Crossing Borders and Double Crossing

First carried in Fortnight Magazine

The man who claims to have supplied Gardai with the bug that Charles Haughey eventually used to eavesdrop on adversaries had a long career in the shadows. George Clarke of RUC Special Branch had been running informers in the Republic from the very early 1970s. Between September and December 1971, those violent volatile months following the introduction of internment, he made 47 visits south of the border. It was to fish but not at rivers. At one point during his long agent running career he attended the Provisionals’ annual Bodenstown rally which honours the United Irishmen leader Wolfe Tone. Viewing the crowd he might well have thought ‘this kingdom shall be mine.’

Of all those he baited and hooked his best catch would appear to have been fortuitous, a 1973 walk-in who gave RUC Special Branch vital information about the London Bombings. If Clarke’s account is correct this information, while not able to prevent the bombing of the British capital, led to the arrest of those involved, most notably the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian.

Reneging

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Helen McClafferty writing on the plight of Gerry McGeough

The Northern Ireland Office has reneged the Good Friday Agreement & Gerry McGeough's 2 Year Release.

Gerry McGeough's attorney asked the NIO to allow Gerry a few hours leave on May 7th to attend his son Cormac's Holy Communion services. Both the Cardinal and the Bishop wrote letters of support on behalf of Gerry, but to no avail. The request was denied and a letter was sent to Gerry from the NIO which read: "Your habitual criminal behaviour does not instil confidence that you would refrain from further criminal activity if granted compassionate release at this time. The safety of the public is most important".

CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR? What criminal behavior? McGeough's charges were over 30 years old and were related strictly to the Troubles and prior to the GFA. The same as every other ex-Provo and Loyalist! The letter further stated that his release date would be 1/29/2021! How is that possible? Under the Good Friday Agreement he is entitled to be released after serving 2 years?

Could there be ANY doubt left in anyone's mind at this point, that the tentacles of the British government, the DUP and Sinn Fein have become so tightly entwined in the selective 'criminalization' of McGeough? Not only is the NIO now trying to label Gerry as a 'common criminal,' but they appear to also be reneging on the Good Friday Agreement with regard to Gerry's political prisoner status and his release in two years?

Regardless of your Irish political affiliations, the McGeough case is a blight on the Good Friday Agreement and those sworn to uphold it. Reputable over-seas newspapers have confirmed that a deal was made between the British government and Sinn Fein for ex-Provos 'on the run' to receive 'Royal Pardons' in '98 and McGeough was one of those 50. Shame on Sinn Fein for allowing this to happen. They have absolutely no excuse for allowing the British government and DUP to get away with this extreme, blatant discrimination and persecution of one man and his family because he ran on an anti RUC/PSNI platform in the 2007 elections.

Robert Moke McMahon

Easter Sunday is that time of the year when a primordial republican instinct pushes its way up through the layers of mundane sediment that hold it in check and makes it out through the wearing course of every day life. It is a day when republican eschatology comes into its own and prompts reflection on dead comrades.

Robert ‘Moke’ McMahon who died recently after carrying cancer for a prolonged period was one of those republicans whose political outlook had developed as a result of his stay in Long Kesh’s Cage 11. It was from that particular abode that he emerged back into the world of the IRA in the late 1970s. Since then Cage 11 has been stamped on the literary map by the publication of a book by the same name written by Sinn Fein boss Gerry Adams. Some time prior to his own release Adams had served as the O/C of Cage 11 and his thinking had influenced many others who served time there. At Moke’s funeral Adams mentioned having first met him in Cage 11. It was there that I first met him too.

Moke was an open Adams backer when I came across him and as such was a vociferous critic of the truce leadership of the mid 1970s. Although Cage 11 prided itself on its own reputation as a source of seditious ideas, the intellectual regime that was fostered there expected a high degree of conformity from those held within its boundaries. It wasn’t considered chic to be enamoured to either the jail or outside leaderships.

Yet the attitude to those who dissented wasn’t overly severe and a dissenter’s life was far from the woeful experience conjured up by Robert Hoffer’s world of non conformity where the dissenter not conforming with non-conformity lives a hard life. When the camp staff placed its education officer in Cage 11 he was treated with a fair measure of tolerance. Nevertheless within the cage it was expected that the camp staff in general should be treated with disdain along with the external leadership it was assumed to be fronting for.

While having few problems with the analysis I recall flagging up the regime of conformity to Moke during a loud discussion when he was giving out about the then camp staff which was associated with the truce leadership. Whatever his views on my observation he remained as friendly as always. His attitude was never poisonous. Whatever position he may have arrived at in later years certainly then he did not feel threatened by a different idea.

His was an effervescent personality and I recall him as forever on the up, always helpful, never vindictive, and more inclined to register his criticism through banter rather than put-downs. There were times during the tedium laced days of the blanket protest when ennui would sit heavily on my spirit that my thoughts would drift back to Moke and others in the radically different world of Cage 11.

A one time internee, he had returned to prison at the end of 1974 or early 1975 having been linked to the capture of a huge bomb in Belfast. I was in Crumlin Road towards the end of 1974 when what experienced hands remained in the Belfast IRA were making their way into the jail. The organisation in the city seemed to be in a dire state despite some considerable successes during the year including a double assassination of two judges in different parts of the city on the same day in September.

From the Crum he made his way to Cage 11 where the ceasefire he and so many others there would prove unremittingly hostile to was in full swing. Cage 11 did not end his prison experience. He would later return to Crumlin Road in 1983 for a short period after being accused in one of the supergrass cases of the era.

Moke, like so many others in Cage 11, had a passion for soccer. And it produced its fair share of talented players one of whom would later ply his trade in the Northern Irish league. Cage 11 took its soccer as seriously as it did its politics and one occasion its passion spilled over into a free for all brawl when it lost a game to a rival cage. The match produced a stinging comment from a governor who offered to have a riot squad on stand by for the following game.

I bumped into Moke a few times after I got out. By that time he was ensconced in the security teams and my dealings with him were social in passing and personal; not in any way related to ‘Movement business’. He was never ignorant or hostile but without doubt given the environment he floated in, didn’t share my view of where things were at.

In the end, whatever perspective he embraced in later years, I have warm memories of him as someone who raised spirits and added a dash of colour to the drab prison grey in an era when republicanism seemed to have a future rather than just a past.

Good Friday

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Spy Wednesday

Tonight's article is a spoof piece that featured two years ago. Today being Spy Wednesday makes it timely to run it again. Enjoy.

To wake up a man from a nightmare is compassion. - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I remember drifting off to sleep and then it was an alternative
universe. Like a flip between worlds I had once read about in a novel by
Peter Straub and Stephen King. I was back in Sinn Fein as the party
gathered at the assembly point for the Easter commemoration. In my dream
it was at Divis Tower and not the usual venue, Beechmount. I didn’t feel
comfortable being back in the fold but like many dreams, breaching the
walls of sleep was the only exit. I couldn’t reach the elusive escape
hatch and was condemned to march the Falls Road until wakefulness
released me. My attempts to run away were accompanied by the slow motion
that always holds you in a dream despite your best efforts to pull away
from it.


The Easter Parade had been moved from Sunday to the Wednesday before.
When I asked the man beside me why this was so, he looked at me with
horror as if a question was a contagious illness which might infect him
and then he might go around asking questions too. He shuffled off
dragging his partner by the hand. I saw someone I took to be an official
or marshal. His overbearing demeanour suggested he could be nothing
else. I put the question to him. For my troubles I received a look which
suggested I was plain stupid. When I let my tongue hang out and turned
my palms upward he concluded that I was pretty much that and proceeded
to give me a ‘mo chara’ lecture in tones that were insultingly
paternalistic; the party had to be flexible, Sunday was not the only day
the actual fighting in Dublin had taken place. Did it take place on
Sunday at all I inquired only to be ignored. He continued by explaining
that other days had to be taken into consideration as well if we were to
avoid having a hierarchy of days. I explained as best I could that if we
were marching the Wednesday after Easter I could buy into this but the
Wednesday before, no fighting happened that day. ‘But they were planning
it,’ he assured me. ‘You don’t think it came out of thin air. And you
would not want to be looking down your nose at those who laid the ground
work and valuing only those who took to the field. Read your history mo
chara.’ He mumbled something about old habits dying hard, a thinly
veiled reference to my long running differences with the party. It was
clear he felt I should be grateful at being back among the true
believers even though I did not truly believe. Penance should have been
my lot.

My persistence wouldn’t surrender as easily as some other things in life
so I pointed out that it wasn’t just any Wednesday, this was Spy
Wednesday. ‘That’s a negative way of describing it. We look at it as
Patriot Wednesday.’ Not quite ready to buy into that I pressed on. ‘What
about marching on Good Friday then?’ Politically and ideologically we
might have drawn back a bit from Easter Sunday but only by two days not
four. The SDLP, I was informed, march on that day. Besides, ‘they made
that agreement on Good Friday not us. Fair’s fair and all that.’ I
argued that the SDLP never march. He told me it was April so there was
little point in us discussing March.

Fair enough. While there was something not just right about it, I
couldn’t think of a way of dealing with it and fell into line, just like
everybody else, and felt the most compelling urge to nod my head and
walk in a somnambulant state. I was handed a little bannerette with a
photo of Caoimhin O Caolain on it and told to wave it at the crowds as I
was passing. Mindful that there might be children watching who I did not
want to frighten I thrust it into my pocket as soon as the marshal had
turned his back.

Having fallen in we slowly shuffled up the road. Try as I might it was
hard to keep step, not being good at these things. Besides, the road had
changed. Whereas during my waking hours, there was no SDLP office on the
Falls Road near the Falls swimming centre, in my dream road the first
building we approached after the pool was called Alex Atwood House. As
we passed we let out a collective roar of ‘Stoops.’ It just came up from
the pit of my stomach. Involuntarily it was racing from my lips before I
knew it. Those inside the premise stuck their tongues out at us and
laughed derisorily.

Next in line was the Workers’ Party headquarters which seem to have been
uprooted from the Springfield Road and placed on its new founds. I was
amazed to see what I thought was a photo of Gerry Adams hanging on it
but as we got closer I realised it was Des O’Hagan. The beard and
glasses had momentarily deceived me. When we reached it we howled
‘Sticks’. They screamed ‘Stormont forever’ back at us. The stewards
instructed us to shout ‘up Stormont’, it being more transitional
sounding than ‘Stormont forever.’ The logic was what goes up must come
down; nothing lasts forever, just a phase in the struggle.

At the Sinn Fein office at the comer of Thiepval Street a crowd had
gathered to wave at us. As we approached they seemed to be shouting
something about caps. I had none on so I took it to be the berets that
the colour party members were wearing. As we pulled up level with them I
began to wave and shout ‘friends.’ I didn’t recognise them as any
friends that I knew but they were there for us. They were waving at us
and I could now make out what they were shouting: ‘up the Scaps.’ That
was it; in the S hierarchy we were at the bottom, the Scaps, lower
placed than even the Sticks or the Stoops. My face was red. What would
my kids think? How could I sing them ballads of ‘brave Scappaticci’?
Sticks, Stoops and Scaps. This was as good as it got.

At Northumberland Street, which was now positioned up the road rather
than closer to the bottom, there was a wall mural of Iris the Virus
Robinson. She was partially concealed in undergrowth and surrounded by
gravestones upon which she seemed to sneer. Emblazoned above her image
were the words ‘First Squaw - Walking Eagle.’ On the headstones at her
feet were inscribed the words ‘God sent me to hell for being gay.’ On
her head was Native American head dress.

While we looked on it lovingly a car pulled up with two former blanket
men in it. Someone shouted ‘traitors’ and we tried pulling them from the
vehicle. I wanted to run away but couldn’t. My legs had a dream powered
life of their own.‘Take them up to Casement and drop them from the wall’
a voice howled. The car the men were in was attacked by the crowd
wielding car braces and poles. Then from her mural Iris the Virus
floated into our midst, wagged a disapproving finger, and said ‘not in
this town, you don’t. Second class citizens shall show each other mutual
respect. It is our job to humiliate you. ’ My instinct was to rebel
against this insult. ‘Hush,’ came a voice. ‘That’s the boss’s wife. Do
as she says.’ So used was everyone to behaving deferentially and with
blind obedience to authority that emanated from the house on the hill
that we immediately ceased our attack on the two former blanket men and
fell back into the ranks. The Virus drifted back in amongst the
tombstones. With her out of earshot some in the parade grew rebellious.
An American tourist walking in the parade asked ‘why is she called
Walking Eagle?’ A woman to my rear said in a broad Belfast accent,
‘because she is so full of crap she can’t fly.’

Up the Falls and at the bottom of the Whiterock Road we turned right and
into the City Cemetery. But we didn’t end up here on any previous
occasion I thought. Still, we pressed on until we stopped at the grave
of Denis Donaldson. We had been told a famous actor who had played the
role of an Irish hero would be giving the oration. Unusual, but for that
reason, novel. Brad Pitt or Liam Neeson, perhaps. Both had played senior
roles in films about Irish resistance icons. At the graveside, Jim
Sturgess was announced as the guest speaker. ‘But it can’t be’ I
protested, ‘he is acting Marty McGartland in Fifty Dead Men Walking.’ As
if that wasn’t difficult enough, when he began reading the role of
honour I wanted to join Walking Eagle behind one of her headstones.

Patriot Franko Hegarty
Patriot Maurice Gilvary
Patriot Peter Valente
Patriot Joe Fenton …

And on it went. When the colour party lowered its flags I heard one of
those flag bearers say ‘too fast Freddie.’ Whoever Freddie happened to
be, his reply was ‘alright Sandy.’ A steward noticing my concern said
‘ah, Scappaticci and Lynch; they are only water-carriers.’ But they were
carrying the national flag. ‘Everybody can change Anthony. One man’s
traitor is another man’s patriot.’

Unsure I could continue with this I nevertheless was sucked back into
position and marched out of the cemetery. Someone said we were now for
Milltown. At last I thought, the escape from this nightmare. It would
all fall into place and this madness would be behind us. As we
approached the front of the cemetery I could see the colour party
slowing down but instead of turning into Milltown it wheeled to the
right to begin the journey back down the Falls Road. By this time those
in front of us had begun rhythmically hoisting their left hands and
pointing with index fingers towards the republican plot, chanting
‘they’re all traitors over there.’ Like a Mexican wave it spread right
down to where I was. My hand jerked up in spite of myself and I too
began screaming. The anonymous pressure of the group had done its work.

As we passed the Falls Park on our journey back down a PSNI landrover
pulled out in front of us. Two cops alighted, and took position at
either side of the road, butts of their automatic rifles resting firmly
in the crook of their arms. Spontaneously the parade gave a clench fist
salute and as one roared ‘victory to the peelers.’

That was it. I pushed my feet hard against the ground and launched
myself as far into the air as I could, coming up through the layers of
sleep and making my way to consciousness, my heart racing and breath
panting.

A dream. Nothing like that could ever happen in real life. Sinn Fein
would never encourage touts and label republicans traitors. A dream,
that’s all it was. Now, back to the real word where Ireland will be
united by 2014.

Mimicking Margaret

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment - and nothing more corrupting - AJP Taylor.

In his recent Morning Ireland contribution, during which he offered to talk to armed republicans, Sinn Fein boss Gerry Adams revealingly took a swipe at the unarmed republican party éirígí. Arguably this had nothing to do with éirígí support for current armed campaigning – there seems to be no such support – and is more related to éirígí candidates contesting local government elections in West Belfast where if the party is to pick up a council seat it is almost certain to be at Sinn Fein’s expense.

Talking Brownie

In the wake of the killing of PSNI constable Ronan Kerr, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams made an offer to talk to armed republicans. Expressing horror – in a fashion that would leave the uninitiated thinking that cop-killing is a thought that never crossed the old caudillo’s mind – at the death of Ronan Kerr, he has offered to engage with those who continue to be governed by the logic he and his colleagues did so much to spawn. Shuffle and shimmy as much as the Provisionals might the ideology of physical force championed by them is the replicator that has produced the mindset for today’s actions.

Is Adams serious with his offer or just playing to a gallery south of the border where he is now a TD? It is foolhardy to assert that armed republicans should not be talked to. The dangers inherent in allowing them to grow more self-referential than they already are through strategies of isolation and marginalisation should be self evident. They are not from some other world which marches to the beat of a different drum we ourselves have never heard. Those who once did what they are doing now can hardly feign unfamiliarity. They live in a world that the current Sinn Fein leadership and the rest of us fashioned.

Few captured this better than the blogger Ardoyne Republican who in his ruminations on the Omagh killing succinctly pointed out:

those who ordered and carried it out were following the same rules of engagement which the Provies followed. They abide by the same Army Constitution as all those Volunteers did in the past, they carry-out similar operations which the Provisionals did before them and their goal is the same. There was no ‘Good Old IRA’, they all existed for the same reason all the other IRAs’ did in the past. To end British rule in Ireland and they did and do use every means at their disposal.

There is no reason that I can think of why armed republicanism might be considered the way to proceed. But to pretend that those within it are something we were not is ludicrous. We are in their genes. If we provided the template for killing Ronan Kerr it is only through a shambolic pretence that we can insist that there is a Chinese wall between we who provided the template and those who continue to use it to such brutal effect.

Adams of course will be told this if he sits down with armed republicans disinclined to listening to a lecture on ‘do as we say not as we do.’ Given past form his idea of dialogue would amount to little more than a monologue in which he would harangue and they would witness; usual hectoring and bullying. The chances of that producing the slightest evolution in thinking away from their current perspective is zilch. And given his foul tackle from behind on Eirigi it seems unlikely that he has the slightest interest in doing something with any shade of ‘oppositional republicanism’ other than goading it.

The Adams gambit seems little more than a stunt; an appeal to a better off section of the twenty six county electorate which he hopes will be sufficiently stupefied into erasing from their memories that under his leadership there were about 300 Northern cops killed compared to the two so far claimed by today’s armed republicans.

Yet it is progress of a sort. That Adams wants to speak to armed republicans in a different tone from that used when his movement spoke to Joe O’Connor earns him at least one Brownie point.

Thousands Are Sailing

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Another Civil War?

In tonight’s Pensive Quill, ex-Blanket columnist and Radical Unionist commentator, Dr John Coulter, says those branded as ‘dissident republicans’ should take heed of warnings not to drag the North back to the early 1970s – a period which witnessed bitter nationalist feuds.

Dissident republicans have clearly forgotten what befell the Official IRA in 1972 after the latter murdered an off-duty Catholic soldier in Derry. When the Officials murdered 19-year-old Ranger William Best of the Royal Irish Rangers, they did not believe it would start a backlash which would result in the OIRA having to call a total ceasefire eight days later.

Earlier this month, dissident republicans opposed to Stormont and Sinn Fein’s peace process killed a Catholic police officer in Omagh. The Tyrone market town was also the location for one of the worst massacres of the Troubles in 1998, when the dissident Real IRA killed 29 people in a no-warning car bomb.

This month, mainstream republican and unionist politicians walked side by side at the funeral of the murdered police officer. In modern Irish politics, imagery has become everything. In 1972, after Ranger Best’s murder, some 200 women from the Catholic Creggan and Bogside in Derry marched on the Official republican headquarters in the city.

Having interviewed sources from what has become branded by the media and political opinion as the ‘dissident republican movement’, it is clear the dissident republican terror campaign has a three-fold purpose. These are to de-stabilise the Stormont Parliament; stop Catholics from joining the police, and embarrass Sinn Fein by forcing republicans to condemn dissident attacks.

One poignant question always disturbs me when talking to such sources – are these dissidents living in a terrorist fantasy world, believing they are akin to the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army driving the Americans out of Saigon in the mid 1970s? As the last American helicopters were retreating from the South Vietnamese capital, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army kept on firing at them. Do dissidents see themselves as blazing away with their AK47 assault rifles at Larne and Belfast harbours as ferries carrying the last police officers, Protestant refugees and Unionist politicians sail down Belfast Lough or across the Irish Sea?

Unlike Sinn Fein, which believed in a political process operating alongside a terror campaign, the dissidents believe there must first be a military victory over the British and unionists before a political solution can be implemented. This has never happened in Irish history, not even when the Treaty talks were being planned during the War of Independence.

But the dissident campaign is starting to have the opposite effect in Irish politics. Rather than driving a wedge between the nationalist community and the police, it is uniting mainstream republican and unionist in a common cause – rooting out the various dissident factions.

Politically, the most that the dissident terror campaign can hope for is additional electoral support from unionist voters for the anti-power sharing Traditional Unionist Voice party led by former DUP MEP Jim Allister. There is still a section of Protestant thinking which would grumble at the sight of DUP First Minister Peter Robinson attending the funeral mass for a murdered Catholic police officer.

The Provisional IRA was nudged into the peace process as a result of losing key operatives in shoot-outs with the security forces, such as the Loughgall ambush in the 1980s when eight top members of the IRA’s feared East Tyrone Brigade were wiped out.

Sooner, rather than later, dissident republican leaders must realise they have to negotiate with the British and Irish governments. Militarily, the dissidents will not be defeated in Loughgall-style ambushes by the SAS. That could only lead to young militant nationalists swelling the ranks of the various dissident terror gangs.In 1972, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in Derry in which 14 innocent Catholics were killed by the Paras, the ranks of the fledgling Provos were also swelled.

The dissidents will be defeated when people from the nationalist community give the police the necessary intelligence the PSNI needs to bring these terrorists before the courts.

However, there is the real danger the dissident campaign could spark a second Irish Civil War, which saw republican kill republican. The history of the present Troubles is littered with bloody internecine feuds within republicanism. The Provisionals have fought the Officials; the Officials have fought the INLA; the INLA has imploded as the various factions butchered each other. In late October 1992, the Provos used hundreds of members and supporters to attack people linked to a breakaway republican faction, the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation, on the grounds the IPLO was heavily involved in drug-dealing. One IPLO member was killed and several others wounded. Within a week of the Provo attacks, the IPLO disbanded.

Officially, the Provisional IRA no longer exists. But if the dissident campaign continues to endanger Sinn Fein’s peace strategy, there is the prospect republicans loyal to mainstream thinking may retaliate against the dissident groupings on a ‘no claim, no blame’ basis. In the Irish Civil War of the 1920s, former republican comrades slaughtered each other in some of the most notorious incidents in Irish history.

Irish political, religious and community leaders have stressed they do not want the dissidents to drag the island back to the bloodbath days of the 1970s. While dissidents may try to increase political temperatures by disrupting either the royal wedding or the Queen’s visit to the Republic, the chances of sectarian conflict – even with the loyalist marching season approaching – are slender.

But what is a distinct possibility is vicious inter-republican blood-letting. That would be a case of dragging the island back to the 1970s.

Amazing!

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Omagh March

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility – Joseph Conrad.

This afternoon thousands took to the streets of Omagh in protest at last week’s republican killing of PSNI constable Ronan Kerr. Like the funeral of the dead man I saw it only on television. But it seemed to have less of an ersatz feel to it than the funeral. The celebrity cortege in attendance just didn’t cut the emotional mustard.

The funeral was as natural as the on the ground welcome given to Tony Blair in 1997 on the first steps of his journey into a British prime ministerial career. It turned out that ‘the ordinary people of London’ were in fact members of the Labour Party put in place for media effect.

When a certain naturalness is usurped by stage management the effect tends to be lost. Everybody knows their roles and their lines, the scenes are wooden and the movement stiff. That’s why there was so much sceptical commentary about the funeral and the carefully worked choreography.

Today’s event however looked something else. There is always some degree of organisation to these things. Photos of the dead man accompanied by the stencilled caption ‘not in my name’ do not make and distribute themselves. Yet today’s gathering did not appear manufactured for the cameras and for that reason had more of an impact when the cameras rolled. That’s how it looked from this living room.

A very large body of Irish people took to the streets demanding that a very small body of Irish people desist from using political violence. It is as stark as that. At its heart is a question of rights. Who are rights with? Are they with the vast majority who want freedom from republican political violence or the small minority who want to deny them that freedom? It is a question that armed republicans should consider contemplating if not for ethical reasons then surely for strategic ones.

Armed republicanism has been totally outmanoeuvred by the British state. The British have found a mechanism which allows them to facilitate the wishes of the Irish people while at the same time positioning armed republicanism as the major impediment to those wishes. Strategically alone it makes no sense for armed republicans to continue on their present course and be depicted as the Phelps family of Irish political life. This particular family under the directives of Pastor Fred Phelps pickets the funerals of dead US troops on the basis that their deaths were ordained by god because the US permits homosexuality. They appear bereft of any strategic understanding of how US society perceives them.

Failing a strategic reappraisal, those republicans who are determined to thwart the very people they insist on violently freeing against their expressed wishes send a Phelps-like message that they are impervious to reason by virtue of being trapped, or even willingly wrapped, in a history-propelled irrationality. When people are deemed to be beyond reason alternative measures are found to deal with them. Those alternatives are always made easier when the general public is alienated from those subject to the measures.

The response is certain to be more draconian measures and political policing. We can see this under way already with the PSNI planning to dig into some past cases not in the interests of justice – otherwise all cases would be looked at - but on political grounds; the expediency of, in the terms once expressed by British counter insurgency strategist Brigadier Frank Kitson, disposing of unwanted members of the public.

In spite of this the likelihood is that armed republicans will opt for the deleterious course. We know from experience that marches like today’s can all too easily be ignored. It is likely that the current crop of armed republicans will simply copy their predecessors of 1976 who launched an angry discourse, and on occasion low level violence and intimidation, against the Peace People. They might well dig up some of Gerry Adams’ old writings in which he took the Peace People to task for trying to impede the progress of the armed struggle.

If so it will amount to nothing other than a rearguard action. A much weaker armed republicanism repeating the tactics of their Provisional antecedents stand to achieve even less. Why copy failure?

Terry The Terrible

The religious cretin Terry Jones, pastor of Gainsville Church, Florida, has gone ahead and delivered on his threat of last year to burn the Koran. In response a gang of religious bigots, having just emerged from Friday prayer sessions, peacefully stormed a UN office in Afghanistan, peacefully killed many foreign staff people working there, two of whom were reported to be peacefully beheaded. A further five people, Afghans, are also said to have died although reports suggest the Afghan dead may have been protestors. The power of prayer at work again it seems.

One newspaper in Pakistan described the US religious idiots as ‘devil pastors’ who were guilty of blasphemy. It didn’t say much about the morons in Afghanistan being guilty of murder. All a bit daft to us on the outside of religion looking in at people promoting their invisible men and waving their holy books at each other. And all of them eager to burn and behead.

Jones was threatening the same type of action last year. Among the objectives then was the halting of things that got up his nose: ‘stop to Islam, stop to Islamic law, stop to brutality.’ Never seemed to figure with him that this could include water boarding. But as is the case with the one eyed men who lead religious groups there is always some excuse for being blind to certain truths.

After a roasting from US officialdom and a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between his ministry and god’s office Jones cancelled his torching spectacle. God, apparently had a change of heart, while officialdom, through the Peter King anti-Muslim witch hunt, has created an atmosphere in which book burning seemed an ok thing to do providing the books are those Muslims cherish. Jones after ‘trying to give the Muslim world an opportunity to defend their book’ and receiving no reply finally lost patience and decided to torch the same book. That sort of leaves his book of myths in poll position, in Gainsville anyway, where it will be considered truer than Islam’s book. The Koran has been purged through purifying fire. All conducted by true Christian gentlemen. Praise the Christian lord for that and All Power to the Zealots.

Now it seems that last year’s warnings from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, that Jones could end up pouring gasoline on more than the Koran, has lift off. Jones can hardly hide behind the excuse that he had not been warned. But this should not mean that the religious crazies who hacked their way through UN staff in Afghanistan should be able to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own actions by blaming their fellow religious crazy, Jones. The demented pastor has a point when he protests that ‘we are not responsible for their actions.’ But it also means Islam cannot be deemed responsible for his.

But Jones didn’t just rush in. We have to give him that. A moron no doubt but a fair one as demonstrated by his holding true to US principles of justice and insising on a jury trial. On the last Sunday in March the good pastor put the Koran on trial in his church. The public were able to attend but only about 30 turned up. The defendant was found ‘guilty of crimes against humanity’ and duly ‘executed’ by the pastoral executioner, Wayne Sapp under the watchful eye of Pastor Jones. The execution, at ten minutes, lasted longer than the deliberation of the jury which took up a mere eight.

One woman who attended the trial of the Koran said of Muslims ‘these people, for me, are like monsters … I hate these people.’ Don’t be surprised if she turns up as a star witness at the Peter King hearings.

The Dingo Barks

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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What did Bobby really die for?

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries an article from guest writer Dr John Coulter who describes himself as a radical unionist.

IRA icons Bobby Sands MP and Brendan Hughes must be having a right auld chin-wag in eternity as to what they really died for. The Shinners will be quick to point out – and effectively utilise to the SDLP’s demise – the Stormont and council polling day is the exact 30th anniversary of Sands’ death in hunger strike in 1981 after 66 days.

His funeral a few days later saw the biggest mobilisation of Catholic opinion in Ireland since the death of IRA legend Michael Collins in the 1920s.  Sinn Fein orchestrated 100,000 nationalists from across the island to converge on Milltown cemetery’s republican plot – the first time Northern Catholics had been able to rival Protestant attendances at the annual 12 July Boyne commemoration.

Sands’ death, along with his nine fellow hunger strikers, propelled Sinn Fein into the electoral process, a process which sees the party in major positions of influence in both the Dail and Stormont. When the Leinster House Shinner team turned up at Stormont to mark the last week of the present Assembly, both Alliance and the Ulster Unionists must have been green with envy at the TDs Sinn Fein has amassed. The Shinners had 41 MLAs and TDs from across the island. Davy Ford and Tommy Elliott would give their right hands to return to Stormont with 14 MLAs each.

But were these Dublin and Belfast scenarios the ones Bobby Sands died for? And why was senior IRA Belfast commander Brendan Hughes – a veteran of the hunger strike – so bitter against the Sinn Fein leadership before cancer claimed him in 2008?

As Sands lay dying inside the Maze jail, what would have been his reaction if the Grim Reaper had said: “Bobby, on the 30th anniversary of me taking your soul, Sinn Fein will have taken its Dail seats and will be propping up a partitionist parliament at Stormont with Peter Robinson’s DUP!”

Had Sands lived, he and Hughes - not Adams and McGuinness – would have run Sinn Fein. The republican movement which Sands died for is not the same organisation which will commemorate his anniversary by remaining not just the largest Northern nationalist party, but beat the DUP into the First Minister’s Office.

Ironically, Sinn Fein is returning to the 1905 roots of its founder Arthur Griffith, who opposed terrorism and was a huge fan of passive resistance. Griffith’s Sinn Fein was not a violent republican death squad, but a separatist party content for Ireland to be a British dominion.

Little wonder when the Shinners celebrated their centenary in 2005, they wanted Griffith airbrushed out. Republicans have conveniently forgotten that Griffith was the first Irish delegate to agree to the British terms which became the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.

Would Sands have been as quick to agree the republican climb-down in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, or the complete remodelling of Sinn Fein in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement? Then again, would Sands even have been at any negotiating table? The republicans who died in 1981 were all committed to the concept of armed struggle.

Maybe the hunger strike was one way of getting these violent republicans out of the way? Hughes suggested before he died himself that some of the hunger strikers could have been saved.

Republicanism can sometimes be a very cruel set of beliefs. As a radical Right-wing Unionist looking in, it seems to have allowed people from its own camp to die needlessly. Chatting privately to friends of the late Brendan Hughes, I always detect a bitterness at the way The Dark was sidelined in his latter years.

As a Unionist, I fully appreciate how police officers and soldiers can lay down their lives for Queen and country. But what cause is so great that Sands would starve himself to death? Brendan Hughes was influential in calling off the 1980 hunger strike. I wonder did Sands have the same choice in 1981?

How many people would still be alive today if the republican leadership had not only saved Sands, but also called a permanent ceasefire instead of waiting another 13 years?

Welcome as the Flowers in May

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Bombing Omagh

Omagh is the last venue that armed republicanism might be expected to have put in an appearance. It takes some nerve. There, the levels of abhorrence for the phenomenon are probably higher than they are elsewhere. Its presence is unwanted, its visitation unsolicited and viewed as a deeply insulting intrusion.

Omagh was the site of the largest loss of human life in the country as a result of the North’s violent conflict. As such it would be thought that whatever else it did armed republicanism would balk at planting a bomb there. The town had become a veritable psychological shrine, a place which, because of the horrendous violence inflicted on it, cried out against republican physical force with the trauma spawned words ‘never again’.

Today’s bomb attack which took the life of a young PSNI member outside his home is like similar attacks in recent years, both futile and brutal. The dead man, a 25 year old Catholic, was a mere three weeks out of his training; basically a rookie. The attack was standard copy, the template inherited from the Provisional IRA: an under car booby trap bomb. It was every bit as futile and as callous as the double killing of RUC constables John Graham and David Johnston in Lurgan in June 1997, the last members of the force to have been killed by the Provisional IRA. It was just as wrong.

A bomb in Omagh on a Saturday afternoon conjures up the most terrible of images. The BBC reported that ‘neighbours rushed to help him and some used fire extinguishers to put out the flames from the explosion. He died at the scene.’ That such words should again be written abut Omagh beggar belief. Armed republicanism which has inflicted so much carnage already on the Tyrone town has returned, like a grave wrecker, to desecrate the memory. The term ‘Omagh bomb’ is one that almost everybody believed had been exorcised to the year 1998. Not for the first time has armed republicanism demonstrated its infidelity to sensitivity.

The death of the PSNI member will be a source of consolation to only the fundamentalist few. There are many republicans who do not support the PSNI but who would strenuously oppose seeing it targeted. It will of course be claimed that today’s killing was a blow for Irish freedom. But it is a gross contradiction to talk of Irish freedom if the Irish are unable to be free from the violence of armed republicanism. The people responsible may well be carrying on in the physical force tradition but they wage political violence on behalf of themselves and no one else. Theirs is a war against the national will. Infinitely much more invasive than the British rule they claim to be opposing, it flies in the face of national self determination while masquerading as a defence of it.

Today’s victim is the fourth member of the British security forces to have died at the hands of armed republicanism in two years. It is a miniscule achievement compared to what the Provisional IRA managed throughout most of its campaign. Yet for all their military prowess the Provisionals ultimately secured very little in terms of republican objectives. They now sit ensconced in a British administration at Stormont in full support of the police force their descendants are currently determined to kill. Gerry Adams who for decades approved attacks like today’s was one of the first to condemn the Omagh incident. There should be a strategic lesson somewhere in there for any republican discerning enough to find it.

Unfortunately, while a lesson that has been absorbed by many it will never be learned by all. There will always be some who without any chance of altering the future remain determined to repeat the past.

Ineffectual and immoral, armed republican violence is a scourge that can only deliver blight in place of betterment.

Morrison's Message

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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