SAOIRSE32

BBC

28 September 2005

The two-sentence statement from the IRA, announcing that it had disposed of its arms, ended with an enigma: Who exactly is P O’Neill of the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin, the name that appears at the end of IRA statements?

Martin McGuinness: Gave interviews in early 1970s

Given the well-documented history of the Irish republican movement’s leadership during the past 30 years, P O’Neill is probably nobody but a committee, perhaps the so-called “Army Council” of seven leading republicans.

But the use of the name on scores of IRA public statements, which have sought to justify the movement’s armed conflict, poses a question: just how does a supposedly secret organisation communicate with the outside world?

In the early days of the 20th century republican movement, everybody knew who they were. The men who led the 1916 Dublin uprising signed the declaration of independence - and in doing so most of them signed their death warrants.

When violence came to the streets of Northern Ireland, and the Provisional IRA emerged at the turn of the 1970s, journalists could interview leading republicans, including one Martin McGuinness MP - not least because most of them believed it was going to be a short conflict.

But that all changed as the conflict became entrenched. The IRA reorganised into a clandestine paramilitary operation, its membership went underground, and the need for publicity became more important.

One of the first signs of this new publicity were the “Brownie” letters. In the mid-1970s, Gerry Adams, now Sinn Fein president, was among the republican internees at Long Kesh, the camp later turned into the Maze prison. These smuggled letters, published in Republican News/An Phoblacht, depicted life inside.

“My name? No, I won’t put my name to it,” he wrote in the first appearance. “You’d take an awful reddner [blushing face] in here over the name up in print. I’ll settle for a pen name - how does Brownie grab you?”

The emerging republican leadership were putting their thoughts to the public - but they would do so while maintaining a façade of secrecy.

Danny Morrison, who became Sinn Fein’s publicity chief in the late 1970s, was given the job of focusing political debate for the party through the pages of Republican News - and developing a propaganda war against the state.

“We were held back at first because in the late 1970s the real crisis was what was starting to happen in the H-Blocks [the battle over political rights for paramilitary prisoners],” says Mr Morrison, now a writer and a commentator.

“The media at the time did not realise how much effort we had to put in to those campaigns and protests.

“There were very few public faces of Sinn Fein at that time,” he says. “I for instance would have been introduced to a newly arrived journalist under a false name. It was only after people were put up in court, flushed out, that we thought, we could exploit this for a public profile.”

To opponents of republicanism, however, Sinn Fein’s publicists were nothing more than apologists for terrorism, who used slick PR techniques to disguise the true nature of the movement. Furthermore many people saw in the IRA’s use of the P O’Neill nom de guerre an attempt to romanticise the organisation.

Self-publishing

Kris Brown of Belfast’s Linen Hall Library is responsible for managing an enormous and unique archive of political material that charts the publicity and propaganda war. The collection runs to hundreds of thousands of documents.

“We often think of the protests and radical disturbances as being driven by television,” says Dr Brown. “But many of the most influential groups [during the Troubles] were quite small and fell back on self-publishing because they had no access to the mainstream media.

“They were producing their leaflets and other material from above pubs, in community centres and distributing it any way they could.”

These restrictions led to some novel tactics. In Derry, IRA sympathisers launched a Christmas postal service, complete with its own stamps, for instance. Loyalist groups also began self-publishing, developing some fairly sophisticated periodicals pushing their particular cause and politics.

Dr Brown says charting the development of this material is vital to understanding the history of the conflict.

But one thing we may never know is the origins of P O’Neill. There’s no clear evidence of the name’s birth in the Linen Hall Library papers - and even the former Sinn Fein publicity director says he doesn’t know.

“In the early days [the 1920s] individual IRA commanders used to sign statements,” says Danny Morrison.

“I’m fairly sure that the name S O’Neill was used in Belfast in the 1940s, but I don’t think we know the exact provenance of P O’Neill.”

There is, of course, one final stack of papers that may have the answer.

It’s the archivist’s dream to see the inner workings of a secret organisation - and the papers that Dr Kris Brown would be delighted to add one day to the Linen Hall Library’s collections are the IRA’s own internal documents.

“I think the last thing to be decommissioned will be the IRA’s internal documents,” he says. “There has to be paperwork, but I would presume it’s not on a large scale and kept very secure for obvious reasons.

“If we do get to see it, it will probably only be a private donation - decades from now.”

BBC

Loyalist violence erupted in the city after the Whiterock parade

Belfast City Council has passed a motion condemning several days of violence which erupted in the city after last month’s Whiterock parade.

The motion, introduced by Alliance councillor Mervyn Jones, accused the Orange Order of “deflecting blame for the violence away from the rioters”.

It also criticised some unionist politicians for “acting as apologists” for the trouble.

“I think what happened did great damage to Belfast,” Mr Jones said.

“I thought there was a great lack of leadership within the unionist community.”

Violence began in the city after the Parades Commission refused to allow the order’s Whiterock march through a nationalist area of north Belfast.

A proposed DUP amendment to Monday night’s motion was defeated.

Sinn Féin

Published: 3 October, 2005

Sinn Féin General Secretary Mitchel McLaughlin MLA and Spokesperson on Equality and Human Rights, Catríona Ruane MLA will hold a press conference tomorrow, Tuesday 4th October, at 11.30 am in our Sevastopol Street Offices on the Falls Road to the launch of the party’s document on Equality.

Speaking ahead of the publication and launch Ms Ruane said:

“It is clear that despite decades of fair employment legislation and the clear legal commitments in the Good Friday Agreement that the lack of political will has meant that inequality, deprivation and discrimination have not been effectively challenged.

“The reality is that a combination of unionist political and establishment opposition to the implementation of the equality agenda has meant that we are all the losers. Strong and effective equality legislation, implementation and policy should make a real difference wherever discrimination is.

“The evidence shows that deprivation and poverty are greater in predominantly nationalist areas. Nationalists are under-represented in the workforce, the unemployment differential has remained virtually unchanged and that in Education, Health and Housing nationalists fair far worse. There is also a specific problem in the allocation of investment by agencies such as Invest NI and in the composition of the Civil Service, particularly at senior levels.” ENDS

Daily Ireland

Máirtín Ó Muilleoir

Judge Peter Cory said at the weekend that a security agency had withheld documents from his inquiry team investigating allegations of collusion.
The Canadian judge was giving a rare public address at the annual meeting of the Irish American Unity Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“When I thought the report was ready, I wrote to all the security agencies again and asked: ‘Have you given me everything?’ As a result, I got a whole bunch more [documents] and had to add an addendum,” he said.
Judge Cory said he had had to observe stringent security measures while examining documents held at New Scotland Yard relating to the 1989 murder of human-rights solicitor Pat Finucane.
“Documents led to other documents. Some places were extremely difficult. Some would even deny they exist.
“One lady from an agency left her purse behind when delivering documents and, when I called her number to tell her, the first question was: ‘How did you get this number?’
“Then they said: ‘We don’t exist and anyhow, we don’t know her.’
“MI5 were more difficult. If I made notes, they had to see them and ensure they accompanied me until they were put in the safe,” he said.
“I never went anywhere on their premises alone. Even if I went to the john, they came with me — the first time that had happened since kindergarten.”
Judge Cory said his report on the Pat Finucane killing, the first report to be finished, had been taken out of Britain by the Canadian High Commissioner in a diplomatic pouch and given to the Canadian secret service for safekeeping.
The Cory reports recommended public inquiries into the killings of Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson, Pat Finucane, Billy Wright and RUC superintendents Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan.
Judge Cory has condemned British efforts to limit the scope of the Pat Finucane inquiry as “intolerable” and said he could not imagine “any self-respecting Canadian judge accepting an appointment to any inquiry constituted under the new proposed act”.
Judge Cory said the inquiries legislation proposed by the British government was much weaker than the 1921 Public Inquiry Act. He said it would create an “intolerable Alice in Wonderland situation” where those being investigated could veto the inquiry. He said his first inkling of his appointment had come in a call from The Irish Times two weeks before he was asked to meet the Irish ambassador to Canada and the British High Commissioner.
“I told the reporter he must be mistaken as I knew nothing about the matter,” he added.
He said he thought long and hard before accepting his brief.
“Then I thought: ‘Remember the Beatitudes and remember the peacemakers.’ Perhaps this would be atonement for my sins and, at my age, I needed a fairly swift atonement,” he joked.
He said there was sufficient evidence to warrant public inquiries in the cases of Finucane, Nelson, Hamill and Wright.
“People say: Why worry about a bully like Billy Wright? But we have to remember the innate dignity of every human being,” he said.
Judge Cory’s report showed that security cameras had been out of order in the H-block where Wright was shot dead by Irish National Liberation Army gunmen, Wright’s visiting schedule was available to the INLA prisoners, and a prison warder who oversaw the courtyard had been stood down.
“Was there collusion? There certainly was,” Judge Cory said.
He said his prayers were for peace in Ireland.
“It was an awfully dirty war on both sides and there is such a need to put an end to it and ensure fairness and justice on all sides, but particularly for minorities,” he said.

Belfast Telegraph

By Noel McAdam
03 October 2005

Sinn Fein is to attend the Conservative Party conference for the first time - more than 20 years after the IRA bombed the Tories at Brighton.

MP Conor Murphy is due to become the first republican to address the Tory faithful gathered in Blackpool for their annual get-together.

The Sinn Fein member is due to speak in a debate on the fringes of the four-day conference tomorrow, which is also expected to include a DUP representative.

The Newry and Armagh MP said today it would also be the first platform the party had shared with the DUP since the IRA’s ‘final’ decommissioning last week.

“Sinn Fein want to see the opportunity which this historic move now provides grasped and built upon in the time ahead,” he said.

“I will be the first Irish republican to speak at an event attached to the British Conservative Party conference. Given the record of the British Tory party and their policy towards Ireland over many years this event will provide for the first time an opportunity for Sinn Fein to place on the record the fact that there are those who share a different vision of the future.”

Mr Murphy said he would tell the Tory ranks if they supported the Good Friday Agreement they needed to join other parties in making the restoration of a Stormont power-sharing administration as a priority.

Five people were killed and the wife of Tory peer Lord Tebbit was paralysed when the Provisionals attempted to wipe out Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet in the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984.

Irish Independent

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern returned to the attack on Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens yesterday, saying the alternative parties of Government “cannot agree on the weather.”

The Fianna Fail leader painted the prospect of a Rainbow Coalition - which is now riding high in the opinion polls - as a Government that “couldn’t make up its mind.”

Mr Ahern suggested that such internal differences could put Ireland’s low direct personal taxes and its low external debt at risk.

But Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny countered in a television interview last night that Fianna Fail had still not ruled out sharing power with Sinn Fein.

He emphasised that Fine Gael had already committed itself to keeping Sinn Fein on the backbenches.

Mr Kenny told Ursula Halligan on TV3 that voters should beware of Fianna Fail’s refusal to give guarantees against having former gunmen in Government.

The Taoiseach however cast grave doubt on his party forming a coalition with Sinn Fein in an RTE radio interview yesterday lunchtime.

He said there would be so many differences of policy between the parties that he could not see such an arrangement lasting “five days, let alone five years.”

“It wouldn’t work,” he added.

Senan Molony
Political Correspondent

Irish Independent

SPEAKING rights in the Dail chamber for Sinn Fein’s Westminster MPs were firmly ruled out by the Taoiseach yesterday.

The Sinn Fein demand for its elected Northern politicians to be allowed contribute to debates in this jurisdiction is just not a runner, Mr Ahern indicated.

He said he was prepared to put the recommendations of an all-party report on enhancing North-South political links to all parties in the Dail. But he warned: “They will not approve speaking rights in the House. It is not something that is going to be agreed.”

Mr Ahern said on RTE Radio he expected that Sinn Fein MPs and the party’s Northern-elected MEPs could be allowed to make contributions before Oireachtas committees. But such is an invitation that can be extended to any person, and Sinn Fein would not have it as of right.

The Taoiseach claimed that more progress had been made in the past decade in relation to political problems in Ireland than in the previous 800 years. But he also sought to emphasise that there were no side deals in relation to either the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe or the Columbia Three.

Mr Ahern said the Columbia Three - Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McAuley - were part of the legal process. It was “no longer a political issue. The rule of law applies.”

It would be “entirely wrong” for him as Head of Government to interfere in any way in the legal considerations taking place. The case of the Castlereagh Five - convicted over the killing of Det Garda Jerry McCabe - was similarly “out of the equation”. The idea that they could be released early was “now over”, he declared.

He added that any person still on the run in connection with the Adare shooting of Det Garda McCabe and his colleague, Det Garda Ben O’Sullivan, in 1996, was still wanted by the gardai and would face justice if they ever returned to Ireland.

In a Sky News interview yesterday, the Taoiseach said he fully understood the concerns of the DUP as to the trustworthiness of the IRA on decommissioning, but still hoped to see a restoration of power-sharing in the North next year.

“I would like to see it as early as possible. I would not see a reason for delaying unduly if we get a positive report on the IRA from the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) in January,” he added.

Senan Molony
Political Correspondent

Belfast Telegraph

By Noel McAdam
03 October 2005

The absence of terrorist and criminal activity alone will not qualify Sinn Fein or any organisation for government, the DUP has warned.

Party secretary Nigel Dodds charged the Northern Ireland Office and the Dublin government with already having “written their scripts” in anticipation of the Independent Monitoring Commissioning (IMC) giving the IRA a “clean bill of health”.

His comments came after Secretary of State Peter Hain said early intelligence reports indicated the IRA is already delivering on its pledge to end violence for good.

Mr Dodds said after his party met the IMC last week it was clear the Commission is “not in the business of giving anyone a clean bill of health”.

“So it will be a matter of interpretation and I have no doubt that the NIO, Dublin and all the usual suspects have already written their scripts.

“But the Secretary of State must realise that the mere absence of activity, whether terrorist or criminal, does not in itself qualify any organistion for government.”

The North Belfast MP said the Government was demanding unionism should jump when the structures of terror and the proceeds of crime are still “part and parcel” of the republican movement - but his party would not be pushed.

Mr Hain made clear an end to the Provisionals’ activities must also include punishment attacks, intelligence gathering and targetting.

But if the “crucial” IMC report in January confirmed a cessation of all IRA activity, the Government would then be urging fresh political negotiations to restore devolution.

Mr Hain also said his direct rule team intends to go ahead with as much of its reforms package as possible before the anticipated resumption of a power-sharing administration at Stormont.

And that will include water charges, increases in rates and dealing with rural hospitals and the rationalisation of schools.

Mr Hain told the BBC Politics Show he would be working “flat out” in the coming months on the restoration of devolution.

“So far the reports reaching me suggest they (the IRA) are delivering on that - but it is early days yet.”

BBC

The Heath government introduced internment in Northern Ireland

The interrogation of imprisoned IRA terror suspects was the subject of top level army and political debate in 1972, newly released papers reveal.

Prime Minister Edward Heath, senior ministers and army officers were asked to define “interrogation-in-depth” by a Labour MP, George Cunningham.

Mr Cunningham wrote to Mr Heath to congratulate him on the dropping of some tactics such as hooding prisoners.

But the MP was concerned that other techniques of “pressurising” remained.

Medical experts

After the British government introduced internment - detention without trial - in Northern Ireland in 1971 a number of suspected IRA members were imprisoned.

Detainees thought likely to have important information were physically weakened through sleep deprivation and a bread and water diet.

Mr Cunningham expressed his concerns to the PM

They were then spread-eagled for hours against a wall with hoods over their heads and subjected to disorientating electronic white noise.

By 1972 the controversial techniques had been dropped, and in papers newly released by the National Archives, Mr Cunningham praised Mr Heath for the banning of “wall standing, hooding, noise, deprivation of sleep and semi-starvation”.

But he added: “You said that these five techniques would be banned but that interrogation-in-depth would continue.

“Besides the doubt this has caused in my mind, I have had enquiries from some of the medical experts who gave evidence to the Parker Inquiry as to whether your replies mean that some techniques for pressurising prisoners will continue.”

Mr Cunningham was Labour, later SDP, MP for Islington South between 1970 and 1983.

Parliamentary authority

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) was asked to compose a reply, and one memo includes a note requesting “to see George Cunningham’s letter to the PM, we are not entirely out of the woods yet”.

Long Kesh internment camp in 1972

After much correspondence between ministers and civil servants, it was decided that interrogations would be based on civil police practice.

In one memo Mr Heath also says that if any new interrogation techniques were to be brought in it “would mean that the government of the day would almost certainly have to seek the authority of Parliament”.

The Irish government made a formal complaint to the European Commission for Human Rights and later the European Court of Human Rights, about the controversial interrogation techniques.

The Commission found Britain guilty of torture, but the European Court ruled the treatment was inhuman and degrading but did not constitute torture.

BBC

Police were on duty in the cemetery

Loyalist protesters who gathered outside Carnmoney Cemetery in County Antrim threatened to descreate Catholic graves, a local priest has said.

It happened during a blessing ceremony, which has been the focus of loyalist paramilitary threats in the past.

Parish priest Father Dan Whyte said people were “very upset”.

“I was disappointed when I learned that later there was a protest that degenerated into a noisy chorus of sectarian verbal assault,” he said.

He also said that “verbal threats of grave desecration” had been made.

Fr Whyte said that he had hoped the situation would have returned to normal, particularly since the ceremony had been delayed from September to allow “temperatures to cool off”.

Sinn Fein councillor Briege Meehan condemned the protests.

‘Vile’

“Once again the Catholic community in Newtownabbey have been subjected to naked sectarian hatred and bigotry in its most vile form as they paid devotion to their deceased loved ones in a dignified and non-triumphalist manner,” she said.

She called on unionist politicians to ensure the protests do not happen again.

Fr Whyte said threats to desecrate graves were made

Two protests were held at the cemetery in Newtownabbey where Catholics had gathered for an annual blessing of their graves ceremony.

Police said an initial demonstration was peaceful. A second protest was held later in the day and the O’Neill Road was closed.

The ceremony was delayed, but was able to proceed after a short time.

Speaking after Sunday’s ceremony, before learning that threats had been made, Fr Whyte, of St Bernard’s Church, Glengormley, said: “Our objection was that in previous years, the protest was a riotous protest, the purpose of which was to prevent us from saying our prayers.

Diversions

“That wasn’t the case today.

“I’m thinking perhaps that the bad old days of Carnmoney Cemetery Sunday are behind us now.”

Traffic diversions were put in place outside the cemetery for the initial demonstration.

It is understood that community representatives were present and helped police ensure that the protest passed without incident.

In September, the graves ceremony was postponed by Father Whyte following widespread violence across Northern Ireland.

Carnmoney graveyard has been attacked on several occasions and headstones have been smashed.

BBC ON THIS DAY

03 October 1981

Click to view - poster from CAIN

Senior Republican figures and inmates’ families have indicated that the hunger strike in the Maze prison is effectively over.

>>VIDEO

Republican leaders yesterday visited Belfast’s Maze prison to tell IRA prisoners that forcing concessions from the British government through the hunger strike was futile.

Although six IRA men are still refusing food, five of their families have made it clear they will authorise medical treatment once they lose consciousness.

Richard McAuley, of Provisional Sinn Fein said “unless prisoners can find a means of overcoming the intervention of relatives they must reassess the hunger strike”.

Bobbie Sands began the protest in March. He threatened to fast to death unless terrorist inmates won concessions over living conditions.

Mr Sands died on 5 May. The other Republican prisoners in the H-Block of the Maze Prison then issued a statement in which they vowed to continue the hunger-strike unless their demands were met.

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Humphrey Atkins accepted back in July that negotiation was possible but only if the hunger strike was called off.

This and later moves were rejected by the prisoners. Ten inmates have since starved themselves to death in seven months of continuous protest.

Speculation is now focusing on the new Ulster Secretary James Prior. He may be willing to meet some of the prisoner’s demands if it is clear that the strike is over.

The strikers have a number of key demands. They want the right to wear their own clothes, the right to refrain from prison work and the right to associate freely between other Republican prisoners.

They are also demanding visits and parcels once a week and the right to have lost remission on sentences restored. These concessions would effectively grant them political status, which the British Government withdrew in 1976.

Father Faul, an assistant Maze prison chaplain believes that if 50% of remission on sentences lost by the republican prisoners for protesting was restored, up to 140 men at the Maze could walk free.

“They have served their sentences and in horrendous conditions,” he said.

In Context

The British Government was anxious not to make the Maze a symbolic battleground for hearts and minds.

But a propaganda battle was nonetheless fought. Hunger striker’s families appearing on US breakfast TV were notable coups.

Hunger strikers attracted a high level of international sympathy

A contemporary survey of 73 newspapers around the world suggested world opinion was sympathetic to the Republican cause.

In efforts to resolve the crisis both the European Commission of Human Rights and the Roman Catholic Church attempted to intervene.

Deputy Irish PM Michael O’Leary accused Margaret Thatcher of obduracy.

Mrs Thatcher, in a press conference, stuck to her position: “Crime is crime is crime. It is not political.”

Sixty-four civilians, police and soldiers died in violence fomented during the strikes.

The Ulster Secretary James Prior did manage to negotiate a package of concessions with the Maze prisoners - three days after the hunger strikes ended.