Social Items

TPQ
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

Anthony McIntyre remembers an old republican cell mate.

On occasion it happens. Someone who once figured importantly in our lives many years ago is laid to rest before we even learn of his death. It happened a few years ago when I took a phone call telling me that the writer Brian Campbell had been buried the previous day.

With Owen Farrell from the Lower Falls I knew he had been suffering from terminal illness. I had not seen him in 12 years and like so many from the ex-prisoner community battling a similar state, often the progress of their condition slips off the radar. When I learned that he had been cremated a heaviness descended upon me. ‘Farley’ was a character whose warmth was infectious.

In the early 1970s Owen Farrell was a young republican activist in the ranks of D Company in the Lower Falls; the same battling ‘dogs’ that Brendan Hughes and Frank McGreevy belonged to, both of whom predeceased him earlier in the year. He was also a contemporary of Kieran Nugent, the first republican blanket man. As teenagers both were on remand in Crumlin Road Prison in 1974. It was then from ‘Farley’ that I first learned of the significance of Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes, when the then leader of the Belfast IRA was captured in the affluent Malone Road area, an arrest that was heralded to a fanfare of publicity.

Owen Farrell was released having beaten whatever charge he was held on but the following year after a brutal battering at the hands of his RUC interrogators he was back in ‘the Crum’ charged with having shot dead Samuel Llewellyn in what became known as the ‘Good Samaritan’ killing. After a loyalist bomb attack on the Falls Road Llewellyn, a Protestant, had been sent to the area to carry out repairs from where he was abducted, held captive and then killed by an IRA unit. The death provoked ‘widespread revulsion’ and many sympathy notices from the Lower Falls appeared in the Irish News. In that atmosphere few were going to make waves about the torture claims of a young West Belfast republican who stood accused of killing the ‘Good Samaritan.’ Eventually Owen Farrell came to be acquitted of the killing.

I was approaching the end of a short sentence in Magilligan Prison at this time and had the same intentions as Farley when he had left prison the year before – to go straight back into the ranks of the IRA. I followed him in more than intent, ending up in the Crum alongside him a mere four months after my release. A further two months would elapse before events would throw the two of us together creating one of those bonds that would forever see me cherishing him for the source of strength and friendship he proved to be.

While on remand in A Wing both he and I received short sentences which because of their brevity could not be served in sentenced republican wings but in B Wing of the Crum. He crossed over first, having appeared in court a few days in front of me. B Wing was not a place any republican prisoner wanted to be. There was a fear that once there the screws would make life a misery for isolated republicans. My first steps down the wing were hesitant and apprehensive. Summoned to the class office the screw in charge laid down the law in stern language before sending me out into the body of the wing.

Immediately Farley approached me full of smiles. Sensing my misgivings in my new surroundings he asked what the screw had said. I explained, to which he replied that I had no need to worry, the screws were actually sound and would give no hassle. After the first few days the accuracy of his assessment became evident. The B Wing screws wanted a quiet time. They had a live and let live attitude. Often they would share their lunch with us and would never see us stuck for a cigarette. Still, without the companionship of other republican prisoners it was a lonely experience. Farley was brilliant throughout, always there, forever at my back when we crossed to D Wing for recreation or meals where I was frequently subjected to verbal abuse by a small number of South Belfast loyalists held there who had reason not to warm to me. They never tried anything physical as there were enough of us backed up by prisoners from Ballymurphy, the New Lodge and Lower Falls to ward off anything serious.

A great companion, he was an inveterate raconteur who regaled me with stories about his exploits, life in the Lower Falls, his fondness for women, his nights on the gargle.

By the time Farley had returned to A Wing, while not completely at ease in my new abode I had mastered it. He had been a strong stanchion of support. Later in Cage 13, I shared a cubicle with him, the late Frank McGreevy and Danny O’Connor, all from the Dogs. I only ever met him once after release from prison. It was in difficult circumstances for both of us but as always he was chirpy, funny and absolutely determined to be philosophical about the challenges he faced. For the few short hours we were together we may as well have been back in the Crum.

Owen Farrell was a good guy whose human decency and selfless solidarity stand out more than thirty years later. My time spent with him was short and our paths in later life were rarely to cross. His funeral was organised by his old D Company comrades. It was fitting for a man whose name never blazed with the neon lights of celebrity but whose contribution to republicanism caused him no small measure of deprivation.

Owen Farrell

Lava

Don't panic yet! You can still order copies of Good Friday in time for Christmas.

Copies ordered online directly from Ausubo Press are immediately available, featuring delivery within 3 days in the United States, and will deliver within 7 days outside the United States.

Books are also available in Belfast at the Bookshop at Queen's, Waterstones and Easons. 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!

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

Good Friday - available in time for Christmas

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?

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)