SAOIRSE32

UUP website

*Via Slugger O’Toole

The UUP today published the government proposals put forward by the Secretary of State to the Policing and Justice sub-committee on the UUP website at www.uup.org.

UUP Leader Sir Reg Empey said the public should be offered the opportunity to cut through the ‘triple lock’ spin of the DUP and read for themselves that in the absence of agreement on the Policing issue, government would impose the devolution of policing and justice as well as the Ministers concerned.

Sir Reg said the proposal amounted to a Ministerial directive, and held out the very real prospect of a Sinn Fein Minister of Policing and Justice by May 2008, regardless and in spite of DUP claims of a ‘triple lock’ on the issue.

In a statement Sir Reg said,

“We now know part of the picture of the behind the scenes Christmas negotiation. The Secretary of State makes it clear in the letter that we have published on our webpage that government is prepared to devolve policing and justice and appoint a Justice and Deputy Justice Minister anyway if the government timetable is not adhered to.

So much for the triple-lock and testing period that some in the DUP have been beating their chests about.

When the UUP first raised this it was denied by both the Government and the DUP, but now in today’s papers Peter Robinson is saying that this letter poses a threat to devolution and must be withdrawn!

This is confirmation that the so called ‘triple lock’ is useless. It is also confirmation that the government has comprehensively out-manoeuvered the DUP negotiators and confirmed the imposition of devolution of Justice within the timescale set out at St Andrews, namely by May 2008. We could therefore, have a Sinn Fein Policing and Justice Minister in Office before May 2008. The public have a right to see through the spin and see it all in plain English. That is why we are putting the entire contents of the letter on our webpage.”

*Click to download Hain Letter in Full

Irish Democrat

By Ken Keable
News 2006

A TV audience-ratings analyst recently reported that when news about Northern Ireland comes on-screen, viewers in Britain tend to switch channels. This situation, which the mainstream media themselves have created by their complicity in British colonial rule, provides news editors with the perfect excuse to continue covering up Britain’s crimes.

The result is that the British state is getting away with murder, the Blair government actively covers up these crimes, and so inured is the public to the whole mess that even when some of the information gets into the mainstream media, hardly anyone in Britain bats an eyelid.

Over the years there has been a build-up of evidence that the British state, through its army, spooks and sectarian colonial police force, and with the knowledge of senior politicians, has had a deeply collaborative relationship with loyalist paramilitaries, supplying them with arms, intelligence and protection.

Yet this flow of information, which should long ago have become a national scandal, has met with almost complete silence in Britain, and the left has failed miserably to press home its advantage. The opportunity to discredit British colonialism and the state institutions responsible, and all the guilty politicians, Labour and Tory, has not been seized.

Part of the reason is the illusion that “it couldn’t happen here”. But Northern Ireland is here, though we behave as if it’s on Planet Zog. What the state can do there it can do in England, Scotland and Wales, if it feels sufficiently threatened.

The latest indictment comes in a 115-page report of 6 November 2006, from an international, independent panel of experts, commissioned by the hard-working Pat Finucane Centre, Derry. It is available, along with lots of other useful information, on http://www.patfinucanecentre.org

The panel found evidence of state collusion in 24 loyalist attacks involving 74 murders in 1972-77. Four of the attacks were in the Republic of Ireland, including the street bombings in Dublin and Monaghan on 17 May 1974, which occurred during the gun-enforced lockout organised by the so-called Ulster Workers’ Council. Thirty-four innocent passers-by were killed in one day, to intimidate the Irish people.

The report says:

“Documentary, testimonial and ballistics evidence suggests that the violent extremists with whom RUC officers and agents colluded and even overlapped, gained much of their arms and ammunition, as well as training, information and personnel, from the RUC and UDR.”

The UDR was a locally-recruited, overwhelmingly Protestant regiment of the British Army which was later renamed the Royal Irish Regiment, and is now being disbanded with full honours. The RUC has since been reformed, to a limited extent, in response to the report of the international Patten Commission on policing, established under the Good Friday agreement. As part of this make-over it has been renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The report goes on to say:

“Credible evidence indicates that superiors of violent extremist officers and agents, at least within the RUC, were aware of their sectarian crimes, yet failed to act to prevent, investigate or punish them. On the contrary, they allegedly made statements that appeared to condone participation in these crimes.”

It also notes that:

“As early as 1973, senior officials of the United Kingdom were put on notice of the danger - and indeed some of the facts - of sectarian violence by UDR soldiers using stolen UDR weapons and ammunition, and supported by UDR training and information. At least by 1975 senior officials were also informed that some RUC police officers were ‘very close’ to extremist paramilitaries.” “…The evidence that police and military officers of the State were involved in the murders, and that some of their superiors knew of this but failed to take appropriate action, raises a further question: How high up the chain of command in the police, army and intelligence agencies of the British State, did specific knowledge and acquiescence in sectarian crimes go?”

The credentials of the four panellists are so impeccable that I can’t see how they can be challenged on grounds of left-wing or anti-British bias, professional qualifications or experience.

Douglas Cassel, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who headed the panel, said:

“Personally, I was shocked. The United Kingdom has a reputation around the world as one of the leading democracies…To come and find that British police and soldiers were involved in murdering people and that this was known by their police commanders and superiors, and that there was information that should have put people at the level of prime minister on notice, is something that I would not have imagined in my wildest dreams.”

Ah, but it was all a long time ago. Yet loyalist paramilitaries are still operating, and the state, which knows exactly who they are through its agents among them, continues to allow it; and scarcely anyone says that all this should disqualify Peter Hain from becoming Deputy Prime Minister.

The above article was originally published in the ISLIP newsletter

Irish Democrat

By David Granville
News 2006

YOU’D THINK that a substantial - and growing - body of evidence supporting long-standing allegations of British state involvement in the murder of its own ’subjects’ and those of a ‘friendly’ neighbour might warrant the kind of media treatment that, let’s say, recent events in Ipswich, or the alleged murder of just one ex-KGB agent have attracted.

Unfortunately, this is the British state and Ireland, its very own partially-occupied colonial fag end, that we’re talking about. Instead of pages of indignation, outrage and a scandal so large that senior heads - political, secret service and military - would have to roll, the silence has been almost deafening.

At the end of November an Irish parliamentary committee published its report into a number of incidents which took place on both sides of the Irish border in the mid -1970s, claiming the lives of 18 people. The Irish parliamentarians concluded that collusion was involved in many of the nine attacks under investigation.

The report is the fourth to date to be published in the wake of the Irish government-commissioned Barron report, which itself identified the possibility of widespread collusion between British security forces and loyalist paramilitaries.

Particularly disturbing is the conclusion that successive British governments, including those of Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher, were aware of the situation, as were the Irish authorities, but did nothing about it.

At the end of October, another report, prepared by a panel of independent, international investigators, concluded that there was “strong and credible evidence” of British state collusion in 24 of the 25 cases, involving 74 murders, it had investigated.

Both of these reports join a growing body of evidence pointing to substantial British state involvement in acts of criminality and murder in Ireland throughout the conflict from the early 1970s.

Among other damning evidence to have emerged in recent months has been:

–the unearthing of documents by the Pat Finucane Centre and the Irish News revealing that, in 1973, the British government knew that between five and 15 percent of those serving in the Ulster Defence Regiment, a unit within the British army, were linked to loyalist groups and that the regiment was “the best single source of weapons” for loyalist terror gangs.

–a report by police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan’s team, which concludes that the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s special branch had allowed loyalist informers to carry out around a dozen murders

–claims made in October by a former police colleague that Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, the highest-ranking RUC officer to be killed by the IRA, had been involved with the mid-Ulster loyalist gang responsible for a number of attacks across the border, including the Dublin/Monaghan bombings, which resulted in 33 deaths and several hundred injuries.

Almost as damning as the growing body of evidence itself has been the British government’s unwillingness to co-operate or assist the work of various investigations into collusion between the British state and its agents and loyalist paramilitaries. Despite this lack of co-operation it is clear that attempts to keep the truth buried can never be wholly successful.

Indeed, some of those involved in the important initiatives concerned with bringing about individual and community reconciliation have spoken of the truth ’seeping under the doors’.

However, despite the trickle of evidence of evidence of collusion becoming more of a flood, outside of the Irish editions of the mainstream British media and their associated websites, very little has been reported. Even where it has, reports have elicited little or no comment from the public or politicians outside of Ireland.

As fellow campaigner and Englishman, Ken Keable, wrote recently:

“The result is that the British state is getting away with murder, the Blair government actively covers up these crimes, and so inured is the public to the whole mess that even when some of the information gets into the mainstream media, hardly anyone in Britain bats an eyelid.”

Of course, had it been criminal activities and human-rights violations of the Syrian, Iranian, North Korean or perhaps the Venezuelan, states and their agents that had been under investigation, things would have been different.

Such attempts to ignore the crimes of the British state, carried out in our name, are themselves an outrage and a scandal. Apart from the dastardly nature of the crimes themselves, the implications for civil liberties and human rights in every part of Britain are enormous. It just goes to show how thin the veneer of ‘democracy’ in Britain really is.

For further information about collusion between the British state loyalist paramilitaries, including the investigation undertaken by the Pat Finucane Centre and Stephen McCaffrey visit the Pat Finucane website at: http://www.serve.com/pfc/ The Irish parliamentary report on collusion can be found at: http://www.oireachtas.ie (see Justice Joint Committee)

BN.ie

02/01/2007 - 07:58:23

The DUP’s deputy leader has said any move to allow IRA “on-the-runs” to return to the North could scupper efforts to restore power-sharing government in the North.

There is speculation that the British government may have offered such a concession to Sinn Féin during negotiations during the Christmas period.

Sinn Féin has agreed to hold a special ard fheis later this month to vote on whether to end its opposition to the PSNI.

The DUP has demanded that the British government come clean on the matter, with Peter Robinson describing it as a potential deal-breaker.

He has also said the DUP will not accept any British attempt to impose a justice minister at Stormont if there is no cross-community agreement on the job.

BBC

Sinn Fein’s “begrudging movement” on policing reduces the prospect of any immediate action towards restoring devolution, Ian Paisley has said.

However, in his new year message the DUP leader said his party would “not be found wanting” if Sinn Fein honoured its commitment “with actions”.

Sinn Fein has voted for a conference on the issue of supporting policing.

Mr Paisley said Sinn Fein support for policing and justice would “break down unionist mistrust and suspicion”.

“This year can be a year of delivery,” he said.

“Quality support for the police, the courts and the rule of law would do much to change the mistrust and suspicion held by the unionist electorate and the sooner we have delivery, the better for us all.

“Unionism has not been found wanting in its desire to see a flourishing and full administration restored to Stormont which will allow local men and women to run this country effectively.

“It is only with real, substantive and quality delivery that this process can and will move forward in 2007.”

Annual commemoration

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has told republicans that now is the time for them to get involved with policing.

He told hundreds of people who gathered at a commemoration in County Fermanagh on Sunday that he wanted a frank debate before the party’s special ard fheis on the issue later this month.

Mr Adams was speaking near Roslea at an annual commemoration for two IRA men who were shot dead during an attack on an RUC station in nearby Brookeborough 50 years ago.

“For years republicans stayed outside policing because that was the best way to bring about change,” he said.

“Now we want to move in because that’s the best way to maximise the change that has been secured,” he said.

He said that if the special conference backed the leadership’s recommendations on policing they would ensure that “political policing, collusion and the force within a force” would be a thing of the past.

The Sinn Fein move on Friday to call for a special conference on policing was welcomed by Downing Street and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

Sinn Fein support for policing would be viewed as removing one of the main obstacles to restoring devolution.

More than two-thirds of the executive voted in favour of the meeting.

The party has historically opposed recognising the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and its predecessor the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), because of what it sees as a Protestant bias within the service.

BBC

Belfast has paid tribute to one of Ireland’s greatest rock stars with a memorial plaque and special concert in the city.

Rory Gallagher died in 1995

Hundreds of fans gathered in the Ulster Hall to celebrate the musical life of Rory Gallagher.

Gallagher, who was born in Ballyshannon in County Donegal, died in 1995.

He decided to start playing the guitar after seeing Elvis on TV and was inspired by musicians like Jerry Lee Lewis, Woody Guthrie and Chuck Berry.

The event included the unveiling of a memorial plaque by Rory’s brother and manager, Donal Gallagher, and performances by The Pat McManus Band and Rory Gallagher tribute act, Sinnerboy.

A screening of Gallagher’s 1984 Ulster Hall concert also took place, as well as an exhibition of memorabilia, including guitars, concert posters and portraits by rock photographer Fin Costello.

During the day, there was a Rory Gallagher Rock School.

Ulster Hall manager Pat Falls said Gallagher played many great concerts at the venue throughout his career.

Gallagher’s nephew Daniel at an exhibition featuring the star’s guitars in Dublin

“Rory had a special love for Belfast, where he made his first real breakthrough playing with Taste in the late 1960s,” he said.

“He remained loyal to his Belfast fans right through the darkest days of the ’70s and ’80s, returning every year for barnstorming performances at a time when many other big names stayed away.

“Since his untimely death, we often have been asked by fans to erect some form of memorial to him. This plaque, and this tribute night, is a great way of us showing our respect to one of the greatest Irish performers of his - or any - generation.”

International Herald Tribune

The Associated Press
Published: January 1, 2007

DUBLIN, Ireland: Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams paid tribute Monday to two Irish Republican Army men killed during a botched attack on police a half-century ago — but told supporters they should work with today’s police force in Northern Ireland.

Adams, who was addressing his first rally of Sinn Fein supporters since the IRA-linked party announced last week that it will begin cooperating with the police, argued that his position may be ironic but was not contradictory.

“For years we stayed outside policing structures because that was the best way to bring about change. Now we want to move into those structures because that is now the best way to maximize that change,” Adams told the rally at a rural crossroads in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein’s executive board voted Friday to organize a special party conference this month to vote on whether to recognize the authority of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Protestants say they won’t form a power-sharing government with Sinn Fein — the central goal of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace accord of 1998 — unless Sinn Fein endorses the forces of law and order in the British territory.

Monday’s event commemorated the IRA’s attempt 50 years ago to kill police officers at a barracks in the nearby town of Brookeborough. Officers repelled the Jan. 1, 1957, attack by 14 IRA members, killing two and wounding four others.
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That IRA campaign, which concentrated on attacking British security-force posts near Northern Ireland’s border with the Republic of Ireland, ended in failure in 1962. A modern “Provisional” wing of the IRA, founded in 1970, killed nearly 1,800 people before abandoning its effort in 1997 to expel Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom.

“The IRA were entirely right to embark on the border campaign in 1956. In 1962, when they called an end to that campaign, that was also their right and judgment — just as it was the right and the judgment of the IRA in more recent times to bring an end to its armed campaign,” Adams said.

He noted that Sinn Fein was long a marginalized political force but today represents most of Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority. He said the party should join political bodies that oversee and control the predominantly Protestant police force, which is being dramatically reformed in line with the Good Friday pact.

Attending the rally were relatives of one of the long-dead IRA men, Feargal O’Hanlon. He and his colleague Sean Sabhat died at farmhouse near the crossroads after being evacuated there by the IRA unit.

Adams argued that Sinn Fein needed to work with today’s police force, which used to be called the Royal Ulster Constabulary but was renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2001 as part of a decade-long reform project.

“We have all lived through the days of sectarian and political policing. The violent excesses of the RUC and their surrogates in the ‘unionist’ death squads have touched every person here,” Adams said, referring to Protestant paramilitary groups that have killed more than 900 Catholic civilians since the late 1960s.

“Our approach has to be about ending all of that. Ignoring policing is simply not an option,” he said.