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Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Zak Ferguson ðŸ¤£Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of Five stars.

The last time I went to watch a stand-up comedian Live was at the beginning of 2016 to see Julian Clary in Eastbourne with a drugged up Mother beside me, who happened to also not an hour out of court – she was drowsy and leg jittery, falling in and out of consciousness beside me/off and on awakening and then openly wincing and stating far too loudly in all the wrong silent spots of Julian's act, that the show was, "Too gay!" Yes, the show is called The Joy Of Mincing, about a notorious homosexual camp act - but, my mother, she is known for being a bit of dumb bitch on top of world’s worst Mother as well. She was constantly nodding back off and then waking up thinking Julian was paying attention especially to her; though being at the furthest row - the back-back row, where your laugh will never reach the performer let alone spot a 48 year old off-her tits nearly got charged with GBH mother waving coquettishly at a notorious gay. It was pathetic. But also funnier than the act itself. It was an odd evening, a bit meh, with a few archival tinned laughter-ha-ha’s issuing from myself and pretty much all there. The theatre was filled with hahaha’ s used merely to fill a silence, you know, to fill in the gaps. In minor spots the show was minorly decent. Clary was just, well, sapped off all energy and care. Also, he obviously hated where he was.

But what really stands out to me, experience wise was my first stand-up show, back 2013, that was Harry Hill’s Sausage Time. I was no doubt very excited and anxious before going in. I'm not one to go into confined spaces and have obnoxious non-entities ruin something I forked out 36 quid for. Something I still loathe to do. I hate seeing movies because there is always one dip-shit that needs the plot explained, Loudly, to them, by an even Louder, yet contradictorily whispering partner. That and I wasn't used to laughing out loud. Suppressed emotions I guess? You choose for me.

I don't laugh out loud. It just isn't something I have ever done. (Well that changed after watching Sausage Time). Harry Hill just taps into something in me. As a creative and, I don't mind coming across as rather “ohhh look at moi”, someone with a vast, varying wide range of humour. I get all forms of comedy. For all different spastic reasons.

I love all forms of comedy. Whether I laugh aloud or not doesn't signify the quality.

But, Harry Hill makes me laugh loud and with meaning.

Aged 18 me and my mate we had booked ourselves to see Harry Hill's Sausage Time as soon as we could. We got the cheap-seats, yet still at least we weren’t the poor fuckers sat behind a hundred year old stone beam. I did notice he laughed directly into the cracked plaster as if the beam was the source of the nights entertainment. Me and my old mate Max, were going in expecting the usual - that of which we had grown up and in love with. Harry Hill, if you're not familiar with is a stand-up comedian, and TV legend and an overall familiar face and voice, that the nation loves, loathes or couldn't give two flying custard pies over.

Both me and my mate loved Harry Hill. He was part of not just our childhood but also part of our maturation, in 2013, because seeing a 16+ Harry Hill rated show meant, well, that we were aging alongside Harry and going to experience his edgier side. That and what is more mature than seeing your first stand-up gig alongside a mate without a parent in tow?

We were becoming "men".

Me more so than my virginal friend at the time. Sorry not sorry, Max. Don't care anyway, guys a douche now.

For myself, I grew up on Harry Hill. I knew him like the majority of my age group, from Harry Hill's seminal and hilarious TV Burp series and Harry Hill's Shark Infested Custard shown on CITV.

Before I witnessed Harry Hill the quite edgy, cheeky, stand-up, I knew him to be a silly, playful, artful man; prone to using homemade props that looked like they had been nabbed from his own studio at home, used to their full potential and effect.

The man is just an oddity. A high collared, highly pump-shoed bespectacled anarchic mad man. Possessing an energy like no other.

Harry Hill is extremely unique. He melds the surreal, the silly, the observational, the musical all so wonderfully together into a melting pot of Hill-gloop. Also, the guy is an imaginative idea-machine.

He has dabbled in not only stand-up and TV. He has written books, for YA And adults alike, he has also illustrated his own books, most notable and my personal favourite being The Further Adventures of the Queen's Mum; he has worked on a West-End musical that bombed, called, I Can't Sing! he has toured and released many stand-up DVDs. He recently released his biography which I totally adored.

He is always working or doing something.

He also got his fabulous feature film, The Harry Hill Movie released in 2013. A movie that was fitting the trend of adapting sitcoms or the characters therein into feature film territory. Giving them the Golden Screen sheen. Much to audiences chagrin. And unlike most stand-up or TV series names/ "icons" of the 2010s and their Big Movies, that seemed to be shat out on their behalf (Keith Lemon had a movie. Alan Partridge had a movie, which is the best of them all. Mrs Browns Boys got a movie, holy fuck did he/she) Harry's didn't suck. It was pure HH anarchy and more. I loved it. Still do.

What am I getting at?

Hill has spent decades not quite reaching the top, not since TV Burp, but he tries and tries again.

What carried across initially in Sausage Time was that Harry Hill aesthetic. The designs. The characters we had grown fond of, like Gary, Harry's wooden ventriloquist son and all of that energy and zip. It was everything you got from the TV appearances and various properties he created or had a hand in re-envisioning, but with a harsher and brutal side.

I was in hysterics and loved every single minute.

Ten years later he is back. On tour. Live on stage. Doing his usual shtick and oh so wackily.

What I loved before hasn't gone away. Harry also seemed more unhinged than usual. More excitable and ready to shoot off and leave skid marks in his wake.

A lot of people, they gravitate to Harry Hill because he is heavily ingrained in modern day television. He presents Junior Bake-off. He has narrated You've Been Framed for nearly 15 years. He is known for his early 90s to early 90s The Harry Hill Show, also the aforementioned series TV Burp, where Harry Hill riffed and spoofed the previous weeks’ worth of telly, which is beloved and mightily missed. They like to be as close to what they deem a known quantity and celebrity, by mere association.

I know this because half the audience who left this show, Pedigree Fun, seemed confused to what they watched.

Many were scratching their heads stating, "It's just...it's just...stupid!"

One man was very brash and yelled as his chain-smoking wheelchair bound Mother, melting like rubber into her seat, puffing on fags as if they were her oxygen, "He Is Not Funny Mum! He Is Silly! Silly! Silly! Silly!"

The Mother replied in a crackling 1950s radio host drawl, "Tis silly and funny, Mark!"

I couldn't agree more. She got it.

So fuck off Mark.

I scoffed and rolled me eyes as I puffed on my vape. Of course it is, It Is Harry Hill. Some seemed conflicted, as if they had laughed wrongly at him or his jokes and mad-gags and prop-anarchy. As if they laughed at something they might feel in the outside world isn't actually funny and was undeserving. I really thought this was going to make many repent and go to the local church after and sing a hymn or pray away the Harry Hill sin. They all had an existential crisis, as if they needed to rationalise why they laughed.

It was quite pitiful to be honest, to watch and hear. Being a Harry Hill fan boy I felt they needed to either leave, do their research or, actually get a clue what Harry Hill is outside of, "Oh he is on thee telly ain't he? Ooooo, on dee TV, I wanna see him!" merely for that reason rather than, going to enjoy the show and get with the vibe.

It was almost as if, away from that hive and weird raucous energy produced from any form of stand-up or gig environment and atmosphere, to join in the whimsy and rippled wave of Hill-gloop, they needed to work it out amongst themselves.

It doesn't take much thinking.

Harry Hill is silly. Stupidly sophisticated in his humour and wit and the physical comedy and slapstick, nigh on Charlie Chaplin levels of physical spasticity and the ingenuity of it all, it was all on offer with Pedigree Fun.

The show was unexpectedly edgy, in a sense that Hill was quite on a raging roll in relation to certain celebs and political figures.


We get the mention of Covid, Hill entering on stage with a mask that, when he spoke opened like a weird sock puppet. It has his usual blundering buffoonery going on. He has again so much material interweaved with audience participation, you never know where it is going to go, then you do, as he re-enacts the same gag, again, only throwing a spanner into the works whilst he is doing it.

The whole thing with his 30 foot sock and having an audience member pull it off was manic, unexpectedly wild, and in my theatre having himself literally dragged almost off the stage in the audience members determined tug of war with Hill's Black and yellow striped sock; now that was gut-achingly funny.

Sometimes my mind drifted as one gag or joke took its time to actually culminate, something that Hill likes/loves to do, to then swiftly top it off with a mundane ending and shrug.

It is vapid. Silly. Fast-paced. This was a welcome return. Enough call-backs and Hillian madness and silliness to tide you over, with new material that, for me felt like a natural evolution from what he did with TV Burp, something Hill has for years never attempted to outdo or redo, feeling that was the height of his genius.

He is naturally sending out his attenuating antennas, feeling the atmosphere and testing the limits, the Hill-ian limits per say, to test the status quo of the pop culturally evolved society we have become. Seeing if it will be rejoiced and enjoyed. I'd say so, yes.

You can tell the guy loves to be on stage, loves the participation and glee of the audience and the glee he gets from rinsing people and being on stage. He is alive and sweaty and energetic and so marvellous to witness on stage.

Pedigree Fun was definitely a share and tear.*

*reference to a long running gag in the act.

🕮 Zak Ferguson is a co-founder of Sweat Drenched Press and the author of books like Soft Tissues, Dimension Whores and One Of These Days

Harry Hill ✑ Pedigree Fun

Ed Walsh from the Irish Socialist Network reviews a new book on Irish Republicanism since the Good Friday agreement.
"If the outcome has been so dismal, why has the Adams leadership been able to maintain its support and marginalise opposition? One answer is that they have stamped on dissenters ruthlessly. McIntyre documents the social pressure and violent intimidation brought to bear on critics of the leadership – especially in West Belfast, the cockpit of the movement."

Republicanism since Good Friday
Ed Walsh from the Irish Socialist Network reviews a new book on Irish Republicanism since the Good Friday agreement.
Frontline, March 2009

Since the early days of the peace process, former IRA member and Long Kesh prisoner Anthony McIntyre has carved out a role for himself as a witty and perceptive critic of the path followed by Gerry Adams and his comrades. This collection of articles spans the whole period from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 to the eve of the Sinn Féin-DUP power-sharing deal in 2007. There is no major event that escapes McIntyre’s attention, from the arrest of the Colombia Three and the outing of Freddie Scappaticci as a British agent to the Northern Bank robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney. Any socialist or republican who is pondering the question “what now?” will benefit from reading McIntyre’s book.

Sunningdale for slow learners

One of McIntyre’s most insistent themes is that the Provos have settled for a deal that was on offer from the time of the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974: a continued British presence in the six counties of Northern Ireland as long as the majority remains pro-Union, with a power-sharing government that includes nationalist ministers, based on a re-charged Stormont assembly. He ridicules the claim that the GFA should be seen as a transitional phase on the way to a united Ireland. According to McIntyre, the agreement sets the seal on a comprehensive British victory in the conflict:

“The objective of the British state was to force the Provisional IRA to accept – and subsequently respond with a new strategic logic – that it would not leave Ireland until a majority in the north consented to such a move. It succeeded.”

If the terms accepted by Gerry Adams in 1998 were available from the mid-‘70s, that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire IRA campaign. McIntyre certainly thinks so, warning that “historians of the conflict … will in all probability come to view the IRA campaign much more negatively than may have previously been the case – a sad denouement to an unnecessary war in which so many suffered needlessly”. Although it contains a strong element of truth, this view deserves some qualification. While the Provos hardly gave fair wind to the Sunningdale Agreement at the time when it was signed, they weren’t the ones who destroyed it. That honour belonged to a far-right Unionist alliance headed by Bill Craig and Ian Paisley, whose violent coup against Brian Faulkner’s government was handled with kid gloves by the British Army and the RUC (something that would have been unthinkable if nationalists and republicans had launched a similar challenge to the authority of the British state).

In his IRA memoir Killing Rage, Eamon Collins recalled the impact which the collapse of Sunningdale had on his political thinking: “The unionists’ destruction of the power-sharing experiment – with the seeming collusion of the British Army – had convinced me that they were not prepared to compromise … I can look back now and say that if power-sharing had worked, I would not have ended up in the IRA.” It’s also worth noting that while Margaret Thatcher was in power, there was little prospect of any negotiated settlement between London and the Provos – even if the latter had been willing to abandon many of their key demands, the “Iron Lady” wanted total victory.

That said, McIntyre has little trouble showing the huge gap between what the IRA said it was fighting for (especially at the time of the hunger strikes), and the deal it finally accepted. All along he predicted that the Provos would end up decommissioning their full arsenal and supporting a police force whose role is to uphold British laws. McIntyre’s blunt, sceptical analysis has proved to be much closer to the mark than the comforting words of the Sinn Féin leadership (he dubs their approach to demands from unionism and the British state “never but will”, with yesterday’s unthinkable departure becoming today’s courageous move).

The trouble with guns

Decommissioning proved to be the central issue in the peace process from the time the GFA was signed until the IRA announced its full disarmament in 2005. Unionists cited the absence or inadequacy of decommissioning as the main reason for their reluctance to share power with Sinn Féin. Naturally this has prompted a lot of “Kremlinology” about the motives of the Provo leadership. Did they move as far and as fast as they dared, held back only by the fear of a split within the IRA? Or did they cynically spin out decommissioning for as long as possible, hoping to provoke divisions within the unionist camp and strengthen their own position at the expense of the SDLP in the meantime?

McIntyre’s view of this question seems to have evolved over time. In a 2000 article, he leaned towards the first perspective:

“Adams has not made the leap presumably because he feels he could not hold republicanism intact … ultimately the leaders do what they can get away with before their respective bases pull them back into line … given the virulent opposition of the Republican base to any form of decommissioning, one key leader breaking ranks and launching a public assault on the leadership’s position may be the catalyst that could lead to a divide from which could emerge a new force with more credibility than either the Real or Continuity IRAs.”

By the end of 2001, things appeared in a different light to McIntyre:

“Some commentators and politicians, while accepting the bona fides of the Sinn Fein leadership regarding its commitment to getting rid of IRA weaponry, nevertheless felt that the grassroots acted as a constraint on the leadership’s freedom to manoeuvre. But how could such an intellectually cauterised and strategically moribund body of people act as a brake? … For quite some time the Adams leadership had been free of any internal constraint … it was merely waiting on the opportune juncture to cash in the guns.”

While it is impossible to be certain about these things, McIntyre is surely over-stating the case. He argues convincingly throughout this book that the Provo leadership managed grassroots opposition to changes in policy by gradually shifting course, one step at a time, without explaining what the final outcome would be until it was a fait accompli. Their goal at all stages was to avoid a split. More than once, McIntyre refers to Ed Moloney’s book A Secret History of the IRA as a reliable source: if Moloney is to be believed, the Adams leadership only remained in control of the IRA by the skin of their teeth after the breakdown of the first Provo ceasefire in 1996. Decommissioning was an especially raw, emotional issue for republicans, bringing in its wake the implication that British Army guns were more legitimate than IRA weapons. It seems likely that Adams and co. would have erred on the side of caution.

Another factor which McIntyre doesn’t mention was surely at work too – the fear that even if they dismantled their entire war machine, the Provos would still have to watch David Trimble lose the leadership of unionism to Ian Paisley. The republican leadership may have wanted to keep their guns in reserve as a bargaining chip when the time came to break bread with the Doctor.

The Short Strand UDA

If that was the plan, it was on the verge of being fulfilled at the end of 2004 before talks with the DUP collapsed. The next month saw the biggest crisis for the Provos since the GFA was signed, as the Northern Bank robbery was quickly followed by the savage murder of Robert McCartney. While the robbery was an act of breath-taking tactical stupidity, handing the DUP the mother of all sticks to beat Sinn Féin with, most socialists will tend to feel intensely relaxed about theft from the filthy rich (as Brecht once remarked, what is the crime of robbing a bank compared to the crime of owning one?).

The Short Strand killing was a very different matter. Some of the angriest and most eloquent writing in this collection is dedicated to the subject. McIntyre recalls the help he and his IRA comrades received from people in the Short Strand during the Troubles, and compares the “republican” killers of Robert McCartney to the infamous Shankill Butchers. While he does not hold the IRA leadership directly responsible for McCartney’s murder, he accuses them of tolerating a culture of arrogance and brutality among “ceasefire soldiers” who used the name of the IRA to lord it over their neighbours:

“During the armed conflict with the British state, IRA volunteers could never have endured were it not for access to myriad resources provided by the local population. The community had to be treated with respect, otherwise it would never have taken the risks it did to help sustain the armed struggle … today many in the IRA have lost their way. The need for immediate community support is not pressing. There is no quid pro quo between IRA volunteers and the community dictated by necessity. Certainly, Sinn Féin needs votes and cannot afford to have Republicans standing on the toes of the electoral base. But a vote in a year or two’s time does not have the same disciplinary or constraining effect on an IRA volunteer as would the need to have access to someone’s kitchen or wall cavity within which a weapon can be concealed.”

Policing and power-sharing

In the aftermath of McCartney’s murder and the bank robbery, the Provos came under intense pressure to decommission their weapons without any deal being struck in advance. The essential pre-condition before the DUP would enter a power-sharing government was Sinn Féin’s endorsement of the PSNI, which duly followed in 2007. McIntyre dismisses the arguments put forward in support of that move with some shrewd comments about the nature of policing and the limits of reform. It is naïve to imagine that a police force can be transformed if enough individuals join with the right intentions: “The individual exchanges his or her own identity for an institutional one. They may start out sporting their new institutional dimension only as a mask, but invariably the mask absorbs and constitutes the face.” Having shifted ground so radically, Sinn Féin now has a vested interest in glossing over abuses by the PSNI, for “if those most opposed to the police join them, then in a bid to minimise criticism of their decision they shall seek to minimise criticism of the police”.

Working-class communities may be plagued by anti-social behaviour and random violence, but those problems will not be solved by backing the police force of a capitalist state, which has very different priorities:

“Actions that threaten to destabilise the political equilibrium, no matter how marginally, will be robustly dealt with, whereas more serious actions that damage the well-being of a working-class community will accumulate by the hundred with minimal police intrusion … why would the British police be successful in curbing anti-social behaviour in Belfast but not in Liverpool, Glasgow, or Birmingham? … the type of crime that plagues working-class communities from Limerick to Liverpool, from Cork to Cardiff, from Belfast to Bolton, fuelling a generalised fear and immiserising numerous lives is largely impervious to modern policing. Working-class communities need a multi-agency approach that is supported by more resources rather than more rozzers.”

But there is no chance of that approach, based on radical reform to change the social conditions of working-class people in Northern Ireland, being adopted by the power-sharing government – whether or not Sinn Féin and the DUP get past their bickering. There has been so much focus on whether unionist and nationalist parties could agree to share “power” that the limited extent of that power has usually been overlooked. The Stormont administration gets its budget from London and has to work within those limits. It could not eliminate poverty even if it wanted to. The British government has made it clear that it intends to reduce the amount of money it sends to Belfast. So the climax of the republican struggle has become the opportunity to introduce cuts in public services on behalf of the British state, providing a convenient buffer between those affected and those ultimately responsible.

McIntyre tells a bitter anecdote that suggests how little has really been achieved:

“Who would have thought that when Brendan Hughes lay in a bed in a prison hospital leading the 1980 hunger strike, fellow Blanketmen would two decades later visit him in the Royal Victoria hospital where he lay on a hospital trolley because there were no available beds? The British health minister at the time was a member of the Provisional movement.”

Brendan Hughes himself put it this way when interviewed by McIntyre: “I look at South Africa and I look at here and I see that the only change has been in appearances. No real change has occurred. A few Republicans have slotted themselves into comfortable positions and left the rest of us behind.”

Out of the ashes?

If the outcome has been so dismal, why has the Adams leadership been able to maintain its support and marginalise opposition? One answer is that they have stamped on dissenters ruthlessly. McIntyre documents the social pressure and violent intimidation brought to bear on critics of the leadership – especially in West Belfast, the cockpit of the movement. Such methods have not only been used against members of rival republican groups whose aim is to re-start the war against Britain (some of whom have been killed by the Provos since 1998). Dissenting figures who oppose a return to armed struggle – such as Tommy Gorman or McIntyre himself – have found threatening mobs of Adams supporters surrounding their homes. In an interview with McIntyre, former hunger striker Richard O’Rawe describes his experience after he challenged the official narrative of the H-Block campaign in his book Blanketmen:

“They needed to bring me down from the status of former Blanketman to the level of the gutter, where it would be all the easier for people to kick me as they passed by. They had to ensure that I was something people would kick off their shoe. Right from publication day, I was persona non grata, someone who was to be ostracised. The smears started. People who I had been friends with avoided me. A former cellmate on the blanket refused to speak to me. Friends I had all my life blanked me out and made it clear when I went to a pub that I was not welcome in their company. All the president’s men cut the tripe out of me on television, radio, newspapers – anywhere they had the chance.”

The effect of such intimidation cannot be underestimated. But it is telling when O’Rawe still maintains that “like or dislike Gerry Adams, he has to be given credit for ending the unwinnable war”. That is surely the main reason why Adams has remained in command of the movement despite all the policy somersaults and tout scandals of the last decade. There is no desire for a return to armed struggle in the communities that supported the Provos from 1970 to 1994. Two decades of military pressure couldn’t force the British state out of Ireland, and a return to the battlefield can only end in failure. At one point McIntyre writes that the IRA’s current strategy, however limited its achievements, “has been infinitely better than continuing to fight a futile war for the sake of honouring Ireland’s dead yet producing only more of them”. Wise words – but they have not been taken on board by many of the best-organised opponents of the current Provo leadership, who still appear to think that a return to war will deliver the elusive goal of a 32-county republic.

McIntyre does not support that quixotic approach himself. His own proposals for the way ahead are sketchy. McIntyre’s main argument seems to be that a new form of organisation based on grassroots democracy is needed: “If republicanism re-emerges, let it be democratic rather than elitist. Army Councils only ever lead us to despair or disaster.” That is well said, but if the liberation sought by republicans is to have a class content, it has to be defined in explicitly socialist terms. The world is full of republics where the class divide has remained immune to pledges of “liberty, equality and fraternity”. A real “Ireland of equals” will only emerge when the economy has been brought under social ownership and control. Otherwise working-class people will continue to wait on hospital trolleys in miserable corridors, whether they are in Belfast, Dublin or Cork.





Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

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Good Friday Review: Republicanism Since Good Friday

Stray Taoist reviews Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.
"[...] While that makes it easy to dip in to to locate certain articles, it also leaves me thinking if the work-shy dirty lefty he is had taken these as research material, and written another work, it would have been even better. But in reality, I am nit-picking. It really is an excellent work, with the angsty Checz authour quotes kept to a minimum."

Not For the Back Cover
Stray Taoist, A Blog of Very Little Brain

One of the books I got for Christmas was Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism by one Anthony McIntyre. And I thought I would write a review of it, you know, just because I can. And I shall also keep count of the number of reviewing cliches as I go. Place your bets now!

By way of further introdution, this isn’t a book per se (one), more a collection of articles from the sorely missed (two) The Blanket, newspapers, writing groups and more. Did I ever mention I wrote for The Blanket? If you know my real name, fvdo real, you can find them. Get me, rubbing shoulders with authors. I should also point out I have had tea in the author’s kitchen, but more of that later. So not so much a review (and I am only one paragraph in), more a tortuous tale of my life, what I believe, what others believe, and where minds meet and history begins, ends and is bent.

To save you, like everyone does in reviews, jumping to the last paragraph (which won’t contain a summary, at least I don’t think it will), this is a great book, an important book (three), but, in the end, not the book Dr McIntyre has in him that I think, know and hope he has in him. I await that book, when it arrives. (four…maybe).

A lot of the articles I have read previously, being a long-time fan of The Blanket. Taking them from there (and the other sources), and putting them together in themed sections works really well, as you get both the narrative of the Peace Processtm, and Dr McIntyre’s thinking as it, and he, progresses. While that is the book’s great strength, it is also the greatest weakness. (five, definitely). All the parts that make up the themed sections were written for a time and a place (six), and a certain medium, so they are short, pithy, witty (I laughed out loud more than twice, and wry-smiled way more times than that), intelligent and thoughtful. You get through one, then there is a slight disconnect as you get to the next one. Nature of the beast (seven), I guess, it being an anthology of sorts.

While that makes it easy to dip in to to locate certain articles, it also leaves me thinking if the work-shy dirty lefty he is had taken these as research material, and written another work, it would have been even better. But in reality, I am nit-picking. (eight). It really is an excellent work, with the angsty Checz authour quotes kept to a minimum. Sure, some turns of phrase get used a few times, but that only comes out as I have ample time to read on the train, and can go through a book quite quickly.

More sticky (hahahaha, geddit?) is that fact (and both he and I would acknowledge it) that we are different political persuasions. (And on differing sides, as others would see it, in the Norn Iron conflict of recent years. No, it hasn’t gone away you know. Although I have a, as you might expect, complicated lineage.) But, as Voltaire said, snip one of the ultimate cliches nine. I have always found him engaging to talk to, articulate, erudite and fun. Given the qualms some would have at talking to him (from where I am from), I had none, and enjoyed our brief conversations. His insight spills over into the book, and much of his analysis I would agree with. (There are some moments of evident Left-isms, but given his background, that is to be expected. While I am not against a United Ireland myself, I would certainly not be for some socialistic thirty-two county disaster project. shudder) I wish the interview with Hugh Orde had been printed, if only to dovetail the article mentioning it, but I guess there were reasons for that.

It is important historically for the very reason that history is written by the victor (ten), but in the case of Northern Ireland, it is written (rewritten, being written, etcetc) by the spinners. It is important historically as while my race have long memories, those memories are sometimes recast for all sorts of reasons, be they political expediency (and there is a lot of that referenced, spotted and called out in the book), MOPEry or whatever. And reading these articles does take your breath away at not only the hypocrisy of the Republican leadership (this is about Republicans, so no whataboutery, please) but the downright gall of their lies. We all know they lied, but gathered together like this makes is both starkly, and comically, depressing. It takes the years worth of material on offer here put together in this way to really drive this point home.

And the time is another of the disconnections. Given the wide-ranging remit (eleven) of the themes, you can finish one section then find yourself years previous in the next. Again, with the reworking of these into a large volume, this might have disappated somewhat, but it isn’t that jarring, truth be told. I am just trying not to be overly gushing. I have a reputation as a grump who likes nothing to uphold here. Even within the themes there is some jumping around in time, but not anything that disrupts the flow of discussion.

Some of the turns of phrase are Norn Iron through-and-through, but not enough to put off someone with an interest in learning more, and a different viewpoint, of Irish politics post-peace process. The writing is clean, understandable, fluent and makes its point well. The nature of them being punchy short(ish) pieces, I guess. Again I think they would make the basis of a great longer book.

The themes work even if you have no background in The Troubles and the recent peace machinations. (While certainly not agreeing with anything Dolours Price would think, I also wondered at the time of the first (90s) ceasefire why there were victory parades down The Falls. They are all glad they have stopped shooting my lot, their lot, the police and the army? What what?) More important still is the fact this isn’t mainstream (in NI sense) thinking, dissenting from the hegemony beamed from Andytown. Surely a Christmas present for those leechers, moochers and parasites in Stormont. It wouldn’t do them a bit of harm to hear something new, something different and something true. Dr McIntyre, I salute you and your work. Now get writing that longer book.

Not sure that that did end up being about me (it is all about me!), and might even almost be a proper review. But what do I know?



Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
ask them to order it for you!


Good Friday Review: Not For The Back Cover

Manuel Frau Ramos reviews Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism for El Sol Latino.

"One of the most outstanding contributions of this book is the fact that it constitutes a well-document chronology of the events leading to the Good Friday Agreement. It is an excellent, critical, and detailed historical insider’s analysis of the Irish peace process from a dissident’s point of view. McIntyre concludes that the revolution and the principles of Irish Republicanism were betrayed, providing a new interpretation to the “official” version presented in the mainstream media."

A Critical and Different Look at the Belfast Agreement

Manuel Frau Ramos, Editor, El Sol Latino

Ausubo Press announced the publishing of its new book Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism by Anthony McIntyre. It is an anthology of McIntyre’s articles published in newspapers, magazines and mainly in The Blanket, a website online magazine. His writings cover the period from the signing of The Agreement, most often referred to as The Belfast Agreement or the Good Friday Agreement, in April 1998, to shortly prior to the shared power agreement announcement by Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley in March 2007.

The topics included in this collection touch important subjects such as The Good Friday Agreement, The Colombia Three, the hunger strikers, the murder of Robert McCartney, and the Northern Bank robbery, among others.

Anthony McIntyre, a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and political prisoner, historian and journalist, has been one of the most consistent, long-time critics of the Sinn Fein’s peace accord. In the book, McIntyre portrays a peace process that he, as well as other Irish Republican voices, regard as a twenty-year journey that brought the gradual abandonment of the Republican ideology by the IRA under the guidance of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

McIntyre indicts both Adam and McGuinness for designing and later carefully executing a strategy that eventually transformed the IRA from an armed insurrectionist to a docile reformist movement during the long peace process.

McIntyre was not against the peace process. What really angered and bothered him were the secrecy, lies, and deception surrounding the peace negotiations. He had already concluded that the armed strategy was leading nowhere. McIntyre argued that the Republican rank and file base was not ever consulted and most of the time was left in the dark about how the development of the discussions and negotiations. In addition, he points out how the pressure from the top leadership, “usually discrete but often forceful”, was felt by those who dared to question or raise concerns about the negotiations.

One of the most outstanding contributions of this book is the fact that it constitutes a well-document chronology of the events leading to the Good Friday Agreement. It is an excellent, critical, and detailed historical insider’s analysis of the Irish peace process from a dissident’s point of view. McIntyre concludes that the revolution and the principles of Irish Republicanism were betrayed, providing a new interpretation to the “official” version presented in the mainstream media.

By providing a valuable different historical point of view, McIntyre has, in turn, provided plenty of material for political analysts and historians regarding what can be considered an astonishing and complex ideological transformation inside one of the most well known pro-independence revolutionary movements in the world.

Review by Manuel Frau Ramos
Editor of El Sol Latino



Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
ask them to order it for you!


Good Friday Review: A Critical and Different Look at the Belfast Agreement

In the News Letter, Liam Clarke compares Henry McDonald's Gunsmoke and Mirrors and Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.

"Unionists will take great heart from two books which have hit the shelves just in time for Christmas. They are: Gunsmoke and Mirrors, by Henry McDonald, the Guardian's man in Belfast, and Good Friday: Death of Irish Republicanism, by Dr Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA prisoner. Between them, they give a convincing account of the final retreat of the Sinn Fein and IRA leadership from the ideals and aims for which they had fought for generations. McIntyre sees it as surrender, whereas McDonald regards it as the political equivalent of the three-card shuffle."

Political three-card shuffle or surrender by republicans?

Liam Clarke

Unionists will take great heart from two books which have hit the shelves just in time for Christmas.

They are: Gunsmoke and Mirrors, by Henry McDonald, the Guardian's man in Belfast, and Good Friday: Death of Irish Republicans, by Dr Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA prisoner.

Between them, they give a convincing account of the final retreat of the Sinn Fein and IRA leadership from the ideals and aims for which they had fought for generations. McIntyre sees it as surrender, whereas McDonald regards it as the political equivalent of the three-card shuffle.

McDonald's book, a sustained polemic, records most of the milestones of their journey and unearths many quotes and incidents that Sinn Fein's born again Stormontistas would rather forget. Martin McGuinness's toes must curl with embarrassment when he is reminded of how he told a Sinn Fein Ard Fheis that "partition has failed and there can be no return to a Stormont regime. Sinn Fein's attitude to Stormont is one of abstention".

Or how about this? "There can be no involvement of republicans in any body which denied the Irish people the right to self determination." That was in 1995. Just three years later, Sinn Fein accepted the Good Friday Agreement, which specified that Irish unity could only come about if it secured majority support in Northern Ireland. Power-sharing in Stormont became the new republican ideal.

McIntyre's central thesis is that partition has not failed at all – it is the IRA campaign which didn't work and had to be abandoned.

"The major question that historians will ask, is not why the republicans surrendered, but why they fought such a futile long war," he writes. It is an impressive statement coming from a man who served 18 years in jail for his part in what he now sees as a futile war.

Sinn Fein avoids the S word, but what else can you call it? Today the British Army is free to recruit not only in Northern Ireland but also in the Republic. The IRA is still an illegal organisation, even though it has dismantled its structures and decommissioned its weapons.

It is all a far cry from the mood after the 1994 IRA ceasefire when hundreds of republicans took to the streets convinced by Sinn Fein's rhetoric that they had won. McDonald remembers some revellers stopping reporters from covering the celebrations and shouting "don't go to work. Today's a holiday. They will be calling it St Gerry's day in a few years time."

Republican social clubs sold beer at 25p a pint and the black taxis in West Belfast gave free rides. The assumption was that there had been some secret deal, that the IRA had only abandoned its campaign after its traditional terms had been met and Britain had agreed to make an orderly withdrawal. It was assumed that the full details would become clear later, and this illusion was fed by McGuinness's hollow assurances to the Sinn Fein faithful.

What republicans would consider, he told his followers, was “transitional arrangements which are linked by a clear commitment by the British government to end British jurisdiction in our country.” It didn’t happen.

Republican leaders can use their privileges at Stormont to protect themselves from accusations about their IRA past.

We had an example of that just a couple of weeks ago when Adams “refuted” accusations, based on books in the Assembly library, of his role as a former IRA leader. His accuser, Nelson McCausland, was suspended from sittings for 24 hours when he refused to withdraw his comments.

Republicans now have little to say about the IRA campaign. There are few ballads about the big bombs or the ambushes. All they want to remember is the hunger strike and the Maze breakout.

Yet after the ceasefire, the enthusiasm was infectious, and not just for republicans. Many unionists assumed that there was some secret agreement between the British government and the IRA. It was hard to believe that the Provos would have stopped in return for terms which they had spent the best part of 30 years opposing.

As I wrote at the time, unionists were too stupid to know when they had won and republicans were too clever to admit that they had lost.





Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
ask them to order it for you!


Good Friday Review: Political three-card shuffle or surrender by republicans?

Seaghán Ó Murchú, formerly of The Blanket, reviews Good Friday:

"This will be a long review, as the ones so far I've seen have not dealt with the contents in depth. They've focused more on the controversy of the author and his thesis. What's missing from such terse attention? The flair with which McIntyre conveys his passion-- and his sobriety. There's little autobiography, but he's dealing with a shadowy, fatal, yet publicized and romanticized cause to which he gave his youth, and much of his adulthood. Half of his life's in the H-Blocks. He leaves to find himself facing a different IRA on the outside than the one he'd sworn to defend decades before. From the mid-1990s on-- along with like-minded volunteers, their families, friends, and comrades-- he's left to flounder while the party leaders posed for the cameras, accepted the acclaim, and betrayed the footsoldiers, those living and dead, those who had starved themselves rather than accept branding as common criminals.

One does not have to accept their methods of the proxy bomb, the guerrilla attack, or the torture of innocents to accept what McIntyre and those whose stories he tells believed in: a united Ireland that through their guns would be gained. They gave up their lives in total or a portion for such an ideal. This vision dimmed under the glare of their commanders who proclaimed a treaty that echoed that compromise which they had rejected in 1975. That was thousands of killings earlier. The confusion and outrage of those left fooled again becomes a human call for justice and truth."

Anthony McIntyre's Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism
Book Review

Seaghán Ó Murchú


As an ex-IRA "blanketman," already imprisoned in his teens, interned for 17 years at Long Kesh, Anthony McIntyre knows his subject by having lived most of his life as a volunteer. After prison, he earned a Ph.D. in political science at Queen's. This Belfast native collects various articles and interviews from the past decade or so that list the deathbed rattles and defiant ralliery of Sinn Féin, the IRA, and the stalemated peace process after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The chicanery with which this deal was finagled to a rank-and-file previously misled about the continuation of their armed struggle led to McIntyre's break with the "Republican Movement" at least as constituted under the control of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and their devoted cadre.

Becoming a leading voice for those who disagreed, not for a return to the "physical-force tradition" but a renewal of the ideals which the IRA he and others joined had abandoned, Dr McIntyre combines two rarely encountered areas of expertise. As an insider, he betters the academics and reporters in relating the perspective of an Irish republican who's proven his credibility on the blanket. As a commentator, he's able to silence the "militant Republicans of the verbal type" eager to perch on barstools or boast to the naive their exploits, fueled with Dutch courage.

Admirably given his doctoral competence, McIntyre never lapses into jargon (although "etiology" escaped onto his keyboard once). He avoids sounding sanctimonious or overbearing. He, as with his model Orwell, manages to keep the human dimension within his sustained criticism of the IRA leadership that, for 320 pages, motivates his setting down-- with as much proof as can be summoned against an organization committed to double speak and clandestine councils-- the reasons why one can be principled, yet oppose the GFA packaged as "the peace process." Furthermore, he relates details to us in a calm, wry manner so that any newcomer can clearly understand the participants who support or oppose this intricate strategy.

It's a testament to his evenhandedness that one of the best moments comes when he's interviewing the chief of the reorganized Police Service of Northern Ireland (formerly the RUC), Hugh Orde. "It was the most I had ever talked in a police station," he admits. (282) While his sympathies remain throughout with the peaceful dissidents, he includes fair treatment of those later incarcerated from the splinter groups determined to fight for the cause abandoned-- with considerable cynicism, spin, and rhetorical acrobatics-- by the IRA leadership and Sinn Féin negotiators. Attention to the Loyalist perspective might have been welcome, but this anthology's already large enough. Counterparts to McIntyre or Ed Moloney's "A Secret History of the IRA" exist from the Unionist viewpoint. As the subtitle indicates, McIntyre's not providing a history of the past forty or hundred years in the North. He's analyzing the RM endgame itself, as a former player privy to many of the moves.

The book's organized into thirteen chapters. Each offers a few articles around a theme. I found the organization sensible, and there's an internal coherence that carries you from one topic to the next gradually, if subtly. An introduction by Moloney, whose own views have been met with the same outrage accorded McIntyre's among the party faithful, but with equal recognition of insight by those less aligned, provides background on the policy shifts. A glossary clues you in to who's Ronnie Flanagan or what's the IMC.

This will be a long review, as the ones so far I've seen have not dealt with the contents in depth. They've focused more on the controversy of the author and his thesis. What's missing from such terse attention? The flair with which McIntyre conveys his passion-- and his sobriety. There's little autobiography, but he's dealing with a shadowy, fatal, yet publicized and romanticized cause to which he gave his youth, and much of his adulthood. Half of his life's in the H-Blocks. He leaves to find himself facing a different IRA on the outside than the one he'd sworn to defend decades before. From the mid-1990s on-- along with like-minded volunteers, their families, friends, and comrades-- he's left to flounder while the party leaders posed for the cameras, accepted the acclaim, and betrayed the footsoldiers, those living and dead, those who had starved themselves rather than accept branding as common criminals.

One does not have to accept their methods of the proxy bomb, the guerrilla attack, or the torture of innocents to accept what McIntyre and those whose stories he tells believed in: a united Ireland that through their guns would be gained. They gave up their lives in total or a portion for such an ideal. This vision dimmed under the glare of their commanders who proclaimed a treaty that echoed that compromise which they had rejected in 1975. That was thousands of killings earlier. The confusion and outrage of those left fooled again becomes a human call for justice and truth.

Chapter 1 laments the GFA. McIntyre in 1999 conjures up the tale of the pickpocket who robs his prey while unctously soothing his victim: "your personal security is brilliant." SF strips their communal base of its pride while telling its gulled voters how they were "the most politicised people in Europe." (10) In Chapter 2, the ghosts of the Republican Dead return to haunt those investigating in 2004 the 1987 pre-emptive attack by the British upon an IRA mission at Loughall. This is one episode that may elude those less knowledgeable about such incidents. I'd have liked more attention to the moral conundrum underlying the Loughall inquiry. The larger question of how ethical should the state be in eliminating or sparing those who seek its overthrow, however, remains sadly all too contemporary.

Poignantly, McIntyre confronts this problem personally. With his toddler daughter, he visits Bobby Sands' grave, only to hear the girl chortle; thus in a small way's fulfilled Sands' prediction that the revenge of the Irish would be the laughter of their children. In this 2004 entry, "Padraig Paisley," this sometimes reticent reporter offers one of his most powerful admissions of the cost of the long war upon those who had invested their lives towards a different ending than the one now on offer from their former commanders. In Long Kesh, they followed a leader who turned on them once they were freed. "Were I to have suggested a course of action during my H-Block days that would lead republicanism to where it is today I would have found myself residing in a loyalist wing." (40)

The space given as Chapter 3 to the hazily explained 2002 mishap of the Colombia Three surprised me, but this episode foreshadows later IRA-SF debacles in the Northern Bank Robbery and the fatal stabbing of Robert McCartney. It remains a muddled area; the murky accounts at the time show the difficulty in separating dirty deeds by the IRA's left hand from SF's right hand. When Adams is charged by Congressman Henry Hyde to "'appear and help us determine what the Sinn Fein leadership knew about the IRA activities with the FARC narco-terrorists in Colombia and when did Sinn Fein learn of them', it was clear that the knotted tie of the IRA was being moved uncomfortably close to the party windpipe." (50) The ten years of witnessing the RM's downhill slide proves grimly amusing, tracked from higher up this slippery slope.

Decommissioning magnifies the microcosm of the Colombian misadventure for global inspection. Not as a symbol, but as fact: giving up IRA arms dumps means the conflict's truly ended. 2001: As the leaders, pushed back from their goal of a unified Ireland into capitulation keep retreating and calling it progress, "they are moved muttering from one slain sacred cow to defend another before it too is slaughtered." (64) 2002: Those like him who complain will incur blame for raising their heads out of the trenches, where "they would immediately draw the attention and surveillance of thought traffic control and the fire of the verbal snipers, their weapons loaded with vitriol, eager to impose silence and prevent republicanism from becoming more democratic." (71)

Long before 2003, McIntyre's disgusted at "organised lying by organised liars. Half a century from now pilgrims, patriots, and prevaricators will flock to the graves of the Provisional Republican leadership to be greeted by an inscription meticulously inscribed into a headstone: 'Here they are-- lying still'." (78)

Cemeteries in West Belfast already fill with those who went to their graves believing in a patriotism that their leaders had, in secret, already abandoned. McIntyre has both outgrown his youthful enthusiasm and managed to nourish his righteous ideals. These matured, I would suggest, from the Fenian slogans of his teenaged years into a humanist skepticism towards totalitarianism in any form, however benignly promoted or however applauded by the chattering classes. He resists the cult of personality that has eclipsed the democratic socialist Republic of 1916.

Chapter 5, most notably with a twenty-page 2006 interview with fellow ex-blanketman Richard O'Rawe, delves into the difficult matter of how much Adams knew when in charge of part of the IRA contingent in the H-Blocks during the second hunger strike that left ten men dead in 1981. O'Rawe's "Blanketmen" book's claims are balanced by outside sources which both men carefully cite in their cautious yet charged dialogue. They explore O'Rawe's argument that Adams deliberately withheld information to advance SF electoral fortunes, rather than intervene with proposals relayed from British negotiators that could have ended the strike, thereby saving the last six men from self-starvation.

A quarter-century later, McInytre speaks at Bundoran to those who shared the years on the dirty protest. Addressing those who now oppose his own dissidence, he manages to affirm his own position while remaining respectful to his detractors. He defends O'Rawe, and reminds his comrades that the rumor-mongering against O'Rawe (and himself by extension) does the 1981 commemoration no credit. He paraphrases the press who lambasted the SF rally (with blankets sold to marchers) to commemorate the ten men dead "as resembling a Friar Tuck convention more than the austere era of the Blanket protest and hunger strikes. The contrast between the easy corpulence of today and the hard emaciation of twenty-five years ago was no more stark than it was on the Falls Road at that political rally. In a sense the imagery mirrored perfectly the ethical decay that has come to beset republicanism. The screws at least gave out the blankets for free." (115)

Suppressing Dissent, as Chapter 6, continues in similar tone. McIntyre allows us to hear more stories from those who speak out against party lines, and in West Belfast, who suffer for their rebellion. Brendan Shannon, "Shando," sticks to his guns as a proponent of the armed struggle. While McIntyre regards him as a cautionary tale of the true believer left stranded, he treats him with dignity and in 2003 tells his story honestly. In 1995, Shando explains to McIntyre: "I did not leave the Provos because they gave up the war. I left because they gave up republicanism." (139)

One who did not survive in early 2005 after standing up against the system, Robert McCartney, merits Chapter 7. His murder, along with the Northern Bank and Colombia 3 incidents, further tarnished an already dulled Sinn Féin. McIntyre and his wife ran the e-zine "The Blanket" 2001-08. They refused to back down to SF militia. They were harassed, raided, and intimidated. Most of the entries in this book originated with their grassroots Net campaigns on behalf of their cowed neighbors and harangued colleagues. They display to future historians and activists the birth of Web networks married to practical solutions. This harnessed solidarity for concrete gains rather than arcane monographs on republican community organizing.

These chapters also reveal McIntyre's growth as a more generous participant in his changing Irish reality. He almost encourages a PSNI officer with "good luck" as the police try to find Bert's killers. As one with his ear to the ground, McIntyre knows at least one culprit even if he's not charged directly. "IRA culture was drawn on heavily both to inflict the crime and to cover it up," (173) even if hard proof dissolves into soft supposition and perhaps a bit of brass knuckles on any witnesses out of the dozens of people who saw the fatal assault-- unless they were all as they claimed in the pub's jakes. The party interferes, so no allegations of collusion between the supposedly rogue IRA operators and SF can be sustained in court.

This leads to frustration. How can you fight such an implacable PR machine? Others join in the protest, but against those who complain. They defend Adams and McGuinness. Why do McIntyre and his colleagues oppose what so many voted for, North and South? The Loyalist veto's consented to by SF. The IRA surrendered. The Crown rules as long as most Northerners agree to a British ruler. McIntyre counters that "the process subverts the peace." (168) Many who favor cessation of violence do not assent to the process, he argues. Their disagreement with the GFA, moreover, remains non-violent. Meanwhile, the IRA and SF subvert the community they claim to advance-- with thugs, censorship, and discrimination.

Informers, long the republican's bane, now turn into its own agents of destruction. Freddie Scappaticci, "Stakeknife," and Denis Donaldson gain infamy. McIntyre's clever. He asks nimbly what Donaldson as a British agent did that Martin McGuinness as a British minister at Stormont did not. Both "shaft Republicanism." Rumors persist, and seem to be hushed, about IRA spies even higher up than Donaldson. The author knows the pressures that burden those volunteers fresh out of prison, unable to cope. "The choice was simple: Grow old and grey with imprisoned comrades and wake up alone each morning to the sound of clanging grills or come to beside a partner and to the laughter of children." (191) While never excusing what Stakeknife or others did by betraying their cause, McIntyre as an ex-prisoner and as one who has worked with many others like himself captures what few other writers could have expressed about the personal torment that a few of his weaker colleagues endured for decades as they fought, plotted, and confided in comrades whom they would expose to their own compromise, or often worse, at the hands of death squads within the IRA as well as among the Loyalists and British forces-- whether vetted or below the radar.

McIntyre's also compassionate towards the reputation that shrouds their children and grandchildren; he implies how this character assassination may be the worst crime yet hatched by such informers. "Provisionalism is being haunted by a spooky spectre," he confides in 2005. "What blossomed in spring has now become autumn fruit, as poisonous as it is bountiful." (193)

With Chapter 9, Comrades appear. These too have been weighed down by compromises when they emerged from prison. The late Brendan Hughes in 2000 tells McIntyre: "We fought on and for what? What we rejected in 1975." (198) A leader of the H-Blocks during the strike, on release he found himself cheated by building crews in West Belfast where he worked; those who were his bosses justified their hypocrisy by their ties to the cosy SF leadership. Exposing this immorality, he found himself expelled by those whom he once had commanded and respected. He concludes how the "Republican leadership has always exploited our loyalty." (200)

In 2006, "Granny Josie" Gallagher remembers when she visited her three sons, all jailed at Long Kesh, over twenty-two years. Two were in the Marxist INLA. Thumbing a ride in the snow on the way back from her prison visit, the Sinn Féin transport van refused her a ride. If she was at the H-Blocks to see her third son, in the IRA, than she might have earned a ride. Such was the discrimination and pettiness even within the RM, as McIntyre rues now.

For Dissembling, Chapter 10, McIntyre introduces other critics of SF-IRA groupthink. In 1994, when the cease-fire was declared, McIntyre was with his comrade Tommy Gorman when Gorman called to agree with Bernadette McAliskey on BBC's "Talkback" with her comment that "the war is over and the good guys lost." (226) From that point on, they and others discussed in this chapter found themselves the targets of the SF-IRA disinformation operatives. Their names were discredited, their supposed links to the militants were publicized, and their credibility was attacked. What differs between the tactics of any faction who has gained power in a putsch? Perhaps the fact that the leaders had led on the followers for so long, so fatally, while dissembling.

With the 2004 Northern Bank robbery in Chapter 11, there's not much point even pretending. "If, as has been widely alleged, the robbery is the work of the Provisional IRA's Army Council, then it is a matter of the rich robbing the rich." (254) Policing, in Chapter 12, finds SF in a quandary. Having lost the hearts and minds of those in projects such as Ballymurphy (where McIntyre had lived when writing these articles), the RM could not provide the protection the residents needed. Over nine months in 2006, 700 acts of violence or intimidation had occurred in his neighborhood. The collapse of the community, as former republican ideals to rally solidarity eroded under drugs, teen pregnancy, vandalism, and theft, showed another collapse of Irish idealism under British administration. The PSNI had first been castigated by republicans, and then clumsily courted, but this left the locals in an awkward situation of who to call on for help. The PSNI wearied, the IRA devolved into a gang, and with few arrests amidst the grim scenario, the costs of the long war's slide into a restless temper tantrum of dealing and dissing showed how hollow had been the claims of a peaceful Northern Irish settlement for so many in what had been Gerry Adams' heartland, his base for IRA action and a unified front pledging SF allegiance.

Strategic Failure, fittingly, concludes this book as Chapter 13. It includes the visit to Orde. What do republicans and dissidents do when the system's in place and the Loyalists remain in control with the consent of the nationalists, post-GFA? Learning to get along, in power or driven away from the dream of centuries of Irish men and women who fought and died for unification, republicans today may be the last of their line so bred to never give up the battle in every generation. Post 9/11, the lust for the brawl's faded. McIntyre's post-mortem for Moloney's 2003 castigation of the hypocrisy of the Adams-McGuinness leadership finds its eulogy repeated in his own compiled arguments here. "For those of us who sought a different and a better outcome-- more just, more egalitarian, more democratic, more honest-- read it and weep." (308)

One does wonder-- admittedly lacking the personal experience that informed the rationale of McIntyre after so much of his life fighting the British state-- if the author should finally blurt out what he locks inside. Why not, imprisoned for so long, as an ex-prisoner demonstrate your inner liberation? Why not embrace your local peeler?

Frequent criticism levelled at dissenters has been that in their refusal to change, they etch deeper the corrosive qualities of a toxic republicanism that will not glow much longer into our own century. McIntyre and his comrades debated against those who drowned them out in the mainstream media on TV most nights. They persisted despite direct and disguised attempts to shut them up. They refused to submit to those who had betrayed them; they turned away from those who beckoned them back to a useless fight. This collection offers carefully reasoned articles insisting that another form of purer republicanism still lingers that deserves resurrection. "The Blanket," as an aside, often featured spirited debate about this very issue, although the selection of more topical pieces by McIntyre may tilt his own anthology towards a clearer chronological, thematically cohesive presentation.

Perhaps, given the futility of the hardline remnant of compromised and infiltrated militants and the corruption of co-opted SF, any "third way" here appears a glimpse up a foggy cul-de-sac. McIntyre and Moloney convince you that the ground troops in the Fenian campaign have been betrayed, but like the Wild Geese, one now wonders what cause will answer their ambitions. Will those who visit the graves in fifty years look back on today's dissidents as students may skim the manifestoes from the ralliers for the restoration of Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Bourbon dynasty?

The failure of an alternative movement to counter the party machine resulted, eventually as this anthology tacitly documents, the folding up of "The Blanket" earlier this year. Its purpose appeared to have been finished; other community activists had taken up the watch, the governments had agencies in place, and the criminal activities that had replaced the RM with petty theft, drug running, and slum squalor appeared less the blame of the Brits and more the lassitude of post-GFA residents. The tricolor flutters and the strikers commemorated on murals still grace the closely packed streets, but one wonders if these depictions will in time fade into "tradition" as walls in other redoubts, those post-GFA Unionist enclaves. The whitewashing waits. McIntyre's anthology warns us of the impermanence of what once stood as an unshakeable foundation under any republican, dawn over a unified island.


(Disclosure: I contributed to "The Blanket" throughout its run, 2001-08, and know Anthony, not as well as I wish, but blame a continent plus an ocean's distance for that!)



Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
ask them to order it for you!

Good Friday Review: A Human Call for Justice and Truth

Revolutionary Unionist Dr John Coulter, in Monday's Irish Daily Star: "This work must rank as one of the best insights into why the Shinners have become Britain's 'token nationalist' puppets operating the Stormont partitionist Parliament in the North."

The new Good Book for all Unionists

John Coulter, Irish Daily Star

Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism, by Anthony McIntyre, Ausubo Press (New York), 322pp, $21.95

The death of Irish republicanism – there's a fantastic phrase to warm the cockles of all Unionist hearts.

What makes it all the more amazing is that it's the title of one of the most damning criticisms of the Shinners' peace strategy ever penned by an Irish republican.

Every Unionist should read the new book by ex-Provo inmate turned academic and writer Anthony McIntyre – Good Friday The Death of Republicanism.

This work must rank as one of the best insights into why the Shinners have become Britain's 'token nationalist' puppets operating the Stormont partitionist Parliament in the North.

If Unionists want to know how to keep the Shinners in check, they just need to smother themselves in the well-written 13 chapters based on McIntyre's comprehensive portfolio of articles, many penned when he was editor of the dissident website, The Blanket.

The book's official launch in Belfast Linenhall Library was a who's who in anti-agreement republicanism.

In his launch speech, Dr McIntyre – who served 18 years in the Maze's H Blocks – pulled no punches emphasising republicans must never again resort to killing to achieve a united Ireland.

Even if you're a diehard Shinner fully in love with the Assembly peace tactics, you need to read McIntyre's work to understand the depth of grumblings within your own ranks.

Even a glance through the defeatist titles of the various sections will stress to even the most disillusioned Unionist that the Provos were defeated both politically and militarily.

What else are we to conclude from articles called: 'We, the IRA, Have Failed'; The Last Supper'; 'Sinn Feign'; 'Republicanism's Surrender by Instalment' – and my personal fave, 'Go to Sleep, My Weary Provo.'

Many evangelical Unionists keep the Holy Bible on their bedside tables for daily inspiration. For added encouragement, get Dr McIntyre's book.

One conclusion was clear after the launch: republicanism is as split as unionism.

It's not so much a case the Shinners have the Hun on the run. If McIntyre's work based on his thoughts as a former leading Provo is to be believed, it's Sinn Féin and the IRA which is on the run from the Hun.

And who is the young man with the black glasses and beret pictured walking beside a coffin on the front cover just above the word 'Death'? I'm sure I've seen him somewhere before.

Meanwhile, everyone in Ireland should wear a poppy to mark the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day to remember the 30,000 plus Irishmen slaughtered in World War One.

Unionists and republicans don't have a monopoly on victims. German and Turkish bullets did not take account of religion.

If republicans cannot bring themselves to wear the red poppy, they should sport a green one to honour the tens of thousands of Irish, Scottish and Welsh nationalists who fought imperial Germany's tyranny.

Ireland's dead may have become a political football over the generations since 11 November 1918, but at 11 am, as an island, let's unite in tribute to their sacrifice.



Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
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Good Friday Review: "The new Good Book for all Unionists"

Gerry Moriarty, in today's Irish Times: ANTHONY MCINTYRE'S Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism is an absorbing and provocative book driven by disillusionment and anger.

Blanket Dissent in the Ranks

Gerry Moriarty, Irish Times

Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism, by Anthony McIntyre, Ausubo Press (New York), 322pp, $21.95

ANTHONY MCINTYRE'S Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism is an absorbing and provocative book driven by disillusionment and anger. It challenges received mainstream republican opinion. This book is unlikely to feature on the shelves of the Sinn Féin bookshop on the Falls Road in west Belfast. It's a collection of articles that McIntyre, who served 18 years in prison for murder, wrote in newspapers and magazines, but mostly for The Blanket - a now moribund blog "of protest and dissent", as it says on its website. It covers the period from the signing of the Belfast Agreement 10 years ago to shortly before Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley decided to share power in March last year.

In one piece McIntyre writes about former IRA chief of staff Joe Cahill blanking him when they last met in 2002. He notes shortly after Cahill's funeral in the summer of 2004 how the first four chiefs of staff of the Provisional IRA are now dead, "all from natural causes".

"I greeted him but he ignored me," McIntyre recalls. "In that he was no different from others in the leadership coterie: willing to direct but never to answer to those fortunate to have survived with their lives from the debacle the leadership so ineptly oversaw, and who sought to ask those questions dead volunteers never had the chance to." He writes that he is glad that Cahill lived a long life but implicitly asks how dare he or any other Sinn Féin or IRA leader snub him when he did his time for the IRA, and when so many other republicans died in an "unnecessary war".

In many senses this is an Émile Zola-type J'accuse! against the Sinn Féin and IRA leadership, with most opprobrium reserved for Gerry Adams. "We deluded ourselves that we were fighting for Ireland when all we were doing was fighting for Adams." Twice he quotes George Orwell approvingly to reflect his view of his former republican colleagues, some of them now up in Stormont, "Nine times out of ten a revolutionary is just a social climber with a bomb in his pocket".

McIntyre is the most eloquent (and jaundiced) of those on the dissenter wing of republicanism, as distinct from its dissident wing. His New York publishers drew considerable mileage from the fact that he could not promote the book in the US because he is barred from the country.

His antipathy to the current Sinn Féin leadership - which is reciprocated - runs deep. His former home in Ballymurphy was picketed by Sinn Féin supporters after he accused the IRA of murdering dissident republican Joe O'Connor in 2000. Despite the antagonism, McIntyre held out in West Belfast, finally moving South with his partner and children over a year ago, but on his own terms. He doesn't want a return to war but with logic, passion and humour, and a degree of anguish and hurt, asks could it not have stopped sometime in the early to mid-1970s? He's not arguing that the provisional republican campaign was wrong per se, or making personal apologies for the loss of life; rather, he asks, why did the IRA prosecute a campaign of violence whose end result was a shaky administration at Stormont? He believes the revolution, which he and many IRA members saw themselves as fighting, was betrayed.

The acceptance of the consent principle - that a united Ireland can only happen with the blessing of majority opinion in Northern Ireland, hitherto anathema to republicanism - called into question "the usefulness or purpose of the IRA campaign post-1974".

"Morally, how justified was armed opposition to a partition that republicanism now accepts has a democratic validity?" He talks of a "sad denouement to an unnecessary war in which so many suffered needlessly".

Long before the first 1994 ceasefire both the British and the IRA acknowledged that neither side could win, leading to the conclusion that here was a "war" fought to a standstill. This point was enunciated by former Sinn Féin director of publicity Danny Morrison shortly after the signing of the Belfast Agreement. McIntyre challenged the view at the time, writing of a "defeated IRA", a position he has held to and that has put him high up the Sinn Féin and IRA personae non grata list.

MCINTYRE VEHEMENTLY ARGUES THAT the republican leadership lied and manipulated its base in achieving the IRA ceasefire, decommissioning, policing, and sharing power with Ian Paisley. Another view is that Adams and McGuinness showed real strategic leadership and courage in finally ending a conflict that couldn't be won, but the author will make no such concessions to them.

Yet he is no ranter. His publishers should have demanded a prologue and epilogue to better round up the book. Nonetheless, there is a coherence, integrity and strength about the collection of articles which deal with subjects such as Good Friday, the hunger strikers, decommissioning, the Colombia Three, the murder of Robert McCartney, the Northern Bank robbery, informers and policing. We hear an alternative view, fiercely argued, well constructed, that sharpens our understanding of the conflict and the peace process, and raises the question thousands have asked: what was it all about?

Gerry Moriarty is Northern Editor of The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times.






Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism
is available at these online outlets:
Ausubo Press; Online Bookshop at Queens, Small Press Distribution.

You can also order directly from Gill & Macmillan:
Email sales@gillmacmillan.ie

Are you a bookseller looking to stock Good Friday?
Call or Fax your order to: Tel: +353 1 500 9500 or Fax: +353 1 500 9599

Gill & Macmillan is now the exclusive distributor in Ireland and the UK If the book is not on the shelves of your local bookstore,
ask them to order it for you!

Good Friday Review: Blanket Dissent in the Ranks

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