SAOIRSE32

An Phoblacht

Just your average freedom-fighting socialist feminist - Remembering the Past

BY SHANE Mac THOMÁIS

Photo: Helena Moloney with Maud Gonne

Helena Moloney was born in Dublin in 1883. At the age of 19, she was deeply inspired by a speech given by Maud Gonne and decided to join Inghinidhe na hÉireann.

On the day Helena went to join up at Maud Gonne’s house in Rathgar, she arrived in the middle of a police raid. On being asked by the police if she was a member, she replied that she was and was proud to be, whereupon she was promptly arrested. From the beginning, Helena played a prominent role in the organisation and, due to Maud Gonne dividing her time between Ireland and France, Helena effectively ran it from 1903 onwards.

In her role of organiser Helena decided to set up a newspaper called Bean na hÉireann, of which she became the editor. It advocated militancy, separatism, and feminism. In later life, Helena recalled that she had no experience in writing, let alone editing, and was only assisted with the first edition of the paper. Nonetheless, under Helena’s editorship, the paper became quite successful and James Connolly, then in America, wrote letters of encouragement and support.

It was Helena who recruited Constance Markievicz into the ranks of Inghinidhe na hÉireann and in 1909, with Markievicz, she became one of the founding members of Na Fianna. Helena belonged to a dramatic company and acted in plays in the Abbey Theatre, many of which were written by members of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and once she played the role of the mother in Cathleen Ní Houlihan, with Lady Gregory playing Cathleen.

In 1911, King George V proposed a visit to Dublin. Helena was at the forefront of the protests against the visit and was arrested for throwing a stone through a pro-British shop window on Grafton Street. When she refused to pay the fine she was sentenced to one month in prison and became the first female political prisoner since members of the Ladies Land League were arrested in the 1880s. She served only 14 days because her fine was paid, unbeknownst to her, by Anna Parnell, who wanted Helena to complete the work of editing the history of the Ladies Land League, titled The Tale of the Great Sham.

In 1913, Helena joined the Labour Movement and began to work closely with James Connolly. She helped set up a Co-op shop on Eden Quay in Dublin. The shop employed women, blacklegged by employers for striking, to make shirts.

In 1915, Connolly asked her to become the Secretary of the Irish Women’s Workers Union. Helena joined the Irish Citizen Army and trained with them in the run up to the rising. On one occasion, when the police were raiding Liberty Hall without a warrant, Helena held them at gunpoint until they decided to leave. After they left, an armed guard was placed on the hall to protect the printing press from seizure.

During the 1916 Rising, Helena joined Seán Connolly’s City Hall detachment as an officer of the ICA. The detachment was made up of nine women and 16 men. In the first attack on Dublin Castle, Helena shot at a British soldier as grenades were thrown into the guardhouse. They failed to go off and Seán Connolly ordered the detachment to occupy the building. During the ensuing battle, Connolly was shot while sniping on the roof. Helena crawled to his fallen body and he died with his head cupped in her hands.

When City Hall fell to the British, Helena was imprisoned in Dublin Castle. A few hours later, when they went to question her, they found the lock half off the door and Helena’s fingers bleeding from trying to escape. Helena was then moved to Kilmainham Jail, where she again tried to escape by starting a tunnel with an iron spoon. Helena was tried before a military court, found guilty and imprisoned in Lewis and Aylesbury Jails. She was released in December 1916.

During the Tan War, Helena worked with Contance Markievicz in the Ministry of Labour and was an aide to Michael Collins and Liam Mellows. She also served as a District Justice in the republican courts in Rathmines.

Helena opposed the Treaty and vehemently supported the Republican side during the Civil War. She continued to work for labour and republican causes after the war.

She was active with the Women’s Prisoner’s Defence League and the People’s Rights Association during the 1930s. In 1931 with Frank Ryan, in 44 Parnell Square, she helped found Saor Éire, a republican left organisation that was immediately attacked by the clergy. The party was outlawed by Fianna Fáil. In 1934, when Fianna Fail started to imprison IRA men, scarcely a year after they had helped the party to power, Helena called a meeting at College Green. Over 15,000 turned up to hear speeches from Maud Gonne, Maurice Twomey and Helena.

She was elected an urban district councillor for Rathmines and Rathgar in Dublin City and fought to re-house families living in tenement housing. Helena campaigned against Fianna Fáil’s Conditions of Employments Bill, which curtailed women’s rights. Subsequently, she became a member of Mná na hÉireann, which sought equal rights and opportunities for women. In 1936, she was the first woman to become president of the Irish Trade Union Congress.

Helena continued to work for the causes of socialism and republicanism she believed in until illness forced her to retire from public life in 1946.

On 29 January 1967, 38 years ago, Helena Moloney died of pneumonia in Dublin at the age of 84. She is buried in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.

An Phoblacht

Sinn Féin MEPs to bring Finucane case to Europe

Photo: Sinn Féin MEPs Mary Lou McDonald and Bairbre de Brún with John and Martin Finucane

Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin Mary Lou McDonald on Wednesday afternoon delivered a speech in the European Parliament on the case of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane. The Dublin MEP said that she was following up on commitments made to the Finucane family last week, that Sinn Féin would raise the issue in the European Parliament.

“Sinn Féin will be raising the Finucane case with the European Council, Commission, and Parliament in the near future. However today, I wanted to take this opportunity to initially raise the matter and put the British Government on notice that it cannot hide the truth from either the Finucane family or the European Parliament for much longer,” said the Dublin MEP.

McDonald and her colleague, Bairbre de Brún MEP, met with members of the Finucane family on Friday last, at which they vowed to raise the killing of Pat Finucane in the European Parliament.

The MEPs met with the human rights lawyer’s widow Geraldine, son John and brother Martin at the offices of Madden and Finucane solicitors in Belfast and promised to explore ways of bringing the 1989 killing to the attention of the Parliament.

In April last year, Canadian judge Peter Cory recommended that the British Government set up public inquiries into the cases of human rights lawyers Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, Portadown nationalist Robert Hamill as well as the death of loyalist killer Billy Wright.

However, the British undertook to carry out inquiries into three of the killings, stalling on the Finucane inquiry until after the trial of loyalist Ken Barrett.

Convicted

Barrett was convicted of killing Pat Finucane in September 2004 and in November, the British announced an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Finucane’s killing.

As the British proposed to hold some of the inquiry behind closed doors and withhold vital documents on the grounds of ‘national security’, the Finucane family said they would not cooperate with it and are continuing their campaign for a fully independent, public inquiry into the killing.

Speaking after the meeting, de Brún said it was not surprising that the British Government is still resisting a full public inquiry into the killing.

“After all, the policy of employing loyalist death squads was endorsed at the highest political level,” she said. “Successive British governments’ have never accepted responsibility for the deaths that resulted from this policy. The Finucane family, and hundreds like them, require closure. Instead, they have been met with walls of silence, denials and cover-ups for many years.

“We intend to bring international pressure to bear on the British Government to hold a full independent inquiry into his death.”

An Phoblacht

Irish Celtic fans attacked

Coaches carrying Celtic fans returning from Parkhead last Saturday were attacked by loyalists who had gathered to protest against a Bloody Sunday Commemoration march through Glasgow city centre.

One supporter told An Phoblacht how parents pushed their children under the seats of the buses to protect them, as bricks and stones struck the vehicles.

The man said that Scottish police officers wouldn’t let any supporters off the buses.

“We were just sitting ducks for the crowd of loyalists who kept on attacking the buses. We couldn’t go anywhere”.

Meanwhile, Celtic fans from Belfast have complained at being detained and questioned about the Northern Bank robbery.

Sinn Féin Assembly member Fra McCann said he had written to both the Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell and Celtic Football Club to highlight the ongoing harassment of Irish supporters by Scottish police.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation Of Auschwitz

Mass grave at Belsen, another Nazi death camp

Guardian

‘This must not happen again’

Staff and agencies
Thursday January 27, 2005

People walk behind barbed wire at Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27 2005, the 60th anniversary of the camp’s liberation. Photograph: Jockel Finck/AP

The commander of the Soviet troops who liberated Auschwitz today said that the world should never forget what his men found there.

As world leaders joined survivors at the Nazi death camp to remember the millions of people killed in the Holocaust, Anatoly Shapiro recalled the day, 60 years ago, when he entered Auschwitz.

“I saw the faces of the people we liberated - they went through hell,” he said via a video link from the US, where he now lives. “I want to say to all people around the world - this should not happen again.”

Built by Nazi Germany in occupied southern Poland, Auschwitz had initially been a labour camp for Polish prisoners, but became a death factory for European Jews.

The ceremony started with the sound of an approaching train on the tracks that brought more than 1 million people to their deaths. It took place by the sidings where Nazi doctors decided which of the new arrivals were fit to be worked to death and which were to be taken to the gas chambers.

“For a former inmate of Auschwitz, it is an unimaginable and overwhelming emotion to be able to speak in this cemetery without graves, the largest one in the history of Europe,” said survivor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who later became Poland’s foreign minister.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said the sight of rail tracks and the gas chambers would always lead people to ask how the Holocaust could happen.

“Auschwitz calls out not only to our memory but to our mind,” he said. “We see what future the fascist Reich had planned for a civilised Europe.”

Moshe Katsav, the Israeli president, said Auschwitz was the “largest burial ground of the Jewish people”. He warned of the re-emergence of anti-semitism in Europe and said it was up to the present generation of leaders to make sure the lessons of Auschwitz were not forgotten.

The ceremony ended with the playing of a Jewish horn - the shofar - and the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

Mr Putin, Mr Katsav, the US vice president, Dick Cheney, and the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, later joined Aleksander Kwasniewski, thePolish president, and scores of Red Army veterans and survivors to light candles at the camp’s main extermination centre, Birkenau.

Six million Jews died in the Nazi camps, along with millions of others, including Roma gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents of the Nazis, homosexuals, beggars, alcoholics and mentally ill and disabled people.

In Auschwitz-Birkenau - the most notorious of the complexes - 1.5 million people died in the gas chambers or of disease, starvation, abuse and exhaustion.

Soviet troops reached the camp on January 27 1945, and found 7,000 survivors, many of them barely alive. The retreating Nazis had driven most of the prisoners who still had strength to walk out into the snow on a “death march” toward camps further west.

“The snow was falling like today, we were dressed in stripes and some of us had bare feet,” 84-year-old Polish survivor Kazimierz Orlowski said. “These were horrible times.”

International memorials

Twenty-nine world leaders were in attendance. The Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, recalled his father’s ordeal in the death camp as he spoke in nearby Krakow before the ceremony began.

“My father was a wounded soldier and he was in Auschwitz. He had a tattoo 11367 on his chest,” he said.

“This is a sacred place for me and my family. This is the place where my father suffered.”

He said on his last trip to Auschwitz he had gathered up soil which he presented to a meeting of Ukrainian Jews.

The German president, Horst Köhler, attended the memorial event, but was not scheduled to speak in a token acknowledgment of his country’s role as perpetrator of the Holocaust.

In Britain, the Queen, Tony Blair and religious leaders joined more than 600 victims from the concentration camps and ghettos at Westminster Hall.

One of the survivors, 74-year-old Susan Pollack, said she had not been able to talk about her suffering at the hands of the Nazis for many years afterwards.

Budapest-born Mrs Pollack, then aged 14, had already been in Belsen for a year - having been transferred from Auschwitz - when Allied troops liberated the camp.

“My mother was gassed on arrival at Auschwitz. My father was taken away, and I still don’t know what happened to him. I was imbued by shame. The process of dehumanisation had affected my life,” she said.

Major Dick Williams, 84, one of the first Allied soldiers to enter Belsen, said he had been shown the devastation by two SS officers.

“I could not believe what I was seeing - the horror that was there. You had to pick your way through the camp because of the people who had died, some hanging from the barbed wire.”

Former soldier Charles Salt, 87, who entered the Belsen camp in Germany shortly after it was liberated by the British in 1945, escorted the Duke of Edinburgh to his place at the ceremony.

Prince Harry, who sparked outrage with his Nazi soldier fancy dress uniform, is not attending an official event.

Survivors who returned to Auschwitz for the commemoration stressed that each new generation needed to be educated about the Holocaust.

“It’s very important. You are the last generation that can talk to the survivors, we are every day less,” Trudy Spira, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 with her family as an 11-year-old from Slovakia, told reporters in Krakow.

“We can give living testimony … to let the world know, to try to get them to learn even though they don’t, so that it doesn’t happen again.”

The German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, will this evening attend memorial events in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, once a vibrant hub of Jewish culture.

More than 65,000 Greek Jews - almost 90% of the country’s pre-war Jewish population - were killed during the second world war, many of them at Auschwitz. There are now around 5,000 Jews in Greece.

David Saltiel, head of Thessaloniki’s 1,100-strong Jewish community, said the memorials did not concern Jews alone. “It is an event to mark acts of barbarism, and it concerns anyone who believes in the value of freedom,” he added.

An Phoblacht

Spotlight on Special Court as Gardaí are charged with perjury

BY SEÁN BRADY

Photo: Colm Murphy pictured after his conviction was overturned

The Court of Criminal Appeal’s overturning of the conviction of Colm Murphy has highlighted, once again, the nature of the notorious, non-jury Special Criminal Court.

Murphy was jailed at the Special Court in 2002 for conspiring to cause the Omagh explosion in August 1998. Appeal court judges on Friday 21 January supported Murphy’s claim that the conviction was unsafe and a retrial has been ordered.

Justice Nicholas Kearns, the presiding judge, said the court had decided that Murphy’s conviction was unsafe on two grounds. The first concerned the Special Court’s approach to the alteration of police interview notes and the evidence given in this respect by two Garda officers, subsequently charged with perjury. Kearns said the second ground was the Special Court’s invasion of Murphy’s presumption of innocence in relation to his previous convictions.

For ten years, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has called on the government to scrap the non-jury Special Criminal Court in line with its various commitments in relation to the Peace Process.

The Special Court has been criticised by, among others, Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The UN body said in July 1993 that there was no justification for the continued use of the Special Criminal Court.

Controversial convictions

Literally thousands of people have been tried by the court since it was re-established in 1972. Some of the most controversial convictions in Irish legal history were delivered by it, including the Sallins Mail Train and the Peter Pringle cases.

With the advent of the Peace Process, a new development in the use of the Special Crimnal Court has been the number of cases tried by it which have had no political connections. Since the cessation in 1994, the intention of the state has been to use the Court for criminal trials and controversial cases, such as those involving members of the anti-drugs movement in Dublin, thus abolishing jury trial by the back door.

Established under draconian “emergency” legislation, the Special Criminal Court undermines the notion of justice in the 26 Counties, just as the Diplock Courts have done in the Six Counties. It does away with the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”, as those who come before it are convicted on the word of a Garda or on undisclosed or secret ‘evidence’.

The Special Court formed an important element in an array of repressive legislation enacted by Dublin Governments in the early 1970s in response to the outbreak of conflict in the North and pressure from the British to act against republicans. This saw the rapid absorption of the 26-County state into Britain’s counter-insurgency strategy in Ireland and witnessed the imposition of media censorship, Garda abuse of detainees and the general erosion of civil liberties. Sinn Féin has for years campaigned on the issue of emergency powers and their abuse in the 26 Counties.

Secret Garda files

Late last year and for the first time in history, the Special Criminal Court examined secret Garda files relating to the trial of two Dublin republicans, Niall Binead and Kenneth O’Donohue. The head of the Garda Special Branch, Detective Chief Superintendent Philip Kelly, brought three ‘files’ to court, which were examined by the three judges in private in their chambers. After this examination the files were sealed by the members of the court and returned to the Gardaí. It was the first time in an IRA membership trial that the court has inspected secret Garda files on the accused. After examining these files, Justice Diarmuid O’ Donovan, presiding, said the court was satisfied Kelly had adequate information that each of the accused was a member of the IRA. This case in particular highlighted the Kafkaesque nature of the court and its operation as a mere conveyor belt for imprisoning political suspects.

Ten years into the Peace Process there has been no progress on the issue of criminal justice in the Southern state. In fact, the current Minister for Justice has declared his intention to expand rather than shut down the Special Criminal Court.

Sinn Féin recently tabled a Dáil Bill to repeal the Offences Against the State Acts 1939-1998, arguing that repressive legislation has no place in a democratic state in the 21st Century. This is particularly the case given that the country is ten years into the Peace Process, eight years into a continuous IRA cessation, and seven years after the conclusion of the Good Friday Agreement, which stipulates that these laws should be reviewed, reformed and dispensed with as circumstances permit.

In the context of a review of the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin published its repeal Bill to remind the government of its responsibility and to urge members of the Opposition to confront their own creeping complacency, by which they have allowed repressive emergency legislation to become part of the ordinary law.

An Phoblacht

Goodbye and good riddance to PSNI barracks

Up to 150 republicans gathered at Andersonstown PSNI Barracks in West Belfast on Sunday last to greet the closure of a building that has stood as a symbol of the British military oppression of nationalists for over 100 years.

As a press conference got under way inside the barracks, with senior PSNI members extolling the merits of RUC and PSNI operations in the area, up to 50 of the demonstrators invaded the barracks.

Standing in the forecourt of the paramilitary base, the protesters brought their message of collusion into a building from where the killers of IRA Volunteer Pearse Jordan set out in 1992. Jordan was unarmed when members of an RUC undercover unit ambushed and him shot dead on the Falls Road, just hundreds of yards from the barracks, in 1992.

Fian John Dempsey was shot dead on the morning of 8 July 1981, within hours of the death of Hunger Striker Joe McDonnell, when British soldiers secreted in the Falls Road bus depot ambushed him. The British unit was almost certainly based in Andersonstown barracks and set up their ambush on the unarmed Dempsey just yards from the barracks.

Welcoming the closure of the barracks, Hugh Jordan, Pearse’s father, said it had been a constant reminder of what happened.

Huge spy towers

Not alone was the barracks a physical symbol of British oppression, it was also the eyes and ears of the crown forces. Its huge spy towers overlooked Milltown Cemetery when loyalist Michael Stone killed three mourners attending the funerals of Volunteers Mairéad Farrell, Dan McCann and Seán Savage, shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in March 1988.

Loyalist attacks on the homes of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams and former councillor Joe Austin and the shootings at the Kennedy Way cleansing depot, where two workers were shot dead, were carried out under the gaze of the barracks spy towers, yet the attackers escaped with impunity.

The barracks officially closed at 5.30pm on Sunday 23 January, and work to demolish it is due to begin in the middle of February.

Constant delays

Gerry Adams, commenting on the closure, said “this blot on the landscape of West Belfast should have been closed a long time ago. Its existence is a constant reminder of the depths to which the state will go to oppress a local community. And the constant delays in agreeing its closure is evidence of the refusal of securocrats within the British system and in the PSNI to the necessary process of demilitarisation.

“This paramilitary Barracks stands on an important junction in West Belfast and the land should now be made available to the local community to use for a project or projects which can make a positive contribution to the life of this area.”

• Meanwhile, Sinn Féin councillor for the Short Strand area of East Belfast, Joe O’Donnell has welcomed the news that Mountpottinger PSNI base in the middle of the Short Strand is one of up to ten PSNI bases set to close.

The barracks, which dominates the small nationalist enclave, began life as an RIC barracks and has long been a blight on the lives of Short Strand residents. Numerous republicans taken into custody by the RUC would have been brought to Mountpottinger before being transferred to the notorious Castlereagh interrogation centre.

Opened fire

In December 1983, an RUC man leaving the base opened fire on three nationalist youths at the junction of Thompson Street, shooting 18-year-old Tony Dawson dead.

Said Joe O’Donnell: “The maintenance of Mountpottinger barracks has been a constant reminder to the local community of the official state policy of keeping the croppies in their place. If nationalist areas are to benefit from the Peace Process, then military installations such as Mountpottinger need to be removed.”

O’Donnell called for a social housing scheme on the site of the barracks “to alleviate the serious housing shortage in the Short Strand”.

An Phoblacht

Myth making and nation building

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Photo: Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams after their meeting with the Dublin Government on Tuesday

Commenting on the American media of his day, film maker John Ford once remarked that when the legend becomes accepted as fact, the only thing left to do is print the legend. And in recent weeks just such a process has been taking place within the British and Irish media.

It followed the collapse of negotiations precipitated by the DUP leader’s demand for the public humiliation of republicans and the opportunity presented by the Northern Bank robbery. It began with media speculation about the projected opinion of Hugh Orde, the PSNI Chief Constable and former London Metropolitan officer.

At this point we had three areas, in the terminology of Hollywood, of myth making, involving the (1) speculation of the media about an (2) opinion set in the (3) future. In doing this, the media was able to draw on a rich seam of notions with a long history of promotion by British counter insurgency and already prevalent within the public discourse.

The second phase involved confirmation of his position by the PSNI Chief Constable and the media upping the ante by further fudging the differences between speculation and inside information, opinion and evidence, fantasy and fact.

The media had prophesied Orde would confirm their imaginings and despite the fact that he said nothing which changed the status of the evidence — which still stands as none at all — in newsprint and broadcast commentary speculation was transformed into assertion.

As far as the media was concerned, the IRA was guilty and the only question to be asked was about the likely political fallout and how to punish Sinn Féin. Few journalists stopped to ask why one scenario necessarily flowed from the other. It was as if the engine pushing the whole process forward had been designed to attack Sinn Féin and now we’d arrived at the station.

Suddenly the platform was crowded with commuters eager to add their penny’s worth of condemnation. Amongst the usual passengers of anti-Agreement unionism, the SDLP was running in all directions and Bertie Ahern appeared to have joined the throng. There was a great deal of noise and smoke but as the air cleared, a few simple truths still remained standing.

No matter how much the British, unionism and elements within the South might wish republicans were excluded and marginalised, it remained a pure fantasy. Phase three of the post November onslaught was all about admitting it.

This week, the two governments announced a resumption of talks with Sinn Féin. Senior British Government sources admitted, as the largest nationalist party, any meaningful way forward must include Sinn Féin. Everyone was cross and tired but nothing much had changed.

Criminalisation as a strategy pursued by the British against republicans is nothing new and has been pursued since the imposition of partition and the creation of a sectarian unionist dominated body politic. Following the 1981 Hunger Strikes, criminalisation as a strategy was effectively defeated by international and national public opinion, but if the corpse was dead it has repeatedly refused to lie down.

The resurrection of criminalisation by sections of the media, the British establishment and unionists as a response to the collapse of negotiations just before Christmas came as no surprise to republicans. At every stage in the peace process, a crisis in unionism has routinely been translated into an attempt to criminalise republicans.

But if criminalisation as a failed British strategy still walks amongst us, it is a shadow of its former self. At one time, criminalisation was a prelude to brutal repression including death, torture and incarceration. Now it is little more than a propaganda ploy played out by reactionary forces hoping to undermine Sinn Féin’s growing electoral potential, and even their most devoted anti-republican advocates are already discouraged and pessimistic.

Liam Clarke of the Sunday Times was momentarily cock-a-hoop last week at the possibility of the SDLP doing “battle with the Provos”. But even before the SDLP leadership put paid to the ramblings of McGrady and McDonnell, Clarke was filled with doom and gloom. Any attempt to exclude Sinn Féin by capitulating to the unionist agenda was likely to hasten the SDLP’s inevitable decline. The SDLP risks being “snuffed out in one fell swoop”, concluded Clarke.

The SDLP had “set its sights on recovering support” after the bank robbery said the Sunday Business Post’s Paul T Colgan but there were “pitfalls” ahead and any decision by the SDLP to enter an executive without Sinn Féin would “bury the party”.

For Clarke, the “political battle” for the North is almost over and Sinn Féin success in eclipsing the SDLP in the forthcoming Westminster elections will build “a strong bridgehead” for the party to grow in the South. In the South, partitionist nationalism might be as fervently anti-republican as Liam Clarke but they’re also equally as pessimistic about containing Sinn Féin.

In the Six Counties the media has already largely admitted that blaming the IRA for the Northern Bank robbery “will have no bearing on the ballot box” and Sinn Féin’s position as the voice of nationalism is “unlikely to change”. In the 26 Counties a series of opinion polls told much the same story.

The “majority wants talks with SF on North deal to continue” ran the front page headlines of the Irish Times and worse still, even people who believed the IRA carried out the bank robbery also believed Sinn Féin was a fit partner of government in the 26 Counties.

After weeks of newsprint dedicated to portraying republicans as criminals and liars, no one was more disappointed than the Irish Times in their apparent inability to manipulate public opinion. And it wasn’t just Sinn Féin voters, “a significant proportion of the total electorate would be happy to see people associated with such behaviour participating in government”, said the Irish Times.

It’s an “appaling state of affairs”, ran the editorial. The “public are confused” and the blame lies with Bertie Ahern. “He has repeatedly failed to draw a line with the Sinn Féin leadership about what is and what is not acceptable behaviour. Luckily McDowell was there.” Without McDowell “the issue of criminality would not have become an issue for the Irish Government,” said the Irish Times.

A crisis in the media to manipulate public opinion in favour of the status quo is swiftly translated by the media’s political commentators into a crisis of state and their rhetoric is all dressed up in the borrowed rags of Britain’s criminalisation discourse.

“One of the downsides of the Peace Process,” writes the editor of the Sunday Tribune, “has been the erosion of democratic standards. That slide has been facilitated by the casual attitude of the Irish and British Governments to the criminal activities of republicans.”

Pat Leahy, writing in the Sunday Business Post, admits that the crisis is rooted in Sinn Féin’s electoral threat to Fianna Fáil and the rest of the southern political establishment.

“A certain amount of the vehemence of the media and political reaction of recent weeks can probably be ascribed to a certain amount of pent up frustration with Sinn Féin’s electoral success and seemingly inexorably increasing support in recent years,” writes Leahy.

Peel away the nonsense and what lies at the core of it all is plain enough to see. It is not a crisis of criminality, as David Adams, writing in the Irish Times, suggests. Instead of inclusive democracy we hoped for, says David Adams, “we are now closer to having built a mafia state”.

The crisis is not in the credibility of Sinn Féin: “Sinn Féin’s electoral support remains rock solid”, says Matt Cooper of the SBP. There is no crisis in democracy, as suggested by the Sunday Tribune. The crisis is not flowing from the Good Friday Agreement, “simply a mandate to re-define ongoing criminality as peace”, as Brenda Power of the Sunday Times suggests.

It is a crisis in Partition. The imposition of partition by definition outlawed aspirations of re-unification, whether by military, political or social means. In this, republicans have always been outside the law, beyond the Pale and their aspirations have been repeatedly criminalised. The unravelling of an unstable and unsustainable sectarian state in the Six Counties will necessarily rock the political establishment both sides of the border. And there will be tantrums and tears before bedtime.

Belfast Telegraph

Quarter of casualty cases drink-related

By Sarah Brett
sbrett@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
27 January 2005

At least a quarter of all admissions to casualty rooms in the North West’s two main hospitals are drink-related, it can be revealed today.

Londonderry’s Altnagelvin Hospital and Letterkenny General Hospital have both confirmed that their emergency departments are inundated with admissions related to drinking, estimating the figure at one in four and rising.

Accident and Emergency Consultant at Altnagelvin, Dr Alan McKinney, today said that alcohol is the single most important factor in preventable injury in the region.

“We have major difficulties with alcohol-related violence and assault and serious problems with general health, mental health and every type of accident you can think of, from car accidents to accidents in the home,” he said.

“In my experience alcohol becomes a factor in injuries from the age of 13 onwards.

“People just don’t take it seriously and have this cavalier attitude that ‘everybody has a little drink now and then’.

“But the population of drinkers is increasing all the time as is the amount of alcohol they consume.

“Perhaps most worrying is the explosive mixture of young people and binge drinking which is something that urgently needs to be addressed from all quarters.”

The figures for Letterkenny Hospital emerged yesterday when the North West Alcohol Forum hit out at recent price wars to reduce the price of alcohol.

Stressing the strength of his views, Chairman Denis Bradley said it was “a defining moment in the drinking culture of Ireland”.

While he acknowledged that publicans had to earn a living, he added that they “should not be allowed to do so on the back of the health and well-being of the people of this country”.

Belfast Telegraph

Provo victim Jean’s family hit back

By Marie Foy
27 January 2005

The family of IRA murder victim Jean McConville today hit back at claims that her killing was not a crime.

The family said they were sickened and devastated over controversial remarks made by Sinn Fein chairman Mitchel McLaughlin.

The McConvilles said that the endorsement of his comments from other members of Sinn Fein had added immensely to their pain.

Mrs McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her west Belfast home in December 1972 and killed by the IRA. Her body was missing for 31 years.

Speaking on behalf of her family, Michael McConville said: “To leave a family of ten without a mother was morally wrong and can only be viewed as a criminal act of the worst kind.

“When our mother was taken we were left orphaned and our family ripped apart as we were all put into care. We grew up not knowing each other.

“Her murder was denied and her body secretly buried and yet this is not viewed by Sinn Fein as a crime.

“What happened to our mother was inhuman, just like all those named as ‘the disappeared’ that were treated in the same way.

“Their families were left with years of uncertainty dealing with the pain and grief of not knowing what happened and where their loved ones remains rest.”

He called on Mr McLaughlin to resign and said those who supported him should “hang their heads in shame”.

“Our mother was an innocent woman who was killed for her compassion and kindness,” he said.

“For so long we have sought to have closure and a grave to go to. All we want now is the wrong to be acknowledged and for our mother’s name to be cleared so that she might rest in peace.”

Mitchel McLaughlin controversially claimed the use of an IRA court martial to sentence Mrs McConville to death meant the killing was not a crime.

Belfast Telegraph

Unionists’ fury at closure of army base
Decision ’simply beggars belief’

By Ashleigh Wallace
awallace@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
27 January 2005

The political fallout surrounding the decision to close a military base in Dungannon with the subsequent removal of 500 soldiers continued today.

And as expected, while the SDLP and Sinn Fein welcomed the closure, both the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party condemned yesterday’s announcement by Chief Constable Huge Orde that Killymeal House will be closing in six months time.

It is understood soldiers currently working from the military base, from the Kings Own British Army, will now be sent to Iraq.

Mr Orde said the decision to close the Co Tyrone army base was taken following “full consultation” with the general officer commanding in Northern Ireland.

He also stressed the closure would not affect the Army’s ability to support the PSNI, when required.

The local MP, Sinn Fein’s Michelle Gildernew, said: “For people throughout Tyrone, the closure of Killymeale barracks in Dungannon cannot come soon enough.

“It is vital that this land is put to best use for the people of Dungannon.”

Also welcoming the closure was local SDLP Assembly member Tommy Gallagher, who said the dismantling of the base was “a step in the right direction.”

He added: “The wish of most people in the north at this time is to see the closure and removal of all oppressive army bases and watch towers.”

However, the DUP’s Maurice Morrow reacted with fury to Mr Orde’s decision which he claimed “beggars belief” and “defies logic.”

The local Assembly member said: “As the Chief Constable prepares to dismantle yet another security base in south Tyrone, no doubt the Provos are preparing their next bank raid, murder, knee-capping or other despicable act.”

Also condemning the closure was the UUP’s Tom Elliott, who said the closure was premature in the current political climate.

He also suggested the closure was due to “political expediency” rather than “operational necessity.”

Belfast Telegraph

Ahern shows fury at SF ‘betrayal’

By Brian Walker and Noel McAdam
27 January 2005

Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern have revealed the extent of their sense of betrayal by republicans as the political stalemate in the aftermath of the Northern Bank raid deepens.

Taoiseach Mr Ahern launched a full-sc ale attack on Sinn Fein as the Dail resumed after it’s Christmas break and disclosed there had been heated exchanges at his meeting with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

He also confirmed that the issue of the release of the IRA killers of Garda Jerry McCabe is now off the table.

Mr Ahern said: “What I find really offensive, is that there was an ability to turn off all punishment beatings while negotiations were in progress, but as soon as the negotiations failed there was a string of them - they are again a nightly occurrence. I will give Sinn Féin full marks for discipline, but not for anything else.”

As Sinn Fein TD Caoimhghin O Caolain shouted “shame”, Mr Ahern asserted that the view that democratic politics could be developed while criminality contained had been tolerated for some time - but could no longer be sustained.

The depth of his anger and loss of patience with Sinn Fein was dramatically revealed as he eyeballed Mr O Caolain and then detailed a number of recent attacks, including incidents in the Short Strand and on the Lower Falls, for which the IRA is thought responsibile.

Belfast Telegraph

Picket plan over lawyer

By David Gordon
dgordon@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
27 January 2005

The Law Society’s Northern Ireland office is to be picketed by protesters seeking to overturn disciplinary action against a prominent solicitor.

Belfast-based lawyer Padraigin Drinan has recently been barred from running her own legal practice after an inquiry.

Announcing the decision earlier this month, the Law Society said an independent tribunal had imposed the disclipinary action after concluding that Ms Drinan “was not functioning at any acceptable level as a single practitioner”.

Groups who have been represented by the solicitor met last night to plan a protest campaign.

This is due to begin with a picket at the Law Society’s Belfast headquarters at lunchtime tomorrow.

Eileen Calder, from the Rape Crisis Centre, was among those who attended yesterday’s meeting.

She said a list of other organisations were represented, including the Committee on the Administration of Justice, Anti-Racist Network, Falls Women’s Centre, Traveller Movement (NI), Anti-Poverty Network and NIPSA.

Messages of support were received from the Garvaghy Road and Ormeau Road Residents Groups and the Chinese Welfare Association.

BBC

Witness set to deny IRA gun role

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry will sit in special session in London to hear the evidence of an anonymous witness.

The inquiry wants to question him about a 1972 RUC interview note in which he is recorded as saying he was an IRA man who fired a rifle on Bloody Sunday.

Witness X is going to tell the tribunal he knows nothing about the note, that he was not in the IRA and not at the Bogside civil rights march that day.

He will testify via video link and be screened from public view.

The inquiry has been investigating the deaths of 14 civilians shot by soldiers during a civil rights march in Londonderry in January 1972.

The Bloody Sunday families will watch the proceedings on video screens in Londonderry.

But they will not see Witness X, they will only hear his voice.

Witness X has asked for these security measures because his job takes him into loyalist areas of the north west.

Medical reasons

Thursday’s hearing is due to start at about 1700 GMT and is not expected to last more than a couple of hours.

It was thought the tribunal had finally ended last November, after seven years and at a cost of about £150m.

Witness X had been due to appear last January, but withdrew citing medical reasons.

The Bloody Sunday inquiry was established in 1998 by Prime Minister Tony Blair after a campaign by families of those killed and injured.

Lord Saville of Newdigate and the Commonwealth judges accompanying him on the inquiry began hearing evidence in March 2000.

The inquiry has heard evidence from leading politicians, including the prime minister at the time, Sir Edward Heath, civilians, policemen, soldiers and IRA members.

Lord Saville’s final report and conclusions are not expected to be made public until the summer.

BBC

Envoy declines Sinn Fein meeting

US special envoy Mitchell Reiss declined a meeting

The US special envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, has declined to meet Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly, US sources have told the BBC.

Mr Kelly was visiting the State Department on Tuesday, but was granted a meeting with lower level officials.

The MLA is in America to give Sinn Fein’s perspective on the political scene since the £26.5m bank robbery.

Police have blamed the IRA for the raid at the Northern Bank on 20 December, but republicans have denied this.

However, Sinn Fein has said Mr Kelly had never expected to meet Mr Reiss in Washington, but had the meeting he expected with State Department officials.

The party said Mr Reiss had previously spoken to Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams on the telephone.

Mr Adams is due to hold talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair at his country residence at Chequers on Friday.

The prime minister has defended the meeting, but said he would make it clear to Mr Adams the need for exclusively peaceful means.

Meanwhile, the BBC has also been told that the White House has not yet finalised the arrangements for this year’s St Patrick’s Day festivities.

There has been some speculation that the festivities could be downgraded to include only a shamrock ceremony involving the US President and the Irish Premier Bertie Ahern.

US sources said they believed there would be a Northern Ireland aspect to the festivities, but a final decision would not be made for another month.

BBC

Attacks ‘linked to loyalist feud’

A car was burnt out in the latest attack in north Belfast

Unprovoked attacks on two men in north Belfast are linked to a loyalist feud, an SDLP politician has said.

Alban Maginness said the two Catholic men may have been beaten by a loyalist gang as a “diversionary” tactic to overstretch the security forces.

Police patrols have been stepped up in the area to deal with an upsurge in violence between rival factions.

Thirty petrol bombs were found during searches in north Belfast on Wednesday, and a taxi was attacked.

There has been growing violence in a dispute between the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and the rival Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

On Monday night, a gang wielding baseball bats attacked a cyclist at Duncairn Gardens.

A solicitor later sustained serious head injuries after being beaten in the driveway of his house in Waterloo Gardens.

Mr Maginness, a North Belfast assembly member, said: “The problem for the ordinary population in north Belfast is that this spills over and, in particular, the Catholic population is then targeted.

The UVF and LVF are embroiled in a feud

“It seems to me that it may be some form of diversionary action being taken by loyalists in north Belfast to overstretch the police and the security forces so that they are ineffective in terms of dealing with the internecine dispute that’s between the LVF and the UVF.”

A taxi parked in Silverstream Avenue, in the north of the city, was petrol bombed at about midnight on Wednesday.

Its back window was smashed with a brick and a bomb thrown inside.

Neighbours extinguished the blaze with a hose but the interior of the vehicle was destroyed.

It is believed the car owner used to work for a firm partly owned by prominent loyalist Jackie Mahood.

The firm closed two days ago after 10 of its cars were burnt out.

A haul of petrol bombs was discovered in a house in the mainly loyalist Ballysillan area on Wednesday evening.

A quantity of drugs was also seized during the planned security operation. One man was arrested.

PSNI District Commander, Superintendent Mike Little, said police in the north Belfast area were determined to crack down on crime.

“This seizure demonstrates the police service’s commitment to crack down and tackle all kinds of criminality in north Belfast,” he said.