An Abused Priest

I now know that false witness is crushing, so hurtful, it is devastating. In fact, it does so much damage, damage which may never be fully repaired – Kevin Reynolds.

So another pervert priest has been unmasked, this time one that raped a young girl while working as a missionary in Kenya three decades ago and who fathered a child as a consequence. Prime Time in its Mission to Prey production of last May brought the priest’s behaviour to public attention and the disgraced cleric was sent packing into exile in the global village of Whisperdom, his reputation in tatters.

Great current affairs story but for one crucial flaw. Kevin Reynolds was neither a pervert priest nor a rapist. Nor did he father a child. The establishment of his innocence came much too late to spare him the anguish and public humiliation that went with his ‘exposure.’ Such is the price of justice that only for the pro bono services of Robert Dore & Co Solicitors, rendered in the service of protecting the weak against the strong, Kevin Reynolds’ portrait would still remain on public display in the infamous gallery of Ratzinger’s Rogue.

Report of NIFC's Annual Fenian Commemoration 2011

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a report of of the NIFC's Annual Fenian Commemoration 2011

Queens, NY - Irish Republicans and supporters of the Fenian Graves Association met to celebrate the National Irish Freedom Committee's Annual Irish Republican Commemoration. The event was held on November 20th, marking the second year at the historic Fenian Monument in Calvary Cemetery. The crowd turnout was larger than anticipated, and as the speakers took turns under a beautiful sunny sky, a strong sense of kinship and purpose was highly evident. Maggie Trainor chaired the event with Jane
Enright. Famed artist and senior Republican in America, Brian Mór O Baoighill & Patrick Frawley were Honorary Co-Chairs. Speakers included Liam Murphy, Seamus O'Dubhda, Bob Bateman, Vic Sackett, Joe Flaherty, Gary Delaney, and Tom Abernethy. John McManus of the Tyrone Pipe Band was the piper for the event.

Appaloosa

This is a beautifully written book. Its simplicity is astounding. Dialogue led, it is narrated through the words of Everett Hitch who met up with his gun slinging buddy Virgil Cole fifteen years earlier during a shoot out. And shooting it out with rogues, rascals and villains is how they made their living since. Depriving others of any living in order to make a living is for many the way of the world.

I am not a Western fan. I long opted to look down my nose at them. Even in jail as a 16 year old I would cast them to the side as I foraged through the bookshelf that sat in the middle of A Wing Crumlin Road Prison along the wall closest to the main road.  Before I made it to my teens I would read Pocomoto but never found the storyline stimulating. In 1982 a jail friend, Pat Livingstone, told me to read JT Edson, but only for a laugh. Big Liv claimed Edson was an English postman who had never been to America in his life and wouldn’t know what a cowboy looked like. Yet, here he was, an accomplished novelist in the Western genre. Seemingly it didn’t take much to make the grade. 

Statistics of the Conflict and Conflict of Statistics

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Liam O Ruairc who offers insight into the the ways in which statistical analysis manipulates perceptions of responsibilty for armed actions during the Northern conflict

According to official British statistics, in the six counties between 1969 and 1998 there were some 35 669 shooting incidents, 10 412 explosions, 11 483 firearms and 115 427 kilos of explosives were seized during 359 699 searches, from 1972 some 18 258 were charged with scheduled offences, and some 3289 people were killed and another 42 216 injured as a result of the conflict in the north. (Sydney Elliott & W.D. Flackes, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-1999, Belfast, The Blackstaff Press, fifth revised and updated edition, 1999, pp.681-687).

Political violence in the six counties did not have the same level of intensity across space and time and social categories. Over 52 percent of killings took place in the years 1971 to 1976. The Sutton Database, a database made available by the University of Ulster detailing the 3526 deaths as a result of the conflict between July 1969 and December 2001 shows that 3269 were killed in the six counties, 125 in Britain, 114 in the 26 counties and 18 in mainland Europe. (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/). Nearly half of the total number of killings within the six counties occurred in Belfast, and three quarters of these were in the North and the West of the city, which also suffered the highest death rates – 544 fatalities in each.

Experience

In recent days my work history has become a subject of conversation on some websites, one of which I have followed with some interest. That website, Slugger O’Toole, has now closed the thread in which the matter was under discussion, seemingly on the basis of something referred to as ‘man playing’. Presumably I was the man considered to have been played. I, of my own volition, had no input into the discussion nor had I any complaint to make about it being hosted. No request was made from me to have it closed. As a long standing practice I have invariably asked for nothing, no matter how critical of me, to be removed from websites or blogs. And there has been some hard hitting material hurled my way including private health issues and matters of a personal nature alongside numerous falsehoods which were of no consequence to intellectual discussion. But if that’s what people choose to do so be it.

However, it is my own view that readers of my writing over the years have a right to discuss issues of public concern where they relate to me whether it is legitimate or not. And in my own blog people will be afforded the opportunity to have their say.

The grievance expressed by some posters, Sinn Fein members for the most part, is that I am a former employee of Coalport Building Company, as if it is a discovery they have just made and completely unbeknown to them before now. Coalport has been at the centre of serious controversy over inexcusable building practices at Priory Hall in Dublin. Such was the concern of the Dublin High Court that it ordered the building closed and the residents moved out at considerable cost to Dublin City Council and incalculable material and emotional loss to the residents.

Given that people are interested as to my history with Coalport I will outline it and they can make up their own minds on the choices I made. They are free to question the narrative either in total or in part. That outline will come with the one proviso that I will not say anything even if it is of benefit to my account if it is likely to prejudice the outcome of any legal proceedings that are likely to arise and which might involve me as a witness in a court of law.

Struggle for Political Recognition will Continue.

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Alec McCrory, a former blanket man, who for years experienced the type of abuses he protests about in his article. 

Anne Owers's report commissioned by David Ford recently supported the use of electronic technologies to replace the full body strip search in the North’s prisons. She described the strip search as invasive and intrusive. Yet the situation in Maghaberry requires urgent attention if a solution to the current protest is to be found before the physical conditions pose a serious threat to the prisoners. This is no idle warning, quite the opposite; it is a statement of fact based on the clear refusal of the prison administration to honour commitments given in August 2010 in the form of an agreement. The independent facilitators, the prisoners and their families, all understood that routine strip searching would be ended in favour of a more humane procedure based upon the use of new technologies.

Unmanned Barricades

It is now ten years since the RUC saw its name changed to PSNI. The evocative partitionist sign the body emblazoned on its old premises seems to have been wilfully chosen for the purpose of letting everyone know who was boss. It no longer even had ‘Ulster’ in the title, three counties of which sit outside British control. The name changed but the essence was retained. The PSNI would continue to be the British police force purpose built to police that area of Ireland ruled by Britain. Its restructuring reflected the power disparity between Irish republicanism and the British State enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement. When Martin McGuinness boasted that Sinn Fein would put manners on the PSNI he might as well have promised to march on Madrid and crown himself King of Spain. It was simply never within his gift. He did not have the power.

Stakes are High but Labour can Play an Ace

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer John Coulter who argues for a reconfiguration of politics in the North of Ireland. This article first appeared in the http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk on 30/10/2011.

Is the British Labour Party the only movement capable of organising a realistic cross-community official opposition in the Stormont Assembly to check the ever-growing advance of the reigning Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein-dominated Executive? With liberal politics the order of the day in Northern Ireland, the natural opposition should come from a coalition of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party, the election-battered Ulster Unionist Party and the middle of the road Alliance Party.

Strip-Search Brutality In Northern Ireland

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Sandy Boyer, the co-host of Radio Free Eireann [1] on WBAI in New York City, who writes on the struggle of Irish republican prisoners against the British State practice of strip searches inside prison.  The article originally featured on http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/31/strip-search-brutality.

POLITICAL PRISONERS in Northern Ireland are on a "dirty protest," smearing their excrement on the walls of the cells they are locked into 23 hours a day. They are protesting violent, degrading strip searches. Unless the strip-searching is ended, the dirty protest could escalate into a hunger strike.

Draconian Destination

And one ought never to forget, either, that it is easier for governments to create laws and instruments that compromise civil liberties, than for them to be repealed or moderated subsequently – AC Grayling

The disproportionate power of the British state police in the North vis a vis civil society is an ominous phenomenon which if left unchecked can only have serious consequences for the citizens who live there. It would seem axiomatic that it is advantageous to the health of any society that it maintains an ability to monitor and subsequently curb, as the situation demands, the coercive powers of the state, for the very good reason that the citizens of that society are those most certain to be the victims of coercion. All societies would do well to remember the observation by David Mamet that:

Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.

The Silence is Deafening

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Sean Matthews interviewing Colm McNaughton

From the killing fields of Mexico to the generational trauma on the streets of Ulster radio journalist Colm McNaughton leaves no stone unturned in his quest for the truth and how memory shapes our lives.
 
While in Australia I caught up with Colm an Irish-Australian award winning producer and writer who recently won an award in the New York International Radio Festival for his radio documentary ‘La Frontera’ which covers the borderland between Mexico and the United States.  This region is a lawless wasteland, a laboratory of the future where massacres, drug busts and battles between the military and drug-traffickers happen regularly. On the edge of the border with the US is the city of Juarez which has officially highest murder rates in the world and made Belfast look “warm” and “fuzzy”.

A Spooky World

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Alec McCrory discussing the campaign of harassment he has been subjected to by British security services. It was written several months ago but the writer’s computer was seized by British police the day after Father’s Day.  It was returned only recently.  The piece is topical given the recent assault by the PSNI on the legal profession and once again underscores how citizens continue to be menaced by the PSNI operating to a political policing agenda.

Recently, I have been receiving some bizarre phone calls to my mobile and landline.   The first call came early last year on a weekday afternoon.  The caller described himself as a “friend in need”, which alerted me to something strange going on.  When I challenged him to identify himself he simply instructed me to save his number and said that he would be in touch.  Of course, I told him where to go in graphic language and terminated the call. 

Bangers Convention 2011

Striped Pyjamas

Bruno never could figure out why the people living on the other side of the wire from where his house was situated in ‘Out With’ all wore the same attire – striped pyjamas. Recently moved to Poland from his German home in Berlin Bruno hated his new environs. His friends he had left back home in the German capital were the people he wanted to be with most rather than have the dubious company of his sister. She, as he was fond of reminding her, was a ‘hopeless case’. Nor did he like the rude, mocking teenage lieutenant who made a habit of hanging around mother while father was away.

Stuck he was in this strange home far away from Berlin. It was near his father’s new office which provided little in the way of consolation. An important office no doubt, after all the ‘Fury’ who seemed to be very important had asked his father to go there to serve as commandant of Out With. And lest he forget, his sister was quick to remind him that the Fury ran the country. Everybody on their best behaviour when the Fury came to dine at the family table. Father was so important that when grandmother died the Fury even sent a wreath. Grandmother, Bruno’s mother said, would have turned in her grave at the thought of it.

One law for one, no law for others

Tonight The pensive Quill features guest writer Christy Walsh who raises serious questions about the integrity of the North’s Public Prosecution Service.

The treatment of defence lawyer Mr Corrigan stands in marked contrast with how crown lawyers are treated despite compelling evidence of criminal conduct. In March 2010 I took one of Prosecutor, Gary McCrudden's files from the courtroom at the close of my Appeal Hearing. Shortly afterward I then presented a file to both the Justice Minister, David Ford, MLA and the Chief Constable, Matt Baggot. I detailed what appears to be the most serious form of criminal conduct within the PPS. Nothing was ever done about it.

When I enquired further I was informed that, without investigation, it was decided that no crime was committed. I pointed out that I had taken one of the Prosecutor's files without his consent, or knowledge and that some had suggested that that was an act of theft. I offered to return it to Belfast if the PSNI wished to speak to me but that was declined.

‘We need a forward thinking leadership - former IRA prisoner’

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries an interview with former IRA prisoner Thomas Dixie Elliot. He was interviewed by Rory Mooney and the end product featured in the Sunday Journal 16th, Oct 2011. It is reproduced with the permission of Rory Mooney.

Thirty years ago this month the 1981 hunger strike ended. It’s legacy is one of debate to this day. In the end 10 republican prisoners from the IRA and INLA perished - five of them from the city and county of Derry.

Outside of Long Kesh mayhem abounded on the streets with the RUC firing almost 30,000 plastic bullets in the summer of 1981 and many innocent civilians dying across the north.

Shortly after the strike ended the five demands of the prisoners were in effect met by the Thatcher administration and in recent years the Sinn Fein leadership have strongly denied accusations that they prolonged the hunger strike to gain political advances.

What, however, is true is that the 1981 hunger strike was a seminal chapter in the history of Irish Republicanism and Nationalism. 30 years after the Hunger Strike the northern state is unrecognisable from 1981, but for those who endured that summer in the H-blocks the memories are still vivid.

PSNI Intimidation

In general human rights defenders play an important role in upholding the rule of law and there have been significant concerns in the past regarding intimidation and harassment of defence lawyers in Northern Ireland. It is wrong and dangerous to identify lawyers with their clients or their clients’ causes as a result of discharging their professional duties as legal representatives - Brian Gormally, Committee on the Administration of Justice

A worrying development in recent days, in which the PSNI launched an assault on the ability of the legal profession to operate efficiently as a defence system, is serving to underscore the threat posed to human rights culture that this armed body of British police officers clearly poses.

Seamus Costello Remembered

Tonight The Pensive Quill features Sean Doyle’s Seamus Costello annual commemoration address from given on the 22nd of October at Newtown-Mount-Kennedy, County Wicklow. Sean Doyle, a regular contributor to The Pensive Quill, belongs to the Costello Memorial Committee & Independent Workers Union Wicklow Branch.    

On behalf of The Costello Memorial Committee I want to warmly welcome you all here tonight to our annual Seamus Costello commemoration. As we have other guest speakers here tonight I will confine myself to this brief tribute.     
                                                                                                        
34 years ago at the age of only 38 Seamus was murdered by an instructed assassin under orders.  Which I believe deprived Ireland and the working people of the most able revolutionary figure since James Connolly.

I am not alone in this assessment. As years go by more people have come to realise his contribution and commitment to building a revolutionary movement in the Tone, Lalor, and Connolly vision. I have no doubt as young leaders will emerge in the revolutionary tradition to take up the challenge to inspire and guide people’s empowerment. They will find inspiration as I did and still do in Costello as he did in Connolly. 

Bulawayo and Beyond

Not long ago I joined the Old Drogheda Society. It was suggested to me that I should as I might have an interest in the events the society promotes. I duly presented myself at the desk one morning in the grandiosely named Governor’s Residence and asked to enlist. The word ‘governor’ always has negative connotations for me, never able to successfully leap the first hurdle of viewing a governor as something other than a brute that society in one of its more callous twists licences to run a prison. Not all jail governors are like that, and I have met quite a few during and after my spell in the North’s political prisons. But enough were of a cruel disposition to implant the thought so deeply in my head that instinct tends to kick in on hearing the word.

In the governor’s office, far from being told that I was on report, would face the mandatory guilty verdict to be followed by solitary, I was relieved of €15 in return for the Society admitting me as a member. It seemed a fair exchange. On Wednesday evening it seemed an even better deal from my point of view, having attended a lecture there, ‘Our First African Mission’. It was delivered by a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Devine Motherhood, Sr Marie Coyle. Listening to her narrate as we viewed silent footage initially captured on old reel, it occurred to me that there were a lot of things I could have parted with €15 for and got much less in return. And that is just the first in a series covered in the cost.

Actually Existing Barbarism

Tonight The Pensive Quill features Guest Writer Liam O ‘Ruairc who addresses the issue of capitalism and what it means for society today.

The 2009 volume of Socialist Register “takes up a question that has preoccupied socialists for over a century – the likelihood that if capitalism is allowed to persist it will be characterised by increasing violence. When Rosa Luxemburg in 1916 quoted Engels’ famous statement that ‘capitalist society faces a dilemma: either an advance to socialism or a reversion to barbarism’, she asked:

What does a ‘reversion to barbarism’ mean at the present stage of European civilisation? We have all read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without a notion of their terrible seriousness. At this moment one glance around us will show what a reversion to barbarism in bourgeois society means.’  (Socialist Register 2009, p.1)

Washing Dishes

On learning of the decision by the Dublin government to wind up its diplomatic mission to the Holy See, a rummage through The Forgot About Folder turned up this old piece which was written during the Cloyne controversy earlier this year. It was a comment on the looming meltdown in relations between Ireland and the Vatican.

 * * * * *

A couple of years ago it was reported how the patrons of a Dublin restaurant appeared honoured to have a luminary dine in their midst. There were hushed respectful whispers and deferential smiles. Not every week that the restaurant would be honoured with the visit of a notable like the papal nuncio. Writer, John Cooney described the scene:

All eyes in a crowded Italian restaurant in the leafy Dublin suburb of Terenure a few weeks ago surveyed the grand entrance of a refined-looking foreign church dignitary and a well-dressed Irishman. Both men were led deferentially by Fabio, the head waiter, to the best table in the house. Word soon spread that the special dinner guests were none other than the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, and the general secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach Dermot McCarthy. What the Taoiseach's right-hand man and the Pope's representative in Ireland discussed at table was of little concern to the other diners, who were more thrilled that they had sighted in their midst a powerful Vatican official with access to Pope Benedict XVI.

Gerry McGeough Update: November 2011

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Helen McClafferty providing the latest information pertaining to the political imprisonment of republican activist Gerry McGeough.

British Agent within Sinn Fein Targeted McGeough

28 October 2011

Following the recent revelations of a British agent working as an aide in Sinn Fein against Gerry McGeough in the 2000 election now explains the subsequent years of character assignation to denigrate him politically.  His arrest during the 2007 election and his 20 year sentence handed down by the Diplock court was a deliberate political act to censor him.  Gerry’s arrest and incarceration on 37 year old charges has not only censored him, but it has also rendered him helpless with regard to ever being able to go back to teaching.  

The selective persecution of a man who supports peace, husband and father of 4, graduate of Trinity College, President of the Tyrone County Board of the AOH and a cardiac patient runs counter to the Good Friday Agreement.  The British government doesn't give a damn about Irish human life.  The English treat their dogs better than they do Irishmen, woman and children.  It’s up to you and me and all those who want to see justice done to get involved in the ‘Release McGeough Campaign’. 

On The Brinks

It is not often that a reader is fortunate enough to strike gold and come across a gem of this quality. Like a perfectly brewed cup of tea, the event is a rare one, to be all the more savoured for that. If the moment is missed, the elements move out of kilter. And the spot, well it just doesn’t get hit.

On The Brinks is one that reviewers sometimes take to awkwardly describing as unputdownable.  That rings as gawkily as unletgoable. There is nothing clumsy about On The Brinks and a term like ‘stunning’ better fits the elegance with which Sam Millar conveys his story.  If the book being translated into ten different languages elicits surprise it would be a feign one.

Once, when a friend asked me for something as a quick read I gave him On The Brinks. He returned it so speedily I thought he might not have read it. His response was terse; he had been bowled over by the sheer pace of it and had to go through it in one sitting.

Thoughts on Anarchism & the Irish 'National Question'

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Sean Matthews sharing his thoughts on the relationship between Anarchism and the Irish National Question.

Anyone who has been active on the left and broader labour movement will have faced the 'million dollar question’ from republicans on the 'national question'. The question of opposition or indifference to the partition of the island is often thrown by republicans like a dagger in the direction of the existing left. In response many become either wedded to the romantic idea of the flag removing all our sins or face the jibe of being a ‘gas and water socialist’ or at worst a sop to unionism. It’s the type of choice you get at Stormont every four years where you get to choose between Coca Cola and Pepsi. Equally it’s the type of approach of the PSNI press statement that presents every ’dissenter’ from the status-quo as being wedded to physical force republicanism. But of course it’s much more complicated than this….

The term ‘gas and water socialism’ it was first coined by James Connolly during his heated feud with his arch rival and labourite William Walker in the early 20th century.  Connolly used it in reference to those on the left who simply focused on economic issues at the expense of the national question. In not wanting to simplify that debate which took place over many years I'll just say that it took into account the realm of strategy. The outcome is still fiercely contested and continues to haunt the left to this day.