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In this issue:
1. Republican Sinn Féin protest at loyalist march
2. Republican prisoner victimised in Maghaberry jail
3. Another Basque political prisoner killed by Spanish repression
4. Call for investigation into DNA evidence of loyalist murders
5. M15 withheld information from RUC on Omagh
6. Three bricklayers released from jail
7. Successful function in Lurgan
8. Prisons for profit
1 Márta / March 2006
A police report of a planned sit-down protest by Republican Sinn Féin on the occasion of last Saturday’s (February 25) loyalist march which has been quoted in Leinster House is without foundation. It is mere speculation and is not true.
The matter of the loyalist march through the centre of Dublin was discussed repeatedly at Ard-Chomhairle meetings. Our information on the growing level of disquiet and opposition to it was much more accurate than that which it appears was available to the “powers that be”.
We sought to give this situation a political focus and the sole woman staff member who was in An Ard-Oifig on Monday, February 20 did not refuse to give the facts to a Garda Inspector when he visited without notice.
All was in the open and was carried on the front page of the January and February issues of SAOIRSE. Republican Sinn Féin carried out its protest picket as planned and departed from the scene in an orderly manner when the march was cancelled.
Earlier we had laid a wreath at the memorial to the 33 people killed in the Dublin-Monaghan loyalist bombings in 1974. All through our time in Cavendish Row we were corralled off by police barriers and an open space from the crowd which gathered in O’Connell Street.
In point of fact we were never in O’Connell Street but located ourselves in Cavendish Row, a small street which connects Parnell Square and O’Connell Street. Banner, placards and leaflets were all there for public scrutiny and the media were constantly in attendance throughout our presence there and can vouch for what we are saying.
The principal leaflet was entitled “An address to the People of Ireland” which made a special appeal to those of the Unionist political persuasion. It asked them to reconsider our ÉIRE NUA programme for a new four-province Federal Ireland including a nine-county Ulster in which unionists would have a working majority, but nationalists would be within reach of power.
We held a press conference three days earlier (Wednesday, February 22) in a Dublin hotel at which we gave interviews to UTV among others. Nothing was hidden but false accusations have been made. Rumour and public house talk is no substitute for accurate information.
We declared this loyalist march to be ill-advised. We believe any attempted repetition of it to be even more ill-advised.
ENDS
By Cormac O’Keeffe
GARDAÍ were given an anonymous letter stating that the Continuity IRA was going to target last Saturday’s Love Ulster rally in Dublin, according to the garda report into the riots.
Garda bosses also held six meetings with Dublin City Council to ensure that all building materials on O’Connell Street would be securely kept behind barriers.
The report said “most of the missiles” fired at gardaí came from these sites.
It also found a “significantly larger number” of gardaí were in place for the rally than there normally would be for a protest.
A summary of the garda report given to Justice Minister Michael McDowell was published yesterday.
It said: “The intelligence indicated that Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) and the Continuity Irish Republican Army (CIRA) intended to mount a counter-demonstration in the form of a sit-down protest to stop the Love Ulster Rally proceedings.
“One anonymous letter was sent to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to the effect that the rally was to be a target of the CIRA.”
The garda report said a “threat assessment” of the event was carried out based on the “available intelligence” and the experience of gardaí.
It said the RSF “declined to engage in a meaningful manner” regarding their counter-protest.
It also found that in meetings, Dublin City Council “agreed that all building materials would be securely kept behind barriers and would be secured on the street”.
“On the day, the site of the renovations at Upper O’Connell Street created significant difficulties for the policing of the hooligan elements that had congregated and joined the counter demonstration.
“Most of the missiles thrown, with the exception of billiard/golf balls and two petrol bombs, came from this site after hooligan elements breached the fencing mounted by the city council.”
The report said that a group of 50 RSF/CIRA members at the top of Parnell Street were joined by a “large number of youths from nearby public houses”.
It said 348 gardaí were present at the top of O’Connell Street, including 65 public order, or riot, police. There were also 39 members of the Special Detective Unit and 58 local plain clothes personnel in the area. The report said a water cannon was considered, but ruled out.
It said a tactical decision was made not to advance the rioters past the junction of Henry Street for danger of pushing them across the river towards the Love Ulster rally, which had gone by bus to the Dáil.
The report said reinforcements were called “immediately it became clear that gardaí were facing substantial violence” and said these, including 47 riot police, arrived within “a short period”.
It said the garda helicopter was not available during the riots as it had developed technical faults.
By Michael McHugh
01 March 2006
The first steps to reopen the Ulster Canal are to be announced by the Government in the coming weeks.
Boaters will be able to travel from Lough Neagh to Blackwatertown in Co Armagh and from Lough Erne to Clones.
The news follows 20 years of campaigning by members of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland and has been welcomed by public representatives.
The canal has been unusable since 1929 after being used to transport materials from 1841.
A total of 10 miles are likely to be navigable once work is complete with much of the money expected to come from European sources.
President of the association, Brian Cassels said he was delighted to see progress.
“This is brilliant news, not only for waterway users but also for people who like to walk along waterways and enjoy the scenery.
“Maghery on Lough Neagh will become a tourist attraction and it will experience much-needed regeneration in terms of people coming into the area.
“This is good news for everybody, it will bring people to these areas, like Blackwatertown, which have been overlooked for investment. In fact there has been little investment in towns like that since the canal was closed.”
A £470,000 project to reopen the section from Maghery to the motorway’s junction with the Coalisland road will begin next month.
The canal is 46 miles long and the latest work would leave approximately 30 miles to be restored between Blackwatertown and Clones.
01/03/2006 - 13:41:10
The Irish Cancer Society has warned parents that they are putting their children at risk by smoking in the home.
The society has published a survey to coincide with National No Smoking Day showing that 20% of parents who smoke do so every day in front of their children.
It says exposing children to second-hand smoke in the home is equivalent to them smoking between 60 and 150 cigarettes-a-year.
This leaves them at a greater risk of developing serious chest and ear infections, as well as ailments like asthma and even cot death.
They are also twice as likely to take up smoking themselves.
Meanwhile, a survey by Nicorette has found that many smokers are hoping to quit the habit this Lent.
The company said one-third of respondents to its survey were planning to give something up for Lent, with one-fifth of these saying they hoped to quit smoking.
It said male respondents were more inclined to give up the habit than their female counterparts.
01/03/2006 - 14:52:27
The Democratic Unionists will veto any attempt to go back to the type of devolution which existed in the North under the Good Friday Agreement, a senior member of the party warned today.
As Sinn Féin travelled to Dublin to discuss British and Irish government plans to revive the Northern Ireland Assembly, Democratic Unionist MEP Jim Allister accused Gerry Adams’ party of adopting the same belligerent attitude in talks as republican protesters who opposed the loyalist “Love Ulster” rally in Dublin on Saturday.
He also told Queen’s University’s Democratic Unionist Association in Belfast if there was to be a return to devolution it would have to be a radical departure from the previous model at Stormont.
Mr Allister said: “Generically devolution is desirable, but not essential.
“In the Belfast Agreement form it is patently unacceptable, inherently unstable and destructive of unionist interests.
“We saw that on the three execrable occasions when it was foisted upon us - ministers running departments as fiefdoms, shutting hospitals at will, abolishing the 11 plus in pique, and all in defiance of the elected Assembly.
“Malevolent direct rule has nothing to teach Sinn Féin as to how to abuse ministerial office.
“Little wonder that the DUP is resolute that we’re not taking Ulster back to such misery.
“We do have a veto and we will use it!
“No, if there is to be devolution, then, it must be on a fresh and radically different basis, where the Assembly, not the ard fheis, has the final say on ministerial decisions.”
Talks sources indicated last night that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern have been working on a road map to devolution which will be put to the Northern Ireland Assembly parties in the coming weeks.
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain will sound out the province’s politicians at meetings on March 8 on legislative changes to the way the Assembly will operate in the future in the event of there being a return to power sharing.
These could be included in the Northern Ireland Bill currently winding its way through Parliament.
It is believed proposals will then be put to the parties on the path back to devolution.
But while British government sources insist London and Dublin have yet to agree the exact shape of these proposals, nationalists and unionists suspect they will involve a shadow Assembly with the 108 MLAs returning to a debating chamber or to possibly scrutinise the work of British ministers through committees.
The DUP has advocated a Shadow Assembly as part of a two-phase return to devolution.
However, Sinn Féin and the SDLP have been more critical of the proposal.
Ahead of their meeting with Mr Ahern, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness said the Shadow Assembly was unacceptable and he has called on both governments to take a firmer line in defence of the Agreement against what he called negative unionism.
Mr Allister said today if other parties weren’t interested in securing durable and workable devolution, then the DUP should signal it was moving on without them.
“Why mark time for the insatiable and irreformable Sinn Féin or an SDLP incapable of recognising opportunity?” he asked.
“ We can devote all our energy to better integrating the North within the UK and with an uncertain government majority in place and maybe a hung Parliament again in prospect, opportunity beckons.”
Senior officers met with the Omagh bomb victims’ families last week
The senior officer in the Omagh bomb case “does not believe MI5 withheld any intelligence from the PSNI”.
Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde said the lead detective confirmed this to him.
After a police briefing to Omagh relatives last week, questions were raised about whether MI5 failed to pass on tip-offs from an American agent.
David Rupert said dissident republicans planned to carry out bomb attacks in Derry or Omagh, but Sir Hugh said this involved a different unit.
Sir Hugh Orde was addressing the final public session of the current Policing Board.
New members are expected to be appointed to the board on 1 April.
The chief constable refused to confirm if MI5 held back any information months before the 1998 atrocity in which 29 people died.
The SDLP said failure to directly answer the question “will not reassure people”.
SDLP board member Alex Attwood said: “The truth of the matter is there may have been intelligence prior to the murders that wasn’t shared.
“We will never know if that might or might not have avoided that awful tragedy.”
‘State of the inquiry’
Speaking at Wednesday’s board meeting, Sir Hugh said he would not comment on reports about whether MI5 passed information to police prior to the bombing.
“It’s the view of the senior investigating officer (Superintendent Norman Baxter) - who I spoke to only two hours ago - that the security services did not withhold intelligence that was relevant or would have progressed the Omagh inquiry.”
Dissident republican suspects investigated in April 1998 were from a different cell than those involved in the Omagh bomb plot, said Sir Hugh.
“There’s no evidence to link these two units,” he said.
The chief constable confirmed senior officers had met with the Omagh bomb victims’ families last week to brief them on the state of the inquiry.
Last year, County Armagh man Sean Hoey was the first person charged with murder in relation to the bombing.
In the third excerpt from the Denis O’Hearn biography Bobby Sands: Nothing But an Unfinished Song, after the end of the 1980 hunger strike, the republican prisoners in the H-blocks begin planning the 1981 hunger strike that would lead to the death of Sands and nine of his comrades.
01/03/2006
Thursday, December 18, 1980
The screws brought Bobby Sands back to his cell in H-block 3 at a quarter to nine. They took him from the administrative area, in the crossbar of the H, down the long grey corridor to his cell at the bottom of the wing. As he passed by rows of solid steel doors on either side of the corridor, some of the other prisoners called out to him.
“Right, Bobby?”
“Cad é an scéal, Roibeard?” (“What’s the news, Robert?”)
Sands finally reached his cell. The prisoners around him waited anxiously to find out what was happening. They had been waiting ever since the screws took Bobby away at a quarter past six. They expected him to return with the good news of a victorious end to the hunger strike that was now over two months old. At the very least, they expected some indication that they were closer to a successful resolution of their four-year struggle to win recognition as political prisoners. They knew that one of the hunger strikers, Seán McKenna, was near death but there had been talk of last-minute British concessions to end the protest before a death ignited Irish society.
“Teapot” was in a cell beside Sands. What he heard next was “a bolt from the fucking blue”. What their friend and commanding officer told them made their hearts sink to rock bottom.
Sands spoke out the door in Irish to Bik MacFarlane, his second in command. He was bitter, deeply angry; he felt betrayed. There was more of Calvary than Bethlehem in his voice. It felt more like a week to Easter than a week until Christmas.
“Tá an stailc críochnaithe” (“The hunger strike is over”), he told Bik.
“Cad é a tharla?” (“What happened?”)
“Fuair muid faic.” (“We got nothing.”)
Sands withdrew momentarily from the door. He could not settle. Well, he could never settle but now his mind was racing even more than usual. He strode quickly to the back corner of his cell and lay down on his filthy sponge mattress by the heating pipe to talk to Teapot, who had his ear to the crack in the shit-smeared wall at the other side.
“Another fucking hunger strike… crazy… die… crazy,” were the jumbled words that Teapot could make out from Sands’ low voice. It was enough to tell him what Bobby had already set his mind to do. Then, unable to sit still for even a few seconds, Sands rose and paced back to the cell door to speak to Bik.
“Bhuel, Bik, beidh stailc eile ann.” (“Well, Bik, there’ll be another hunger strike.”)
“Tá an ceart agat.” (“You’re right.”)
And that was it. In the minds of the prisoners around Sands, the men who effectively made up the leadership of all the Irish republican prisoners in the H-blocks, the die was cast. They immediately began to plan another hunger strike, speaking through their cell doors in Irish. They talked over how it would go but, whatever way they played it, the plot ended the same way. Bobby Sands would certainly die.
Friday, December 19, 1980
Sands met twice with the officers commanding (OCs) of the other H-blocks that housed protesting IRA prisoners. The screws brought them in to see him in the “big cell” at the bottom of the wing. He could not just repeat “we got nothing” to them, as that would wreck the morale of the whole prison. He had to give them some measure of hope. He told the OCs bluntly that the agreement they got after the hunger strike ended was not what they wanted, that it was full of holes. But maybe, he said, they could step through those holes to achieve some form of political status.
At least, maybe, they could get their own clothes to wear and then continue struggling for more rights. Séanna Walsh, OC of H5 and one of Bobby’s oldest friends, did not believe the positive spin he was hearing. He knew Sands too well and he could see right through him. He could tell from Sands’ demeanour that there was really little hope of getting anything concrete from the agreement that Margaret Thatcher’s government had offered them the night before. Not even their own clothes, much less their other demands, like the right to free association and freedom from prison work.
They had been protesting for four years to achieve this goal, ever since young Kieran Nugent refused to wear a prison uniform after he was convicted of hijacking a car for the IRA in 1976. Sands had only to look around him to see how far the protest had come, for bad and for good. Now, more than 300 prisoners had joined the protest. Not only were they living naked in their eight-by-ten foot cells, as they had been from the beginning of their protest, with only a blanket and a small towel to keep them warm and hide their nakedness. Not only were they locked up 24 hours a day, without even a book to read, a radio to listen to, nor pen and paper with which to write. They were not even allowed to leave their cells for exercise or meals or even to go to the toilet and have a wash.
Now, they were literally living in their own shit —heaps of it, along with rotted food and maggots, lay in the corners of each cell. The cell walls were plastered in it. Some of the lads hadn’t seen their families or loved ones for years.
Never mind their families, some of them had not even seen each other. Some of their closest friends were just disembodied voices that came out of a crack in one cell door and back in through a crack in their own cell door. By now, they knew more of the intimate lives of these disembodied voices than they did of their own family members.
Despite these unimaginable conditions, they had never been crushed. Deprived of radios and reading materials, they invented their own forms of entertainment: bingo, quizzes and, best of all, the “book at bedtime” where they told each other stories out the door. Kept from formal education, they organised their own classes, with teachers shouting out the lessons through the cell doors. Many men who never finished secondary school were now fluent in Irish and experts in history and political theory. Paper and pens were banned, yet they had developed a communications infrastructure that kept them in constant contact with each other and with their comrades outside of prison. Under Bobby Sands’ direction, they were running a virtual propaganda industry, churning out hundreds of letters about their protest to movie stars, journalists, and politicians around the world. Tobacco was banned, so they found ways to smuggle it into the jail and then to manufacture cigarettes and to distribute them from cell to cell so that each prisoner could enjoy a smoke in the evening.
After all they had endured and all they had achieved, Sands told the other OCs, they would not quit now, short of gaining recognition as political prisoners. He said he would talk to the prison governor and offer to end the prison protest if the prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes. He expected that the appeal would fall on deaf ears.
Sands’ prediction came true within hours. Bobby met with the governor, who took his offer to his political bosses and then came back and told him that all he could offer was “prison-issue civilian-type clothes” during non-working hours. After a few days to build up their strength after their long protest, they would have to start doing prison work. And they would have to wear the prison uniform when they were working. After all, the government still considered them to be criminals.
“Your civilian clothing is nothing but a uniform,” Sands bitterly told Governor Hilditch. “Not only will we not be ending the protest but we will escalate it and take other actions.”
“What actions?” asked the governor.
Sands knew that he was taken aback by the blunt refusal of his offer of civilian-type clothing.
“You’ll find out,” was Bobby’s reply.
Back in his cell at three o’clock, Sands asked his cellmate Malachy for a pen and some paper. Malachy carefully slid his thumb and forefinger into his anus and slipped out a huge wad wrapped in plastic wrap. He carefully unwrapped the package, took out a refill for a ballpoint pen and some cigarette papers, and handed them over. Sands hunched down on his bit of filthy foam mattress and wrote a letter to his old friend Gerry Adams, the man he called comrade mór (“big comrade”). He told him what had transpired over the past 24 hours and gave him the “disturbing” news that they would soon be starting another hunger strike.
Two hours later, at five o’clock, Sands told the other prisoners around him about the meetings he had held earlier in the day and about his encounters with the prison governor.
Again, they debated their options. With cooler heads than the previous night, Sands, Bik MacFarlane, Richard O’Rawe, Jake Jackson, and Pat Mullan discussed how they could carry the protest forward. Was there another way, short of another hunger strike? Bobby already knew the answer in his heart, but they all wanted to find some way out. The debate went on and on. People suggested some alternatives but they kept coming back to the same thing.
Finally, Pat Mullan stopped the discussion in its tracks.
“Níl ach freagair amháin… ar ais ar stailc arís.” (“There’s only one solution… back on hunger strike.”)
It was the end of debate. They all knew it.
Bobby had the last word. We can only begin to imagine the despair he felt when he told them: “I’m gonna wake up tomorrow morning and I’m not gonna like the first thought that hits my head.”
From that moment, says Richard O’Rawe, Bobby Sands became less effervescent and more solemn… slightly more distant. Outside, he maintained his bubbly disposition, still optimistic, as was his character. But they could see through the surface to a difference on the inside.
“You just knew that there was a sadness in Bob.”
Tomorrow’s excerpt describes how Bobby Sands educated other prisoners while entertaining them with stories to keep up morale.
Bobby Sands book launches:
Belfast: Thursday, March 9 at 7pm, St Mary’s College, Falls Road.
Dublin: Friday, March 10 at 7pm, Pádraig Pearse Centre, Pearse Street.
Dundalk and Drogheda: Monday, March 13. Details to be confirmed.
Derry, Tuesday, March 14. Details to be confirmed.
Mid-Ulster, Wednesday, March 15 at 7pm, Mid-Ulster Republican Centre, Gulladuff.
Bobby Sands kept a secret diary of the first 17 days of his hungerstrike. This is his first entry from March 1981
Sunday 1st
I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.
My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother’s heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have considered all the arguments and tried every means to avoid what has become the unavoidable: it has been forced upon me and my comrades by four-and-a-half years of stark inhumanity.
I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.
I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.
Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.
I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the ‘risen people’.
There is no sensation today, no novelty that October 27th brought. (The starting date of the original seven man hunger-strike) The usual Screws were not working. The slobbers and would-be despots no doubt will be back again tomorrow, bright and early.
I wrote some more notes to the girls in Armagh today. There is so much I would like to say about them, about their courage, determination and unquenchable spirit of resistance. They are to be what Countess Markievicz, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, Marie MacSwiney, Betsy Gray, and those other Irish heroines are to us all. And, of course, I think of Ann Parker, Laura Crawford, Rosemary Bleakeley, and I’m ashamed to say I cannot remember all their sacred names.
Mass was solemn, the lads as ever brilliant. I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting.
By Ed Moloney,
the author of “A Secret History of the IRA”
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
NOTHING BUT AN UNFINISHED SONG
Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation
By Denis O’Hearn
Nation. 434 pp. $28
There is a great irony to the life and death of Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands; unfortunately, Denis O’Hearn only lightly touches upon it in “Nothing but an Unfinished Song.” Sands died in a bid to validate the IRA and its violence but in the long term, his death served only to bring both to an end. He lived as an IRA bomber, but he died as the unwitting architect of the Irish peace process.
To understand that irony, we need to turn back to 1981, when Sands and nine other members of the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army were jailed near Belfast for murders, shootings and bombings intended to end British rule of Northern Ireland. The 10 deployed an old Irish protest technique to put forward the claim that their violence was motivated by the age-old cause of Irish independence, not by criminality or personal gain. They died in the process, some of them agonizingly.
The hunger strikers had demanded they be treated as political prisoners and not felons — principally by being allowed to wear their own clothes and being exempt from prison work. They saw themselves as soldiers in a war against the British government, its troops and police, but things were never that straightforward. The war in Northern Ireland was a dirty one that all too often degenerated into bloody and indiscriminate sectarian strife between the loyalists, who supported continued British rule of Northern Ireland and were mostly Protestant, and the mostly Catholic nationalists, many of whom sought to unite with the Irish republic to the south and regard the IRA as their defenders. More often than not civilians, not soldiers, were the victims, and political motives for the carnage sometimes grew hard to discern.
Faced with the hunger strikers’ demands, the British government of Margaret Thatcher refused to budge. “Crime is crime is crime; it is not political,” the Iron Lady declared. The prisoners, led by the 27-year-old Sands, dug in their heels. The resulting deaths, including that of Sands, and political traumas shook Ireland to its roots.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of those awful months. Sands may have started his protest to vindicate republican violence, but the hunger strike’s paradoxical effect was to bring the armed struggle to an end — and, ultimately, to persuade the IRA to accept the legitimacy of Northern Ireland, the state that Sands and his dead comrades had dedicated their lives to destroying.
Sands’s protest enabled the IRA’s leaders to fast-forward plans to go political that they had nurtured for some time. Not long after he began his hunger strike, Sands was put forward as a candidate for a local seat in the British Parliament that had become vacant. Against all expectations, he won, and almost out of the blue, the IRA leadership — then as now dominated by Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing — was offered a political alternative to violence. After Sands died, his “election agent” — the local Sinn Fein leader Owen Carron, a 26-year-old teacher who had served as Sands’s surrogate — won the seat; that winter, with a live and unimprisoned member of Parliament at his side, Adams was able to persuade the IRA and Sinn Fein to embrace electoral politics, alongside violence.
One can draw a straight line between the summer of 1981 and the current Irish peace process. The IRA’s new “ArmaLite and ballot box” strategy, as it was called, was superficially successful, but it suffered from an inherent long-term contradiction. Seeking votes and planting car bombs were deeply conflicting modes of behavior, and eventually one would have to prevail. Thanks in no small part to Adams’s wily ways, politics and negotiations ultimately won out.
The best part of O’Hearn’s biography is his often moving account of Sands’s time in jail, his interactions with fellow prisoners, the songs and poetry he wrote behind bars, and finally the agonies of the hunger strike. But this story has been told many times before, not least by Sands’s prison comrades. What is lacking here is the sort of serious assessment of Sands’s sacrifice that decades of hindsight should bring.
Nor does O’Hearn acknowledge that the hunger strike is now the subject of a furious historical revision. In his recent book “Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike,” Richard O’Rawe, the IRA prisoners’ public relations officer during the protest, claims that Sinn Fein’s leadership sabotaged a promising effort to resolve the protest — on secret terms offered by the British and accepted by the prisoners — because ending the fast before Owen Carron’s election would have threatened Adams’s political project. (O’Rawe cites the IRA leadership’s insistence that Adams be present in the jail with Sands to endorse any deal — something no British government could accept, least of all one led by Thatcher, since it meant negotiating with the IRA’s best-known leader. This demand ensured that the hunger strike could have only one end.) Thus six of the 10 hunger strikers may have died needlessly. If O’Rawe is right, one has to wonder: Was Sands’s death even more to further Adams’s agenda? After all, with his martyrdom, Ireland exploded in anger, thousands were radicalized, and the stage was set for the IRA’s transition to politics. Had his life been saved by a last-minute deal, none of this might have happened.
Today the hunger strike has become another battleground — this time for ownership of Sands’s political legacy. On one side are the current Sinn Fein and IRA leadership and their supporters, upon whom O’Hearn leans heavily for his account. They will welcome his book, not least because it does not challenge their claim that Sands, had he lived, would have supported his mentor, Adams, as he discarded armed struggle. Among those against them are Sands’s family, many of whom profoundly disagree with the Adams strategy and broke with him years ago. They refused to cooperate in the writing of this book, but O’Hearn neglects to tell his readers this. Recently Sands’s sister Marcella rounded on O’Hearn, claiming that he had falsely implied that her family had endorsed his book, which she said contains “numerous factual inaccuracies.” Bobby Sands’s song, like the fight for Irish independence, may well be unfinished; the struggle for possession of his political inheritance looks like it could be never-ending.
01/03/2006 - 11:50:27
The trial of a Co Cork chef arrested as part of a garda investigation into IRA money-laundering was adjourned at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin today.
Don Bullman, aged 31, a chef and father of two, of Fernwood Crescent, Leghanamore, Wilton, Co Cork was charged in February last year with membership of an illegal organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Óglaigh na hÉireann, otherwise the IRA on February 16.
His trial was fixed for March 22 next but today, the court adjourned it after an application by Bullman’s counsel.
His counsel Ms Anne Rowland BL told the court that extensive documentation had been received by the defence in the past two weeks , including hand-written documents and CCTV footage.
She said that on the direction of senior counsel, it may be necessary to retain expert witnesses and she said that although it was only a membership charge the case is quite complicated.
The court adjourned the case until April 4 when it will be mentioned again and remanded Bullman on continuing bail.
Last year during a bail hearing, Detective Superintendent Diarmuid O’Sullivan of the Special Detective Unit said that gardaí had found a bag containing a Daz box and the box contained over €94,000 wrapped in three individual wrappings of €30,000 each when Bullman was arrested at Heuston Station in Dublin in a northern-registered jeep.
The Detective Superintendent said during that hearing that Bullman was “a central individual” to the activities of the IRA prior to February 16, 2005 and that activity was “a money-laundering operation for the IRA, in which he is central”.
Nationalist councillors in Derry want to commemorate the Easter Rising
The 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising should be officially commemorated in Derry, city councillors have decided.
The proposal was made by Sinn Fein representatives and supported by the SDLP, however, unionists on the council have opposed it.
Sinn Fein’s Peter Anderson said the 1916 rebellion should be remembered like other events.
The DUP’s Joe Millar has said the council should not support it.
“I don’t think that Derry City Council, as a council, should be getting involved in this if they are trying to reflect the views of all the people,” he said.
“We would not be supporting something that is anti-British.”
Mr Anderson said commemorating the rising was a matter of equality.
“What I was proposing, in my opinion, was just for equality,” he said.
Motion
“We have been sending councillors all over the world to commemorate World War I and World War II and what I am saying now is that we want an equal playing field.”
SDLP councillor Pat Ramsey said he tabled an amendment to the original Sinn Fein motion, which was passed on Tuesday.
Mr Ramsey said he asked for the need to cherish all children equally to be the central theme of the commemorations.
“The 1916 rising was a hugely important part of our history and it cannot be airbrushed out,” he said.
“This is not about coat-trailing but about enabling the council to commemorate what was a turning point in Irish history.”
NI Secretary Peter Hain has written to the leaders of the four main parties seeking their nominations for a new Policing Board as of 1 April.
There is no expectation from government that Sinn Fein will take their two places at this stage.
The DUP has been asked to put forward four names. This will increase their current team on the board by one.
The Ulster Unionists and the SDLP have been asked to put forward two each, which is a reduction in their teams.
Sinn Fein has resisted giving the PSNI, the Policing Board and other institutions its support, insisting more legislation is needed before they can sign up.
The government has stuck to their formula despite speculation from some politicians that the resignation of Paul Berry, which changes the arithmetic for any future Stormont Executive, would have a knock on effect on the new Policing Board.
“It is not clear what the attitude of the Ulster Unionists will be to the new board - they had threatened to walk off if the number of unelected members was greater than the number of elected politicians,” BBC Northern Ireland editor Mark Devenport said.
On Tuesday, Sir Reg Empey accused the government of a power grab - turning the board from a body with a democratic majority into a “quango”.
Some political sources suggest that the government might choose to include elected politicians amongst the ranks of independent members in order to meet Ulster Unionist concerns.
However, officials are advising against this possibility, indicating that the UUP was being asked to put their concerns to one side in the interests of preserving a balanced board.
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