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Breaking News.ie
01/11/2008

Today marks the 75th birthday of Fine Gael.

The party will be celebrating three quarters of a century in political life at a commemorative event in Dublin today.

Around 250 people are expected to attend including party members, historians and supporters.

Event organiser, TD Jimmy Deenihan said it’s an occasion that’s not just about the past.

“It’s about recognizing our heroes from the past”, he said, “but also about looking to the future. Looking at ways that Fine Gael can win support and how we can be more electoral successful going into the future.”

BBC
1 Nov 2008

Thousands of fallen soldiers have been honoured at a cross-border commemoration service in County Louth.

Ex-service groups from both sides of the border paid tribute to the war dead at the only all-Ireland remembrance event on the island.

The cross-border service has been held for the past nine years

The Irish Ex-Service Men’s Association and Whiteabbey British Legion branch laid wreaths bearing the Royal Crest and Tricolour in Drogheda.

The joint memorial service has been held for the past nine years.

Drogheda Mayor Frank Maher and Newtownabbey Mayor Victor Robinson represented their respective areas.

Ceremony

The event also included an inter-denominational religious ceremony recalling the service and sacrifice of thousands who joined the British forces to fight in the First World War.

Brian McCalden, spokesman for Whiteabbey Royal British Legion, said it had grown in size and importance over the past decade.

“It started off as a handful of people, but has attracted up to 200 in recent years,” said Mr McCalden, who was one of organisers.

“Last year the Irish Ex-Service Men’s Association had 12 people at it, and we expect the same this year.

“They remember their soldiers who were killed in all conflicts.”

BBC
1 Nov 2008

A suspicious object which caused a security in Larne on Saturday morning has been described by police as an “elaborate hoax”.

The Royal Irish Regiment paraded through Larne

The alert, in Agnew Street, was close to Larne’s council offices where the Royal Irish Regiment were being conferred the freedom of the borough.

The ceremony took place at around 1230 GMT and a council spokesperson said the event was not affected by the alert.

Crowds of people lined the streets for the regiment’s parade through Larne.

Meanwhile, there is an ongoing security alert on the railway line between Larne and Whitehead.

And a suspicious object found at Main Street in Glenavy has been described as an elaborate hoax.

It follows an alert in the County Antrim village on Friday night, which was also declared a hoax.

Belfast Telegraph
Saturday, 1 November 2008

Northern Ireland’s First Minister today pledged not to walk away from the troubled powersharing government no matter what the difficulties facing it.

Peter Robinson said his Democratic Unionist Party was committed to devolution for the long haul and said a return to Direct Rule from Westminster would be madness.

The powersharing cabinet at Stormont has failed to meet for over four months amid rows between the two main parties - Sinn Fein and the DUP - over a range of outstanding issues, among them a timetable for the devolution of policing powers.

But in his first DUP conference speech as party leader since succeeding Ian Paisley this summer, Mr Robinson said he was not for turning back

“The form of Government we have entered is clearly not our first choice,” he told delegates at the Armagh City Hotel.

“But as a party we will honour all our obligations and deliver on all of our pledges. If devolution fails it will not be because unionists have failed to live up to any agreement that we reached.”

The east Belfast MP said Direct Rule could not be contemplated.

“Taking the route back to powerlessness and irrelevance - would be sheer madness: madness for unionism and madness for Northern Ireland.” he said.

After receiving a rapturous welcome from party faithful as he took the stage, Mr Robinson went on to hit out at hard line unionists who advocate pulling out of the powersharing administration.

“There are some who say we should turn back,” he said.

“They try to fool people into believing there is some better alternative. But they know the options they advocate are unachievable and could not, even for a fleeting moment, be attained.”

Sinn Fein cabinet members are currently refusing to attend executive meetings, claiming the DUP is not honouring commitments on policing devolution and legislation to protect Irish speakers made in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement.

It says until the party agrees to govern on the basis of real partnership and equality it will not return to the executive table.

However, the DUP and the junior partners in the cabinet - the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists - have accused the republicans of holding the administration to ransom until they get their own way.

The DUP leader told his party conference that Sinn Fein’s refusal to get down to the business of government, especially in the midst of the current economic downturn, was unforgivable.

“As the global economy is reeling and our local economy looks to the Assembly for leadership and help, what is the Sinn Fein response?” he asked.

“How do they respond to the needs of people in the hour of need?

“They respond by obstructing the Executive from meeting and leaving those most at risk to fend for themselves. The powerlessness of opposition during Direct Rule was frustrating, but the paralysis of the Executive by Sinn Fein is unforgivable.”

He added: “It is time for Sinn Fein to get back to work. There should be no hiding place for those who wish to hold politics in Northern Ireland to ransom.”

Mr Robinson said his party would not bow to Sinn Fein threats and would only sign up to devolving policing powers from Westminster when there was sufficient confidence in the unionist community for such a move.

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has warned dissident republicans not to “piggyback” on the party’s protest against the armed forces parade.

Sinn Féin has organised a protest against the armed forces parade

The armed forces and Sinn Féin have both altered Sunday’s homecoming parade and protest in Belfast.

An RAF flypast has been cancelled and soldiers will be unarmed, while Sinn Féin has changed the route and times of its protest.

“Anybody looking for trouble shouldn’t be coming here,” said Mr Adams.

Dissident republicans opposed to the Sinn Féin leadership strategy of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are still planning to march in the city.

Their protest has not been approved by the Parades Commission, which has already determined on the main two events.

News Letter
01 November 2008

HOPES are growing that tomorrow’s Belfast homecoming parade will pass off peacefully after a second successful Royal Irish parade.

This afternoon thousands lined the streets of Larne to cheer the Royal Irish Regiment through the town after the regiment was awarded the freedom of the borough by the council.
This afternoon’s parade in Larne was delayed by the alert, but the crowds waited patiently for about an hour until the all-clear had been given and the parade got under way.
Among the thousands lining the town’s streets stood families with children perched high on their father’s shoulders, veterans with medals proudly pinned to their chests and elderly waiting in wheelchairs.
The parade consisted of about 200 soldiers from the 1st and 2nd Battalions, along with retired Royal Irish veterans and Army cadets.
Filling the road, they marched forward in utterly straight columns behind the vast Irish wolfhound mascot and regimental band.
Police said that no warning was received about the “elaborate hoax” device, discovered at about 8.40am this morning on a street which was part of the parade route.
Ammunition Technical Officers from the Army carried out controlled explosions on the device and the PSNI helicopter circled overhead during the parade.
A PSNI spokeswoman said that police had discovered the hoax package while searching for two another devices which they had received a telephoned warning about.
“There was no warning for Agnew Street,” she said.
The PSNI spokeswoman also said that there had been no reports of trouble at last night’s parade in Ballymena or today’s event in Larne.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Shaun Woodward has joined those appealing for a peaceful Sunday and called for “small unrepresentative factions” not to disrupt the day’s events.
“Many people are looking forward to welcoming back those who have served, for the majority of their time, in Afghanistan as well as Iraq and the Balkans,” he said.
But the Secretary of State will not attend the homecoming parade, although an NIO spokesman said that he would be at the Royal Irish service in St Anne’s later in the day.
Conservative Shadow Secretary of State Owen Paterson, who is the local MP for North Shropshire, where the Royal Irish are based, will be attending the parade, along with the Conservative’s Northern Ireland spokesman in the House of Lords, Lord Glentoran.
First Minister Peter Robinson will also be among leading politicians at the event.

Belfast Telegraphl
Saturday, 1 November 2008

Fears of violence at Sunday’s armed forces parade were heightened today after Sinn Fein multiplied the size of its protest.

Up to 2,000 protesters are now expected to take part in the demonstration — more than four times the number originally estimated.

Dissident republicans are also planning an illegal march.

Figures posted on the Parades Commission website were updated last night —after Sinn Fein announced it would alter the times and route of its rally to facilitate peace.

Unionists have accused Sinn Fein of heightening tensions but the party’s Paul Maskey defended the increase in the number of protesters. “A lot of people have expressed an interest to attend our protest. That’s the maximum number we are looking to have, there’s nothing more to it.”

The Belfast Telegraph can also reveal that British soldiers not participating in the homecoming parade have been banned from Belfast all weekend.

It is understood senior officers have ordered their men to stay out of the city centre between 4pm Friday and 4pm on Monday.

Yesterday the MoD dumped plans for an RAF flypast and said soldiers returning from Afghanistan would not be armed as they walked the city centre parade route.

Independent.ie
Saturday November 01 2008

A major security operation is planned in Belfast tomorrow amid fears of trouble at a British Armed Forces homecoming parade, writes David Young.

Despite moves yesterday by Sinn Fein protesters and the British Army to defuse tension surrounding the event, concerns remain about the potential for clashes between republican and loyalist extremists.

Sinn Fein supporters have decided to change the route of their protest march in order to avoid potential confrontation with loyalists entering the city centre from the north-west, and to distance themselves from an illegal demonstration being planned by dissident republicans.

However, with the renegade republicans still planning demonstrations at a number of locations, some where parade followers are likely to pass, the potential for unrest remains.

BBC
31 Oct 2008

The band will return to thank Banbridge fans

The Miami Showband, which lost three members in a UVF attack in 1975, is to return to the town where they played on the night of the murders.

They were returning from a show in Banbridge when their van was stopped by a bogus UDR patrol near Newry.

Three musicians were killed when a UVF bomb exploded prematurely.

The band have been rehearsing for a nationwide tour and will play in Banbridge in December. The tour begins with a show in Ballymena on Saturday.

Miami member Steve Travers said they wanted to return to Banbridge to pay a tribute to the people who had made them so welcome.

“Banbridge marked the last time we were really happy on stage, so Banbridge is a very good memory for us,” he said.

Singer Fran O’Toole, guitarist Tony Geraghty and trumpeter Brian McCoy were killed and two other members of the band were badly injured as the bomb exploded while the UVF gang attempted to place it in the Miami minibus.

The re-formed group returned to Belfast in September this year when they were warmly received in the Grand Opera House.

David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent
Times
November 1, 2008

A homecoming parade through Belfast tomorrow for soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment returning from service in Afghanistan has put Northern Ireland on high alert, with all police leave cancelled and fears of violent protest.

The tension has steadily built all week, culminating in the decision yesterday to cancel a Royal Air Force flypast as part of the ceremony.

The head of the Army in Northern Ireland, Major-General Chris Brown, also said that none of the troops taking part in the parade would be carrying weapons. His announcement was swiftly followed by one from Sinn Fein announcing that it was rerouting its own protest march away from the city centre. But that still leaves the hardline republican group Eirigi, which has promised to demonstrate, for the police to tackle.

The cancellation of the flypast also inflamed Unionists, who accused General Brown of “pandering” to republicans. Danny Kennedy, the Ulster Unionist Party’s deputy leader, called it “absolutely disgusting”.

The dispute comes amid a lengthy political stand-off between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, the Province’s two largest parties, which lead a power-sharing government.

The power-sharing Executive has not met since June because Sinn Fein is angry that the DUP has not agreed to the devolution of policing powers from Westminster or an Irish Language Act, both elements of the deal that brought the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, the former Provisional IRA commander, together in the unlikeliest of political pacts.

With no sign of the impasse ending soon, the chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde, has given warning that the political vacuum is helping so-called dissident republicans in their attempts to reorganise an armed violent campaign against British rule. If serious unrest does break out, the death of power-sharing may be hastened by the sound of angry voices and marching feet.

Police fear that the homecoming parade will act as a lightning conductor for extremists on both sides, a view supported by anecdotal evidence canvassed by The Times among loyalists and republicans.

Eirigi, a relatively new grouping, intends to hold its own protest rally and is bringing in supporters from the countryside by coach. Loyalists are also expected to be on the streets in an unofficial capacity.

BBC

Police officers have been attacked with petrol bombs and fireworks in a County Armagh village.

The incident took place in Crossmaglen shortly after 2100 GMT on Friday.

Inspector David Beck, sector commander, said it was “extremely disappointing” that a minority seemed intent on putting lives at risk.

Police were still working to restore calm in the area late on Saturday. They have appealed for anyone with information to contact them.

SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Washington Times
October 31, 2008

DUBLIN, IRELAND (AP) - The British army in Northern Ireland cut back its plans Friday for a parade through downtown Belfast amid rising fears of conflict with Irish Catholic protesters.

The British army commander in Northern Ireland, Major Gen. Chris Brown, said he has canceled plans for army helicopters to fly overhead during Sunday’s parade, and no marchers will carry weapons. Brown said he wanted to ensure that the parade “does not increase the potential for friction.”

The parade is supposed to honor Northern Ireland members of the British armed forces who have recently returned from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. But some Catholics find the presence of the British army on the streets of Belfast unacceptable and the event poses a test for Northern Ireland’s own shaky peace.

The army hasn’t paraded in Belfast since 1970, when the outlawed Irish Republican Army began a campaign of violence that attempted to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. The IRA’s bombings and shootings killed nearly 1,800 people, including about 800 soldiers.

The IRA disarmed and formally renounced violence three years ago, soldiers no longer patrol Belfast streets in support of the police, and the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party is the leading Catholic voice in an 18-month-old coalition government with the territory’s British Protestant majority. Belfast hasn’t suffered a major riot since 2005.

But political tensions are rising. Sinn Fein leaders have refused since June to convene a Cabinet meeting with their supposed Protestant partners, leaving Northern Ireland without a coherently functioning government.

Sinn Fein is also looking over its shoulder at IRA dissidents who oppose power-sharing, and continue to plot attacks in Northern Ireland.

Speaking before the latest army moves, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said a public parade was “totally unacceptable” and the soldiers and the event should have been a private ceremony and religious service for the soldiers and their families.

Adams said his constituents in Belfast’s Catholic west side “suffered dreadfully under British military rule in the recent conflict.”

Protestant politicians criticized the scaling-down of the parade as a capitulation to Catholic threats. Ulster Unionist Party lawmaker Danny Kennedy said the British government was “trying to pander to elements that will never be satisfied.”

The Police Service of Northern Ireland plans to deploy hundreds of riot police along the mile-long (2-kilometer) parade route to prevent any direct clash as members of the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and five army units march past.

Gerry Moriarty
Irish Times
01 November 2008

NORTHERN IRELAND: Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism By Anthony McIntyre Ausubo Press (New York), 322pp, $21.95

ANTHONY MCINTYRE’S Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism is an absorbing and provocative book driven by disillusionment and anger. It challenges received mainstream republican opinion. This book is unlikely to feature on the shelves of the Sinn Féin bookshop on the Falls Road in west Belfast. It’s a collection of articles that McIntyre, who served 18 years in prison for murder, wrote in newspapers and magazines, but mostly for The Blanket - a now moribund blog “of protest and dissent”, as it says on its website. It covers the period from the signing of the Belfast Agreement 10 years ago to shortly before Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley decided to share power in March last year.

In one piece McIntyre writes about former IRA chief of staff Joe Cahill blanking him when they last met in 2002. He notes shortly after Cahill’s funeral in the summer of 2004 how the first four chiefs of staff of the Provisional IRA are now dead, “all from natural causes”.

“I greeted him but he ignored me,” McIntyre recalls. “In that he was no different from others in the leadership coterie: willing to direct but never to answer to those fortunate to have survived with their lives from the debacle the leadership so ineptly oversaw, and who sought to ask those questions dead volunteers never had the chance to.” He writes that he is glad that Cahill lived a long life but implicitly asks how dare he or any other Sinn Féin or IRA leader snub him when he did his time for the IRA, and when so many other republicans died in an “unnecessary war”.

In many senses this is an Émile Zola-type J’accuse! against the Sinn Féin and IRA leadership, with most opprobrium reserved for Gerry Adams. “We deluded ourselves that we were fighting for Ireland when all we were doing was fighting for Adams.” Twice he quotes George Orwell approvingly to reflect his view of his former republican colleagues, some of them now up in Stormont, “Nine times out of ten a revolutionary is just a social climber with a bomb in his pocket”.

McIntyre is the most eloquent (and jaundiced) of those on the dissenter wing of republicanism, as distinct from its dissident wing. His New York publishers drew considerable mileage from the fact that he could not promote the book in the US because he is barred from the country.

His antipathy to the current Sinn Féin leadership - which is reciprocated - runs deep. His former home in Ballymurphy was picketed by Sinn Féin supporters after he accused the IRA of murdering dissident republican Joe O’Connor in 2000. Despite the antagonism, McIntyre held out in West Belfast, finally moving South with his partner and children over a year ago, but on his own terms. He doesn’t want a return to war but with logic, passion and humour, and a degree of anguish and hurt, asks could it not have stopped sometime in the early to mid-1970s? He’s not arguing that the provisional republican campaign was wrong per se, or making personal apologies for the loss of life; rather, he asks, why did the IRA prosecute a campaign of violence whose end result was a shaky administration at Stormont? He believes the revolution, which he and many IRA members saw themselves as fighting, was betrayed.

The acceptance of the consent principle - that a united Ireland can only happen with the blessing of majority opinion in Northern Ireland, hitherto anathema to republicanism - called into question “the usefulness or purpose of the IRA campaign post-1974″.

“Morally, how justified was armed opposition to a partition that republicanism now accepts has a democratic validity?” He talks of a “sad denouement to an unnecessary war in which so many suffered needlessly”.

Long before the first 1994 ceasefire both the British and the IRA acknowledged that neither side could win, leading to the conclusion that here was a “war” fought to a standstill. This point was enunciated by former Sinn Féin director of publicity Danny Morrison shortly after the signing of the Belfast Agreement. McIntyre challenged the view at the time, writing of a “defeated IRA”, a position he has held to and that has put him high up the Sinn Féin and IRA personae non grata list.

MCINTYRE VEHEMENTLY ARGUES THAT the republican leadership lied and manipulated its base in achieving the IRA ceasefire, decommissioning, policing, and sharing power with Ian Paisley. Another view is that Adams and McGuinness showed real strategic leadership and courage in finally ending a conflict that couldn’t be won, but the author will make no such concessions to them.

Yet he is no ranter. His publishers should have demanded a prologue and epilogue to better round up the book. Nonetheless, there is a coherence, integrity and strength about the collection of articles which deal with subjects such as Good Friday, the hunger strikers, decommissioning, the Colombia Three, the murder of Robert McCartney, the Northern Bank robbery, informers and policing. We hear an alternative view, fiercely argued, well constructed, that sharpens our understanding of the conflict and the peace process, and raises the question thousands have asked: what was it all about?

Gerry Moriarty is Northern Editor of The Irish Times

Issued through the Pat Finucane Centre
Thursday Oct 30, 2008
Contact 07989 323418 for further detail

Speaking today Jean Mc Bride said:

“There have been many dark days since my son Peter was murdered in September 1992. When the two soldiers convicted of his murder, Mark Wright and James Fisher, were granted early release in 1995,it was a blow. When they were reinstated in the army, despite their murder convictions, it was a blow. They were posted to the Irish Guards Regiment as if to make the point that the murderers of an Irish citizen belonged in a so-called ‘Irish’ regiment.* When the MoD decided they could remain in the army despite a judge’s ruling that no exceptional grounds existed to justify the decision it was yet another blow.

I now learn that soldiers of the Irish Guards, the regiment which includes the murderer of my son, are to march a couple of miles from my home. When Peter’s killers were sent to Iraq I said that my sympathies were with the Iraqi mothers whose sons might fall foul of the convicted murderers that were sent there. But I want to know which officials in the MoD thought it right to parade the Irish Guards through Peter’s home town. James Fisher was convicted of the murder of my son and he remains in the Irish Guards Regiment.

Will James Fisher be marching through Belfast?

Will his company or platoon be marching through Belfast or will his Commanding Officer be taking the salute?”

END

• See www.patfinucanecentre.org/pmcbride/mcbrindex.html for extensive background

* Mark Wright was shot and slightly injured in a friendly fire incident and was granted a medical discharge.