Another ‘Pathetic Grubby Little War’

Parliamentary Brief December 2009

The decision of the Sinn Fein leadership to become part of the British administration it had earlier unleashed the IRA against was supposed to herald an end to all republican political violence. Gerry Adams, the alpha and omega of Provisional IRA political violence, would be allowed to dig deep into British pockets in return for getting rid of the IRA. His party would ensure that the British state got the protection it paid for. No more armed attacks on its forces or trespassing on its property.

Things haven’t quite worked out that way. Both Sinn Fein and the British state could have learned something from Harold MacMillan when he said ‘events, dear boy, events.’ And it is those pesky things termed events that are causing concern within the wider British establishment in Northern Ireland including Sinn Fein; on average one armed event a day.

One PSNI member speaking to a Belfast newspaper in November claimed that ‘nothing about the real threat on the ground comes out to the public, but the reality is that it is very, very high.’ Many times throughout the period when Hugh Orde led the PSNI the threat was also said to have been very high. But up until March it was a threat that never quite proved effective. Then in the space of a few days two of the remaining IRAs between them killed three members of the British security services. Since then they along with others have kept their state adversaries busy to the point that there are some areas where the police dare not enter without ballistic body armour. There are other regions into which they fear intruding at all as was made manifest when a PSNI patrol turned back rather than confront a Real IRA team manning a roadblock in South Armagh.

According to Suzanne Breen, one of the North’s better informed journalists currently commenting on the ‘dissident threat’, republican activists of both the military and political variety, are being targeted at a level surpassing that seen during the Provisional IRA campaign.’ Stop and search procedures under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act are on the increase with 10,265 people having been subjected to the measure in one three month period compared to 1,657 for the same period a year earlier.

A matter of weeks ago Belfast police were under instruction to carry out surveillance on ten republicans suspected of being of a military disposition. Now that number is said to have trebled. If surveillance reflects the rate of recruitment to the armed dissidents groups throughout Northern Ireland, where there are said to be 200 republicans attracting the attention of the intelligence services, then the active IRAs are signalling their intent to stay in the game. Belfast, Derry, South Armagh, North Armagh, Fermanagh – the picture is the same; all hotspots that regularly made news features when the Northern conflict was at its height are again grabbing the headlines. It was reported in the Sunday Times that ‘MI5 devotes 60% of its electronic surveillance operations and 15% of its manpower to spying on the dissidents.’ All of which uses up a lot of resources on a problem the Sinn Fein leadership was supposed to have sorted out for the British.

The Northern Irish columnist and historian Brian Feeney is not alone in saying that the strategic objective of armed republicans is to bring the British Army back on the streets so that they can have more targets, as well as causing Sinn Fein embarrassment by a troop presence the party was also meant to have saw the back of. But it is difficult to discern such a strategy amongst a disparate group of activists who belong to at least three different organisations. If there is no organisational unity it is hard to imagine a strategic unity.

The dissidents are not stupid people and it seems unlikely that they are trying to force a greater British military presence which will curb their room for manoeuvre even more than it is at present. They appear to mount operations whenever and wherever they can. They are aware that their campaigns will not force the British to up and leave Northern Ireland. Resisting rather than winning seems to be their raison d’etre. They feel an obligation to put up resistance to what they view as British occupation in Ireland.

Strange as it may seem to many who do not share their republican outlook, in reality all they are doing is following the course of action once prescribed by Gerry Adams the Sinn Fein president who told his followers that while British forces remained in Ireland armed struggle was a necessary and morally correct form of resistance. Adams unleashed a genie from its bottle which no one has been able to squeeze back in.

Nevertheless, it is important to place the ‘dissident threat’ in context rather than blow it out of proportion. The reason it looms large is unrelated to its scale but rather to it being viewed against a backdrop of a much promised peace process dividend: an end to all republican political violence. The performance gap between promise and delivery is amplifying the noise of dissident blasts and gunfire.

In terms of its overall efficacy the current campaign is roughly on the same scale as the Provisional IRA’s own armed struggle in 1997 before it called the ceasefire that led to the Good Friday Agreement. A leading figure in the RUC described that phase of Provisional IRA violence, in which the lives of policemen and soldiers were lost, as ‘a pathetic grubby little war.’

Observers, commentators and politicians could do worse than temper their alarmism.

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Killing Ciaran Doherty

The killing of Ciaran Doherty by the Real IRA just outside of Derry City on Wednesday evening was laden with evocations of the ‘bad old days’ when bullet lacerated bodies, were left bound and gagged at the side of a road on full public display. Over the decades many Derry men met a similar a fate; Jock Lynch in 1974, Franko Hegarty in 1986, two of the names that spring to mind. Killings which look no different from the slaying of Ciaran Doherty: brutal, chilling and sordid. The likeness drew the following precise observation from Brian Rowan: ‘all of what the dissidents are doing comes from an IRA book.’

There has been much condemnation of the killing. The North’s British First Minister Peter Robinson and his deputy Martin McGuinness spoke on behalf of the Northern Executive when they repudiated the ‘dirty deed’. McGuinness made the point that the republicans responsible for the killing need to realise that the war is well truly over. It might have helped fortify his repudiation of the killers had he said the war is well and truly over because it was well and truly lost; that the lesson of the Provisional IRA campaign has been salutary – do not fight wars that are not winnable, achieve little and exact a price in gross excess of the purchase.

Martin McGuinness’s Assembly colleague Martina Anderson also criticised the killing in strong and forthright terms. She put a lot of visible energy into challenging the people who took Ciaran Doherty’s life: her judgement, how dare they bring this type of activity to the streets of Derry. She may well be genuinely sincere in her revulsion. But the background of her party always places a low hanging ceiling on the moral authority Sinn Fein representatives can reach when making such condemnations. Representatives of other parties which have no history of association with republican political violence sound all the more plausible in their rejection of events like that which took place on Wednesday evening. The condemnation issued by Mark Durkan of the SDLP sounded natural rather than forced.

The Real IRA in claiming responsibility for the killing of Ciaran Doherty, who was the one time commander of the group’s volunteers in Portlaoise, accused him of knowing the consequences of certain associations he had maintained. In its statement the republican military group alleged that Ciaran Doherty was a senior member who had relationships with a criminal gang linked to the drugs trade.

That is no reason for having killed him. There is no war or legitimate targets. The Real IRA might well think it is carrying on in the tradition of the Provisional IRA when it dispenses this type of brutal justice; that because an army council signs off on the action that it somehow becomes morally superior to any other killing that takes place on the streets. While Real IRA inflicted fatalities may differ from a criminal killing it can hardly be claimed in their defence that they are any more meritorious.

The growth of the Real IRA, despite it being effectively red carded after the Omagh bomb, is in part a consequence of a growing realisation that the Sinn Fein leadership negotiated a very poor return on the Provisional IRA campaign. Sinn Fein being able to sit in the middle of a British administration and label other republican traitors is not what any republican ever envisaged as a worthy objective.

This realisation that little in the way of republican objectives were secured should be extended to the point where it allows for an acknowledgement that the Provisional Movement did not sell out a campaign that could have been prosecuted successfully. The Provisional movement sell out lies not in the defeat it sustained but in the management of that defeat which saw it defect to the British side and has it body and soul now backing an armed British police force.

The logic is stunningly simple: unwinnable wars are invariably lost. The Real IRA in trying to reinvent the Provisional IRA wheel will do what wheels do – go round in circles. No matter how many bodies like that of Ciaran Doherty lie strewn on darkened roads, that circle of futility will not be broken – just hearts.

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Gerry Does Jesus

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

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The Gerry & Jesus Show

You would imagine that there would be no laughs left to squeeze out of the North’s politicians. Until Iris the Virus came along that is and caused much mirth for all but her husband and family. After that there could be nothing else to rouse the laughter and douse the ennui. Or so we thought. Step in St Gerry of Jerusalem.

Channel 4’s documentary The Bible: A History was billed to be hilarious. Big Percy Pompous gallivanting around the Holy Land, explaining the true Jesus to the hoards of Philistines. New insights were certain to abound. The origins of the peace process might just be traced to the Bible. Jesus supported it too you know. All but the bovine bunch cringed at the thought of it.

The amount of texts and phone calls I received from people thinking it would be like something out of Monty Python left me fed up and reluctant to answer the phone or even read messages. That takes nothing away from the fact that in the end The Life of Brian had more in the way of serious religious content and discussion. I waited hoping Gerry would burst out in song – ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ an appropriate ditty given the occasion. Besides, he knew the lines well, knew them before those that wrote them even did.

A man apart – great leaders have to be – Gerry seemed to warm to the idea of the tomb when he entered the crypt that had at one time contained a brace of bodies, even joking about how it resembled Long Kesh tunnels and making quips about Sinn Fein having previously been an underground movement. I wasn’t sure if that was a loose reference to the fact that the party had undertaken certain business that had been carried out beneath ground or if it was just a reference to its one time illegal status. Whether he, the only civilian to have served as O/C of Cage 11, was ever down a tunnel I don’t know. The tomb had only recently been discovered, having been secret for a long time; a bit like Ireland where he can’t seem to escape association with secret burial sites. Here they have the annoying tendency to make the headlines at awkward junctures.

The anticipated spoofing began early enough. He had negotiated the Good Friday agreement which led to the release of the people who shot him. They were actually out four years before the Good Friday Agreement. Nor did he negotiate the Good Friday Agreement. The SDLP and Irish government did that. As Paul Bew put it two years ago: 'Presented with a fait accompli which he could not alter, he moved rapidly to claim ownership of the deal which had, in fact, been created by others.'

I may not have sat down to view The Bible: A History exactly with popcorn and soda but the gravitas with which I plonked myself on the settee had no great weight to it. I arose – not from the dead, the documentary didn’t quite do that for me - feeling the same way.

I can hardly claim amazement to have heard Gerry Adams say he had no blood on his hands – blood spilt by the IRA was the work of others, not he. The thought did cross my mind as he sat peering at Alan McBride, who lost his wife in the Shankill bombing of 1993, whether the thought crossed Alan’s mind that the man in front of him was often reputed to have been a member of the army council which ordered the bombing in which his wife lost her life. If Alan put the question to him it was edited out of the finished product.

While Gerry Adams as much as anybody else has the right to discuss biblical interpretation – and he did introduce some interesting observations into the discussion which made his interlocutors seem less than surefooted - his appearance had less to do with the erudite biblical knowledge he would bring to bear on the subject and all to do with the controversy it would provoke – helps push the ratings up. Moreover, it has helped compound the image of the North as a place that played host to a conflict sustained by a bunch of religious cranks.

During The Bible: A History, Gerry Adams claimed that his friends viewed him as a staunch Catholic. He hardly disappointed them as they watched him receiving Holy Communion and praying. I came away from the show with the realisation that at last there was at least something I had in common with Gerry Adams after all these years. Neither of us believes in god.

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Buried Secrets

In yesterday’s Irish News it was revealed that the former IRA hunger striker Dolours Price had stepped up to the plate and acknowledged her involvement in some of the Northern conflict’s most notorious incidents. It was a remarkable step made none the easier by an undoubted awareness on her part that there exists a widespread public revulsion towards disappearing people, some of whose remains have yet to be uncovered.

The group responsible for the bulk of the disappearances was the Provisional IRA. In some cases not only did it disappear its victims but it bestowed the status of double disappeared on them. The very act of their disappearance was itself disappeared. This disclosure, as made public in the case of the late Joe Lynskey, has thrust a dagger into the heart of the Provisional IRA’s earlier claims to have been doing all in its power to recover the bodies of people it had secretly interred. There is not the slightest intention of recovering a body of a person never revealed as having been disappeared to begin with.

Although Joe Lynskey would seem to have disappeared in the summer of 1972, when the late Seamus Twomey was commander of the Belfast IRA, the dark practice really came into its own under the leadership of Twomey’s successor in the city, a Pinochet type character who overruled the objections of his operations officer to the new policy. In a few short months at least three people had been spirited away never to be seen alive again.

Dolours Price was reported in the Irish News as having been the IRA operative who drove Lynskey across the border from the North days before he died and who remains buried in some hidden grave. Whether Price knew the fate that awaited Lynskey before she accompanied him on that journey has not been made clear. There is little doubt however that she has undergone severe trauma as a result of her IRA involvement.

That trauma was a subject addressed by Sinn Fein president, and former Provisional IRA chief of staff, Gerry Adams. Clearly pricked that one of his former volunteers would publicly identify him as the man who issued orders to her while she engaged in IRA activity, he has sought to defuse her charges by claiming that she is opposed to Sinn Fein and the peace process. He has also called on her to take responsibility for her own actions and for former combatants to be proud of their role in the IRA.

It very much seems, as reported in the Irish News, that Dolours Price is taking responsibility for her actions. What appears to have enhanced her trauma is that others have failed lamentably to accept responsibility for theirs. Her trauma has caused her to remember. Maybe others are not traumatised because they have conveniently managed to forget – that they were even in the IRA.

IRA volunteers have every right to look back on their role with pride. But it does not fall upon them to be proud of everything the IRA did. No volunteer can claim to derive pride from actions that were demonstrable war crimes. And if the IRA is something to be proud of, why does its one time chief of staff deny that he was ever in it?

Taking responsibility for our actions is indeed laudable and for which Dolours Price deserves praise. Taking action to avoid our responsibilities is shameful. The IRA did many wrong things but it was not so terrible that we need to be ashamed of it.

Did those most ashamed do the most terrible things?

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Light From The Dark

During the Blanket protest the blanket men, most barely out of their teens or still in them, would sing a song: ‘we’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go, wherever he wants to go.’ It was a song that was really sung from the cells, not a spoof about a song being sung in the H-Blocks before the song was ever written as one well known Walter tried to dupe us into believing a while back. The ‘old man’ was Brendan Hughes who was in fact anything but an old man. Only 29 when he embarked upon the blanket protest, Brendan was in the prime of life and brimming over with radical vitality which he never allowed slip into fanaticism.

The Dark would laugh at the thought of us who were so willing to follow him as he led us through those daunting arduous years of prison protest, no longer being as eager today to follow him – quite prepared to wait our turn or put it off for as long as possible. ‘Such is life’ would be his summing up of our sense of contentment to remain where we are. We can face death when it comes – so long as it doesn’t come for a while.

A republican icon in those heady and challenging days he possessed charisma and charm in abundance but was never flash. He had an unassuming character which saw him shun the bright neon for the quietude of ordinary people.

Now dead two years, it is those same ordinary people who are flocking to his memory. On web forums, chat rooms, in bars, on the street and in the workplace Brendan Hughes and his views are discussed with more than a passing interest. An upcoming book about his role in the republican struggle by the journalist Ed Moloney is awaited with great anticipation.

In the final years of his life Brendan drifted to the margins of the political radar screen. That screen had been monopolised by the peace process lobby and if your face didn’t fit then you were shunted to the sidelines. Brendan was happy to sit on the margins because in his view of the world it was at the margins where the marginalised, whom he had always championed, were to be found. He did not hog the limelight but did not fear the spotlight when he felt compelled to say what had to be said.

That interest in his life and views is growing rather than diminishing is not because of the fact that he is no longer with us. Many republicans have died since the passing of The Dark but they are remembered for the most part in private and do not generate the public interest that he has. Brendan Hughes is achieving a centrality unfamiliar to him in the final years of his life because of the legacy he has left. His contribution to republicanism was an authenticity that is missing in the discourse of many with whom he served in the ranks of the IRA.

One of the most potent criticisms that can be levelled at his onetime mentor and fellow leader of the IRA in Belfast, Gerry Adams, is that the Sinn Fein leader has warped republicanism into one vast lie. The entire Sinn Fein project lurches embarrassingly from one lie to the next.

Brendan’s fellow hunger striker Tommy McKearney once observed that Sinn Fein’s bottom line is that there is no bottom line. This is because the party can be believed about virtually nothing.

The Dark is being lionised today because of the honesty he has brought to our understanding of republicanism. People have seen, as a result of his efforts, that the republican armed campaign which both inflicted and endured great misery was never about Catholics becoming junior partners to the British in the administration of partition. His philosophy was simple: if republicanism is an honest project to begin with it should be defended honestly. There is no need for the routine resort to lying.

The authenticity of Brendan Hughes against the mendacity of Gerry Adams will shape the contours of future discursive battlegrounds. It will become one of the major prisms through which the history of the republican struggle will be interpreted. A struggle between republican substance and Catholic spin. Strange that we had to look into the Dark to find light.

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Responding To Seán Mór

Earlier today the former republican prisoner and current Irish language enthusiast ‘Seán Mór’ placed a comment on The Pensive Quill which while not addressed to anybody in particular, does merit something in the way of response from those of us who feel we can rule in or out of the republican court people on the basis of the views they profess to hold.

Thomas Paine’s notion might well have some purchase on the thinking of Seán Mór. If so, it is good company to be in.

It has always been the political craft of courtiers and court government to abuse something which they call republicanism but what that republicanism is or was they never attempt to explain.

There is already an interesting discussion prompted by the Seán Mór question. Because my response, although quickly written, is a bit long for a comment, I have opted to post it as an article on TPQ. This gives it no special status and others who feel they wish to make use of the same facility for a lengthy response can do so.

I have neither the time nor inclination to find the time to write a comprehensive piece detailing what republicanism includes and excludes. But there are some thoughts that struck me immediately upon mulling over Seán Mór’s question and which I wish to commit to print.

I see a difference between an Irish nationalist and a republican. Connolly was at pains to emphasise such a difference in his Labour In Irish History. He placed a demarcation line between conservative nationalism and radical nationalism. The latter was more complementary to and compatible with republicanism. So, there is history of differentiation that republicans might draw upon.

In 1995 I used a term to describe the SDLP at a public discussion in Derry - ‘partitionist nationalists.’ Mitchel McLaughlin bristled at its usage arguing that there was no such thing; to which I responded that a partitionist nationalist was a nationalist – very different from a unionist who valued the union and opposed any united Ireland outside of British rule - who wanted Irish unity but who was prepared to have such unity deferred in preference to the partition/consent principle. Now Mitchel knew quite well that I was actually critiquing the SF position-to-be in a shielded fashion and for that reason he tried to rubbish the suggestion. So while a nationalist can be a partitionist a republican never is. It is the primal ground a republican cannot abandon.

About three years ago in a review for Fourthwrite I wrote the following:

But if republicanism is viewed as a systematic history of ideas rather than a whatever you’re having yourself philosophy then at its heart are core tenets that it seeks to promote and which distance it from the other perspectives that seek to utilise its insights.

It stands apart from nationalism in that interdependence rather than commonality defines it … Republicanism poses a particular challenge to nationalism in that it is based on citizenship rather than commonality. The point is illuminated in the collection of essays by showing that Germans living in Russia could obtain German citizenship as soon as they arrived on German soil but Turks living for years in Germany were denied citizenship.

In other words republicanism embraces people, not just some people on the basis of their national identity. It champions citizenship rather than common background.

The type of republicanism we are discussing today however is the republicanism that moulded the bulk of us – Provisional republicanism. It was a hybrid ensemble and the Provisional part ditched all republican sentiment and jumped into the arms of the British administration. The core issue it ceded ground on was the partition principle. Accepting that a minority in the island have the right to exercise veto and keep the country divided is the antithesis of republicanism. And support for the consent principle is inseparable from acknowledging that minority right to veto the unity of the country.

Whether the consent/partition principle is a good or bad thing is not the point – what is the point is that it is not a republican thing in that it is alien to the republican primal ground.

Taking it down to its most basic level, is there any republican who would criminalise armed republican activity and side with the British police against it? I totally oppose the use of armed force and criticise it most strongly but never forget that the people using it are in the very same mould as those young men and women who resisted tenaciously the British criminalisation policy in the jails. The SF leadership is in the mould of Don Concannon, Roy Mason and all that British crowd that stood shoulder to shoulder with the British police shouting ‘criminal’ at the people wearing the blanket. It should be an easy matter for observers to judge for themselves on what side of that line republicanism is to be found.

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Late Late

Arriving home from Dublin late in the day and tired to boot my idea of a relaxing end to the evening was hardly one of watching the Late Late Show which had earlier been billing an appearance by Gerry Adams as a significant feature. Watching Northern politicians waffle about the peace process might have some uses but as a means to keep awake it is pretty much redundant.

Listening to any of my former military leaders from the days when I was an IRA volunteer holding court on television is not something I have a penchant for. They never seem to say anything that would halt me in my tracks and cause me to think, ‘didn’t expect that.’ Nor are they ever able to announce the securing of anything remotely resembling the aims which the IRA promised to deliver while I was a member. So, as time passes, what leaders from my IRA days say does not send me scrambling for the paper or a TV remote control in the way that it once did. It makes absolutely no difference to anything whether I hear them or not.

I felt in advance of last evening’s chat show that there was nothing the Sinn Fein president would say that would shock or startle viewers. He was hardly going to reveal that he was the Provisional IRA’s chief of staff in 1977-78 or its Belfast commander in 1972-73. Secrets best left buried I suppose. Nor was he likely to announce a united Ireland for 2016. His colleague Martin McGuinness tried moving that ‘certain day’ forward to 2014 a year ago only to be scorned and sniggered at by the unionists. Try spinning that bollix to the electorate in the South and you are certain to be laughed back across the border. What it amounts to is simple: the Promised Land has been sent packing and in its place a greater public consideration of Brian Cowen’s more sober assessment that the country might be free from its economic woes by 2016. That is what taxes most people’s minds, not the endless peace process and nonsense about a united Ireland in 6 years time.

Still, tired as I was, I lay down on the settee wondering how Ryan Tubridy might handle the interview. He had demonstrated from the first Late Late show he hosted that while Brian Cowen might be Taoiseach of the country the Taoiseach of Late Late was Mr Tubridy and no other. He was hardly going to prove susceptible to the Adams ploy of bullying and hectoring. Nor would he allow his interviewee to drone on endlessly about the peace process. RTE can’t have the whole country sleeping during its big Friday night special.

All things considered, it had all the potential for no contest. Tubridy has always looked sharp and quick on his feet. Adams in recent years has seemed cumbersome and jaded, repeating the same old mantras, searching out some scapegoat onto whom his woes can be pinned. Moreover, I was of the view that his major Irish News interview alongside his slot on the Tubridy wheel was not coincidental. Both may have been timed to draw the sting from the upcoming book on IRA matters by the distinguished journalist Ed Moloney. What has filtered out from the book thus far seems to have frightened the Sinn Fein horses. If so, Adams rushed his fences and shot his wad too soon. The much anticipated book has not been released to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Brendan Hughes, the late Provisional IRA leader, whose testimony is said to form a crucial part of the Moloney story. When the book does come Adams will not have the same opportunities to defang it.

In all then the Late Late promised to be something to stay up for, no contest or otherwise. Yet the willpower deserted me. Not long after Samuel L Jackson appeared I drifted off. My wife, maybe not expecting a handsome enough Valentine’s treat, shook me from my slumber to tell me ‘it’ was on. ‘It’ indeed; through bleary peepers what ambled across the screen in front of me seemed like something from a Stephen King novel. Was it really Harold Shipman back from the grave beaming out from our screen? While relieved to realise that my eyes were focussing in on Gerry I could hardly feign joyousness at the knowledge that here was someone with even more accomplishments than Harold.

So how did it go? It was not one of the Sinn Fein president’s worst performances. He keeps them for election time down here. Yet he will get no bounce whatsoever out of it. Tubridy gave him little space to promote himself. Rapid fire questions which produced only banal responses prevented Adams taking control of the interview. His one attempt, when he made reference to the republican anti-Treaty credentials of Tubridy’s grandfather, quickly saw the initiative snatched away from him by the Late Late host’s fleetness of foot. The moment had passed and the opportunity was lost. Where other interviewers have let go off the reins when confronted by Adams ‘whataboutery’ Tubridy tightened his grip and cleared the fence.

Most things, even his evasions on the issue of his brother Liam’s inexcusable behaviour, might not have caused Adams any credibility problems. Tubridy for whatever reason chose not to press him hard enough. It was the silly old prevarication on the question of IRA membership that has disembowelled him time after time, which saw him limp out of the studio. If Tubridy failed to experience a Paxman moment when Adams denied ever having been a member of the organisation he once led as chief of staff, then many others registered it for him. Urban myth or not, Paxman is reported to have famously said that a thought that often crosses his mind when interviewing politicians is ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me.’

The answer is in the question.

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Dis/topia [sic]ness

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, Mark McGregor

Distopia [sic]ness by Mark McGregor


The Provisional movement was a four decade long hegemony in Republicanism, other groups rarely featured in a narrative dominated by them. Political challenges were like gnats on a cow’s arse and competing militarists a whimper beside a bang.

Slowly from the 90s on as that ‘movement’ gradually retired itself from militant republicanism, both armed and political, a space should/could have opened for those that rejected the direction taken. Those opportunities were consistently missed. Various groups have managed to build and then neglect small globular clusters of dissent over years - none ever achieved a gravitational pull large enough to become the dominant voice of republican opposition. The discerning dissenter now has more options than a P7 child deciding on secondary education - but unlike them knows failure is almost always guaranteed.

Republicans have even been faced with a ‘Unity Network’ promoting a ‘Unity Forum’ that half the organised groups are ‘United’ in ignoring. The options of organisations to join has never been so vast, Republicans finally have real choices to make - on which futile organisation suits them best.

While this goes on, Republicanism retreats further into insignificancy. Fractured, competing and utterly irrelevant. Some groups build fiefdoms but nobody builds a head of steam or a broad base. Huge areas without a viable group of committed activists from one organisation are left with no republican organisation at all. In many instances nobody ends up taking a credible stand on issues that should matter.

Instead of a mirror being shown to the face of the British state and its supporters we have a shattered myriad of fragments blinding all and ensuring focus is impossible.

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Priest Off

One certain to upset the humour haters. A friend sent it to me and I found it so funny. Follows after the jump. Enjoy.

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The Borefast Agreement

The great bores of Ireland have been at it again in the North this past week or two. Not that I spend a lot of time following it. It reminds me of one of those movies my kids watch so often that they know the lines verbatim, being able to speak in sync with the characters word for word. For me, the ability to maintain interest in anything served up ad infinitum, food, films or fools, demands either an iron will or no imagination. I am neither gifted nor cursed with either.

Political commentators must feel the same; they know it’s all action replay from beginning to end. Whatever angle it is viewed from it remains the same. They could as easily run some old news reel from years ago and the public would hardly notice the difference. While Blair and Ahern have moved on, the idea that old faces should not be thrown at old problems seems not to have registered up in Borefast, the North’s political capital. That probably goes some way to explaining the seeming intractability and longevity of the contentious bone. The issue is less a problem than its supposed solvers. Same old, same old, desperate to remain in power all these decades later; operating on the simple basis that ‘with no new faces to zoom in on, the cameras will have to look at us peeking out at them like peeping Toms from behind doors or whatever, still clinging to the notion of being indispensable.’ A few years ago the Irish Times described one of the North’s chief negotiators as someone who goes rigid with excitement the moment a camera is in the vicinity. There are other products on the market that should do that for him without involving a long suffering public.

On Friday I took a call from a Northern journalist inviting me to do some radio commentary on ‘developments’. Another deal had apparently been struck and agreement had at last been reached on policing and justice, none of which will improve the lives of anybody one iota. I declined. I could have gone in cold and did it, easily drawing on experience of what has flowed under the same bridge from the same sources since long before the two children here were born. I saw no point. I had little interest in it and had no inclination to make any serious effort to find out. It will make no difference to the lives of my children, and the North will be just as British this week as it was last. I sensed the journalist I was speaking with had the same feeling. But it is her job to keep people alert. How to keep them awake I felt was the real challenge. I did not envy her having to scavenge through the political rubbish tip in the hope of finding some caffeine like substance rather than sleeping tablets. I felt like telling her that a public health warning should be broadcast in advance of any news items coming out of Stormont: something like ‘do not drive or handle machinery after watching the following: it is liable to make you drowsy.’ But we knew that anyway as both of us reached for our caffeine laced coffees the minute we stopped talking about it. That's how I imagined our response - we were divided by the partition line so I couldn't actualy see her.

Sunday, evening, two days after the new agreement, I have little idea what it is. Haven’t listened to the news, bought a paper, not even the Sunday Tribune, or browsed the net. I have hardly missed anything. A Belfast journalist sent me a few texts. He seemed to have as much interest as I had.

The ancient Chinese wish for their enemies came in the form of a curse that they should live in interesting times. Nobody in the North of Ireland has ever upset China.

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Donegal Bag Man

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

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Ms Cahill’s Appeal

Which philosopher made the comment that what does not kill us makes us stronger, is not as important as the sagacity it embodies. It is a wisdom very much on display in the resilient human spirit of Ms Cahill, the young Belfast woman, who stepped into the breach and virtually sacrificed her anonymity to ensure her rapist did not maintain his. She has emerged from her experience very much alive and stronger and despite strong resistance to her efforts is fast blazing a trail deep into the conspiracy of silence that for so long has allowed abusers to go unidentified and unaccountable.

In taking the very public stance that she did it is hoped that she has become a source of great inspiration to those many bearers of the effects of double torture; first tortured by what happened to them and tortured for a second time by the silence they have been forced to undergo.

In her appeal to the wider republican community to dismantle the protective wall of silence that rapists and paedophiles have sheltered behind she has again stepped into the breach. Forcing the issue into the open makes it harder for any conspiratorial cabal to deal with to its own advantage and to the disadvantage of those who have been attacked by sexual predators.

Ms Cahill’s appeal, carried in a number of web outlets, is a very strong entreaty to people to do the right thing. In pointing out that ‘no one is blaming the republican movement for members of that movement who inflicted sexual abuse on others’ she is properly measured. As she states, the crux is ‘how the republican movement dealt with the issue’. What confronts the Provisional movement is not its involvement in systemic sexual abuse but its systemic cover up of sexual abuse. At the same time it cannot be denied that the systemic culture which gave rise to such cover ups was maintained from the top down by people who thought the poser of an awkward question was more of a threat than a molester.

The republicans I knew over the years and worked with struck me as despising rapists and paedophiles. But it seems that many of them were more ready to believe that one of their comrades might be an informer than to accept that he may have been a rapist. Ms Cahill’s attacker was hardly subject to the ‘South Armagh treatment’ - as a tough and often prolonged interrogation procedure was colloquially known within the Provisional movement. There was no sense of urgency to deal with the problem.

Like most other institutions, most notably the Catholic Church, the Provisional movement proved chronically incapable of properly investigating its own. This seems abundantly clear from the case of Ms Cahill and others who have recently emerged as having being attacked by abusers. The Louth TD, Arthur Morgan, alone seems to be the one party figure who despite a very shaky and inauspicious start has publicly stated that his party’s behaviour, and that of its leader, in respect of the Liam Adams case was somewhat less than glorious. Everyone else in the party, the leader included, seems to believe that both he and the party he presides over have done no wrong.

Almost certainly, Ms Cahill is right in suggesting that that there has been a lot more abuse inflicted by Provisional movement members either not properly addressed at the time or covered up since. Her call for this to be justly dealt with is one deserving of all backing.

However there has to be some concern about moving forward on the strength of ‘suspicion’ or what meanders through the ‘grapevine.’

The vagaries of suspicion for which the grapevine is fertile ground are not something that can be readily measured or easily categorised. Those of us who have had grounds to be suspicious of whoever for whatever reason over the years, only to find that our suspicions later proved as groundless as the grapevine was barren are mindful of a suspicion-based approach to anything. In today's climate members of Sinn Fein might just make an easy target. But where would it lead? A witch hunt of Sinn Fein members would be not only be wrong but also counter productive.

While there is nothing in Ms Cahill's appeal that would in itself necessarily serve as a catalyst for a witch hunt there remains a need when talking about a suspicion based approach to specify clearly what constitute grounds for suspicion. The bar must be raised very high. Too often suspicion has been indivisible from dislike.

No person who was ever abused should sit silent. Theirs is an evidence based claim, the evidence being their own experience at the hands of their attacker. They deserve justice. But justice is only secured when the case against those accused of abuse is justly made.

Ms Cahill is proving her emotional resolve and stamina by providing real leadership in the battle against systemic cover up of wide ranging sexual abuse. She has the determination to excise this malignancy from republican culture. If she is successful she will give a fresh impetus to the laughter of our children and scourge those who laughed at them.

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An Open Appeal to All Republicans

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer Ms Cahill

An Open Appeal to All Republicans
Ms Cahill

Over the last number of weeks, there have been several allegations circulating – alleged to have been perpetrated by members of the Republican Movement.

There has been mixed reaction to this within the Republican Community, but particularly those within the Provisional republican movement, and those within Sinn Fein Circles. This reaction ranges from outright disgust, horror, condemnation, to the very damaging “turn a blind eye and say nothing” approach. There are obviously people understandably angry as a result – not least the victims. There is a lot of hurt within this community also, hurt which has been compounded by recent contradictions, mistruths, outright denials and certain media spin, which has the potential to deflect away from the real issue – the alleged cover up of paedophilia within certain quarters. Whatever that hurt, there are also families hurting too, people who are trying to come to terms with their lives right across this island, and trying to deal with the fact that members of these families were abused.

There are also parents, rightly angry and worried about their children. People are now backtracking through the years, wondering if their children have come into contact with perpetrators - and they are also rightly questioning if they trust the people they know now. This is a massive issue, and it is a disgrace that alleged child abusers have had free reign to have access to other children. Collectively, we now know more about the issue of sex offenders and reoffending rates. It is likely that perpetrators do not rehabilitate by just simply moving on somewhere else. We know as republicans of a number of cases being discussed at present – is this just the tip of the iceberg? How many more children have been put at risk as a result of mishandling, and in some cases planned facilitation of moving people around the country?

I also want to make it clear, paedophilia is not restricted to members of the Republican Movement. Unfortunately, paedophiles ingratiate themselves in all walks of life. In some instances they are our relatives, friends, priests, professionals, community and youth workers, lawyers, teachers, doctors – the list is endless. No one is blaming the republican movement for members of that movement who inflicted sexual abuse on others.

The blame, however is rightly centred around how the republican movement dealt with the issue, in several cases. It is clear from these cases that not once did the people involved either in so called investigating or in listening, directly report to any of the authorities. They also retraumatised victims of sexual abuse by either their chosen action, or inaction. It is also abundantly clear, for anyone who wishes to take the blinkers off, that paedophiles have been able to move around the country and further afield. In some cases they continued to masquerade as republicans, which in turn afforded them protection, or at the very least a degree of trust, which then also in turn made it easier for them to do what they did, unchecked. That is disgraceful, and brings a deep sense of shame on anyone who continues to support the republican ideology. The fault for this lies squarely with those in positions of power who espoused themselves as the epitome of republicanism, individuals who were looked up to by some, and who now feel tarnished by that association.

There are people out there now who have knowledge in different parts of Ireland on similar allegations of sexual abuse. Are you one of them? There are also people who have heard things on the grapevine about similar alleged cover-ups. Again, does this apply to you?

By not speaking out, you allow yourself to become complicit in the same alleged collective cover-up. I am appealing directly to all republicans from all persuasions to tell what you know. No perpetrator should be allowed to continue to abuse. No movement should give them succour by shielding them. And no republican should sit on the fence on this issue, waiting on other victims to come forward in the hope that the full story should start to emerge.

Be proactive. Do not continue with the legacy of silence. Out all the cases of child and adult sexual abuse. Highlight any suspicion, or knowledge of cover ups. Do this through whatever channel is comfortable for you. An email has been set up, by myself to deal with this issue. If this is an avenue you feel comfortable with using, use it.

I also want to directly appeal to those still within Sinn Fein. I am aware that some of you refuse to believe that this happened at all. People will make up their own minds on the issue. However, as a human, there has to be a shadow of doubt in your mind. Ask the hard questions, and demand an answer. If you are not happy, demand again. No one can afford to put politics over the safety of children. As a human being, you cannot afford to stay silent on this issue. Do the right thing.

Email: exposethetruth2010@hotmail.com

Is mise le meas

Ms Cahill

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Short Straw

It is not certain why the short straw ends up in the hands of Mary Lou McDonald on the issue of Sinn Fein’s handling of sex abuse cases carried out by party members or those with inextricable links to the party.

On the three occasions that she has faced Suzanne Breen of the Sunday Tribune, the paper's Northern editor has mauled her. Were McDonald playing professional soccer her performances would see her on a free transfer to a team well down the lower divisions by now. In these public exchanges she is emulating her track record in elections – losing.

On a number of points throughout last week’s Breen-McDonald mismatch on RTE’s Pat Kenny radio show McDonald displayed considerable weakness and showed signs of not having been adequately briefed as to what Suzanne Breen might say. She stumbled when Breen informed her that Killian Forde who had only defected from Sinn Fein to Labour had his profile removed from the party website but that the councillor against whom the allegations of abuse in Ardoyne still featured on it. When she criticised Breen for not having first gone to Sinn Fein about complaints of rape Breen pointed out that one of the the victims, Ms Cahill, had expressly asked that Sinn Fein not be told in case the party cranked up the intimidation machine. The reading out on air of Mairtin Og Meehan’s e mail to Breen confirming that Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams had been informed about the abuse of his sister left her reeling.

A former IRA leader with no love for journalists rang me immediately after the exchange on Kenny. He said it was like listening to Albert Einstein debating with the village idiot. McDonald’s performance was not as bad as that but it certainly was not good.

Mary Lou McDonald is an intelligent woman. She is capable of much better than her performances would suggest. But she has been dealt a very weak hand by her party leader and she is instructed to play with it to the bitter end in the ethical Stalingrad to which she has been sent in the middle of January without any winter clothing. In that pitiless theatre any party spokesperson thrown to the front without the proper apparel is immediately taken out with clinical accuracy.

When Mary Lou McDonald pontificates that the Sunday Tribune and its Northern editor are engaging in evasions and mistruths any gravitas she might have laid claim to prior to opening her mouth evaporates. There are few if any other papers in the country willing to week after week - including elevating the status of the allegations to the editorial - label the leader of one of the countries political parties an unmitigated liar in the absolute certainty that the leader accused of brazenly lying lacks the fortitude to have his day in court. That the paper is utterly confident in the making of such assertions is down to one very simple matter: the party of which Mary Lou McDonald is vice president has no standing when it comes to matters of political honesty.

She is further handicapped by having previously publicly expressed a belief in the one lie Sinn Fein without fail continues to tell about Gerry Adams – that he was never a member of the IRA.

Mary Lou McDonald can only play with the hand she has been given. Why it should be so underhand and ineffective is something she should seriously consider putting to the dealer. Failing that she can claim as many free tickets as she wants for her ride into irreversible negative political equity.

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