A Complex Peace

Tonight the Pensive Quill carries a stimulating piece by guest writer Henry Reid, Deputy National Chaplain of the AOH in the US. It was first published in The National Hibernia Digest.

Since my appointment as Deputy National Chaplain, I have been fielding questions on my position on Northern Ireland, and my immediate response is that I have always loved Donegal, but if you are talking about the six counties, it gets a little more complex. Complex is probably the best word to describe the situation in the Six, as well as my position on what is happening there. A friend asked me if I was opposed to the peace process. First of all, I am a priest, a Christian, and have many people that I care about living in Ireland, many of them in the British controlled section, who I worry about. I am all in favor of peace. But we also have to look at what we mean by peace. This is where it gets complex, because as well as being a priest, I am also an Irish Republican, and it is my firm belief that only through the establishment of a 32 county sovereign Republic, can there be any hope of peace, because only through a United Irish Republic can justice be assured for all. That being said, I don’t necessarily agree with the “peace” process that has been pursued by Sinn Fein (and for the sake of brevity and sanity I am not going to refer to them as Provisional Sinn Fein, as this is the one everyone recognizes as SF), since I think much has been sacrificed for various reasons, but peace and justice will not be served by the current direction.

Before I go any further, let me explain my position on “dissident” Republicans. Politically, I can see where there would be a great deal of frustration, not only among the older leaders who sacrificed their youth to the cause of an Irish Republic, only to see (remember it’s about perceptions) Gerry Adams and others abandon these principles. Keep in mind, many of the men and women that lead these “dissident” groups were involved in Irish Republicanism before Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness were, some of them served alongside of the two. I think the biggest tragedy with the political groups is that they represent a failure of dialogue within Republicanism; the leadership of Sinn Fein failed to listen to its base (and for those who disagree with this last part, I’ll tell you later on why I’m not). As for the military wings of these different groups, I wish they would take their weapons and put them up in their attics for the next ten years, or more. Do I dispute that Irish Republicans have a right to be armed? No, especially since I believe that the right to keep and bear arms is a God given right of every free man and woman, that’s why it’s enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the United States. Neither do I deny them the right to the armed struggle, since it was the armed struggle that forced the British government to negotiate with Irish Republicans for peace, but this is just not the time. Now is the time for talking, for dialogue, and for envisioning what a future Irish Republic will look like.

Fishing in Boston College's Archives

Fishing in BC’s archives
By Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre
BOSTON GLOBE
August 23, 2011

BOSTON COLLEGE is currently resisting efforts by the security forces in Northern Ireland to force it to hand over part of its oral history archive on the Irish Republican Army, and as well it should. This attempt to violate the college’s files could have disastrous consequences for oral historians and their close cousins in the media. It also could be immensely destructive to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

The subpoenas that have been served are based on an unproven assertion: that an interview given to the college by a former Irish Republican Army activist, Dolours Price, could shed light on a 40-year-old murder and should be surrendered.

The truth, however, is that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), on whose behalf US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz is acting, does not know what Dolours Price told Boston College’s interviewers. Neither does Ortiz.

Voltaire’s Voltage

An abundance of disturbing events bear out the fact that radical Christianity, like radical Islam, is quite capable of violence, and contrary to what Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would have us believe, the examples are numerous – Alex Henderson

Hans Kung, the theological professor the Vatican refused to allow to teach, once asked the question if people are for or against France. He was merely introducing the element of nuance into perspectives, underlining that yes or no answers often do not suffice.  On some matters I am certainly for France. It gave us such sacrilegious gems as Voltaire and is a country that we have come to regard as being at the forefront of ensuring religion does not intrude on the lives of its citizens. Its vibrant secular tradition has long protected its citizens from religious encroachment. 

Even in terms of Irish history French culture is something to be envied. When French troops landed in the 18th Century as part of a bid to help oust the British they were disdainful of the Irish fondness for priests and their pope. Their view was that the Irish needed liberated from more than just the British.

It was French leftwing magazine Charlie Hebdo, with its huge circulation, that challenged Islamic intolerance through its decision to publish the Danish cartoons that so enraged the Imans in 2006 when other media outlets were vying with each other to lift the Cowardice Cup. The enraged clerics, driven by censorious zeal, took the magazine to court accusing it of racism for having made ‘public insults against a group of people because they belong to a religion.’ Charlie Hebdo, probably to the chagrin of those fellow leftists, who shamefully sold the pass on the matter, won the case.

Brendan's Victory

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Reality Behind the Windsor Spin

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer David McSweeney who raises a number of serious concerns about far right elements and influence.

The recent visit of the Windsor’s, David Cameron and Barack Obama cost the citizens of the 26 county state forty million euro.

You will remember the attendance of Elizabeth Windsor at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin was depicted by some as somehow having some cosmic significance for relations between Ireland and Britain.

Yet it seems that no matter how much the British state and their fellow travellers spend on fluff, waffle and subterfuge the reality of the poisonous position towards Ireland by the ruling British establishment will come to the fore.

Piss Sunday

The following article and a follow up have been lying around for a while but never made it to the Quill due to other pieces pushing through.

As a former Catholic, and as someone who even today is not opposed to being called a Christian, I felt I had every right to use the symbols of the Church and resented being told not to - Andres Serrano

When on Palm Sunday in April intolerant French Catholics attacked Andres Serrano's Piss Christ photograph in Avignon, France, they placed themselves on a par with their fellow bigots in Islam who used violence in a bid to suppress cartoons of their prophet Mohammed, sketched for a Danish newspaper a few years ago. Mohammed’s men also wanted the cartoonists killed. What fate may might have befallen Serrano had the French men of god stumbled across him on their mission of Christian love is anybody’s guess. Would they have waited until he reached hell before having him burnt?

Ardoyne Wall

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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The Good Fight

Tonight The Pensive Quill features the address delivered by Sean Doyle in Wexford at a commemoration for the 30th anniversary of Tom McElwee.

On behalf of the Regional Socialist Republican Unity Committee I warmly welcome you here today to The East Coast 1981 H-Block Hunger Strike Commemoration. Today we have come to Wexford Town. County Wexford people have a proud tradition of freedom fighters that spans the duration of British occupation .A courageous people that took the fight to the British with whatever they could muster. Pitchforks, pikes whatever was at hand to defend their sovereignty and paid a huge human cost that spans the centuries from Vinegar Hill to Edentubber. Also on this day we want to remember Wexford hunger striker Joseph Whitty who died on the 2nd Of August 1923 aged just 19 in the Curragh Concentration Camp.           

Today we are paying tribute to the 9th of our courageous young freedom fighters Thomas Mc Elwee, aged 23 who died on the 8th August 1981 after 63 days on hunger strike. 

Vengeful, Vindictive, Violent

"Unfortunately this decision should have been made months ago, but ultimately humanity has triumphed over bureaucracy and process."
– Alban Maginness, SDLP Justice Spokesperson

When we left Drogheda’s Bridge of Peace on Wednesday evening, another vigil for Brendan Lillis completed, agreeing to meet at the same spot the following week, none of us felt that Brendan’s release was imminent, the following day in fact. He had previously been moved from Maghaberry Prison to Belfast City Hospital where treatment for his condition, ankylosing spondylitis, could be administered by a health professional who sees in front of him a patient rather than a prisoner. So it was clear that the campaign was having an effect. Without street pressure and political lobbying the Justice Ministry would have kept Brendan Lillis hidden deep within the bowels of the British penal establishment, a statistic whose inevitable death would have meant nothing more than one less inmate on the day’s closing headcount.

Wasted Youth

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a piece by guest writer Thomas "Dixie" Elliott

Are We Seeing Another Wasted Generation of Republicans?
by Thomas "Dixie" Elliott

I remember a long time ago, during the Blanket Protest, Tommy McKearney said something during a lecture on the wing that has stuck with me ever since. He was talking about the need for political awareness among grassroot volunteers.

"Without political awareness, we'll put people on pedestals and be too preoccupied looking up to them to see what they are doing behind our backs."

Tommy was right then and today it's no different whether we are talking about the leaderships of PSF, 32SCM RNU, IRSP, Eirigi, RSF....etc.

Young people should be capable of deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong. I believe that today's young Republicans are far more politically aware than we were and that's a good thing. However they should look at what happened in the past and see where we failed.

And we failed because we believed in and followed the few, without question; until it got to the point where it was seen as traitorous to question.

No Rome Rule

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Gerry McGeough: Summer Briefing

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries an update on the Gerry McGeough situation by Guest writer Helen McClafferty

8/5/11
Cardinal Brady's Secretary meets with Gerry McGeough in Maghaberry Prison
Gerry called yesterday to advise that Cardinal Brady's secretary paid him a visit the other day and Gerry requested that the Cardinal intervene directly to resolve the Brendan Lillis matter and the protests in the prison. He also discussed his own case with the Cardinal's secretary.

King Cuckoo

I wonder if Martin McGuinness ever casts an eye back over the devastation he helped to wreak in the North and further afield that culminated in his appointment to the British administration that now assists London in running the place.

The British state might be home to a strange lot but it sure does know how to co-opt and neutralise an erstwhile dangerous adversary. It can even use that one time aggressor as a stalking horse to draw the invective from republicans that would in other circumstances be lobbed directly at the British themselves.

Graffiti on the Wall

Tonight The Pensive Quill features as guest writer Paul O’Neill,  a former republican prisoner who currently works as a community activist in North Belfast. In an articulate and well argued piece he takes issue with some of the comments made in relation to graffiti in North Belfast.

I have become aware of some controversy relating to the removal of graffiti in the New Lodge area of Belfast on Thursday August the 4th 2011. Over the past number of days I have heard about various comments, lies, rumours and innuendo being spread relating to myself and to others that were involved in the actual graffiti removal and as a result I would like to set the record straight and place everything within context so that people can judge matters for themselves.  However before I do that, I would like to briefly explain a little bit about my personal background, my work and my perspective on some of the political and social issues involved. 

Not the First

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Shut Them Up Sean

No lessons were learned by these bishops because if they were, I feel sure that, at the very least, Bishop Magee would have stopped his abhorrent child protection practices once the Ferns report was published in 2005. Not only did he not feel compelled to do that, he continued to practise as a bishop while himself under investigation for inappropriate sexual behaviour, in contradiction of every set of child protection guidelines available. In committing this act of defiance, Bishop Magee had support from the head of the Irish Catholic Church. – Niall Muldoon Director of Children At Risk in Ireland.

With the decision by Senator David Norris to step out of the ring where the Irish Presidential campaign is to be fought, the incongruity of Cardinal Sean Brady’s position as leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland is brought into sharper focus. As leadership roles in society are seemingly being morally means tested Sean Brady, more ethically dubious than Norris ever was, can hardly lay claim to lead a body that would seek to prescribe society’s moral values.

No Reason To Disown

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a piece by guest writer Alfie Gallagher which poses some questions to revisionist writing

In an article in the Irish Times recently, the journalist Chris Ryder called for a public memorial to the Royal Irish Constabulary. Though Ryder’s article is measured, it reminded me of the long-running “revisionist” campaign being waged by many public figures, notably Kevin Myers and Eoghan Harris, to rehabilitate the image of British rule in Ireland.  Apart from this, Ryder’s article brought to mind my own ancestors. One of my great-grandfathers was a member of the RIC; another was an IRA volunteer. I am told that both men were decent and honourable. However, my sympathies lie with the man who fought for an Irish republic.

Bridge of Sighs

"While I am very concerned for Brendan's health, I am equally angered by the continuing denials coming from the prison authorities that Brendan wasn't sick enough to be granted compassionate release when it is perfectly obvious now that his medical condition is much more serious than they had assessed.  I am also shocked that this was the information given to the Justice Minister from NIPS, this is something that I am sure the Justice Department will want to be clear on going forward"
- Pat Ramsey SDLP Assembly member

Tonight we assembled yet again on Drogheda’s Bridge of Peace where once more we sighed with exasperation at the British treatment of the ill Brendan Lillis.  To the extent that the British move at all it is invariably sideways.  In dealing with prisoners their attitude has always been one of ‘as late as, as little as.’ Our numbers were fewer this week but the weather helps explain that. If Brendan Lillis is not free this time next week we shall be on the bridge again, our numbers increased.

Brownie's Lament

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Lying The Flag

‘It isn’t a sin, a crime or an offence to forget about something’ (even Liam electioneering) – Gerry Adams

It must be in the water. If it is then it is that bottled water Sinn Fein have been marketing this past while back. Only Our Fibbers Run Free or something it is called.

Most of us have heard of flying the flag but Sinn Fein in its innovativeness has come up with something new. It has dropped the F and is now lying the flag. The party gives full credit to its state of the art propaganda machine, Porky Productions.

Political Struggle Past And Present

Tonight The Pensive Quill features an address by Sean Doyle delivered in Wicklow Town on 1st August 2011. It was in honour of the republican hunger strikers Kieran Doherty and Kevin Lynch.

On behalf of the Regional Socialist Republican Unity Committee you are most welcome here today to The East Coast Hunger Strike Commemoration.
                                                                                                                                          
Today we believe this is a fitting place to honour our hunger strikers. Here in Wicklow Town at the monument of William “Billy” Byrne of Ballymanus whom with hundreds of comrades led the resistance to British occupation and were eventually captured, tortured and executed. In July 1799 he was sentenced to death and on the 24th September 1799 he was taken from the jail and marched down through the town under escort to be executed at Gallows Hill.

God Is Not Great

Religion – the quintessential original sin.

Hail him, hate him, Christopher Hitchens has been one of the great polemicists of modern times. He is as close to Mencken when it comes to employing flair to debunking the pretentious claims of religion as anything else this century has thus far produced. He simultaneously inspires and inflames through his passion whether expressed with oratorical flourish or via the aperture in his quill. His much publicised treatise against the greatness of god, written some years before the cancer that currently afflicts him began its war of manoeuvre, is replete with all the vintage vigour we have come to expect of this exemplary writer.

It is not one particular god that Hitchens has in mind but the religions that over the years have created their own version of god which they have sought to inflict on everyone else. Christians, Jews, Muslims are not left unpicked, nor are some of the sects that are offshoots from the major religions. Intelligent Design is ridiculed with wit and panache. As are those Jewish Rabbis of Hasidic fundamentalism who sexually assault children by biting off their foreskins, on occasion infecting the children and causing fatalities as part of some quaint but dangerous religious ritual disgracefully not criminalised by US law. His perspective on religion is captured in one striking line where he tackles the old murderous bible:

The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride price and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude uncultured human mammals.

Irish Verboten

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Ford Must Step Aside

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries an appeal put out by the Friends Of Brendan Lillis.

A Chara,

Roisin Lynch, Brendan Lillis's partner is now calling on PSF and the SDLP to back her and demand that Justice Minister David Ford resign from his post with immediate effect.

Revisiting 1981

Just in through the door after taking part in a vigil on the Bridge of Peace in Drogheda. It was in support of demands for the release of the Maghaberry prisoner Brendan Lillis. His condition continues to deteriorate in the face of determined opposition by the British state to calls for it to take a compassionate view.

Like previous events there over the past two weeks tonight's was organised by Duleek Independent Republicans who deserve  enormous credit for the work they do in support of prisoners. Were it not for groups like them people throughout the Twenty Six counties would be in a state of perpetual darkness about British abuses in the North’s prison.

The Politics Of Policing

Political policing was long supposedly the bane of Sinn Fein.  Or so we thought. That was only a myth it now seems spawned by journalists out to undermine the peace process. What these misinformed ne'er-do-wells failed to grasp in their reluctance to read between the lines of party statements was this: it was not that the RUC was a political police force per se but that it was not Sinn Fein’s political police force that really angered the party. Which of course led to its support for an armed campaign aimed not at ending political policing but at killing police officers it could not politically control.

Culture with a K?

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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