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Showing posts with label Lyra McKee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lyra McKee. Show all posts
Áine O'Halloran takes a dim view of a new women's media group and asks some serious questions.

The new group set up to give a voice to women journalists is a very good idea but a big problem with "Women in Media Belfast" is that Allison Morris is a founder of it. Of all the women journalists in this country, she would definitely be the most unsuited to starting up this new group.

When I saw this group announced on social media, my first thought was "What would Lyra McKee make of it?" Lyra McKee was the young journalist murdered by the New IRA in Derry at Easter in 2019. She did not have a good experience of Allison Morris during her few years in journalism. Allison Morris had never even met Lyra McKee but she was very hostile to her on social media. Lyra felt that certain material was so nasty and the tone so bullying she went and reported it to the PSNI.

Lyra McKee going to the PSNI about Allison Morris is not a claim or an allegation. It is a statement of fact, and there are many people who can confirm that it did happen. A NUJ official took it so seriously that they actually accompanied Lyra McKee to the police station and supported her when she was there.

Allison Morris may have cleaned up her Twitter since then and certain things may be deleted now but Lyra McKee recorded everything and too many people know what Lyra's experience was of Allison Morris. Lyra's partner, Sara Canning, last year raised it with the most senior NUJ official in the UK. Members of Lyra's family know what happened also. Lyra had a big circle of friends in Northern Ireland and they know this all as well.

Some of these friends are journalists and others are definitely well known in their jobs. The well respected victims campaigner Ann Travers knows what Lyra experienced with Allison Morris. The journalists Suzanne Breen, Kathryn Johnston, Hugh Jordan, and Tina Calder know as well. Lyra confided in many others as well, some of who are in politics in Belfast. Sometimes Lyra would be very upset about it all and she would ring Anthony and Carrie McIntyre and other friends as well in tears. People might think Allison Morris is a nice person when they see her on TV, but she has a dark side for some not in her clique that looks to be motivated by jealousy as Lyra and others know to their cost.

This all brings me to the experience of another young journalist. The announcement of the founding of Women in Media Belfast was made on 10 February. Later on in that week there was sinister graffiti that appeared in a loyalist area about Sunday World journalist Trish Devlin.

Women in Media Belfast had plenty to say about other things after that happened but they didn't say a word about Trish. She went and challenged their silence on Twitter.

Last week, my name was spray painted on 3 walls with gun crosshairs. I have received six threats from paramilitaries including one to my newborn son in just over a year. I haven't heard from you. Do u represent women in the media under threat here? Why has this group been selective in who they offer support to? Are you not supposed to represent all women in the media or is it just some? How do I go about getting that support? - (was what she wrote).

She got a reply which was like something out of the school playground, not what you would expect from serious women journalists. It led the scales to fall off the eyes of many people on Twitter about this Women in Media Belfast group. Trish is not seen as part of their girl gang. But that is a good thing for her because as other people have said it is a big ego trip that has been tarted up as a serious campaigning group.

Trish's friend Sunday World fellow journalist Hugh Jordan also went and challenged her exclusion on Facebook. Daily Mirror journalist Jilly Beattie agreed as well.

I would have imagined these horrific threats towards a woman in media in Belfast would have been an ideal matter for Women in Media Belfast to highlight to amplify the voice of a woman working in print as their mission statement claims (was what she wrote).
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Thank goodness that there are some genuine women journalists in local media who are ready to stand up for others like this.

It is not a secret that Trish Devlin has not had a good experience of Allison Morris in the media. Lyra McKee was definitely not alone in such a department. Maybe after the social media reaction against Women in Media Belfast, they will be shamed into doing something on supporting Trish.

They are hosting a conference online on International Women's Day but for all the reasons that I have written about above I believe that this group should be better ignored. Maybe women who are planning on taking part in this group's events could ask themselves a few questions.

Why did this group not support Trish Devlin from the start with the serious threat that she is under? Why did Lyra McKee who was a lovely person that everyone who ever met her loved go to police and make a complaint about bullying nastiness by Allison Morris?

Maybe some of local newspapers that wrote so much about Lyra McKee after she was murdered could look into this or others in the media could. It would be really wrong if they don't do that and ignore it.

Media Mean Girl Allison Morris

Aaron Edwards on completion of a book shares his thoughts on the process of:

Bearing Witness 


 
‘Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death, and trying to bear witness,’ observed veteran reporter Marie Colvin at a memorial service for fallen journalists in November 2010. ‘It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash.’ 

Journalists cover war from different vantage-points. Some, like Colvin, reported while the smell of cordite and burnt flesh still lingered in the air. Others, like Lyra McKee, covered the aftermath, long after the guns had fallen silent. Regardless of their vantage-point, it takes courage to bear witness to the horrors of war; and, as we now know, a few, like Colvin and McKee, have tragically lost their lives as a result.

In Lost, Found, Remembered, we find dispatches from an inquisitive young reporter who grew up amidst the smouldering foxholes of a conflict-ridden society profoundly damaged by decades of violence. Lyra McKee came from an optimistic generation who were told by politicians that they would ‘reap the spoils and prosperity that supposedly came with peace.’ 

Lyra thought differently. She believed her generation of “ceasefire babies” - those born around the time of the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires – had been lied to by politicians. This disappointment lay at the heart of her writing. It seems cruelly ironic in light of the clamour by many of the same politicians to attend her funeral shortly after she was shot and killed that we were all forced to bear witness to their failures.

To be sceptical of the Northern Ireland peace process is a risky business, particularly in a tribal society where you can easily be shunned, exiled, or worse. If you are seen to be standing against the herd, even in a small way, you can provoke a change in their direction. Very quickly a loose, meandering herd can become a focused stampede heading right for you. 

Lyra knew the risks and sometimes heeded warnings of caution in her writing. She had the emotional intelligence to recognise how badly others had been treated whenever they departed from conventional wisdom. But Lyra could also be brave and intuitive in her dispatches. Her hunger for a story shone through, from Tweets to text messages with friends, and, as we see in Lost, Found, Remembered, in the very best of her journalism.

Lyra had a rare talent for investigative reporting. I don’t mean in the sense of her having the best sources, or the most original of stories, or even in the volume of work she generated. What I really mean is her imagination as a writer. This creative impulse is evident in this posthumous collection published by Faber. Lyra painted on a broad canvas. She paid attention to the causes and drivers of conflict, grappling with complex theories like the intergenerational transmission of trauma or the socio-economic effects of a largely negative peace. Her stories were vivid portraits of people deeply affected by war, peace and discrimination.

Lyra was a champion of many causes and she walked proudly in PRIDE in Belfast each year when it was by no means always fashionable to do so. As a gay woman, she wrote about the challenges facing the LGBT community in the conservative backwoods of Northern Ireland. ‘The fight for equality is as much a fight for hearts and minds as it is a courtroom battle,’ she wrote. By standing up for what she believed in, Lyra often invited harsh words from her critics. Yet, despite suffering occasional online bullying and harassment, she remained perpetually optimistic about human nature.

People were capable of amazing feats. Lyra had seen this first-hand. She watched her ‘friends and family members cope with the trauma of what they could not forget.’ In an unpublished story in Lost, Found, Remembered, we find Lyra and a friend search for a missing boy on the Cave Hill overlooking Belfast. This story was part of her investigation into the suicide epidemic gripping Northern Ireland in the 16 years after the Good Friday Agreement. Some 3,709 people took their own lives, bypassing the number who died in armed conflict in the 30 years up until 1998. It is difficult to understand why they did so in such great numbers, though, as Lyra observed, this placed Northern Ireland in the top quarter of the international league table of suicide rates.

As a reporter, Lyra was often reticent about covering stories with a paramilitary theme. Her first book, Angels with Blue Faces, was a re-examination of the cold case murder of 40-year-old South Belfast MP Robert Bradford and another man, 29-year-old Ken Campbell, who were shot dead by the Provisional IRA on 14 November 1981. Lyra uncovered new leads in the killing, including how the RUC’s Special Branch had ‘received information from not one but two agents inside the IRA, telling them an attack was going to happen.’ Lyra even uncovered the names of the alleged perpetrators, who she anonymised in her book. In an essay in Lost, Found, Remembered, she records how:

I’m working on a story that requires me to ask questions about dangerous people. Every day, I wonder if they’re going to find out and do something about it.

One of the men who was involved in the murder of Robert Bradford lived not far from Lyra’s family home in North Belfast. The other gunman is thought to now belong to the same group of militant republicans who murdered Lyra on 18 April 2019.

Lost, Found, Remembered is a tribute to Lyra McKee’s tenacity, her fun-loving spirit and the compulsion she felt in bearing witness to the tragedy of the place she was proud to call home. 

Lyra McKee, 2020, Lost, Found, Remembered. Faber & Faber, 208 pp., £12.99. ISBN-13 : 978-0571351442

⏭ Aaron Edwards is the author of Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law: Aden and the End of Empire and UVF: Behind the Mask. His new book, Agents of Influence: Inside Britain’s Secret Intelligence War Against the IRA, is due to be published by Merrion Press in 2021.

Lost, Found, Remembered

Sarah Kay remembers Lyra McKee on the first anniversary of her death in a piece that featured in Non Curat Lex.


In the middle of a pandemic, where everyone worldwide is counting their dead, pouring over curves, peaks, spikes, and dips, where every little dot is a human life drowned in the name of the god of statistics, it feels trite to extract one life, and make it important. What would be even more painful, and egregious, would be to turn this one life into a symbol of everything larger than them, bigger than the pain of their loved ones, and plant it as a monument to all those wishing to worship another god – politicisation, bigotry, peace – as opposed to the life itself.

It’s been one year since my friend Lyra McKee was gunned down in Derry. It’s been one year with a couple of people in custody, some outrage here and there, and fortunately, a compilation of all her unpublished work released by her publisher with the consent of her family. It’s been one year today, and it’s a year during which so much happened, that I couldn’t stop thinking, for a second: Lyra should have been there. Lyra would have been on the frontline with NHS workers, defending a welfare state that cares about all and not a few; she would have investigated governmental failures to protect; she would have reached out to us human rights defenders to see what could be done to ensure security and health, and what were our primary concerns for the post-pandemic world. She would have, would have, could have, she could have, all of this potential, wasted away.

This isn’t my grief. It is Northern Irish grief. It is this very form of anger mixed with the powerlessness in which paramilitary recruitment incubates 20 years after the peace process. It is the fury bubbling below the surface of our tired skins that a 29 year old would still be adding her name to the list of those who continued dying after our official statistics ended. She has become one of those she were writing about. Those young lives, all of whom mattered, all of whom had loved ones and futures and maybe an education, a vocation, a calling, all of those beating hearts that had not been defeated by the lack of prospects in our respective neighbourhoods, that could have helped radiate Northern Ireland not just in Ulster, but in Europe, and beyond. Lyra died because someone in the N-IRA went out that day and decided the right to life wasn’t their priority. Most importantly, Lyra died because she was doing her job, and the N-IRA would not stop terrorizing communities.

I don’t care about their apology, but I care about all those messages I have left on my phone. This isn’t a peculiar loss, either. Throughout the world, families, extended ones and close ones, have those empty chairs, those absences, those ghosts, their candles at their windows, because terrorism, conflict, insurgency, cartels, have robbed them of someone that was crucial to their stability. Lyra McKee was a journalist, and she stood up, wrote, researched, interviewed, probed and poked for all of those bodies, the nameless and the interred, the disappeared and the headlines, to figure out why they were not amongst us anymore. Her particular skill, what made her writing so specific and her voice so unique, was that she was capable of entirely removing herself from a story and give the front row seats to those voiceless citizens. She focused outside of the statistics. The new generation – hers, and the ones that came after – that continue to suffer the mental health deterioration due to the conflict, the unspoken suicides, the lost boys of paramilitary machismo, the forgotten girls of religious bigotry. The issue with Northern Ireland, you see, is that every cobblestone hides something underneath it. Every brick probably rings hollow. Not only did we need Lyra, we need more journalists like her. She had spoken with the support of PEN and Amnesty International on the importance of investigative journalism at a time when the political will on both sides was to forget and maybe, down the line, accept reluctant forgiveness. Amnesties were not Lyra’s beat. Lyra wanted accountability, and she wanted them for all.


I wrote about this before, but the way Lyra McKee and I met was because she had heard of me, a girl from the lanes, that had somehow made it out, and had tried to do something that would make the city proud. I don’t know if I had the chance, throughout all those years, to tell her that she was the one being the standard for what Northern Ireland can achieve. She was the role model. She was a powerful voice, a loving caretaker, and a passionate partner to the love of her life, Sara. I would send her photos of wherever my travels would take me, and she would make plans to be there some day. My losses and my frustrations were hers. My wins and my elation were hers, too. This is what friendship means. But there is a strange bond between a human rights lawyer and a journalist: it’s truth. Granted, the two professions butt head often enough that this may sound odd, but truth and justice are two fundamental values that could never be replaced. We talked about our dead, in the middle of the night, or over coffee; we talked about exile, displacement, about parallels between this war and others. She wrote so beautifully about how Northern Ireland could be so much more than what it is. Because it can. And I have to believe it will.

If we are about truth and justice, the very least we can all do is carrying on Lyra’s work. It’s to leave no stone unturned, to advocate for all victims of the conflict, to continue pushing for accountability, to force recognition and acknowledgement of every repeated pattern in current counter-terrorism operations, and to respect, honour, protect the freedom of the press. We have to commit to ensuring a brighter and positive future for everyone across Ulster, and to uphold their civil and human rights. LyraMcKee did not give up on Northern Ireland, and neither should we. This isn’t about the guilt of the diaspora. It’s about what we can do, right here, right now, to put an end to paramilitary recruitment, to demand more from those tasked with enforcing the peace process, to push for deeper integration of communities, take those walls down, and giving each and every grieving family what they were asking for all along. Truth. Justice. And the end of the staccato sound of a rifle ripping through a dark and moody night. No more of those. No more waiting for wailing sirens, no more being interrupted by the dull vibration of a distant explosion. No more.

She is not the first person I have lost to this particular war in which I grew up. I am, very much, this war. She is not the first person I have lost to a terror attack. She is not the first journalist to have been killed while performing their job. She is not the first friend whose loss is leaving an empty space where text messages and dinners at Home should be. The question “why” continues to resonate, loud, insistent, a power drill to the skull, every single time. How can someone die in Derry in 2019? How was someone with such a strong activist background absent from the celebrations of the legalisation of same-sex marriage and abortion? We will keep working, speaking, writing, publishing, advocating, and litigating until Northern Ireland sees a future at the end of this very bleak and much too long tunnel.

There are no lessons learned, because senseless death is senseless death. There is going forward. For Northern Ireland. For us all. For Sara. For journalists worldwide.

The mission has never mattered more.

➽ Sarah Kay is a human rights lawyer.

Northern Discombobulation


Christopher Owens reviews a recently published book written by the late Lyra McKee.

Events have a habit of bestowing importance onto the seemingly insignificant.

Can you think of those times when you heard surprising news about a friend/relative and thought "is that why they were behaving that way?" Behaviour you'd normally dismiss takes on new meaning. You ponder if your reactions helped play a role.

Often, it's just random coincidence. But it's an eerie coincidence. One of the many to be found in salubrious, every day interactions.

But when the event is a murder, then everything becomes significant.

And such is the case with Angels With Blue Faces.

Approved for publishing before her murder in April this year, Lyra McKee's posthumous debut is a curious hybrid. Ostensibly about the murder of Robert Bradford by the IRA in November 1981, it uses the allegations surrounding his death as the basis to explore the history of Kincora, the persistent rumours that surround the place to this day as well as musing on the uneasy peace that "post- ceasefire babies" have come to expect and the insidious forces that still lurk where others fear to venture.

Quite a tall order for any writer to achieve. Interesting, McKee adopts a balance between historical fiction and investigative journalism in order to discuss her findings (possibly as a reference to Salman Rushdie's proclamation that "The truth is that truth has always been a contested idea"). Unfortunately, she does not succeed in mastering either style.

The fiction segments feature lines like " 'You need to get out,' he'd shouted before dropping - what was it, a bag? Who could accurately recall what packaging a bomb came in when it was placed directly in your path...", which clearly intend to convey a weariness and hard bitten cynicism in the narration, almost Dashell Hammett/Eoin McNamee style hard boiled noir. Bu it lack the gravitas of the former or the spiritual grasp of the latter.

In terms of the factual elements, the prose is dry and unengaging. The chapters come across more like a series of blog posts rather than a gripping investigation and some of the conversations are so ludicrous that they do not warrant serious thought. For example, she cites a discussion with Jeffrey Donaldson, who believes there might be something to the rumours as his old boss Enoch Powell would articulate similar thoughts and, as Powell was a smart man, that was good enough reason for Donaldson.

Leaving aside the fact that Powell once claimed that Airey Neave was murdered by MI6 and the CIA, it is astonishing that Donaldson (a member of the House of Commons) has never seemingly aired these views before, nor sought to have them corroborated or debunked. I would have imagined such troubling rumours deserved public scrutiny.

Narrative wise, it's a mix of conjuncture, regurgitation and speculation. Lots of half remembered conversations and memories are offered up as supposed evidence, which do little in proving the allegations, or shedding light on Bradford or his supposed crusade to discuss Kincora in public. Often, when writers are aware of how forlorn their goal is, the narrative subtly switches to being about the pursuit of the story and the characters the writer meets as the journey goes on.

Here, the narrative peters out and leaves the reader feeling that they've just wasted their time reading a 102 page book that promises much but delivers little.

It does not give me pleasure writing this review. Lyra McKee was clearly a passionate investigator who wrote about the forgotten and vulnerable. Her death put paid to a life and career that would have left a substantial mark on the national psyche. Angels With Blue Faces is a great and worthy experiment poorly executed. With time and revision, I have no doubt that McKee would have made this a substantial piece of work.

Events have cast the book in a new light, leading to some sympathetic readings, which is understandable but with the news that Faber are due to publish an anthology of McKee's journalism next April, it's reassuring to know that her literary legacy will not simply be this well intended pamphlet.

Lyra McKee, 2019, Angels With Blue Faces. Excalibur Publishing ISBN-13: 978-1910723437


⏩  Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland.

Angels With Blue Faces

Sara Canning welcomes the extension of the same sex marriage bill to the North of Ireland. 

MPs have voted to bring LGBT+ equality to Northern Ireland. I shed tears of happiness at the news, but they were bittersweet

It won’t always be like this. It’s going to get better.” My incredible partner, Lyra McKee, wrote these words years before we crossed paths. I remember reading her “letter to my 14-year-old-self” and being blown away by her bravery. Lyra opened up about the deep hurt so many of us felt as teenagers, and showed that families can be incredibly loving, supportive and accepting; particularly important in a place like Northern Ireland, where religious divides and conservatism still play a huge role ...

... The rest of the UK had implemented marriage equality that year, while in Northern Ireland, despite swiftly increasing public support, it remained a political football … 

… We are five years behind the rest of the UK in terms of marriage equality, and four years behind the Republic of Ireland. It seems that in Northern Ireland, lagging behind our neighbours is standard. Women have lacked reproductive rights that have existed in the UK since 1967 and were legalised in “Holy Catholic Ireland” last year. Waiting is something we have got used to, and in the meantime we have become very good at campaigning, speaking out and speaking up. It often feels as if Northern Ireland is forgotten until there’s some terrorist crisis, or one of our parties is needed to prop up a minority government, then suddenly we pop up in people’s consciousness again, and everyone has an opinion on “the Northern Irish problem”.

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

My Partner, Lyra McKee, Would Have Been Overjoyed About The Same-Sex Marriage Bill

TOMMY MCKEARNEY writing in Socialist Voice advises physical force republicanism to leave the stage. 

The death of Lyra McKee was a needless tragedy inflicted on a young woman by thoughtless stooges. It was an act that devastated her life partner, her family, and her friends and colleagues in the world of journalism.

There is no room for equivocation when commenting on this event. Yet this killing was not wrong only because a young, talented and engaging 29-year-old lost her life—though it was certainly all of that. It was not wrong only because of the undisciplined firing of live ammunition in a built-up area, reckless as that undoubtedly was. It was also wrong because it involved the aimless, ill-conceived and counter-productive use of physical force.

And before some wiseacre challenges this writer by saying that the same may have been said about the Provisional IRA, let me make two basic points. In the first instance, there is no comparison between the situation today and the scale and circumstances that gave rise to the Provisionals. More important, though, is the fact that events must be considered strictly on their merits, albeit in context. It is in the light of contemporary situations and circumstances that events in Derry must be considered.

Claiming that those who opened fire were defending the Creggan is simply being disingenuous. To credibly protect a community, it goes without saying that there must exist a genuine and serious threat to the people of the area. In contrast to events during 1969, when the RUC used lethal force to kill and injure people in the Bogside, Belfast and elsewhere in the Six Counties, no such threat was evident on that April evening in 2019. Responding to house searches is not defending, and firing wildly with a pistol in the direction of an armoured vehicle was at best bravado and in this case inexcusable.

It must be pointed out, however, that the PSNI also have questions to answer. What on earth did they think they were doing by aggressively carrying out house searches at 9 p.m. on the Thursday before Easter? While no-one could have predicted the actual outcome, surely they must have known that there was the real risk of a violent confrontation when so many people were out and about on a mild spring evening, and in a republican area.

Let’s be clear: this is not to imply that the PSNI were responsible for Lyra McKee’s death. Nevertheless their decision to carry out searches at that time and place must be carefully scrutinised and weighed in the light of the subsequent tragedy.

However, when analysing existing material conditions, one overriding consideration is crystal-clear. To paraphrase an expert in the subject, the Derry shooters have no water in which to swim. Whatever wider assessments may be made of the Provisionals, it is undeniable that they received very considerable support from within the North’s nationalist community. By no stretch of the imagination can any similar claim be made today for the tiny, isolated groups promoting armed conflict in the Six Counties. That fact alone condemns them to certain and total failure. In the process, however, they serve only to damage the efforts of those working to build a workers’ republic in Ireland.

By any reckoning, the political entity that is Northern Ireland is in disarray. Political institutions have not functioned for more than two years. The leading pro-union party, the DUP, has not only lost the confidence of powerful elements within unionism but has also overplayed its hand with the Conservatives in London. All the while, the very existence of the six-county state is in doubt.

Meanwhile the southern 26-county state is disguising its failure to address the needs of its working-class majority by promoting its relationship with the neo-liberal EU while loudly lamenting the Brexit process. This is the state with 10,000 homeless people and a two-tier health service, where money buys access to life-saving treatment. Yet at the same time its government sees fit to award private companies a lucrative contract worth €373 million over fifteen years to operate toll systems on the country’s busiest motorway.*

Overcoming the two failed Irish states requires the building of a broadly based progressive mass movement of working people. Signs that such a development is possible have been evident in several well-supported campaigns over recent years in the 26 Counties. Encouragingly, many disparate republican groups and individuals have overcome their reluctance to change old and redundant tactics and have engaged in this process.

Unfortunately, all too often these initiatives to unite on a working-class agenda have been ridiculed and obstructed by those responsible for the death of Lyra McKee. Ironically, while they have sought to cause division and dissension within the ranks of left republicanism, they have now succeeded in uniting the forces of the establishment on a sterile security programme. Hardly a surprise, therefore, that so many suspect the presence of a sinister hand monitoring and manipulating these organisations.

But irrespective of the presence of provocateurs, these groups are objectively counter-revolutionary. Their presence and their actions are more than a mere distraction: they cause confusion by peddling a false promise that they can deliver on a republican objective. Their actions give comfort to the enemies of a workers’ republic as they distort and mangle the socialist message. Their reckless incompetence allows for the demonising of genuine revolutionaries. Common sense, not to mention common decency, dictates that they should vacate the stage.

Regrettably, it is doubtful if any of these arguments will have any positive effect on the organisations involved. If logic or political understanding were their strong point they wouldn’t be in the cul de sac they now occupy.

It is important, however, that the counter-productive actions of these groups are not allowed to facilitate a reactionary agenda. The demand for an all-Ireland workers’ republic is as valid as it ever was. The building of a mass movement among the working class to do this remains not only legitimate but also essential. Only through a mass movement of the Irish working class will we definitively sideline what Connolly derisively described as the “physical force party.” Only through such a movement can we transform society in the two failed states into a republic that serves the needs of working people.

We must continue, therefore, to speak the facts objectively, overlook the hyperbole, and continue to build for the future.

*Barry O’Halloran, “Abtran and Vinci win €373m contract to operate M50 tolls,” Irish Times, 18 April 2019.


Tommy McKearney is a former IRA hunger striker. He edits Fourthwrite magazine and is a union organiser

Reckless Isolated Groups Should Vacate The Stage

Dieter Reinisch with an opinion piece for RTE: despite widespread condemnation of the killing of Lyra McKee, the New IRA will continue to use violence on the streets of Northern Ireland.

Since the killing of Lyra McKee by a New IRA gunman during riots in Derry, commentators, former Provisionals, and politicians called for an end of the armed campaign by republican paramilitaries. The morning after the shooting the political party Saoradh stated on their website that the journalist was shot "accidentally" by a "republican volunteer". The statement sought to blame the "heavily armed British Crown Forces" for the clashes between residents and the PSNI.

Saoradh is understood to be the political wing of the New IRA, a claim rejected by its spokespersons. Over Easter, republicans such as their national executive member Dee Fennell at the Saoradh commemoration in Dublin, and the party’s chairperson Brian Kenna at the commemoration in Belfast called on the New IRA to "take responsibility and apologise if they are responsible for the death of Lyra McKee".

The following Monday, the New IRA claimed responsibility for the death in a statement to the Irish News. This stated that "we have instructed our volunteers to take the utmost care in future when engaging the enemy, and put in place measures to help ensure this."

Both statements delivered the same message: while they regret the death of McKee, the shots fired at the PSNI during the riots were a legitimate act of resistance. While the death of McKee is appalling, the messages Saoradh and the New IRA send are constituent.

For radical republicans, their fight today is not different from the fighting in 1916, 1919, 1939, 1956, or 1969. Rather than dissenting from republicanism, today’s "dissident republicans" are those who brought the Provisionals' message into the 21st century. As Philipp McGarry explains, "these individuals are doing what the IRA have always done, which is using physical force to pursue a political agenda." As long as there is a partition in Ireland, John F Morrison adds that "there will be those who see it as a cause to take up arms."

If paramilitaries produce guns and deploy car bombs on the streets, civilian casualties are unavoidable. Yet, as former Republican Sinn Féin vice president, Cáit Trainor outlined on Good Friday in Duleek, Co Meath only hours after the death of McKee:


one influence on Pearse taking such a decision was witnessing an ordinary Dublin family get gunned down near a British barricade on Moore Street. He too would also have been aware a Volunteer had just accidentally shot dead a teenage girl.



While Trainor is not linked to Saoradh, her speech resonated widely within republican circles. The message is clear; civilians died during the fight for the Irish Republic in 1916, an event the state commemorates. For republicans, McKee died 103 years later during the fight for the same cause.

Hence, the support base of Saoradh and the New IRA will remain largely unaffected by the death of McKee. In the deprived working-class areas of Northern Ireland such as Creggan, where people feel left out from the "peace dividend", Saoradh "offers a sense of meaning to some young people who are alienated from the 1998 vision of power-sharing, peace and prosperity", writes Peter Doak.

However, while Saoradh and the New IRA recently attracted urban youth into their ranks, their support among seasoned republicans in rural areas of Tyrone and Armagh must not be underestimated, as I have outlined elsewhere. The attendance of hundreds of supporters at the Saoradh national Easter commemoration in Dublin, as well as large numbers at similar events in Derry and Belfast only days after the killing of McKee, shows that their supporters are unwavering.

Talking last week, a senior Northern Irish republican close to the group told me that:

when the media attention settles down, Derry will still be the most impoverished city under British rule. It will still be one of the most impoverished and underdeveloped and economically starved cities in the EU. That is the poverty which Lyra wrote about, which has a young person like Lyra jumping from Craigavon bridge every week, isn't going to go away and isn't going to be solved without the Irish people having their sovereignty.

However, more republicans are distancing themselves from the New IRA. The Easter statement from the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, believed to be the political wing of the Real IRA, is a lengthy attack on Saoradh and the New IRA. Following the formation of the New IRA in 2012, both groups engaged in a bitter feud that left at least three republicans dead in the Republic of Ireland.

Republican Sinn Féin, believed to be the political wing of the Continuity IRA, likewise used Easter to criticise the New IRA. Their president Joseph Malone condemned the tragic events in Derry at an Easter commemoration in Fore, Co Westmeath and their former president and ex-member Des Dalton did likewise at a commemoration in Lurgan, Co Armagh.

The CIRA is the most orthodox republican paramilitary organisation. However, this year’s Easter statement failed to mention "armed resistance" for the first time. Although planting a hoax bomb in Lurgan before Easter, the organisation is highly infiltrated and splintered, as I explain in the recent edition of Village Magazine. While not officially declaring a ceasefire, as Óglaigh na hÉireann did in January 2018, the CIRA will drift further away from the armed struggle. Without a political alternative provided by the remnants of RSF, their movement will end in obscurity.

The New IRA pose the biggest security threat to Ireland since the Real IRA in the late 1990s and their long-term strategy and support base will not be affected by the death of McKee. While support for the New IRA is growing, as I outlined in a previous piece and stressed by John F Morrison, there will be no return to the scale of violence of the pre-1994 period. Nonetheless, Brexit and the deadlock at Stormont provide a vacuum that will be exploited by the New IRA. Thus, further sporadic attacks are likely and, unfortunately, Lyra McKee won’t be the last victim of Northern Ireland’s endless Troubles.

 
⏩ Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Webster Vienna Private University and a Lecturer at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.

➤ He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute and is an Editorial Board member of “Studi irlandesi” (Florence University Press).
➤ He is also an IFPH member, tweets on @ReinischDieter and blogs on www.ofrecklessnessandwater.com.


Why There's Still Support For Dissident Republican Groups

Denis Russell writes that the ‘Troubles’ may be over but Northern Ireland’s sectarian divides are deepening.

The recent tragic death of Lyra McKee in the Creggan area of Derry City has raised fears that the peace in Northern Ireland is now under threat. Dissident republicans, calling themselves the ‘New IRA’ have admitted to causing her death while attacking the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

McKee came to prominence in 2015 when her blog went viral. It was a letter to her 14-year-old self who was suffering with the fact of being gay in Northern Ireland. It was later made into a short film. Her much-anticipated book, The Lost Boys, is an exploration of eight young men and boys who disappeared during the ‘Troubles’.

The sprawling Creggan Estate on the outskirts of Derry is one of the poorest working-class estates in the UK. Crime, vandalism, carjacking, joyriding, drugs, punishment shootings and heavily armed police raids against dissidents are commonplace. Because of this, the estate has become something of an attraction for journalists and filmmakers. Former BBC presenter Reggie Yates was in the area on the day McKee was shot, making a documentary for MTV about extreme and unusual places. Sinead O’Shea’s 2018 documentary A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot is set in the Creggan. It follows the life of the O’Donnell family after the mother voluntarily brings her son for a punishment shooting because he was dealing drugs.

Continue reading @ Spiked Online.

A Peace Process With No Peace

Fintan O'Toole  writes that Sinn Fein no longer accepts the legitimacy of crypto-fascist 'republicanism', but it won't disavow it either.



Dissident republicans are neither. The idea of dissidence is to oppose and contest received ideas, to challenge calcified cliches. The gangsters who call themselves the New IRA and their groupies in Saoradh are nothing but calcified clichés. They endlessly recycle dead platitudes and poses. They are military re-enactors with real bullets, museum dummies with live bombs. And republicanism is a philosophical tradition about which they have no clue, a way of thinking about a democracy in which, as Philip Pettit has put it, we can look one another in the eye without reason for fear or deference. Fear and deference are what these bullies seek to create, first in their own enclaves and then for the rest of us.

In fact, these people are not even, properly speaking, Irish nationalists. The core demand of Irish nationalism has always been self-determination for the Irish people as a whole. The Irish people as a whole, North and South, had that act of self-determination on May 22nd, 1998, when we voted simultaneously on whether (in effect) to accept the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. It was supported by 71 per cent north of the Border and 94 per cent in the South. On an island-wide basis, 86 per cent of voters supported the agreement. That is and remains the emphatic will of the people who share this island. The so-called dissidents are in revolt, not against "the forces of crown", but against the self-determination of the Irish people.

This is not dissidence or republicanism or Irish nationalism. It's fascism. The only question is why this is not as obvious as it should be. 

Sinn Fein has taken huge strides away from the mentality of this crypto-fascist 'republicanism.'

Continue Reading @ the Irish Times.

Gangsters Who Call Themselves The New IRA Are Calcified Cliché Only

DIETER REINISCH writing in the Irish Examiner thinks the physical force republicanism is not about to pack up any time soon. 

On 28 January 2007, an extraordinary ard fheis of Sinn Féin supported policing in the North. Less than a year and a half after the decommissioning by the Provisional IRA in September 2005, throwing its support behind the PSNI was another crucial step towards constitutional nationalism of the Provisionals.

The support for policing was overwhelming among party members in attendance in Dublin – just 5% of the delegates opposed it. Despite this historic decision, Sinn Féin experienced no significant split; apart from the formation of the tiny campaign group éirígí (Arise).

Following the formation of the Continuity IRA in the late 1980s and the Real IRA campaign of the late 1990s, many observers saw the dissident campaign finally halted.

Yet, what only became known years later was that former leaders had already broken away from the Provisional IRA and embarked on reorganising their movement. Although hidden within the remoteness of rural villages in counties Tyrone and Armagh, the period 2006 to 2008 was a watershed moment for modern republicanism.

Those alienated by Sinn Féin were not merely small pockets of die-hard republicans but a group of seasoned republicans, their families and supporters. Shortly afterwards, a series of independent Easter commemorations were organised in Co Tyrone. Thousands marched under the banner of the independent Tyrone National Graves Association, rather than at Sinn-Féin-affiliated commemorations.

When in September 2013 the Tyrone NGA organised a commemoration for the three Provisional IRA members killed in an ambush at Drumnakilly outside Omagh, up to 2,000 locals attended the event supported by the families of those killed. The Sinn Féin commemoration on the following day attracted significantly smaller crowds.

Opposition to Sinn Féin manifested itself in the rapid rise of organisations like éirígí, the 1916 Societies, and the Republican Network for Unity in republican areas throughout Ireland.

However, a parallel development emerged unnoticed by the public. Experienced former Provisional IRA reorganised the IRA.

On April 2, 2011, Ronan Kerr was killed by a booby-trap bomb planted outside his home in Killyclogher near Omagh. Like the death of the PSNI officer, it is suggested that the attack on a British army base in Masserene, Co Antrim, can be attributed to those who later formed the New IRA, although the Real IRA then claimed the latter attack.

Other former Provisionals emerged under the name of “Republican Action Against Drugs” in North Derry and West Tyrone, tackling criminality and drug-dealing in nationalist areas. In this way, they filled a policing vacuum left by the distrust for the PSNI that existed since the Troubles.

In July 2012, these alienated former Provisionals joined forces with some sections of the Real IRA, then the largest of the dissident republican paramilitaries. In November 2012, the new group killed Maghaberry prison officer David Black. Another victim was prison officer Adrian Ismay in 2016.

While the group pursued a low-level campaign of violence against the PSNI in the North, the amalgamation faced fierce opposition from Real IRA members in the Republic. Following the killing of Dublin Real IRA leader Alan Ryan in September 2012, militant republicanism was riddled by a deadly feud in the Republic. Among those believed to be victims of the feud were Alan Ryan’s brother Vincent, Deccy Smith, Peter Butterly, and Aidan O’Driscoll.

It was only in 2016 that the decision was taken to form a new political organisation. Saoradh (Liberation) held its inaugural conference in November 2016 in Newry. The new organisation managed to unite former members of the Provisionals with experienced dissidents from organisations such as éirígí, the 1916 Societies, or Republican Sinn Féin.

The formation of Saoradh saw a wave of new, young recruits from socially deprived areas in the North joining anti-Good-Friday-Agreement republicans. Many were born only after the signing of the agreement.

While Saoradh experiences significant support in impoverished areas such as Creggan where people feel left out by the “peace dividend”, the organisations’ support in rural areas is often underestimated. In rural areas of the Tyrone, Armagh, and Fermanagh, republicanism evolves around family linkages, stretching back for generations. Here, the militant republican ideology of groups like Saoradh or the New IRA falls on fertile ground.

Saoradh has establish a small presence south of the border, particularly in Dublin and parts of Munster. The election of Dublin men Brian Kenna as chairperson and Ger Devereux as secretary, as well as holding their main commemoration in Dublin, are significant developments for the party.

While Saoradh faces a harsh public backlash, the participation of up to 1,000 supporters at their Dublin commemoration, as well as hundreds in Belfast and Derry only days after the killing of Lyra McKee underlines that their support base will not be affected by the tragic events in Derry. For them, armed struggle for a united Ireland is justified. The death of innocent civilians is unavoidable if guns are produced on the streets, this has happened in 1916, and for radical republicans, 2019 is no different.

There are no indications that the support of Saoradh will affected by the death of Lyra McKee in the long-term, nor that the New IRA will reconsider its attacks in the North. On the contrary, Monday night’s New IRA statement indicates the likelihood of further attacks. The threat from militant republicans is here to stay.

Dr Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Professor in International Relations at Webster University and a Lecturer in History at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.

 

⏩ Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Webster Vienna Private University and a Lecturer at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.
➤ He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute and is an Editorial Board member of “Studi irlandesi” (Florence University Press).
➤ He is also an IFPH member, tweets on @ReinischDieter and blogs on www.ofrecklessnessandwater.com.

Unfortunately, The Threat From Militant Republicans Is Here To Stay

KATHY SHERIDAN writes that Dissidents failed to anticipate furious backlash from new generation.

Should any visitor decide to test the nation’s tolerance, they might begin a conversation about the fake soldiers parading down O’Connell Street a couple of weeks ago. Even without the murder of Lyra McKee, it would have been an assault on the senses. The two combined made it almost impossible to process at any rational level.

One thing we know: Simon Harris’s declaration that “only one organisation has any right to march in military uniform in our country” is only morally correct. There is no law against a ragbag militia taking over a swathe of the capital’s main thoroughfare and calling it a march.

They run an armed gang. Nothing will dissuade them from using armed violence to achieve their aim. And they have zero support. We know all this because they said so in a Sunday Times interview. They failed to mention that to achieve their aim would entail the overthrow of democracy and the State’s entire system of government. This approach is also known as fascism.

Continue reading @ the Irish Times.

‘No-One Likes Us, We Don’t Care’ Will Only Take The Fake Soldiers So Far

SAORADH claims it is being subjected to unprecedented censorship on the internet.

Following the tragic killing of Lyra McKee in Derry a fortnight ago, Saoradh offered its analysis of the events that led to the journalists death; we did so as a political party on behalf of our membership who share our analysis of the terrible events. 

We did not and do not speak on behalf of any other organisation and contrary to a hostile media and state narrative we do not speak on behalf of the Irish Republican Army.

Saoradh was roundly attacked in the media and by the political aristocracy for doing so. Quickly a public discourse was built up accusing Saoradh and its activists for Lyra’s death. Saoradh played no role in the events that led to the death of Lyra McKee.

Saoradh is an open and publicly accessible political party, though we offer an analysis on armed actions in the pursuit of Irish national liberation, Saoradh does not engage in armed struggle. Saoradh is not a proscribed organisation, we have as our means political agitation, mobilisation and grassroots activism. Since our formation in 2016 we have grown and we continue to grow, we have three public offices with more planned, each one open and accessible to the public.

Everyone has a fundamental right under international law and European human rights legislation to organise, hold and impart their political opinion and freedom of expression. However since the events in Derry at Easter a campaign to remove those rights from Saoradh has been launched.

We have had our access to the internet and various online platforms curtailed in an effort to deny us those basic fundamental rights of freedom of speech and expression. Saoradh place the blame for this orchestrated attack on everyone's rights at the door of the British and Dublin Governments who ironically are using the death of a journalist to impose unprecedented levels of censorship. Presently no political party in western Europe is subjected to the level of censorship now imposed on Saoradh.

Saoradh is currently pursuing a number of avenues to address these attacks on the freedom of speech. What the state does today on Irish Republicans it will not hesitate to use tomorrow on the rest of society. You may not share our opinion, you may be diametrically opposed to it, as is your right, but you must understand that the denial of our rights today is the denial of your rights tomorrow.

Saoradh Facing Unprecedented Internet Censorship

PAULINE HADDAWAY raises awkward questions about the North's peace process, observing that many of the politicians at Lyra McKee’s funeral have presided over a broken system. 

The fatal shooting of journalist Lyra McKee in Derry was a reminder that beneath the fiction of ‘post-conflict’ normalisation and the sentimental narrative of peacebuilding, Northern Ireland remains a violent, divided and fundamentally unstable society ...

... In the words of Eamonn McCann, veteran activist and People Before Profit Alliance candidate in the coming Derry City and Strabane local elections: ‘Everybody knew there was going to be bother.’ 

... Amid widespread public revulsion, politicians in Ireland, Britain and internationally responded to the shooting with the usual chorus of condemnation.

… Some blamed the collapse of power-sharing in the Northern Ireland assembly – there has been no functioning government for two years – for bringing regional politics to a standstill and creating a dangerous power vacuum. Others blamed austerity, which is preventing young people from realising their futures. However, PSNI detective superintendent Jason Murphy proffered another explanation, warning that the attack was the work of a ‘new breed of terrorist coming through the ranks’. This poses the question: does the new IRA represent a new form of political threat or is it simply a continuation of historical patterns?  

Continue reading @ Spiked Online.

So Now They Care About Violence In Northern Ireland

DIETER REINISCH, a historian, is interviewed by  Cormac O'Keeffe in the Irish Examiner.

The shooting dead of Lyra McKee by the New IRA will not affect their actions “in any way”, a leading historian and republican researcher has said.

Dieter Reinisch said the death of the 29-year-old journalist in the Creggan area of Derry last Thursday week was most unlikely to be the last.

Dr Reinisch, attached to the University of Vienna, has studied republicanism for the last 15 years.

He has written one book on republicans in prison in the North and a second book is due on women and republicanism.

He has recently been in the North and met and interviewed senior members of Saoradh, the political wing of the New IRA. In an interview with the Irish Examiner, he says:

➽The New IRA is the “biggest, most experienced and best organised of all the dissident groups”
➽Assesses the threat they pose as “quite high”, but not comparable to the threat posed by the Real IRA in the 1990s
➽The group has not had much success in staging attacks saying this was because it has been “infiltrated” by intelligence services and hit hard by arms seizures and convictions
➽Estimates that the group has a “few dozen” activists involved in organising, preparing and conducting attacks, a second group, amounting to hundreds of people, who provide logistical support, and a wider group, in the region of 1,000 to 1,500 strong, who provide political support

The academic said that he did not think that the New IRA had planned to fire shots on Thursday night last, but rather had wanted to build up tension over the weekend and take armed action on Monday night after their Easter commemoration.

“They had plans to stage an attack on the PSNI,” he said.

I expected on Monday a militant display with a riot, petrol bombs and to fire shots, but on Thursday they chose to do it as there was a relatively big riot, there was a lot of people out, there was media there and people were broadcasting live, including on Facebook and Twitter, and they thought ‘let’s do it tonight’.

Dr Reinisch said it was his understanding that the order was to shoot towards the police and “not into the crowd”: “I think their aim was to have a publicity stunt, to fire shots into the air. The media was there and the headline the following day would be ‘New IRA fire shots in Derry’.” 

Asked were the gunmen young and reckless, he said:

There were definitely very young, you can see in the video, but they knew what they were doing. The second masked man remained calm as he collected the bullets, so they were not completely inexperienced. There were firing into the crowd and not into the air. I’m pretty sure that was a mistake, that the organisation didn’t want that and that wasn’t the order.

"Their statement (issued subsequently) seems to reflect that.”

However, he added: 

There’s always a risk when you give anyone a gun and personally I was very surprised they took that risk. They killed an innocent civilian. And many of the people standing very close to Lyra McKee were republicans, known members of other organisations, they could easily have been shot.

Mr Reinisch said the New IRA has a “significant presence” in Derry, “particularly in the Creggan area” and said it was “one of three strongholds” of the group.

“They are recruiting young members, teens, young men. They have a significant presence and authority there.” He said high unemployment and deprivation in the area were factors and said many of the young men “come from republican families”.

He added:

That’s very important to understand. They may have not lived through the conflict but grew up as republicans. You add in no jobs and that many of them don’t see a future in Derry, and are radicalised by an organisation offering an alternative.

He said the New IRA was:

the biggest, most experienced and best organised of all the dissident groups, no doubt. The pose a threat. It’s very likely we will see future attacks, in the near future. The death of Lyra McKee will not affect their strategy in any way.


Expanding on the threat, he said: “The threat they pose is quite high. It’s still weaker than the Real IRA in the 1990s. It’s not comparable to that.” He said they didn’t have the success rate in staging attacks that the Real IRA had.


I would consider them very much infiltrated by the intelligence services in the last two to three years. Most of their operations have failed due to the intelligence services and that is most likely coming from within the organisation.

He said the conviction of Kevin Braney, from Tallaght, Dublin, for the 2013 murder of Real IRA man Peter Butterly, last February was an example of the hit the organisation had taken.

Braney, a former chairman of Saoradh, was considered the most senior New IRA figure south of the border.


“Those convictions are a huge blow for the organisation as were the recent arms finds in Co Louth,” he said.

There are currently 40 subversives in Irish prisons, the bulk in Portlaoise, Co Laois. Mr Reinisch said the car bomb outside Derry courthouse last January illustrated the organisation was “capable of building bombs”.

He said the organisation has “experienced members” from the Provisional IRA, which provided that generational link to the new generation of young republicans. However, he said the organisation was facing problems in accessing explosive material.

“Most of the arsenal currently being used dates back to the Provisional IRA, arsenals that weren’t decommissioned. That won’t last forever. They need to look for alternatives,” he said.

He said the eastern European market was the obvious source and said links with Lithuania “still exist and were exploited”.

The issue was bringing it back into the country. He said criminal gangs have better networks to do that.

He said he believed the New IRA was looking for new technology to “remote control bombs and car bombs”.

On the numbers attached to the New IRA, he broke it down into three groups:

➽A “few dozen” people actively involved in attacks — from organising, to preparing and planning and conducting them
➽A wider group that supports them, including infrastructure, safe houses, fundraising, intelligence, training camps, which he estimates to be in the hundreds
➽A third and the biggest group, political support and more fundraising, sympathisers and family members, numbering around 1,000 to 1,500, adding that there would be overlap between the groups “One should not underestimate the support for radical republicans in some areas in the North,” he said.

He said the death of Lyra McKee “will not affect Saoradh in the long run”.
Hardcore republicans know this can happen, they know it’s a mistake and regret it, but know there can be casualties when you put guns on the street. In their view it’s inevitable and part of the republican struggle. For radical republicans, those who support the New IRA, they will still support it after the death of Lyra McKee. It will make no difference to them.
In relation to the other dissident groups, he said the Real IRA (the bulk of which was subsumed into the New IRA) was no longer present in the North, but that “pockets” remain in the south, “particularly” in Cork and lesser so in Dublin.

He said the Continuity IRA was no longer capable of staging attacks and was splintered and had no arsenal of weapons. He said the Republican Sinn Féin march (the political group associated with CIRA) in Dublin was small.

One of the most dangerous groups in recent years was Óglaigh na hÉireann, comprising some Real IRA and former Provisional IRA figures. The conviction of Seamus McGrane, a senior figure, for directing terrorism, and other convictions in the North, effectively decapitated it, Garda sources have said.

“Óglaigh na hÉireann is on ceasefire,” said Mr Reinisch. "It still exists and has a structure, but I can’t see them ending their ceasefire."

He said they have a presence in Belfast north and west and south Armagh. Its political grouping, the Republican Network for Unity, held a march over the weekend in Ardoyne, north Belfast.

On Brexit and the ongoing absence of a power-sharing government in Stormont, he considered these as not having a direct role in the thinking and strategy of the New IRA. However, he added: 
Stormont and Brexit definitely provide oxygen for radical groups and have an indirect impact. They will milk it. If border posts go up, I’ve no doubt it will be one of the first targets of the New IRA. It will be a symbolic act and the talk of direct rule plays into the hands of radical republicans.

⏩ Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Webster Vienna Private University and a Lecturer at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.
➤ He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute and is an Editorial Board member of “Studi irlandesi” (Florence University Press).
➤ He is also an IFPH member, tweets on @ReinischDieter and blogs on www.ofrecklessnessandwater.com.

New IRA ‘Will Be Unaffected’ By Murder On Derry Street

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