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’...

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...

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...

Good Friday

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

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...

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...

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...

Thousands Are Sailing

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

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...

Amazing!

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

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...

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...

The Dingo Barks

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

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...

Welcome as the Flowers in May

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

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...

Morrison's Message

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...