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The Guardian's Simon Hoggart - We are not worthy ...

Guardian diarist Simon Hoggart is a clever chap. Or at least he is clever, and actually quite funny, when he sticks to writing about what middle class English scribblers seem to excel at – jokes about bodily functions, lewd innuendo and verbal faux pas. You know transvestism and all that – chortle, tee hee as Simon Hoggart goes all Billy Bunter and Beano! on us. He is a one man Carry On team for middle class Guardian readers - their thinking man’s Les Dawson. And that’s fine as far as it goes. A bit of froth and public school gossip after a hard week can be quite entertaining.
However when Hoggart gets into political spoutery he begins to wobble and his Home Counties fangs begin to appear. Then, and it goes almost without saying, any mention of Ireland invariably sees his liberal mask slipping altogether, to lay bare a colonialist of the worse sort. Give me an unapologetic bigot any day, rather than a wheedling diarist who patronizes us with displays of his allegedly superior knowledge about Ireland (see below) rather than having the courage to admit that he bears a feral animosity towards the Irish and their cohorts.

Let us look dear readers at this feral ill will in more detail.

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Paul Mackintosh Foot, writer, journalist and champion of the oppressed.

As many of you will know, the late Paul Foot was not only the finest investigative journalist of his generation, he was also a great friend of the Irish. Foot was close to death when he insisted on writing a promotional paragraph for my book A Very British Jihad. Not because he agreed entirely with my thesis that plain anti Irish and anti Catholic bigotry lay at the heart of the collusion story, but because he recognized it as an important work. There could be no higher accolade for a writer than a recommendation from Paul Foot, and if I never write another book again, I feel that a dying Paul Foot confirmed my place in the literary pantheon. Or at least our own revolutionary Aosdána.

Paul Foot died on July 18th 2004, but look at how Simon Hoggart treated Paul Foot in the days directly after his death and Paul not cold in his grave –

Simon Hoggart's Guardian diary - Saturday 24 July 2004

Like everyone who knew him, I thought Paul Foot was terrific. He was always very kind and helpful to me. I did have doubts, though, about the way he pursued anyone who disagreed with him - not agents of the repressive capitalist state, but other investigative reporters who just happened to take a different view.

Readers can read the full article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jul/24/politics

So within two sentences, Hoggart is dissing Foot’s name and he then goes on at some length to quote Panorama reporter John Ware who joins in the kicking game. Why? Because Paul Foot was brave enough to champion the cause of British Intelligence whistle blower Colin Wallace when the rest of the world, including John Ware, was denouncing him as a fake. Foot’s position on Wallace, of course, was finally vindicated. Indeed his destruction of John Ware (and David McKittrick’s) campaign against Wallace in the late 1980s was widely described at the time as “wholly devastating”. In 1990, the British government admitted that Wallace was indeed involved in a dirty tricks campaign called Clockwork Orange – Mrs Thatcher herself issued a Downing Street communique, which apologized to Wallace (and to parliament) for the disinformation that had occurred. Wallace, they were admitting, was at the heart of British Intelligence operations in Ireland.

So Wallace and Foot were vindicated in 1990 but here in 2004 we have Hoggart not only speaking ill of a recently deceased Paul Foot but also trying to rewrite history in favour of the establishment. There is a pattern here.

Now why do I mention this now in the early days of 2012?

Because Hoggart has played the same card yet again. This time over Bloody Sunday, where he not only once more casts a shadow on the graves of the dead but also seeks to return the narrative to a pro colonial and discredited agenda. He then rounds this off by giving incomplete and therefore potentially misleading information about a state sponsored killer gang who almost succeeded in wiping out Bernadette McAliskey and her family. All this in the name of “sifting the evidence” about Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. Deary me.

The indisputable facts about Bloody Sunday are set out very well in Wikipedia.
Here –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_%281972%29

viz:

...in which 26 unarmed civil-rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army. Thirteen males, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately or soon after, while the death of another man four-and-a-half months later was attributed to the injuries he received on that day. Two protesters were also injured when they were run down by army vehicles. Five of those wounded were shot in the back. The incident occurred during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march; the soldiers involved were members of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 Para).

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Bloody Sunday - Derry. Photograph Gilles Perres

Now once again, and as most of us know, the British government has finally put its hands up over Bloody Sunday, has said that the actions of its troops were wrong and that all of the people killed and wounded were unarmed non combatants. This is also an effective admission that there had been a huge cover up over the killings.

The British government made its apology in 2010 but in praising a new book that has supposedly sifted through the evidence of the monumental Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Simon Hoggart now wants to question what he calls the Bloody Sunday “narrative”:

Here is Simon Hoggart’s version through the prism of the book he praises:

What emerges is that the tale was a great deal more murky and complicated than anyone is prepared to concede or believe. For one thing, there were many Republican gunmen roving around the place, shooting enough to convince some soldiers they were under sustained fire.

The whole article can be read here -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/jan/20/simon-hoggarts-week-camerons-date?newsfeed=true

In other words, as far as Simon Hoggart is concerned, the British apology (delivered by Prime Minister David Cameron himself) is merely a sop to the victims families because, the truth is that the soldiers were justified in firing at unarmed civilians with their backs turned (they were running away) because these soldiers believed that they were under "sustained fire".

Never mind all the evidence that states that this “under fire” myth is precisely that. Never mind the British state’s own rejection of this myth. Never mind the well documented fact that the same units from the same parachute regiment of the British Army had shot dead and wounded scores of innocent and unarmed people in Ballymurphy, West Belfast just six months prior to Bloody Sunday. No, Simon Hoggart wants to (woundingly) refute all this. Why? Because of course when he’s not being Les Dawson and a poor man’s Barry Cryer, he rushes to his closet and dons his Colonel Blimp suit so as to sally boldly forth to rewrite the “narrative” of the Irish War from his sketch column redoubt.

In this latest contribution, he even contrives, in a narrative leap, to bowdlerize the real events surrounding the attempted assassination in 1981 of Bernadette McAliskey and her family at her home in Coalisland, Co. Tyrone. Hoggart piously informs us that her life was saved by a Parachute Regiment soldier. He connects this murder bid on McAliskey with Bloody Sunday ten years previously just in case you didn’t get his message in his preceding paragraph that the Paras were more or less OK guys and that we should back off. Where did he get his script for this rubbish and how did it pass unnoticed through the Guardian's editorial process?

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Bernadette McAliskey nee Devlin campaigning on the streets of Derry

Now in that same spirit of the forensic “sifting of evidence, but once again including the things Hoggart either chooses to omit, or declines to research properly, let us just observe that the Para soldier who, it is true, saved Bernadette McAliskey’s life was part of the same unit that had encircled her house BEFORE the loyalist gunmen arrived and that the killer gang sent to Bernadette’s door was directed by UFF supremo John McMichael a key “asset” for British Intelligence in the war against the Irish. Given that the elite soldiers surrounding Bernadette's house did nothing when the state directed gunmen arrived at her house, the inevitable conclusion is that they were there to mop up once the loyalist killers had done their dirty work - the traditional role of pro British killer gangs in Ireland.

My advice to Simon Hoggart is to stick to custard pies, literary festivals and ancient Goon Show jokes and may his literary limbs whither if they ever set foot on Irish issues again.





@Paul Larkin
Baile Átha Cliath 2012]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=390 Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:14:46 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=388 Six Winters

A translation of Tomas Tranströmer's "Sex Vintrar"


1
In the black hotel a child sleeps.
Outside: the winter night
where monster eyed dice tumble.

2
An elite of dead knights is turned to stone
in Katarina graveyard
where the wind rattles in its armour from Svalbard.

3
One war-winter when I lay sick
a colossal icicle grew outside my window.
Bystander and harpoon, inexplicable memory.

4
Ice hangs down from the edge of the roof.
Icicles: the upside down Gothic cut.
Weird cattle, udders of glass.

5
In a shunting, an empty train carriage.
Poised. A lion rampant
The journey in its claws.

6.
Tonight snow-mist, moonlight. The moonlight jellyfish herself
hovers over us. Echoes of our laughs
on the way home. Enchanted path.



@Paul Larkin
Mí Eanáir 2012

(Source text Tomas Tranströmer - Samlade Dikter - 1954 1996)
]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=388 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:07:05 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=384
Cnoic Dhoire Bheatha - The Derryveagh Mountains - Tír Chonaill

A léitheoirí, comrádaithe agus cairde
Dear readers, comrades and friends

The winter, and in particular the Christmas and New Year period, have always been sacred times. Times for inner reflection. Any man who says he has no time for meditation and wondering about life and why we are here is either a fool or a liar, or more likely both.

Below I present a poem I wrote over the Christmas just past. I was writing my own Northern Lights if you like. Below that again is my translation of a very short extract of Søren Kierkegaard's Either/Or from the original Danish. It is a very brief passage but it is the absolute epicentre of Kierkegaard's thought. I am grateful to the Danish author Lise Søelund for reminding me just how breathtaking this passage is - at least for those who finally dare to make that existential leap into themselves.
--------------------------------------------
The Northern Light and The Eternal Self


(For my brother Brian)


The Northern Light



In the late afternoon, crawling
through the road rage of Dublin
in the season of good will

We pass in stages to a land
that still embraces the dark matter of life
the black velvet night

In Dublin there is no absence of light,
evening falls into an orange sodium pall
now polluting the whole eastern seaboard

In the end there will be nothing but a chafing red ribbon
from Belfast to Dublin

A Barium meal throwing up our psychoses,
our fear of silence, each other, loneliness,
the alien light cementing the conurbations

Only after Letterkenny do we leave
the last splurge of sickly street

Step out of the car at Termon - Refuge

Sense and listen for the hills
rising into mountains
at Errigal and Sliabh Sneachta
the stars cascading around Muckish
in the shape of Sé Do Bheatha

Fáilte 'na bhaile don Nollaig

A Christmas welcome home

To a place where the mysterious dark
still holds the light, the spirit and the way


@Paul Larkin
Carraic, Gaoth Dobhair
An Nollaig 2011


-------------------

The Eternal Self
(Translated extract from Enten-Eller - Either-Or - Part Two – by Søren Kierkegaard - Translator - this blog author Paul Larkin)



From the chapter - "The balance between the aesthetic and ethical in the development of personal identity"


When all around you has become still - profound as a starlit night; when your soul rises clear from the whole world around it; then right above you will appear, not some ideal image of man, but the eternal glory of creation itself; then will the heavens seem to part and your own “I” will choose itself, or rather it will accept itself.

Now has your soul beheld the infinite essence, something that no mortal eye can look upon, and once seen can never be forgotten. Then will your true inner self receive its noble title, which it will hold for all eternity. You do not become someone else; rather, you become your essence; your human self awareness is no longer fractured; you are your true self.

Just as the heir to a great fortune, even the greatest treasure there ever was, cannot own anything until he has come of age, so is even the richest person as to naught until he has chosen himself. And likewise, he who one might call the lowest of the low is the epitome of existence itself when he finally chooses himself. For, to be exalted does not mean to possess this or that material thing, but simply to be oneself, and this is open to all men and women should they only will it to be so with all their heart and all their soul.


@Paul Larkin
Carraic, Gaoth Dobhair
An Nollaig 2011

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Søren Kierkegaard


The chapter heading for the above passage in Enten-Eller Either-Or is:

Ligevægten mellem det Æsthetiske og Ethiske i Personlighedens Udarbeidelse
The balance between the aesthetic and ethical in the development of personal identity

See – pp 183/184 of Enten Eller part two from Søren Kierkegaard’s Collected Works - Electronic version available (in the original Danish) from The Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre - http://sks.dk/forside/indhold.asp]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=384 Mon, 9 Jan 2012 21:40:30 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=379 null
Remarkable image of Margaret Thatcher's handwriting as she edited
what became the verbal offer sent to SF and IRA leadership on the 6th of July 1981

(Under the 30 year release rule, Britain’s national state archive at Kew has now released at least some of the documents covering the 1981 Hunger Strikes. This has provoked widespread debate here in Ireland and elsewhere. I beg the forbearance of readers in making this blog longer than usual to consider this crucial period in our history)

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One thing that strikes me forcefully about the discourse surrounding the present discussion of the Hunger Strikes is that the rancour and finger pointing of a small but vociferous group of people and their “supporters” in the press is aimed exclusively at the leadership of Sinn Féin. I find that remarkable.
In 1981, Northern Irish society was in complete clampdown after the heads of the RUC had won their battle to fully Ulsterize the security campaign. Ulsterization led to the infamous RUC Shoot to Kill policy. “Firepower, Speed and Aggression” was the RUC’s new slogan; a more widespread use of Special Branch informers was introduced in liaison with Margaret Thatcher’s top spy Maurice Oldfield and at the same time stricter policies came in for Irish republican prisoners in the North, which was the whole point of building the H Blocks in which they were incarcerated. There was also, we now know, intimate state cooperation with loyalist killer gangs. Only a few weeks ago, it was admitted that one of the North’s most lethal loyalist killers had been an RUC agent/assassin all along. See -
http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?amount=0&blogid=1&query=jackal

It is easily forgotten that even speaking about pro Irish rights in the North or Britain at that time, labelled you as a subversive, a proper subject for surveillance, harassment, death threats or worse. Of course this was a war, but it was a war in an utterly sectarian society (a point now admitted by the British with their disbandment of the RUC).

My question then is - how is it that the notorious regime that was in place at that time is not being talked about? It seems clear to me that the new evidence that has emerged about the Hunger Strike period points to a sectarian establishment in the North as being the root problem and not Gerry Adams.

From reading much of the commentary, one would think that the Hunger Strikes were a private spat between a group of mad zealots and the British security forces in an otherwise civil society. That, of course, is the way the old Unionist establishment wanted the conflict portrayed.

PIC JACK HERMON
Jack Hermon RUC - The real Secretary of a Sectarian Sate

For example, not one of the accounts of the Hunger Strikes that I have read in the last few days mentions Sir John “Jack” Hermon, head of the old RUC, who presided over the RUC primacy policy (Ulsterization) and was centrally involved, along with his heads of Special Branch, in dictating British policy in the North at that time. Put bluntly, nothing could move at that time without Jack Hermon’s say so, and the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, seems to have fully backed this policy. Or perhaps he had no choice.

How has the debate been turned upside down in this way?

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I believe that these new papers give a strong indication that Sinn Féin’s version of events surrounding the Hunger Strike negotiations is the correct one – backed as it is now by the British version of events. They also destroy a story that has been pushed by our favourite spook and fantasist Ian Hurst/Martin Ingram, amongst others - viz: that Martin McGuinness was working for the British, and that Gerry Adams was working to a British agenda.

Veteran BBC journalist Peter Taylor gets very close to this crucial point when he said he was astounded that Maggie Thatcher herself was involved in the negotiations with the leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA during the Hunger Strikes.
See here - Margaret Thatcher “negotiated with IRA”:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-16366413

But the bigger point here, for Irish society at least, is that all guerilla armies have channels to the enemy and vice versa. (The US government, for example, is in dialogue with the Taliban, at one remove, at the moment.)

Much has been made of the fact that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness had secret channels to the British, and dark ulterior motives have been ascribed to this, whereas I would have been astounded if they hadn’t – the same goes for most IRA volunteers I have ever met.

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McGuinness and Adams - the laughable myth that
they were British spies is destroyed once and for all

And what are we to make of the fact, stated clearly in these highly classified British documents, that under no circumstances would the inner sanctum of the British establishment and its intelligence services allow Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness access to the Hunger Strikers? This is the same Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness whom we have been repeatedly told were British spies, or acting effectively to a British agenda.

Fascinating , and top secret, transcripts of phone conversations between the link man to the IRA/Sinn Féin leadership and the British government (Derry businessman Brendan Duddy – codenamed “Soon” by the British) that took place in the first week of July 1981 say the following :
“After consultation with HMG, we said that we would accept Morrison but would on no account accept either Adams or McGuinness.”

Here the British are saying that former Sinn Féin press officer Danny Morrison was an acceptable person for them to go into Long Kesh prison to speak to the Hunger Strikers and the “Officer Commanding” for IRA prisoners Bik McFarlane, but not Adams or McGuinness. Whoever it was that was saying Adams and McGuinness were British spies, it certainly wasn’t the British intelligence services themselves.

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Seosamh Mac Dónaill - Joe McDonnell - The fifth hunger striker to die
as tentative backdoor negotiations reached an impasse.

Whilst they are not the full picture, the “feel” and emotion lying behind these secret documents, I believe, is that the British and the Sinn Féin leadership went some way to finding an agreement to end the Hunger Strike in the days just preceding the death of the fifth Hunger Striker Joe McDonnell on the 8th of July 1981. The sticking point came not with Sinn Féin, but with local unionist opposition to a satisfactory deal.

In other words, the possibility of an offer was in the air, and this may have been enough for some prisoners, but the verbal offer that was made by the British on Monday the 6th of July was not seen as being enough either by the Hunger Strikers or by the Sinn Féin leadership. The British themselves make that very point – see below.

Thus, an accusation that has now emerged and is being pushed by Sinn Féin’s critics, to the effect that a conclusive deal was offered by the British but was concealed by Sinn Féin leaders for their own secret motives looks to be incorrect.

In truth, and at this volatile point in our recent history, a solution to the prisons conflict was probably never going to be found, but what is now clear is that the back of Ulsterization was broken over the dead bodies of the Hunger Strikers and the huge support they received. The artificial border that had been constructed around an artificial six county Ulster (where three counties were "disappeared" to ensure a pro-British majority) was breached forever and the days of the sectarian statelet were numbered.


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Máirtín Ó hUrsáin - Martin Hurson, the 6th Hunger Striker to die on July 13th 1981

When we begin to talk about people’s motives in this situation, we have to remember that a dirty war was being fought whilst the Hunger Strikes progressed and people on all sides were embattled and embittered. Sometimes, we need to step away from the cold black and white of documents and look at people’s faces, or the memory of them.

As a much younger man, I was in Belfast in the week in 1981 when Hunger Striker Martin Hurson died on July 13th of that year. I had occasion to speak at length to Sinn Féin and IRA members in West Belfast and also to watch certain republican leaders at a distance. I even met and spoke briefly (purely by accident) with Tom Hartley not long after Martin Hurson died. The reason I mention this is that I believe I am a good reader of men and what I saw in their faces that day, and in the days following, was grief, genuine grief, and the struggle to control grief.

Thus on a purely intuitive level, I do not believe that these people saw some kind of macabre greater good in allowing their comrades to die. Now I will explain in more forensic terms why I think this allegation is nonsense.

WERE THE HUNGER STRIKERS OFFERED A DEAL?

These new state papers on the Hunger Strike show that Margaret Thatcher, who was under enormous international pressure to stop the cycle of death, took an active part in trying to solve the crisis but the advice coming from the state apparatus in the North of Ireland was to “stand firm” and hopefully “humiliate” the IRA. That kind of language sounds more like a senior RUC Special Branch officer rather than the urbane Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins. This is Humphrey Atkins’ advice to Thatcher:

Monday 6th of July 1981 - Atkins to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
“My judgement, and that of Michael Alison who has been close to the latest moves with the ICJP, is that the best course is to continue to stand firm. There is always the chance that the strike will, in whole or in part, collapse of itself, leaving the Provisional leadership humiliated.”

Humphrey Atkins is writing this when Hunger Striker Joe McDonnell (the 5th Hunger Striker to die) is on the brink of death and his advice to Margaret Thatcher is to stand firm.

It seems to me that the advice, nay instruction, coming from the security apparatus in Belfast, and the subsequent British response to what became known as the prisoners’ Five Demands (i.e. to reject them – see below) is being ignored in certain quarters.

It also has to be said that, in the times that were in it, these papers show that the majority of prisoners (with some exceptions) were equally determined not to accept anything less than the Five Demands regarding full remission, wearing their own clothing, free association etc. Four of their comrades had already died by the time backchannel negotiations started and it is difficult to see them accepting much less than what Bobby Sands had died for.

In a letter dated 21st of July 1981, and coming from the Northern Ireland Office, a British official clearly states that the republican movement (both prisoners and IRA/Sinn Féin leadership) is at one in rejecting what the British had offered verbally on the 6th of July. In fact an official was sent in to the jail to clarify this and his proposals were rejected by the very people whom Sinn Féin’s critics say would have accepted a deal:

Letter from Northern Ireland Office to Margaret Thatcher’s office - 21st of July 1981
“...we have sent an official in to clarify our position to the hunger strikers and they have said that they do not wish to listen.”

Thus, we are watching a game of brinkmanship and blinkmanship (who would blink first) worthy of any ancient Greek tragedy.

It took an academic not a journalist, and once more via the BBC, to identify the key elements emerging from these state papers. Conflict historian Dr. Eamon Phoenix’s excellent analysis can be read here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-16355142

As is indicated above, one of the most significant things highlighted by Dr. Phoenix is the fierce opposition to a deal on the part of the state apparatus in the North. However, he goes further (agreeing with the Sinn Féin position) and says that that no conclusive deal was ever offered to the Hunger Strikers via link man Brendan Duddy and the Sinn Féin leadership.

Or as Dr. Phoenix puts it himself:
“The British never actually formulated their final statement while concessions were strongly opposed by senior NIO Ministers, led by Humphrey Atkins."

These new state papers, therefore, add credence to Sinn Féin's account of the desperate back-channel manoeuvring that took place over the weekend of the 4th and 5th of July 1981 as Joe McDonnell neared death . As Dr. Phoenix points out, the fact that there was no firm deal in place calls into question former IRA prisoner Richard O'Rawe's account (in his book “Blanketmen” for example) of events at this time. O’Rawe argues that the IRA/Sinn Féin leadership had a deal in their back pocket but chose not to accept it so as to prolong the Hunger Strike for electoral reasons.

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A grim faced Sinn Féin PRO Danny Morrison outside Long Kesh prison

In "Blanketmen", Richard O’Rawe claims that on Sunday the 5th of July, Danny Morrison brought a message in to Long Kesh prison from the British government, a message which amounted to a ‘deal’. He also claims that Morrison then discussed this ‘deal’ with Bik McFarlane (the prisoners overall commander) who, upon his return to his cell that Sunday night, wrote down the details and passed it on to O’Rawe via a teachtaireacht – a comm. (small pieces of tissue paper that were used by the prisoners to communicate).

As Eamon Phoenix points out, the newly released state documents show that the British had categorically not drawn up their position by this time point on Sunday afternoon the 5th of July; so even if Morrison had wanted to, he could not have been in a position to bypass the hunger strikers, or give details of it to Bik McFarlane.

Going back to the phone transcripts between the link man Brendan Duddy (“Soon”) and the British government, at 2pm on that same Sunday the 5th of July the transcripts say the following:
“Soon then indicated that McGuinness had arrived. He said time was of the essence and asked what the current HMG position was. We explained that it was important before drafting any document for consideration by ministers, that we should possess the Provisionals’ view. Soon then undertook to seek clear views of their position, which would be relayed to us later after discussion in the light of Morrison’s visit.”

So there we have it, it seems, from the horse’s mouth. The British would not begin considering their position on that Sunday afternoon until they had received feedback about Morrison’s visit to both the prisoners and Bik McFarlane.

I can only assume that O’Rawe, because of his anger and trauma over the death’s of his fellow prisoners has forgotten the exact train of events, or is writing what he now wishes to believe. Because in fact, a verbal offer from the British was not made until Monday the 6th of July. This offer was approved, and indeed was edited, by Margaret Thatcher, and was sent to Duddy and on to Sinn Féin later that day. This verbal offer was amended by Sinn Féin to reflect the prisoners’ perspectives of work and remission and was relayed back to the British via Duddy.

Readers can see at the top of this blog, the draft (including Margaret Thatcher’s handwritten amendments) that was drawn up so as to be read out to Brendan Duddy on the 6th of July. But we now know that the British never responded to the republican side’s request for more movement. Or to use Humphrey Atkins’ phrase, the British “stood firm”

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Owen Carron - Bobby Sands' former election agent,
won the Fermanagh South Tyrone seat as an H Block candidate.

The above leads to another fundamental point where Richard O’Rawe and the anti Sinn Féin, constituency that supports him, falls down. For O’Rawe says that Gerry Adams et al cynically wanted to prolong the Hunger Strike in order to maintain the momentum of their electoral success, with Bobby Sands himself having been elected an MP before his death in May 1981 and then another Hunger Striker who died, Kieran Doherty, being elected in the South.

O’Rawe argues that Sinn Féin wanted to ensure the election of Owen Carron in the Fermanagh South Tyrone constituency and so hid details of a British deal. However, the writ for the by election in Fermanagh South Tyrone was not moved in the British Parliament until the 28th of July, some three weeks after the non existent deal was alleged to be offered, and for a polling day that would not take place until the 20th of August that year. It strains the imagination, therefore, to suppose that on the 5th of July Sinn Féin would not only know that a writ for the by election would be moved on the 28th July but that the field would be clear for Bobby Sands’ successor to be elected.

The reality is that nobody could have known what the situation would be some two months down the line. These papers clearly show that the British expected the Hunger Strike to collapse, regardless of whether the republican movement wanted to keep them going or not. Besides, O’Rawe must be well aware that at this time the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership were very committed to a military strategy. A truly dirty war was being fought and electoral successes were seen as a part of, not a replacement for, that ferocious struggle.

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Ed Moloney - foremost critic of the Sinn Féin Leadership

In conclusion, some readers (my younger readers in particular), may ask why I believe these issues to be so important. My answer is that, quite apart from the historical importance of the Hunger Strikes, some of the biggest hitters in Irish journalism have picked up on Richard O’Rawe’s accusations against the Sinn Féin leadership and effectively reported his accusations as fact. For example, probably the most prominent of these journalists is Ed Moloney who, it is claimed, has written the definitive book about the IRA – “A Secret History of the IRA.” In this book, Moloney describes O’Rawe’s account of the Hunger Strike negotiations as “explosive for the Adams leadership.” Of course it can only be explosive if it is true.

O’Rawe’s, in my view, questionable account of the Hunger Strikes also fits in with Moloney's thesis that the “duplicitous” Gerry Adams sent IRA volunteers to their deaths for the sake of his electoral strategy. This is made clear in Moloney’s summary of O’Rawe’s evidence:
“... the hugely damaging accusation that the peace process strategy was constructed on a foundation consisting of the graves of six republican hunger strikers who needn’t and shouldn’t have died was fated to hang forever over Gerry Adam’s head.”

Moloney does not clarify exactly how Adams has been “damaged”. For, since these allegations about Adam’s alleged “duplicity” with regard to the Hunger Strikes and other issues have been made, his electoral vote both North and South, and that of his party, has actually increased. However, Moloney’s acceptance of O’Rawe’s allegations is clear.

I also find it strange that Moloney elevates O’Rawe to some kind of lone figure seeking to represent the hunger strikers fairly against a manipulative Gerry Adams. We have already seen above that the British sent a top official into Long Kesh to address the Hunger Strikers personally and they refused to listen. Moreover, it is an established fact that all issues to do with the Hunger Strikes were discussed amongst groups of prisoners with Bik McFarlane as the link man and Richard O’Rawe being asked to write out what was agreed in these discussions. Here is what McFarlane says in the book "Nor Meekly Serve My Time" about the drafting of the prisoners’ conciliatory statement of 4th July which led to the Duddy/London telephone calls, and about which Richard O’Rawe has claimed to be the sole author:
“We talked it over for a long time, with contributions from Butch Butler (subsequently a Sinn Féin MLA] and Colm Scullion, our respective cell mates. Our cell mates were separated by another, occupied by Marty McManus and Ta-Buck Bradley, and we had some interjections from them. Finally we agreed that a comprehensive explanation of the five demands should be drafted. So Richard set about the task eagerly.”

Is the above quote not a more likely scenario? It is certainly what the vast majority of ex republican prisoners say actually happened. It took more than Gerry Adams, surely, to run the Republican war, politics and propaganda machine?

I could even accept the arguments coming from the likes of Moloney and O’Rawe if they were happy to follow their own logic. Surely, accepting for a moment their position, if what Moloney calls the Gerry Adams faction was so Machiavellian and scheming in knowingly consigning people to their deaths, so too were the British. There was Thatcher and the British hierarchy screaming “No Truck With Terrorists”, as they sent British troops to their deaths, and all the while, engaging in secret talks with the IRA. Yet the finger is exclusively pointed at Gerry Adams and his supporters in West Belfast.

The naivety of the above argument in a war situation is plain for all to see and now, irony of ironies, these top secret British papers have emerged to give yet more credibility to Sinn Féin’s position.

Overall, the story that is emerging is that Sinn Féin and the IRA scored a stunning victory, not in an outright military defeat of the British, which was never going to happen in my view, but in getting rid of a society that was rotten and sectarian to the core. I believe that history will finally record that Irish Republicans (and not just in Sinn Féin and the IRA) forced the British to instruct the Unionists to accept the inevitable tide of history and share power with the Irish.

The historical import of these new papers is in showing that, with the Hunger Strikes of 1981 involving IRA and INLA prisoners, the British saw the writing on the wall. The support for the prisoners across Ireland and in the Irish diaspora was immense and, significantly the message from Bobby Sands that went out to all Irish hearts was not a blood curdling call to drive the English into the sea, or for some kind of Vietcong type "Tet Offensive" but simply -

“ Tá páirt le imirt ag achan duine - Everybody has a part to play”

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Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh - Bobby Sands 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981

Imeasc laochra na nGael atá sé - A hero to huge numbers of Irish people all over the world










@Paul Larkin
Carraic, Gaoth Dobhair
Mí Eanáir, 2012 ]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=379 Wed, 4 Jan 2012 13:22:45 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=375
(Page references to Brian Hanley's and Scott Millar's The Lost Revolution, refer to the large format Penguin Ireland edition of 2009)

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Kim Jong Il before his untimely death

Irish newspapers and online news outlets are all full of reports about the death yesterday of the North Korean potentate Kim Jong Il. What they are not saying however is that many of our present day political leaders and journalists here in Ireland saw ultra Stalinist North Korea as a society that should be supported. I am not making this up.
In the 1980s, leading members of the Irish Workers Party and its youth movement used to regularly visit Kim Il Sung and his country. At that time, North Korea officially described Kim Il Sung (the father of the now deceased Kim Jong Il) as the “Eternal President of the Republic” even though North Korea is nominally an atheist state.

Before certain readers mail me privately and tell me that I should allow for people to make political mistakes in their young lives before they mature and see sense, a significant element of the present leadership of the Labour Party were members of the Stalinist modelled Workers Party from the 1970s and 1980s right up to the 1990s. The Workers Party was a firm, long standing supporter of the dictatorships in Eastern Europe and North Korea. In other words, for people like Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, our minister for communications Pat Rabitte and prominent MEP Proinsias De Rossa, this was no flash in the dictatorial pan.

In fact, during the mid 1980s, a time when there is said to have been mass purges and the related establishment of concentration camps for "enemies” of the North Korean state leading to possibly thousands of deaths, prominent Workers Party members were in North Korea as Kim's guests on a regular basis.

For example, on the 29th of September 1984, the North Korean English language newspaper Pyongang Times carried a statement from the great Kim Il Sung praising the Workers Party for having struck "deep roots within the masses", as well as its work in ridding Ireland of British occupation forces – again I am not making this up. There is a good account of this period in the “Fight Back!” chapter of the The Lost Revolution by Brian Hanley and Scott Millar - see pages 462/463. The same book reports that the now Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa visited North Korea two years later in 1987 along with Official IRA leader Seán Garland. The Workers Party then invited a delegation from Kim Il Sung land to Dublin in 1988 and, that same year, expressions of solidarity between the two parties were further strengthened when a high powered WP delegation went to Pyongyang to celebrate the country's revolution. On the 1988 visit to North Korea, senior Workers Party members met the now freshly deceased Kim Jong Il. This was common knowledge within the Workers Party.

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North Korea has a formidable army

Whilst all this fraternal Korean/Workers Party backslapping was going on in the 1980s, the North Koreans, who have very motivated, well trained and equipped armed forces, were also training the Workers Party's armed wing (the Official IRA or “Group B”) in the use of an assortment of lethal weaponry.

All Workers Party TDs (members of parliament) have consistently claimed that they knew nothing about links between the Workers Party and the Official IRA or Group B. Indeed in 1997, Proinsias De Rossa won a libel case against broadcaster and journalist Eamon Dunphy, which was partly about that very issue. However on page 564 of The Lost Revolution (a book De Rossa supported by way of giving an interview) its authors claim that De Rossa and Seán Garland came to an agreement about stopping Group B’s “special activities” in 1989:

"Two leading activists recall that in the period following the 1989 election De Rossa received from Garland a clear commitment to halt all Group B 'special activities', and some Group B activists were informed that a decision had been made to disband the organisation."

To my knowledge, De Rossa has never challenged the above account of this period in the Workers Party’s history.

It was almost certainly Official IRA veteran Seán Garland who arranged for young Workers Party militants to train with specialist units of Kim Il Sung's army in 1987 and 1988. He it was who had the most long term and regular contact with North Korean officials, both in Korea and at their embassies in other countries.

There is an absolutely riveting account of the above specialist weapons training on pages 540/541 of The Lost Revolution and it is surprising that not one journalist has reacted to this Korean bombshell by asking the people who at that time were leaders of the Workers Party (and are now in government as Labour party TDs) whether they were aware of these activities. Nor did the North Korean WP/OIRA paramilitary connection just involve weapons training. According to The Lost Revolution, arms were also imported to Ireland via the same connection:

“Group B also utilized their connections with North Korea to import around two dozen .32 automatic pistols during the late 1980s, collecting the weapons from North Korean diplomats in Paris."
Page 541 The Lost Revolution.

The North Korean connection with Ireland did not stop with the disintegration of The Workers Party in 1992 – when De Rossa, Eamon Gilmore et al jumped ship and eventually joined the Labour Party. My former colleagues in BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme have demonstrated fairly convincingly how the Soviet Union and North Korea arranged to flood the western financial market with fake dollars (or “Superdollars”) via their contacts with Seán Garland and the rump of Group B activists.

So there we have it. A major element of our present government were once members of a party that had close and fraternal links to the North Korean dictatorship. Kim Jong Il dies and not a word is said about this connection. Not a word from the huge list of media and journalist commentators who were once members or supporters of the Workers Party and would be well aware of their link to North Korea and other Stalinist states. Not one journalist or commentator who will put his or her hand up and say they got it wrong.

It’s as if it never happened at all. It is the Emperor’s new clothes.

My God, I think I liked them all better when they were unapologetic, dyed in the wool Stalinists. At least they had the courage of their political convictions.

Postscript

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Seán Garland - Efforts are being made to have him extradited to the US

I am completely opposed to attempts to extradite Seán Garland to the USA on foot of the counterfeiting allegations referred to above. Quite apart from the fact that he is old and infirm, he is an Irish citizen and if he is to be accused of something he should be tried in his own country amongst his own peers.







@Paul Larkin
Baile Átha Cliath
An Nollaig 2011]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=375 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:48:16 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=369
Robin "The Jackal" Jackson - State sponsored assassin

I regard this as a very important blog as, particularly in the points I make in the last paragraphs, it contains cross referencing information about state sponsored loyalist killer Robin Jackson that has been missed or deliberately ignored by journalists and other investigating agencies. Please, therefore good readers, distribute this blog as widely as possible across the global internet.
PL

Cic Saor readers should mark the 14th of December 2011 in their diaries as the day when a large hole appeared in the skies above Ireland. A collusion hole. A hole that allows us to “officially” see, how the British state's sordid and squalid sponsorship of a group of anti Catholic and anti Irish sectarian killers actually worked.
For yesterday we saw the partial release of the findings of the North’s HET (Historical Enquiries Team) report in relation to the Miami Showband massacre. The conclusion of the HET's report confirms a startling fact, what your author has been saying for a long time; namely that Robin Jackson, the so called "Jackal", was a key player in the Miami massacre.

THE MURDERED SOULS WHO DEMAND THE TRUTH

In July 1975 three members of one of Ireland’s most popular showbands were killed outright by British soldiers manning a roadblock; others were badly wounded but managed to escape. There is a surprisingly good description of the attack and its implications in the Belfast Telegraph -

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/miami-showband-massacre-report-points-to-ruc-collusion-families-say-16091272.html

CROPPIES LIE DOWN
This attack was a classically fascist “Strategy of Tension” outrage designed to encourage the view that there was no solution to the Irish question other than the iron fist of the British state. The same killer gang carried out the Dublin and Monaghan bombs a year earlier.

In this period, there were serious attempts at building a peace process and contrary to a myth peddled by certain journalists that the IRA destroyed the peace process, it was these British soldiers and their loyalist cohorts who made sure that we got their "clamp down". The lives of these musicians were sacrificed at the ghoulish altar of an anti Irish Catholic Jihad whose watchword was – Croppies Lie Down.*

I have written before about the role of Irish journalism in this dirty affair here -
http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=82

But with this report, Irish journalism stands exposed as having played the role of court jester for the dark Jacobean state that Britain was at that time. For we now have an effective official admission that one of the most lethal sectarian killers within the UVF had a close relationship with the RUC. This official acknowledgement is a collusion tsunami that will fall over former senior members of the RUC and the British military because Robin Jackson travelled all over Ireland, Britain and South Africa in his role as a very willing hired killer for the RUC.

Jackson was not as the papers and news outlets are now saying an RUC agent. He was an RUC assassin.

Can we be clear about this?
Robin “The Jackal" Jackson was not like British army agent and loyalist fixer Brian Nelson. Jackson did not go round taking pictures and carrying out surveillance with British state issued equipment like Brian Nelson did. Jackson didn’t need to; because in the 1970s at least, he was picked up from his home by RUC men and taken to the spot where the police required that a Catholic or republican activist be killed. Jackson’s victims even included a member of the RUC (Sergeant Joe Campbell a Catholic who may have been about to blow the lid off some of the collusion activity going on his area of North Antrim). We may ignore UVF claims that Jackson was not involved in this killing, an RUC officer (John Weir) who was also a killer in in one of these pseudo gangs has described Jackson's assassin role in detail. See here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Weir_%28loyalist%29

THE TSUNAMI THAT BUILDS AS WE SPEAK

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The Miami Showband - Sacrificed on the altar of collusion

The survivors of the Miami Showband attack now intend to push for an explanation as to why Robin Jackson received a tip off from RUC Special Branch to make himself scarce before he was arrested over his involvement in the massacre. This question leads us to the core of the RUC's Jihad against the Irish. For the now deceased Jackson was, to my own knowledge, able to walk out of prison cells and remand centres on at least four occasions. On one occasion at Crumlin Road Courthouse, a judge asked the RUC why Jackson was not before the court along with other defendants, who were RUC men, involved in the murder of a Catholic. The judge was told that this was for “operational reasons”.

What were the faceless mandarins in Whitehall, and their senior officers on the ground in Ireland, thinking of when they placed the full military resources of the British state into the hands of killers like Jackson who had a feral hatred of Catholics?

COLLUSION REPORTING - THROUGH A LOOKING GLASS

In my book A Very British Jihad, I criticise the late Judge Henry Barron's report into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings for failing to realise the significance of Jackson’s role as a state sponsored assassin – see in particular page 312 – “Poor Research and cross-referencing”.

What I am referring to is the fact that British Army whistle blower and former intelligence officer Fred Holroyd has always stated categorically that Jackson was involved in the murder of leading IRA man John Francis Green. This murder took place in County Monaghan and a few months before the Miami Showband attack, and also in a period when the IRA was engaged in peace talks and had called a ceasefire. Judge Barron did important work in copper fastening Holroyd's claim that there was an undercover British army surveillance car in the vicinity at the time Green was murdered, but what he crucially failed to do was to point out that the Luger pistol used to murder Green and also used in the Miami Showband attack had Robin Jackson's fingerprints all over them. Now we are officially told by the HET that a senior RUC officer warned Jackson about the forensic evidence on the Luger and told him to disappear for a while. Given the widespread nature of The Jackal's murder campaign, this revelation has huge significance.

Both Holroyd’s and RUC killer John Weir’s account of the close relationship between Jackson and the Mid Ulster UVF on the one hand, and senior members of RUC Special Branch and British army operatives on the other, is now effectively vindicated. I am presuming that lawyers for the Miami Showband families will now speak to Holroyd and they will discover that "legendary" RUC officer Frank Murray was helping to "run" Robin Jackson. It will also be worth the while of those same lawyers to consult with John Weir. For Weir will tell them that Jackson also operated with none other than RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen.

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RUC Special Branch Leader Harry Breen - a close associate of "The Jackal"

I should state that I am not asking for some kind of post factum campaign of vengeance against these police officers. Both Murray and Breen are dead now and may God rest their souls. However, it is important that the truth is finally told about collusion and the parameters of the public discussion changed.

At this very moment and not too far away from where I am writing this blog, a tribunal has spent a vast amount of time and energy to establish whether there was Garda collusion in the murder of RUC Superintendent Harry Breen.The whole exercise is a sop to unionists who wish to assert some kind of mythical equivalence between the RUC's wholesale collusion with loyalist killers like Jackson (Breen's in particular) and that of the Garda Síochána, an organisation that was renowned throughout the Troubles for its hatred of Irish republicans.

Where is the high powered Tribunal about the Miami Showband massacre or the Dublin Monaghan bombs? Our whole discourse about the British state’s dirty war against the Irish (who at first were merely calling for civil rights and one man one vote) has been inverted to Alice in Wonderland proportions.

It is very likely that we are seeing the long slow process of British withdrawal from Ireland, but Britain’s spooks and killers have successfully switched the focus of debate onto the leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA and away from a murder paradigm that puts the whole of the leadership of the RUC, British Military Intelligence and the Civil Service in the dock.

But now the ghost of The Jackal has returned to haunt them.


Paul Larkin

Baile Átha Cliath
Mí na Nollag 2011


*
"Croppies Lie Down" is an anonymous Protestant loyalist anti-rebel folk song dating from the 1798 rebellion in Ireland celebrating the defeat and suppression of the rebels.]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=369 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:08:10 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=365
Tá an cinneadh a bhí fógartha ag an rialtas maidin inniu chun Oifig an Choimisinéara Teanga a dhruid go hiomlán scannalach. Is beag na hacmhainní atá ag na Gaeil cheana féin agus, rómhinic, bíonn an Stáit ag déanamh beag beann ar an chead teanga agus lucht labhartha na teanga laistigh de cóir a bheith achan ghné den tsaol sa tír seo.

Tá sé doiligh a creidmheal go bhfuil Páirtí an Lucht Oibre ag tacú an tionscnaimh seo. Comhartha eile atá ann i mo thuairimse nach dtig linn brath ar chomhlacht reachtúil ar bith - caithfidh na Gaeil a gcuid cearta a chosaint mar ghluaiseacht neamhspleách atá sásta dul i mbun agóide agus feachtas easumhlaíocht shibhialta má tá sé riachtanach. Ar ndóigh bheadh sé níos fearr agus níos éifeachtaí dá mbeadh an feachtas seo ag dul fite fuaite le hagóidí eile in éadan na laghduithe uafásacha atá romhainn ach ní mór do na Gaeil a beith d'aon ghuth láidir maidir le cearta na teanga.


Tír gan teanga Tír gan anam

No Pasarán

TRANSLATION

Dear Comrades

The decision announced by the government today that it intends to close the Office of The Irish Language Commisioners Office is a complete scandal. As things stand already, Irish speakers have very few resources and far too often, the Sate
has little regard for and diminishes what is supposed to be the First Language and the speakers of that language in nearly all walks of Irish life.

It is hard to believe that the Labour Party is supporting this initiative. Another sign in my view, that we cannot rely on any statutory body - as Irish speakers and as Gaels we have to protect our rights via an independent movement that is willing to demonstrate, agitate and if necessary conduct a campaign of civil disobedience. Of course this would be more effective if done in conjunction with other groups that are campaigning against the savage cuts that we face but Irish speakers need to be united in defending our language rights.


A Country Without Its Language Is A Country Without A Soul

No Pasarán




@Paul Larkin
Baile Átha Cliath
Mí na Samhna 2011]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=365 Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:25:42 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=361 null
RTÉ -Tubridy and O'Callaghan - new faces, same old tired agenda

A surprisingly large number of people contacted me to ask why I hadn’t reacted to events in Libya, with a smaller number asking my view of the ETA ceasefire. My problem was that I was struck dumb by the flagrant prejudice shown by RTÉ during the Irish presidential election and for some reason felt the need to speak to people at "home" in the Donegal Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area) before I could write anything. To be sure that it wasn’t just me.

I found that even people who are not traditional Sinn Féin supporters were coruscating in their condemnation of RTÉ - all of the critics of the station that I spoke to are TV license payers.
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Raymond McCartney IRA Hunger Striker – Human Being

Some time ago I wrote a blog in which I praised Miriam O'Callaghan after she interviewed two former IRA hunger strikers - Pat Sheehan and Raymond McCartney.
Here - http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=252

I contrasted the dignity and basic respect she had shown her guests with the priggish and utterly unprofessional behaviour of Ryan Tubridy who had interviewed Martin McGuinness just prior to that. I also pointed out that RTÉ's culture was one of extreme bias against Irish republicans. So in this instance, O’Callaghan’s approach in actually treating republicans as human beings had been refreshing and very much against the RTÉ grain.

Unfortunately this was a false dawn. In a much hyped television debate on RTÉ which involved all of the candidates, Miriam O’Callaghan asked the deputy first minister of the Northern Assembly and presidential candidate Martin McGuinness the following question:
“How do you square with your God, Martin McGuinness, the fact that you were involved in the murder of so many people?
The actual clip can be seen here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaxUywZBHhE

Miriam O'Callaghan will now go down in broadcasting history as yet another champion of RTÉ’s blatant bias against Irish Republicans in general and Sinn Féin in particular. For she must have known (as do her superiors who would have discussed her input beforehand) that in placing this loaded question to Martin McGuinness she was aligning both her own journalism and the policy of what is supposed to be our state broadcaster firmly alongside a failed British strategy of criminalising Irish republicans.

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The dark days of Thatcher's clampdown

Quite simply, RTÉ has been seen once again to embed itself with the worst elements of Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher’s Dirty War period in our recent conflict by depicting Irish Republicans as beyond the pale of public decency and therefore ‘fair game’ for the dirtiest questions in its repertoire.

Margaret Thatcher correctly recognised that the only way to defeat Irish republicanism was to portray them as common criminals and, likewise, the only way RTÉ can justify the abandonment of its statutory obligation to be impartial is by portraying Martin McGuinness as a common criminal.

Imagine for a moment Miriam O'Callaghan haranguing Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore for being involved in the Official Republican Movement at a time when its armed wing was killing people and robbing banks. Or more globally, the next time Tony Blair appears on RTÉ will the Praetorian Guard of Dublin 4’s Citadel interrogate Blair and ask how he can reconcile his newly adopted Roman Catholic faith with his role in the mass murder of innocent women and children in Iraq?

Of course not. For RTÉ’s purpose, Martin McGiunness is a criminal, Gilmore and Blair are statesmen.

The irony is of course that the British have now accepted the legitimacy of Sinn Fein and the IRA’s position, as has the unionist community – without of course agreeing with it. Only RTÉ is still stuck in its partitionist, anti republican mind-set, which would be fine if RTÉ were a political party rather than a state broadcaster with obligations to its national audience and rules of impartiality.

In Donegal, I met three families who changed their minds and decided to give their first preference vote to Martin McGuinness, so outraged were they at what one husband and wife called O’Callaghan’s “dirty tricks”. This latter family have never had any huge grá for Sinn Féin.

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Ireland beyond the Pale - Out of sight and out of RTÉ’s mind

All writers look for some image or central idea before they can begin to compose their thoughts. My speechlessness over RTÉ's continued attempt to rewrite Irish history was finally broken when I got that image - it is one of retreat.

On the long drive back from Donegal to Dublin, we heard the first hints on the radio that the present Irish government is going to attempt to renege on its solemn pledge to upgrade the Dublin road that runs between the Monaghan/Tyrone border at the southern end and the Derry Donegal border at the northern end. This road is not only used by the people of North and West Ulster but also those living in Sligo and Leitrim. A vast area in other words of the North and North West of Ireland.

On hearing this news, it struck me that the southern political establishment has been out of touch and in retreat for decades and that the outgoing president Mary McAleese and Martin McGuinness stand as symbols of that retreat, precisely because of the way they were vilified by the southern establishment but were embraced by people beyond the Pale.

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Mary McAleese - her vilification in RTÉ has not been forgotten

Mary McAleese worked in RTÉ during the 1980s and her account of her treatment at the hands of an anti nationalist and pro partition station management and its Workers Party producer grade (who pompously and ridiculously called themselves Marxists) still shocks.

So blind and embittered was this faux bunch of workerites and anti Catholics that they refused to acknowledge the huge transformation that was happening in the country because of the Hunger Strikes in 1980/81. As a professional journalist, McAleese simply argued that it was incumbent upon RTÉ to reflect this phenomenon and for her "sins" she was “sent to Coventry”, blackballed and demonised.

That was RTÉ then and this is RTÉ now. Miriam O'Callaghan is simply a continuity member of that same faction, representing a constituency that has no real idea of peoples' lives and aspirations outside of their south Dublin mansions. That hundreds of thousands of her viewers and their families would be far more shocked at her performance as a supposed TV “moderator” than the career of Martin McGuinness as an IRA leader turned politician.

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Margaret Thatcher Chief Censor and Warlord

Thatcher failed in her attempt to criminalise Irish republicans and, though they do not realise it, senior management and journalists at RTÉ have done irreparable damage to the station in the eyes of huge numbers of people across Ireland. RTÉ’s own policy of criminalisation, in other words has failed and I suspect that it will rue the day it contrived to allow Miriam O'Callaghan to reveal her partitionist slip so blatantly.

They may try to keep our roads or minds closed, rewrite or invent our history, but out there in the North and West the huge rivers still flow. We are a river flowing, we're a river flowing..





@Paul Larkin
Baile Átha Cliath
Mí na Samhna 2011



Iarscript - Uachtarán na hÉireann

Guímis gach rath agus beannacht ar Mhicheál D. Ó hUigínn, ár nUachtarán úr - go n-éirigh go geall leis, fear uasal, Gael agus sóisialaí.]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=361 Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:51:32 +0000 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=358 null
Tomas Tranströmer in wheelchair

The Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has finally been given the international recognition he deserves with this week’s awarding of the 2011 Nobel prize for literature. There is an excellent article in yesterday's Guardian for those who wish to find out more about him -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/06/nobel-prize-literature-tomas-transtromer

A very dear friend of mine from Sweden and her husband were kind enough to send me Tranströmer’s Samlede Dikter - his collected works. It is one of my most treasured possessions. I have taken one of my favourite poems from this book, Romanska bågar – "Roman arches" and translated it as a celebration of this week’s award.

Tomas suffered a stroke in 1990, which affected his speech but he continues to create and even play the piano with his only good hand. Oh harbinger of death - where is thy sting? We do not fear thee.

I mean no disrespect to other great poets, but in my humble view, Tranströmer is light years ahead of most other "stellar" poets because he dares to make a leap, a leap into the unknown, a leap into the dark, carrying humanity on his back. Most poets turn in on themselves, or just talk to each other, and abandon their sacred role as teachers. Tranströmer goes out to meet us, our fears, our stupid ways, our redemption – redemption can only be found in human empathy. Empathy with the world, the universe, with and for each other. Tranströmer is the epitome of human empathy and courage.

Readers who would like to hear the great man himself reading this poem (in the original Swedish version obviously) can go to this YouTube page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrzePp6WJgU

Here is my translation:


Roman arches

Inside the vast Romanesque church the tourists milled around
in the ancient light
Arches appearing beyond other arches and nothing else visible
Some candle flames dipped and flared
An angel with no face embraced me
and sent a whisper through my whole body:
“Do not be ashamed of your humanity, be proud!
Deep inside you are arches that open out to other arches for all eternity.
Your journey will never end and that is how it is should be."
I was blinded by tears
and herded out on to the sun-pulsing piazza
along with Mr and Mrs Jones, Tanaka san and
Signora Sabatini
and deep inside all of them
were arches appearing beyond other arches for all eternity.



For those of you who have Swedish, here is the original poem:

Romanska bågar

Inne i den väldiga romanska kyrkan trängdes turisterna
i halvmörkret
Valv gapande bakom valv och ingen överblick.
Några ljuslågor fladdrade.
En ängel utan ansikte omfamnade mig
och viskade genom hela kroppen:
"Skäms inte för att du är människa, var stolt!
Inne i dig öppnar sig valv bakom valv oändligt.
Du blir aldrig färdig, och det är som det skall."
Jag var blind av tårar
och föstes ut på den solsjudande piazzan
tillsammans med Mr och Mrs Jones, Herr Tanaka och
Signora Sabatini
och inne i dem alla öppnade sig valv bakom valv oändligt.

@ Tomas Tranströmer


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Translated poem - Roman arches and blog article @ Paul Larkin, Mí Meán Fomhair, 2011, Baile Átha Cliath]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=358 Fri, 7 Oct 2011 13:02:26 +0100 http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=354
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James Kelman - Booker Prize Winner

see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/12/featuresreviews.guardianreview22

Many readers of Cic Saor will be aware that this blog was started because of the unspoken but extremely effective type of censorship that is practiced by Irish media and broadcasting outlets.

You want to make films or write stories from a left wing and "gaelach" perspective – no chance. They will tell you that you are being didactic and are not an artist - as was said to me.

As for trying to highlight collusion between the British state, the higher ranks of the Garda Síochána and pro British death squads and the RUC - why Easons will refuse even to put the book on its shelves. Or, as the Irish Times demonstrated on Thursday (see... ... blog below), your comments will be removed instantly, Irish media features editors will not even acknowledge your existence never mind reply to your email with as much as a no thanks.

If that is my experience as a former European Journalist of the Year, what must it be like for people trying to give voice to their feelings, philosophies and creative urges from their tower block or bedsit homes? Those who have no contacts in the media whatsoever.

Draw a line down from RTÉ’s headquarters in Dublin 4, on through the Arts Council at Merrion Square and finish it at Tara Street by the banks of the Liffey , where the Irish Times is based and you have a Blueshirt/Workers Party tripwire waiting to snap you shut. A partition line both for the country and of the mind.

In all my dealings with RTÉ and the upper echelons of Irish media, I have never met one person who is unashamedly an Irish Republican, which in my eyes also means that they believe in true wealth redistribution, an end to capitalism as a social system and the building of new society in Ireland that has our native language at its core.

Like many Irish immigrants, I was schizophrenic until I learned to speak Irish (as best I can). Without An Ghaeilge, the whole country is schizophrenic . Tír gan teanga – tír gan anam. A country without its language is a country without a soul.

This month so far, 10,000 real and separate readers took time to read some of the many individual posts on Cic Saor, and we still have a week left in the month.

Let this encourage all of you out there. Don’t let tiredness after work, crying wains, dodgy relationships and poor excuses stop you creating the things you feel inspired to create - be that writing, sculpting painting and so on. Get back to that story, blog or block of granite and batter away at it - "pick at your own wounds" as Paul Schrader, writer of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver once said.

Or as James Kelman would say - fuck them - scrios dearg orthu. We are many they are few.


Buíochas ó chroí / fair play to all of ye


Pablo


@Paul Larkin
Béal Feirste
Mí Meán Fómhair 2011 ]]> General http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=354 Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:12:25 +0100