SAOIRSE32

I was going to post the remembrance story on Bloody Sunday 1920 which can be found here at An Phoblacht:

Remembering the Past

However, after looking at it, it is barely comprehensible due to mistakes made in putting it online. I find this to be the case time and time again on An Phoblacht, and even when you write to them and ask them to correct their glaring mistakes, they totally ignore you and leave the errors. Basically it seems to be an editing problem. They don’t bother reading the page after they get it up. If they did, they could see what they had done.

For an entity which represents Irish republican history to such a large extent, I find this to be inexcusable and unforgivable. It gives the public a bad impression.

Please write to An Phoblacht to express your displeasure at seeing our history printed in such a haphazard manner. Maybe the edirors will listen if enough people complain.

An Phoblacht contact:

Any editorial or general enquiries or comments about An Phoblacht can be addressed to the editor, Seán Brady, at editor@anphoblacht.com

58 Parnell Square
Dublin 1
Ireland
Tel: +353 1 8733611
Fax: +353 1 8733074

Thank you,
micheailin

An Phoblacht

HUNGER STRIKE - Edited by Danny Morrison
Published by Brandon

By MíCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA
16 November 2006

The depth of the lasting impact made by the 1981 Hunger Strike is evident in this fine collection of reflections from 49 contributors compiled, edited and introduced by Danny Morrison. Writers, artists and activists write pieces short and long, including essays, memoirs and poetry, some from ‘81 itself, most written especially for the book.

Contributors include Edna O’Brien, Ken Loach, Christy Moore, Tony Benn, Rita O’Hare, Ronan Bennett and many more. I especially enjoyed the pieces from the three Marys - Mary Nelis’s hard-hitting ‘Ordinary People’ about the campaign in Derry, Marie Moore on ‘Smuggling the Comms’ and the indomitable Mary Pearson’s ‘Marching in England’. It is fascinating to see the impression made by the Hunger Strike on so many diverse individuals who are able to express it so well. People stood in awe at the determination of the young republicans in the H-Blocks to carry through their protest to the death. We were humbled, inspired and activated.

It is now commonly asserted that the 1981 Hunger Strike led to the peace process and the electoral rise of Sinn Féin. This is far too simplistic an assertion and it actually underestimates the true extent to which the Hunger Strike impacted on Irish republicanism. For every activist convinced by 1981 of the need to develop electoral politics there was at least another new activist recruited to the IRA and fully convinced that armed struggle was essential to end British rule in Ireland. Of course these two positions were not mutually exclusive and the immediate political legacy of the hunger strike was the strategy articulated by Danny Morrison in his famous ballot box and armalite speech.

By the tenth anniversary of the Hunger Strike the limitations of the ballot box and armalite strategy were clear. Danny Morrison himself wrote as much April 1992 in a column for this paper entitled ‘A Bitter Pill’ (reprinted in Then the Walls Came Down by Danny Morrison, Mercier, 1999) on the realities republicans needed to face after Sinn Féin lost the West Belfast seat. I was editor of An Phoblacht at the time and did not publish the piece. I told Danny I agreed with 99% of what he had written. But it was ahead of its time and would have been seized on by our enemies. I believed the internal upheaval it would have caused would have outweighed whatever good such a stark and frank piece might have done.

Much of what Danny wrote in that piece was being said among some republicans at the time. But in a struggle under constant siege it is very difficult to question strategies which have hardened into principles. In many minds armed struggle hardened into a principle, an end in itself, and it took time to change that. What was needed was the space to see beyond the smoke of the immediate battle. It was necessary to remember what US imperialist Henry Kissinger wrote of the Vietnam War: “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose; the conventional army loses if it does not win.”

Clearly the British could not win in their effort to crush Irish republicanism. They failed in the H-Blocks in ‘81 and they failed in their counter-insurgency war thereafter. Neither could the IRA drive the British into the sea. But they could win in the sense of surviving and creating the political space for Irish republicanism to advance by other means. And in that sense the IRA won, just as the hunger strikers won.

After the hunger strike the H-Block prisoners adopted new strategies, undermined the prison system from within, won their demands and more. They were flexible and agile, while adhering to republican principles. On the outside republicans talked a lot about building mass support. We did the same at the start of the peace process. We recognised that Sinn Féin alone could not bring about Irish reunification. It is vital not to lose sight of the need to build wider popular support that is not confined to electoralism and participation in institutions. The republican message strikes a deep chord with Irish people and friends of Ireland as the breadth of contributors to this book demonstrates. The point is to convert that support into real political strength.

An Phoblacht

White Team another Whitewash?

BY LAURA FRIEL
16 November 2006

Running scared in the wake of another damning report highlighting British state collusion, PSNI Chief Hugh Orde announced the establishment of yet another team tasked with ‘investigating’ allegations of collusion this week.

Last week Sinn Féin called for a full independent inquiry after an international panel of legal experts highlighted ’shocking’ evidence of British state collusion in 74 out of 76 killings they investigated.

The report focused on the Glenanne gang that terrorised people in Armagh, Tyrone and other border areas in the 1970s. The international investigation found evidence of systematic state collusion in some of the most notorious attacks of that time, including mass sectarian killings such as the Miami Showband killings and the Dublin/Monaghan bombings.

Faced with international exposure, the British dilemma was further compounded after the issue was raised in the Dáil and picked up by the Southern media. Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghlin Ó Caoláin called on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to put pressure on the British Government to co-operate with an international inquiry headed by the UN.

Writing in the current affairs magazine Village Justine McCarthy criticised the “tyranny of silence” in the south, surrounding the “forgotten killings”.

“As individual citizens are we not entitled to be furious? Indeed are we not obliged to shout from the rooftops on behalf of the dead?”

McCarthy highlights the inconsistency of “people who have loudly objected to Britain’s part in the illegal invasion of Iraq” but who continue to “ignore its criminal cover-up of assisted murders in Ireland, north and south”.

It is hardly surprising that PSNI Chief and former member of the Stevens’ team, Hugh Orde chose this week to announce yet another British initiative into allegations of collusion.

The new unit is to be an arm of the already discredited Historical Inquiries Team and was deemed ‘independent’ on the spurious basis that it would be based in London. As if this wasn’t just another variation on the theme of the British state investigating itself.

The announcement was made during an unprecedented address by the PSNI Chief Constable and head of HET David Cox to the Dáil subcommittee examining British collusion in relation to a number of bombings in the south.

The newly formed “White Team” will examine allegations of collusion that do not “fit in” with other incidents and surprise, surprise, the first series of cases to be passed to the team will centre on the activities of the Glenanne gang.

And guess who’s also going to be ‘helping’ the new unit with their ‘investigation’? The British army and British MOD who had kindly set up their “own historical team to assist the HET”. And if that isn’t ‘helpful’ enough, MI5 and MI6 have drawn up a “memorandum of understanding” between themselves and the new unit.

Already people are wondering if the White Team is some sort of abbreviation for Whitewash.

cryptome

By Gerry Adams
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Village Magazine

The last time I was in the British Army Palace Barracks in Holywood, on the outskirts of East Belfast, it was 1972. I was arrested and taken there for interrogation. Palace Barracks was the site of the in-depth interrogation of republican detainees. We were beaten and subjected to noise and sleep deprivation, which were later declared by the European Court of Human Rights to be “ill-human and degrading treatment” – a modern euphemism for torture.

Photo: Palace Barracks, Holywood, North of Ireland 2006 - click image for full view

Palace Barracks now has a new claim to fame. It is the new home of the British Security Service – MI5. According to the British government, MI5 will now assume for the North “the lead responsibility it has had for national-security intelligence work” for some time in Britain.

MI5 is a not a new player on the intelligence scene in the six counties. No more than MI6 in the 26 counties.

Only this week the Irish government received a report on collusion from a four-strong international panel of legal experts. They examined 76 cases between 1972 and 1977 related to unionist paramilitary actions operating out of south Armagh. They concluded that 74 of these involved collusion between members of the RUC, Ulster defence regiment and unionist death squads, and that senior officers within the British system “failed to act or punish” those responsible.

None of this is new. The British have a long history of involvement in spying, spooks, the running of double agents, informers and agent provocateurs – and Dublin Castle, the colonial seat of government for the British in Ireland for centuries, was a byword for spies and torture.

MI5 and MI6 emerged in 1909 out of a crisis in Europe and concern within the British government about imminent war and invasion. Over the years, the role of both agencies has shifted and changed as the British domestic and international situation has evolved. But throughout this time the two intelligence agencies retained an involvement in both parts of Ireland. This took on greater significance with the onset of conflict in 1969.

With 1970 came the beginning of a plethora of British intelligence agencies operating in the north. MI5 and the RUC’s Special Branch were joined by the Force Research Unit, the British Army’s Intelligence Corps, the Military Reconnaissance Force, the 14th Intelligence Company and a host of smaller, specialist intelligence sub-groups. They all participated in intelligence-gathering and the use of black propaganda and dirty tricks, through to the training and running of unionist death squads. And their efforts were interlocked and connected.

MI5 is the senior agency. It is under the control of the Joint Intelligence Committee which is directly responsible to the cabinet and to Downing Street. It is hard to find out how much money and numbers of staff it has. The Security Service (MI5), the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the British Government’s Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are all funded from the Single Intelligence Account. This year the three will spend almost £1.5bn. MI5 allocated 23 per cent of these resources to Ireland.

In recent years the Bloody Sunday tribunal, the commission of inquiry into the Dublin, Monaghan and Dundalk bomb attacks in 1974, and the various investigations involving Stevens and Stalker into collusion, all faced serious obstacles when seeking cooperation and information from MI5.

The judge who investigated the killing of Pat Finucane detailed a number of occasions when MI5 was aware of plans to kill Finucane, which were not passed on to him. Nor were any “steps taken to intervene or halt the attack”. The judge concluded that the conduct of MI5 fell “within the definition of collusion”. However, the inquiry he recommended, and which the Finucane family demands, has yet to be established.

MI5 was also involved in Operation Torsion, along with the PSNI’s Special Branch. In October 2002 the powersharing government in the North was brought down as a result of Operation Torsion.

More recently, the British government outlined MI5 plans to second PSNI officers for MI5 work. In other words, elements of the PSNI will work for MI5.

Since the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin’s aim has been to achieve a democratically accountable, representative, civic policing service. We want to bring an end to partisan political policing.

At the core of the outstanding policing issues is the matter of transfer of power from London to Belfast – from British ministers to locally accountable ministers in a restored executive. But this issue of MI5 involvement in the PSNI is a huge issue also.

It is clear that there is no place in an acceptable service for a force within a force. That was part of the problem with the old RUC. Surely no democrat could stand for a force within a force in the PSNI. There can be no role in civic policing in Ireland for MI5.

BN.ie

19/11/2006 - 14:48:41

Sinn Féin has challenged the Northern Secretary Peter Hain to abide by a High Court recommendation and launch an inquiry into how he appointed the Commissioner for Victims.

Gerry Kelly said Mr Hain must initiate the “immediate inquiry” ordered by the court into an attempted cover-up over his appointment of Mrs Bertha McDougall.

The court found Mr Hain had acted with an improper political motive in consulting one party only - Ian Paisley’s DUP - before appointing Bertha McDougall, a police officer’s widow, as interim Victims’ Commissioner.

Even more damaging was the judge’s conclusion that senior civil servants had decided that incorrect and misleading information would be supplied to the court.

Mr Hain’s subsequent response has been to defend his appointment and to say that time would prove him right.

Gerry Kelly said it was a “blatant political sop” to the DUP and that those involved were fully aware Mrs McDougall’s appointment would not command cross-community support.

Sunday Life

By Ciaran McGuigan
19 November 2006

The historian charged with writing the definitive history of the British secret service has uncovered the Ulster links of a top spy.

And Professor Keith Jeffery - who was selected to write the official history of the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6 - has appealed for more ‘local knowledge’ as he uncovers the history of Britain’s secret war.

The Queen’s University academic wrote in the latest edition of Queen’s Today of the Belfast background of World War Two hero, Francis Cammaerts.

Cambridge graduate Cammaerts - who played a crucial role in organising resistance in Nazi-occupied France - was a committed pacifist when he started his teaching career at Cabin Hill Prep School in east Belfast in 1937.

He registered as a conscientious objector before World War Two, and was sent to labour as an agricultural worker in 1940, instead of military service.

However, following the death of his brother while serving for the RAF, he joined the Special Operations Executive and went on to play a crucial role in undercover operations in France ahead of the D-Day landings.

Details of Cammaerts’ Special Operations Executive work is just one tale of derring-do that is likely to be included in Prof Jeffery’s work, due to be published in 2010.

After being selected last year to write the first segment in the official history of the SIS, the academic has been granted access to previously restricted papers relating to the SIS, from its inception in 1909 until 1948.

As well as the official archives, he is also looking to hear from individuals who have had connections to MI6.

“I’ve been looking hard for other local connections, but not much has turned up so far.

“I’d certainly be interested to hear from anyone with stories or links, however tenuous, to the ’secret war’,” he wrote.

Sunday Life

19 November 2006

It was a week when a new ‘D’ word entered the republican vocabulary and alongside it a new threat.

We already knew about the republican dissidents, those who have their roots in the falling-out inside the IRA in late 1997 - and those who then showed themselves in the bombs of 1998 in Moira, Portadown, Banbridge and Omagh.

The dissidents are the Continuity and Real IRA organisations, and it is the threat they currently pose that the chief constable has been warning about in recent weeks.

We see it in the burning of stores, in the roadside bomb they abandoned in Fermanagh - another of their devices that didn’t explode - and in the recent gun-attack on a police station in Co Armagh.

This is one part of the threat, but there is another linked to the new ‘D’ word - the “Disaffected”.

Now, we are talking about more recent resignations inside the IRA - resignations that are only some months old.

This, we are told, is where you will find the threat to Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly that Sinn Fein spoke so publicly about last week.

The resignations are being viewed as a statement of opposition to their political strategy and the position they are trying to develop on policing.

What has happened recently inside the IRA is not on the same scale as 1997 - nothing like it.

The number of resignations is much smaller and they do not reach up to the same levels of leadership.

One source spoke of “a slow shedding of personnel (who) are finding a home with each other”.

According to the source, the numbers are “small”, but there has been some coming together of individuals “of all sorts of affiliations” - “disaffected IRA members, INLA members and members of other micro organisations” - meaning the Continuity and Real IRAs.

“They have access to arms,” a source said. “Some of the people who are involved are serious characters,” said another source.

And, when you add those two things together, you get to why republicans believe there is a threat to the Adams-McGuinness-Kelly leadership.

The public expression of opposition to that leadership, and the direction in which it is taking the republican movement, can be read in the “traitor” graffiti that has started to appear in some places.

So, as the British and Irish governments try to make the St Andrews Agreement work, there are now two threats - the one linked to the dissident organisations, and, now, this added feature of the more recent resignations from the IRA by those who have become disaffected over politics and policing.

The question is: Would they dare do what some believe they are thinking and talking about?

Add the dissidents and the “disaffected” together and, in terms of their numbers and how they fit into the big picture, they struggle to be relevant - but they are dangerous.

The dissident organisations were long-ago infiltrated. Special Branch has agents inside their bomb teams - so much so that explosives have been removed from devices and replaced with similar-looking substances. It is called ’substitution’.

The dissidents and the disaffected are not an alternative to the IRA and Sinn Fein - what they are, within the broader republican community, is a nuisance, an irritant.

But the fear is they may try to get themselves noticed or make themselves relevant by following through on this threat against the Sinn Fein leadership.

They might think that this would derail the republican project and the political process.

The question still is, would they dare?

The IRA, the leadership that is overseeing the transition of this organisation, will be monitoring all of this very closely - checking the mood inside the movement and watching those who have gone.

If the conditions can be got right, then republican participation in policing will be delivered.

Yes, there are still those inside the republican community capable of pulling a trigger or exploding a bomb.

But what they can’t do, and what they won’t do, is stop this process.

The dissidents and, now, the disaffected, are being left behind.

slnews@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sunday Life

By Alan Murray
19 November 2006

Ian Paisley won’t be shaking hands with Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness at Stormont tomorrow.

The DUP leader’s son made it clear last night that Dr Paisley won’t be attending the Programme for Government Committee in spite of Sinn Fein’s hopes that the groundbreaking meeting could happen soon.

Ian Paisley jnr confirmed that his father won’t be attending the committee meeting and wasn’t preparing to greet either of the two Sinn Fein leaders soon.

“I can tell you now that the party leader will not be greeting anyone from Sinn Fein tomorrow for a handshake or any other spin-generating stunt someone has dreamed up.

“The whole idea that Dr Paisley would be meeting with Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness on Monday has come from Sinn Fein and it doesn’t extend beyond their spin doctors’ imaginations.

“A meeting is scheduled for Monday for one of the committees, but that is to continue a debate on the merits of the economic package Gordon Brown has proposed.”

Peter Robinson, the party’s deputy leader, is expected to attend tomorrow’s committee meeting but he too dismissed speculation that it would be a groundbreaking event.

“It’s a meeting, but I’m not expecting anything unusual to happen. I expect that I will be there, but I don’t expect anything out of the ordinary to happen,” he said.

Sunday Life

‘Slab’ kept detailed ledgers for IRA’s empire - and they’re now in hands of authorites following raid…

19 November 2006

The IRA’s multi-million pound border empire has been laid bare - in handwritten ledgers seized from the home of top Provo Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy.

Precise details of massive smuggling and counterfeit operations are contained in the records found during a joint PSNI-Garda raid on Murphy’s farm in March.

They pinpoint how the IRA sold millions of pounds of illegal goods to members and criminals for distribution.

Officers from the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau can hardly believe their luck at finding the meticulously kept ledgers, which give the clearest insight ever into the Provos’ racketeering empire.

The discovery is likely to cause embarrassment to Gerry Adams who earlier this year claimed Murphy was “not a criminal”.

One source said of the ledgers: “It is an old-fashioned book-keeping method that may reflect the age or the generation of the person who maintained it. But it is immaculate and is very easy to follow.

“In simple terms, purchases or smuggled goods of one type are colour-coded and they turn up in the same colour code when they are sold on at a profit.

“Diesel has one colour code, petrol another and cigarettes another. These are immaculately maintained records which will enable the Criminal Assets Bureau to levy a tax bill of maybe £5m against Murphy.”

The records clearly indicate the cost of goods brought into the IRA’s ’stores’ and the price received for the contraband goods when they were offloaded on both sides of the border.

They reveal how the goods came into the IRA’s possession and were then sold on to its members and criminals for distribution.

The majority of the transactions show smuggled fuel being ferried from the Republic into the IRA’s control around Murphy’s farm at Ballybinaby, which straddles the Armagh/Louth border.

The records were seized earlier this year when 200 soldiers and cops accompanied customs officers to carry out a major search of the property belonging to Murphy, a former IRA chief-of-staff.

Officials from the Republic’s Criminal Assets Bureau and personnel from the Customs and Excise Department were accompanied by gardai as they entered the property from the southern side of the border.

Two laptop computers concealed among bales of hay in a barn were located during the search, but sources say the handwritten ledgers provide the most detailed insight into the IRA’s criminal operation.

Senior officials in the CAB in Dublin are understood to be delighted at the precise book-keeping details recorded in the ledgers.

Because they’re handwritten and not formulated on a computer, handwriting experts may be able to pinpoint the identity of the person who maintained the records, and tie them into the IRA’s crime operations.

That could lead to a membership charge or a more serious terrorist charge being brought by the Garda.

In a stout defence of Murphy after the raids, Mr Adams described him as “not a criminal” and went on to say he was “a key supporter of the Sinn Fein peace strategy”.

Mr Adams also said that smuggling was wrong and that his party supported the pursuit of criminal assets.

But that praise for Murphy could backfire on Mr Adams when the CAB goes to the High Court in Dublin to demand millions from him in unpaid taxes, and lay bare the criminal, financial empire Murphy has controlled for the IRA for over two decades.

Sunday Life

By Stephen Breen
19 November 2006

The convicted armed robber and son of a senior republican who last night vowed to fight for Ulster prisoners.

Former cocaine-addict Kevin Meehan - the eldest son of top Sinn Fein man Martin Meehan - warned lives will be lost at Magilligan Prison, if the facility is not closed soon.

The 41-year-old, who has just been released after serving 18-months for a vicious armed robbery, accused jail bosses of ignoring his warnings about depressed prisoners.

Meehan, who worked for the Samaritans during his time behind bars, claims inmates suffering from depression and other forms of mental illness are not receiving proper help.

But a spokesman for the Prison Service dismissed the ex-prisoner’s claims and said doctors were always available to address prisoners’ concerns.

Meehan, who is now living in Craigavon, has vowed to help republican, loyalist and other prisoners.

He said: “I trained for six weeks to become a Prisoner Listener and I got to meet a lot of inmates who were in very distressed states. Inmates obviously know who my father is, but this won’t stop me from speaking to them.

“I wrote to Minister Shaun Woodward and the Prisoner Ombudsman, Brian Coulter, before Ronald Davey died last year and I got no reply. I may be out of prison but I’m not letting this go.”

He spoke about loyalist drug dealer David Kincaid, who in September was found dead in his cell at Magilligan from a suspected drugs overdose.

Said Meehan: “I also warned them about the state of David Kincaid and then look what happened - he overdosed on pills.

“I was able to get first-hand information from the prisoners because of my role and I can’t believe my warnings were ignored. But I’m not finished yet.

“I’m going to explore every avenue open to me, because I’ve no doubt in my mind more lives will be lost in Magilligan if the situation is not addressed as a matter of urgency.”

Although the Prison Service is currently looking at alternative sights for Magilligan, it stressed inmates were not being ignored.

Said a Prison Service spokesman: “We realise there is a need for a replacement for Magilligan, but there is no over-crowding.

“We have doctors at Magilligan Prison and inmates can see them at any time. The jail respects their qualified medical opinion.”

Two prisoners have died in Magilligan Prison since last year, while two have also died in Maghaberry Prison.

The Prisoner Ombudsman, Brian Coulter, also voiced concerns this week about the state of Magilligan.

Sunday Life

By Stephen Breen
19 November 2006

The crusading father of a loyalist murder victim last night hit out at councillors over their failure to remove a UVF wreath from the Belfast Cenotaph.

The terror group waited until dark before having their own commemoration at the city hall last Sunday.

Although the council received numerous complaints about the UVF ceremony, the wreath has remained at the cenotaph all week.

Mr McCord (above), whose son Raymond jnr was butchered by a gang of UVF informers in 1997, said the wreath was an insult to the memory of soldiers who died in two world wars.

Said Mr McCord: “It’s a disgrace that the UVF has been allowed to do this. This wreath has nothing to do with the old UVF.

“It’s up to the council to address this problem. David Ervine should remove it because the people of this city don’t want killers and drug dealers honouring the fallen.

“This is the organisation behind the Shankill Butchers’ attacks and many other atrocities. My father and grandfather fought in two world wars and the last thing they would want is a group like the UVF remembering their sacrifice.

“The wreath should have been removed as soon as it was placed on the cenotaph.

“It seems unionist politicians are frightened to stand up to the gangsters of the UVF, an organisation that kills its own. It has murdered 30 Protestants since 1994.”

Nobody from Belfast City Council was available for comment.

The SDLP’s Alban Maginness said: “Veterans and relatives of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of their country will be disgusted at this sullying of their good name.

“Everyone knows their claim to links with the organisation formed in 1914 is a gross distortion and a ruse to fly their flags.

“If the UVF want to become an ‘old boys’ commemorative organisation, then we will be expecting them to hand in their guns forthwith.”

Sunday Life

By Eddie McIlwaine
19 November 2006

Former bass player Stephen Travers will make a pilgrimage to Belfast next month for a reunion with bandmates from the tragic Miami Showband at the Do Ye Come Here Often gala at the Waterfront Hall.

Travers (55) was horrifically injured in the terrorist attack on the band near Banbridge in July 1975. But he told Sunday Life: “I have no bitterness in my heart about what happened that awful night.”

Singer Fran O’Toole and musicians Brian McCoy and Tony Gerrity were killed in the attack by loyalist terrorists at the height of the Troubles.

Travers and bandmate Des Lee were left seriously injured on the roadside beside the band minibus.

Two of the terrorists were also killed as a bomb they were carrying exploded prematurely.

Businessman Travers, who is now in entertainment management as A1 Bands and who still plays in a duo with his ex-Horslip pal Johnny Fean, will be in the audience for the show which runs from December 28 to 31.

He added: “But I won’t venture up on stage with Ray Millar and the rest of them in The Sounds of the Miami. There would be too many memories stirred up.

“I had 13 holes in my chest and a collapsed lung after the shooting and my life was saved in Daisy Hill Hospital at Newry by surgeon James Blundell and his team.

“So, just 24 hours after the horror, my faith in human nature was restored by the skill of that surgeon.

“I was talking to Mr Blundell just the other day and recalling all the kindness and help that was offered to me in Daisy Hill.

“I have great hope now for the future of Northern Ireland and I think it is good that the Sound of the Miami gets together to remember the good days.”

Travers, who lives in Cork, is co-writing a book on the Miami with journalist Neil Fetherston-Haugh, who also co-wrote the book on the Stardust Ballroom tragedy.

Added Stephen: “It isn’t easy, opening old files and memories.

“I can cope with it, though, and my co-author is of a younger generation with no baggage and of the kind of inquisitive mind that asks the right questions.

“But I don’t want to go playing with the Miami again and having to answer the same old questions every night at the shows.

“My book will pay homage to Fran, Brian and Tony, who were all destined to be world stars.”

Sunday Life

By Ciaran Murray
19 November 2006

Security Minister Paul Goggins’ refusal to grant protection to an Ulster journalist under threat from the UVF is to be raised at the House of Commons.

MPs are to be asked to debate whether he was justified in refusing a Sunday World reporter into the Key Persons Protection Scheme.

The journalist has been subject to a number of threats from members of the UVF in recent months.

But security chief Mr Goggins said the journalist did not meet criteria to qualify for protection measures under the KPPS, despite the Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Orde, regarding the threat against the reporter as substantial.

Mr Goggins said the reporter did not “occupy a wider public role which is contributing to the objectives of the scheme”.

His decision is expected to be challenged in an Early Day Motion due to be laid down later this week.

The National Union of Journalists’ Irish Secretary Seamus Dooley described the NIO minister’s decision as “baffling”.

He said: “Sadly we have learnt from experience that there are times when journalists are targeted and are deserving of special protection. The employer is of course exercising a duty of care, but the State also has a responsibility.” Sunday World’s journalists have been targeted by loyalist paramilitaries before.

Just over five years ago the LVF gunned down investigative reporter Martin O’Hagan (right) as he walked home from a night out with his wife.

No one has ever been charged in relation to his murder. And the paper’s former Northern Editor Jim Campbell was shot and severely injured by the UVF in 1983.

Sunday Independent

JODY CORCORAN

AN EX-PAT founder of a corrupt US building firm has emerged as the main organiser of a fundraising event in New York two weeks ago which raised $375,000 for Sinn Fein, the Sunday Independent can reveal.

The fundraising dinner, hosted by Friends of Sinn Fein, was the first such event attended by Gerry Adams since a ban on him raising money in the US was lifted.

The ban was imposed after the IRA murder of Robert McCartney last January and the £26m Northern Bank raid in December 2005, also carried out by the IRA.

The murderers of Mr McCartney remain at large and the Northern Bank raid, while under active investigation, is still unsolved.

Notwithstanding this, about 750 people, paying $500 a plate, attended the Sinn Fein fundraising event at the Sheraton Hotel on November 9, raising about $375,000 for the party.

In Ireland, where many of the major US technology companies are based, Sinn Fein wants to return Capital Gains Tax of 40 per cent from the present level of 12.5 per cent, a move which economic experts warn would do long-term damage to the economy. It also wants to return employer’s PRSI to 12 per cent. At present it ranges from 8.5 per cent to 10.75 per cent.

One of the main organisers of the Sinn Fein fundraising event in Manhattan was Pat Donaghy, the founder of New York’s third-largest construction firm, Structure Tone, which has revenues of close to €2bn.

“A lot of those attending were there at his invitation,” a well-placed source told the Sunday Independent.

Mr Donaghy, originally from Co Tyrone, who emigrated to New York in the late Fifties, is a major financial backer of Sinn Fein. He sold tables for this month’s event to many of the companies which do business with his firm. His niece, Pauline Quinn, an IRA member, served time in Maghaberry prison in the North.

Structure Tone formed a central part of a five-year corruption investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney.

The District Attorney found that consultants, brokers, architects and contractors conspired throughout the Nineties to rig bidding for work carried out at some of New York’s best-known companies, such as the Sony Corporation, Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley, Bertelsmann AG and Gleacher & Company.

In 1998, in a plea bargain, Structure Tone pleaded guilty to paying a bribe to obtain a $500m contract at the Sony Building at Madison Avenue and 56th Street, according to an article published in the New York Times in 1998.

According to investigators, Structure Tone paid about $2.3m in kickbacks while it worked at the Sony building in the early Nineties. It was one of five construction companies that admitted they participated in a scheme to rig bidding on $2bn worth of renovation work.

Structure Tone pleaded guilty to commercial bribery and agreed to pay $10m in lieu of fines and forfeiture of assets. Hours after pleading guilty, the company issued a statement saying it was a “victim” of the bid-rigging scheme and had merely paid “legitimate sales commissions”, a claim that incensed the prosecutors.

Political parties here, particularly Fianna Fail, will seize on today’s disclosure should Sinn Fein attempt to make further capital out the main government party’s links to property developers in advance of the general election.

Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams spoke at this month’s dinner in the Sheraton Hotel. Last year he was forced to address it via a satellite link from Dublin.

It is thought Mitchell Reiss, the US special envoy to Northern Ireland, recommended the ban be lifted despite Sinn Fein’s refusal to back the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The lifting of the ban came as Sinn Fein gave conditional support to the timetable for devolution laid out by the Irish and British governments in the St Andrews Agreement.

Last year President Bush delivered a humiliating rebuff to Gerry Adams by inviting the victims of IRA violence to the White House for St Patrick’s Day.

The Sinn Fein leader had been hoping for a face-to-face meeting with Mr Bush. Instead, Mr Bush asked the family of Robert McCartney to an intimate gathering where they met the President, Peter Hain, the Northern Secretary, and the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. This year he invited the McCartneys and the family of Joseph Rafferty.

Sunday Independent

METICULOUS bookkeeping records have provided the clearest evidence yet of the extent of the IRA’s activities between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Handwritten records of transactions involving smuggled fuel, cigarettes and other contraband recovered from the home of the IRA’s former chief of staff, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, have provided an unprecedented insight into the IRA’s racketeering and money laundering activities along the border.

The records were compiled using colour-coded shading to clearly indicate the cost of goods brought into the IRA’s stores and also the price received for the contraband goods when they were offloaded in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Most of the transactions show smuggled fuel being ferried from the Republic into the IRA’s control around ‘Slab’ Murphy’s farm at Ballybinaby, which crucially straddles the border in south Armagh, but they also detail cigarette consignments and transactions in counterfeit goods.

The records were seized in March this year when 200 soldiers and PSNI officers in the North accompanied customs officers to carry out a major search on Murphy’s property.

Officials from the Republic’s Criminal Assets Bureau and personnel from the Customs and Excise Department were accompanied by gardai as they entered the property from the Southern side of the border.

Two laptop computers concealed among bales of hay in a barn were located during the extensive search which the PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde hailed as a showcase example of the type of cross border co-operation that will be employed in the future to thwart terrorists and criminals.

But it is reliably understood that traditional handwritten ledgers also seized in the raid provide the most detailed insight into the IRA’s smuggling operation. These ledgers show goods coming into the IRA’s possession and then being sold on to their members and criminals for distribution - providing the most comprehensive record ever seized of the terrorist organisation’s smuggling empire in Ireland.

The Criminal Assets Bureau is understood to be delighted at the precise bookkeeping details in the ledgers and believes it will enable a justifiable claim for a substantial tax settlement to be presented to ‘Slab’ Murphy.

One source said: “It is an old fashioned bookkeeping method, which may reflect the age or the generation of the person who maintained it. But it is immaculate and is very easy to follow.

“In simple terms, purchases or smuggled goods of one type are colour coded and they turn up in the same colour code when they are sold on at a profit.

“Diesel has one colour code, petrol another and cigarettes another. These are immaculately maintained records which will enable the Criminal Assets Bureau to levy a tax bill of maybe €5m against Slab.”

Because they’re handwritten and not formulated on a computer, handwriting experts may be able to pinpoint with certainty the identity of the person who maintained the records and tie them into the IRA’s crime operation which could lead to a membership charge or a more serious terrorist charge being brought by the Garda.

In a stout defence of ‘Slab’ Murphy after the raids were carried out, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams described him as “not a criminal” and went on to say he was “a key supporter of the Sinn Fein peace strategy”.

But that praise for Murphy could come back to embarrass Mr Adams when, as expected, the CAB goes to the High Court to demand millions from him in unpaid taxes and lay bare the criminal financial empire he has controlled for the IRA for over two decades.

Recent reports suggested that the Assets Recovery Agency, the UK’s equivalent of CAB, has been unable to link Murphy with a UK property portfolio after raids in Manchester in October 2005. But an ARA spokesperson said its investigation in Britain was continuing and many leads were being followed.

Liam Collins

Sunday Business Post

By Colm Heatley
19 November 2006

When Sinn Fein’s leadership became aware of the death threats against them from dissident republicans last week, it marked a fresh stage in the peace process.

When Sinn Fein’s leadership became aware of the death threats against them from dissident republicans last week, it marked a fresh stage in the peace process.

In the nine years since dissident republican groups first emerged, they have stayed clear of any public suggestion of attacking Sinn Fein members.

Although the Real IRA denied there was any intent to kill Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams or the party’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness - and claimed that Sinn Fein had ‘‘invented’’ the problem - in Belfast last week, the threat was being taken seriously.

In the context of a Sinn Fein deal on policing and the prospect of power-sharing next March, the murder warning is regarded as an attempt by dissidents to claim the mantle of ‘‘true republicans’’ and emasculate Sinn Fein.

A year after IRA weapons were decommissioned, dissident republicans are attempting to push Sinn Fein off the republican stage.

Just a year ago, the threat would have been inconceivable. A few years ago, it would have met with retribution.

The Real IRA and Continuity IRA still lack anything near a sustainable support base, but they are determined to exploit Sinn Fein’s recent internal difficulties and build on the ‘‘success’’ of their firebombing campaign, which has cost the North stg£25 million (€37 million) since the summer.

‘‘We want to exploit this to the full,” said a senior Real IRA source who is close to the group’s Derry-based leadership.

‘‘Adams and McGuinness are traitors, there is no way around that.

“Even in 1921, the Free Staters didn’t join up with the British war machine.

‘‘We want to put that message out to people and we are seeing defections from Sinn Fe¤ in and the Provos, but the difficulty for us is that you don’t know if they are being sent over to keep an eye on you or if they are genuine.

‘‘We didn’t make a threat against Adams, Kelly or McGuinness, but that isn’t to say that they are always going to be safe either.”

The threat, however, has angered grassroots republicans who regard the dissidents as puppets of the British security system, riddled with informers, offering no viable political alternative, but just meddling in the peace process at sensitive times.

Mainstream republicans have always had a low tolerance threshold for dissidents.

In October 2000, one of the Real IRA’s leaders in Belfast, Jo Jo O’Connor, was trying to assert himself in the west of the city, usurping mainstream republican dominance in west Belfast. He was shot dead by the IRA and significantly no attempt at retaliation was made by dissidents, aware of their vulnerability in republican areas.

The Real IRA feels that situation has changed. However, in reality, it is still marginalised and even its leaders acknowledge that their campaign can’t ext end beyond firebombs in the near future.

‘‘It’s really all we can do at the minute,” said a Real IRA leader.

‘‘The Brits have tampered with our explosive mix, so we can’t set off any bombs until we find a way around it.

‘‘There have been some bombs made, but most of them were abandoned because they are too unstable.

“We have plenty of AK-47s and plenty of ammunition for that, but not a huge amount else.”

The Real IRA claims to have smuggled weapons into the south last year, but says it is having difficulties bringing them north of the border.

‘‘Our strategy at the minute is to disrupt normal life, not to let the Brits and Sinn Fein have it all their own way, and to remind people that true republicans are still in existence offering armed resistance to partition and British rule,” said the Real IRA leader.

‘‘We know it can’t go back to how it was in the 1970s or even the 1980s, but we also believe it is important to continue the campaign, despite its limitations.”

The Real IRA laughs off suggestions that its firebombing campaign, which costs jobs and money, is alienating working-class nationalist communities. One feature of both the Real IRA and Continuity IRA campaign is their lack of attacks on either British Army bases or PSNI patrols.

A fortnight ago in Keady, south Armagh, a PSNI station was attacked with gunfire and a blast bomb, but that was the exception rather than the rule.

In almost a decade, neither the Real IRA nor the Continuity IRA has killed a member of the security forces. The Real IRA argues that if it did attack PSNI patrols, it would be ‘‘shut down’’ within days.

‘‘Maybe we’d get one or two in Belfast, a few in Derry and Tyrone, but after that they would be all over us; they’d be swamping the place,” said the senior Real IRA member.

However, such tactics harden suspicions among mainstream republicans that dissidents are controlled by Special Branch and MI5, who are content to allow a certain amount of low-level attacks go ahead to create political instability.

But the message from dissidents, enjoying their greatest period of success, is that they are not going away and they will continue to disrupt the peace process, which they regard as a sell-out.

Republicans continue to agonise over PSNI move

While news of the dissident threat against Sinn Fein’s leaders was circulating around the North, the party was in London making final submissions to the British government ahead of Thursday’s announcement on the St Andrew’s Agreement.

The past month has been one of the most turbulent in Sinn Fein’s recent history. Internal debates have centred on the policing issue and, according to senior party sources, emotions have run high.

Even the debates over decommissioning and the standing-down of the IRA caused less rancour among the grassroots than the current argument over whether Sinn Fein should endorse the PSNI and pledge to uphold law and order in the North.

‘‘People have brought a lot of emotion to the debate,” said one senior Sinn Fein source.

‘‘It is an emotive issue, but what we have been trying to emphasise is that it needs to be seen in a broader context.”

In any event, last Thursday’s announcement by the British government that a pledge to uphold law and order is to be taken after elections in the North on March 7 next year, have stalled the debate. In Belfast, Gerry Adams moved to reassure republicans that the pledges would only take place then.

The issue of policing is one of the most emotive for republicans, who perceive the police as the armed wing of unionism with an inherently sectarian agenda and deep roots with loyalist paramilitaries.

Nationalists argue that the policing problem pre-dates the Troubles and can be traced to the formation of the state.

Republicans also point to evidence that strongly implicates the PSNI - and its predecessor, the RUC - in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

For its part, the PSNI said it had made the break with the old RUC and said the Patten reforms had created an accountable police force with more inbuilt checks than any other in Europe.

The message which Sinn Fein’s leaders have to sell the grassroots is that ‘‘the political detectives’’, as it dubbed the PSNI at its last ard fheis, have changed, or at least that endorsing them will bring about change.

That task is not made any easier by the fact that the timetable for the transfer of policing powers to a revived Stormont Assembly, a key Sinn Fein demand, has been kept deliberately vague and won’t be reported on until 2008.

The British government also has plans to have MI5 take the lead security role in the North. Work has started on their new headquarters on the outskirts of east Belfast.

The Patten Report, which sought to reform the RUC as part of the Good Friday Agreement, recommended 175 changes to the police force to make it more accountable and more acceptable to nationalists.

However, less than half - about 75 - of those proposals were implemented.

One of the report’s authors, Professor Clifford Shearing, complained that Patten had been not ‘‘cherry-picked’’ but ‘‘gutted’’.

Sinn Fein, which always regarded Patten as a compromise, agreed and subsequently refused to take its place on the Policing Board or to endorse the PSNI.

However, over the past year Sinn Fein has slowly prepared its grassroots for a deal on policing, arguing at its ard fheis that it must go ‘‘toe to toe with the political detectives’’.

Gerry Kelly, Sinn Fein’s policing spokesman, has told republicans to prepare for ‘‘hard choices’’ in the future.

Since the PSNI came into existence, it has been required by law to recruit Catholics and Protestants on a 50/50 basis.

This has provoked anger from unionists.

Throughout the Troubles, the 13,000-strong RUC, was 94 per cent Protestant. That figure has dropped to around 80 per cent for the PSNI today.

The PSNI has also been scrutinised by the Police Ombudsman, who is in the final stages of preparing what is expected to be a critical report on police collusion with loyalists in Belfast in the mid-1990s.

Among other things, the oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth has been replaced with a more neutral oath.

The force has also been reduced in size from 13,000 members to around 7,500.

Sinn Fein has always argued that such changes are cosmetic and has criticised the SDLP for taking its seat on the Policing Board, which it describes as ‘‘toothless’’.

For Sinn Fein, the key test is whether it can wrest control of the PSNI from London and make it directly accountable to a Stormont Assembly. Unionists oppose that idea.

A final decision on policing is not imminent and, between now and the new year, hard political bargaining will take place.

Among other things, Sinn Fein wants assurances about MI5’s proposed new role in the North and a timetable for the transfer of policing powers.

Until then, it is unlikely to call an ard fheis to endorse the PSNI.

Guardian

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday November 19, 2006
The Observer

Some of MI5’s activities could be placed under the independent scrutiny of Northern Ireland’s Police Ombudsman under a move to be made at Westminster on Tuesday.

The SDLP are tabling an amendment to the Northern Ireland Bill, which will bring the St Andrews Agreement into law. It will give the Ombudsman powers to investigate security operations that jointly involve MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

At present under the St Andrews deal, MI5, which now has supreme control of all counter-terrorist intelligence in the North of Ireland, is not subject to any independent outside control.

Mark Durkan, the SDLP leader, confirmed last night that the party intended to attempt to amend the Agreement in order to make the security services’ actions amenable to the Ombudsman. Under the Patten reforms, the PSNI is obliged in law to open all its files to the Ombudsman in any investigation.

‘If we don’t act on this then MI5’s role will undermine the whole point of Patten, which was to grant some democratic control and scrutiny over security policies,’ Durkan said.

‘If the status quo remains, any future Minister of Justice or Policing will have no access, let alone control of, a crucial part of security policy. In the event of a terrorist outrage taking place here, a Minister of Justice would be standing up in the Assembly unable to give the full intelligence picture as he or she wouldn’t have any access to that intelligence,’ the Foyle MP said.

Policing has become the key to unlocking the door to restored devolution in Northern Ireland. A crucial element to the Northern Ireland Bill is a pledge by future First and Deputy First Ministers to support the PSNI and the rule of law. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are encountering grassroots opposition to Sinn Fein signing up to support what they see as a British police force.

The Adams-McGuinness leadership have tried to sell the St Andrews deal by pointing to the possibility of a Sinn Fein Minister of Policing or Justice when those powers are devolved. However, the transfer of terrorist intelligence from the police to MI5 means at present that any such minister would have no effective control over counter-terrorrist operations in Northern Ireland.

Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson said the party was happy with the ministerial pledge contained within the 71-page bill. ‘If Sinn Fein sign up then they are in reality pledging support for a British police force,’ he said.

Donaldson said the DUP was also content that all counter-terrorist intelligence in the North of Ireland was in the hands of MI5. ‘Terrorist intelligence and counter-terrorist operations have effectively been boxed off. No local minister can get their hands on or ever abuse that information or policies,’ he added.

It is now highly likely that the government’s 24 November deadline will pass without the parties forming a devolved administration. Irish government sources admitted that Peter Hain’s threat to roll up the Stormont Assembly and make its members redundant on Friday will not now be carried out.

‘The real deadline is 26 March after the elections on the 2nd,’ one Dublin source told The Observer. ‘It gives everybody time to sell the deal to their respective constituencies.’

Meanwhile the centrist Alliance Party warned last night that the St Andrews Agreement is threatening to become a ‘division of power rather than a power sharing arrangement’.

Alliance leader David Ford said the exclusion of his party from tomorrow’s Programme for Government Committee at Stormont indicated that Sinn Fein and the DUP, are ‘more interested in a sectarian carve up rather than inclusion’.