Peter Skeet Hamilton

As the year moves into its final hours it leads to reflection on those who will not cross the threshold of the year about to dawn. Skeet Hamilton may have remained with the Provos right up to his last breath, even having voted for Gerry Adams in Louth a few short hours before he died, but those of us who knew him and journeyed with him through difficult times never allowed that to get in the way of friendship.

A contemporary comrade of the late Martin Meehan, Skeet had received a life sentence upon conviction for a 1975 IRA attack on the Shankill Road’s Bayardo Bar. The IRA denied the attack as was customary at the time but no one believed it. Nobody in Crumlin Road Prison, where I first met him, regarded Skeet as a member of the North Belfast Catholic Reaction Force. He was IRA to his bones.

It was an overcast June morning. I had turned 21 two days earlier and could feel the knot of tension in my midriff as I prepared to leave Cage 11 for a court appearance at the appeal Court near Belfast City Centre, Few were up out of bed, but one of those who were was the inimitable Skeet.

Chris Bray: Boston College

Below is a link to separate locations that feature an article by Chris Bray, a Los Angeles based blogger and historian who has been following the Boston College subpoena crisis. In the article Chris Bray, in the words of the Belfast Project director Ed Moloney, ‘charts a disgraceful and shameful chapter in the history of American academic life.’

The Case Of Gerry Daly

It is very distressing for my mum and dad, Gerard and Bridget. They are very concerned about him, as we all are at this point. Not knowing anything is very distressing. Hopefully this appeal will help somebody to remember something that may lead to whereabouts – Belinda Daly.

In recent weeks Prime Time ran a feature, Hidden Dead on the re-emergence in Ireland of a phenomenon better known for its association with the North’s violent political conflict. The use of unmarked secret graves to bury those who had transgressed some code outwardly respected only by those who devised it, was one of the most barbaric features of the Provisional IRA’s campaign.  The IRA, while the prime mover behind the fate of the disappeared, was by no means the sole practitioner of the dark art. The INLA and UVF on occasion too killed people and placed their bodies in secret burial locations.

With the drawing to a close of the Northern conflict the IRA began to open its secret graves, allowing them to yield up their dead so that bereaved families could attain some degree of closure. It was welcome if limited measure which brought considerable relief to many although not all families who had this appalling gratuitous cruelty inflicted on them. 

This & That. Take 4

The Sky Blues

Coventry is one of those English cities I have never been to. It is hard to make any claim on its behalf that it is best known for its soccer team. When we think of footballing greats Coventry City does not figure amongst them. To my mind rather than reaching for the skies the history of Coventry is more one of the skies reaching for it. It has a history of things falling on it from the sky, not all of them good. The Luftwaffe bombed it on a number of occasions during the Second World War. The IRA bombed it in the same period although not from the sky. While willing to collaborate with the Nazis the IRA was not the beneficiary of Goering’s Junker, Messerschmitt or Stuka planes. To cause its fatalities the IRA used something much less technologically sophisticated – the simple bicycle.

Fortunately for the city this time round when the skies opened up it was a barrage of apples that rained down on the citizens journeying along the city’s streets. They had been sucked up into a vortex from a garden or orchard in one part of the city during a freak weather outburst and deposited on the heads of the unsuspecting public at another location.

Gerry Liar

This & That. Take 3

A Baptism of Rape

There are more things to be concerned about in Holland than those hedonistic pursuits in Amsterdam that Christy Moore sang about that so annoyed Gregory of God and his bible bashing devotees. A report just released by the Deetman Commission has found that Dutch priests abused 'up to 20,000 children'. Deetman reported that ‘to prevent a scandal, nothing was done.’  A culture of silence meant that dirty washing was not to be cleaned in public. Sort of sounds familiar.

Archbishop of Utrecht Wim Eijk made it clear in his comments on the report that the Church hierarchy knew but, as usual, failed to act, something which now ‘fills us with shame and sorrow.’ That sounds familiar too.

A Beautiful Tribute

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Julie Duchatel who explains the impact in France of translated work of Denis O’Hearn’s biography of Bobby Sands.

Two independent Swiss and French publishers translated and published in September 2011 the very good biography about Bobby Sands, by Denis O'Hearn, entitled Nothing But An Unfinished Song.

We decided to do so because first of all, the struggle of the hunger strikers and of the Irish Republicans to a larger extent, is so enormous that French speaking people interested in Irish history have to realize how far the struggle went, under which terrible and unimaginable conditions it was held. We also wanted people to appraise this struggle at its true value. Thirty years after, for the majority of non Irish people, even for activists, the war in the north of Ireland has been little by little like forgotten as if the “Peace process” meant the end of the Irish history (of course it is not true but it is what many people think outside Ireland). Secondly, translating such a book was a kind of tribute to the tremendous work Denis O'Hearn accomplished by gathering testimonies, and researches and by instilling political analysis and a universal dimension into almost each pages. Essentially, this is not a biography like another biography on any revolutionary icon. It is more than that. It is a beautiful tribute to oppressed people all around the world, to creation and inventiveness under strong repression, to solidarity and sharing, even to beauty. We were pretty sure such a book will move deeply the people who were interested in. We were right.

This & That. Take 2

The Pain of Confinement

Jimmy Boyle touched on something when he titled one of his books The Pain of Confinement. It is a matter addressed  in today’s Sunday World by Suzanne Breen in respect of the ongoing detention of Marian Price. Were it not for Breen’s journalism many abuses of power in Irish society would never see the light of day.

Marian Price has now been in solitary confinement since May of this year. She told Breen of the "mind-numbing boredom" of being confined in conditions of isolation.  ‘I get three visits a week in Maghaberry. Those three hours' conversation is the only contact I have with other human beings. Of course, it's taking its toll on me.’

How could it not be? Her solicitor Peter Corrigan, like his client, himself a target of the PSNI political policing, has said:

Marian Price has been in solitary seven months. This shouldn't happen in a civilised country. Even those who vehemently oppose my client's politics must realise this amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment.

Response To Boston College Decision

The Pensive Quill carries the following response from Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre to the decision by a US court to deny a motion to quash a subpoena compelling the handover of material from the College's oral history archive. The court also ruled against a motion to intervene by both Moloney and McIntyre.

We are naturally disappointed but we confidently expect BC to take up Judge Young’s implied invitation to lodge an appeal. One way or another this fight will go on. There are very important issues at stake – legal & political – that could adversely affect vital and essential US interests, both domestic & international. Not least among the latter is the Good Friday Agreement in which President Clinton, Senator Mitchell and virtually the entire American body politic invested so much energy, time, effort and not least their personal & national prestige to bring a seemingly intractable and bloody conflict to an end.

This & That. Take 1

Government is Good. 

In the face of looming home repossessions it is worthwhile revisiting the thoughts of the late George Carlin on the matter.  He looks at some possible solutions which the Dail is bound to consider. In a spirit of generosity it might drop the household charge and hand out crates and cartons instead.

http://www.organizedrage.com/2011/12/dealing-with-homelessness-better-crates.html

Murph Massacre

As part of Human Rights Week the Ballymurphy Massacre Relatives Group has taken its case to Dail Eireann in Dublin. The body demands the truth behind the killings of 11 innocent people at the hands of the British state’s security forces in August 1971. As in Derry some months later, British paratroopers were the vicious trigger men who with the sure certainty of immunity slaughtered the innocent. 

Towards A General Strike

Tonight The Pensive Quill features a piece by guest writer Sean Matthews arguing for more than one day strikes.

The recent public sector strike builds on the momentum from the education and healthcare strike last month and sends out the message that we mean business. We are relied on every day to run the hospitals, schools, fire service, and all other public services that society depends on to function. We have demonstrated that when we withdraw our labour and stand together in defence of our rights we have real strength. However a one day strike on its own will only express our anger and let off a bit of steam. It is not enough if we want to actually defeat the ongoing attacks on our pay and conditions - attacks which are affecting all workers and unemployed.

Solidarity and support for strike action needs to be built across all workplaces unionised or not and in our communities where we are feeling the impact of these devastating cuts on our standard of living if we want to win. In the short-term we need to be organising for rolling strike action including go-slows and ultimately an indefinite general strike. Such action is needed because history shows us that those at the top will concede little of significance without such mass resistance.

Zombie on the Stairs

I am over halfway through a great novel by Cormac McCarthy which I picked up in a second hand bookshop during the week. It is titled The Road and details the relationship between a father and son as they struggle to survive in a post apocalyptic world of predatory hostility.  As the father of a six year old boy, the story has a certain resonance beyond the book.  But whereas the father in McCarthy’s novel is loyal to a fault my son regards me as a cheat.

Usually when he tires in the evening, as a prelude to going to bed, he asks for his cuddle which has to be from me otherwise there is a protest. Each night we go through the ritual of ‘last one up the stairs is a rotten egg.’ He positions himself in the hall closest to the stairs before making the announcement. As I usually try to con him out of his victory he has grown wise to all the ruses and will no longer accept the offer of sweets or an invitation to look at the fireworks or exotic creatures out the back. My promise of €5, temptingly visible in my outstretched hand, he treats like a wily fox would a trap, something to be shunned. On this occasion he put sufficient distance between us so that he would be out of my physical reach, his path to the bedroom and triumph unhindered. So sure was he of being first across the line, he even told me the rules allowed me to play one of my customary tricks.

End the Torture of Marian Price

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Sandy Boyer, the co-host of Radio Free Eireann [1] on WBAI in New York City. In the following piece originally carried at http://socialistworker.org/2011/12/06/end-torture-marian-price, he reports on the unjust imprisonment of Northern Ireland political prisoner Marian Price.

MARIAN PRICE is the only woman political prisoner in Northern Ireland. She has been in continuous solitary confinement, except for three visits a week from relatives, since her arrest in May.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, called for the abolition of solitary confinement in an October 18 report to the UN's Third Committee. "Considering the severe mental pain or suffering solitary confinement may cause, it can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Socrates

A qualified doctor, renowned intellectual and an outspoken, pro-democracy fighter during Brazil's brutal military dictatorship, Socrates had defied many stereotypes - Helena DeMoura, CNN

Casually perusing through a newspaper in the house of a friend, a piece about an erstwhile world renowned footballer caught my eye. Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, concisely and universally known as Socrates, the former Brazilian soccer international, had died at the age of 57.

In 1982 Socrates was the gifted player who captained the finest Brazilian team not to lift a World Cup. That type of observation, despite being clichéd remains no less true. It is probably a cliché because its truth status is such that it is stated matter of factly, incurring little disagreement. The team had flair, skill, technique and charisma in copious quantities and undoubtedly has the distinction of being the only Brazilian team in 40 years to resemble the great side of 1970. It ranks alongside the outstanding Dutch team of 1974, a squad of champions denied the championship.  That was before the days when coaches like Dunga acquired licence to impose a pedestrian character on Brazilian national soccer teams. Make a team more like England and it will repay you by winning as much as England.

The North Shuts Down

Tonight The Pensive Quill features an article forwarded by Sandy Boyer. Although not written by him as mistakenly stated by TPQ, it deals with the recent strike in the North of Ireland. It was originally carried on the Socialist Worker (Ireland) web site

100,000 workers in Northern Ireland staged a massive one day strike on Wednesday. Throughout Britain, it was the largest scale strike action since the General Strike of 1926.

In Derry, 2,500 workers rallied at the Guildhall while 20,000 turned up in Belfast.

At a huge rally afterwards in Belfast, the Northern ICTU leader, Peter Bunting said that ‘The public sector is being sacrificed in the name of an ideology which favours the 1%.’ Many of the union leaders promised that the action was only the start and would be followed up afterwards.

Resolution

What makes this book riveting reading, like Appaloosa before it, is the economy of language. While it is a dialogue driven novel each sentence spoken is stripped to the bare minimum yet conveys with razor sharp precision insight, intent, menace and meaning in abundance. It is dialogue as action. Each sentence is measured and distilled before being and delivered as if laser guided.

From the opening page Parker, through his characters, primes his readers for a journey through the lawless West. Human rights didn’t much matter there, business did. Everett Hitch states openly if a guy causes a problem ‘I’ll kill him.’ It was said so mundanely but lacked the banality that Hanna Arendt famously attributed to evil. Hitch wasn’t evil but he was ruthless all in the course of making a living. He slung his gun in defence of the townspeople but was paid by those with the money to pay, business men. They didn’t want trouble, it being bad for business. They didn’t particularly want ‘whores’ defended either, even though they made quite a bit out of the women and girls who worked the saloons and hotels.  So they deducted it from the wages of Everett if he protected them when they should have been working. He didn’t get too excited over it.

Occupy Belfast

Today The Pensive Quill features a talk by guest writer Sean Matthews. The talk was given on 15/11/11 at Belfast Occupy Camp Teach-Ins and it was on the topic of 'Reform vs Revolution - What type of Change do we want and how do we get there?

There’s a lot to be angry about. On the one hand mass unemployment, cut backs and pay cuts, we have death and destruction on a grand scale. On the other, the crushing bore¬dom and alienation of everyday life. All of these various horrors are tied together, different faces of a single system. It exploits and exaggerates every tiny little difference between us from sexism to racism, making us compete for scraps and hate each other as we fight while a tiny minority enjoys all the benefits. This system is global capitalism backed by the armed force of the state, a pattern of economic and political exploitation that reaches into every aspect of our lives. Class oppression is not simply a small cabal of the ultra-rich in Wall Street or Washington or London, it's in every workplace, every police station, every dole queue, every courtroom, every prison and every territory occupied by Western militaries, and can only be sensibly understood as such.

Tram Talk

A brouhaha has stirred this week after YouTube featured a video clip showing a London tram passenger expressing racial sentiment by the bagful. With infant in lap she sat there and laid it on thick to people of black skin and Poles. It was a racist rant in which those who spoke differently or appeared as something other than white were urged to go back to their ‘own’ countries and leave ‘my Britain’ alone.

To get some sense of perspective, the British National Party is able to have its members returned to the European parliament and to have councillors elected in Britain while soccer stars, role models for numerous young in British society, are increasingly being accused of racist behaviour on the pitch. Yet an incident as minor as somebody with bigoted views, seemingly full of the booze or something else, giving off on a tram has a large swathe of the British public transfixed.  It provoked nothing short of outrage.