Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label Gerry Kelly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gerry Kelly. Show all posts
Anthony McIntyre ☠ Sinn Fein's use of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation experienced its third successive defeat in the courts last week when Gerry Kelly lost a case he had taken against the journalist Malachi O'Doherty.

Kelly's failed action comes on the heels of similar unsuccessful outings in the courts by his Sinn Fein colleagues, Michelle O'Neill and Liam Lappin.

Kelly had sought to sue O'Doherty for allegedly defaming him by publicly stating that the former IRA prisoner and current Stormont MLA was responsible for shooting a prison officer in the head during the Long Kesh escape 41 years ago. The judge ruled that the action fell within SLAPP, describing it as "scandalous, frivolous and vexatious".

While it was a significant victory for O'Doherty who opted to stand his ground rather than retreat when Kelly tried to cross the portal shouting 'SLAPP' it was an even more crucial success for journalism in general and the right to free inquiry. The NUJ assistant General Secretary, Seamus Dooley, in describing the outcome as 'extremely significant' emphasised the threat posed by SLAPP to journalists:

Such threats have a chilling impact on journalists and journalism. The unambiguous language used in the determination should give those intent on using SLAPPs pause for thought.

Sinn Fein, it seems, intends to smother both investigative journalism and critical commentary so that in the event of it exercising formal power in Leinster House it will not be subject to the type of scrutiny so crucial for keeping a democratic culture porous. The judge in the case homed in with laser-like accuracy to the objective behind the lawsuit which was:

initiated not for the genuine purposes of vindicating a reputation injured by defamatory statements, but rather for the purpose of stifling the voices of Mr Kelly's troublesome critics.

Perhaps Gerry Kelly did not shoot John Adams but there is no one I know of who ever claimed it was anybody else. If he did fire the shot I think no less of him for that. He was an IRA volunteer on a precision timed operation and behaved in accordance with military necessity. It was not a gratuitous act of violence. In the H Blocks Kelly was held in very high regard by his fellow prisoners for his operational prowess and his courage. He would have been held in much less esteem were it believed that he hesitated at a crucial operational moment and failed to shoot John Adams, thereby allowing the alarm button in the control room to be hit, leading to the escape being aborted.

It is simply not possible, therefore, to believe that Gerry Kelly genuinely felt his reputation was somehow impugned by an allegation that as a member of the IRA he carried out an armed IRA operation. The SLAPP action pursued by Kelly is simply a variant of Section 31 which was used by the Dublin government to muzzle Sinn Fein.

Moreover, implicit in Kelly's legal action is the perspective that if he did not fire the shot then the person who did is of a lesser moral character than Kelly. Why should the action of another IRA volunteer on the same military operation as Kelly be considered by Kelly as something of a moral low that he would not stoop to and for which a British court must be entreated to find that IRA operations were so heinous that a man of Kelly's character would not deign to carry out one?

I have never criticised Gerry Kelly for taking a Royal Pardon, feeling that he would have been foolish not to avail of it. But there are no grounds to pardon him for seeking British courts to rescue his reputation from the effects of a genuinely held belief that he carried out an IRA operation. 
 
⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

SLAPP Down For Gerry Kelly

Anthony McIntyre ✒ It sometimes seems that Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly is given the shitty end of the stick, almost as if he is being punished for some transgression the rest of us know nothing about.

No doubt, Kelly has his indiscretions like everybody else, probably pisses in the street after a beer or takes a hammer to a wheel clamp. Nothing that should concern the rest of us, apart from some unionists who seem to get perplexed about these sort of things, although not, for some reason, about the behaviour of Davy Tweed.

It could be speculated in those more fanciful moments that Kelly has become a pin cushion for his ardent revolutionary past at the behest of the conservative leadership now running Sinn Fein. More plausibly, that very past is held up to show how deferential to the establishment the party has become after years of a relationship of mutual contempt and anathema. Having the erstwhile ardent revolutionary undo all he ever did and unsay all he ever said is perhaps an authentic and effective way of flashing the required credentials that permit admission to the establishment ball.

Recently, Kelly commented on the British government's amnesty proposal for all those combatants from the North's violent conflict: 

People, whether they are ex-combatants or not, look upon this as an issue for victims. We had the Stormont House Agreement, all parties said this had to be based on a victims-centred process, and the Stormont House Agreement brought that. I am an ex-combatant myself and I have talked to others and they have no notion outside of supporting the families in this.

He contended that former combatants "would feel no relief" from any amnesty. It is not about relief but belief. As one of those former combatants I do not support the Kelly position. I have always believed a political amnesty should have been enacted on the cessation of hostilities.

Long before the British suggested their own self serving amnesty I found myself opposed to prosecutions. I can fully understand the victims favouring such an approach even if I feel many of those in the political class perform a sleight of hand when encouraging families to go down the prosecutorial route.

What is harder to fathom is why former combatants like Gerry Kelly can support the arrest by the British of their own comrades, former IRA volunteers of the Bobby Sands generation, have them prosecuted and tried in a non-jury Diplock Court as mere deviants subject to the criminal code, and deposited into the British prison regime.

As a former combatant, I will see the crematorium before ever agreeing to that.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Belief Not Relief

Anthony McIntyre ✒ Sinn Fein’s volte face on no jury courts was as predictable as it was unprincipled.

The fixity of principle can often prove a deadweight in the fluidity of the political marketplace where opportunism and opportunity are frequently indistinguishable, and the premium is on horse trading and deal making before all else. In that environ the only principle is that of Groucho Marx: “those are my principles, and if you don't like them ... well I have others.”

When a political party decides to charge down the road of perdition, it can hardly gripe when detractors remind it of its earlier claims to have been the voice of principled leadership. Whatever Sinn Fein is, it can be safely said that it is not principled. Maybe it is best to be candid and simply admit to having no principles to begin with.

Like an earlier about turn on monarchy-groveling, the attitude to no jury courts was determined by a reading of the public mood, a skill acquired in the get votes at all costs library. It left me to reflect that somewhere along the line the message got garbled to such an extent that the party mixed up its Ps, if not its Qs, on what Wolfe Tone really did have to say, and have now replaced the original with a forgery.

If the men of principle will not support us, they must fall. Our strength shall come from that great respectable class, the men of no principle.


Believing in nothing but office, principle is now treated as if it were Covid. Outside the Helix centre in Dublin, the party hierarchy seems to have set up its own walk-in vaccination centre where members were inoculated against the dangers of the principle virus prior to any raising of hands. Aoife Moore’s quip that "it used to be the case in Ireland that you waited until you entered government before you gave up your principles" resonates without a single note being out of tune.

Trial by jury is a fundamental bulwark of a democratic system. Even bodies as conservative as the UN oppose the use of non-jury courts. In Ireland the usurping of the principle of a trial by a jury of our peers by placing justice in the hands of judges, has long been a policy of the right. As Sinn Fein inexorably continues its right-wing journey it too is eager to demonstrate that it will swoop on the carrion of the justice killed off by the predatory right so that it might stand shoulder to shoulder with Fine Gael and everybody else it previously condemned for having done likewise.

While younger radicals take to the podium to appeal for a defence of the democratic right to a fair trial, old conservatives with courtroom form are trundled out to make the pitch. It is the "sensible" thing to do, Gerry Kelly assured delegates in the Helix. Aye Aye, Captain. Kelly who has long been in his party's cruiser weight division now sounds remarkably like another Cruiser who supported measures such as non-jury courts. Yet back in the day it was felt by the Kelly generation of Provos that the Cruiser dead would be a service to humanity.

Forget all that: the dead can't remember in any case. Forget, too, previous protestations and assertions that no-jury courts are just "plain wrong” and happen to be opposed by international human rights bodies, while you deliver a deft Rabbitte punch to the solar principle region. 

Maybe there is a reason for no-jury courts, one that I am unable to see and which sensible politicians like Gerry Kelly in their political wisdom can discern. But just think of how many people would have been alive had Captain Sensible and the rest of us adopted such a stance many years ago and instead of joining the IRA had flocked to Fine Gael who remain as consistent on no jury courts as they did half a century ago.  

It is a terrible thing to kill other people because of what we believe in. It is even more terrible to kill them because we believe in nothing at all. From being plain wrong Captain Sensible is now there to assure us that no jury courts are just plain right. From no pasaran to no principle, the journey is almost complete.


⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Captain Sensible

Anthony McIntyre reflects on Gerry Kelly's support for British state prosecution strategies against former IRA activists.

Hind Legs

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)