Rule 7 Bans Easter in Maghaberry

TPQ with a statement from Cogus prisoners in Maghaberry.

Maghaberry Cogus POWs Easter statement 2013.

We the Cogus POWs would like to take this opportunity to extend fraternal greetings to our comrades and friends who have shown immense loyalty to imprisoned republican prisoners. Your support during the eighteen month protest was inspirational. This Easter Sunday while many republicans will be honouring Ireland's dead, republican prisoners in Maghaberry shall be denied this right.

Eulogy in Bellaghy

This is an eulogy I had the honour of delivering in Bellaghy this evening at the graveside of Dominic and Mary McGlinchey.

It is an honour for any republican to stand here today at the resting place of Dominic and Mary McGlinchey. It is a deep honour for me to be that particular republican. It is also an honour that we would rather not have to claim, wishing instead that a different outcome had led to us being in the pub or at a game of football with either of the two people we stand here paying tribute to. Yet we must be philosophical rather than sentimental, take a deep breath and accept things as they are. That was the approach to life adopted by Dominic and Mary McGlinchey.

Ed Moloney: "NUJ Should Put Morris And Barnes In The Dock"

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a statement from Ed Moloney, from his Broken Elbow blog.

NUJ Should Put Morris And Barnes In The Dock
Ed Moloney
The Broken Elbow
March 28, 2013

I have the following statement to make in reference to the NUJ’s decision to suspend Anthony McIntyre from union membership for six months on foot of a complaint lodged by Allison Morris of The Irish News and Ciaran Barnes of The Sunday Life that he had allegedly breached ethics.

The wrong person was brought up in front of the NUJ’s ethics council in relation to this matter. Allison Morris and Ciaran Barnes are the people who have breached the NUJ’s code of conduct and it is they who should be suspended, not Anthony McIntyre.

The following facts in relation to the origins of the PSNI subpoenas issued against the Belfast Project archive at Boston College are, I believe, beyond dispute:

1. When Allison Morris interviewed the late Dolours Price in February 2010, Dolours was undergoing psychiatric care at St Patrick’s hospital Dublin. When her family learned that the interview was underway they asked Morris to end the interview because of her illness but this request was refused;

2. Following subsequent conversations between Dolours Price’s family and the management of the Irish News, agreement was reached on the manner in which the story would be treated in the paper’s coverage. No direct quotes were used, restraint would be exercised in relation to what she had alleged in the interview and Dolours Price would agree to take her story to the ICLVR, the so-called ‘disappeared’ commission. The Irish News evidently accepted the family’s view that in Dolours’ mental state caution should be exercised in how the story was treated;

3. The Irish News complied with that agreement but Allison Morris breached it. She took her tapes/story to her friend and former Andersonstown News colleague Ciaran Barnes in The Sunday Life and three days later he published an unrestrained account based, I firmly believe, on Allison Morris’ taped interview with Dolours Price. The Irish News abided by the agreement with her family but their reporter did not. If that is not a breach of ethics I do not know what is;

4. In the course of his story Barnes suggested that he had listened to Dolours Price’s taped interview with Boston College and in it she had admitted helping to ‘disappear’ Jean McConville. The US Attorney for Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz, specifically cited this claim from Barnes in court papers as justification for issuing the subpoenas against Boston College. There is no doubt in my mind that the behaviour of Allison Morris and Ciaran Barnes led directly to the legal action instituted by the PSNI in Belfast and the Department of Justice in America;

5. The proof that Ciaran Barnes could not have listened to the taped interview that Dolours Price gave to Boston College lies in the fact, to which I have attested in an affidavit, that she never once mentioned the Jean McConville case nor her alleged part in that woman’s disappearance in her interview with Anthony McIntyre. The effect of his claim was to disguise the fact that his source was Allison Morris and that she had breached the agreement her editor made with the Price family;

6. It therefore follows that Barnes’ source had to be Allison Morris, the only other person who had talked to Dolours Price in the run up to his article. It is surely no coincidence that his story appeared three days after Allison Morris’ story appeared in The Irish News, and that he and Allison Morris are friends and former colleagues.

I too am a member of the NUJ although I now live and work in the United States. In 1999 I was made an honorary life-time member of the union, an award I was honoured to accept. I have to say however that I am dismayed at this decision by the ethics council and more so by the manner in which it was reached. The wrong people were charged with a breach of ethics and I now call on the leadership of the NUJ to institute a full inquiry into the behaviour of Allison Morris and Ciaran Barnes in relation to the interview of Dolours Price of February 2010 and its aftermath.

I also call on the NUJ to include in this investigation an examination of the relationship between the PSNI and the media in Northern Ireland with specific reference to the differential treatment of journalists in the pursuit of confidential sources.

---

CLICK HERE FOR BACKGROUND INFORMATION

---

In Memory of Dominic and Mary McGlinchey

The Friends and Family of the late republican volunteers, Dominic and Mary McGlinchey, will be hosting a commemoration in their honour this weekend in County Derry. Those who knew either of them, whether directly or through reputation, acknowledge their impact on the republican resistance to British state repression.

The Family and Friends request that any former prisoners attending the event consider turning out in the traditional republican funerary attire of  'black and whites': trousers, tie and shirt.

Wiki-Dump

Complete coverage:

NUJ Vindicates Boston College Researcher

What Price Justice

The Weird World of an Irish News Journalist

I Have a Right to be Angry

Are you being Gagged?

True to Their Words
Invertebrate Journalism
Reporting to London

UPDATE July, 2013: NUJ VINDICATES BOSTON COLLEGE RESEARCHER

Following a hearing in London on 24th July 2013, the NUJ Appeals Tribunal upheld an appeal by journalist Anthony McIntyre....[click for more]

On 22 November, 2012, the NUJ informed Anthony McIntyre that complaints had been lodged against him by Ciaran Barnes and Allison Morris, in relation to a blog post written by Mark McGregor published on The Pensive Quill in May, 2012.

Mark's post had previously been removed upon an informal request by local NUJ members on behalf of Allison Morris, and the withdrawal of the post by Mark himself. Anthony had not once been contacted by Allison Morris or Ciaran Barnes. Noel Doran, the Editor of the Irish News, prior to the approach from local NUJ members, contacted Anthony and threatened to bring legal action against him.

Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number.

Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society Sigmund Freud because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space - one of the ideological defences offered by the military

The election of Pope Francis has added oomph to the interest in Argentina’s Dirty War. It is a thorny issue for the Catholic Church, and given the military extolling of Christian virtues any division between junta and hierarchy is blurred by both having drawn from the same ideological well and sharing the same religious opinion.

Supremacists on the March

TPQ runs a statement from Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective issued on 24th March 2013

This coming Easter Monday the Apprentice Boys will once again have an unwanted sectarian triumphalist march through Ardoyne, Mountainview and The Dales against the wishes of the vast majority of local residents who remain opposed to such open expressions of sectarianism in their area.

Another one Interned by Decree.

Guest writer Alec McCrory with a piece on the latest in a series of British state measures which are directed towards republicans and pose a significant threat to civil liberties.


When Damien McLaughlin returned from a visit with his wife and young children on Tuesday, he discovered a large folder sitting on his bed. A sixth sense alerted him to the possibility of bad news. Damien had not ruled out the revocation of his licence due to the weakness of the current charges against him. With a degree of foreboding he gingerly lifted the folder removing a larger brown envelope. Inside the envelope was a letter from the British Secretary of State informing him that his licence had indeed been revoked based on security reports. No other explanation was given for this decision.

Damien was previously convicted of possessing a weapon and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. He was on Roe House during the protest and was subjected to dozens of brutal strip searches. His personal account of the procedure, which appeared on TPQ last year, is the most graphic and disturbing to appear to date.

He was released last year having completed more than half of his sentence. Because he fell under the terms of ‘The Criminal Justice Order 2008’ - this effectively removed fifty-per cent remission - the remainder of his sentence was to be served on probation. The conditions of release required him to meet with a probation officer on a monthly basis, inform them of all changes in his personal circumstances, provide fingerprints when requested to by the police, and to seek permission to travel. Damien was also placed on a ‘terrorist’ register for an extended period of five years.

All of this reeks of a new policy of criminalisation which political prisoners are bound to resist to the better end.

Damien McLaughlin now finds himself one of a growing number of Republicans who have been interned by decree. This policy of creeping internment has been met with little opposition from the nationalist parties at Stormont. They prefer to approach the issue on the basis of the individual injustice rather than that of systemic abuse. To shout too loudly would run the risk of alerting people to the existence of serious anomalies within the criminal justice system.

Our appointed champions of the new political order want the people to remain ignorant to the old ways of British misrule. As long as those being jailed are a tiny minority there is no need to kick-up a fuss. And if asked what we are doing about Marian Price: we are working our backsides of behind the scenes. This has become the stock response of the political parties to any questions.

Martin Corey, Marian Price, Gerry McGeough (released), Brendan McConville, John Paul Wotton, Stephen Murney, Brian Shivers and Damien McLaughlin. All of these people have families and are well respected members of their communities. Slowly, these human rights abuses are leaking out into the public arena thanks to the efforts of political and human rights activists. Many campaigns have helped to raise awareness around these issues, so much so, that more questions are now being asked about the return of internment and other forms of injustice. The people are awaking from their slumber.

END INTERNMENT NOW!

A Mountain to Climb

Recently, TPQ featured a piece from the Peader O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum. It referred to a series of meetings hosted last year by the Communist Party of Ireland. I attended one in Dublin on the 14th April 2012 and scribbled together a few notes which then made their way into the forgot about folder.  They have now found their way back out again, promoted by the latest initiative.

The Price of Poverty

Guest writer Davy Carlin with a piece on deprivation.

The recent report commissioned by the End Child Poverty campaign has found that out of 650 parliamentary constituencies, West Belfast has the second highest levels of child poverty in the UK.   Manchester Central being the only constituency to record higher levels of child poverty and deprivation.

Brave New North: Neoliberalism in the Six Counties

In a piece that first featured in Irish Anarchist Review No 6 the left wing writer Liam O’Ruairc casts his eye over the neo-liberal project of regeneration in the six counties. He notes that the elite sections of both communities have no problem uniting around what he describes as the “shared non-sectarian identity of the consumer” which reduces shared space to “commercial shared space”. Yet the fact that working class people have seen little of the promised “peace dividend” has not lead to heightened class consciousness so much as it has to increased sectarian division.

Today, the core assumption of the dominant classes in regards to the six counties of ‘Northern Ireland’ is that economic liberalism goes hand in hand with sustainable peace – in other words, neoliberal social and economic policies plus peace process equals prosperity.

With its ‘propaganda of peace’, the media is giving the public an explicit narrative of ‘an end to violence’ and of a ‘political settlement’ having been achieved, as well as an implicit narrative according to which Northern Ireland is at present fit ‘for integration into the consumerist society and the global economic order’. [1]

The image of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley ringing the trading bell of the Nasdaq in December 2007 symbolises the idea that if the ‘invisible hand’ of the market gets its way, it will provide lasting peace and reconciliation. Economic development agencies from countries like Kosovo and Iraq have even been brought on official visits to the north to witness the success of that idea. Under the ‘new dispensation’, governance structures have been assembled to reconfigure post-conflict economic space.

‘The onset of devolution has promoted a mix between ethno-sectarian resource competition and a constantly expanding neoliberal model of governance.’ All governing parties subscribe to the virtues of free market enterprise, austerity finance, urban regeneration, public-private partnership, private-finance initiatives, and foreign direct investment by global multinationals. Neo liberal principles of privatisation, fiscal conservatism and low social welfare are seen as the main engines of social and economic peace dividend. [2] Peace has in effect been ‘privatised’.

The Mask of Neoliberalism

In opposition to the destructive antagonism be- tween Republicanism and Unionism, the neolib- eral project of governing elites promotes the the ‘shared non-sectarian identity’ of the consumer. It seeks to normalise the north by reducing ‘shared space’ to commercial shared space. Critics point that this idea is fundamentally to ‘provide a mask or a ‘Potemkin Village’ to obscure the poverty and sectarianism hidden behind’. [3] The recently opened Titanic Belfast project is a prime example of such a ‘Potemkin Village’ promoted by this ‘propaganda of peace’. A lecturer in History of Design at the University of Ulster has described the likes of the Titanic Project and the Laganside Development as the city’s largest ‘normalisation project’ and contrasts the ‘propaganda drive to make Belfast appear as normal’ to the fact that at the same time the population has become even more divided and segregated. [4]

This project of ‘rebranding’ the six counties is there to hide the fact that Northern Ireland is a failed economic entity. It is fiscally dependent on the rest of the UK ; its annual deficit stands at £9 billion (€10.6 billion) a year, equivalent to £5,000 a person. Public spending accounts to almost 70 percent of its gross domestic product. Economic output is 20 percent below the British average, 30 percent of the population is economically inactive and it continues to experience the lowest private sector productivity of all UK regions. It is the only part of the UK where weekly wages in the public sector –where over 30 percent of the workforce is employed- are on average £105 higher than the private sector.

Growth rates have consistently trailed behind the UK average. All this puts in doubt whether ‘Northern Ireland’ can become an attractive option never mind a shining example for global capital. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Economic Outlook report published in August 2012, not only is the north’s economy facing ‘very serious problems’ and lagging behind the rest of the UK, but the prognosis is even worse, with predictions for the regional economy to shrink even further. [5] Esmond Birnie, an Ulster Unionist and a senior economist at Pricewater- HouseCoopers admitted last year: ‘Over three decades, the standard of living has remained flat. The reliance on the public sector still remains very high. We've had a high decline in manufacturing...and while there has been growth in the service sector, these are low wage, low productivity jobs - no compensation for the loss of traditional industries. The Northern Ireland economy only grows when there is a massive increase in public spending and another increase in public spending is not realistic.’[6] So much for Northern Ireland PLC!

In a famous analysis published in 1988, Bob Rowthorn and Naomi Wayne described the Northern Ireland economy as a « workhouse economy » : « It would be little exaggeration to describe Northern Ireland in the late 1980s as a workhouse economy. A large part of its population is unemployed. Those who are not are chiefly engaged in servicing or controlling each other –through the provision of health, education, retail distribution, construction, security and social services. Relatively few people within the province are engaged in the production of tradable goods and services which can be sold outside. » [7] Is this analysis still valid today? An analysis published in 2008 (exactly twenty years after Rowthorn and Wayne's book came out) concluded: “Rowthorn and Wayne’s critique of the local economy still has resonance and relevance two decades later. The basic weakness of the economy…has, if anything, been amplified in recent years.” [8]


The Spoils of Peace

There were hopes that the cessation of violence would be followed by a ‘peace dividend’. A detailed study of the evolution of the northern economy in the ten years since following the Belfast Agreement seriously questions the degree to which the peace process has engendered a general and sustainable ‘peace dividend’, especially for the marginalized populations who suffered most during the conflict. [9] Even Ian Coulter, the chairman of the Confederation of British Industry, stated earlier this year that despite the political peace dividend in the last 14 years, there has been no real economic dividend and the north’s economy has not moved on since 1998. [10] Her Majesty’s Treasury provided this assessment in a paper published last year: ‘Peace has not in itself been sufficient to raise Northern Ireland prosperity to the UK average or even to the UK average excluding South East England. Northern Ireland still has one of the weakest economies in the UK.’ [11] And since the start of the great recession ‘the much-heralded prospects of a peace dividend have simply evap- orated following the meltdown of global financial markets. Negative equity, job fears and the cost of living dominate the domestic economic horizon.’ [12]

The working class has seen little improvement of their condition. The Wall Street Journal notes that: ‘In the decade following the official end of ‘the Troubles,’ levels of poverty in both communities has not been reduced. Any peace dividend Northern Ireland received has failed to reach those that most needed to see economic improvement. Indeed, working class communities, which were heavily subsidised by the British state during the Troubles, have actually seen their economic position decline in recent years.’ [13] In a 2011 report, the Northern Ireland Assembly's Research and Library Service studied deprivation and social disadvantage since 1998. It found little evidence of 'peace dividend' and that the gap between the well-off and the disadvantaged ‘persisted and in some cases increased since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement’. Of the 56 wards ranked as the most deprived ten percent in 2001, the researchers found that only 14 areas had climbed out of deprivation by last year. In some cases this had been achieved only because of boundary changes. [14] It is thus hardly surprising that there were recent criticisms of the fact that working class communities have missed out on the dividend from development at Titanic Quarter. [15]

Divide and Re-Conquer

Behind the facade of regeneration, ‘peace’ is at best what has been described as ‘benign apartheid’. Segregation and divisions have significantly increased since 1998. Neoliberal peace has failed to normalise the six counties. Four- teen years after the Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland remains a very divided society. The indicators show that in some areas the divisions have increased: most obviously, the number of interface walls has increased from twenty two at the time the Agreement was signed to forty eight today according to the Department of Justice, or eighty eight according to the last count taken by the Institute of Conflict Research. There is evidence of continuing deep division in housing and education. [16] With its failure to bring peace dividend or develop reconciliation, the ‘re- branding’ of the six counties is a case of ‘putting lipstick on a gorilla.’ [17]

The idea that the free market can generate social and economic prosperity and lasting peace can thus be seriously questioned. The current economic crisis makes things even more difficult. Objective circumstances certainly have weakened the neoliberal project but whether an alternative political project of the subordinated classes will emerge remains very uncertain. The establishment is particularly concerned that the economic crisis provides an opportunity for so- called ‘dissident’ republicans.

The Financial Times for example noted that in the Creggan estate in Derry, six out of ten people are were classed as ‘economically inactive’ and in a sign of the deepening recession over two thousand three hundred people applied for 14 jobs on offer at a new DFS furniture store. The paper concluded that ‘this climate has presented opportunities for hard line groups of dissident Republicans, who oppose the peace process’. [18]

Former Tánaiste and attorney general Michael McDowell predicted earlier this year that the peace process will survive the economic downturn on both sides of the border. Politics in the north could become more divisive in the absence of economic progress, but he said he didn’t believe there was a fundamental risk that it would slip back into conflict. [19] This raises the important question of the political effects of the economic crisis. There is no automatic connection between an economic and a political crisis. There is an economic crisis, but it has not yet reached the stage of an organic crisis – where the very legitimacy of the system itself is questioned. Instead, in the north the crisis has led to calls to lower corporation taxes. There was a substantial one day strike on 30 November 2011 over public sector pensions but it seems to have had little political effects. Such protests remain limited to 'economic-corporate' interests and are unconnected to the question of winning political power and the transformation of the state.

Different Class

While working class people in the six counties are overwhelmingly aware of the material inequalities that mark the social order under which they live, this seems to have little effect upon the political culture of the province. The ideological formations that are prevalent within the six counties would appear to arise not out of class consciousness but rather out of national and sectarian identity. Over two hundred thousand people are members of a trade union, but class politics are absent and the left is largely irrelevant. [20] Many writers in the socialist and labour traditions have pointed to episodes of working-class unity in the past - notably the 1907 and 1919 strikes and the 1932 unemployed workers' movement as the way forward but have failed to analyse the relative weight of class issues and national or sectarian divisions.

Class and 'religion’ have together shaped the structure and consciousness of the modern working class in the north of Ireland A purely class-based focus - or rather one based on a narrow economic definition of class - leads to a misinterpretation of such key events. Working class unity can be fragile if based solely on economic interests, as in 1907, 1919 and 1932.

It is unlikely to crystallise into full unity embracing political and ideological elements, given the irreconcilable differences between the Unionist and Nationalist components. [21] The left and other oppositional forces such as dissenting republicans are also all emerging from a period of defeat and the general climate is one of depoliticisation and demobilisation.’Ours is the age more of the general shrug than the general strike’ as Mick Hume put it. [22]

The key question is whether these are structural tendencies or a conjunctural phenomenon. From a longue durée perspective - an approach which gives priority to long-term historical structures over the histoire événementielle or short term ‘eventual history’ — it would be premature to conclude that the working class movement in the north is dead, it is possibly more accurate to characterise it as being in a process between decomposition and recomposition. Key to that recomposition are international factors. Given the dependence of the six counties on external forces (political and economic) the internal balance of forces is unlikely to change in the north until they begin to change elsewhere in the British Isles and in Western Europe. Until then the left will have to prepare for a long 'war of position' and get ready to battle for political leadership.







 
Notes

[1] Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker (2010). The Propaganda of Peace: The Role of Media and Culture in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, Bristol: Intellect, 87ff
[2] Brendan Murtagh and Peter Shirlow (2012). Devolution and the politics of development in Northern Ireland.Environment and Planning C : Government and Policy, 30 :1, 46-61
[3] John Nagle (2009). Potemkin Village : Neo- liberalism and Peace-building in Northern Ire- land ? Ethnopolitics : Formerly Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 8 :2, 187
[4] David Brett. (2004) Geologies of site and settlement, in : Nicholas Allen and Aaron Kelly (eds), The Cities of Belfast, Dublin : Four Courts Press, 25-26
[5] Una Bradley, North's economy facing 'serious problems', The Irish Times, 8 August 2012
[6] Clare Weir, Province no longer ‘a special case’ for cuts, The Belfast Telegraph, 13 January 2011
[7] Bob Rowthorn & Naomi Wayne, Northern Ireland: The Political Economy of Conflict, Oxford: Polity Press, 1988, 98
[8] Jim Smyth & Andreas Cebulla, The Glacier moves ? Economic change and class structure, in Colin Coulter & Michael Murray (eds), Northern Ireland After The Troubles : A Society in Transition, Manchester University Press, 2008, 181
 [9] Denis O’Hearn (2008). How has Peace Changed the Northern Irish Political Economy ? Ethnopolitics : Formerly Global Review of Eth- nopolitics, 7 :1, 101-118
[10] Francess McDonnell, Sectarianism in work- place dampens jubilee cheer, The Irish Times, 22 May 2012
[11] HM Treasury (2011), Rebalancing the North- ern Ireland Economy, London : HM Treasury, 3
[12] Francess McDonnell, Homegrown talent stands high in otherwise difficult year, The Irish Times, 27 December 2011
[13] Neill Lochery, There May Be Trouble Ahead in Northern Ireland, The Wall Street Journal, 14 September 2011
[14] Diana Rusk, Quality of life in north's de- prived areas worsens, The Irish News, 24 March 2011
[15] Lesley-Anne McKeown, Working-class com- munities ‘missed out on Titanic Quarter divi- dend’, The Belfast Telegraph, 3 May 2012
[16] Paul Nolan (2012) Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report (Number One – February 2012), Belfast : Community Relations Council
[17] William J.V. Neill (2006) : Return to Titanic and lost in the maze : The search for represen- tation of ‘post-conflict’ Belfast,Space and Polity, 10 :2, 119
[18] Jamie Smyth, Northern Ireland: A peace to protect, The Financial Times, 14 August 2012
[19] Paul Cullen, Peace process will survive de- spite downturn, says McDowell, The Irish Times, 25 February 2012
[20] Colin Coulter (1999). The absence of class politics in Northern Ireland. Capital and Class, Issue 69, 77-100
[21] Ronald Munck (1985). Class and Religion in Belfast - A Historical Perspective. Journal of Contemporary History, 20:2, 241-259
[22] Mick Hume, British Trade Unions: General Shrug Now!, Spiked Online, June 2011

Dirty War, Dirty Church

The Church behaved appallingly badly – Robert Cox, editor of the Buenos Aires Herald which stood up to the Argentine military dictatorship in the 1970s.

President Michael D Higgins earlier this week in Rome attended the inauguration of Pope Francis. He was among many heads of state who turned up for the occasion, an event of global significance.

UKIP a Brit of a dark horse

Dr John Coulter with a piece on the UKIP which featured in the Irish Daily Star on 11th March 2013


Irish politics may be about to throw up another curious twist as the pro-Union community indulges in a summer of its favourite past time – splitting and realigning.

Response to SAA Discussion of Boston College/IRA Oral History Case

Boston College case, SAA

 

Discussion of Boston College/IRA Oral History Case

SAA’s Government Affairs Working Group has drafted a document summarizing a case in which Boston College had signed an agreement to house oral histories regarding the “Troubles in Ireland” that later were subpoenaed.

• Boston College/IRA Oral History Project Discussion Document
• Prepared by the SAA Government Affairs Working Group for Council Discussion in January 2013; Revised and Posted on February 11, 2013
  March 2013: NOTE: This document is currently under review and being revised. 
• See also: SAA: Discussion of Boston College/IRA Oral History Case – Ed Moloney Response

Response of Belfast Project Lead Researcher Dr. Anthony McIntyre
Lead researcher for the Belfast Project, Dr. Anthony McIntyre, offers his response to the SAA/GAWG document on the Boston College/IRA Oral History case.

View this document on Scribd

In response to a recent statement prepared by the Society of American Archivist Government Affairs Working Group for SAA Council discussion on the ‘Boston College/IRA Oral History Situation’ it was somewhat dispiriting to read the following comment from Society of American Archivists President, Jackie Dooley:

Today we hear from Frank Boles, SAA past president and chair of our Government Affairs Working Group, who led the work to develop our statement. He and his merry band of GAWGers always do excellent research and thinking before they send a document to Council, and this one is no exception.

It struck me that a casual reader could be forgiven for deducing that that Ms Dooley and I had been reading different documents from Frank Boles: the one he submitted to the SAA Council and then another which the Council put out as a discussion statement outlining its stance in respect of the Boston College legal battle.

Without being dogmatic, it simply defies standards of excellence to attribute ‘excellent research’ to Boles and his colleagues who took the lead role in the preparation of the SAA statement on the Boston College affair. This is hardly a churlish response from an aggrieved researcher. It is easily borne out by the litany of incontestable mistakes that ‘excellent research’ could never have plausibly churned out. Ms Dooley, if she is familiar with Euripides, would appreciate the prudence in his comment that ‘a bad beginning makes a bad ending.’ Alternatively a purposeful bad end can produce a bad beginning. Consequently, one is compelled to explore the possibility that the end result of taking no action was decided in advance and the research tailored to fit.

Some of the mistakes that litter the SAA discussion statement are surface flaws, which, while indicating sloppiness, are not catastrophic. Others are serious foundational errors and for that reason are considerably more egregious. Both sets, when aggregated, point in the direction of an absence of serious research and in its stead a superficial scan.

This is all the more regrettable because in spite of being asked by some of its membership to intervene in the Boston College Subpoena case, ‘the SAA Council believes that it is inappropriate for the Society to take a formal position on the case or on the concept of “archival privilege” at this time.’ While ultimately any strategic initiative is a matter for the Council, it would be an intellectual travesty if this disappointing decision by the Council is based on specious reasoning.

While the interpretation of the facts is a matter for the authors who, in the interests of intellectual autonomy must have latitude to interpret, it is not within the gift of the authors to designate as facts matters that have no demonstrable basis in fact.

Moving from surface to foundational, an itemisation of the errors that appear in the SAA Council statement should suffice to indicate something other than best practice.

• The introductory paragraph of the background section confuses the donor agreement with the contract between Project Director Ed Moloney and Boston College, and suggests it is unclear whether Boston College had signed it or not. The Moloney contract was signed, not ‘apparently’ signed, by Burns Librarian Robert O’Neill, as were the donor agreements given to each interviewee. O’Neill refers to having signed the Moloney contract in his affidavit; his signature is clearly visible in the copy attached to his affidavit and submitted to the court:

“I signed an agreement with Ed Moloney to serve as Project Director for the Belfast Project dated January 31, 2001. A true and complete copy of the January 31, 2001, Agreement is annexed to this statement and marked O’Neill Attachment1.” (Paragraph 5, page 2, Affidavit of Robert K. O’Neill)
http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/exhibits/affidavit-of-robert-k-oneill/
http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/exhibits/respondent-moloney-agreement/

• The “Disappeared Commission” is not part of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). It is an independent entity that has won the legal right not to divulge to the PSNI or any other state agency information about the sources that make information available to it. http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/supporting-documents/concerns-expressed-by-the-iclvr/
• The only disappearance in December 1972 was that of Mrs Jean McConville. There were not eight others disappeared that month. (For background on the McConville investigation see: http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/supporting-documents/jean-mcconville-investigation/)
• I was at no time subpoenaed.
• At no time did I refuse to turn over material in my possession for the simple reason that I had no material in my possession. What I refused to do, as a matter of academic and journalistic principle, was assist Boston College on the eve of court, to filter the material in its possession for anything that might be responsive to the subpoenas. To the extent that I am an archivist/researcher, I am most definitely not a gatherer of evidence for law enforcement agencies.
• Neither I nor Moloney on September 1, 2011 asked the court to quash the subpoenas. We asked for the right to intervene in the case as we had little faith in the efforts being made by Boston College. Our Motion to Intervene and our Complaint for Declaratory Judgement, Writ of Mandamus and Injunctive Relief are available both online.
  http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/court-documents/motion-for-leave-to-intervene/;
  http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/court-documents/intervenors-complaint-for-declaratory-judgement-writ-of-mandamus-and-injunctive-relief/
• No subpoenas have been issued against Ed Moloney. Two subpoenas have been issued, in each case against Boston College. In December our request to intervene was denied, not a request to quash which we had not been afforded an opportunity to make.

More substantially:

• The subsidiary agreement was not drawn up between the ‘scholars undertaking the project and the interviewees.’ It was an agreement between Boston College and the interviewees, written up by Boston College on Boston College headed paper, and signed by the Burns Librarian at Boston College. An example of the agreement form given to all interviewees is available online: http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/exhibits/respondent-hughes-agreement/
• Boston College staff did not merely either fail to ‘review or reviewed insufficiently the agreements drawn up for participants’ signatures.’ Boston College drew up the agreements for the participants’ signatures. This is a matter of public record for which there is an easily accessible paper trail, and which Ed Moloney has thoroughly addressed in his response to the SAA.
• The researchers at no time ‘made additional written promises to participants in the oral history project that went beyond those offered by Boston College, but project staff did not disclose to participants that these additional assurances were made on behalf of the project staff and did not represent the position of Boston College … These additional assurances apparently were founded in the researchers’ belief in a legal theory of “archival privilege” previously rejected by a federal court.’

This last assertion on the part of the SAA Council is so demonstrably false and misleading that only with extreme reluctance could it be accepted as something issued in good faith. Not a scintilla of evidence for such a bald statement has been forthcoming. Where is the evidence that the researchers ever gave ‘additional assurances’ to the participants?

In a matter considered so important that the SAA Council thought it worthy of public comment, it is striking that so little effort was put into getting it right. The Council simply packaged a falsehood based on lazy rather than excellent research, and passed it off as factual. It is not difficult to conceive of a corollary whereby the researchers would be excoriated and Boston College exonerated. Is the instinct to protect the institution so strong that it cannot resist the tendency to close ranks and displace culpability onto those considered least able to fight their corner?

There was no additional written agreement made available to the interviewees. What appeared in the Hughes [donor] Agreement, minus Mr Hughes’ own amendments, was the sole template for the donor agreement that was used in every case. It was inscribed on Boston College headed paper and signed off on by the Burns Librarian, Professor Robert O’Neill. Again, from O’Neill’s affidavit, paragraphs 6 and 7:

“6. Each person interviewed for the Belfast Project was offered a donation agreement directing that his or her interview materials be deposited in the Burns Library at Boston College. If the interviewee agreed to the donation, the donation form reassured the interviewee that no part of the interviews would be released without the interviewee’s approval or until the interviewee died, whichever came first.

7. A uniform donation agreement for Belfast Project interview materials was offered to all interviewees. It was the same as the form signed by one of the interviewees, the late Brendan Hughes, that is annexed to this statement as O’Neill Attachment 2, except that the Hughes donation form has additional handwritten terms that he requested.”

There is nothing whatsoever that would lend itself to even a speculative assumption, let alone the firm conclusions arrived at by the SAA Council, that the researchers ever at any point entered into a side agreement with the interviewees or expanded the terms of confidentiality independent of Boston College. The researchers gave to the participants only what Boston College drew up and approved. Neither a word more nor a word less; no side agreements or undertakings.

Much of the skewed thrust of the SAA Council statement aims at establishing the case that Boston College, because it mentioned in the agreement between it and project director Ed Moloney that the project was subject to ‘the extent of American law’, should somehow be absolved of the lion’s share of responsibility. And so we have this:

Boston College officials appear to have been clear, when an agreement initially was reached to undertake this project and house the resulting oral histories in the college library, that all promises of confidentiality made to interviewees were subject to U.S. law.

I first take issue with the claim that “Boston College officials appear to have been clear… that … promises …were subject to U.S. law”; up until the arrival of the subpoenas, Boston College were very clear that the confidentiality of the archive would be protected, by Boston College, in all circumstances. For example:

• In the preface to Voices from the Grave, Hachey and O’Neill wrote,

“Boston College is contractually committed to sequestering the taped transcriptions unless otherwise given a full release, in writing, by the interviewees, or until the demise of the latter.”

• In a 2010 interview with the Irish News, Hachey said,

“They [interviewees] also needed to know that we would honour an agreement not to publish any of their testimony until death. The only caveat is that if they give their consent before their death in writing, that would clear us legally.”

• He also said, in an interview with the News Letter,

“We began this oral history on the understanding that the documents would be sequestered and embargoed in the archives at the Burns Library here in Boston. That seemed to be very reassuring to a number of people.”

• In a 2011 article written by Editor Sean Smith for Boston College’s in-house publication, The Boston College Chronicle, for which the sources were Hachey and O’Neill and neither myself nor Ed Moloney, Boston College’s position was very clear:

“[Brendan Hughes and David Ervine, subjects of Voices from the Grave], along with nearly three dozen other former combatants interviewed for the project, were guaranteed that no interview material would be used without their consent or until after their death. Ervine died in 2007, Hughes in 2008.”

Even after the arrival of the first subpoena, Boston College remained clear:

• “There was information that was clearly granted on the condition of confidentiality, with the expectation that it would provide a benefit for posterity, a historical narrative of the Troubles. That was our sole role in getting involved in the project, continuing our effort at peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, being a repository for these tapes of great historical value.” – Jack Dunn, 25 May 2011
• “The assurances of confidentiality at the start and during the interview process were subsequently documented when the interviews were concluded. Each interviewee was given a form to donate his or her interview materials to the Burns Library at Boston College on the express condition that the materials would not be disclosed, absent the interviewee’s permission, until after his or her death.” – MOTION OF TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE TO QUASH SUBPOENAS
• “I want you to know and you can quote me on this, any one of you, because I don’t think the president (Fr Leahy) would mind me divulging this and he would certainly confirm it, but he said: ‘I want you to understand,’ he wasn’t talking to me specifically but to my two colleagues (Jack Dunn & Nora Fields), ‘I want you to understand that we are not going to allow interviewers or interviewees to be compromised in this.’” – Professor Thomas Hachey, May 16th 2011
• “We aren’t letting anybody into (the archive) and they are not touching it. That’s going to be the bottom line”. – Professor Thomas Hachey, May 16th, 2011
• “B.C. is firmly and unconditionally committed to respecting the letter and intent of what is a contractual agreement never to release any of the material to anyone unless given permission in writing (notarized) beforehand by the participant, or until the demise of a participant.” – Professor Thomas Hachey, 23 May, 2010

All of these quotes and more are available online: http://bostoncollegesubpoena.wordpress.com/supporting-documents/boston-college-confidentiality-public-references-to-agreement/
In addition, it is my definite understanding that the donor agreement/Hughes Agreement issued to the participants was predicated on the initial agreement [the Moloney contract] which contained the phrase to ‘the extent of American law’.

If the donor agreement produced by Boston College was in any way inconsistent with ‘the extent of American law’, why was it codified by the College and issued as an informed consent form to the participants?

Had US law not have enabled the terms of the donor agreement, then it was incumbent on BC to state that ultimate power of release lay with the interviewees ‘except as required by law, subpoena or court order’. BC, having knowingly stated outside the donor agreement that the conditions of the interviews were to the extent allowed by American law, must have issued a donor agreement it believed consistent with US law, and not contrary to it.

Professor John Brewer, whom I remain fundamentally at odds with in relation to the issue of where culpability resides on the Boston College case, does make a valid point when he says that “informed-consent forms always explain that confidentiality will be maintained only to the full extent provided under the law”.

In my response to Professor Brewer I made the point that, ‘Always … except when the forms are issued by Boston College.’

Boston College has yet to explain what many observers feel is a discrepancy between its own two agreements.

Other issues in the SAA paper are matters of interpretation arguably underpinned by asymmetrical reasoning:

Boston College officials failed, however, to exercise ongoing diligence over the project … Such review should have led Boston College staff to draw this matter to the attention of the project staff in order to utilize appropriate language in the agreements regarding confidentiality.

This begins to sound like an attempt to create a shield which protects the institution. It suggests that Boston College at worst adopted a hands-off approach. Because the SAA Council failed to do the research that its ultimate deliberations should have been underpinned by, it is incapable of following the linear logic that would easily permit it to conclude that Boston College did not leave it to the researchers in the field to reach agreement with the interviewees and that therefore the failing of the College is not one of post facto inadequate supervision but one that was built into the design of the project. There was no distance between Boston College staff and the donor agreements, no mediators acting with latitude, through which the College’s intent was misinterpreted.

On the issue of Ed Moloney’s book, Voices From the Grave, the SAA Council statement fails to follow through on the logic and shies away from asking the very obvious question: if Boston College, which gave its imprimatur to the book, genuinely believed that the extent of American law restricted rather than enabled confidentiality, was it not imperative on the College prior to the publication of the book to warn Moloney then?

So the flawed reasoning underpinning the SAA Council’s approach to the matter naturally produces a conclusion consistent with the errors in the research:

Given these circumstances—that the project staff, for whatever reason, chose to ignore existing case law and assure participants that a greater level of confidentiality could be given the oral histories than could reasonably be assumed, and that Boston College failed to carefully review the legal agreements signed by participants for conformity with the promises about confidentiality made by the College and to insist that those promises be represented in writing—the Government Affairs Working Group suggests that SAA take no position on the case at hand.

Distilled down it simply means the GAWG suggested to the SAA Council that it do nothing because the GAWG got it wrong and was incapable of arriving at a more balanced conclusion.

The SAA Council, having based its non interventionist recommendation on deeply flawed research, is ethically required to make right what it did wrong. There is so much at stake in this case for archivists that to allow an adverse outcome to result from badly informed inaction, would be to do irreparable harm to the art/practice of archiving and research.

The SAA Council, now that the shortcomings underpinning its ultimate decision have been brought to its attention, could do worse than retrace its steps, review its own research and revise its strategic position in relation to the ongoing legal battle by positively responding to the requests for intervention made by some of its membership.

Louis XVI once said, ‘surely the archbishop of Paris must at least believe in God.’ The Society of American Archivists must at least believe in the right to protect archives.

Coming Home

Guest writer Davy Carlin continuing his story of life in West Belfast as viewed through his eyes.


It was the year 2004, thirty-five years after 1969, which many view as the beginning of ‘the troubles’. I was thirty-four years old and living now in Turf Lodge {the Turf} in West Belfast. On a particular day of that year I had ventured out of my home to go down town, this despite the downpour that was ongoing.

Gael Force Art on the Black Mountain

Today TPQ features a video from Gael Force Art. 


The artists in a short statement accompanying the video said:

On Friday 08th March, 2013, the Artists of Gael Force Art, once again took to the Black Mountain, Belfast, in support of International Woman's Day, and with a key message calling for the release of Marian Price, who is being held within the occupation prison system, without crime, or without trail.

What follows is a short video, that we have speed up in order to get the best of this project in a short time.

Some of the footage will appear shaking, however, this footage was take from a roof top, when the wind was not much fun to be stood battling against. We almost lost our camera three times.

A long, more comprehensive video will follow in due course.

Videla's Voice

The attitude of the church was scandalously close to the dictatorship ... It did not kill anybody, but it did not save anybody, either - Argentine Priest Ruben Capitanio at the trial of fellow cleric Christian von Wernich.

With a global focus on the new Roman Catholic pontiff the contents of a 2010 interview with Jorge Videla, the Argentine coup leader responsible for massive human rights abuses during the country’s military dictatorship, are again coming to light. Speaking to El Sur, the former caudillo implicated the country’s Catholic Church in his crimes against humanity. Videla claimed that during ‘many conversations’ with Cardinal Raúl Francisco Primatesta, and also papal nuncio Pio Laghi, he had kept the Catholic hierarchy up to speed on the policy of disappearing people. It in turn offered advice on how to manage the policy. Through its ‘good offices’ the Church:

advised us about the manner in which to deal with the situation ... In the case of families that it was certain would not make political use of the information, they told them not to look any more for their child because he was dead (the Church ) understood well . . . and also assumed the risks ...

That the Church in Argentina would take such a stance is not inconsistent with its attitude towards the military regime from the outset. Buenos Aires was not Santiago where the Chilean Church stood up to the regime of Augusto Pinochet, something testified to by Michael Chossudovsky, a Visiting Professor at the Social Policy Institute of the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina during the rule of the generals.

In the immediate wake of the coup in Chile, I witnessed how the Cardinal of Santiago, Raul Silva Henriquez – acting on behalf of the Catholic Church – confronted the military dictatorship.

Argentine Catholicism had an entirely different relationship to the military, at one point seemingly urging it to seize power:

A few months before the military coup was launched, in a homily delivered in the presence of the army chief of staff, Bishop Victorio Bonamin asked aloud, 'May not Christ some day want the armed forces to go beyond their normal function?'

Nor was this an isolated case, some lippy loose cannon within the hierarchy shooting from the hip.

On the eve of the coup, Videla and other plotters received the blessing of the Archbishop of Paraná, Adolfo Tortola:

who also served as vicar of the armed forces. The day of the takeover itself, the military leaders had a lengthy meeting with the leaders of the bishop’s conference. As he emerged from that meeting, Archbishop Tortolo stated that although “the church has its own specific mission . . . there are circumstances in which it cannot refrain from participating even when it is a matter of problems related to the specific order of the state.” He urged Argentinians to “cooperate in a positive way” with the new government.

While it will create discomfort in some circles it is important that outlets like El Sur continue to publish the account of the former dictator. Another Spanish magazine Cambio 16 sustained a barrage of criticism for interviewing the war criminal in which he expressed no remorse, only pride. It is hard to see how such a criticism can be sustained other than on grounds of outright censorship. Yet the irony would not be lost on those who risked everything in a country where a homocidal military junta relied on censorship and a general media indifference to the disappeared referred to by John Simpson and Jana Bennett in their book The Disappeared. A small number of editors and journalists broke the military sound barrier, punching holes in it and getting their voices through to irrigate an arid information desert. Jacobo Timermann was tortured and jailed while Richard Cox eventually had to flee the country to protect the safety of his family. Censorship of the military's Dirty War narrative albeit for reasons different to military censorship have nothing to offer free inquiry.

As with all ‘accomplice’ evidence it serves no purpose to rush in fool-like and take at face value, independent of corroboration, everything or anything Videla has to say. At the same time, while viewing his narratorial history as self serving it is foolish to dismiss his account as false on that basis alone. His voice, strident, hateful and unapologetic nevertheless helps to fill the gaps caused by the unwarranted silences of others.

The Plight of Marian Price

Dr Linda Moore speaking on the plight of Marian Price at the Annual Rosemary Nelson Memorial Lecture at Conway Mill, Belfast on the 14th March 2013. It was recorded by Pauline Mellon who has actively campaigned on behalf of Marian Price.

57 Percent Effective

Martin Galvin with a letter which featured in the Irish News on 6th March 2013


A chara

Traveling through Belfast International Airport to attend Gerry McGeough’s homecoming from Maghaberry, I took for granted that the scanners used there and at other airports assured passenger safety.

Heart of Darkness

The church's role and support of the dictatorship hasn't been fully shown under the light of day - Ian Mount

Last night within minutes of learning that the new leader of Roman Catholicism hailed from the Church hierarchy in Argentina I posted the following comment on my Facebook wall:

I wonder what his position was during the dirty war. The then cardinal was an absolute bastard and backed the government when it was murdering, raping, torturing and disappearing people.

Putting Christ Back Into Republicanism

Former Blanket columnist and Unionist commentator Dr John Coulter gives us the latest chapter from his forthcoming e-book, An Saise Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism. This chapter is entitled ‘Putting Christ Back Into Republicanism’ and is exclusive to The Pensive Quill. 


National Republicanism needs to spark a revival of the concept of Holy Mother Ireland instead of becoming swamped in a secular sea of atheism, agnosticism, pluralism, humanism and especially Marxism.

Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum.

TPQ carries a press statement from the recently formed Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum. 

This month a group of socialist and republican activists from a variety of backgrounds throughout Ireland came together in Dublin to establish the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum. The concept of the forum arose from a series of seminars that in turn had their origin in a symposium on “Republicanism in the Twenty-First Century” hosted by the Communist Party in September last year.

Bleakness Descends

On Friday evening I passed the Huntsman Inn at Gormanstown, where, two days earlier, Peter Butterly was gunned down. The weather ensured that it had lost none of the cordite induced bleakness which had descended on it, snuffing out one more life.

Marian Price On Black Mountain

Rosemary Nelson Annual Memorial Lecture

The Famine Plot

John Murphy with a review of Tim Pat Coogan's The Famine Plot. It initially featured on his own blog on 25th September 2012.

The subtitle plays into conspiracy theory, a melodramatic touch calculated to attract readers to what's a familiar saga for many who know Irish history. So, how justified is "England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy" by "Ireland's best-known historian" according to his byline?

Michael Campbell - The forgotten Prisoner?

Guest writer Aine Fox, a frequent contributor to the Blanket, with a piece highlighting the situation of republican prisoner Michael Campbell, currently held in a Lithuanian jail.


Lukiskes sits in the Lithuania town of Vilnius. If one were to walk around the exterior of the prison you may think it was part of local government buildings that inhabit the surrounding square. Instead this relic from 1904 is a notorious prison, one that even Lithuanians arrested abroad fight to stay away from. Lithuanian crime rates in EU countries have risen in the past decade but many want and fight to remain in the country’s they committed crimes in rather than be sent back to what many describe as a hellhole.

Tomas Navickas, a 32-year-old Lithuanian emigrant in the United Kingdom who was sentenced in March 2011 by a UK court to life in prison for murdering his concubine, is one of a handful of vicious Lithuanians who will likely spend the rest of their days behind bars. The murderer prays he will be held in an English penitentiary, promising Western-like hotel-type prison amenities, rather than facing the prospect of being extradited back to Lithuania, as serving the sentence in the notorious Lukiskes Remand Prison makes him shiver. - The Baltic Times

Gangsters, harden criminals who traffic human beings for their pocket money are desperate not to be returned to Lithuania dare they end up languishing in this system. Now think of Michael Campbell – He currently resides in this prison.*

Research carried out by European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (ECPT) and the European Court of Human Rights recommended Lukiskes, be shut down. Throughout it’s 107 year history the prison is infamous for torture, suicides, deaths in custody, overcrowding is prominent with sometimes more than 6 males squeezed into an average size cell. No access to regular communication, very little resources available to inmates. Michael is suffering under these conditions and has been every single day for the last 4 years.

Michael was arrested in Lithuania in 2009 as part of a joint ‘sting’ operation by British Security Forces and Lithuania forces who currently remain anonymous. These “witnesses” testified by audio only during Michael’s trial. Video evidence is believed to have been tampered with, they stated that Campbell intended to buy and ship arms and ammunition to Ireland.

Michael Campbell claims that these crimes were not committed of his own free will but were provoked by agents of the United Kingdom's intelligence service, denying membership of any organization Michael feels he is a victim of entrapment. Without dissecting Michael’s case it is fair to say that there are contradictions in the state’s case against him.

Michael’s brother Liam recently won a court victory and his extradition to Lithuania was ‘stayed’ due to the fact that his human rights would have been impinged had he been sent to Lukiskes or somewhere like it. (Ironic that those who run Maghaberry are opposed to regimes that impinge on human rights!! – Liam has subsequently been granted bail but is not yet released.) How do we then reconcile the fact Michael remains there?

There are question we need to ask ourselves…

• Has the wider republican movement forgotten about Michael?
• Is it a matter of out of sight out of mind?  
• What can we do to show solidarity?

We can all write to Michael, although he doesn’t receive his mail consistently it still will not hurt to drop a few lines to let Michael know he hasn’t been forgotten.

Michael Campbell

Pravieniskiu pataisos namai-atviroji kolonija,

2-oji-valdyba Pravieniskiu 11 k,

Kaisiadoriu r,

LT-56552, Lithuania

You can sign onto a recent petition set up by friends of Michael and Liam.

More importantly we can bring Michael’s case to the forefront by talking about it – questioning the reasons as to why the UK government won’t extradite Lithuanian “criminals” back to their homeland, yet it is permitted for Michael to remain there indefinitely? We need to Demand his repatriation to his home country.

Solidarity and support for Michael is not about guilt or non guilt it is about remembering that he is the only Irish republican that sits in a foreign jail in despicable conditions and not enough is being done for his human rights to be respected.

It is my opinion that Michael, just like Martin Corey and Marian Price amongst many others are being used as guinea pigs by a system that wants to see how much it can/will get away with – they are setting precedents that could have serious repercussions on all Irish republicans/state dissenters at home and abroad.

*  It has come to my attention (after I wrote this piece) that Michael has been removed from Lukiskes prison and placed within another known as "Pravieniskiu Correctional Colony". Regardless of which facility he is heldwithin this inadequate prison system, we need to demand his rights are respected and he be returned to his home country.

The Slaying of John Downes

Guest writer Martin Galvin with a letter submitted to the Irish News on the 4th December 4, 2012 but which was unpublished.                                                                                                  


A chara

While reorganising my bookcase, I came upon a pamphlet, in which I have some personal interest, titled: The Slaying of John Downes. This pamphlet includes vivid photographs of more than a score of smiling constabulary, busily clubbing, dragging or shooting plastic bullets at innocent nationalists in front of Connolly House during the Internment March of August 12, 1984. Among the memorable photographs is one of a constabulary member taking direct aim to shoot John Downes, which demolished the ricochet cover story foisted on the public by the self-righteous constabulary chief.

Alan Meban interview with Anthony McIntyre

Boston College case

Anthony McIntyre describing the Belfast Project as “an invitation to people to engage in deep moral reflection on the consequences of war and political violence”

TRANSCRIPT

Mon 4 February 2013

The topic of the Belfast Project – an oral history of republican and loyalist paramilitaries that is archived in the Burns Library at Boston College – is one that Slugger O’Toole posters have been tracking for some time.

Marian Price Needs Your Help

A Message From Bernadette Devlin McAliskey to the Sunnyside, Queens, NY "St.Pat's for All" parade on Sunday March 3. 


Marian Price needs your help perhaps more than she has ever needed it before as you march in this St Pats for All parade whose theme is “Justice for Marian Price.”

Childhood Times Within War

Guest writer Davy Carlin with the first in a series of short pieces reflecting on a childhood being created in a climate of destruction.

West Belfast – My early years
Series 2, Part 1
Previous Series on the Blanket page of a decade past

Tortured to Death

Since 2003, there have been 700 complaints of torture in the Israeli Prisons, none of which have been investigated. There have been 53 deaths from medical neglect and 72 deaths resulting from torture in the Occupation’s prisons since 1967. Arafat’s death is the second this year that is attributed to Israeli detention; Ashraf Abu Dra’ was subjected to medical negligence during his detention and died on 21 January 2013 from a fatal coma shortly after his release. -  Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association

Israel is a malevolent state that routinely engages in both crimes against humanity and war crimes. Those who criticise it and compare its practices to those of the Nazis are often labelled diabolical anti-Semites. Yet we have an Israeli colonel during one of the occupations of Lebanon arguing with a  sergeant in the presence of the journalist John Simpson that:

We are like Nazis here. Sharon is a war criminal, and we are helping him do his dirty work. It’s genocide. All of us are guilty.

It is not an isolated incident.

There is something quintessentially evil about those who torture. It does not matter what ‘noble’ end to which it is used. In its application it is a monstrous evil. The consequentialist logic of ends justifying means has little ethical value against the humanist position of process legitimising outcome.

While torture has been openly practiced by most if not all countries and religious institutions in the world at some stage, in the latter half of the 20th Century a sense of shame in the face of international opprobium caused most of them to deny it or pretend to take measures to bring it to a halt in those instances where they could no longer deny its existence. That was until the US breached the official discursive protection that was in place. The language of ‘thou shalt not’ which served as a shield was cast aside. When George Bush responded to an allegation that he had approved water boarding torture with the words ‘you bet’ the moral authority that Western democracies liked to claim for themselves vis a vis their less democratic adversaries suddenly seemed quite scrawny. No longer did torture sit on the human rights ‘no no’ pantheon alongside rape and slavery whereby there was no contingency that could ever legally permit them. Even prior to Bush, behaving like some 1970s Argentine dictator,  approved torture, Israel had from 1999, through its High Court, while formally claiming to prohibit the wicked practice, agreed to it in conditions of necessity.

Arafat Jaradat was arrested on suspicion of throwing stones at Israeli troops on the 18th February. By the 23rd of February he was dead. The Palestinian Authority Minister for Detainee Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, is reported to have told a news conference in Ramalla that an autopsy conducted in Israel in the presence of Palestinian officials revealed that Jaradat had sustained injuries for which there was no anodyne explanation:

The information we have received so far is shocking and painful. The evidence corroborates our suspicion that Mr. Jaradat died as a result of torture, especially since the autopsy clearly proved that the victim's heart was healthy, which disproves the initial alleged account presented by occupation authorities that he died of a heart attack.

Jaradat's lawyer, Kameel Sabbagh, said about seeing him in court:

When I entered the courtroom I saw Jaradat sitting on a wooden chair in front of the judge. His back was hunched and he looked sick and fragile ... when I sat next to him he told me that he had serious pains in his back and other parts of his body because he was being beaten up and hanged for many long hours while he was being investigated..When Jaradat heard that the judge postponed his hearing he seemed extremely afraid ...

Elsewhere a legal expert has complained that hunger strikers are being tortured by Israeli authorities. It actually sounds like something we would expect to read about in the memoirs of a survivor from a concentration camp run by Rudolf Höss.

Moreover, according to the journalist Charlotte Silver, the same High Court that licenced 'necessary' torture

 has been extravagantly helpful in securing the Shin Bet with its imperviousness to accountability to international law, and thus enabling widespread and lethal torture.

Let those who back Israel now have the chutzpah to tell us that there are no points of comparison between the practices of Shin Bet and those of the Gestapo.

Justice For Marian: Belfast Bus Times

Onward Christian Soldiers

Ex-Blanket columnist Dr John Coulter is an ardent supporter of the state of Israel. In this controversial column which he penned for the Irish Daily Star of 25 February, he argues the contentious case as to why all Irish Christians should follow his example in his support of Israel.


Irish Christians needs to take their heads out of the sand and start openly supporting Hamas-battered Israel. With the North’s marching season already kicking off weeks earlier because of the Union flag dispute, already Israeli and Palestinian flags have started to flutter in loyalist and republican strongholds.

'Britain’s New FBI'

Guest writer Alec McCrory with a piece examining the potential impact of the British state forging ahead with the imposition of the National Crime Agency on the North.

A showdown is looming between the British government and the two main nationalist parties over plans to allow the National Crime Agency (NCA) to operate in the six counties. Recent discussions at Stormont ended in deadlock when Sinn Fein and the SDLP refused to support British government proposals to establish the new crime fighting agency in ‘Northern Ireland’, much to the chagrin of their unionist counterparts.

Political policing in Ireland exposed yet again

On the 32nd anniversary of Bobby Sands beginning his hunger strike TPQ features a statement from the Release Martin Corey Committee. That the issue of political prisoners and the conditions of their detention still features over three decades later is a cause of concern to increasing numbers of people including many of those who experienced life as political prisoners subject to a British prison regime.

Recent Loyalist Marches once again expose British political policing in Ireland. Since December 2012 a weekly "illegal" parade has taken place in Belfast by a number of loyalists. This parade has been facilitated time and time again by the RUC.