SAOIRSE32

EAMON PHOENIXJOHN BEW in Belfast and in London
Irish Times
**Via Newshound
30 Dec 2008

ANGO IRISH RELATIONS: THE FIRST face-to-face meeting between Northern secretary of state Roy Mason and minister for foreign affairs Michael O’Kennedy was marred by a war of words over remarks by taoiseach Jack Lynch on Irish unity and Mason’s suggestion that the IRA perpetrators of the La Mon bombing atrocity in which 12 died, had “fled South”.

At the outset of the meeting in Iveagh House on May 5th, 1978, O’Kennedy said his government had been very concerned that, without any notice to them, the secretary of state indicated that those responsible for La Mon might have come South. It had provoked a severe reaction in Dublin.

O’Kennedy told Mason he believed there was the closest co-operation between the two police forces on the island. “The IRA were looking for a long-term role for themselves at the expense of the Irish government. There need be no public or private apprehension about their commitment against the IRA. They were very concerned that the UK government showed any doubt about this,” the report of the meeting states.

Mason said there had been irritants on both sides including references to Irish unity. When British prime minister Jim Callaghan had met the taoiseach, they had agreed to differ.

On La Mon “he had simply said that those responsible might possibly have gone to the South because of the wave of revulsion against them in the North”. O’Kennedy said that even to refer to it as a possibility caused a serious problem in the South.

Mason replied that Lynch’s January interview had stopped inter-party talks on the North and caused the British side a lot of concern.

O’Kennedy rejected this view, saying that “Mr Lynch was the last person to want to give succour to the terrorists”.

O’Kennedy said one of the central themes of Irish policy was to show an understanding of the unionist position and they had been reasonably encouraged by the private response from unionists. Mason replied that “speeches on Irish unity frightened the unionists and undermined the Irish government’s own long-term aim”.

O’Kennedy said Irish unity was the only possible long-term basis for peace. His government was convinced that there could be no real move until the UK government accepted this and said so.

On the North, O’Kennedy felt that “the difficulty was to win respect from an element in society which had been consistently held down”. The Fair Employment Report had shown the extent of the discrimination. “We must try to give a sense of confidence to this element or they would be a breeding-ground for trouble.”

The secretary of state said there could be no declaration of intent on Irish unity from the British government. The violence in the North now came mainly from the IRA. Speeches on the goal of Irish unity could bring unionist leader Harry West and the Rev Ian Paisley together by frightening them. This would end any prospect for political progress.

At a full session of talks later involving officials from both sides, Mason said the political situation in the North was the constitutional responsibility of the UK government but it was right that Dublin should know how he saw it.

In the run-up to the meeting of Mason and O’Kennedy, the British believed that “Anglo-Irish relations are ironically the only area where the Irish government are enjoying any public success”.

A telegram from the British ambassador in Dublin, Robin Haydon, suggested that the Lynch government’s Northern Ireland policy has, “temporarily at least, struck a responsive chord, and become something of a national cause”.

In the telegram, the ambassador complained that Irish officials had “been venting their spleen almost daily since January”. He also claimed that the Irish were “putting it about that that the venue, agenda and even timing of Thursday’s meeting represents concessions rung (sic) out of HMG” and they “assume, furthermore, that Mr Mason will be in a contrite mood”.

It was predicted that O’Kennedy’s “main aim will be to convince public opinion that he has refuted Mason’s claims of 6 March”, in which he claimed that the Irish were not being sufficiently helpful on the issue of security co-operation.

“In the present mood of angry and quite nauseating self-righteousness”, it was also argued, “the Irish overlook the weakness of their own case”.

For Britain’s own part, Haydon advised that “while we have no interest in public recriminations, that does not preclude tough speaking in private”. In keeping with this, it was recommended that Mason “should get in first on the security issue”.

On May 24th, a meeting of senior officials at the Northern Ireland Office did conclude that Anglo Irish relations were on a better footing after the meeting, as O’Kennedy had reiterated his government’s “100 per cent commitment on security”.

EAMON PHOENIX
Irish Times
**Via Newshound
31 Dec 2008

Urban Decline: BELFAST WAS “an ailing city” in 1978, beset with violence, poverty, poor housing, unemployment and a declining population which was most marked in Protestant areas.

This government view of Belfast as a rapidly declining industrial city is expressed in confidential Stormont files released by the Public Record Office in Belfast.

On December 28th, 1977, Ken (now Sir Ken) Bloomfield of the Department of the Environment defined the “problem of Belfast”. Much of the violence of the last eight years had taken place within its boundaries.

“There is an entrenched and bitter sectarianism which poisons many aspects of its life. Some of its established industries are in an unstable position.

“The state of much of its housing stock is deplorable. Large areas of the city are characterised by multiple social need.”

Bloomfield noted that Sir Robert Matthew in the early 1960s had predicted a continuation of dynamic growth in the city but the economic downturn and impact of the Troubles had shattered this optimistic assumption.

What Belfast needed above all, the official argued, was “a restoration of self-confidence and self-respect”. Unless the government could reverse the view that it was “a city in continuing decline”, its “dirty, drab, depressing face must increasingly repel potential investment . . .”

The problems of the city dominated a meeting of the Policy Co-ordinating Committee at Stormont on January 11th, 1978, attended by officials from all the main Stormont departments and the Northern Ireland Office. Bloomfield said recent surveys had highlighted the poor state of housing stock in the city and this, together with unemployment, was unanimously accepted as the major problem. Population in Protestant areas had fallen fastest and movement out of the inner city had tended to be imbalanced with the young families resettling elsewhere (eg Craigavon) with the old and the unskilled left behind.

Dr George Quigley (Department of Commerce) referred to unemployment in particularly Catholic areas of the city where immobility of labour presented one of many difficulties. There had been a net loss of some 10,000 jobs between 1972-76. It was unlikely that the four largest companies serving the area (Mackies, Harland and Wolff, Shorts and Gallahers) would contribute to net employment over the next five years because of the decline in the shipyard.

The meeting considered a report from the Department of the Environment on the changing sectarian demographics. This noted that the population in Protestant areas such as the Shankill, East Belfast, Sandy Row and Donegall Pass had fallen fastest.

“The Shankill area for example has lost almost 10,000 people over five years. The loss of population has been reflected in a crude housing surplus in these areas resulting in bricked-up dwellings, abandoned modern flats and vacant land.”

The report continued: “In the Protestant areas, age structures generally tend to be heavily biased towards the older age groups and therefore . . . passage of time will tend to reduce the population of these areas further.

Conversely, the Catholic population was increasing.

They may die, hide or linger as their causes fade or morph mainstream

Brett Popplewell
thestar.com
Jan 03, 2009

After a six-month ceasefire, Hamas and Israel are battling again.

And while that part of the Middle East is burning, a paramilitary group from another generation has crept back into the press. Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) was blamed this week for bombing a TV station in Spain, which came as a surprise to those who recall that in 2006 the armed Basque separatist group, known for bombings and political assassinations, declared a permanent ceasefire with Spain.

The reigniting of age old conflicts between state actors and paramilitary factions begs the question: what becomes of groups like Hamas and ETA as the passage of time bears down, and social, political and economic change affect their causes?

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has fallen out of the media spotlight in recent years, sidelined politically by Hamas. However, the PLO and its largest faction, Fatah, remain powerful in Palestinian politics and say they are primed for a return to political and paramilitary importance.

During three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, attacks by and against the Irish Republican Army (IRA) filled the western media. Though peace has returned with a power-sharing self-rule agreement between republicans and unionists, the paramilitary groups that once terrorized both Protestants and Catholics remain active.

Murals of machine-gun wielding, balaclava-sporting militants still adorn many buildings in Belfast. The IRA has recently been implicated in major bank heists and has been linked to the drug trade in Western Europe. Meanwhile, the Ulster Volunteer Force, one of the largest unionist paramilitary groups, has been accused of fire bombings and attacks on immigrants who have settled in Northern Ireland since the return of peace.

In the U.S., the Weathermen were a forceful group of militant revolutionaries who declared war on the government, tried to bomb the U.S. Capitol building and longed to overthrow the establishment.

Though the movement seems all but dead, some who were associated with it live on in positions of authority; one of them is Bill Ayers, the law lecturer who for a time sat on the same charity board as Barack Obama.

Germany the Red Army Faction, (RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang) a group of revolutionaries who sought to combat what it saw as U.S. imperialism and capitalist oppression of West German workers.

Numerous bombings, abductions and murders of high profile industrialists in Germany in the ’70s and ’80s solidified the group’s reputation as terrorists. Though they officially dissolved in 1998, the 2007 release of two convicted murderers from the group sparked a fierce debate in Germany where they are still remembered as subversive revolutionaries.

The Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) was more-or-less erased from existence in 1971, but the group’s memory lives on in the hearts and minds of vandals who, in 1993, decapitated a statue of John A. Macdonald in a Montreal square and who have been known to spray paint “FLQ” and expressions of hatred toward Anglos on edifices across Quebec.

Like the IRA, the FLQ lost its political significance when separatism found a voice in valid political parties, but the threat of violence seems still to linger. Remember the attempted fire bombings of Second Cup outlets in Quebec in 2001 – targeted by an ex-FLQ member.

The evolution of some of recent history’s most nefarious paramilitary groups shows that though their causes might disappear from the headlines, they never truly leave our consciousness.

News Letter
02 January 2009

THE DUP has interpreted comments by Gerry Adams as an admission that the republican dream of a united Ireland by 2016 is over.

While the Sinn Fein leader spoke in a New Year’s interview of stepping up the unification campaign by beginning fresh lobbying in the United States and Great Britain, he also spoke of 40-year spans for change.

And MLA Simon Hamilton said it was clear from the remarks, which focused on unity but made no mention of 2016, that the oft-noted target date had been quietly dropped.

He said: “We have become accustomed down through the years to habitual pronouncements from Sinn Fein that their primary aim of achieving a united Ireland was a few short years away from becoming a reality.

“In 2000, Mr Adams himself spoke of how he saw ‘no reason why we cannot celebrate the 1916 Rising in the year 2016 in a free and united Ireland’.

“This view was echoed by Martin McGuinness in 2003 when he said: ‘Gerry Adams has said 2016 and I think that is achievable’. Now, Gerry Adams is talking about 40-year spans. So much for Sinn Fein’s boasts of Irish unity by 2016.”

While Mr Adams did not give a start and end date for his 40-year span, he discussed unification in detail and did not mention 2016.

Mr Adams said his party wanted to encourage debate towards ending partition.

“All of this is part of a process,” he added.

“I like to judge it – because it’s convenient to do so – in a 40-year span.

“And 40 years in a lifetime is huge, but in history it’s only a blink.

“If you consider what things were like here (across Ireland) 40 years ago in terms of both the Orange state; the conservative, impoverished state in the south; the fragmented and very minimalist republican development.

“And then you fast-forward to now – without for a moment minimising all the tragedies and difficulties that have occurred in between – you can see how things have moved ahead.

“That’s what’s going to happen in the up-coming period. It’s an incremental process of building the republic day-by-day.”

Regardless of just when Mr Adams sees 40 years coming to an end, Mr Hamilton said Sinn Fein had “set aside their smugness and the supposed certainty of a united Ireland by 2016 for an undefined date in the distant future” which appeared to be beyond the lifetimes of the current leadership of republicanism.

“Gerry Adams has effectively admitted that he will never deliver a united Ireland,” the MLA maintained.

This pessimism on the part of republicans was in stark contrast to the sense of inevitability about a united Ireland which was felt by many unionists in the past, he said.

“Gone are the days of doom and gloom under the UUP, to be replaced by the strong and confident leadership offered by the DUP,” claimed Mr Hamilton.

“Unionists now see the status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom stronger than ever and republicans robbed of their dreams. The DUP strategy is working. We have turned the tide.

Irish News
02/01/09

THE president of Republican Sinn Fein Ruairi O Bradaigh has dismissed media reports that the IRA sent a message to the British government in 1978 claiming it was willing to end the violence and talk.

The reports, contained in a sensitive document released in the latest batch of British state papers at the National Archives in London, were carried in a Dublin newspaper earlier this week.

Controversy surrounds the IRA’s message to the British government of February 1993, in which the organisation was purported to have said: “The conflict is over but we need your advice on how to bring it to an end.”

Republicans have since denied making the statement and there is reason to believe intermediaries embellished the message.

However, prime ministerial files for 1978 describe an IRA message 15 years before “to the effect that it was time to talk and end the present violence”.

However, Mr O Bradaigh said the claims were false.

“As one who as president of Sinn Fein was involved in the 1974-76 talks between representatives of the British government and the republican movement, I am totally unaware of the purported IRA message to London ‘seeking talks’ in early 1978.

“Not alone do I doubt the authenticity of such a message but I believe that if it existed at all it was the work of some self-appointed ‘well-wisher’ and had no basis in fact,” he said.

Mr O Bradaigh also described as having “no basis in fact” another newspaper report quoting a document released through the National Archives in Dublin.

The report claimed “feelers” had been sent out at Christmas 1976 by the PIRA leadership in another approach to the British government.

Medical officials say at least 437 people have died in Gaza and 2,250 have been injured since Israel’s aerial bombardment began last week.

Read article

Indymedia.ie
3 Jan 09

The Irish Council Against Blood Sports is deeply saddened at the loss of our great ally, Tony Gregory TD, who was our Vice President for many years. Tony died on Friday, January 2nd, at the age of 61. His untimely passing is an incalculable loss to our campaign.

Tony’s deep sense of social justice and compassion for the vulnerable extended to the prevention of cruelty to animals in all its forms. He was to the forefront of the campaign to ban blood sports for decades, and in 1993, he courageously brought a Private Member’s Bill to outlaw hare coursing, which although defeated, brought huge attention nationally to a barbarous activity that many other politicians would rather turn a blind eye to.

Tony’s invaluable support continued down the years and right up until recently, despite his illness, he raised the issue of blood sports in the Dail and other public fora. Be it hare coursing, fox hunting or the Ward Union deer hunt, Tony was always willing and available to give his help and support.

He will be sorely missed by all of us. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis.

ICABS extends deepest sympathy to Tony’s brother Noel, his partner Annette and to his extended family and friends.

Related Link: http://www.banbloodsports.com

Andersonstown News Thursday
Belfast Media
1 Jan 09

Dissident republicans are suspected of being behind Monday’s West Belfast tiger kidnapping that resulted in £50,000 being stolen from the Next store in Belfast city centre.

A family was held captive after two masked men, one armed with a handgun, entered their Lagmore Dale home on Sunday evening.

They demanded that three children – one aged 15 and twins aged eight – be put into their bedrooms. The parents were held in another part of the house. At 6.45am on Monday morning they ordered the father to go to the Next store in the city centre, where he is a manager, and take away a sum of cash, thought to be around £50,000.

The mother, father and three children were then freed.

This was the fourth tiger kidnapping to occur in West Belfast in the past month.

On December 14, an armed gang took hostage the family of a Marks and Spencer manager from Hannahstown and ordered him to hand over £90,000 from the Lisburn store. The man’s wife and their two children, still in their nightclothes, were held in a blue van at Boucher Road while the money hand-over was taking place.

A PSNI spokesman refused to rule out dissident republican involvement.

He said: “The investigation is at an early stage. At this point we require information from the public.”

Andersonstown News Thursday
Belfast Media
1 Jan 09

The wife of a New Lodge republican has slammed Secretary of State Shaun Woodward for returning her husband to Maghaberry Prison just days before he was due to spend his first Christmas with his family in six years.

Terry McCafferty was recently released on licence after serving a six-year sentence for a Real IRA bomb attack on a city centre tax office. Just over a week ago, he and his wife Martine were coming home from their honeymoon in Spain when he was arrested at Belfast International Airport and told his licence had been revoked.

It has since emerged that the father-of-five could go back to prison for another two years if a legal bid for freedom fails.

“We handed over our passports at the desk and this cop came over and took Terry into a room,” Martine explained.

“Two cops came over and told me his licence was being revoked and that he was being brought to Antrim holding centre. Then another two came over and when I asked them why, they said, ‘The Secretary of State revoked it.’ We still don’t know why this is happening, no-one will give us answers. I know Terry is gutted about this, I’m disgusted with it. He’s there for no reason at all. This would have been our first Christmas in six years and he was looking forward to it. I came home from the airport alone and all the kids were waiting up for him to come home and I had to tell them he was back in prison.”

Terry and Martine were married last year after prison bosses allowed the 40-year-old New Lodge man a three-day release.

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement (32CSM) held a white line picket on the Falls Road on Christmas Eve to protest about Terry’s return to prison.

32CSM spokeswoman Marian Price said Terry had been returned to jail for sticking to his republican principles.

“This is basically internment by another name. Terry McCafferty has been sent back to jail for being a republican, that’s the only reason,” she said.

“It’s absolutely abominable, he has served his sentence. The authorities can obviously do what they please here. He is being interned simply because he is a republican who came out with his principles intact. To their disgust he didn’t come out a broken man and they decided to punish him and his family by sending him back to prison.”

An NIO spokesperson said: “On the basis of information available, the Secretary of State is satisfied that Mr McCafferty is a danger to others and that he is likely to commit further offences.”

A Prison Service spokesperson explained that Mr McCafferty could serve another two years in accordance with the terms of the NI (Remission of Sentences) Act 1995 which means prisoners, at the behest of the Secretary of State, can be made to serve two-thirds of their sentence instead of half.

This is subject, however, to the consideration of the Remission of Sentences Act Commissioner. “He has a right to make an appeal to the Commissioner,” the spokesperson added.

Local Sinn Féin MLA Carál Ní Chuilín said due process was crucial.

“If there is any evidence against Mr McCafferty then it should be brought to open court, enabling him to challenge any allegations made against him,” she said.

“It’s vital that the legal system is seen to operate in an open, transparent and accountable manner and that everyone is entitled to due process in any legal proceedings.

“It’s clear that the decision by the British Secretary of State to revoke Terry McCafferty’s licence on the basis of allegations which he cannot contest in court is not the way to do business.”

Mr McCafferty’s solicitor, Kevin Winters, said he would be challenging the decision in court.

“We have received from the Secretary of State a broad summary of reasons why he was taken back into custody. In the New Year we will be making an application to court to challenge the grounds for the revocation of his licence.”