Conflict
“Given these circumstances we believe the soldiers used reasonable force.”
After 8 weeks of evidence, and 3 days of deliberation, a Belfast jury has delivered their verdict in the inquest into the deaths of Provisional IRA members Dessie Grew and Martin McCaughey in County Armagh in 1990. The Detail’s Barry McCaffrey recounts some of the legal arguments from the inquest before reporting the verdict. Shortly [...] more »
The End of the Northern Ireland Model of Peace Processing?
Even with the recent apparent spike in terrorist activity, including a large car bomb abandoned near Newry, and public paramilitary displays, it’s probably premature to talk of “the IRA’s resurgence”. But that’s the reference used in this article by Michael Rubin Perhaps the most important fact I learned was that British security officials believe that their pact with [...] more »
Baggott: Fear within communities retards convictions for punishment beatings and shootings…
Matt Baggott on Nolan says that more and more people are turning to the PSNI to give information. He also notes (before getting abruptly cut off in the audioboo edit) the sheer organisation of local paramilitary regimes handing out sentences as though they were part of some local, unofficial judiciary. As the CC himself notes [...] more »
Boston College: an end of history
Slugger readers will be familiar with the ongoing saga around the content of, and, access to the archives of the Belfast Project which were deposited with Boston College (where Irish government documents on decomissioning have also been deposited). The outworking of the litigation by which the PSNI’s Historical Enquiries Team are attempting to gain access to some [...] more »
…the British Government has planned the sell-out of Ulster
So Ian Paisley was right after all! In his The Revivalist editorial of January 1982, he reflected on 1981 saying: 1982 is the year when the British Government has planned the sell-out of Ulster. It is essential that Ulster prepares itself for the great battle which lies ahead. Without Divine intervention all is lost. Admittedly, [...] more »
“What happened to them was vindictive and not only a stain on their honour but on the honour of Ireland”
The BBC’s John Waite previews his forthcoming Radio 4 Face the Facts – The Disowned Army - to be broadcast 12.30GMT on Wednesday 4 January 2012. It’s subject, the post-World War II treatment in Ireland of around 5,000 Irish soldiers who deserted their own neutral army to join the British army and fought in Europe and elsewhere. From [...] more »
Maltreating victims may condemn us to the folly of repeating the past
So here I am seven months on from the appointment of Mary McArdle as Special Advisor to the then new Culture Minister Carál Ní Chuilín . That appointment – of the only person convicted of my sister Mary’s murder – caused untold stress both to me and my family. While Sinn Fein seemed not to see [...] more »
“It was a trivial problem that… occurs every year”
Just your average family gathering at Christmas, with a bit of an argument about the seating cleaning arrangements… Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics over a turf war in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the [...] more »
The Dirty War: Informers are not necessarily ‘agents’…
Liam Clarke has a useful corrective for those who think agents are the same thing as informers… Martin McGartland, who infiltrated the IRA in west Belfast, was an agent in the purest sense. He joined the IRA at the request of his handlers and did exactly what he was told; it involved no switch of loyalties. [...] more »
Miami Showband: “Disturbing questions about collusive and corrupt behaviour”
Henry McDonald reports (John has more detail here) on the conclusion of the privately released HET report (they are all intended for the families) subsequently released via the Pat Finucane Centre into the killing of the Miami Showband on 31st July 1975. He notes: The Het team said the murders raised “disturbing questions about collusive [...] more »
Thinking beyond Finucane
I’m surprised, both that a public inquiry into the Finucane murder has been refused, and that the response to the refusal so far has been quite muted. Perhaps it’s only the calm before the storm. I would guess that the decision was finally taken on political grounds, namely that the UK government can get away with [...] more »
Yes, IRA violence was remorseless, but what caused it? And who brought it to an end?
Martina Devlin with a timely observation: A debate about the North has become intertwined with the presidential race — one which should have taken place at the time of the Good Friday Agreement more than 13 years ago, but was sidelined amid euphoria about peace in our time. Quite so. It is an important debate. [...] more »
If McGuinness is right then an awful lot of people are lying about the past…
Brian Feeney makes a strong point in yesterday’s Irish News in which he contrasts the ‘good’ IRA (the one that spawned the mainstream political parties of the Republic), and the ‘bad’, the one operated solely by their political rivals, Sinn Fein. If there is a difference in the treatment given each, then it is surely [...] more »
Contradiction in McGuinness advice to informers between 1986 and 2011?
There was a wall of ‘criticism’ (simmering outrage might be a better description) in the southern papers… In the midst of it all buried within a suite of articles on the torture and killing of IRA informer Frank Hegarty there’s an interesting snippet worthy of further consideration. Upsetting detail aside there’s an apparent contradiction in [...] more »
It’s now about police v politicians
A dust storm is blowing up over the riots but not entirely along conventional party lines. It’s much more like a stand-off between the police and politicians. With the police taking a second political battering in almost as many weeks, you’d have thought they’d be bound to emerge as losers. They still might, if the [...] more »
London riots Day 3. Met tactics come under increasing scrutiny
The picture of burnt out cars may not be the most dramatic of the day, but it is my own and it is very local. I experienced last night in ways all too familiar to old Troubles hands. It was all happening five [...] more »
A poem for (yester) day – Affshore
In the early 90s I was living in Portmuck, Co Antrim, with a small child who thought the beach was where you lived, rain or shine, day or night. A gas pipeline was being laid between the Ayrshire and Antrim coasts, and the ‘supergun‘ scandal was in the news. Then the same news told us [...] more »
Can we find the tipping point when protest becomes riot?
When some people have a serious grievance like an alleged (don’t foreget that ”alleged”) wrongful fatal shooting, they rise up in their just wrath and – trash the place. A hideous non sequitur to you and me, a “protest” to many in places where we don’t live. 30 years ago I covered the Brixton riots which [...] more »
A poem for the day – The Pipe-bomber
This is another one from the late 90s, that I think is a response to or expression of a sense of depression at the low-level post-ceasefires violence from loyalist organisations that didn’t ‘get it’ or see anything in the ‘process’ for themselves or were just too plain sectarian to care (delete as applicable). Though I [...] more »
“We lived in peace for a few years, and then all this is coming back”
A view from the Protestant side of the peace walls… The mystery of exactly what kicked all this off, continues… more »
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Books
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The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday (Neil MacFarquhar)
With perhaps the longest title of any book I’ve read this year, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East gives an insight into the lives of people living in Middle East through the eyes of journalist Neil MacFarquhar. MacFarquhar’s father was a chemical engineer [...] read our review »
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Ulsters Last Stand?: Can Unionism Move Beyond Insurance Policy Politics?
How has Ulster unionism arrived at where it is today – fractured and uncertain, yet dominated electorally by the DUP, a party that tells us it offers unionists sure footing in uncertain times? In his latest book, Ulster’s Last Stand? Reconstructing Unionism after the Peace Process (Irish Academic Press, 2010), Prof. James McAuley from the [...] read our review »
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Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation. A book about how things are changing.
Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland is a new academic tome by lecturer and researcher Lee Smithey. In the book the Pennsylvania academic outlines his findings based on 67 interviews over eighteen months with grassroots activists in unionist and loyalist communities and organisations. This is largely a book about men, even though they [...] read our review »
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