Snakeknife

By AM Tuesday, November 26, 2013

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I'm fascinated by the whole concept of snake handling. When you read about the Pentecostal snake handlers, what strikes you the most is their commitment
- Lucinda Williams

In the wake of last evening’s TV3 documentary Sinn Fein Who Are They?, Danny Morrison has once again sought to use the internet as an Agency of Influence. Not for the first time I have been labelled a tout by this close colleague of Freddie Scappaticci from back in the days when the IRA's Security Department was busy securing British interests. With Dolours Price & Brendan Hughes having previously been smeared by this reptilian revisionist I, happily, am in good company. 

"Of course, I have defended myself through rebuttals on my own website, but the magnitude and frequency of the attacks require such energy that one is left drained." 

Rather than summon up the energy to write anything new about it, a quick rummage in the Forgot About Folder pulled this piece out. It was initially drafted in February 2012 in response to some nonsense Morrison had penned for the Irish News, but like so much else it slipped off the radar. Without any further dusting needed, here it is.

It is hard not to have some sympathy for Danny Morrison. Flayed alive in the hunger strike controversy, he keeps slithering back in the vain hope that if he can only land one blow, somebody, sometime, somewhere is bound to believe him about something. He has only to be right once but we still wait, like winter solstice seekers, that elusive moment. The title of his semiautobiographical novel The Wrong Man is just about the sum total of his fortunes in the accuracy game.

He applies with determined ineptitude the same lack of dexterity when handling Boston College documentation as he does papers referring to the hunger strike. It is now a matter of public record how immensely destructive he has been of his own narrative on 1981. He is a great ally to have, so long as he is not on your side.

Boston College’s oral history project was the catalyst for his latest fall from grace. His version of history has been rubbished and he may harbour fears of worse to come. Perhaps resentment at being caught out is what fuels his antipathy towards the oral archive and prompts him to argue the case on behalf of the British police as they attempt to seize it.

The interviewees far from being incensed at either myself or Ed Moloney direct their hostility at Boston College for giving assurances it proved unwilling to stand over and for pulling out of the legal battle against the British police.

If the people described as ‘gullible interviewees’ face arrest it will be at the hands of the same armed British police force that Morrison supports. That it is in a position to arrest anybody for republican activity conducted during the IRA’s armed campaign is courtesy of the policing arrangement endorsed by Morrison. Maybe we should all be resentful of that. Strangely, the British police force involved in seeking the archive has thus far escaped Morrison’s baleful glare as he with great deference accepts his Ich bin ein Londoner status.

Whatever the outcome of the battle with the British police that myself and Ed Moloney are currently engaged in we will persist in our commitment to those we seek to protect. As one of them said today they know we will not do to them as a snake did to the hunger strikers.

As for threats to my safety, maybe Morrison is right. But it would be a first in his extended career as the Wrong Man. The British police in seeking to transform into evidence what Judge Young in a Boston court described as ‘a bona fide academic exercise of considerable intellectual matter’ substantially enhances the risk. Meanwhile, Morrison has sought to poison the well by accusing the people involved in the oral history project of ‘touting.’

While acquitted on appeal Morrison, as one of the people familiar with events at the ‘Sandy House’, has some knowledge of what may befall people that he seeks to label informers. And as innocent as he might claim to be, I doubt if I will accept an offer from him to attend a press conference.

Cartoons by Brian Mór