Blink and you’ll miss it
Just FYI for the files: The Andersonstown News has removed Blinker’s, er, Squinter’s, article about Gerry Adams from their websites, and from Squinter’s blog. (Hint: it’s quite easy to start your own blog – ask Newton Emerson, Eamon Lynch or Anthony McIntyre, who also benefited suffered from the censorship control-freakery of Teach Basil, for tips*). We print it below for posterity’s sake – to remember the day the bold men struck a blow for freedom of speech.
* Insert your own “Told you so” here
UPDATE: The Belfast Telegraph reports: “A pro-Sinn Fein newspaper has apologised to Gerry Adams after an unprecedented attack on him by one of its best-known columnists.” Only “here” would an MP be able to stop a local paper from criticising his political performance, not to mention getting a front page apology in the bargain, with barely an eyebrow raised, eh?
UPDATE 2: Peter Weir calls for a ban on government funding to the paper as it has now proved itself to be nothing more than a party propaganda sheet.P.S. You can still access the heretical article via Belfast Media and Irelandclick sites using their Pagesuite viewer and paging through the archived edition – well, until they black that out or something. SHhhhh, keep that to yourself though. Don’t give them any ideas….
Squinter: Taking a sideways look at the week
20 years on, Gerry must face the truth
“The cruellest lies are often told in silence.” Adlai Stevenson wasn’t far wrong when he said that. Not that Squinter can be accused of keeping quiet too often, but it is the case as we prepare to bury Bap McGreevy that there are some things that are said and some things that aren’t, and one of the things that isn’t being said – publicly at least – is that it’s time for Gerry Adams to shoulder his share of the blame for the mess we’re in and stop blaming everybody else.
Adams has been the West Belfast MP for 20 years. First elected in 1983, he has served continuously since then, save for a five-year break when Joe Hendron took back the seat for the SDLP in 1992.
If a week is a long time in politics, then 20 years is the Upper Paleolithic Age. It is in that same 20-year period that the slow, steady decline into chaos in certain parts of West Belfast began, and it was on his watch that it has gathered pace to become the runaway train that it is today.
First thing to be said is that there are many people and many agencies to blame for the state of the lower Falls, to take that as an example: the Chief Constable, the Housing Executive, the courts, the Prison Service, the Probation Board, Social Services, certain local parents – the list goes on. But while Adams can and does point the finger at some or even all of the above, Squinter has to say that he has never heard Adams accepting any responsibility for the fact that large parts of his constituency are no-go areas, but without the bellbottoms, the parkas and the armalites, of course.
It definitely wasn’t Adlai Stevenson who said: “You don’t drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there.” Whoever said it had a point. Like every one of us, Bap McGreevy fell into the water when Harry Holland was slaughtered. It was hoped back then that the wave of community disgust and horror might be fashioned into a life raft which would carry us all on a tide of community solidarity and determination to a safer shore. Didn’t happen. What happened was that Bap McGreevy was left to drown – in his own blood – while the rest of us continue to flail around hoping that we won’t go under too.
Who’s to blame for the failure to press home the Harry Holland momentum? Gerry Adams is to blame, that’s who. He’s not the only one to blame, of course. Squinter refers you back to the list above, and every one of us who complains and then pulls the curtains and turns up the TV when the sun sets is to blame in our own collective way. But Gerry Adams is the MP, has been for 20 years. He’s supposed to know how to marshal and direct; he’s supposed to give us the ideas and the leadership; he’s supposed to make things better. When he asks for and gets our votes he accepts a host of very onerous responsibilities, and the most basic of those responsibilities is to make his constituency a good place for decent people to live and for parents to bring up their families. In that he has failed terribly.
Of course the police are falling down on the job, but how long is it possible to get away with that excuse? Bears crap in the woods, fat babies fart, the Pope wears a funny hat, the Trevors are jaw-droppingly useless. Tell us something we don’t know. Gerry Adams knows a lot better than Squinter that while the PSNI might have a lot of intelligence about the people of West Belfast, they know them as well as they know the remotest tribe of Western New Guinea – and they care even less. Against that background, complaining about the PSNI not doing their job is like complaining about the cold weather we’re supposed to be getting over the Easter weekend.
And every time Sinn Féin gets together at another fist-clenching Stormont meeting (the 2008 equivalent of Long Kesh political lectures), we’re told that economic deprivation underpins the myriad social problems that are convulsing the West Belfast community. They hope nobody will think to ask whose job it has been for the past 20 years to get investment and jobs and to generate community confidence and optimism.
It wasn’t as if Adams didn’t have the clout and the contacts. A former aide of Tony Blair has been making frankly embarrassing revelations in a new book about how close Adams and Blair were. Adams was the Oprah Winfrey of Irish-America. And what did we get? InBev gone and Visteon going. A huge investment conference that holds its nose as it swishes past West Belfast ferrying ministers and Invest NI suits to Hillsborough and Cultra. Adams might have got away with pointing to the lack of investment in his constituency in 1983 and saying: “Nothing to do with me, mate.” 20 years on and you’d buy a house in Ross Street quicker than you’d buy that.
20 years. Two decades. Four parliamentary terms. Four US Presidents. Two Popes. 11 Secretaries of State. Five UN Secretary-Generals. Five Taoisigh. Five Prime Ministers. In Ross Street the wind of change blows in empty Budweiser boxes and despair; it blows out good people and hope.
As a friend bitterly told Squinter over a St Paddy’s Day pint, Ourselves Alone are not the proud and risen republican people surging shoulder-to-shoulder towards a new Ireland, but the abandoned pensioners of the lower Falls who now fear the night a million times more than they ever feared the Brits or the loyalists. And don’t tell Squinter they’re not right to be afraid. When the bad guys can kill a well-known and popular ex-prisoner who was a fit and strong body-builder, then quite frankly Squinter’s more than a little concerned himself.
And so, next election day, Squinter thinks he’ll stay in the house in solidarity with those who are staying in their homes simply because they’re afraid to leave.
ADAMS RESPONDS TO THAT SQUINTER ARTICLE
A chara,
The ‘Squinter’ article of March 20, following the murder of Bap McGreevey, was both offensive and hurtful.
I am well used to and welcome criticism but I am disappointed at the tenor and tone of his tirade.
It was more reminiscent of a Sunday Independent columnist than the Andytown News.
Squinter’s advice that we should stay at home is also bad advice.
The duty of citizens is to join in the efforts to achieve more change, more jobs, better housing, and safer communities.
That’s the way forward for this constituency.
Gerry Adams, MP MLA
The Andersonstown News accepts that the tone and the timing of the Squinter article last week, during a period of community mourning, was inappropriate and unnecessary and apologises to Gerry Adams and our readers for any hurt caused. — Ed.
Previously on Slugger: here, here, here, and here.
That’s it….I’m calling the doctor for Greg…ten years is about nine years and 11 months too many for him to have been this way….
Mick Hall
I totally agree with you 6:31. I must now go have a lie down!
“That’s it….I’m calling the doctor for Greg…ten years is about nine years and 11 months too many for him to have been this way….”
I might need one before this is over.
I don’t think Big Brother No 1 is guaranteed to be too pleased by what is happening next week.
So, no sex offenders in schools, no matter what Ms Ruane or Big Brother No 1 say.
G.
Susan,
They repressed the freedom in speech in a lot more violent and direct ways for years. And some of the people now up in arms supported them while they did it. And as has been pointed out at the top of this thread, the people behind the ATN have not been backward about censorship either.
What has happened is clearly inappropriate, and demonstrates the quasi-fascistic streak that is ingrained within the Provisionals. But there have been worse examples.
Big Brother No 1 isn’t quasi anything, I’m reporting you to think-rite CRJ.
G.
I think I have seen this play before. Wasn’t it called Dallas and Bobby Ewing’s dream where everything that had gone on the previous series was all made up and a figment of Bobby’s poor deluded mind. Likewise the ATN reaction and climbdown is a rewrite where all mention of ‘the article’ vanishes in a puff. Was it really there at all? Next we will have Adams and his fawning worshipping entourage denying it ever existed, it was all a Sunday Independent plant. YO HO will someone in the Republican Movement get a grip here and stop digging. The low credibility that the Shinners already had in many parts of Nationalist Belfast is fast disappearing like snow off a ditch. What fools do they take us for? Instead of taking it on the chin Adams and Sinn Fein threw a strop, took their ball home and forced the ATN to take the blame for even questioning the Bearded One. They should BOTH have put their heads together and made a joint statement of sorts including one where the ATN would reconsider publishing large half page ads for cheap alcopops and beer which it does every week. It should also have contemplated it’s own navel for the massive upsurge in anti-social behaviour. SOMETHING obviously happened in the last 7 days to force such a climbdown and the ATN & Robin Livingstone have a moral duty to their profession and an obligation to tell their readership what this was. Both Sinn Fein and the ATN now look totally foolish and have lost the confidence of their own community. Is it any wonder the hoods and thugs are sitting back and laughing. You can fool some of the people All of the time, you can fool ALL of the people some of the time BUT you can’t fool ALL of the people ALL of the time.
Are you associating the promotion of blue rocket fuel with alcohol induced violence in West Belfast?
I had to pay for a skip to take away about 800 bottles, SF and Belfast City Hall allowed me to eat the loss/cost. Rely on oneself.
SF also cut down my tree. In fairness the ATN did a sympathetic story on my knife wielding yobbo probs. However, SF tended to well, take control, so my tree had to go.
Not that the tree was out killing anybody or anything. That’s life, that’s SF. I wasn’t invited to the meeting about MY tree, I’m not a group-thinker.
G.
Greg
its nice to see someone deeply attached to a tree…. did you give it a wee hug before it went awat
They done it when I wasn’t there. It’s demise is officially recorded by the US Department of State as ‘The Battle of Downfine Forest’.
‘Opponents of Big Brother No1 were today targeted by group-think militia in a punitive action which left one little dog ‘kicked’ and many pedestrians injured, one tree is thought to have been set upon by a group of eejits armed with a chainsaw’
I’ve asked for political asylum in the United States I’m still waiting for President Bush to get back to me.
G.
I feel it my duty to inform everyone here that I recently encountered Greg on another forum, where he ranted on for months and months about sex abuse. There was no topic he couldn’t turn into a conversation about kiddyfiddling.
It would be laughable except for the fact that Greg works for some organisations connected to the Catholic Church, the really fundamentalist wing of the Church at that, ask him about is campaign to have sex education banned in Scotland, or his comments about how condoms are useless in the fight against AIDS.
Worst of all, and I say this seriously, Greg calls in the lawyers when things don’t go his way.
Mick needs to be very careful in allowing this type of loon on the boards, my advice is to keep a very close watch on him, he has destroyed on discussion board as it is.
I think we all have to stay cheerful for the sake of Big Brother No1, that is the only threat to free speech in my part of the world.
I do however win court cases as a rule. If you are the original TAFKABO, have you still got the Stormont photos of me waiting for the Deputy First Minister?
GARDAÍ are investigating claims a sex pest stole the identity of a West Belfast anti-porn campaigner and used it to harass women over the internet.
http://tinyurl.com/3bztp9
They haven’t censored everything at the Andytown News yet by the way.
G.
Don’t say you weren’t warned folks.
I do tend to feel the authorities, that is to say the An Garda Siochana, took the view, that the copyrighted photos should not have been used for the purpose they were put to.
“Sick sex pest poses as local man to harass women online”
That being unlawful, the Andytown News vaguely hinted at that in their headline. Also, I’m not Continuity Catholicism as such, I’m just a pro-Vatican lobbyist.
I do Catholic stuff.
G.
Yeah Greg, you support the banning of condoms in AIDS riven Africa, and you don’t want kids to have sex education.
A lobbyist for the Vatican?
Ironically, they’re the one organisation you want accuse of sex crimes.
“Sex pest” indeed.
Do keep us informed of the Garda’s investigations.
want s/b won’t
The Vatican were offered a fait accompli.
The following article was written after Esmond Birnie called the Newsletter to offer the UUP perspective & view.
I spoke to Dr. Birnie about it on the 1st Feb 2007. I told him I wasn’t happy at all and would appreciate it if the UUP could adopt a critical position.
“However, despite such a lengthy investigation, on Jan- uary 15 a
spokesman for the Government said in Parliament that they did not know
how many Roman Catholic officials have been interviewed by police in
Northern Ireland or charged in relation to withholding evidence of
child abuse over the past 10 years.
Minister Paul Goggins told MP Teresa May that the PSNI said the
information was not available in the requested format and could be
provided only at disproportionate cost. ”
http://tinyurl.com/yvdxd5
Makes you wonder about C. Ruane’s vetting promises doesn’t it?
I think you will also find the hand of Tony Blair and the NIO all over our local issue.
G.
They only handed over abstracts. The PSNI were happy enough not to have the detailed files.
A few people tried to do do something about it. We didn’t have that much support.
In my view the NIO, PSNI, & PPSNI took a less than thorough position.
G.
Northern Ireland
Clergy: Sexual Offences
David Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether the Police Service of Northern Ireland has received (a) full details and (b) summaries of allegations of child sexual abuse by priests from the Roman Catholic Church. [148549]
Paul Goggins: I have been advised by the PSNI that they have received information regarding a number of allegations of historic sexual abuse allegedly committed by priests from the Roman Catholic Church.
This information was handed to PSNI by solicitors acting on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church has co-operated fully with PSNI supplying all relevant information which has been required or requested.
An investigation file is currently with the Public Prosecution Service for consideration.
People should note that even when discussing abuses by the Church, Greg will attack and criticise everyone but the Church, note how he carefully chooses his words to leave the church looking as if they’re the only ones doing the right thing, whilst all other parties are negligent in Greg’s eyes.
(a)
See above, I just did criticize the Northern Bishops, they can’t be trusted in relation to child protection, they’re very difficult.
(b)
I also requested the media articles which illustrated ‘the nature’ of the problem. Or, to be specific, the PSNI & PPSNI didn’t really want to do any of it. The NIO hand at work.
(c)
I roped in political friends to say the needful for the positive media articles.
‘The UUP family affairs spokesman Esmond Birnie said: “An independent inquiry could be very helpful in restoring public confidence. I am not completely convinced the Church has done all it can to restore public confidence since Ferns.”‘
PSNI & PPSNI let us down. The former couldn’t even be relied upon to ask for detailed files.
I spoke to Dr. Birnie about it on the 1st Feb 2007. I worked at it until 17th Jan 2008.
The decision not to prosecute was perhaps early August, I’ve seen documents dated 09 August 2007 talking about informing suspects.
The notification to the media took place 07 December 2007, I stopped (lobbying) a few weeks later, 17th Jan. The NIO had it fixed.
There you have it
G.
Yes, there you have it.
Once again, you focus on the aftermath of the crimes, preferring to lay blame for the failures in prosecution, all the while avoiding the elephant in the nursery, namely the church you work for and the systematic abuse of children.
How can you crow so much about being a crusader against abuse when you work for the catholic church?
I spent a year trying to get the culprits prosecuted, to no avail. I’ll get the allegations listed (in detail) on the NCR in the USA.
the SDLP, Sinn Fein were a waste of time, I had to talk unionists into taking a swing at it.
The reason it went nowhere was because the PSNI, PPSNI & NIO didn’t want to do it.
The Vatican wants it resolved.
It is not that easy out in the provinces to get the central line adopted, it just isn’t.
Northern Bishops, they just want it buried.
The PSNI. PPSNI, NIO & Goggins, and Tony Blair, agreed that buried was the best option.
That’s what we were up against & the Northern Bishops of course. I worked it for a year.
Did my best
G.
So there you have it, according to Greg, the Nice Vatican wants priest child abusers prosecuted, but them pesky police services, government agencies and political parties are all stopping it from happening.
(Anyone else find that the lights on their bullshit detectors just started flashing?)
There is a revolution occurring in America right now, a fundamental shift in sensibilities that were once thought to be cast in stone. People of all colors are acknowledging their commonality; in some instances even celebrating it. For we have come to recognize that we are not enemies, but comrades united in the struggle to keep our homes from being foreclosed, to keep food on our tables, and to force televangelists to open their books. People, I am talking about a genuine grass roots effort to kick unrepentant, rampant, ruthless, capitalism in the knees. Citizens, errr subjects of N.I. wake up and smell the coffee. Your neighbors aren’t your enemies, it’s the cashed up politicos of both parties with second homes in Donegal.
“So there you have it, according to Greg, the Nice Vatican wants priest child abusers prosecuted”
The Vatican is not here, and Catriona Ruane and the NIO are sadly calling the shots. That’s the problem you are failing to grasp.
Ms Ruane tells the CCMS they can get away with what they want to get away with.
She won’t lift a finger to put a CCMS school back on the straight and narrow. She is following in a line of malfeasance which has direct rule precedents.
The CCMS and the Northern Bishops have an immunity agenda, they’e encouraged in that direction by the NIO & the British govt.
The NASUWT get the exact same deal. So it is not restricted to the Catholic Church. Both are offered the same ‘free pass’ franchise.
The Vatican tells subordinates they shouldn’t have immunity and the British tell them they can have a free pass, in fact, the NIO insist. That is what I am up against.
If the Pope was Big Brother No1, I’m sure we wouldn’t have the same problem. The core problem is the NIO and the govt. in London.
Big Brother No1 is also doing a Cardinal Law if you make the assumption he is Catronia Ruane’s political boss. That transfer of blame wouldn’t be unreasonable. Gerry Adams is (often) here and the Pope isn’t.
G.
Speaking from the perspective of an American, the Catholic church in the US has been held accountable for it’s sins of omission regarding turning a blind eye towards sexual abuse. The hierarchy of the Catholic church working in conjunction with law enforcement agencies and civil reviewing boards have taken steps to safeguard children against being victimized in the future.
That Squinter was such a troublemaker.
Will he join the lists of the disappeared?