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Showing posts with label Belfast Telegraph. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belfast Telegraph. Show all posts
Belfast Telegraph ✒ Three bombing victims have sued former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. Recommended by Carrie Twomey.

Brian Farmer
Three mainland bombing victims have accused former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams of seeking to “close down any public hearing in which his membership of the Provisional Irish Republican Army might be evidenced and established”.

John Clark, a victim of the March 1973 Old Bailey bombing in London; Jonathan Ganesh, a victim of the February 1996 London Docklands bombing; and Barry Laycock, victim of the June 1996 Arndale shopping centre bombing in Manchester, have sued Mr Adams and the Provisional IRA and want “nominal” – £1 – damages.

A barrister leading Mr Adams’s legal team told a High Court judge in London on Tuesday that damages claims brought against the Provisional IRA should be struck out.

But a barrister leading the three claimants’ legal team argued Mr Adams’s application to strike out the claims against the Provisional IRA should be dismissed and said a trial should be progressed.

Mr Justice Soole is considering Mr Adams’s application at a High Court hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice complex.

The hearing is due to end on Wednesday and the judge is expected to deliver a ruling in the near future.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Gerry Adams ‘Trying To Stop Any Attempt To Establish Links To Provisional IRA’

Belfast Telegraph ✒ A Sinn Fein councillor who was jailed for his role in a car bomb that claimed six lives has spoken of a “very moving” deathbed conversation he had with a survivor of the atrocity.

Garrett Hargan

The extraordinary encounter at Antrim Area Hospital between former IRA man Sean McGlinchey and victims’ campaigner David Gilmour was first reported by the Northern Constitution.

Councillor McGlinchey was convicted of the 1973 Coleraine bombings and served 18 years in prison.

Among 39 others seriously injured was Mr Gilmour’s father, who was blown the entire length of the shop he had entered moments before.

David miraculously escaped unscathed having been left in the car outside.

Mr Gilmour died at the age of 59 on August 30, 2022, at the Macmillan Unit of Antrim Area Hospital.

For almost a year nothing was known about the conversation between the two men.

Mr Gilmour had previously been critical of the councillor for what he termed “legitimising the rewriting of a terrorist past”.

They were familiar with each other for many years and had passed each other on countless occasions without saying a word.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Coleraine Bomb Survivor And Former IRA Man Jailed For Attack Held ‘Very Moving’ Deathbed Conversation

From the Belfast Telegraph Ex-hunger striker Gerard Hodgins calls on Sinn Fein to halt the sale of 'exploitative' Sands shirts.

By Suzanne Breen

A former IRA hunger striker has called on Sinn Fein to stop selling Bobby Sands sports jerseys.

Gerard Hodgins said they were exploitative and in bad taste.

He was speaking to the Belfast Telegraph after it was revealed that the future of the Sinn Fein company involved in the sale of republican memorabilia is at risk due to falling demand for its wares.

"The Sands family have said time and time again that they don't want his image to be used in this way," Mr Hodgins said.

"I reiterate the family's request. If the people selling this merchandise genuinely love Bobby, please stop making money out of him now."

Continue reading at Belfast Telegraph

Sinn Fein Racket

Aaron Edwards writes in the Belfast Telegraph that the deaths of Lord Mountbatten in Sligo and 18 soldiers at Warrenpoint 40 years ago this week marked a watershed in the fight against the Provisional IRA.  

Forty years ago the Provisional IRA carried out two of its most audacious attacks. In Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, they exploded a bomb on the boat of the former UK chief of defence staff and cousin to the Queen, Lord Louis Mountbatten - killing him, two teenage boys and his daughter-in-law's mother. Later that afternoon, at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint in Co Down, the Provisionals struck again, this time exploding two huge bombs on a military convoy carrying soldiers from the Parachute Regiment.

The pathologist who arrived on the scene shortly after the attack at Narrow Water, Arthur Orr, later told the inquest into the soldiers' deaths that he had "never seen such carnage". For Orr it was "the most distressing incident" he had ever encountered in his 25 years as a coroner.

It later emerged that gardai had stopped and arrested two young men from Crossmaglen, who were riding a motorcycle on the Republic's side of the border near the detonation point in Omeath. At the Smithwick Tribunal, which investigated allegations of collusion between Irish police and the IRA, it was revealed that a forensic report recorded how, even though swabs had been taken from both men, police could not tie the suspects conclusively to the attack and they were released.

No one has ever been brought to account for the murders of the soldiers that day.

Thirty years after the Warrenpoint ambush I met one of the soldiers who survived the massacre, Paul Burns, at the launch of his memoir, A Fighting Spirit. Paul was travelling in a four-tonne truck with seven other paratroopers when the first explosion happened. A massive fireball engulfed the vehicle and he lost a leg in the blast.

"And I do not hear the bang, nor the screams that follow," he wrote. "I do not smell the stench of burning flesh, or witness the confusion. All I know is darkness."

While Paul suffered horrific injuries on that day, he would remain in the Army until 1991 and become a tireless advocate for the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association (now Blesma, The Limbless Veterans).

Paul's story is like so many others I've heard about Warrenpoint. One former soldier, who had been on an earlier tour with the men killed and injured in the attack, recalls hearing the news while he was stationed in an Army camp in Antrim:

"I was in the ops [operations] room at the time and it brought back memories of '73. The IRA had that well planned, with the secondary device."

Another veteran, Parachute Regiment officer David Benest, recalled. "I was on leave. I turned up the day after to a battalion in shock. Soldiers thinking: 'Crikey, that number of people being killed in one incident?'"

Relations between the Army and RUC were badly strained by Warrenpoint. It was said that the General Officer Commanding Sir Timothy Creasey "freaked out" when he heard the news and tried to wrest back control of security operations from the Chief Constable, Sir Kenneth Newman. Recognising the discord within the security forces, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher flew to Northern Ireland to calm tempers.

"The people of the United Kingdom will wage the war against terrorism with relentless determination until it is won," she told reporters.

Thatcher had been personally affected by the Troubles when the INLA assassinated her long-time friend and political mentor, Airey Neave, in 1978. She was renowned for taking an uncompromising public stance; after Warrenpoint she sanctioned an intelligence-led response to IRA violence.

One of the most visible signs of this new approach came when she appointed the recently retired chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield as security and intelligence co-ordinator in Northern Ireland. He arrived in Belfast in October 1979.

Former RUC Special Branch officers have admitted to me that intelligence "coverage" was limited in south Armagh prior to Sir Maurice's arrival. One officer even suggested to me that "Oldfield's job was to hold people's hands" through a process of change.

That change was Thatcher's decision to keep the RUC in the lead against the terrorists, with the Army in support under the mantra "policy primacy".

Sir Maurice believed that the best way to deal more effectively with the IRA was to turn its own members against the group. To "start a cancer and watch it spread", as one veteran RUC spymaster put it. In this Sir Maurice had some success.

The "supergrass" trials of the early 1980s were part of his legacy after his retirement from the post; so, too, was the comprehensive infiltration of the Provisionals by agents. The direction given to these moles was to disrupt IRA activity and to help move the group down a political path.

Sir Maurice also believed - as did Thatcher - that the only way to tackle IRA terrorism was to work closely with the authorities in Dublin. The Irish border had long been porous and IRA members and smugglers crossed it with ease, despite the presence of a number of crossings manned by security forces on the northern side.

Interestingly, Omeath, where the Provos responsible for Warrenpoint had detonated their bombs, would become a key hub of IRA activity over the coming years. It was the place where the Provisionals' internal security unit (or "nutting squad") once took suspected "touts" for interrogation. And it was the place where the IRA also kept a major bomb-making factory in the 1980s. These borderlands were synonymous with the political dispute at the heart of the Troubles.

As we remember the 18 soldiers and one civilian killed near Warrenpoint four decades ago, it is also worth keeping in mind how it represents a Pyrrhic victory for the IRA.

Within a decade of the killings the group came under intense pressure from the security forces and had even moved towards secret talks with the British aimed at ending its armed campaign.

Nowadays some republicans have desecrated the poppy wreaths left by the roadside to commemorate the soldiers who died at Narrow Water.

But attempts to dismantle the visible symbols of their past atrocities can never fully eradicate the memories of such evil deeds, nor of militant republicanism's ultimate strategic surrender.

⏭ Dr Aaron Edwards is the author of UVF: Behind The Mask (Merrion Press, 2017). He is currently writing a new book for Merrion on Britain's secret intelligence struggle against the Provisional IRA.

1979 ➖ The Year The Gloves Finally Came Off In The Battle Against The IRA

From the Belfast Telegraph: The purposeless disbeliever idea, lacking anything to ascribe ultimate meaning to the universe, does not bear scrutiny, researchers said.



The idea that non-believers in God lack morality has been disputed by new research, experts said.

A common supposition – that of the purposeless disbeliever, lacking anything to ascribe ultimate meaning to the universe – does not bear scrutiny, a university study said.

Most endorse objective moral values and human dignity at similar rates to the general populations in their countries, the report presented at the Vatican said.

One of the authors, University of Kent sociologist Dr Lois Lee, said:

These findings show once and for all that the public image of the atheist is a simplification at best, and a gross caricature at worst.
Instead of relying on assumptions about what it means to be an atheist, we can now work with a real understanding of the many different world views that the atheist population includes.
The implications for public and social policy are substantial — and this study also stands to impact on more everyday interactions in religiously diverse societies.

Non-Believers Do Not Lack Morality, Research Suggests



Laurence White interviews Anthony McIntyre for the Belfast Telegraph

Anthony McIntyre (61) is a former IRA man who served 18 years in jail for the murder of a UVF man in 1976. But he left Sinn Fein after it signed up to the Good Friday Agreement and has been a vocal critic of the party. He is a co-founder of The Blanket website and The Pensive Quill blog, which carry a wide range of views on political developments in Northern Ireland.

McIntyre gained a PhD after leaving prison and is regarded as an important voice in questioning republican circles. He describes himself as anti-violence, but not a pacifist.

Q. You were a friend of murdered journalist Lyra McKee. How did that come about?

A. I was introduced to her by a contributor to my website The Pensive Quill. That was about six years ago and we used to meet occasionally to go for a pint in places like Drogheda, Belfast and Dublin.
She told me in February that she planned to move to Derry as there was a special woman in her life and that we would have to get out for a drink to celebrate.
Then I saw a post about her engagement and I wrote wishing her well. That was a week before she died and was the last contact I had with her.

Q. Would you ask people to give information on the killing of Lyra McKee to the PSNI?

A. I have never asked people to give information to the PSNI. I oppose them politically and I wouldn't give them information.
If I asked people to go forward with information there would be a risk to life, as this is a force which cannot be trusted with information.
If I had information I would make it available to the National Union of Journalists. If the PSNI want information from the public, then they should give information to the public on the agents they are running in Derry. Then we would have a much better understanding of Lyra McKee's killing.
I would be a conscientious objector in giving information to the PSNI.
However, if people go to the police with information, I would not be calling them informers. I would have no feeling about them.
I have no sympathy for Lyra McKee's killer. The public have the right to demand that they should be protected from those who would kill them.

Q. She had written a very powerful piece, 'A letter to myself at 14'. What would you have written in such a letter?

A. I only saw this for the first time the day after her murder and we carried it on our website. It was a very powerful article and by the end of that day we had 50,000 page views of our blog.
I have never thought of what I would include in a similar letter to my teenage self. The first thing I would say is: be glad that you are not young enough to know everything.
I look at my children - one is 13, one 18 - and I think back to when I was a teenager. I had gone into prison for the first time at 16 and came out again at 18. The thought of my children doing anything like I was doing drives me to distraction.

Q. Do you regard those years you spent in prison - 18 years for murder - as a wasted youth?

A. I was in the IRA and I didn't join to read books or play tiddlywinks. I accepted I was in an organisation that took life, that was involved in a guerrilla war against the British state. It was a very violent period.
I don't regard myself as a different Anthony McIntyre then. I lived a life differently and I developed in ways I might not have if I had not been in prison. Sometimes you have to make a virtue out of necessity and I met some of my best friends in prison and on the blanket.
I don't look back aghast at myself. I don't feel sorry for myself and I don't make any political apology for being part of the IRA campaign.

Q. Yet you are very critical of that campaign.

A. Yes, I have reflected on it. Republicans have reflected more than many on the British side. The winners of any conflict don't have to reflect. It is the losers who have to think how could they have done things differently.
Given the minimum amount we settled for and the number of lives lost, I would like to have done things differently.
The difference between what was on offer in 1974 and what was accepted in 1998 did not justify the loss of one life. Had the IRA conveyed to the British state how little it was prepared to settle for, the British state would have moved heaven and earth to give it to us.
If the IRA had said it was prepared to drop its campaign of coercion for the unionist demand of consent could the British have moved the unionists more towards the 1974 power-sharing proposals?
I believe the unionist reaction was less against power-sharing and more against the notion of an Irish dimension.
The IRA was a manifestation of insurrectional energy within the nationalist community at that time, a reaction to how the British behaved here.
To bring the IRA campaign to an end, the British only had to modify their behaviour a little.

Q. In a recent article you argued that the Provisional IRA had handed on the intellectual and ideological template which has been taken up by the New IRA.

A. The problem with the IRA campaign was that, once it was started, you were never sure where it would go. In spite of the fact that many people in the IRA were interested in idealism and social justice, it violated more rights than it could ever assert. For that reason the IRA was wrong.
The New IRA's physical force republicanism, when everything else is shaken down, says: "We have the right to kill you and you have no right not to be killed by us." That is a serious mental aberration and should have no standing.
In the current situation the PSNI, for example, are political opponents of republicans but not enemies to be killed. Police officers and military people have ceased to be combatants.
The use of violence has to be strategic. I don't believe the current violence has anything to do with strategy, but is just following a tradition.
I am not a militarist. I don't believe in a military solution to complex political problems. Time causes people to think about problems and solve them in a different way.

Q. Yet you are also critical of Sinn Fein's adoption of the Good Friday Agreement?

A. The Good Friday Agreement is much better than the Bad Friday killing of Lyra McKee and preferable to physical force. But the GFA was never a republican strategy, or principle, and is based on a principle against which the IRA fought.
It mocks the very logic of the IRA campaign, which was a coercive campaign aimed at forcing Britain out of Northern Ireland irrespective of what the people of NI felt about it.
Now, the IRA, or Sinn Fein, says a united Ireland can only come about through those people's consent. What were the soldiers and policemen who died killed for?
Sinn Fein has just taken the clothing of the SDLP. We are not going to get a united Ireland as a result of the GFA.
I can understand anyone celebrating the GFA, but republicans celebrating the GFA is like turkeys celebrating Christmas.

Q. Are you opposed to the peace process?

A. My opposition to the peace process is not opposition to peace, but to the process. It is a political project meant to give something to one party - the unionists - to the detriment of all others. The unionists have secured the room, but have overreacted to the colour of the wallpaper; it is too green for them.
Nationalists have proven that they are more willing to go into a relationship with London than unionists are willing to go into a relationship with Dublin.

Q. Does Sinn Fein's continual commemoration of dead IRA volunteers, who may have committed horrible crimes, only continue friction between them and unionists?

A. Sinn Fein are merely trying to ensure that no one else can wear their clothing. I don't see anything wrong with commemorations for dead volunteers. I am not for suppressing the past. I don't think we should forget the past.
I believe people should be allowed to remember their dead.
I hold no truck for the Parachute Regiment, but I find it obnoxious that their loved ones are not able to plant wreaths at Narrow Water where 18 of them were killed without someone coming along and destroying them.
In the same way, I would never think of destroying Lenny Murphy's (leader of the Shankill Butchers) grave. His family and loved ones deserve somewhere to go and remember him.
I am not asking the state to celebrate dead IRA members, but I would ask them to tolerate such commemorations.

Q. What are your feelings about the Boston Tapes fiasco, where some tape-recorded oral histories from republicans and loyalists were handed over to the PSNI, even though they were meant to be kept secret until after the subjects' deaths?

A. The journalist Ed Moloney and myself were absolutely shafted. It was a great project conceptually, but went wrong procedurally. The handing over of the tapes caused me immense concern and grief and disappointment. It was an attempt at truth recovery.

Q. How do you think we should deal with the past?

A. I think we should forego the quest for truth recovery through prosecutions, so that we can get simple truth recovery. It should be about revelation, not retribution.
Very few people will be prosecuted and to pretend otherwise is to lead people up the garden path.
You could get some information through prosecutions, but it would not set the context - why something was done and who decided it should be done, for example.
The truth is going to come out in spite of people, not because of them.

Q. Have you ever been threatened because of your views and have you been afraid?

A. I certainly have felt fear. My wife Carrie and I and our two children have had Sinn Fein mobs picketing our homes - our previous one in Belfast and our current one in Drogheda - and members of the IRA leadership came to our home to intimidate us.
I have been accused of being involved in compiling the Boston Tapes in an attempt to get Gerry Adams (inset below) arrested and that created a certain environment.
There was always the possibility that we would be attacked. We worried about the children and I would go out of the house first in case someone decided to do something.
I don't put it about that we are brave and that we lived like Salman Rushdie. He renewed his Muslim faith in an effort to get a fatwa against him withdrawn. There is no chance of me becoming a Shinner, or a dissident, or a Catholic, or a Muslim.

Q. Do you ever think of the man you killed - a UVF member - or have regrets about that killing?

A. It is part of my past. I don't disassociate myself from it. I regarded him as a combatant. Loyalists tried to kill me in 1976 and my brother in 1994. Would I ever ask them to apologise for trying to kill me? No. I was a combatant.
For the same reason, I would not apologise for the killing I carried out. But I would ask them to apologise for trying to kill my brother. He was not a combatant.
I was in the IRA and don't have any political regrets from that period.
Would I rather not have killed anyone? Absolutely. I wish no one had been killed.

Q. So what do you do nowadays?

A. I write extensively, but I also edit a local community magazine, do voluntary work with the St Vincent de Paul Society, even though I am an atheist, and I work for a trade union in Dublin.
And after all these years and having read thousands of books, thanks to HM Prison Service, I recently have discovered the greatest book I have ever read - Hillsborough: The Truth by Professor Phil Scraton - about the death of 96 Liverpool football team supporters at an FA Cup match at Hillsborough stadium.

Shadow Of A Gunman: Interview With Anthony McIntyre

Marty Flynn feels totally vindicated by the IPSO inquiry into his claim that he had been smeared in a Belfast Telegraph article.

I Have Overcome!

Anthony McIntyre writing for the Belfast Telegraph takes the view that Gerry Adams is intent on extending his political career rather than truncating it.

Not Letting Go

Anthony McIntyre writing in the Belfast Telegraph reflects on the bonfire culture in the North. 

Belfast Telegraph Title: Burning cars to be condemned, but is a result of young feeling alienated

Bonfires And Burning Cars

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