SAOIRSE32

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micheailin

I just received notice that Blogsome will be closing after December 7. I will of course still be posting at the Livejournal and Dreamwidth sites (see links at right) where anyone can make a comment although I have to screen them there due to spammers. I am apprehensive about using Wordpress as it is more difficult and time-consuming to post to, edit and search , and it also is undergoing adverse changes from what I have read. This location here was the most heavily read location, and I am extremely sorry to have to lose it. Please continue to visit the following location for the best ad-free choice:

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micheailin

Belfast Telegraph
24 November 2011

Private papers which could shed light on secret talks between the IRA and British Government at the height of the Troubles have been made available to scholars.

The handwritten records of Brendan Duddy — who acted as an intermediary between the IRA and Westminster — released to the National University of Ireland in Galway have now been catalogued, with many available for academic research.

Some of the archive has never been seen before, and what these papers may reveal about the conflict could well prove explosive.

The documents, highlighting the secrecy and tensions involved in communication and negotiation between the two sides, were unveiled on Tuesday.

The Brendan Duddy Archive spans three decades of the Northern Ireland conflict.

It is understood the documents include a raft of sensitive files, including handwritten records of negotiations during key periods, along with a letter from the IRA to then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The files could highlight the details surrounding key political decisions during the height of the Troubles, including the hunger strikes and 1993 IRA ceasefire.

In 1980 and 1981 Duddy acted as intermediary during the hunger strikes and also began recording the telephone contact he made in a red hardbound notebook — referred to as the ‘Red Book’.

Known as ‘The Mountain Climber’, Mr Duddy also made handwritten notes of offer and counter-offer between the Government and the IRA in the attempts to end the hunger strike.

The files, which were originally deposited at NUI Galway in 2009, contain over 700 pieces and will be available to scholars and researchers from January next year.

President of the university, Dr Jim Browne, thanked Mr Duddy for his “steadfast conviction” through the conflict and his “commitment to peace” over many years.

“I would especially like to thank him, on behalf of NUI Galway, for making his archive available to scholarship, so that others might be inspired,” he said.

Herald.ie
November 23 2011

The reliability of DNA evidence linking two men to the murders of two British soldiers has been challenged by an international genetics academic at their trial.

Professor Laurence Mueller said one of the methods used to analyse the samples which allegedly connect Colin Duffy and Brian Shivers to the gun attack on Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar had not been sufficiently tested.

The University of California expert, who gave evidence to Antrim Crown Court on behalf of the defendants, said the computer-based statistical technique developed by his fellow American, Dr Mark Perlin, had not yet been accepted by the majority of those practising forensics.

But a Crown lawyer questioned whether Prof Mueller had the relevant expertise in the particular field Dr Perlin works in.

It also emerged that in hundreds of criminal cases the academic has testified in before, he has only given evidence for the prosecution on one occasion.

Sappers Quinsey, 23, and Azimkar, 21, were shot dead by the Real IRA as they collected pizzas with comrades outside Massereene Army base in Antrim town in March 2009.

Duffy, 44, from Forest Glade in Lurgan, Co Armagh, and Shivers, 46, from Sperrin Mews, in Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, deny two charges of murder and the attempted murder of six others - three soldiers, two pizza delivery drivers and a security guard.

Dr Perlin’s evidence strongly linked the two men to the getaway car used in the attack.

He carried out tests on DNA data from a seatbelt buckle, a mobile phone and a single matchstick found in or around the Vauxhall Cavalier, which was abandoned partially burnt-out on a country road just a few miles from the shootings. He said that a DNA sample found on the buckle was 5.91 trillion times more likely to be Duffy’s than someone else’s, while a sample from inside the phone was 6.01 billion times more likely to belong to Shivers than another person.

Dr Perlin carried out hundreds of tests on the samples and explained that he produced a likelihood statistic which was representative. But on the eleventh day of the trial, Prof Mueller questioned that approach, expressing concern that much smaller ratios were not reported on.

The First Minister says Northern Ireland’s future in the UK could depend on Catholics voting across the divide. But the Union is safer than he thinks, argues Henry McDonald

Henry McDonald
Belfast Telegraph
Wednesday, 23 November 2011

Earlier this autumn Peter Robinson - or at least the office of First and Deputy First Minister - maintained radio silence over the question of the UK’s future.

Specifically, Robinson’s officials failed to answer repeated requests for an interview with the Guardian on the subject of how devolution has impacted on the Union.

Not only did they fail to set up a sit-down chat, but the highly-paid PR public servants didn’t even bother to confirm that no interview would be given.

To be charitable, maybe the request never got through to the First Minister’s office. Or perhaps not - given that he gave a strange and wide-ranging interview to The Times at the weekend.

Rather than speak with the paper of the liberal centre-Left in Britain, Robinson chose the Murdoch Press instead.

Which is his choice, of course, although it is perplexing that, given his appeal for Catholic support for the Union, he might have chosen rather to speak to the nationalist Press on either side of the border. Better still, Robinson could have made an even bigger splash in nationalist Ireland had he opted to go on RTE’s Late Late Show, for instance.

Why does any of this matter? Because what he had to say in The Times is important in terms of unionism’s future - particularly its relationship with the northern Catholic community.

Robinson stated that the Republic’s economic woes and its entrapment inside the eurozone would make the goal of Irish unity unpalatable and unrealisable.

Given the narrowing electoral gap between the DUP and Sinn Fein, Robinson needs his brand of unionism to become more attractive to middle-class Catholics.

He can look to recent opinion polls that show a significant minority of Catholics in favour of retaining the link with the UK. In one poll, this was more than 20%.

Yet even if that figure was exaggerated, even a 10%-15% pro-Union Catholic vote could still be significant in any border poll on the province’s future.

Beyond the dismal science of economics, however, there are other means that Robinson could deploy to attract that section of the population. One of these is the fate of Catholic grammar schools and the selection process formerly known as the 11-plus.

At present, Catholic parents in better-off areas are defying not only the Sinn Fein Education Minister, John O’Dowd, but also the SDLP, their Church’s hierarchy and even some head teachers.

These refuseniks are sending their children off this month to take part in the privatised 11-plus examinations that the Catholic grammar sector has set as entrance qualifications. Indeed, a large number of Catholic parents are also hedging their bets and putting their children into the other tests for the state grammar schools, as well.

The result of this is rising tension within the Catholic primary sector. In one south Belfast school, for instance, there have been ructions at recent parent-teacher meetings over the staff’s refusal to shape the curriculum around the private entrance exams.

Nonetheless, it is a given that these parents of primary 6 pupils will be dipping into their post-Christmas wallets in January to pay for the private tutoring needed to bolster their children’s chances of gaining a grammar school place next autumn. They and their kids will vote with their feet.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of academic selection, here is one area where the DUP and Robinson could win friends and influence on the other side of the traditional divide. If Robinson was serious about making the DUP more attractive, he and his spokespersons could express their admiration for the Catholic grammar sector as continuing centres of educational excellence.

The DUP chief has, in recent years, had some success in secularising the party.

And, given the personal scandals that beset not only his family of late and those of some of his party colleagues, Robinson must realise that the days of the DUP as Ulster’s moral police force are long over.

People, in general, want to be good, as George Orwell noted, but not too good. And Catholic people in Northern Ireland don’t want to be told that their faith is blind and that they are living in darkness. They want - and deserve - respect for their belief system, rather than patronising insults.

The trouble with unionism over the last few decades, but, in particular, the years since the IRA ceasefire, has been the inability to separate symbolism from substance.

Robinson warns in The Times that he could be the last unionist First Minister, as if that marked some apocalypse for the Union itself. But the question is: what if there was a nationalist First Minister? Could he, or she, alone force Northern Ireland out of the UK?

The answer, according to the Good Friday Agreement (a settlement the DUP opposed, but later adopted under the camouflage of the St Andrews accord) is no. Only a constitutional referendum could determine the status of Northern Ireland. If a majority remains in favour of the Union, then a nationalist First Minister would still be operating within the British state and be wholly dependent on the fiscal life-support machine that is the UK Treasury.

Yet Robinson was only last week prepared to press the eject button and crash the current power-sharing Executive over a possible dumping of the Crown on the badges of prison officers.

Maybe he could explain that one if and when he sits down on RTE’s comfy sofa with Ryan Turbidy some Friday night soon.

BBC
23 Nov 2011

The trial of two men accused of murdering two soldiers at Masserene barracks in 2009 has been hearing from a DNA expert called by the defence.

Colin Duffy and Brian Shivers deny murdering Sappers Patrick Azimkar, 21, from London and Mark Quinsey, 23, from Birmingham, at the Antrim Army base.

Professor Laurence Mueller challenged the evidence of crown witness and US DNA expert Dr Mark Perlin.

The defence is seeking to have Dr Perlin’s evidence ruled inadmissible.

Dr Perlin previously testified that samples on the tip of a latex glove found in the getaway car were 5.91 trillion times more likely to have come from Mr Duffy than anyone else.

He also said samples on a mobile phone were six billion times more likely to match Mr Shivers that anyone else.

However, Professor Mueller said Dr Perlin’s computer-based method had not been properly tested and validated and his evidence could not be relied on.

The two soldiers were shot dead as they collected pizzas outside the base in Antrim.

Mr Duffy, 44, from Lurgan and Magherafelt man Mr Shivers, 46, both deny six charges of attempted murder and one of possession of guns and explosives.

The trial continues.

:::u.tv:::
22 Nov 2011

**Video onsite

A specialist team of detectives are digging into Northern Ireland’s past, in a bid to uncover the truth about 670 unsolved crimes - including a number of high-profile murder cases.

The families of some victims, including tragic schoolgirl Jenifer Cardy, have in recent times finally seen their decades-long wait for justice come to an end.

But, unlike serial child killer Robert Black, many more killers still haven’t been caught.

The murder of German backpacker Inga Maria Hauser is just one of the hundreds of cases that remain open after a lengthy period of time.

The young woman was found dead in Ballypatrick Forest in North Antrim, back in 1989 - no one has yet been convicted over her killing.

But ACC Harris said “valid” lines of enquiry were being actively pursued and added: “Over the last ten years, we’ve made a lot of progress”.

Forensic scientist Peter Barker said DNA profiles can now be formed from cigarette butts, small drinks containers or the root of a hair.

“There is potential to go back and look at cases to examine some items that haven’t been feasible before.

“A murder 20 years ago is not without hope, provided we have access to the exhibits that were recovered at the time, there’s always some potential that we can bring something new to that investigation,” he added.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris told UTV his teams were “determined”, in their bid to secure convictions.

“If you’ve been involved in unsolved murders, you should be worried,” he said. “We are conducting investigations with the purpose of bringing you to justice.”

Police are largely depending on new lines of enquiry being opened - either by members of the public coming forward with new information or by forensic developments allowing for better analysis of existing evidence.

“It’s not just a passive process of looking at what we already have,” ACC Harris explained. “We also proactively assess what more we can, what more is viable to do.”

It was new developments in forensics that made it possible to solve the murder of south Belfast pensioner Annabella Symington after more than 20 years.

DNA evidence taken from the scene of the 1989 killing was re-tested in 2010, leading to the arrest and eventual conviction of former police officer Kenneth McConnell.

And police are hoping for similar results in other cases.

Lisa Dorrian disappeared after a party on a near-deserted caravan park at Ballyhalbert close to her Co Down home in February 2005.

Lisa Dorrian

Her disappearance is not on the list of cold-cases, but the Dorrian family say they live in hope that the 25-year-old’s body will be found.

“Every day is a battle,” said her sister Joanne. “We talk about her, just can’t get over the fact that she’s not here and we haven’t found her.

“Lisa doesn’t deserve to be out there, lying somewhere. She deserves to have a grave and a proper funeral.”

John Dorrian was the last one to see his daughter alive on the Friday before she disappeared. He said what happened to Lisa is still very raw within the family.

“We live in hope that someone will come forward or something forensic will be developed where maybe it could help to pinpoint what happened or who did whatever happened.”

“What we’re determined to do is, where there is evidence or forensic evidence, to pursue that and hopefully bring killers to justice,” ACC Harris said.

LORNA SIGGINS
Irish Times
23 Nov 2011

A DIRECT personal appeal from the IRA leadership to British prime minister Harold Wilson along with codenamed contacts for those involved in secret talks to resolve the Northern conflict were revealed in documents unveiled at NUI Galway yesterday.

The documents kept by Derry businessman and mediator Brendan Duddy, which were discussed at a symposium attended by key British counter-intelligence official Michael Oatley and former senior Irish diplomat Seán Ó hUigínn at NUIG, record how Provisional republican leadership figures were codenamed “Greek tycoons” in 1981.

During attempts by British officials to resolve the 1981 hunger strikes, “Onassis” was the codename for Martin McGuinness, and “Niarchos” for Gerry Adams. The British government was known as “the Company” and the Irish government as “the Americans”. The Democratic Unionist Party was referred to as “PO”, the SDLP as “Euroferries”, and the Official Unionist Party as “Cunard”.

Duddy acted as intermediary between the British government and the IRA during three main periods of the conflict – in the early and mid 1970s, the early 1980s and between 1990 and 1993, when then Northern secretary Sir Peter Brooke decided to try to bring the IRA into a political settlement.

NUIG political science lecturer Dr Niall Ó Dochartaigh, who has studied the archive in detail, notes most accounts of the time argue the British “duped” the IRA into a 1975 ceasefire and “strung them along to weaken them militarily”.

However, the archive includes a message sent by the British to the Provisional IRA leadership in January 1975, which acknowledged this concern: “We know that the Provisionals fear that we may be stringing them along.”

It includes a letter from the IRA with a “formal and courteous tone” to Harold Wilson, also in January 1975. A telephone message from the British to the IRA that February via Duddy concludes with “We will ring you. Don’t ring us.”

Mr Oatley said the archive “shows the importance of understanding the different motivations and instances that can produce political violence”, and the “importance of dialogue”.

He said “all sorts of pressures” were used in ending conflict, but he found the notion of a “war on terror” which “lumps particular situations together” such as the Middle East and the conflict in Chechnya to be “offensive”, and there was nothing constructive to be gained by such an approach.

Mr Ó hUiginn said the archive showed the peace process had roots, “both positive and negative”, including the fact that dialogue had been going on.

Mr Duddy’s role as a mediator was “impeccable”, Mr Ó hUigínn noted, and the fact he had ensured his own ego “stayed out of the frame” was very significant.

Mr Duddy and members of his family and Prof Paul Arthur,author and former politics professor at the University of Ulster, also attended the symposium.

News Letter
22 Nov 2011

When he was first minister of Northern Ireland, David Trimble challenged Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to hold a public inquiry into Irish state collusion in creating and resourcing the Provisional IRA.

“There is reason to believe the Irish government/Fianna Fail made approaches to northern nationalists/IRA to form a northern command and separate from its Marxist attacks on the Irish state,” Mr Trimble said while in office. “PIRA came out of that with standing orders saying there were to be no attacks on the Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland government kept its side of the deal for some time.”

He asked Mr Ahern for an inquiry but the Taoiseach refused.

Peter Taylor’s ‘Sparks That Lit the Bonfire’ BBC documentary came to the same conclusions as Mr Trimble in 1993, with leading republicans, Irish intelligence officer Captain James Kelly and Irish politicians speaking at length.

Ed Moloney in his acclaimed book, the secret History of the IRA, says recently released papers show that it was the Irish Cabinet and Department of Justice who decided to create the Provisional IRA, but that Ministers Charlie Haughey and Neil Blaney ended up in the dock because they put the policy into action.

His book examines the allegation that Captain Kelly, Blaney and Haughey conspired to split the Official IRA to neutralise the politically radical and increasingly violent Dublin leadership, while creating an instrument in Northern Ireland that could be controlled by Fianna Fail.

“Cabinet papers of the day that have recently been published acquit Haughey of this particular charge; they reveal that this was a policy agreed upon by all Taoiseach Jack Lynch’s ministers in April that year, long before the August riots [in Belfast, 1969]. The papers show that the Department of Justice had recommended a policy of dividing the IRA’s rural conservatives from the urban radical and that the cabinet endorsed this. Even so, the working out of the policy put Haughey and Blaney at the centre of the scheme, almost as if it was their private freelance plan.”

Similar concerns were shared among Bogside republicans in the late 1960s, according to journalist Eamon McCann.

He was invited to a state-run training camp for republican paramilitaries in Donegal in 1969, he said.

“During that period elements of the Dublin government and military intelligence were sussing out things north of the border and were offering to take people across the border to train them with arms,” he told the News Letter. “There was considerable debate in the Bogside that if the offer was accepted it would be compromising. It was said that an offer like that from the Fianna Fail government could not be taken without putting ourselves under their control.”

Kevin Rooney
Spiked
22 Nov 2011

Imagine the scene. A dawn raid. A vanload of police officers batter down a front door. A 17-year-old boy is dragged from his home and driven away. He is charged with a crime and appears in court. His lawyers apply for bail, but the court decides his crime is too serious for that. So he is taken to a prison cell and remanded in custody.

What was his crime? Terrorism? Rape? No, this 17-year-old was imprisoned for singing a song. Where did this take place? Iran? China? Saudi Arabia? No – it was in Glasgow, Scotland, where the 17-year-old had sung songs that are now deemed by the authorities to be criminal. The youth was charged with carrying out a ‘religiously aggravated’ breach of the peace and evading arrest.

>>Read article at SPIKED

By Henry Patterson, Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster
News Letter
Tuesday 22 November 2011

Martin McGuinness’s campaign for the Irish Presidency was badly damaged by being overshadowed by the focus on his IRA past and his possible role in a number of murders.

Sinn Fein’s narrative on the Troubles was contested in the media in a way the party is not used to in Northern Ireland. In the wake of its disappointing performance, leading figures in the party have claimed that the issues of the past and particularly of victims need to be addressed in a systematic way.

While its proposal for an independent international truth commission is unlikely to be acceptable to the British government, some more coherent and balanced way of dealing with the past is needed.

The rationale behind the Eames-Bradley call for some form of Legacy Commission to deal with the past was that without it, past instances of violence and the victims they created would continue to cause polarisation and division as each community focussed on those incidents and victims they considered important.

The danger was that the past would become simply a resource to be mined for ammunition in a continuation of the ‘war’ by another means.

The response of many unionists to these arguments has been generally negative. Unionists tend to fear that ‘truth recovery’ will end up focusing on the agents of the state while neglecting the role of republican and loyalist terrorists. The implicit assumptions and language of those supporting some sort of truth commission have not helped.

Parallels with truth commissions in former military dictatorships in Latin America and with the transition in South Africa where the violence and human rights abuse came predominantly from state agents are inappropriate to Northern Ireland where terrorists were mainly responsible.

The peace process involved democratic politicians making significant political and ethical compromises with the paramilitary organisations in order to get and maintain ceasefires. Part of this process was the acceptance of former terrorists’ narratives and terminology so that those involved in paramilitary organisations are now ‘former combatants’ treated for all intents and purposes as playing a similar role in the Troubles to members of the security forces.

This is a flagrant distortion of history. The Provisionals were responsible for 1,781 deaths during the Troubles whilst the figures for the Army, RUC and UDR are 301, 50 and eight respectively.

From this perspective unionist negativity on proposals to deal with the past is understandable. However, unionists are overly defensive.

It is true that some of those who promote ‘truth recovery’ argue that this is part of a broader process of reconciliation through the emergence of an integrated and broadly acceptable version of the past. Given the depth of disputes over history of Northern Ireland this is most unlikely.

However, it is possible to envisage the creation of mechanisms which, while avoiding overly legalistic and expensive inquiries, would do much to provide a rigorous and comprehensive stock-taking of our past. Owen Paterson’s suggestion of the use of a commission of historians is an interesting and potentially fruitful avenue of progress.

Such an approach would enable us to take the longer term view of what occurred during the Troubles and above all to integrate all the different agencies and individuals involved into the analysis in a balanced and objective way. Without such an approach we will continue to have the knee-jerk and one-sided use of terms like ‘collusion’. Unionists tend to resent the use of the term when used only to refer to the British state and its agents.

Some unionists have pointed to the 1970 Arms Trial in the Republic as an example of collusion on the part of senior Irish politicians and agencies in the creation and arming of the Provisional IRA. The verdict of historians who have written on this episode is less clear-cut.

What is agreed is that two government ministers, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, did favour a direct intervention by the Irish army into Northern Ireland to generate an international incident and force a British rethink on partition.

They did this in the aftermath of serious violence in Londonderry and Belfast in August 1969. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, strongly opposed any intervention and the army command pointed to their lack of capacity to do more than hold Newry for a few hours given the overwhelming firepower of the British army and local security forces.

Despite this Haughey and Blaney used a substantial portion of the £100,000 which the government had allocated for the relief of northern Catholics displaced by the violence for the clandestine purchase of arms on the continent. These were to be imported into the Republic for transfer to ‘defence committees’ in Northern Ireland. The committees were often controlled by members of the recently formed Provisional IRA.

The main cache of arms was impounded in Antwerp but it is possible that at least some of the relief money was spent on arms and explosives that did reach the Provisionals. At this stage, without the Irish government making more of key documents of the time available it is impossible to come to any definitive conclusion on the episode.

Lynch was forced to sack the key ministers responsible when the former head of the Irish Special Branch leaked the information about the plot to the leader of the opposition in the Dail. However, when the ministers involved and others were arrested and brought to trial the charges against Blaney were dismissed and Haughey and his co-plotters were acquitted.

Lynch, who was personally appalled at the idea of giving guns to IRA men, was hostage to public opinion in the Republic which at that time regarded the IRA not as terrorists but as defenders of beleaguered Catholic communities in Northern Ireland.

He was also a prisoner of the anti-partitionist ideology of the Irish state. The Irish Press, the newspaper supportive of Fianna Fail, was at the time edited by Tim Pat Coogan and saw the outbreak of violence in the North as an opportunity to ‘complete’ the national revolution.

The conditions were being created where for the next quarter of a century the Provisionals were able to exploit the territory of the Republic as a relatively safe haven to evade security forces in the North, plan operations, raise funds and import weapons.

Even when attitudes in the Republic towards Northern Ireland became more realistic, Irish governments were wary of being portrayed as ‘collaborators’ if they took measures to improve cross-border security cooperation with the authorities in the North.

The Provisionals’ use of the territory of the Republic was a direct challenge to successive Irish governments. The IRA killed members of the Irish security forces who got in their way and threatened and intimidated others.

The most damaging event in Martin McGuinness’s presidential campaign came when he was confronted by David Kelly, whose father, an Irish soldier, had been shot dead along with a young garda, when they came upon the gang holding the kidnapped businessman, Don Tidey.

The southern dimension of the Troubles has also been raised by the Historic Enquiries Team investigation into the Kingsmills massacre and the Smithwick Tribunal’s investigation into possible collusion by members of the garda in the deaths of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan.

A balanced and comprehensive assessment of the role of the British and Irish states’ role in the Troubles should be a fundamental element in any ‘truth recovery’ process. Both governments could take the lead in this matter by establishing a commission of historians and legal experts to which should be made available all official documents which relate to the violence of the Troubles.

We will never have an agreed version of the history of the Troubles.

However, what such a commission could do was make it impossible to produce one-sided, self-justifying narratives and expect to be taken seriously. It would not be the sole mechanism for dealing with the past but it would be a sure foundation stone.

By Sarah Stack
Independent.ie
Tuesday November 22 2011

A PROMINENT republican facing tax evasion charges plans to appeal over a legal ruling that his case should be dealt with in a non-jury court.

Thomas “Slab” Murphy last week lost his challenge against the constitutionality of a law sending him for trial before the Special Criminal Court instead of a jury.

The republican appeared today before the three-judge Special Criminal Court where his solicitor, Paul Tiernan, revealed that he was lodging an appeal against the High Court ruling to the Supreme Court.

“I got instructions from Mr Murphy to appeal that decision,” said Mr Tiernan.

The case will be mentioned in the Special Criminal Court on December 21.

Murphy, of Ballybinaby, Hackballscross, Co Louth, is being prosecuted on nine charges of failing to furnish tax returns for 1996-1997 to 2004. The case was brought in 2007 after an investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau.

The 64-year-old alleged former IRA chief took legal action against the state in the High Court because he was sent for trial to the special three-judge, non-jury court.

The court usually deals with terrorism-related offences, but the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) can decide if an ordinary court is not adequate to deal with a case.

Barrister Benedict O Floinn, for the DPP, said he was anxious over the delay in the matter.

However Mr Justice Paul Butler, presiding, rejected his application to set a hearing, stating that Murphy was entitled to appeal.

News Letter
Monday 21 November 2011

UUP Deputy Leader John McCallister addresses the conference at the weekend in Newry Town Hall. Upwards of 500 members of the public attended. Sinn Fein held the fifth in a series of major conferences on the theme - ‘I dtreo Poblacht Nua - Towards a New Republic’ - in Newry Saturday evening November 19th. (Photo: Mark Pearce/Pearcemedia Northern Ireland)

THE first Ulster Unionist to address a Sinn Fein conference has said that unionists should not be afraid to take their pro-Union arguments to republicans.

On Saturday night, UUP deputy leader John McCallister spoke at a Sinn Fein public meeting organised to discuss the merits of a united Ireland.

In his speech, Mr McCallister told those in Newry Town Hall that both unionists and republicans had made mistakes in the past which they needed to acknowledge.

He told an audience which included Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and other former senior IRA members, that the terror organisation’s long campaign was immoral, sectarian and had involved the “systematic murder” of innocent Protestants and Catholics.

Mr McCallister told the News Letter that he had received “polite applause” but not the standing ovation afforded to Londonderry Presbyterian minister the Rev David Latimer when he told the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis that Martin McGuinness was “one of the true, great leaders of modern times”.

“It went well, they listened politely. In fairness to them, it wasn’t a group of Shinners gathering on a Saturday night with sycophantic love for Gerry Adams.

“Actually there were a lot of questions along the lines of: What is this ‘new Republic’ and why would I want to be part of it? I was asking some of the practical questions such as: What about our huge subvention from the Treasury — where do you get £9 billion from?”

He said that despite delivering a speech in which he denounced the “bloody and immoral actions of the IRA”, the atmosphere was “not hostile”.

“I take a very pragmatic view — Sinn Fein have a mandate and we need to engage with them in peaceful democratic politics.

“That’s what we’ve called for — and for much longer than I’ve been in politics — and now they’re doing it so unionists should never fear going to these events.

“A pro-Union message is a good message to be selling to people and we should never be afraid to go out and sell that to people.

“To be part of the fifth largest economy in the world, to be outside the Eurozone, to have your civil rights and liberties upheld — those are all strong reasons to keep the Union. And republicans still have big problems, not least that of how they fund this ‘new Republic’.”

In his address, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams insisted that republicans had “acknowledged the hurt they have inflicted”.

“Of course, as John McCallister has reminded us, to plan for the future we have to deal with the past. Sinn Fein has never shied away from this, whether on the issue of victims or on other matters,” he said.

“Dealing with the past is not easy and there is little agreement at a political level about how we do this. But that should not be an obstacle to the future. Republicans, including the IRA, have acknowledged the hurt they have inflicted.”

He added: “I very much welcome John McCallister’s contribution here this evening and the presence of other unionists at this event.”

The former West Belfast MP, now a member of the Dail for Louth, also said that all sides had a responsibility to commemorate the coming centenaries of landmarks such as the signing of the Ulster Covenant and the Easter Rising “in a way that encourages greater understanding and appreciation of the differing attitudes that exist”.

However, local victims’ campaigner Willie Frazer, who attended the event, criticised Mr McCallister’s speech.

“We have nothing to apologise for,” he said.

Mr Frazer said that he had been invited by Sinn Fein but that despite indicating that he wanted to speak he was not allowed to do so.

“Even some republicans in the audience were saying, ‘Let Willie speak’,” he said.

LORNA SIGGINS
Irish Times
22 Nov 2011

DETAILS OF the secret talks between the British government and the IRA in the mid 1970s and early 1990s are due to be made public at a conference in NUI Galway today.

The details are recorded in the personal papers of Derry fish-and-chip shop owner Brendan Duddy – dubbed the “secret peacemaker” by the BBC documentary made by British journalist Peter Taylor.

Mr Duddy’s papers were donated to the university two years ago and include notes, documents and previously unseen diaries of negotiation, along with interviews with him.

A number of prominent figures, including former Irish diplomat Seán Ó hUiginn, former senior British government official Michael Oatley and Prof Paul Arthur, honorary associate at the International Conflict Research Centre, have been invited to attend the conference at the university’s James Hardiman library today.

NUI Galway politics lecturer Dr Niall Ó Dochartaigh describes the personal archives as being of “great historical significance to all on the island of Ireland and beyond”.

Codenamed “Contact”, Mr Duddy maintained a secret channel of communication linking the British government to the IRA army council for 20 years. Both sides held intensive peace talks in the mid- 1970s and attempted to reach a negotiated settlement to the 1980-1981 hunger strikes.

Dialogue resumed again in the early 1990s, leading to the IRA ceasefire of 1994 and the 1998 Belfast Agreement.

The channel involved successive British prime ministers from Labour’s Harold Wilson to Conservative leaders Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

Its identity was “so closely guarded that it was kept secret from other members of the British cabinet”, according to Dr Ó Dochartaigh.

Irish Times
22 Nov 2011

Stormont chiefs should get expert advice before taking ownership of further military bases after the cost of decontaminating the Maze prison site soared to over £8.5 million (€9.9 million), a critical report has said.

The Northern Ireland Audit office investigation said £20.8 million has been spent on redeveloping the site, though major work is still needed before it can be put to new use.

The slow progress in redeveloping six former security force sites that were handed to the Stormont Executive eight years ago was rapped in the report.

But the document highlighted the impact on the Stormont purse of decontaminating former military bases where the presence of fuel spills, lead, asbestos or harmful chemicals has been found.

The audit report raised concerns over the extent of soil tests carried out on the adjacent Maze Prison and Long Kesh army base before the site was transferred to the ownership of Northern Ireland ministers.

“Our review of documentation offered little detail regarding the extent to which OFMDFM (Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister) carried out due diligence checks on the sites to establish the extent of remediation work that would be required following their transfer,” the report said.

“This is surprising given a condition of transfer was that ‘the Executive must bear the cost of making the sites ready for use as and when they are released’.”

OFMDFM said the British ministry of defence (MoD) had already made clear it would not carry out any decontamination, while conducting the work prior to the transfer of the lands would have delayed the process.

The audit office report predicts further security sites will become disused and recommends the creation of new protocols, plus the use of a qualified third party to evaluate land quality assessments.

The report said:

- The cost of over £8.5 million to decontaminate the former prison site “demonstrates the importance of carrying out due diligence to protect the Northern Ireland Executive from the financial burden of remediation and the cost of maintaining and in making sites safe and secure. With former security sites becoming surplus, and likely to be offered or sold to the Executive, it is important that decisions to take on responsibility for them are informed by independent professional advice and full assessment of risks”.

- It argued that costs of decontaminating the Maze/Long Kesh site could have been reduced had it avoided clearing the entire area to the level required for residential properties, and instead zoned the site in line with the development plan which foresees various types of projects, including maintaining some of the cells where inmates were held and where 10 republican hunger strikers died in 1981.

- The Audit Office said it was difficult to estimate the costs of clearing military bases. It cited how the sale of the Magherafelt base in Co Derry for £1.2 million, included a £250,000 deduction for remedial work, which to date has cost only £20,000.

- The Fort George army base was purchased by the department of Social Development in 2004 for £12 million, but the report said “subsequent ground analysis surveys uncovered extensive contamination and the estimated cost to resolve this is in the region of £4 million to £5 million”. The MoD later agreed to make a contribution and has paid £3.2 million, but it is protected under the settlement from contaminations it did not consider it was responsible for, and which the report said could prove costly to treat.

- The report also found that 14 years after its introduction in Britain, the Northern Ireland Executive has yet to bring in a key part of the Waste and Contaminated Land legislation, making it impossible to use all available inspection and regulatory powers. The report recommends the Executive introduce a “polluter should pay” principle.

Derry Journal
22 November 2011

The shooting of a 22 year-old man in the Creggan Hill area of the city on Sunday evening has been condemned by local politicians.

The victim was shot a number of times in the ankles in a house on Creggan Hill at around 7.30pm on Sunday.

A number of children were playing in the street at the time of the shooting and it has been claimed that they were threatened by masked gunmen that they would be shot.

Parents living nearby have said their children have been left traumatised by what happened and are now afraid to play outside.

Foyle SDLP MLA Pat Ramsey condemned the gunmen and described the shooting as a “despicable act.”

“It appears that this young man was the target of two masked men who shot him in both ankles.

“I have also been told that a young mother who was with her young children in the area at the time was told to go home by the masked men or she would be shot.

“This is a despicable act that has left the community of the Creggan Hill area in fear. There is absolutely no place for guns, punishment shootings or kangaroo courts in our society.

“I totally condemn this brutal attack,” he said.

Sinn Féin councillor and Derry District Policing Partnership member Maeve McLaughlin also condemned the gun attack. “This is a very worrying incident and is the second time in just a few days that guns have been used in our city.

“People do not want these actions taking place on their streets and those behind them need to stop,” she said.

Local community worker, Tommy McCourt, from Rosemount Resource Centre, said a new way has to be found to end punishment-sytle attacks. “This should not be happening, and something needs to be put in place to stop this happening.

“Engagement is what has removed violence, and we need to engage with people to stop this happening,” he said.

BBC
22 Nov 2011

For the first time, the police in Derry have published pictures of people who failed to turn up to court on their website.

They say it follows their success in publishing images in newspapers of those suspected of being involved in summer rioting.

About 150 people were arrested and 300 warrants cleared as part of Operation Relentless.

Inspector Jon Burrows said the website “allows to widen our search area”.

“This is the first time we have used the PSNI website to order to locate people wanted on warrant.

“We have pursued every reasonable option to find these people via other avenues, including releasing their images in local papers.

“The PSNI website allows people who may not have access to newspapers to look up the images and see if they can help us find these people.

“Police are also checking passenger lists at ports to locate persons who have failed to turn up at court and to date three people have been arrested at airports.

“Anyone who has outstanding warrants should surrender themselves to the police or the court before booking holidays or taking flights or ferries or face possible arrest at an inconvenient time.”

BBC
22 Nov 2011

A new book on the Orange Order has found that more than 60% of its members agree with the view that “most Catholics are IRA sympathisers”.

One of the authors, Professor Jon Tonge from Liverpool University, said the findings were “disturbing”.

They are based on the views of 1,500 members from across Northern Ireland.

The book also notes that nine out of 10 Orangemen think Protestants are discriminated against.

Only 6% of respondents said they would be in favour of one of their children marrying a Catholic.

However, Mr Tonge said this was largely representative of the Northern Irish community as a whole.

“Only 9% of marriages are mixed here, so in that sense the Orange Order is not that far removed,” he added.

Mr Tonge said the book, Loyal to the Core: Orangeism and Britishness in Northern Ireland, was the first of its kind and had the full backing of the Order.

“They wanted a full and frank survey. We did offer concessions, but in the end they chose not to hold anything back,” he added.

“They wanted a warts and all survey.”

BBC
22 Nov 2011

The ‘Battle of the Bogside’ painting of Bernadette Devlin was created by Robert Ballagh in 1999.

A selection of paintings depicting the seven signatories of the 1916 proclamation are to be auctioned off by a golf club in the Irish Republic.

The portraits have graced the stairway of the Druids Glen Golf Resort in County Wicklow since it opened in 1995.

But the current owners have decided that the paintings no longer suit the “ambience” of the clubhouse and are planning to sell them.

Artist Robert Ballagh, who was commissioned to create the pencil drawings by the club’s previous owner Hugh ‘Hugo’ Flinn, told the Irish Independent he was disappointed by the decision.

“Sadly, Hugo is no longer with us and it seems the new management have decided to divest the house of these proudly nationalist emblems,” he added.

“The portraits of the 1916 signatories have been there since Druids Glen opened and I believe they should remain there,” he added.

Mr Flinn died last year and the Druids Glen Resort is now headed by chief executive Richard Collins.

Mr Ballagh said he was “shocked” at the 8-10,000 euros (£7-8,500) guide price for the set of seven portraits.

Other lots in the sale, also created by Mr Ballagh, include portraits of Eamon de Valera and John Costello with a guide price of between 1,500 euros and 2,000 euros each (£1,200-1,700), and an oil painting of Bernadette Devlin which has an estimate of 8-10,000 euros (£7-8,500).

“I liked Hugo. I did all of this work at very, very cheap rates but if you look at estimates in the catalogue for the exhibition, they are not selling at cheap rates,” said Mr Ballagh.

Respected

The works will go under the hammer in Whyte’s “Important Irish Art” auction which takes place in the RDS in Dublin on 28 November.

Ian Whyte, managing director of the auctioneers, defended the guide prices for the paintings.

The pencil drawing of James Connolly and six other signatories of the 1916 proclamation are up for grabs

“There has been good interest so far. Robert Ballagh is very well respected and his paintings are very sought after,” he said.

“So they should sell well.”

Mr Whyte said the current management of the resort felt it needed to reduce its collection of 30 very similar nationalist portraits.

“They are retaining some of the art in one of the rooms. In the drawing room they have two very large paintings of Edward Carson and Michael Collins.

“Those will stay, along with portraits of Wolfe Tone and Charles Stuart Parnell. There are a lot of sculptures on the grounds, and they are staying too. So it is not like they are throwing everything out.”

The money raised will be used to fund a refurbishment of the golf club.

Mr Whyte said the works had been replaced by a temporary exhibition showcasing contemporary Irish artists.

Mr Ballagh’s work will be on display for at the RDS in Dublin this weekend ahead of the auction on 28 November.

BBC
22 Nov 2011

A judge who found a County Monaghan man liable for the Omagh bombing did not clarify what weight was put on his later conviction for Real IRA membership, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Senior judges have set out their reasons for directing a retrial in the case of Seamus Daly, one of the men sued over the atrocity.

They also identified an error in the handling of evidence against him.

No-one has been criminally convicted for the August 1998 attack which claimed 29 lives, including the mother of unborn twins, and injured hundreds more.

Daly, 40, was one of four men found legally liable for the outrage in June 2009 following a landmark civil action taken by relatives of some victims.

Jailed Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt, fellow senior republican Liam Campbell, and Colm Murphy were also held responsible.

Mr Justice Morgan, now Northern Ireland’s lord chief justice, ordered them to pay £1.6m in compensation.

In July, the Court of Appeal dismissed challenges to the outcome brought by McKevitt and Campbell, a County Louth man currently fighting extradition to Lithuania over arms smuggling allegations.

They are now preparing to take their case before the Supreme Court in London.

But judges did uphold the appeals of Murphy and Daly. At the time they ordered that Murphy, a Dundalk-based builder and publican, should face a retrial.

Daly is also to face fresh civil proceedings, despite his lawyers arguing it would be unfair to put him through another hearing.

Explaining the reasons for making such an order, Lord Justice Coghlin said on Tuesday it appeared indisputable that the case against him would not have succeeded without a statement from Denis O’Connor, who allegedly received a call on a phone owned by Daly on the day of the Omagh bomb.

“The learned trial judge misdirected himself in taking into account the consistency between statements made by Denis O’Connor on the afternoon of 23 February 1999 and in December 2001,” he said.

“Had he appreciated his error it is not possible to say whether and to what extent that would have affected the weight he would have placed upon the afternoon statement of O’Connor.”

It was acknowledged that Daly’s conviction for Real IRA membership after the Omagh bombing was a factor that could have been taken into account.

But Lord Justice Coghlin said there was no clear indication whether this was done by the judge.

“In such circumstances, despite the earlier specific references, it is not possible to ascertain whether he took into account the conviction and, if so, what degree of weight he placed upon it.”