wake of his first book Blanketmen. It was there over five years ago that he first publicly vented grave misgivings about the longevity of the strike, expressing the view that with better management six lives need not have been lost. What he said in Blanketmen he had already been saying in private for years. In fact it was through such claims that I ended up meeting him again after a gap of many years. Our paths for long enough simply had not crossed.

Brendan McFarlane the leader of the IRA prisoners during the 1981 hunger strike has reentered the fray against O’Rawe. McFarlane, while not silent on the issue previously, has not been to the fore of the debate to the extent that some might have expected. The prolix of others who have rejected the O’Rawe claims seems not to have done the trick. Turning up the volume and drowning all else out might have made things loud but certainly not clear. So McFarlane has stepped in to the breach to make up the deficit. No easy task given that O’Rawe in the public mind has taken on the persona of writer in residence in the hunger strike debate, his account the incumbent narrative which others must dislodge if they are to make progress of their own. The once dominant Sinn Fein perspective has been rocked and now struggles to stay on its feet and avoid the telling blows that have so far penetrated its guard.

In literary terms O’Rawe’s reversal of fortunes is akin to the Soviet obliteration of the German Operation Barbarossa. Hit by a seemingly unstoppable Blitzkrieg of ill will and hate salvoes from the minute it emerged out of its birth canal, O’Rawe’s challenging account had to withstand a battle a day. But gradually and against the odds, the besieged author carefully pulled his critics onto the punch and delivered body blows that pushed them back well behind their own lines.

It is with much regret that I have followed Brendan McFarlane’s recent contributions including that in today’s Irish News. He does not seem comfortable in the role. Earlier in the week in the Derry Journal he was adding new detail to the narrative which to have any bearing should have seen the light of day much earlier in the debate. Unlike O’Rawe’s revelations, they seem awkward and grafted on, constructed from the perspective of the present rather than as an accurate history of the past.

I have long regarded Brendan McFarlane as a person of immense integrity who led from the front in the violent crucible of the H-Blocks. His task was onerous and unenviable. I feel distinctly uncomfortable about the position this outpouring of critique has placed him in and have said as much to O’Rawe. Yet the chips fall where they do and the evidence lends itself to no conclusion other than that a deal was offered which was accepted by the prisoners. This acceptance was subsequently subverted by the leadership for whatever reason and the hunger strike carried on with the resulting loss of six more lives.

Today Brendan McFarlane revealed communications written by Richard O’Rawe in his capacity as jail PRO. McFarlane claims these show that O’Rawe while in the prison was not of the view that the British had made any substantive offer. But this is old hat, a repeat of the Danny Morrison venture to Dublin a few years ago to search archives for similar communications. Morrison returned to Belfast and revealed that what he had discovered in Dublin was … Dublin. Few took the Morrison ‘comms’ disclosure seriously, intuitively knowing that the public positions of the day were not what people believed privately. How otherwise could the ‘victory’ parade presumably organised by Morrison and others in the wake of the vanquished 1980 hunger strike have gone ahead? The organisers knew privately that no victory had been achieved but publicly ran with the victory parade anyway.

Brendan McFarlane is an important witness to history. He could do worse than take stock of his situation and render a version of events that, even if at odds with the interpretation of Richard O’Rawe, at least sounds credible. The current narrative he is defending is, as William Sydney Porter might have said, ‘beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.’

Brownie in the Big Apple

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Walk Off

The speculators who took a club, on the verge of its second champions league title in three years, that was once again clad in the finery of Europe’s aristocracy, and dressed it up in paupers’ rags – Rory Smith, Irish Independent.

The change of hands at ownership level at Liverpool FC seems to have brought some success on the field, but it is early days. The opposition thus far overcome, Blackburn and Bolton, are not the most formidable adversaries a team must do battle with in the course of a season. Chelsea at the weekend will be a different proposition altogether. Still, the anomaly of Liverpool being in the relegation zone has been brought to a welcome end.

After a nine day rearguard action by the profiteers Tom Hicks and George Gillett, they finally lost their battle to sink the club while all the while disingenuously claiming to be saving it. They were the enormous iceberg that the titanic Merseyside outfit had the misfortune to run into on its journey to what it thought was terra firma and better times.

The ousted owners claimed that the sale to New England Sports Ventures was a swindle and sought to block it, on their reckless way inflicting more stress and strain on a creaking support base long disdainful of their avarice and broken promises. In the words of Hicks ‘this is a very valuable asset that was swindled away from me in an epic swindle. I'm very angry about it.’ Not half as angry as the thousands who felt swindled enough to protested week that he and Gillett ever owned the club to begin with. Under their reign Liverpool FC were swindled out of every hope of success and ended up so far down the league table that the players seemed to be weighed down by cumbersome diving equipment each time they set foot on the pitch, delivering precision passing and finishing which only those with flippers could manage.

The two swaggering Americans even sought a big hat injunction in a Texan courtroom. But like everything else this duo engaged in it came to nought, just like the success they brought to the club. Big hat no cattle, as the saying has it. Their rigging, nobbling and manoeuvring was quickly recognised by the British judge handling their case who said ‘when they saw that the process was going against them they sought to renege on their agreement.’ In real terms their gripe amounted to little other than a feeling that they were out-swindled.

They then went on to try and dig their greedy claws into a sum of over a billion by way of compensation for their loss. That one action alone exposed who the real swindlers are in this drawn out and sordid soccer saga. Confirmation if it was needed of, what one sports writer has termed, ‘a new dynamic within the game: the final and total ascendancy of money.’ We may quibble over dating the dynamic but the point is clear.

Shortly after they took over in March 2007 Liverpool lost the Champions League final. From then the club flattered to deceive no one. Long time observers could see beyond the field of play, knew the writing was on the wall, and it read more like relegation than championship contenders.

When the Spirit of Shankly group said of the speculators, ‘if this is the end of them and their empty wallets and empty promises, it will have been a momentous day for this club’ it sounded like a collective Kop chant of ‘Walk Off, Walk Off.’

Sick To The Teeth Of The English Presence

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a short piece from guest writer, the republican activist and author, Gerry McGeough, who is currently being pursued through the Diplock courts by the British Police Service of Northern Ireland.

A Chairde,

Just want to say a big THANK-YOU to everyone who has sent messages of support
and offered their prayers ahead of the re-starting of this so-called "trial".
By now, you will all be aware of the fact that this charade has nothing
whatsoever to do with Justice and everything to do with continuing the war
against the Irish people by other means. It is raw, brute political intimidation
and censorship in its most blatant form.

This persecution against me is being driven by elements from within the British-
Unionist establishment who hate with a passion everything that is Irish
nationalist and Catholic. They are blinded by bigotry.

Needless to say, I have never been impressed or intimidated by this outfit in
the past and most certainly will not bow down to them now. Irish-Catholics will
not be pushed around in our own country and the sooner these people face that
reality the better.

My patience has been sorely tested by these anti-Irish, anti-Catholic wretches
and I believe that the time has now come for the establishment of a broad-based
Independence Movement that will demand the end to foreign misrule in our
country. Our ancient Irish Nation requires freedom, unity and full independence
from Britain ... as of now.

As an Irishman, I am sick to the teeth of the English presence in our country.
England has nothing to offer our people but misery and captivity. This is our
nation and we want it back. England, get out of Ireland and take your pathetic
little Diplock courts with you! Remember, the Irish Nation will never be beaten
and Irishmen and women everywhere must stand up and be proud of our ancient
heritage and noble history of resistance to the foreign enemy!

Éirinn go Brách/Ireland Forever!