SAOIRSE32

Tory councillor Mari Gatland is an example of someone who has paid her dues for her 1970s IRA affiliation

Liam Clarke
The Times
7 Dec 2008

Maria Gatland, a Dubliner living in Surrey, clearly regrets the year she spent as a member of Sinn Fein and the IRA. Her case raises, in a particularly acute form, the question of when someone has the right to put their past behind them.

Gatland has suffered for her youthful republican affiliations. In the 1970s she was placed under a death threat and banned from entering Switzerland after admitting involvement in moving money for the purchase of weapons. “It was a painful and traumatic time for me and it took me many years to recover from it and closed many doors to me,” she told me last week.

Photo

Nowadays, she looks nothing like an IRA woman. Until last week she was a prominent Tory councillor who sat on Croydon council as the cabinet member for education. Gatland was outed after Dr Peter Latham referred to her as “councillor McGuire” (her maiden name) and wondered aloud whether, since she was Irish, she knew much about a book he had been reading about a year in the IRA.

“I didn’t know when I went into the meeting if it was definitely her or not,” said Latham, who was trying to force a vote on local education cuts. “Had she agreed to the ballots, I don’t think I would have mentioned anything about the book.”

It gave the Daily Mirror the sort of headline a Labour-leaning newspaper can usually but dream of: “Top Tory quits in IRA shame”. Gatland’s resignation from the party was demanded by Mike Fisher, the Conservative leader of the council, who gave the Croydon Advertiser an interview that reads, in places, like a script from Little Britain. “Councillor Gatland telephoned me this morning . . . She said she had been a member of the Provisional IRA and had been active at the time,” he said. “We do ask if they are a member of another party, but how can you check up if somebody has a history like this?”

He accused her of a betrayal of trust: the charge levelled by the IRA when Gatland published her kiss and tell account of her time with them in 1973. The Provos suspected she had been debriefed by British intelligence. Sean MacStiofain, the IRA chief of staff, who died in 2001, took a firmer line than Fisher: he warned Gatland that if she returned to Ireland she would face an IRA court martial and the penalty was likely to be death.

With MacStiofain, it was personal as well as political. McGuire’s book, To Take Arms, portrays him as a narrow-minded fanatic who was sniggered at and called “Mad Jack” behind his back. She even relates how he had secretly eaten steak while supposedly on hunger strike in prison.

All this may explain why McGuire decided not to publicise her past after she became a Tory matron in the shires. She did tell Mervyn Gatland, whom she married in 1976. He wanted to become a Tory councillor but died after a lung transplant in 2000 and she decided to enter politics in his place.

Like many young people in conflict situations, McGuire joined a terrorist group on the spur of the moment. A wealthy Dublin socialite from a respectable family, she phoned RTE with a request to be put in contact with Sean O Bradaigh, Sinn Fein’s director of publicity, after hearing him being interviewed.

After meeting her, O Bradaigh contacted MacStiofain, who recorded his impressions in Memoirs of a Revolutionary. “She was a university graduate, then aged about 23, and was supposed to be a linguist. It was felt that she might be able to contribute useful work.” She sensed he was a bit taken aback — “possibly he wasn’t expecting someone wearing hot pants to be interested in the Provisional IRA”.

Dave O’Connell (better known as Daithi O Conaill), a veteran of the 1950s campaign and a member of the Army Council, was more enthusiastic. He slept with her — and the pillow talk was fascinating. O’Connell talked of murdering MacStiofain and taking control of the IRA with her at his side.

A month after Bloody Sunday, he dispatched her to the north west, where Gatland spent days talking to local IRA members in Derry and Donegal before reporting back to O’Connell. The most sensational episode was an arms-buying expedition which degenerated into a binge of sex and drink conducted in European hotels at the IRA’s expense. The outcome was that 166 crates of bazookas, rocket launchers, grenades, rifles and ammunition, all paid for by the IRA, were seized at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.

O’Connell and McGuire fled to Ireland where an IRA court of inquiry blamed the security lapse on Omnipol, the Czech state arms manufacturer which supplied many of the weapons. Sinn Fein made the best of the debacle, presenting McGuire and O’Connell as heroes for evading British intelligence and escaping to Dublin. The affair with O’Connell became common knowledge, but, McGuire wrote in her book: “He wasn’t worried by the newspaper reports of how many beds had been used, so long as they didn’t discover all the whiskey bottles underneath them.”

Disillusion set in as the indiscriminate nature of the IRA campaign became clear. The last straw came on July 21, 1972, Bloody Friday, when at least 22 car bombs detonated in Belfast killing 11 people and injuring 130. McGuire confided her doubts to Colin Smith, a journalist, who took her to England. Before leaving she dumped her IRA-issue Walther pistol in the women’s toilets at Dublin airport.

It has all the makings of a blockbuster movie, but it is a long time ago. Gatland did do her best to make amends by telling what she knew about the IRA. As Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, pointed out, she is not wanted for any crime and, in security terms, it is understandable that she did not make her past public. “It was so long ago that I felt I could do something that used such talents that I have, and make some kind of difference to the community where I live,” she told me last week.

All over Ireland people, often with a much more serious paramilitary past, are struggling to be re-integrated into society. Our attitude to them is not always thought out or joined up. Some are hounded, others hold public office. Martina Anderson, a former bomber who got a degree in prison, sits on the Northern Ireland Policing Board but cannot be employed as a teacher. Gerry Kelly, another former bomber, is a minister who could not work as a civil servant. Kelly recently boasted on television of shooting a prison officer in the face during a prison break, yet no questions were raised about his fitness to act as Sinn Fein’s justice spokesman.

Last week it was disclosed that Sean O’Callaghan, who carried out two murders in Omagh on behalf of the IRA in the 1970s but later became a garda informer and confessed to his crimes, had been paid £80,000 (€92,500) by the Omagh Victims’ Legal Fund for lobbying on its behalf.

Anthony McIntyre, who served 18 years for the murder of two loyalists, was denied entry to America to promote a book which called for an end to republican violence. Gerry Adams, however, comes and goes as he wishes and last month Nelson McCausland, a DUP Assembly member, was thrown out of the chamber for using privilege to accuse the Sinn Fein president of involvement in IRA activity. McCausland said he was merely echoing statements by Irish ministers and the contents of books available in the Assembly library.

There is no consistency here, but the need to draw a line under the past with fairness and equity is obvious. If the strange case of Maria Gatland/McGuire serves to open up a debate on how and when we can allow people to move on, then Dr Peter Latham and the Save Our Schools campaign in Croydon has done us all a great service.

Independent.ie
Monday December 08 2008

The military presence in Northern Ireland is being downgraded in the New Year, it was announced today.

The British Army’s General Officer Commanding is leaving and a Brigadier will be put in charge.

It will be the first time since the foundation of the State in 1921 that there has been no GOC, but the move is a clear reflection of the changed times in Northern Ireland.

Major General Chris Brown packs his bags on January 1 and heads off to Iraq to take up a new command in Baghdad.

“It is the end of an era, we have had a GOC in Northern Ireland since partition, but I am now superfluous and it is time to go,'’ he said.

Since the Army’s duties in Northern Ireland - Operation Banner - ended in 2007 it had always been envisaged the top job would be downgraded.

Where once there were up to 30,000 soldiers on duty, there is now a peacetime garrison of just under 5,000 scattered around bases across the province.

“We have gone through a transitional phase, but there was always going to come a point when we needed to recognise a two star general in command is no longer appropriate and in my judgment that is now,'’ Gen Brown said.

By Aine McEntee
Belfast Media
**Via Newshound
North Belfast News

ON the 37th anniversary of the atrocity that claimed her mother’s life, the daughter of Kathleen Irvine has revealed she wants to meet with the only man ever convicted of the UVF bombing.

Pat Irvine, whose mother Kitty was murdered along with 15 other people on December 4 1971 in the McGurk’s Bar bombing, said she wants to meet Robert James Campbell to speak about the killings, which she believes were carried out in conjunction with the British security forces.

Campbell, a self confessed member of the UVF living in Ballysillan at the time, has admitted to his part in the murders.

However he told the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), who delivered their Operation Bakerhill report on the atrocity earlier this year, that he didn’t want to take part in any discussions.

“I am a man in my seventies who simply wants to live out my remaining years in peace and to put the events of the past well and truly behind me,” he wrote in a letter sent to the HET last year.

However Pat Irvine said the victims and their families deserved the whole truth about what happened that fateful night.

“I am prepapred to meet with Robert James Campbell one of the murderers. If he is not prepared to talk to the HET, will he talk to me?” she proposed.

Mr Campbell confessed to his part in McGurk’s when he was arrested in connection with the 1976 killing of John Morrow, a Protestant worker who was shot dead when UVF gunmen ambushed the van he was driving through Ligoniel. His five Catholic workmates managed to escape without injury.

Mr Campbell appeared before Belfast City Commission in 1978 and received 16 life sentences for the McGurk’s Bar bombing and for the further murder committed in 1976.

When he was first arrested Mr Campbell revealed there were two others in the car the night of the McGurk’s bombing and that he was directed by a third man. However he refused to name any of those involved.

Campbell was released from prison in 1993 having served 15 years.

“Whilst I understood the families need for answers I have nothing new to add,” his letter to the HET stated.

Pat Irvine said the recent government’s apology clearing the names of the victims only served to heighten her belief that collusion lay at the heart of the atrocity.

“This man says he understands the families need for answers, he wants to live in peace, but we want to live in peace too. Fifteen people died and had their names blackened we want to know why.”

Meanwhile the Police Ombudsman, who started their probe into the bombing in November 2005, have told us they have completed their report.

However they are considering claims made in a recently published book that British military intelligence instructed loyalists to plant explosives in the bar that fateful day in 1971.

“Our investigation is now complete and a report has been finished pending the outcome of some additional enquiries prompted by the publication of the book,” a spokesman said.

Pat Irvine’s letter to Robert James Campbell:

I am writing in response to your letter dated 6th July 2007 to the HET. You were invited to attend an “informal discussion about the explosion of McGurk’s bar 4th Dec 1971″. Your response was: ” I admitted my involvement many years ago. It has taken me many years to come to terms with what I have done. I have not been involved in any other criminal or paramilitary behaviour since.”

In other words Mr Campbell , you want everyone to believe what a model citizen you have become. You want to live your remaining years in peace and you want your family’s need for peace and privacy to be respected.

You, Mr Campbell, have not earned the right to be respected or to ask for anything. You gave up those rights when you murderered innocent men women and children. From my mother, Kathleen Irvine, you took her right to life, a basic human right. You also violated my rights as a 14 year old child when you left me without a mother. Now you ask for compassion for you and your family. No, Mr Campbell. I refuse to grant you peace in any form.

You see Mr Campbell, when the British government apologised for the hurt and lies they had caused to the families of the McGurk’s Massacre, they reinforced my belief that they were involved in the slaughter. Their apology now opens many other questions that demand answering:

• Why did they lie to the press?

• Why did they mismanage any serious investigation into the bombing?

• Why did they continue to lie for 37 years?

• Why were you allowed to remain free to kill again?

• What else have you done that you have not admitted to?

• Were you an agent for the British?

• Is that how you were able to continue until you mistakenly killed Mr Morrow?

To me Mr Campbell, you have not served your sentence, you have not paid for your crimes and you have not told the truth. You certainly have not earned the right to live in peace and privacy.

By murdering my mother, Kathleen Irvine, you have given me the right to ask and continue to ask questions until the truth is told.

I am now asking you, Mr Campbell, to meet with me, to afford me the right to live my life in peace and privacy, to tell me the truth!

Pat Irvine
Daughter of Kathleen Irvine, murdered 4th December 1971 McGurk’s Bar

Tribune.ie
**Via Newshound
7 Dec 2008

Every year on the birthday of her missing lover, Cecilia Moore visits the forest in France where he is said to be buried. Here she, and his family, tell Suzanne Breen about their efforts to find out what happened to him

She met the man, whom she later found out was one of the killers, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. She’d been told he could help. Her instructions were to stand at a certain book rack in the library and he would approach. Her Irish boyfriend had been missing for a month and she was out of her mind with worry.

Looking for answers: Séamus Ruddy’s brother Terry and sister Anne who have lived with his disappearance for 23 years

The man who appeared was ‘S’, an INLA figure in Europe. “The meeting lasted 10 minutes,” says Cecilia Moore. “I asked dozens of questions. His answers were full of contradictions. He said Séamus’s disappearance had nothing to do with the INLA and, if I kept making crazy accusations, I’d get them all arrested. He was heartless. He didn’t give a shit. He saw me as an annoying woman he wanted rid off. I was pleading for information. He said Séamus was back in Ireland. I said his passport was still in our Paris apartment. ‘Maybe he swam home,’ he replied.”

The Pompidou Centre was an odd meeting point for a republican. It was only later that Cecilia worked out why it had been chosen: “Visitors had to pass through a metal detector. The INLA had feared I might get a gun and shoot S in revenge for Séamus.”

What S didn’t tell Moore was that her boyfriend was about 100 miles from Paris, lying in a forest near the town of Pont de l’Arche in Normandy. It was a far from peaceful resting place. The first time the grave was so shallow that deer pawed up the body, exposing a limb. So the killers went back, moved Séamus, and buried him again.

Séamus on the banks of the Seine in Paris

Twenty-three years later, Séamus Ruddy’s body still hasn’t been found. Since 1999, four bodies of the disappeared have been found in Ireland. An end appears in sight in two other cases. DNA tests are underway on remains found last month in the Wicklow mountains. They are understood to be those of Danny McIlhone, a Belfast man killed by the IRA. New information has led to plans for a dig in Co Monaghan for Gerard Evans who was also killed by the Provisionals. But for Cecilia Moore and the Ruddy family, the prospect of finding Séamus’s body seems as far off as ever. The INLA has admitted killing him and has given information to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.

“But we don’t believe the same effort has gone into finding our brother as went into locating the disappeared buried in Ireland,” says Séamus’s sister, Anne Morgan. “In border areas, they’ve spent months searching for bodies. The combined total of the three digs for Séamus is less than a week.”

Cecilia Moore, now an artist based in Dublin, was dating Séamus for three years before he disappeared. From the Isle of Wight, she was in Ireland training to be a silversmith when she fell in love with the country and Séamus.

“He lived and breathed politics,” she says. A schoolteacher from Newry, he was national organiser of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) – the INLA’s political wing – and a key figure in the 1981 hunger-strike campaign. Two years earlier, he’d been arrested smuggling weapons across the Greek/Turkish border. He was acquitted of the charges.

In 1983, he left the IRSP, writing a deeply critical resignation letter. “Séamus was an international revolutionary,” says his brother Terry. “He’d joined the IRSP because he saw the Provos as right-wing Catholic holy joes. But he didn’t like where the IRSP/INLA was heading – it was a far cry from his ideals.”

After resigning, Séamus moved with Cecilia to Paris but they socialised with IRSP figures living in the city. They’d have dinner occasionally. Séamus secured a job teaching English at a private college, but politics remained his passion. “He organised the other teachers into a union,” says Cecilia. He started an Irish Cultural Association. He held Irish-language and dancing nights. He established a newsletter for Irish people in Paris. He was also active in the campaign to support the British miners’ strike.”

A close family

Although Séamus lived in France, the Ruddys remained a close family. “I even made him a Christmas pudding and posted it to Paris,” says Anne Morgan. She met her brother a fortnight before he disappeared. A teacher in Newry High School, she’d taken her pupils on a coach trip to Paris. “The driver didn’t know his way around so Séamus boarded the bus and guided our tour.

“The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, we did it all. At night, he laughed at us trying to eat frogs’ legs. We spent a wonderful evening in a café on Rue Saint-Denis. I treasure those photographs.”

Anne with Séamus in Paris before he was killed

In May 1985, Cecilia was working in Cork so Séamus was alone in Paris. He agreed to meet three members of the INLA – chief-of-staff John O’Reilly, Peter ‘Dunter’ Stewart, and S – in a bar in Montparnasse. Séamus was nervous about the meeting. He contacted M, one of the IRSP members he was friendly with in Paris. M guaranteed his safety, according to the Ruddys.

In Cork, Cecilia started receiving concerned telephone calls from friends saying they hadn’t seen Séamus in days. She returned to Paris. “A box of letters and two cameras were missing from the apartment – they would have contained evidence of people Séamus had met or communicated with,” she says.

Friends told her they’d seen M leaving the apartment. He had a key. She wondered how he’d got it. “I went to see him. He was very guarded. I said I was going to the police. He said he’d get somebody to talk to me. He set up the Pompidou Centre meeting.” After that, Cecilia returned to Ireland and, with the Ruddys, kept trying to find the truth. “It was hell,” says Terry Ruddy. “We travelled the country asking IRSP figures to meet us. An arrangement would be made, then cancelled. They’d say the Brits were raiding houses or give some excuse.”

‘They told us we’d be killed’

Then, the French police made contact to say children had found a black bag, weighed down by stones, which had been washed up from the Seine. They believed it contained Séamus’s clothes. “John O’Reilly, whom we later found out had shot Séamus, told us that if we travelled to France to inspect the clothes, we’d be killed,” says Anne Morgan.

She went to Paris anyway. There was a jacket with two bullet holes in the hood, blood-stained jeans and Doc Marten boots. She knew immediately they were Séamus’s. He’d been wearing those very clothes on their evening on Rue Saint-Denis.

The situation deteriorated further for the family. The INLA met them in the home of a west Belfast priest. “We were told if we kept asking questions about Séamus, or talking to the media, we’d be killed,” says Anne Morgan. “I was terrified for myself and my children. I’d look under the car for bombs before I drove to school.”

Terry Ruddy says: “I was working in Dublin. Whenever a motorbike pulled up beside me in traffic, I’d think somebody was going to shoot me.” Only Cecilia wasn’t afraid: “I kept on at the IRSP. I must have written them hundreds of letters. I was never frightened. They’d taken away the most important person in my life, what else was there to lose?”

It was 1995 before the INLA admitted killing Séamus. “We all knew Séamus was dead long before then, except my mother,” says Anne Morgan. “She put a chair by the front window, where she had a good view of the street, and she sat waiting for him to turn the corner. She waited every day for 10 years. After they admitted killing him, she died within months.”

Séamus’s murder was linked to an INLA power struggle. John O’Reilly wanted access to all the movement’s weapons dumps and arms smuggling routes to strengthen his hand against a rival faction which later became the IPLO. The Ruddys believe their brother’s refusal to divulge this information led to his murder.

Of his three killers, only S is alive. O’Reilly was shot dead by the IPLO in 1987; Peter ‘Dunter’ Stewart died of cancer. S, a west Belfast man, has served time in Portlaoise prison and is now in jail in the North. He once faced a murder charge in the Republic but was acquitted.

The limited searches that have taken place for Séamus’s body have been based on S’s information. Along with IRSP members, he has made several trips to the forest at Pont de l’Arche, including one earlier this year. The group received diplomatic immunity to prevent their arrest by French police.

Arms dump

S said Séamus had been buried in an INLA arms dump in the forest and then moved to a second arms dump. The IRSP laid markers on trees to pinpoint the location down to 10 square metres. Not only was Séamus’s body not found in the ensuing search, there was no forensic evidence to suggest an arms dump was ever there.

The family wonders if S deliberately lied about the location. “We’ve heard Séamus was tortured before he was killed. S mightn’t want the body found in order to hide that,” says Anne Morgan. She believes IRSP ard comhairle member Willie Gallagher, who has liaised with her over the location of the body, has been genuine in his attempts. He told the Sunday Tribune: “I will neither condemn nor condone Séamus Ruddy’s killing, but I view his secret burial as disgusting and I will do as much to find his body as I would if he was a member of my own family.” The INLA is carrying out another “internal review” into Séamus’s murder and burial.

Sources say it’s possible that members of the French revolutionary group, Action Directe, also have knowledge of the burial. Apart from S, a key person with information is M, the IRSP member seen leaving Séamus’s flat in the days after he was murdered. M, who is now in his 60s, is living in Dún Laoghaire. When asked if S and M still have associations with the IRSP/INLA, Willie Gallagher refused to comment.

Every year on Séamus’s birthday, Cecilia Moore visits the forest outside Pont de L’Arche.

“I found it hard to move on with life. It was difficult meeting new people. ‘My boyfriend disappeared’ is a conversation stopper. I met plenty of men over the years, but nobody ever replaced Séamus.”

By John Nova Lomax
Houston press
Fri Dec 05, 2008

Pol Brennan, the former I.R.A. fighter detained in Texas on immigration charges, has lost another court battle.

The 55-year-old Brennan had been working as a carpenter, living openly in the San Francisco area for ten years, where he had also married an American woman named Joanna Volz.

Early this year, he was picked up at a Border Patrol checkpoint in the Valley for having an expired work permit. Border Patrol computers revealed his checkered past - several early ’70s arrests in Belfast and a daring escape from Long Kesh Prison in 1983, after which he had come to America under an assumed name.

Although he had been tracked down by the Feds in 2000, it appeared that he could come in from the cold when the British Crown dropped its extradition proceedings against him. The U.S. government started issuing him yearly work permits, the last of which Brennan had allowed to lapse, though he claimed to have sent in his application on time.

None of that mattered in the court of Immigration judge William Peterson.

In earlier denying Brennan bail, other judges cited the Irishman’s petty crimes in San Francisco - a gun charge for a weapon he no longer possessed, an assault charge for a dust-up with a contractor - Peterson reached all the way back to Brennan’s 1970s IRA activities for his November 28 decision.

“The judge ruled that my wife Joanna was suffering hardship as a result of my detention. That would have had me out of here. But then he ruled on the terrorism issue and that went against me,” Brennan told the Irish Echo.

Brennan has vowed to appeal. He has 30 days to do so. Should he lose, he likely faces deportation to the Republic of Ireland. Although Brennan’s attorneys have said that Brennan could face reprisals if he returned to Northern Ireland, the last such act of vengeance took place in 1997, before the current, prevailing peace deal was struck between Protestants and Catholics.

When Hair Balls spoke to him this summer in a visiting area of a South Texas immigration lock-up, it did seem as if Brennan, at least in some small part, would not have minded a trip home. He hadn’t been home in 25 years, and his father was not in the best of health, he said.

On the other hand, Brennan’s mother-in-law is also in poor health. She lives in the Valley. Volz faces either parting from her husband for long periods, expensive travel back and forth from Belfast to Brownsville, or the prospect of starting a new life overseas. Little wonder that she is said to be “distraught.”

Neither Brennan nor Thar Saile, an organization that aids former IRA members in America, could be reached for comment.

David Brown
The Times
6 Dec 2008

As a young woman Maria McGuire was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world: pin-up of the Irish republican movement, gunrunner, the glamorous face of political violence.

Her decision to leave the Provisional IRA and write a memoir led to a death sentence from her former comrades. For years she lived under assumed names, disguised her appearance, and moved from house to house until the memories dimmed. Then on Monday her three decades on the run ended when she was unmasked as Maria Gatland, a leading Tory councillor in Croydon.

Yesterday she spoke for the first time about her secret life.

Mrs Gatland, 60, had a comfortable childhood in Dublin. After graduating, she lived in Spain and became “idealistic, romantic and foolish” about the Irish republican movement. She returned to Ireland in 1971 to offer her services to the Provisional IRA, which saw how an attractive, middle-class woman graduate would broaden its appeal. “I allowed myself to be used, but I did not see it in that way,” she said. “I was just so pleased to be doing something, pleased to be involved.”

As a lapsed Roman Catholic who supported contraception and campaigned for women’s equality she upset the republican old guard. And her affair with David O’Connell, the IRA’s married chief of staff, did little to endear her to her comrades. But the couple were involved in one of the IRA’s most dramatic adventures. In September 1971 they went to Amsterdam to buy weapons. However, the police intercepted more than 160 crates of Czech-made bazookas, rocket launchers and grenades at Amsterdam airport. They fled and returned to a heroes’ welcome in Ireland.

“I obviously like very high levels of stress – it’s something that I seek,” she said. “It was glamorous, it was exciting. It is so difficult to explain in Ireland in those times, the feeling that things were changing and there was a chance of a united Ireland.”

Her decision to leave the Provisional IRA came when Mr Connell was sidelined by Seán MacStiofáin. She fled to England. William Whitelaw, the Home Secretary, seeing the propaganda value of an IRA defector, ensured that she was not arrested.

“I just walked away one evening. All I could take was a small case. I left everything, my whole life, behind,” she said. “I joined the IRA because I felt that I needed to do something but it was only after I saw the realities of a violent campaign – on both sides – I just couldn’t go on with it.”

Instead of seeking a quiet, anonymous life she told the inside story of the battle for control of the IRA in a series of newspaper interviews. “Being young, foolish and arrogant I thought people might be interested in what I have to say,” she said. “But in no way did I think of the consequences or the rest of my life.”

After arriving in England she was moved from hotel room to hotel room, always fearful of the unexpected knock at the door. In 1973 she arrived in Croydon to write her memoir, To Take Arms: My Year with the Provisional IRA. Even then she had to move regularly, use false names and change her appearance. “It was an extraordinary period,” she recalled. “You didn’t know who was working for who, who was following who.”

The book was a sensation. Its revelations about the divide in the IRA leadership, the support of the US senator Edward Kennedy, the Amsterdam trip and her affair with Mr O’Connell were highly damaging to the republican movement. An IRA court martial sentenced her to death.“I had left behind a cause I had believed in – rightly or wrongly – and suddenly my life was very empty,” she said. “I was drinking too much and mentally I wasn’t very strong.”She said that she regretted the pain that she had caused to Mr O’Connell’s family but strenuously denied the rumours of other affairs spread by the IRA leadership after her defection.

“I did have a relationship with David O’Connell. I was very involved with him for a while, very infatuated with him, but these things fade.”

Her life did change after meeting a businessman, Mervyn Gatland. They were married in 1976 and she reinvented herself as a loyal suburban wife. The explosion of violence in Ireland during the 1970s also altered her view on the armed stuggle. “I now abhor all violence – that is both official and nonofficial. It spawns more violence.”

In the early 1980s her husband developed a chronic lung condition, which dominated their lives until he died in 2004. A Tory activist, he encouraged his wife to fulfil his ambition to stand for the local council.

“I wanted to do something in the community and put something back,” Mrs Gatland said. “I am not talking about anything as grandiose as redemption. I had my doubts because of my past but I felt it was so long ago that it would not be a problem.”

In 2002 she became the first woman councillor for her ward. Two years later the Tories took control of Croydon council and the next year she became Cabinet member for education. But the 30 years of carefully woven deceit were to end on Monday evening. During a heated debate one of her political opponents referred to her as “Councillor McGuire” and mentioned a book. No one else understood the significance, but Mrs Gatland knew that the secret was out.

After a sleepless Monday night she contacted the Tory council leader. She admitted that she had been a member of the IRA and offered her resignation. An hour later he called back and accepted. “I am disappointed in the way the local party acted but I do understand it was a great shock to them,” Mrs Gatland said. “Perhaps I should have said, ‘Here is the book, this is what I did, make up your own minds’. They should not have reacted so quickly but I can understand they were worried about their reputation.”

But why did she did not tell them about her past when she was selected?“Things were not as safe then and I still thought I was a risk. But also I did not feel it was relevant to the person I am now – it is almost 40 years ago.”

Yet she says she has been overwhelmed by the support she has received this week. “One of the things I have always admired about the English is their tolerance,” she said. “I have been amazed by their understanding that someone is allowed to make mistakes in their past. I feel I have paid for it in a number of ways.”

Now she fears, once again, that not everyone has forgiven. For the first time in 30 years she is back in contact with the police, who have advised her on safety precautions. “But it is a relief to me that I can, at last, be the person I am — my past and all.”

Irish News
06/12/08

THE trial of four Derry men accused of IRA membership was adjourned until Tuesday at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday after the court was told that a Garda witness was not available until then.

The four were arrested during a Garda investigation into a Real IRA ‘show of strength’ for members of the media near the Derry/Donegal border last March.

The court heard two of the men told gardai they were helping the makers of a BBC Spotlight documentary.

The four are Gary Donnelly (38), of Kildrum Gardens, Michael Gallagher (28), of Sackville Court, Martin Francis O’Neill (40), of Colmcille Court, and Patrick John McDaid (38), of Marlborough Street, all Derry city.

They have pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oghlaigh na hEireann, otherwise the IRA, on March 16.

BBC
8 Dec 2008

>>Watch video of attack

Loyalist killer Michael Stone has been jailed for 16 years for trying to murder Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams at Stormont.

Stone had attempted to enter Stormont during a key debate on Northern Ireland devolution in November 2006.

Last month at Belfast Crown Court, he was also convicted of seven other charges, including possession of weapons and explosive devices.

Stone had denied the charges, claiming the incident was performance art.

However, a judge at Belfast Crown Court said this was “wholly unconvincing”.

Stone launched his attack on the day Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were due to be nominated as Northern Ireland’s new first and deputy first ministers.

The trial heard he pointed an imitation gun at a female security guard, ignited an improvised explosive device in a flight bag and threw it some yards from him.

The bag contained explosive fireworks, flammable liquids, a butane gas canister and fuses. It failed to explode.

He was found to have seven nail bombs which the court heard were capable of causing death or serious injury to anyone in their proximity.

Stone also had three knives, a hatchet and a garrotte.

Handing down his sentence on Monday, Mr Justice Deeny said he had decided not to give Stone a life term because he suffers from a degenerative muscle wasting condition which would see him confined to a wheelchair in the future.

However, Mr Justice Deeny said he also had to take into account the serious offences that Stone had already committed before his attack on Stormont.

“He could hardly have a worse criminal record,” the judge said, “and I do take into account the very grave offences of which he was convicted in 1989.”

In 2000, Stone was released early from a life sentence under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

He had been jailed for a 1988 gun and grenade attack on the republican funeral at Milltown Cemetery of three IRA members shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar.

Three men were killed in that attack and Stone also admitted three other murders.

Independent.ie
Sunday December 07 2008

In the days after the Easter Rising was put down, British soldiers discovered a section of the printing block for the proclamation as they searched Liberty Hall.

Now one of the rare “half proclamations” — run off the press by soldiers — is to be put up for auction at a sale of private manuscripts, books and artwork, including dozens of items of Irish historic significance.

The collections of Trinity- educated diplomat and Liberal politician Cecil Harmsworth and his son, the artist and publisher Desmond — which includes private correspondence from WB Yeats, James Joyce, Oliver St John Gogarty and Lady Gregory — are being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions in a two-day sale beginning on December 11.

The items on auction offer a unique insight into the turbulent days of the Rising and personal vignettes from James Joyce as he battled to save his eyesight, and to halt the decline of his beloved daughter Lucia, who was treated by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung for schizophrenia and spent much of her adult life in psychiatric institutions. There are also letters from WB Yeats relating to his battle to ensure that Hugh Lane’s art collection came to Ireland.

Among the letters for sale is correspondence to Harms-worth from his older brother Lord Northcliffe a month after the Rising.

In the correspondence between Desmond Harms-worth and Joyce, the writer details the battle to save his eyesight by consulting the noted oculist Dr Vogt, and tells of how he asked Lucia to do some illustrative work as physical therapy in the aftermath of what appeared to be a nervous breakdown.