SAOIRSE32

GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
Irish Times

TWO SISTERS who were with Robert Hamill the night he was fatally assaulted in Portadown have denied suggestions he was part of a group of Catholics who uttered sectarian comments that may have provoked the assault, the Robert Hamill Inquiry has heard.

The sisters, Witness E and Witness F, said 25-year-old Mr Hamill and his friend – the husband of Witness E – were beaten in a totally unprovoked attack in the centre of Portadown, Co Armagh in late April 1997.

Witness F said a crowd of up to 30 loyalists were involved in the attack on Mr Hamill and her brother-in-law, known as Witness D. “I remember them kicking at his head and shouting, ‘Die you Fenian bastard’,” she said. Mr Hamill died 11 days later.

The inquiry is investigating a range of allegations, including a claim that RUC officers who were close to the scene failed in their duty to intervene, that one officer colluded with one of the suspects, that suspects were not detained on the night, and that the crime scene was not properly maintained by investigating officers.

Mr Hamill and the other three were returning from a night out early in the morning of Sunday April 27th, 1997, when they were attacked in Portadown.

Ashley Underwood, QC, chief lawyer for the inquiry, referred to contradictory evidence that is to be given to the inquiry in which it will be claimed that one of a small group of nationalists allegedly assaulted a loyalist on the night, that a fight erupted between nationalists and loyalists which was broken up by police, and that earlier some nationalists shouted sectarian slogans, “You Orange bastard” and “Up the IRA” close to the general scene.

Both sisters insisted that neither Mr Hamill nor any of the group of four who were heading home early that Sunday morning made any such comments or were involved in any such incidents.

Irish News
22/01/2009

A PROMINENT dissident republican who is being sought by authorities in Lithuania was remanded in custody in Dublin yesterday.

Liam Campbell, who was convicted of Real IRA membership and is being sued by relatives of Omagh bomb victims, faces extradition proceedings on charges of terrorism offences in Lithuania.

However, the High Court in Dublin heard that the state has consented to conditional bail for the 46-year-old from Co Louth, which is likely to be granted on Monday. Bail will be allowed on his own bond of €100 (£93) with an independent surety of €50,000 (£46,650).

Campbell has also been ordered to sign on daily with gardai in Dundalk and submit his passport.

The Lithuanian authorities are seeking Campbell’s extradition on charges of terrorism and trafficking weapons.

His brother Michael has been detained in Lithuania since his arrest there last year.

Yesterday a court in Vilnius was told that the authorities are awaiting the extradition of Liam Campbell before the case can proceed.

Irish News
22/01/2009

Claims that intelligence agents tracked the Omagh bombers on the day of the attack but failed to alert police were rejected in an official report yesterday.

Sir Peter Gibson, the intelligence services commissioner, said he had found no evidence to back up allegations that the British government’s listening station GCHQ intercepted information that could have prevented the 1998 atrocity.

Twenty-nine people, including a mother pregnant with twins, were killed when a Real IRA car bomb exploded in the town after misleading warnings.

No-one has ever been convicted of the attack, which inflicted the single biggest loss of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Sir Peter was called in by the government to examine the role of GCHQ after a BBC Panorama programme alleged the agency had monitored calls between the bombers before and after the explosion.

He found that while GCHQ could intercept mobile phone calls it did not have the technology to use them to track the live movements of the bomb car and scout car on the day.

“The portrayal in the Panorama programme of the tracking on a screen of the movement of two cars, a scout car and a car carrying a bomb by reference to two ‘blobs’ moving on a road map has no correspondence whatever with what intercepting agencies were able to do or did on August 15 1998,” he said.

“On the basis of evidence from an independent expert witness from a mobile communications service provider I am satisfied that in 1998 it was neither possible to track mobile phones in real time nor to visualise the location and movement of mobile phones in the way that was shown in the Panorama programme.”

The documentary also claimed that information on the possible identity of the bombers was not passed to RUC detectives in the hours and days after the attack.

Sir Peter said he was satisfied all the data obtained by GCHQ was given to RUC headquarters and its intelligence unit, Special Branch.

However, he did highlight gaps in the information flow between Special Branch and the investigation team working on the case.

This concurs with an investigation by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman in 2001, which found that Special Branch had not passed all its intelligence on the bombers to detectives in Omagh.

Special Branch would have had to gain GCHQ’s permission if it wanted to forward its intelligence on to the RUC in Omagh but Sir Peter revealed that no official request to do that was ever made.

He also noted that Special Branch only briefed the Omagh investigation team twice and gardai once.

“It was not part of the terms of my review that I should investigate, nor have I investigated, the reasons why Special Branch South acted in the cautious way it did, nor have I investigated the soundness of those reasons, although I do not doubt that Special Branch South took the actions it did for what it considered to be good operational reasons.”

Sir Peter also said there was no evidence before him that gardai warned the RUC of a likely attack.

He said there was no intelligence to suggest paramilitaries were planning to strike in Omagh.

British prime minister Gordon Brown, who will meet some of the victims’ relatives at Downing Street next month, is expected to face fresh demands for a full cross-border judicial inquiry.

Some of the families are involved in a multi-million pound High Court compensation claim against the five men they allege were responsible for the bombing.

By Rebecca Black
Irish News
22/01/2009

**Download ‘The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns’ here from Project Gutenberg

People around the world are preparing to recite poetry in praise of the haggis before raising a wee dram to Rabbie Burns on the 250th anniversary of his birth. Rebecca Black reports

Men in kilts, a rise in whisky sales and misty-eyed recitals of Scottish poetry. It can only mean one thing – the annual celebration of Robert Burns.

While few people expect to be so fondly remembered a century after their death, in 1795 Burns confidently prophesied to his wife Jean Armour: “Ay, Jean, they’ll think more of me in a hundred years after this.”

While this weekend marks 250 years since the Scottish bard was born, it is clear that – like the amber-coloured drink he loved – his spirit has lost none of its potency.

Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, on January 25 1759, Burns lived a relatively brief but colourful life before dying aged 37 of rheumatic fever, the same day his wife gave birth to a son.

He stayed until the age of seven in a house built by his farmer father William (now the Burns Cottage Museum). Then his family were forced to sell up and take up a tenancy.

There, as the eldest of seven, Burns experienced a life of poverty.

The severe manual labour of the farm left its traces in a premature stoop and weakened constitution.

With little time for regular schooling, he received much of his education from his father, who despite their circumstances believed strongly in its importance.

Flourishing despite this difficult upbringing, Burns made his name with an uncanny ability to observe everyday life.

He wrote in Scots and standard English and one of his best-known pieces is Auld Lang Syne, traditionally sung at Hogmanay, as well as Scots Wha Hae, which for a long time served as an unofficial national anthem. Gordon Lucy, director of the Ulster Society at Queen’s University Belfast, contends that Burns speaks to everyone – from Ireland to the United States and Russia.

“Burns was very popular in the former Soviet Union through the translations. By 1964 he had sold more than a million copies,” he said.

“In 1787 James Magee of Bridge Street, Belfast, published the first edition of Burns’s poetry outside Scotland.

“This is a measure of Burns’s popularity in Ulster.”

Mr Lucy said that, while the poetry was published with a glossary to help explain the language, it was not needed in Ireland.

“In Ulster, volumes of Burns are found with the poems well thumbed but the glossary in almost pristine condition,” he said.

“Quite simply, Ulster people understood Burns’s vocabulary. Many of them even spoke the same language.”

Today, Belfast hosts one of the finest collections of Burns material in the world, courtesy of Belfast-based businessman Andrew Gibson, originally from Ayrshire, who donated it to the Linen Hall Library.

As well as boasting many fans in Ireland, Burns also had relatives who moved across the Irish Sea.

His sister Mary lived in Co Louth and her grave can still be seen in Dundalk while a park outside the town of Knockbridge was named after her.

The late Tyrone writer Benedict Kiely summed up Burns’s enduring popularity when he said: “Burns became a popular folk author in Ulster, Catholic and Protestant, as he never was or could have been in any other part of Ireland. “Burns was the best of us.”

Tips for Burns Night

The following is recommended for celebrating Burns Night:

• Reciting of the Selkirk Grace:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

• Entrance of the haggis.

Diners stand and slow-clap as a piper leads the haggis carried by the chef.

• The host then recites the eight-verse Address to a Haggis. Upon reaching the line “An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight”, the host stabs the haggis with a sharp knife.

Guests applaud and toast the haggis with a glass of whisky.

• A typical menu would be:

cock-a-leekie soup,
haggis warm reeking, rich wi’ champit tatties,
bashed neeps (haggis with mashed potatoes and turnips with onion gravy),
tyspy laird (sherry trifle),
a tassie o’ coffee.

• A speech about Robert Burns.

• Toast to the lassies – originally a thank you to the ladies for preparing the food, with a bit of humour, and then a response from the lassies.

• Poems and songs performed by guests.

• The evening should end with guests standing, linking hands and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne.’

BBC

A man thought to be the last surviving Irish fighter of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War has died at 93.

Bob Doyle, who died in London on Thursday, fought on the Aragon front during the war for the pro-government republicans against the nationalists.

He was captured by Italian fascists at Calaceite in March 1938 and imprisoned in the San Pedro prison camp.

He also served in the British merchant navy during World War II.

Mr Doyle described his experiences in his autobiography Brigadista.

The Spanish Civil War from 1936-39 was between Spanish republicans and General Franco’s nationalists - backed by Hitler and Mussolini.

It was once described as “World War One-and-a-Half”, “a bloody dress rehearsal” for the Second World War.

About 45,000 international volunteers came from 54 countries but ended up on the losing side.

More than 500,000 people died in the civil war, about 200,000 in combat.

An estimated 200 men went to Spain from Ireland to fight for the republican side, including Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland.

By Brian Rowan
Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 23 January 2009

The families of Shankill bomber Thomas Begley and LVF leader Billy Wright would receive a £12,000 payment if proposals by the Eames-Bradley group on the past are accepted, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal today.

In a £40m costed plan, all families who lost a loved one in the Troubles — security force, republican, loyalist and other — would be entitled to the new payment. The proposal — from the Consultative Group on the Past — will be viewed as the most controversial recommendation as it will pave the way for families of terrorists killed during the Troubles to receive money.

Begley died in 1993 while planting a bomb in a fish shop on Belfast’s Shankill Road which killed nine others. Wright was murdered in 1997 by the INLA in the Maze Prison where he had been serving eight years for threatening to kill.

The plans aimed at dealing with Northern Ireland’s violent past also propose that victims should be able to discover more details on how and why loved ones were killed.

Over 30 recommendations will be made in a nine-chapter, 200-page report due to be unveiled by Lord Robin Eames and former Policing Board vice-chairman Denis Bradley in Belfast on Wednesday.

The document will be presented as The Report of the Consultative Group on the Past, which was formed in June 2007 by then Secretary of State Peter Hain.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown was briefed on the plan in Downing Street yesterday.

Today, the Telegraph reveals key elements of the Eames-Bradley blueprint — its plan and proposals for dealing with the past. The recommendations also include:

lThe Legacy Commission — three commissioners including an international chairman appointed by the British and Irish Governments after consultation with the First and Deputy First Ministers.

lInvestigations Unit — part of the new Legacy Commission and headed by one of the three commissioners. The proposal is confirmation that there will be no amnesty. It will continue to investigate unsolved killings.

This replaces the Historical Enquiries Team and some of the Police Ombudsman’s work.

• Information Recovery Unit — Part of the new Legacy Commission and headed by one of the three commissioners. Its role will be to draw out information from republicans, loyalists, security forces and intelligence services as requested by families. The aim is to provide families with as much information as possible on past killings.

• Reconciliation Forum — will work alongside The Legacy Commission. It will include the International Chairman of that commission, the Victims’ Commissioners and the Community Relations Council.

The Belfast Telegraph understands there is a 12-page chapter on Remembrance, but no proposal for a single memorial to remember all victims of the conflict.

Big goals in the recommended process will include combating sectarianism and creating a story-telling process on the conflict. Eames-Bradley will set out aims and criteria for this.

Yesterday in Downing Street Mr Brown and Secretary of State Shaun Woodward were briefed by the co-chairs of the Consultative Group on the Past.

By Brian Rowan
Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 23 January 2009

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has again warned against setting up any truth process that is “established by and answerable to the British Government”.

An article by the west Belfast MP appeared in the latest edition of the republican newspaper An Phoblacht yesterday as Lord Robin Eames and Denis Bradley briefed the Prime Minister and Secretary of State in No.10.

At the heart of now imminent proposals for dealing with Northern Ireland’s violent past is a three-strong Legacy Commission, headed by an international chairman. The full report of the Consultative Group on the Past will be unveiled next Wednesday.

“Sinn Fein has concluded that the establishment of an Independent International Truth Commission is the best way of taking this forward,” Mr Adams wrote.

“But this cannot work if such a body is established by and answerable to the British Government,” he added.

The Sinn Fein President made similar comments in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph last November.

Lord Eames and former Policing Board vice-chairman Mr Bradley — co-chairs of the Consultative Group — were in London yesterday with officials to brief Prime Minister Brown and Secretary of State Woodward.

Their report comes at the end of a 19-month period of consultation, research and writing.

Yesterday, Mr Adams wrote: “The British State are protagonists in this conflict, they are not innocent observers.

“There are many victims’ organisations that fear that the Eames-Bradley proposals will not recognise this reality and allow the British State to continue its policy to date of cover-up and concealment,” the article continued.

He wrote that one way of achieving an independent process would be to have an international inquiry. “The United Nations or another reputable agency could be involved,” he said.

The IRA did not meet the Eames-Bradley Consultative Group — and how next week’s proposals are interpreted will determine whether future republican co-operation with The Legacy Commission is possible.

It is thought there will be a significant period of debate after the report is published next week.

Belfast Media
Andersonstown News Thursday

The Continuity IRA has admitted setting fire to a digger belonging to a contractor working at Casement Park.

Speaking to the Andersonstown News on Monday, the Belfast leadership of the dissident republican group claimed responsibility.

Continuity IRA members approached the Downpatrick-based contractor at Christmas demanding cash.

He refused to pay, but instead of going to the PSNI he approached Sinn Féin.

Last Wednesday, a JCB belonging to the man’s firm which was parked in the grounds of Casement Park was set alight by the Continuity IRA.

The arson attack prompted Sinn Féin to go public with the threats against the building firm boss.

On Friday, West Belfast MP Gerry Adams launched a stinging attack on dissident republicans, accusing them of extortion, protecting drug dealers and threatening business owners. He also correctly fingered the Continuity IRA as being responsible for the Casement fire.

The Sinn Féin President said: “The gangs involved are targeting innocent families, business people and in some instances other criminals, in particular drug dealers, demanding protection money. This behaviour is intolerable and it must end.

“I would challenge those who set themselves up as supporters of these groups to repudiate these actions and co-operate with the PSNI in ending criminality in our community.”

Although admitting to trying to extort cash from the builder, the Continuity IRA denied involvement in protecting drug dealers.

“We firmly oppose drug dealing and we will go after anyone we find out is involved in the drugs trade,” a spokesman told the Andersonstown News.

“Recently we disrupted the activities of a drug dealer from Antrim who has been bringing cocaine into West Belfast. We are committed to ending drug dealing.”

The Continuity IRA leadership also admitted carrying out a shotgun attack at Selby Court, off the Grosvenor Road, last week.

Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 23 January 2009

Playwright Martin Lynch’s new play Chronicles of Long Kesh sets out to give an insider’s view of what it was like to be an inmate, but just what do some of those who were actually there make of the drama? Former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre takes a seat in the audience

Around two years ago I was interviewed by Martin Lynch in Belfast’s John Hewitt bar. He was laying the founds for the Chronicles of Long Kesh. As one of the former denizens of the then sprawling news magnet I can readily testify to the forensic mind Lynch brought to the task. His probing unearthed long forgotten nuggets from a distant past which reduced both of us to uncontrollable fits of laughter over pints of beer. He couldn’t believe what I was telling him and I couldn’t believe I was telling it.

That was much of what Long Kesh was about — laughter. When Bobby Sands famously said that revenge would be the laughter of our children, he may have been inspired by the laughter he witnessed behind the walls even in the worst of circumstances.

Laughter overcomes a lot, including the delight a malign adversary derives from his nefariousness.

In 1980 when a naked Tony Miller from Derry laughed in the face of a screw who had been kicking him, all of his comrades banged up along the blanket wing knew who emerged the victor from that exchange.

There is a freedom in laughter. Frequently the most psychologically liberating moments in the prison arrived via laughter. And there are lots in this play for an audience to laugh about. Humour is its strongest feature.

The story of Long Kesh is a challenging one to chronicle. For three decades it formed a stage where deaths, escapes, riots, burnings, protests and violence were the major acts viewed by a large audience.

Can such an incident-packed and prolonged time span be adequately explored in the form of a play?

And, to boot, a play deprived of props relying entirely on the power of performance to deliver.

A film is perhaps a better medium, even more so a book. The hiatuses and silences that need plugged are pretty expansive.

For the historian in the audience and her companion, the devotee of detail, the playwright might just, to borrow a phrase, have extended his reach at the expense of his grasp.

Yet this must be qualified by recognition that there is a tendency on the part of those who live through or have been deeply affected by any event to want it reproduced exactly as they recall it. No depiction can manage this. To expect that it should is to ignore the licence that so distinguishes art from science.

With Oscar, Toot, Eamon, Hank and Thumper forming the prison population, acuity was enhanced by having the story of Long Kesh narrated by Freddie Gillespie, a prison officer.

His tale insinuated how a battle ground could become a bottle ground. Freddie, like so many in his keep, survived the battle but not the bottle. As narrator, it fell to him to join the dots that an audience less familiar with the jail scene might have difficulty placing in any intelligible context.

It is hard to see how it might succeed otherwise. The play is predicated on the audience’s familiarity with events.

The bizarre musical outbursts only have meaning if grounded in that familiarity, outside of which the play is rapidly reduced to cabaret sustained by a series of charades.

During the blanket protest nocturnal sing songs were one of the limited ways of putting the evening in. They were also used after a particularly bad wing shift to show that despite regime brutality the spirits had not been broken.

The acting is superb as it deftly manoeuvred between the two levels at which the play operated.

At the surface there were the stern-faced soldiery drillers in the parade ground where feet were hammered against the ground and heads yanked to the side in response to barked military commands.

This was the controlled martial backdrop that the political prisoners sought to drape behind their stage.

At another level, chronicled was life as it was lived by prisoners in the cells and huts that spawned the marshy ground on which the prison was built: banter, trauma, emotions, hypochondria, chicken choking and depression.

If there was one thing the play failed to capture it was the pervasive thought control that insidiously gnawed away at the autonomy of intellectual life within the prison.

For sure it produced writers and artists but the controlled environment also allowed it to throw up the nemesis of art, the censor. The screws censored the prisoners and the prisoners censored their own.

In the end one scene followed me home; where two blanket prisoners took to lying on the floor conversing through the pipes to each other.

For two years during the no wash protest before he was moved, Martin Livingstone and I in adjoining cells, audible but invisible to each other, would assume the prone position and chat about every nonsense under a sun we never got to see. It was darkness at noon, every noon.

Chronicles of Long Kesh by Martin Lynch runs at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall until January 31

By Vincent Kearney
BBC

The government is to be asked to pay £12,000 to the families of all those killed during the Troubles - including members of paramilitary groups.

The families of paramilitary victims, members of the security forces and civilians who were killed will all be entitled to the same amount.

The payment is expected to be recommended by the group set up to advise on how to deal with the past.

The Consultative Group on the Past is to publish its report next week.

“As yet, I have not seen a copy of the group’s recommendations but media reports on the issue are both disappointing and disturbing,” said Northern Ireland’s first minister and DUP leader Peter Robinson.

“The DUP has consistently opposed any equation between the perpetrator of crimes during the Troubles and the innocent victim.

“Terrorists died carrying out their evil and wicked deeds while innocent men, women and children were wiped out by merciless gangsters.”

The SDLP’s Alex Attwood said: “What has been reported today may be true or may be malicious but until we know, people should reserve judgement.”

Ulster Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson warned against implementing a proposal he condemned as “immoral”.

“The proposal endorses the morally flawed notion that a terrorist killed while undertaking a mission of murder has the same status as an innocent civilian murdered in a bomb attack or a member of the security forces murdered in front of their family,” he said.

TUV leader Jim Allister described the recommendation that £12,000 is paid to the families of all those killed during the Troubles - irrespective of how they met their deaths - as “nothing short of outrageous”.

If the recommendation is accepted by the government, the cost would be an estimated £40m.

The group, co-chaired by Lord Eames and Denis Bradley, is expected to say there should be no hierarchy of victims and that everyone should be treated in the same way.

That would mean the family of the IRA Shankill bomber Thomas Begley would receive the same for his death as those of the families of the nine civilians he killed.

Likewise, the families of two UVF members killed while they planted a bomb that also killed three members of the Miami Showband in 1975 will be entitled to the same payment as those of the victims.

The Consultative Group on the Past is also expected to recommend the creation of a five year legacy commission, appointed by the British and Irish governments, to deal with the past - and to say there should be no further public inquiries.

The total cost of the proposals would be £300m, and the Irish government will be asked to make a significant contribution.

More than 3,000 people died during the Northern Ireland Troubles and the group was set up to find ways forward in dealing with that legacy.

**This post is from my friend Sharon at 1169 and Counting, and if you will follow her links back, you can see many more photos of the event.

11sixtynine.blogsome.com

90th Anniversary of An Céad Dáil Éireann (the First Dáil Éireann) : held in Wynn’s Hotel, Dublin, on Tuesday, 20th January 2009.

Approximately sixty people gathered in a room in Wynn’s Hotel, Dublin, on Tuesday 20th January 2009, to hear various Irish Republican speakers outline what that political event of 90 years ago means to them - all the speeches, and the many contributions from the crowd, shared one common theme: that the present institution in Kildare Street in Dublin, and those that sit in same, share absolutely no linear connection to the people, or the actual institution, which met in Dublin’s Mansion House on January 21st, 1919.

Photo: Ruairí Ó Brádaigh greeting the crowd

The Wynn’s Hotel lecture began at 7.45pm and ended at 10.15pm: proceedings were Chaired by Des Dalton, and amongst the other Irish Republicans that spoke during the evening (in Irish, French and English) was Tomás Ó Clérigh, Richard Walsh, Róisin Hayden, Seán Ó Brádaigh, Séamus Ó Súilleabháin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Séan Ó Sé. Following the main speakers, a ‘Question and Answer’ session was held, with many from the audience taking part. Our National Anthem was then sung by all present, the audience was thanked for braving the wet and windy elements (and for not being intimidated by the State ‘elements’, who were inside and outside the hotel), the ‘Top Table’ people were beseeched by autograph hunters (!) and, eventually, all present retired to the private function room where refreshments were being served. Overall, the function was a fitting and proper tribute to An Céad Dáil Éireann, an institution with which Republican Sinn Féin is proud to be associated.

We publish with this post four more photographs from that evening (please >>go here), with another five photographs published on our ‘Sister’ blog, which we have linked to at the end of this post. A full report and other photographs will be published in the February 2009 issue of ‘Saoirse‘, which will be published on the 4th of that month.

As stated above, five more photographs from that event can be viewed here: 1169 and Counting.blogspot.com (post dated Wednesday 21st January 2009). Also, please note that our usual ‘three-in-one’ post will be published this Friday or Saturday.

Thanks!
Sharon