SAOIRSE32

By Roger Boylan
Boston Review
September/October 2008

On June 8, 2008, the Reverend Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland’s Big Man, stepped down as First Minister of Northern Ireland, the mini-state he fought long and hard to preserve as a province of the United Kingdom. It was the end of an era.

For most of his life, Paisley embodied the doggedness of the Ulster Protestant, that European Boer who views with suspicion most of the world outside of his tiny laager of Ulster, especially the neighboring, mostly Catholic—and, until the 1990s, poorer—Irish Republic, which comprises three-quarters of the island of Ireland. Like the “North,” the “South” is the result of an arbitrary British-administered divvying-up that occurred in 1921, when Northern Protestants, most of whom are descended from Lowland Scots and English colonizers imported by the Crown during the seventeenth century, went overnight from being a minority in all of Ireland to a majority in customized loyalist Northern Ireland. In the hearts of Paisley and his followers, Ulster is, was, and ever will be as integral a part of the United Kingdom as Hertfordshire or Devon.

Northern Irish Catholics, rendered a minority by the same gerrymander that made the Protestants a majority, have taken a different view…

Read Writing the Troubles

BBC
25 Sept 2008

Two men, aged 28 and 31, arrested in connection with the murder of journalist Martin O’Hagan have been released by police.

A file is to be sent to the Public Prosecutions Service, a police spokesman said.

Mr O’Hagan, 51, was shot dead as he walked home from a pub in Lurgan, County Armagh, with his wife in 2001.

The Sunday World reporter had built a reputation for stories about paramilitaries and drug-dealing.

Two men appeared in court in Craigavon charged with his murder on Wednesday.

William Crawley
BBC
25 Sep 08

Gordon Brown is planning to remove the constitutional ban on Catholics becoming monarch. Chris Bryant MP, a former Anglican priest, has been reviewing anti-Catholic legislation, and Downing Street sources say the laws will be repealed early in a fourth term. The key laws that will be revised or repealed are the 1688 Bill of Rights, the 1701 Act of Settlement and the 1707 Act of Union. The current UK constitution also prohibits accession to the throne anyone from a non-Protestant faith background.

Plainly, the ramifications for this consitutional revision — should it be enacted — for the established Church of England will need to be examined. The monarch is currently ex officio Supreme Governor of the Church of England. That is a role that could not be filled by a future monarch who is not Anglican. I wonder if Chris Bryant is also proposing that the Act of Supremacy be repealed. The repeal of an Act granting titular headship of the established church to the monarch would seem to follow as a matter of logic should other reforms make way for a non-Anglican sovereign. In other words, Chris Bryant’s plans pave the way for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

Irish Times
25 Sept 2008

A catalogue of security failures was uncovered at the Northern Bank in Belfast after the £26.5 million robbery, it was claimed today.

Arthur Harvey QC, defending the bank official charged with the robbery, said there was a failure by Maybin, the security company tasked with protecting the building, to properly control who went in and out.

Bank supervisor Chris Ward (26) of Colinmill, Poleglass, on the outskirts of west Belfast, has been accused of the robbery and two counts of abducting a senior colleague who worked with him in the bank’s cash centre, Kevin McMullen, and Mr McMullen’s wife.

Ward denies all the charges.

Under cross-examination on his third day of giving evidence at Belfast Crown Court, Mr McMullen was asked by the QC: “Were you aware there was a failure by Maybin to control entry in and out of the building as well as the cash centre?”

Mr McMullen said he could not comment, but added: “Any time I entered, I had a pass which authorised me and, if it was not checked, it was clearly hanging on my belt.”

He did say, however, that he had been responsible for reporting to security staff at Maybin that the double security doors into his department had been faulty for a number of weeks.

He told the court: “In theory, there was a risk anyone in the building could come in in the right conditions.”

Listing what he described as a “catalogue of security failures”, Mr Harvey asked him if he was aware that “senior executives on the fourth floor had the disabled access made by coded entry. That the alarm at the entrance was not only not used, but had never been activated”.

He went on: “A panic alarm button was not only not used, but not connected.”

Mr McMullen said he was unaware of such issues and, after being forced to help smuggle the money out of the bank, had always believed the raid had been conducted by people with inside knowledge.

He said: “I didn’t think about defects in security. My thoughts have always been that someone within the cash centre provided the information.”

The prosecution claims that Mr Ward was the inside man for the robbery gang.

They have alleged it was he who told the gang that Mr McMullen and himself would be the men with the keys to the vaults on the day that the robbery was staged.

The rota detailing who would have the keys for the late shift on the Monday the robbery was staged in December 2004 was not completed until the afternoon of the previous Friday — by Mr Ward.

However, Mr Harvey said the rota was pinned up on the inside of a door in the cash centre, where it was not only visible to the 35 or 40 people who worked there, but to cleaners and security staff and people working for a delivery company who had made regular collections.

Mr Harvey also revealed a member of the bank’s staff had reported to police — in the wake of the robbery — that he had been approached in a pub and asked about the bank in the previous September.

Mr Harvey said the bank worker had been asked for details about the cash centre even though he did not normally work in it. There was an indication that a robbery was being planned.

Mr McMullen said he was unaware of such information.

The trial continues.

Irish Times
25 Sept 2008

Former taoiseach Albert Reynolds today received an award in New York for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process.

The Flax Trust honoured Mr Reynolds for his leadership, integrity, statesmanship and commitment during his time as taoiseach from 1992 to 1994.

“As Taoiseach, I decided that in order to achieve sustained peace and political progress, it was essential to engage with all sides,” Mr Reynolds said.

“Thankfully, after a long and difficult period, future generations of Irish will enjoy the fruits of our labour.”

Mr Reynolds co-signed the Downing Street Declaration with prime minister John Major in December 1993.

Flax Trust director Mary Turley presented Mr Reynolds with a Bog Oak award, which features a silver Flax flower representing the charity’s emblem.

The award presentation took place at the 18th Annual New York Flax Trust Ball, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

The Flax Trust is one of the largest and longest-established trusts in Ireland. Formed in Belfast in 1977, its aim is reconciliation and enrichment through education, training, social development and respect for cultural difference.

The charity recognises noted individuals who have sought to unite the people of Ireland.

News Letter
25 September 2008

THE home of a DUP councillor in south Armagh has been badly damaged in an arson attack.

Glenn Oliver - who sits on Newry and Mourne Council - was not in the house when it was targeted.

Windows were broken and flammable liquid was poured into the Newtownhamilton property. Graffiti was also daubed on a wall.

The damage is believed to have been substantial and a sectarian motive is a line of enquiry being pursued by PSNI in Newry.

This week, Mr Oliver’s party colleague John Finlay has vowed he will not be forced out of his Cloughmills home after being subjected to an eighth attack.

The DUP mayor of Ballymoney believes he may have been targeted because of Ulster flags flying at the property.

ALAN ERWIN
Irish Times
25 Sept 2008

DEFENCE LAWYERS are to call the ex-wife of an Omagh bomb suspect to give evidence at the multi-million pound civil trial in Belfast, it has been revealed.

Séamus McKenna’s legal team confirmed they want to cross-examine his former partner Catherine about her interviews with detectives seeking those behind the atrocity. Brian Fee QC was granted permission to seek to have Terence Patrick Morgan, a former associate of Mr McKenna’s, put in the witness box.

Both will be asked to attend the landmark action, in which relatives of some of the 29 people killed in the Real IRA attack are seeking damages from five men they hold responsible.

Neither is compelled to turn up, but subpoenas could be issued.

The High Court case has heard police transcripts of questioning of both potential witnesses.

At one stage Catherine McKenna allegedly lied to detectives about phone contact she had with her former husband less than an hour after the attack on Omagh.

A detective who gave evidence earlier in the trial said she gave a false account of being in Galway on August 15th when the bomb went off.

Mrs McKenna could give no explanation for the contact. She also described Mr McKenna as a drunkard who rarely contacted his family when sober, the transcripts disclosed. Lawyers also want to cross-examine Mr Morgan about his police interviews.

The court has heard further allegations that Mr Morgan, who worked for Colm Murphy - another of the five men being sued - lent his mobile phone to his boss the day before the bombing.

The five men named in the civil action, who include convicted Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt and Liam Campbell, all deny responsibility.

The trial continues today.

BBC
24 Sept 2008

The five men accused of murdering father-of-six Gerard Devlin have had their pleas to lesser charges accepted.

On Wednesday morning Francisco Notorantonio, 21, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, affray and malicious wounding.

His co-accused, Christopher Notorantonio, 56, Anthony Notorantonio, 50, William Notorantonio, 24, and Paul Burns, 26, pleaded guilty to affray.

The prosecution accepted the pleas at Belfast Crown Court.

Mr Devlin, 39, was stabbed to death outside his Ballymurphy home in February 2006.

BBC
24 Sept 2008

An art expert has said that having real nail bombs could “come under the ambit” of performance art, as long as there was no intention of setting them off.

Peter Bond, a senior art lecturer at St Martin’s College, London, was speaking at the trial of Michael Stone, 53.

Stone denies attempting to murder two Sinn Fein leaders at Stormont in 2006.

Mr Bond told Belfast Crown Court that if an individual intended to detonate such bombs, “not for one moment” could that be construed as performance art.

As well as the charges of attempting to murder Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, loyalist Stone denies 12 other charges of possessing nail and pipe bombs with intent, possessing three knives, an axe and a garotte and having an imitation firearm on 24 November 2006.

In his evidence, Mr Bond, a professional performance artist stressed that in performance art, the most important thing was that people were not harmed.

Giving evidence on his own behalf, Stone had claimed the whole incident was performance art, designed to send a “proverbial rocket up the backsides” of the politicians.

He claimed that all the items he had brought with him on that day had their own symbolism in what he described as “an installation”.

The trial continues.

BBC
24 Sept 2008

The attack which lead to the death of Ballymena schoolboy, Michael McIlveen, started off as “much like a fight in a schoolyard”, a court has been told.

Defence for Aaron Cavana Wallace, 20 of Moat Road in Ballymena, told the jury at Antrim Crown Court that there was “no sectarianism” to the attack.

The lawyer made his remark during his cross-examination of a witness, who cannot be named because of his age.

Mr Wallace denies murdering the 15-year-old.

The witness has already told the court he saw his friend being attacked by a group of Protestant youths after being chased into a car park in Ballymena.

The witness has also said that sectarian abuse had been shouted before and during the assault.

The defence lawyer asked the witness that if this really had been “an all-out confrontation on sectarian lines”, how as a known Catholic he had managed to escaped

The witness replied: “How am I supposed to know? Ask them (referring to the defendants).”

The lawyer said the cause of the dispute had been “exaggerated” and that “this was a personal disagreement brought about through alcohol and adolescent aggression”.

“A number of people funnelled into that alleyway, much like a fight in a schoolyard. It’s not always the intention of getting involved,” he said.

“There is an element in this crowd that didn’t intend to hit anyone and my client was one of them. If he was, he could have hit you earlier.”

The witness has already told the jury that he saw Mr Wallace in an alleyway prior to the attack on Michael McIlveen on 7 May, 2006.

Defence told the jury that an experienced engineer had looked at the location and it was his opinion that the possibility of making out any facial features at the distance the witness said he saw the defendant was “zero”.

He also said that many of the people were dressed in a similar way and that the lighting in the alley was poor.

The witness replied: “I know what I seen (sic) and I did see him putting the feet into Michael.”