SAOIRSE32

Belfast Telegraph
By Lesley-Anne Henry
Monday, January 28, 2008

Mural artists from both sides of Ulster’s political divide have been given the go-ahead to show off their skills in Liverpool.

East Belfast loyalist Mark Ervine, son of the late PUP leader David Ervine, and republican ex-prisoner Danny Devenny have been granted £10,000 to paint murals of Merseyside’s most famous sons — The Beatles.

The unlikely duo are part of the Liverpool Mural Project which has been awarded the cash by the Liverpool Culture Company to mark this year’s Capital of Culture status.

They plan to paint a timeline history of The Beatles on an outside wall of the famous Picket music venue on Jordan Street in the heart of the Liverpool’s cultural district.

The mural will chart The Beatles’ rise from wannabes to a worldwide phenomenon, with painting expected to start in March.

The Liverpool Culture Company had initially rejected the project because it was not deemed “edgy enough”.

But after an 18-month campaign backed by politicians on both sides of the Irish Sea, the Culture Company changed their minds.

Mark, who was responsible for the New Dawn mural on Belfast’s Newtownards Road, said: “We are really pleased. We have been campaigning for this for about 18 months.

“We were initially told it didn’t have enough edge — but how much more edge can you get? We are well pleased to get the funding.”

Danny Devenny, who served time in Long Kesh, is renowned for painting murals across north and west Belfast — including the famous Falls Road Bobby Sands work.

He said: “We are over the moon about it. The boys from Liverpool are coming over on February 9 to plan when we are going to head over there to start.

“Our plan is to do a timeline history of The Beatles and possibly a couple of other murals. “We are hoping to bring three or four artists from here over as well as a number of musicians so that it is more than just a visual event.”

The artists also hope to involve school children and community groups from Liverpool. The idea came about after Liverpudlians Gregory Brennan and Peter Morrison took a black taxi tour of Belfast’s murals.

Originally it was planned to paint 12 murals — based on Beatles album covers — but that figure was reduced.

By Chris Thornton
28 January 2008
Belfast Telegraph

A serving MI5 officer will be first witness to testify as the Billy Wright Inquiry resumes today.

Witness DO1 is one of three members of the Security Service who will appear at the tribunal.

All three will be anonymous and screened from the public when they give evidence in Banbridge’s courthouse. In his application for anonymity, one of the agents said some of his closest friends are not even aware he works for MI5.

The three agents are expected to be asked about intelligence, including perceived threats against Wright, around the time the LVF leader was murdered.

Wright was shot dead in December 1997 by three INLA inmates who were housed in the same H Block of the prison. Last week, in a report detailing the PSNI’s inability to produce some evidence, the Inquiry revealed that a police informer was suspected of smuggling a gun to one of Wright’s killers, Christopher ‘Crip’ McWilliams, in prison sometime before the murder.

The PSNI told the inquiry the Special Branch agent is dead.

The inquiry’s report detailed other major gaps in intelligence, including reports on the surveillance of known INLA leaders who were suspected of the plot.

But the report thanked MI5 for its cooperation in resolving a logjam about evidence. The Security Service, along with the Army, had been seeking a restriction notice to prevent some documents being made public, while the in quiry was reluctant to do so.

They reached a compromise in which the evidence will be summarised and the original documents will not be produced.

The three MI5 agents had their applications for anonymity granted by the inquiry earlier this month. They will only be identified as DO1 — for “desk officer” — DO2 and HAG.

Billy’s dad, David Wright, did not raise any objections to the screening. He is known to be anxious to avoid any further delays in the inquiry, which is already running behind schedule.

The inquiry had been plagued by significant gaps in the documentary evidence, including the destruction of thousands of prison files. The Maze security files on Wright and two of his killers are among the missing documents.

The file on the third killer, John Glennon, was found by the inquiry among other prison documents. It contained the handwritten note saying a named Maghaberry prisoner was responsible for smuggling a gun to McWilliams.

The inquiry later matched his name to a list of informants supplied by the PSNI. It is not clear if the gun was one of the weapons used to kill Wright. McWilliams actually managed to breach high security twice in 1997 to produce guns in prison. On the first occasion, he took a prison officer hostage in Maghaberry, eight months before the Wright murder.

Finance Minister Peter Robinson is due to appear before the inquiry next week. He is being called because he revealed in Parliament in 2003 that he had been sent photocopies of the police file on Wright’s murder — one of the documents that the inquiry had trouble acquiring from the PSNI.

Derry Journal
25 January 2008

A Derry woman says she has been refused an army pension because she and her partner were not married when he died in a Real IRA bomb blast in the city’s Waterside.

David Caldwell

Father-of-three David Caldwell, a former UDR soldier, died after picking up a lunchbox packed with explosives at a TA base on the Limavady Road almost six years ago.

His long-term partner Mavis McFaul says the Ministry of Defence has told her she does not qualify for his pension. She insists she is struggling to get by on income support.

“It’s terrible. I’m sitting here in the house and I’ve a mortgage over my head and all I’m getting is £79 a week,” she said. “That’s what I have to live on, to pay for oil and groceries for me and the wee girl.”
Derry MP Mark Durkan, who has taken up the case, is urging the MoD to act with sensitivity.

“Here is a woman and a daughter who have lost someone in a terrible atrocity,” he said. “The issue that the MoD would be relying on will appear to them to be grossly insensitive and almost a bit of a ‘gotcha clause’ where they’re looking for an excuse not to pay.”