Henry McDonald has revealed that a parallel academic project to capture to oral history of security personnel working during the Troubles collapsed when the PSNI won their case to get access to ‘Boston Tapes’ interviews with republican and loyalist paramilitaries.
Belfast’s newest festival launched this morning in the Lord Mayor’s parlour in the City Hall. Nichola Mallon described the city of Belfast as “young, edgy, colourful and creative” as she introduced The Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics. Organiser Peter O’Neill [Ed – no, not that P O’Neill!] explains that the festival’s mission is “to stimulate people’s minds and passions [with] an annual programme of discussion and debate”. None of the invited keynote speakers are politicians. listen to ‘Peter O’Neill …
It’s all looking a bit fraught. We need a recovery plan. The words of the Chief Constable Matt Baggott describing the fortunes of his football club rather than the PSNI’s response to the flags crisis. Though the words must echo what went through the PSNI senior officers’ minds when the flags crisis didn’t abate before Christmas. Monday’s post covered PSNI transformation, regulation and vocation. Remember that blogs aren’t newspapers, so not every post has to try to make a news …
Dolours Price – sister, mother, bomber, prisoner and a thorn in Gerry Adams’ side – died in her Malahide home on Wednesday night. The Guardian’s Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald writes: Price was involved in a car bombing at the Old Bailey in 1973, which injured more than 200 people and may have led to one person’s death of heart failure. The ex-IRA prisoner, who went on hunger strike with her sister Marian in the 1970s and was subjected to forcefeeding …
I’ve previously noted how some local media seems to get a free pass from the PSNI over their sources/stories while others are dealt with more proactively and recently we’ve seen the press collectively oppose attempts to turn them into an evidence gathering arm of the state. The ongoing legal case to access the Boston College oral history archive may indicate elements of the media already acting in that evidence gathering capacity (hopefully unwittingly). It is impossible to know which arm …
