SAOIRSE32

Craig Mathieson
The Age.com.au
10 November 2008

Watch video trailer

Hunger, the debut feature by English visual artist Steve McQueen, is an intensely powerful film that never tries to overwhelm you. It is as unyielding as the men it documents - the Irish Republican Army members who undertook fatal hunger strikes in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison in 1981 - but refuses to force a judgement or demand sympathy.

The focus of McQueen and his co-writer, Enda Walsh, is regressively intimate: inside a prison, inside a cell, inside a body. The background of the IRA’s struggle for independence from Britain is barely mentioned, let alone explained. Instead, one frightened young man, Davey (Brian Milligan), who refuses to wear a prison uniform because of standing demands to be treated as political prisoners, finds himself entering the cell of Gerry (Liam McMahon). Excrement covers the walls, urine puddles on the floor, food rots in the corner.

Hunger is a film about how an individual defies the state. The battleground is their bodies. A haircut, never mind a cavity search, is a pitched battle. The mainly Protestant guards - who faced IRA execution threats at the time, have to suppress their individuality to survive.

McQueen’s background means he is unafraid to convey information visually. There are several, purposefully framed, unsettling tableaus and McQueen designs three, distinct acts: Gerry and Davey’s struggle; a 22-minute conversation between Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and a Catholic priest (Liam Cunningham) about a planned hunger strike (their conversation shot in a single take); and the 66-day hunger strike that culminated in Sands’ death (the first of 10 inmates to die).

As he grows increasingly emaciated, Sands’ mind wanders, leaving his failing body behind. A prison hospital intern eventually builds a frame around his bed to hold the bed clothes up, as they’re too heavy for his decaying flesh to bear.

It is an act of tenderness, but creates a final cell for Sands to inhabit; Hunger is besieged by such harsh, haunting contrasts. It is a film of patient, illuminating strength.

By Peadar Whelan
An Phoblacht
06 Nov 2008

First came two British soldiers, decked out in desert battle dress, leading a pair of Irish Wolfhounds. Behind them strutted the first contingent of soldiers from the Irish Guards. Left right, left right, they marched with their chests puffed out pompously.
Next came the military band in their ‘Royal Irish’ green dress uniforms blasting out the hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers no doubt in an attempt to hide this display of naked militarism behind a religious fig leaf. Not that it mattered as the strains of the hymn were all but drowned out by the bellicose screaming of hundreds of loyalists who crammed into Fisherwick Place. Their jeering was directed at the families of nationalists gunned down by British state forces who stood not 30 metres away protesting at the British Army’s march of shame.
This was Sunday 2 November 2008 in Belfast City Centre and if the actions of the PSNI, the British Army, loyalist mobs and the unionist politicians who were in Belfast city centre last weekend say anything it is to tell nationalists that the struggle for justice and equality has a long way to go.
When the British Army decided in September to hold a “homecoming” parade in Belfast to “welcome” home soldiers from so-called Irish regiments, particularly the RIR, who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea was greeted with disbelief within the nationalist population.
The relatives of those killed by the British state over the past four decades of war in the Six Counties knew instinctively this march was to be an exercise in militaristic posturing that dove-tailed perfectly with the unionist campaign – driven by the Belfast daily the Newsletter – to ‘Welcome Home the Heroes’.
This campaign provided unionist politicians, DUP members in particular, with a stage on which they could pose as latter day Winston Churchills; totally committed to the military prowess of the British armed forces (or their efficiency as a killing machine).

The photographs, published in the Newsletter, of the DUP’s Peter Robinson, Nigel Dodds and Jeffrey Donaldson on their sorties to Afghanistan playing soldier as they posed with heavy machine guns and sat behind the controls of armoured vehicles revealed the militaristic soul of unionism. The ‘might is right’ mentality was outed.
So it didn’t matter to unionism that the many thousands of nationalists who suffered at the hands of this very same army while serving the interests of the British crown would be offended by the proposed armed parade and fly past by the RAF.
But when Sinn Féin announced its intention to organise a demonstration to give voice to the disgust felt by those who suffered at the hands of the British Army, traditional unionism enjoying the support of “green unionists”, in the chattering classes, the churches and the SDLP went on the offensive.
The unionist strategy was to accuse Sinn Féin of sectarianism, of fomenting trouble and jeopardising peace, the Executive and community relations. They conjured up images of Belfast City Centre in flames as a scare tactic.
Most vociferous of the unionists was Nelson McCausland, he of the Orange Order who insists on imposing unwanted marches on nationalist communities of Belfast year in, year out. McCausland, enraged that the Parades Commission had the temerity to allow the Sinn Féin demonstration to go ahead fulminated, “the Parades Commission has handed Donegall Place over to Sinn Féin”.
What irked unionists most was the way in which Sinn Féin spokespersons, such as Paul Maskey, articulated the legitimacy of the nationalist case. The West Belfast Assembly member argued that the British Army gunned down over 400 nationalists during the conflict in the North: that the RIR/UDR, operated as a surrogate for unionist death squads; that members of the UDR were members of the UDA and UVF supplying weapons and intelligence which were used to kill hundreds of Catholics and Nationalists.
As the day of the march drew near unionists whipped up their supporters into a frenzy. The UDA and UVF played their part and mobilised within their strongholds, telling people to be in Belfast City Centre on Sunday. The tension was slowly but surely being ratcheted up.
However, unexpectedly on Friday 31 October the British Ministry of Defence cancelled its proposed RAF fly-past and said the marching troops would not be armed. Then at a 12 noon press conference Sinn Féin proposed an alternative route for the relatives’ counter-demonstration.
The Sinn Féin decision, that would take the nationalist protest away from Royal Avenue to Fisherwick Place closer to the British Army’s march route, meant according to North Belfast assembly member Gerry Kelly that the focus would remain on the relatives’ protest against the RIR and the British Army.
On their arrival at Fisherwick Place on Sunday the families of those victims of British state terror, at the head of a 2,000-strong crowd, were met by vile sectarian abuse from the hundreds of loyalists gathered around the Presbyterian Church’s Church House. The ‘welcoming’, as we knew it would be, was soon being exposed for what it was, another exercise in loyalist coat-trailing.
Vicious rants about the Famine, about Bobby Sands and soccer tripped off the tongues of the loyalist crowd. And when the soldiers and their dogs appeared on Fisherwick Place the baying got louder and as each contingent of Irish Guards, the military band and the RIR swaggered past the cheers and jeers became more venomous.
The triumphalism and sectarianism of unionism were on show on Sunday 2 November for anyone willing to look. Alas most of the media didn’t really want to see it. Unionism didn’t want see it. The churches ignored it and the SDLP as usual were afraid to see it.
What provoked this torrent of bigotry last Sunday was a silent, dignified demonstration of grieving families looking for truth. Instead they were confronted by a rabid loyalist mob, whipped up by unionist politicians, telling the croppies to lie down.
They need to know that it is long past the time when nationalists will ever cower before such a display of bigotry.

Forthright defender of his officers, he had the difficult task of leading the RUC through Northern Ireland’s Troubles

Owen Bowcott
Guardian
Saturday November 8 2008

The longest-serving chief constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary during Northern Ireland’s Troubles, Sir John Hermon, who has died aged 79, led the force through the 1980s - a decade of unrelenting terrorist violence. His time in the UK’s toughest policing post was dominated by controversies over the supergrass system of informers, “shoot to kill” operations and the fury of loyalists denouncing the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Protestations by Hermon that he was an impartial upholder of law and order did not prevent republicans and civil rights campaigners from portraying him as the embodiment of the establishment, selectively bending security rules. Unionist leaders turned on him following the Hillsborough Accord as they attempted to suborn the police service.

But Hermon was a forthright defender of his officers, having been steeped in the constabulary’s embattled culture since his earliest professional life. In the ranks, he was known simply as “Jack” or “JC”.

Born in Larne, County Antrim, and educated locally, Hermon trained and worked as an accountant for four years until he joined the RUC in 1950. In 1963 he became the first RUC officer to attend what is now the Police Staff College, Bramshill in Hampshire. On his return, promotion was rapid. He was appointed district inspector and, in 1967, deputy commandant of the RUC training station in Enniskillen.

By 1976, he had risen to deputy chief constable. Attachment to Scotland Yard in 1979 was a further sign of approval and he became chief constable the following year. His era opened with a sharp escalation in the level of IRA violence as H-Block hunger strikes further polarised the divided province.

Hermon had little love for politicians, whom he blamed for tearing society apart. That distrust dated back to a critical incident in 1964 when the Rev Ian Paisley inflamed opinion over the presence of an Irish tricolour flag in republican west Belfast. The ensuing riot embittered relations between the police and nationalist community.

Perceived by critics as an abrasive disciplinarian, Hermon fell out at times with both the Northern Ireland police authority and the Police Federation, which passed a motion of no confidence in him after he upbraided them for discussing revival of the disbanded B Specials. He was knighted in 1982.

His reform of the RUC, which transformed it into a more independent force, shorn of its worst sectarian sympathies, enabled it to resist the onslaught of loyalist violence against officers and their homes in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. That resilience protected the developing political process.

But it was the row over police “shoot-to-kill” operations in County Armagh during 1982 and the subsequent inquiry by the deputy chief constable of Manchester, John Stalker, that overshadowed his period in office. The two senior policemen clashed repeatedly. Stalker later claimed that during their first meeting Hermon sketched out Stalker’s family tree on the back of a cigarette packet, highlighting the Irish Catholic ancestry on his mother’s side - some of whom Stalker himself did not know.

The Stalker Affair, which fuelled allegations of official cover-ups and conspiracies, degenerated into a vendetta between the chief constable and the media. Despite efforts to dissuade him, Hermon privately pursued three legal actions to clear his name.

In 1984, Stalker had been appointed to investigate the shooting by police of six men - five of them republican suspects. He had striven to obtain access to a secret MI5 tape recording of one of the shootings. But he was abruptly removed from the inquiry and suspended for supposedly consorting with criminals - only to be reinstated three months later.

Hermon was said to have tossed Stalker’s report across the room in fury when he read the document. Stalker later revealed that, for five months, Hermon had refused to allow him to send a report, recommending the prosecution of a number of officers, to the director of public prosecutions.

But he did not believe Hermon had been entirely responsible for the obstructions. “I think the architects of my removal were on this side of the water,” he told a court in 1995.

Hermon’s well-publicised views on the work of the murdered Belfast lawyer Patrick Finucane, shot dead by loyalists in 1989, added to his unpopularity with the civil rights lobby. The chief constable later insisted: “Pat Finucane was associated with the IRA and he used his position as a lawyer to act as a contact between suspects in custody and republicans on the outside.”

Hermon was ahead of his time in calling for the police to renounce their powers to adjudicate on parades during the annual marching season. In 1986, following violence in Portadown, he reported: “Unless parading organisations face the reality that population changes can result in areas once receptive becoming hostile, then the public order tasks of the RUC will become increasingly difficult.”

According to his autobiography, Holding the Line (1997), he left his bomb-proof office in east Belfast disillusioned. The appointment of his successor, Sir Hugh Annesley, commended as a team player, was seen as a reproach to his style of leadership.

On retirement in June 1989, he became a consultant to Securicor. His first wife, Jean, had died from cancer, but he subsequently married Sylvia Paisley, a law lecturer at Queen’s University. They had met after she wrote a paper criticising his refusal to allow women officers to carry firearms.

In 2001, she was persuaded to stand as the Ulster Unionist Party candidate for North Down. She held the seat again in 2005, becoming the sole UUP representative at Westminster. Lady Hermon declined, however, to lead the party because her husband was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease: she felt she could not “let him down in his hour of need”. She survives her husband, as do two sons from their marriage, and a son and a daughter from Hermon’s first marriage.

• John Charles Hermon, policeman, born November 23 1928; died November 6 2008

BBC
8 Nov 2008

The nationalist Mayor of Derry has held a reception for Royal Irish Regiment and Territorial Army soldiers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Soldiers were welcomed to the mayor’s parlour in Derry’s Guildhall on Friday night.

Gerard Diver, of the SDLP, said he hosted the reception in his role as the city’s first citizen.

He said he was committed to working with “communities and groups throughout the district”.

BBC
8 Nov 2008

The nationalist Mayor of Derry has held a reception for Royal Irish Regiment and Territorial Army soldiers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Soldiers were welcomed to the mayor’s parlour in Derry’s Guildhall on Friday night.

Gerard Diver, of the SDLP, said he hosted the reception in his role as the city’s first citizen.

He said he was committed to working with “communities and groups throughout the district”.

Independent.ie
Saturday November 08 2008

A former DUP member opposed to sharing power with republicans has appealed to voters to help him bring down Northern Ireland’s coalition government.

Jim Allister who now leads the TUV has told delegates at his new party’s first conference they must take on the DUP to defend the Union.

The MEP was elected to the European Parliament on a DUP ticket but left the party after it entered government with Sinn Fein.

By Diana Rusk
Irish News
06/11/08

A PHOTOGRAPH showing US president-elect Barack Obama with an IRA fugitive wanted over the attempted murder of a British soldier has emerged.

GENERAL SECRETARY: Senator Barack Obama with Sinn Fein general secretary Rita O’Hare, the party’s representative in the US, and party president Gerry Adams in Washington DC. The photograph was taken about a year ago.

Yesterday Sinn Fein released the picture of Senator Obama with party president Gerry Adams and general secretary Rita O’Hare, one of the most prominent ‘on the runs’.

It was taken about a year ago when Mr Adams was in Washington DC holding private meetings with members of Congress.

The Belfast woman has been wanted in Britain and Northern Ireland since being charged with the attempted murder of a soldier in her native city in 1971.

She was shot and seriously wounded in the incident.

After being granted bail she fled to the Republic, where she served three years for trying to smuggle material into a jail holding IRA prisoners.

The 64-year-old has been prominent in the US for the past decade as a Sinn Fein representative.

She is ineligible for a regular visa because of the outstanding warrant but holds a special visa that requires her to notify the authorities for any travel across the US.

Last month Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin accused Senator Obama of associating with terrorists.

She claimed he had been “palling around” with a former member of the Weather Underground, a US-based militant group that opposed the Vietnam war in the 1960s.

By Joe Diamond
Belfast Media
Andersonstown News Thursday

LOYALISTS erected a banner (right) across the lower Shankill Road comparing hard-working local Sinn Féin MLA Paul Maskey to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

The large and elaborate banner, which is believed to have been erected in response to Sinn Fein’s protest against last Sunday’s controversial RIR ‘homecoming’ parade and which has now been taken down, read ‘Paul Maskey and Bin Laden – Blood Brothers’.

Councillor Maskey vowed he would not allow those responsible to intimidate him, and questioned their motivations for erecting the banner.

He said: “Obviously this banner has been erected in relation to our campaign against the British Minstry of Defence parade in Belfast on Sunday and, like the MoD, whoever put it up has no consideration for the countless people who have lost loved ones at the hands of the British army over the years.

“It won’t deter me or Sinn Féin from our campaign for truth and justice for these families, and we won’t allow ourselves to be intimidated out of our right to hold a peaceful, dignified protest.

“Also, given the location of this banner, it is ironic that it was from here that loyalists were firing live rounds at the British army during loyalist rioting on the Springfield Road as recently as 2005, so I think they need to question where their loyalties really lie,” he added.

A spokesperson for Roads Service said that they were aware of the banner and were investigating the circumstances of it going up.

BBC
7 Nov 2008

The former chief constable of the RUC Sir John Hermon has died.

Sir John, known as Jack, was chief constable between 1980 and 1989. He first joined the force in 1951.

Sir John Hermon was chief constable in the 1980s

His wife, Lady Sylvia Hermon, is now the Ulster Unionist Party’s only MP. She has held the North Down seat since 2001.

Sir John had Alzheimer’s disease for several years. He died in a nursing home in Bangor, County Down, on Thursday evening.

“It is with enormous sadness that the family of Sir Jack Hermon announce his death, after a long and valiant struggle against the ravages of Alzheimer’s,” a family statement read.

“He passed away very peacefully at teatime yesterday in a nursing home in Bangor.

“Members of his immediate family, including his wife, Sylvia, had been with him throughout the day.”

His period as chief constable was one of the most turbulent periods of the Troubles, including the 1981 republican hunger strikes and probes into the controversial so-called shoot-to-kill allegations made against the RUC.

Sir John was also chief constable when the RUC suffered its biggest single loss of the troubles, when nine officers were murdered in an IRA mortar attack on Newry police station in 1985.

He remained a target for republicans long after leaving office - last year he had to be moved from another nursing home because of a threat.

Former RUC assistant chief constable Alan McQuillan said Sir John was “a huge figure in the history of the RUC”.

“Sir Jack was a very energetic and dynamic leader, but when you got to know him you saw he was driven by a total passion for impartial policing, for protecting the community and an immense pride in the men and women who served in the RUC,” he said.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable Sir Hugh Orde spoke to Lady Hermon last night to express his sympathy and pass on his condolences to the family.

‘Jack Hermon was the chief constable of the RUC during a particularly intense period of the conflict.’
Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin

Secretary of State Shaun Woodward said Sir John had earned “deep and lasting respect”.

“He was undoubtedly a strongly committed and dedicated police officer, leading the RUC through some of the most demanding, difficult and dangerous years,” Mr Woodward said.

DUP leader Peter Robinson said: “Jack Hermon was the chief constable of the RUC at a very difficult time in Northern Ireland’s history.

“As the leading police officer in Northern Ireland during this period he was to the fore of the battle against terrorism and he played a leading role in stamping it out.”

‘Courage and determination’

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey said he was deeply saddened by Sir John’s death.

“I know Sir Jack will be sadly missed by Sylvia and his family to whom we extend our deepest sympathy for their loss,” he said.

Alliance party leader David Ford said Sir John led the RUC with “courage and determination”.

“He set an example which should inspire members of the PSNI in these different times,” he said.

Former SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon said Sir John had all the qualities of a good police officer, but these had not been allowed to operate in the running of an impartial force.

He said Sir John was “caught in the trap” of the police being the “protectors of the state and the constitutional position, rather than the enforcers of law and protectors of the individual”.

Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness said he extended his sympathy and condolences to the Hermon family.

“Jack Hermon was the chief constable of the RUC during a particularly intense period of the conflict. Today we are still grappling with the legacy of that. However, this is not the day to dwell on that,” he said.

By John Thorne
BBC News, Belfast
7 Nov 2008

The report of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday has been delayed until the autumn of 2009, causing huge disappointment to relatives.

Soldiers shot 13 people dead in Derry on Bloody Sunday

January 30 1972 - forever Bloody Sunday in the annals of the Troubles in Northern Ireland - was not the bloodiest day, but perhaps the most significant in helping to decide the direction and progress of the bitter conflict in the decades that followed.

Nearly 37 years later and at a cost of £172m and still counting, the most definitive inquiry and re-examination of what really happened is still on hold.

Lord Saville’s officials have confirmed it will be autumn 2009, five years after the investigation ended, before the final report is released.

Brutality

The actions of the Parachute Regiment troopers in shooting dead 13 unarmed civil rights protesters in the so-called no-go Bogside district of Derry swelled the ranks of the Provisional IRA and gave invaluable weight to Irish republican arguments within the Catholic community.

The international reaction was almost totally damning, and set the British government on the road to suspending the unionist administration at Stormont, taking over direct rule control of law and order in Northern Ireland.

The brutality of events on Bloody Sunday are stark. Paratroopers shot 27 civilians, 13 died that day and a 14th victim sometime later. Even after seven years of the Saville Inquiry, lawyers admitted it was still unclear which soldiers actually fired upon whom.

As a young newspaper journalist I travelled from Belfast to Derry the day after the shootings and reported on the dire lethal consequences of the “getting tough with terrorists” political notion.

‘The delay is very disappointing and confusing as well’
–Tony Doherty, Victim’s son

‘Disappointment’ at inquiry delay

And when Lord Widgery began his adversarial legal inquiry in Coleraine soon after, I heard Parachute Regiment soldiers giving evidence to him from behind screens.

One piece of that evidence still stands out in my mind.

A soldier, identified only by a letter of the alphabet, explaining how he fired scores of shots at a shadowy profile he said he spotted dodging in and out of focus from behind the frosted glass of a bathroom window.

The Widgery report - dubbed the “Widgery whitewash” by the victims’ families - was published within 10 weeks.

Much valuable evidence had been excluded, and so began the campaign for another investigation.

When he was prime minister, John Major accepted the Bloody Sunday victims were unarmed civilians, not IRA gunmen, and should be regarded as innocent.

Inquiry opens

But it was not until 1998 that Lord Saville of Newdigate, and the Commonwealth judges who assisted him, were appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair to establish a new inquiry.

That inquiry began hearing evidence at public hearings in March 2000, after a formal opening two years earlier at Derry’s Guildhall.

The statistics of the evidence collection are formidable, and the cost prohibitive and for many critics were allowed to run out of control.

More than 920 witnesses were heard including the prime minister in 1972, Sir Edward Heath, 33 policemen, 245 soldiers, 35 IRA or former paramilitary members and seven priests.

The tribunal sat for 433 days in Derry and London.

The inquiry team interviewed and received written statements from around 2,500 Bloody Sunday marchers, witnesses and security forces.

The 33 evidence bundles sent to all the interested parties to the inquiry contained about 30 million words, 13 volumes of photographs, 121 audio-tapes and 100 video-tapes.

Of course the final bill has still to be calculated, but the inquiry’s own website “currently expects” the total cost to be £172m, with an additional £15m included to transfer the hearings to London.

‘Disappointment and anger’

The new delay has disappointed and angered many. In a letter to the victims’ families, Lord Saville apologised but said he and his colleagues were determined to deal fairly, accurately and thoroughly with the issues before them.

Tony Doherty, whose father was shot on Bloody Sunday, said the delay was “very disappointing and confusing as well”.

Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward said he shared the families’ concerns and would be discussing the implications of the delay ” as a matter of urgency”.

Eamon McCann, chairman of the Bloody Sunday Trust, said confidence in the inquiry was being eroded. The investigation was an enormous task, he conceded, but he said, “some people are beginning to ask themselves, what’s going on?”

The saga will continue to creep on at least until September next year, the difficulties of scale, time lapse and the complexity of the witness material helping to make the legal task so complicated.

And in the end the sorry truth is that none of the fatal horrors of Bloody Sunday and its violent aftermath can be put right by a single word that may be in the final Saville report.

GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
Irish Times
7 Nov 2008

A NEW Irish history book by popular historian Jonathan Bardon, spanning an era from the Ice Age to the eve of the second World War, was published in Belfast yesterday evening.

A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes is based on a mammoth commission Dr Bardon received from the BBC in 2005.

He was asked to explain all of Irish history in a series of 240 short, dramatised radio programmes that were broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster every weekday in 2006-2007.

Having already written A History of Ulster , Dr Bardon decided to take on the formidable task. He started writing the five-minute pieces in 2005 and managed to complete the project, meeting every deadline.

Dr Bardon, who is one of the contributors to The Irish Times’s Irish and British State papers coverage each year, has re-edited, restructured and supplemented the original transcripts into a single comprehensive body of work.

“Officially this book began in 2005 but the gestation period has been all my adult life,” explained Dr Bardon, who arrived in Belfast from Dublin as a 21-year-old history teacher in 1964.

His first posting was Orangefield Boys Secondary School in east Belfast.

“I just missed teaching Van Morrison, who was a famous pupil there, but did teach Brian Keenan,” he explained.

Each story is self-contained, in order to allow the reader to open a chapter at random and delve into any of the historical accounts.

Alternatively, the episodes read in sequence providing a complete narrative history of Ireland.

The book, published by Gill and Macmillan and priced at €29.99, was launched by the BBC Northern Ireland controller Peter Johnston.