2002 Spring Fourthwrite

              Issue No. 9 Spring 2002 Price stg£1.50/Euro2
Fourthwrite
For a Democratic Socialist Republic
Must we endorse this?
Referendun...Southern Establishment...Sinn Fein and elections...Trimble
See Pages 16 & 17
A
SIMPLE SPARK
Gareth Peirce talks to Fourthwrite See Pages 12-14
2
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
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Editorial Contents
Editorial............................... 2
Assessment......................... 3
News Stand..................... 4&5
Current affairs
Referendum ....................... 5
The Establishment........6 & 7
Policing the South ....... 8&9
Policing the North............... 9
The Health Service........9&10
Interview ...............12,13&14
International
Guantanamo Bay
View from USA...................16
View from Ireland...............17
Issue Review
Workers’ Party.............14&15
Anti Social Crime...............18
Call for unity.......................19
Physical force .............20&21
Letters.............................22
Contributors.................23
As is evidenced by the outcome of the recent referendum, Southern
Ireland is changing greatly. Nor is it really so much an urban/rural
divide as some of the commentators would have us believe. The
major urban areas undoubtedly swung the day for the ‘NO’ camp during
the election but that may be also due to the age profile of the electorate in
the big cities. Nor should it be overlooked that in comparison with twenty
years ago, rural Ireland has changed even if not as dramatically as in the
towns.
Simultaneously, there is a seemingly endless series of events
undermining the vitality of the Southern Establishment. The list is long:
corruption in high places, an apparently unaccountable police force, bank-ing
incompetence, deviant churchmen and a major privatisation effort that
is ending in what borders on legalised robbery. And now we learn of the
Dept of Sport’s dubious awarding of building contracts to a friend of the
Taoiseacht.
In this issue of Fourthwrite we carry an important article by
Margaret McKearney outlining the impact that these scandals may have
on Southern Irish society. It is a timely article that indicates the need for
a credible and coherent alternative to the current status quo. Elsewhere in
this edition we carry an advertisement for a seminar organised by the
Liam Mellow’s Society in Arklow, County Wicklow. The objective of the
organisers is to examine Irish republicanism in the 21th Century. There
has never been a more opportune time to do so.
This magazine applauds the organisers of the Mellows seminar
and would encourage as many of our readers as possible to attend the
event. There is little point in criticising something if we are unable to offer
a better alternative and if we don’t have a completed alternative, then it
behoves us to start working on one. The upcoming seminar gives us all
the opportunity to begin the work of creating a new programme for the
days ahead and this is a chance that should not be missed.
When in doubt – Kick the Pope
In light of the editorial comment above, it would be richly ironic if this
magazine were to find fault with David Trimble for merely criticising the
Republic of Ireland. There are many areas needing improvement in the
South and society south of the Border is certainly not perfect.
Yet David Trimble was not actually contrasting living conditions,
economic performances and social mores in the North with those in the
Republic. Nor is he indicating that he would take a more benign view of
the Republic if there were to be improvements in the South. In fact, the
comments he made at the recent Ulster Unionist Party conference were
disingenuous since the North has few advantages over the South in the
areas identified by David Trimble. Matters such as abortion may be influ-enced
by Catholic attitudes in the South but at least they are being debat-ed.
North of the Border the question is frankly ignored. His description,
too, of Northern Ireland (or Britain) as a vibrant multiethnic, multinational
liberal democracy is not a description that many of the ethnic minorities -
including Irish nationalists - would readily concur with. Of course, the
Northern Ireland First Minister was not really attempting to analyse condi-tions
south of the Border in any objective or meaningful manner. He was
in reality beating the drum of unionist bigotry. Unionist leaders in earlier
times would have lashed out at Rome. The reliable old practice of, When
in doubt – Kick the Pope. Crude sectarianism is no longer possible but
the same backwoodsmen are still present at a Unionist Party convention
and are still pandered to by the Glengall Street leadership.It will be a long
time before Mark Durkan will be able to change the sectarian
fundamentals of Northern Ireland.
Working on a new programme
3
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
The Sinn Fein party’s electoral
machine has been described
by the Sunday Tribune, in a fit
of anti-republican hysteria, as a jug-gernaut.
To halt this assault, the
Tribune advises other political parties
in the Republic to stand up to and
confront Sinn Fein and highlight the
party’s so-called ‘anti-democratic’
practices. Special mention is made of
the Ferris machine and its unortho-dox
views on policing in North Kerry.
Historically speaking, the two main
parties in the 26-Counties state are
hardly well placed to lecture anyone
on respect for due legal process. The
Ballyseedy killings and the execution
of Charlie Kearns are not good mod-els
for any democracy.
Nor is it necessary to look all
that far back to find evidence of dubi-ous
practice in the conduct of affairs
by those the Tribune would have
guard our freedom. Southern Irish
society was blighted and besmirched
for almost 30 years by an all-encom-passing
censorship. An evil that, in
the stated publicly opinion of well-known
Tribune journalist Ed Moloney,
prolonged the Northern conflict. We
have seen too, a list of other prac-tices
that are repugnant in any dem-ocratic
society - the cavalier treat-ment
of Hepatitis B suffers and the
seemingly endless saga of malprac-tice
emerging from the tribunals in
Dublin. Worst of all perhaps, the
frightening and apparently
unchecked behaviour of the Gardai in
Donegal and elsewhere begs the
question as to where ultimate power
lies – with the elected government or
with the police.
Let’s be honest, Southern
Irish political life is no innocent,
blushing maiden about to be ravished
by a handful of Provo TD’s. Cynics
might argue indeed that it’s the
Provos who will suffer most from their
‘honourable’ colleagues.
In reality, the rise of
Sinn Fein is greatly exaggerated. The
party will undoubtedly gain seats at
the next general election and may
well go on to emulate or even better
the performance of the old Workers
Party. It won’t, however, overtake the
other major parties nor will it have
any crucial say in how the affairs of
state are managed, and that also
goes for when it takes its place in a
coalition government. Minority coali-tion
partners do not impose major
constitutional changes.
Most damaging for Sinn Fein
is that it is afflicted by an acute bout
of political schizophrenia and cannot
easily recover from the illness. The
party just doesn’t know whether it
should be radical or reformist and as
with all who try to walk the middle of
the road – they will eventually be
knocked over.
Gerry Adams recently said
that the Irish Army and police force
are the only legitimate armed forces
in the Southern state. A few days
later, his party’s only TD Caoimhghin
O’Caolain refused to advise his sup-porters
to provide, to what the party
Assessment
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president says is the only legitimate
authority, information about the killing
of members of that same force.
Shortly before this particular furore,
the devoutly Catholic TD fronted up
the party’s press conference to call
for a ‘No’ vote in the abortion referen-dum.
Subsequently, in the days
before the election, there wasn’t one
party poster to support his call in
O’Caolain’s hometown of Monaghan.
In both instances, O’Caolain was
more protective of his personal elec-toral
position than of his party’s pub-lic
position.
Sinn Fein is a mass of similar
contradictions and ultimately these
must be ironed out. The parliamen-tary
party will not, indeed cannot tol-erate
indefinitely the frustration of
having to go through the contortions
of supporting the institutions of state
while refusing to co-operate with
them. Reconciliation of the anom-alies
must take place and yet the dif-ficulties
are enormous.
Many support the party
because of its unorthodox attitude to
street crime yet many other support-ers
fear vigilantes. Many adhere to
the party because of its links to mili-tant
republicanism yet even more
admire the organisation because it
has endorsed the IRA’s ceasefire and
arms decommissioning. Many young
people in the South view the party as
radical and even socialist and sup-port
it on that basis alone. Its going to
be difficult to maintain that position as
Gerry Adams hobnobs with ‘Big
Money’ as he did recently in the
Waldorf Astoria in New York It will be
totally impossible to do so when Sinn
Fein enters coalition in Dublin and is
forced to take the type of pragmatic
decisions about budgets that party
colleagues Bairbre de Brun and
Martin McGuinness are currently tak-ing
in Stormont.
Sinn Fein will be forced to
opt for one side of the road or the
other. Consistently radical or con-vincingly
reformist are the options.
The former will not allow them to
become the electoral juggernaut that
the Sunday Tribune fears while the
latter course entails that they become
the type of party that the paper
apparently admires so much. And
with all evidence pointing to Sinn
Fein opting for the latter, the party will
soon become as tame and quiescent
as all the rest.
The House (of
Commons)
Sinn Fein will be
forced to opt for
one side of the road
or the other.
Consistently radical or
convincingly reformist
are the options
ʻ
4
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
Society launched
in Dungannon
The life of Tom Clarke, first
signatory of the Easter 1916 procla-mation
of an Irish republic, was
recalled at a meeting in St. Patrick’s
Hall Dungannon on Friday 15th
February. Speakers at the event
reminded the audience that the
Clarke family lived for many years in
Dungannon and that Tom always
regarded himself as a native of the
Co. Tyrone town.
It was pointed out that with
the passing of time and of the gen-erations
it is natural that memories
fade and what was once familiar is
no longer so. The story of Tom
Clarke’s life in Dungannon is not a
secret but it is no longer as well
known as perhaps it once was.
Everybody concerned with the histo-ry
of the area has an interest in
recording and maintaining a link with
the past. It would be valuable for
all, therefore, to mark Dungannon’s
over, it has also incurred great dam-age
due to the nature of the prevail-ing
economic practices and policies
of many British governments over
the years.
He told us that there is how-ever,
a new and healthy spirit
abroad in the Drumarg at present
and the residents are again
demanding proper and decent treat-ment
. The new newsletter shall, he
says, reflect the mood and hopes of
the population in that area. We wish
the newsletter and the residents of
Drumarg well.
Death of Sister Sara Clarke
Republicans in general and
former prisoners in particular were
greatly saddened to learn recently of
the death of Sister Sara Clarke. She
died in England but was buried in
her native County Mayo.
For many years, Sister Sara
assisted Irish prisoners in British
jails and on many occasions was
one of the few friends that they had
in Britain. Her great work was com-memorated
by the large attendance
at her funeral and by those who
spoke at the graveside. Among
those who addressed the crowd was
the celebrated British lawyer, Gareth
Peirce who recalled the many great
deeds and kindnesses of Sister Sara
News
Stand
News stand News stand News In the eye of the
Stormount
Enormous consternation was
caused in the ‘House’ recently
when the cute boys from the DUP
set ambushes for both the Sinn
Fein and Ulster Unionist parties.
The issue centred on the jubilee
celebrations for Queen Elizabeth
11 of England. The DUP realised
that if they made what on the sur-face
was a modest proposal, that
every school child in the 6-
Counties receive a jubilee memen-to,
that Minister for Education in
Stormont - Martin McGuinness
would have to either endorse or
reject the suggestion.
The beauty of the DUP
scheme was that Martin would be
embarrassed if he agreed to recog-nise
British royalty and accused of
bigotry if he refused. Better still, the
Ulster Unionists were also in a diffi-cult
position since they would have
to either collude with the embarrass-ing
of Martin or be accused of being
less than enthusiastic about ‘HRH’
and her big day.
The outcome was less than
dramatic. Martin exercised an parlia-mentarian’s
degree of subtlety and
declined the opportunity on the
grounds that better spending option
existed for the money needed to buy
the mementoes (NB No ringing anti-royalist
declaration from a minister
of the crown) and slipped ungra-ciously
away through the smoke.
The Ulster Unionists found a heaven
sent gift in the death of Princess
Margaret and declared that as even
more super-royalist than the DUP,
they would refuse to discuss the
affairs of their monarch at such a
tragic occasion.
Naturally enough, these
explanations and excuses did not
satisfy Ian og Paisley who made the
obligatory round of condemnations
of all and sundry. The DUP did not
however decide to pull its well paid
ministers out of the Assembly.
connection with such a momentous
event and with one who played no
small part in the great affairs of the
time.
In order to develop this
work, a group of local people have
formed a Tom Clarke Society under
the chairmanship of Patrick Carty. At
the recent, inaugural public meeting,
Mr. Carty said that much work
remains to be done to record the
history of Tom Clarke’s association
with Dungannon and district. He
announced that a further series of
meetings would take place to
research aspects of the man’s life
and to agree on a suitable course of
action to mark his ties with this area.
New publication for Armagh
City
Regular Fourthwrite contrib-utor,
John Nixon has told us that he
is about to launch a new quarterly
newsletter in Armagh City, The publi-cation,
to be entitled - Drumarg
News, will at first be an eight page
venture reflecting the concerns and
aspirations of the residents of that
well known district of Armagh.
Speaking to this magazine recently,
Mr. Nixon said that the Drumarg
area of Armagh has suffered greatly
as a result of the recent conflict that
raged across the North and more-
5
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
Conference in Arklow
The recently formed Liam Mellows
Society has organised a seminar for
20/21 April in the Royal Hotel,
Arklow. The theme of the event is,
Irish republicanism in the 21st
Century. Several prominent speak-ers
have promised to take part in the
weekend’s discussions.
It is intended to hold a
series of three discussions over the
two-day period. The format will be to
have a keynote speaker make an
initial address after which a desig-nated
panel will question the speak-er
on the contents of the address.
After this the floor will be invited to
comment, or question the speaker.
Fourthwrite spoke to Sean
Doyle, committee member of the
Liam Mellows Society, and he told
our reporter that this event is being
organised in order to give republi-cans,
democrats and socialists an
opportunity to meet and review the
state and health of Irish republican-ism
in the present day. Mr Doyle
emphasised that he expected the
seminar to be conducted in a posi-tive
and inclusive spirit and that the
objective is not to castigate others
but to allow political activists identify
common ground with others.
Fourthwrite is delighted to
learn of this initiative and is happy to
carry the advertisement for the semi-nar
on page 23 of this issue. We
look forward to seeing you all in
Wicklow on the 20th April.
Thanks to George Harrison
Fourthwrite is delighted to hear
again from its good friend George
Harrison in New York. George post-ed
the magazine a most interesting
article about the last public hanging
in Britain. The victim was an Irish
Fenian named Michael Barret from
Ederny in Co. Fermanagh who was
hanged in the aftermath of an explo-sion
outside Clerkinwell Prison in
London. The article also points out
that although Michael was a mem-ber
of the IRB, he was innocent of
the charge. Many years later anoth-er
member of the Fenian movement
gave a full account of the event and
accepted responsibility for the explo-sion
thereby exonerating Barret.As
always, little changes with the -
Good old system of British justice.
News stand News
On 6th March a referendum
held in the South of Ireland
to insert an amendment to
Article 40.3.3 of the constitution was
defeated. The aim of the amend-ment
was to roll back the situation
that exists at present where it is law-ful
for a woman to have an abortion
in this state if she is suicidal. This is
the second time in ten years that the
attempt to roll back the Supreme
Court judgement in the X case has
failed.
The No vote won by a mar-gin
of approx 10,000 votes, mirror-ing
the closeness of the vote in the
divorce referendum in the mid-
Nineties when the Irish people voted
Yes for divorce by a margin of
approx 9000 votes.
The result in this referen-dum
reveals once again a clear
urban/rural divide with Dublin and
other urban centres resoundingly
returning a liberal No vote and vice
versa - a conservative Yes from the
country. The Dublin vote was key. In
Dublin forty-eight percent came out
to vote, in a low overall turnout, as
against 42% in the rest of the coun-try.
An additional factor contributing to
the success of the No campaign
was the fact that the pro-life lobby
was split, the majority taking the
Catholic Bishops position of support
for the amendment, while a small
right-wing rump - Dana et al - took a
position of opposition on the grounds
that the amendment was too liberal!
It is unlikely that this result
will have much impact on the election
campaign already under way with the
government parties set to make a
successful return. Fianna Fail has
consistently polled high in about nine
Irish Times/MRBI polls over the past
two years. Other issues are likely to
dominate the campaign as indicated
by the latest opinion poll conducted
last week which showed abortion
(unfortunately) scoring last in a list of
concerns in the public mind.
The defeat of the government’s
proposal in this referendum
means that the status quo remains
i.e. that suicide remains a ground on
which abortion may be permitted in
this country. While we welcome the
defeat of this disgraceful attempt of
the government to roll back the gains
- albeit small - that resulted from the
Supreme Court judgement in the X
case, nevertheless it will make no dif-ference
to the ever- increasing num-bers
of women who travel to Britain
for abortions – 6000 a year and ris-ing.
The only way women will truly
have the right to choose is for abor-tion
to be made available on demand,
freely and legally here in this country.
Only then can we ensure it is not just
a service for the rich but will accom-modate
the needs of working class
women as well.
The
Maureen Gallagher reflects on the outcome of the
recent referendum
Congrats Dr. King
Fourthwrite is delighted to learn that Stephen King, a contributor to our first
ever issue, has gained a Phd. Dr. King is also an advisor to Unionist Party
leader David Trimble. We earnestly hope that with his new qualification,
the good doctor will now have the gravitas and authority to instill some
sense into the Unionist Party and help them see the errors of their ways.
6
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
Within the next few months
the Southern Irish people
will go to the polls to elect or
possibly re-elect their government.
Regardless of the out-come, it is an
undeniable fact of present Irish life
that most of the electorate are now
less likely to trust in or believe in the
potential governing bodies, than at
any time since the creation of the
state. This distrust is not alone
reserved for aspiring politicians, it
has been impregnated into the minds
of the population whenever they con-sider
the other institutions, which
either underpin or support the south-ern
Irish state. Ten years ago the
middle nation nestled in their beds at
night secure in the established order.
Regardless of which political party
reigned, either headed by the men of
property or the industrialists, the
country would be in conservative but
safe hands, nothing fundamental
would change. The public services
offered both employment opportuni-ties
and protection to these same
conservative interests. The private
sector though in recession still
offered possibilities to those propi-tiously
situated as to take full advan-tage
of any potentially lucrative pro-posal.
Furthermore the financial
institutions catered to the needs of
this world. Discrete, they did not ask
too many embarrassing questions
regarding surplus monies. Neither
did they feel the need to offer to the
national treasury all the Deposit
Retention Interest Tax due from such
account holders and allegedly were
co-operative in advising the prospec-tive
offshore investors, where their
best interests lay. In addition to this
facilitation, management of such
institutions often chose to absorb
gigantic overdrafts and outstanding
loans incurred by select customers.
Standing in a special relationship
with most of this gilded social order
was the omnipresent Catholic
Church.
Two Events
Two events worked in tandem to first
crack this idyllic dream and finally
indelibly alter this world. When the
tabloids showed Ben Dunne high on
cocaine and in compromising compa-ny,
he not only alienated his family
and lost his position as head of the
family firm, but his fall from grace pre-cipitated
a series of events, which are
still being unravelled and are still
reverberating throughout business
and political circles. However an
other event was more corrosive on
the docility of the entire Irish people.
An American astounded the nation
when she categorically stated that
the almost iconic Bishop Eamon
Casey was the father of her now
adult son. A nation, who had firmly
believed that such behaviour was the
prerogative of the British Tories, now
reeled in utter astonishment when
the details of both affairs were made
public. These disclosures marked
precedent; the dirty linen of the Irish
establishment had been aired in pub-lic
and this trend would continue.
Now, a scant ten years later if we
remember at all, we look back and
laugh. Who today would be shocked
at anything so normal as a relation-ship
between a young and besotted
woman and a man past the first flush
of youth? After all, Ben Dunne was
only spending his own money.
Ireland and her people have in those
ten years witnessed in rapid succes-sion,
a series of revelations that
would cause any soap writer to
pause and suggest that to run with
the story line would beggar belief.
Indeed, we may well come to consid-er
these events as still sited in our
period of innocence, before the
house of cards came tumbling down.
Garda accountability
Paul Ward and Colm Murphy if their
paths cross in prison will possibly not
even speak. On the surface these
two men are worlds apart, a die-hard
militant republican would not ideolog-ically
interact with a drug user-cum
p u s h e r - c um- a s s a s s i n ’ s - h e l p .
However one word is missing from
this pen picture of both men and that
word is ‘allegedly’. Both men have
been popularly convicted by means
of the most doubtful and indeed spu-rious
evidence. This aspect of the
convictions has been glossed over
and has made palatable to the public
by an axis of media and establish-
How stable is the
by M argaretM cKearney
7
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
ment baying not for justice but retri-bution
visited on any suitable sus-pect.
A concept and action not unfa-miliar
to such people as Judith Ward,
Gerard Conlon and Paddy Hill. This
concept that now appears to be
espoused by an increasing hubristic
police force may yet flounder in the
graveyards of Abbylara and
Ballybofey, as the people empowered
by the decade of revelations increas-ingly
ask for state accountability
Financial and Health Scandals
As the century closed, formerly
respected institutions, mirrored the
Gardaí and yielded up a dark and
secret side. Politicians were found to
have harboured within their midst
members whose financial dealings
would not bear scrutiny. The triumvi-rate
of Lowrey, Lawlor and Haughey
overshadowed the incompetent
financial transactions of Fitzgerald
that his bankers chose to excuse.
However the one common factor in
these salacious disclosures was con-tinuously
downplayed. The bankers
maintained a low profile and continue
to do so as the latest exposé regard-ing
their managerial incompetence in
the USA hits the wires and they back-track,
accuse and counter accuse in
their attempts at damage limitation.
However again like the Gardaí their
days of directing and manipulating
public beliefs may be numbered, as
banking ceases to operate in any
socially responsible manner, an
increasingly affluent and vocal clien-tele
is becoming aware of exclusion
at the altar of corporate adoration.
Another set of admissions
damaged not only the Blood Bank but
also the Fine Gael led Rainbow coali-tion,
which was severely hurt by their
handling of the Hepatitis C disgrace.
The public learned that sections of
the medical world, as fronted by the
Blood Transfusion Service was pre-pared
to ride rough shod over vulner-able
women and haemophiliacs as
they sought to limit and even deny
the concept of socio-economic rights
to a portion of the citizens of Ireland.
Even though they have offered cur-sory
financial compensation, no
member of the organisation has yet
to stand trial for manslaughter.
Church misdeeds
However, Fianna Fail and the
Catholic Church shared the most
damning ignominy. A Taoiseach fell
when Brendan Smith’s extradition
was delayed, this was followed by a
spate of incredible accusations which
were subsequently proven against
this church. The most damning fact to
be revealed was not that the mem-bership
of the Catholic clergy
appeared to have an uncommonly
high penchant for paedophile tenden-cies
but that recognising this, the
management attempted a cover up,
rather than an honest effort to eradi-cate
the curse. It is, perhaps, within
this previous bastion of society that
the nuances of change within Irish
society are most apparent as popular
response is manifesting itself through
increasingly empty churches.
Shaking beliefs
Ten years later the Irish people are
coming increasingly to believe that
nothing then can be regarded as
secure, safe or dependable, not to
mention honest, decent or trustwor-thy.
The Irish middle nation has been
caught squarely with their fingers in
the till. Why then can they still get
away with this? Why has the Winter
Palace not been stormed? Why have
not these institutions been given
Bastille type treatment? Why if we
must subscribe to a custodial penal
system are our gaols not full of the
management and professional
castes?
A buoyant economy has left
more and more people in paid
employment, and in this perhaps the
state has been lucky that
Globalisation has temporarily saved
its bacon. More and more people are
acquiring skills, trades, and educa-tion
leaving them among the employ-able
elite but for the state and the
institutions that underpin it there is a
flip side to this coin. Increasingly this
workforce has been trapped in an
ever-increasing spiral of con-sumerism
and credit are questioning
the value of employment that offers
short-term contracts designed to
evade the limited labour protection
laws. The same workforce that have
been forced to accept the conditions
where unionisation was either out-lawed
or actively discouraged are
now voicing the first rumblings of dis-content.
In tandem there has been a
rise in the employment of the
unskilled or semi-skilled again featur-ing
the worst of imported practices
such as arbitrary and casual shift
work again designed to fall outside
the paradigms of labour law protec-tion.
Against all this is the ever-widening
gap in the distribution of the
wealth flaunted in magazines whose
only editorial policy is to pander to the
egotism of super-rich.
How long will we endure?
What then will happen to this disillu-sioned
and newly empowered people
should the country face a down turn
in the economy or indeed any other
crisis? Who will we chose to lead us?
Who will we depend on? Who will we
turn to? We have been played for
fools by almost every section of sec-ular
and religious leadership and
their administrative bodies and most
damagingly... we know it. An in addi-tion
we are less likely to believe the
ponderous and often sanctimonious
outpourings of either Abbey or Fleet
Street. Previous vehicles through
which we traditionally voiced our
opposition have either joined with or
make no secret of their ambition to
join in with the discredited
Establishment. Past rhetoric is now
exposed as only mutterings of dis-content
for not sharing the spoils of
corruption. Should and probably
when Irish society is forced by cir-cumstances
to re-assess their cir-cumstances
then how safe are the
institutions of this society in the
South?
We have been
played for fools by
almost every
section of secular
and religious
leadership and their
administrative
bodies and most
damagingly...
we know it
ʻ
ʻʼ
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
The subject of policing has tend-ed
to focus on police reform
within the six counties, and
rightly so, but with recent revelations
suggesting serious malpractice within
the Garda Siochana. There is a case
to be made that the debate on polic-ing
should be extended to include the
South too.
The recent scandal in
Donegal has provided for alarming
reading. Revelations came to light
claiming that the Garda manufac-tured
weapons finds, subsequently
attributed to republicans, bugged
legal interview rooms in Letterkenny,
used paid informants to manufacture
evidence and engaged in an orches-trated
campaign of harassment
against a family in the village of
Raphoe whom it was claimed were
involved in the murder of a local cat-tle-
dealer.
Activities of the Garda in
relation to the McBrearty family led to
an Oireachtas investigation. Both
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in turn
seized on the scandals in Donegal to
call for reform within the force, but
given past response to claims of
Garda wrongdoing, these calls could
only be regarded as gamemanship.
The Garda have, it could be argued,
operated immune from an acceptable
level of accountability since inception
of the force in 1922.
The activities of the so-called
'Heavy Gang' (in essence the
murder squad during the 1970's)
which were condemned by Amnesty
International, have never been prop-erly
investigated. During this period,
when successive Justice ministers
called for a 'crackdown' on republi-cans
in particular, the practice of
Garda brutality toward suspects
became the norm. These practices
were beyond doubt extended to
cover 'non-subversive' cases, and
indeed were it not for the Kerry
babies scandal during the early
1980's the antics of the 'heavy gang'
would have gone totally unnoticed by
the those vested with power in the
Oireachtas.
When we add into the equa-tion
the existence of a totally ineffec-tive
complaints procedure, the Dowra
affair involving collusion with the
RUC in obstructing justice, several
unresolved cases involving the use of
lethal force against civilians and
republicans alike, the increasing use
of 'stormtrooper’ tactics, by the emer-gency
response unit in particular, the
fudging of the investigation into the
1974 Dublin and Monaghan bomb-ings,
Garda attendance at the recent
PR crusade by Ronnie Flanagan
concerning the Omagh bomb inquiry;
it becomes patently clear that a seri-ous
case is to be answered not only
by the Garda themselves, but espe-cially
by those in high office charged
with the dispensation of justice in the
south.
Is it right that the emergency
response unit can enter the home of
parents of a suspected republican in
their 70's wielding shotguns forcing
them to lie face down on the floor of
their home as was the case in Kildare
a few years ago? Is it right that mem-bers
of the same unit can gun down
John Carthy, a civilian suffering from
depression in Abbeylara, in response
to a call for help from his family? Is it
right that Gardai in the late 1990's
can import over £100m million of
cannabis in Urlingford as part of a 'st-ing'
operation and once rumbled then
claim the operation as a successful
drugs find without anyone in authori-ty
batting an eye-lid?
These are high profile scan-dals
and complaints suggesting
Garda wrongdoing in relation to
these incidents have often been dis-missed
by the force with a common
arrogance as no more than the
whines of criminals or republicans.
Indeed, a force once lauded as
accepted by the community finds
itself isolated and regarded with
suspicion by communities across the
south, particularly in urban areas. In
the latter the Garda are viewed by
many people with an increasing sus-picion.
In many cases the views of
ordinary people in these areas can-not
be dismissed as irrelevant com-plaints
from dole-cheats criminals,
republicans or spongers.
One example of how com-munity
frustration was exacerbated
occurred in 1999. Then working class
communities in Dublin were subject-ed
to a multi-agency welfare fraud
investigation only to find themselves
waking up to Garda checkpoints with
those manning them checking their
vehicles for tax and insurance, while
several high profile white collar fraud
cases involving corporates and politi-cians
went almost unnoticed by the
force.
Public perception counts for
a great deal when it comes to effec-tive
policing, and no rational person
can suggest that society does not
need effective policing. However, as
has been the case in the south, pub-lic
perception of the Garda stands at
an all-time low. The force needs to
address this imbalance, but for this to
happen there first needs to be a will-ingness
among the hierarchy of the
force to accept that mistakes have
been made. To date this willingness
To whom is the Garda
accountable?
8
by Cathal Mc
Policing Ireland... Cathal McGovern and John McAnulty take south of Robert Peel
9
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
has not been forthcoming.
At a political level much
needs to be done. The south has yet
to ratify into domestic legislation the
European Charter of Human Rights
(ECHR), pressure groups and the
legal profession need to become
more proactive in helping ordinary
people with grievances they have
against the force. We must always be
prepared to question the Garda prac-tice
of using 'stool journalists' or
crime correspondents who very often
sensationalise as opposed to investi-gate
the area of crime and the Garda
response to such.
The South does not need a
police force that seeks the advice
and input of the FBI, a force itself tar-nished.
Neither does it need a police
force that regards itself as above
public scrutiny or justified in snubbing
investigative requests from the
Oireachtas. When scandals come to
light, as is inevitable in any organisa-tion,
a clear willingness must be
demonstrated by the force to punish
the wrongdoers instead of shifting
them to another position or continu-ing
their pensions while in retirement,
as has proved the case with those
retired from the 'heavy-gang.'
All political parties must be
prepared to back their calls for reform
with a degree of substance. There
needs to be a combined as opposed
to party political effort to eradicate
Garda corruption instigated with
urgency. The political classes can
start by ending Garda obstruction of
the John Carthy inquiry, opening up
the Garda complaints procedure to
an independent body, and calling for
the charged with leading the force in
Donegal during the McBrearty and
subsequent scandals to be indicted
before the courts on criminal
charges. Only with these and similar
developments can the people be
expected to afford confidence to what
has become in very many eyes - a
discredited force.
At the height of the troubles sectarian
killings of Catholics civilians by loyal-ist
paramilitaries were a nightly
occurrence. It was the RUC that
dreamt up the term "motiveless mur-ders".
The loyalists killed with impuni-ty.
Not only were the RUC unable to
catch them, they were unable to work
out the fact that the sectarian killings
were happening in the first place!
Stories abound to this day of RUC
handlers running death squads and,
when the loyalist paramilitaries tried
to bring down the Good Friday agree-ment,
they did so by plastering the
walls of East Belfast with an the end-less
torrent of intelligence documents
on Catholic civilians supplied by the
RUC. Even at the lower level of
Orange marches the tendency is to
present it as a community dispute
and ignore the fact that the marches
are preceded by a police force that
imposes a curfew and interns people
in their own homes.
When socialists are trying to
put forward a coherent and principled
position on the police they do so by
putting the police in an historical and
material context. For most of human
history there were no police and we
anticipate that in a socialist society
founded on justice and equality there
would be no police either. Karl Marx
explained that police forces arose out
of shortage of basic needs and class
society. A good analogy is a queue
for food. The police appear to stand
outside the queue and to act to pre-serve
order but, of course, they are
acting on behalf of the capitalist mas-ters
of society who have unrestricted
access to resources and they them-
Some years ago a packed meet-ing
in Belfast heard reports
from representatives of both
the Rosemary Nelson campaign and
the Stephen Lawrence campaign. A
large number of young people
attended the meeting, attracted by
the similarities between the murder of
a Human Rights lawyer by Loyalists
and the allegations of RUC involve-ment
and the murder of a black
teenager in London followed by alle-gations
that police racism had sabo-taged
the case.
It was a dramatic and emo-tional
meeting, however it lost much
of its punch when speakers from the
left-wing group which organised the
meeting insisted in a number of inter-ventions
that the lesson of these
cases was that police forces every-where
where the same, equally cor-rupt.
This was absolute nonsense.
Cops are cops everywhere, but the
old slogan "SS RUC" expressed a
reality. The RUC are a sectarian
police force guarding a sectarian
state. Any nod towards democratic
rights or legal norms trail far behind
the need to preserve the sectarian
logic of the state. Instead of restrain-ing
the Orange mobs in the pogroms
that followed the early civil rights
marches, the RUC led them. Those
who battered demonstrators and
murdered innocent civilians were not
a source of embarrassment to the
force. Rather, they were promoted to
the leadership of the RUC. It has
proved impossible in the course of
the troubles to say where the RUC
ended and the death squads began.
The old songs are the
best
Ireland... South
by John
take a look at policing, north and
of the Border
Chris Patten
Cont. page 10
10
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
selves are granted privileges to
ensure their loyalty to the state. In
any conflict over resources they act
to repress the working class and pro-tect
the rights of the capitalists.
As the working class grew in
size so it became less and less prac-tical
to rely on brute force. More and
more the capitalists stress "the rule of
law" and try to convince everyone
that the police are impartial. This
imposes some restrictions on the
police right to arrest and torture, but,
as we see in the US and in Britain in
the aftermath of September 11th, the
'rights' of workers can be removed at
the drop of a hat. Socialists therefore
support reform of the police and the
extension of human rights, but with-out
ever believing that this should
lead us to support the state or the
police.
How does this apply to the
Good Friday agreement and the new
Police Service for Northern Ireland
(PSNI)? The difficulty here is that the
report at the heart of the new institu-tion
- the Patten Report - is not in fact
a reform. The report never addresses
the sectarianism of the RUC. Instead
it addresses a perception by
Catholics that the RUC represent a
different culture. Many of the Patten
proposals focus on changing the
symbols of repression, so we get a
new name, are promised a new cap
badge and we are told that court-house
symbols will be made
politically neutral.
In the nature of things the
Unionists then complain that the
water is too thick and that it should be
watered a little more, so many of the
symbols revert back to their natural
state with the blessing of the British.
There is of course, outstand-ing
one major change that has been
promised and that would make the
continuation of the old RUC impossi-ble.
That is the promise of 50%
recruitment of Catholics. The prob-lem
is that in order to get the new
non-sectarian RUC many years
down the line you have to support the
existing structures. Any serious
analysis of the history of the North or
even of the history of the Good Friday
agreement would suggest that the
new organisation will be still-born - in
any case it would be still a colonial
force as with the old RIC. The reality
is that the sectarian state will still
require a sectarian police force.
Sinn Fein tried to steer a
middle course of reform. They took
pains not to fall out with the Dublin
government, the SDLP and the
Catholic Church when they all sup-ported
the new force and pledged
loyalty to the leadership of the GAA
when they also supported the police.
Sinn Fein are of course deeply
involved in community restorative
justice, which was intended to be an
adjunct of the new police force when
it is fully installed. Currently they are
lobbying for a long list of clauses and
sub-clauses, which, they argue, will
transform the PSNI into a police serv-ice
for all. Then Sinn Fein will feel
free to call on young nationalists to
join the new police force. What all this
amounts to is a defence of Patten. I
have already pointed out that Patten
was not a reform in the first place, so
a reform of a non-reform is unlikely to
succeed. It also ignores the fact that
there was a first Police Act that estab-lished
the final authority of the British
over the police no matter what
changes are made to any other bills.
Socialists and republicans
should stand for disbandment of the
RUC. We would support reforms
such as disarming the police while
pointing out that no true reform will be
possible as long as the sectarian
state remains and requires a sectari-an
force to defend it. Never in any
campaigns will there be any require-ment
on socialists or republicans to
support the police. Even if by some
miracle the RUC/PSNI were to be
converted into the ordinary decent
‘filth’ that staff a normal police force
they will remain the main mechanism
for the repression of the working
class and no militant would dream of
joining Sinn Fein in offering to advise
any young worker to join the
RUC/PSNI.
The summer in Ardoyne give
us a before and after picture of the
new police force. Before the summer
the old RUC reacted to loyalist intim-idation
by banning Catholic children
and their parents from walking to
school. After the summer the new
RUC/PSNI defended the loyalist's
cultural rights to carry out the sectar-ian
intimidation while at the same
time allowing the Catholic children
the right to walk a gauntlet of abuse,
spit, balloons filled with urine and
blast bombs on their way to school.
What can one say to this? I say:
SS RUC! DISBAND the RUC/PSNI!
Socialists therefore,
support reform of the
police and extension
of human rights but
ever believing that
should lead us to
support the state or
the police
without
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
As growing concerns for the
National Health Service (NHS)
take hold, it has emerged that
the health services in the 6-Counties
are not only the worst in the UK, they
are the worst in Western Europe. It is
an extremely worrying development
as we are all potential users of the
health service. The most widely quot-ed
definition of health is that present-ed
in the constitution of the World
Health Organisation. (WHO) “Health
is a state of complete physical, men-tal
and social well-being”. It is impor-tant
to acknowledge that health and
health promotion can only be under-stood
as part of the social contexts in
which people exist.
In 1981 the UK Government
signed the WHO ‘Health for All’ by the
year 2000 strategy and later commit-ted
itself to 38 European targets
designed to meet this goal. Sadly
these targets are still not met while
health services have deteriorated to
a point of real concern.
Moreover, our hospitals are
no longer clean. It is important to note
that thousands have died in NHS
hospitals due to infection borne dis-eases
since cleaning services were
contracted out to private companies.
The introduction of Private Finance
Initiatives (PFI) continues and is sup-ported
by almost all politicians in the
North. Meanwhile, the so called
deprived country, Cuba has a more
radical approach to delivering health
care, and has reached the ‘health for
all targets’ well in advance of the year
2000 despite economic crisis and
blockade.
The radical and empower-ment
models for health are worth
looking at. Paolo Freire, a South
American academic, developed the
empowerment model. (He believed
that the most oppressed people in
impoverished Colombian society
could be revolutionised through edu-cation.)
This radical model for health
promotion is concerned with promot-ing
healthy public policy which effect
changes on the physical, social and
economic environment. Historically, it
has its roots in the nineteenth-centu-ry
public health movement, which
made major contributions to reduc-tions
in disease through improve-ments
in housing and sanitation. The
aim of this community based
approach to health promotion is to
empower its members to achieve
social change and thereby health
improvements. How realistic is this
model for health promotion in our
society.
When the local Health
Minister Bairbre de Brun came under
fire for the state of our health service,
politicians and their supporters
played political football with the
whole issue in the most disgraceful.
The minister’s political opponents
simply used the failing services to
gain political points. All the time the
minister blamed previous conserva-tive
governments for neglect and lack
of funding during their years in gov-ernment
and the minister’s support-ers
loyally defended her handling of
the affair. Oddly enough, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared
on a television programme using the
same line to defend his governments
handling of the Health Service. Blair
also talked about promoting health
using the preventative approach by
targeting risky behaviours such as
smoking and poor diet.
Coincidentally, Bairbre de
Brun also advocated such action
when she was asked in a radio inter-view
about the opening of the cancer
services and coronary care. The min-ister
echoed the Prime Ministers
health promotion plans citing anti
smoking campaigns. At first sight it
seems an attractive proposition and
successive governments have
favoured this approach to health pro-motion.
However this approach
assumes that if individuals do not
take responsible action to prevent
disease, they are themselves to
blame for the consequences, hence
adopting a victim blaming ideology. It
can be argued that this approach jus-tifies
the lack of a comprehensive
anti-poverty strategy. It also down-plays
the importance of social and
environmental factors, ignoring that
individual behaviour is influenced by
social conditions. There is ample evi-dence
that social inequalities under-mine
health. Government policies
scarcely acknowledge the socio-eco-nomic
determinants to health despite
the fact it is widely accepted that gen-erally
those in poorer social and eco-nomic
conditions are the least
healthy, with health promotion activi-ties
only reaching the better off.
Studies show that the pre-ventive
strategy may even lead to a
widening of health inequalities
because those with sufficient materi-al
and emotional resources find
behavioural change much easier
than people coping with fewer
resources. Studies also indicate that
national reduction in smoking rates
has been achieved by the higher
social classes, whilst smoking rates
of the most impoverished groups has
shown no equivalent reduction.
There is a strong argument to sug-gest
that such strategies compound
the exclusion and lack of control of
low-income groups by suggesting
that they have choices.
So where does this leave the
disadvantaged groups in places like
Tyrone, Fermanagh or North and
West Belfast, the latter, which is
described as the most disadvantaged
in Europe? Do they have choices?
Where are the initiatives, which
attempt to address inequalities by for
example, making services more
accessible? Will the government and
politicians monitor the effects of poli-cies
to improve housing etc?
As for those who play politi-cal
football with the health issue and
are in a position to work at communi-ty
level with the people, will they pro-mote
and devise radical strategies to
address the needs of people living in
rundown, drug infested areas. They
have fewer alternatives and need the
empowerment and radical models of
health most. At a time when the
terms ʻequality agendaʼ and ʻequityʼ
are common buzzwords it would be
much better for disadvantaged peo-ple
if the politicians put their spin in to
practice and worked towards deliver-ing
a proper health service to every-body
in this society.
A radical alte-rna
tive
for health service
11
12
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
PC: Do you think the attack on the
Twin Towers gave the British
Establishment the opportunity to
make life more difficult for ethnic
minorities and refugees.
GP: Certainly, its very obvious. Its
very hard to know what particular dis-torted
mind dreamt it all up in the first
place but it is very obvious that there
was legislation of a really truly appal-ing
kind waiting in the wings and this
was the opportunity to bring it out. In
1998 after the bombing of Nairobi
and Darussalam and the Omagh
bombing, Parliament was recalled for
a day and legislation was rushed
through on the basis that it was nec-essary
and that it would allow for
prosecutions for conspiring to commit
acts abroad or be involved in serious
crime and alleged terrorist acts. In
fact that legislation has never been
used although its two years old. And
again, legislation pushed through
parliament, including last year the
Terrorism Act, which effectively crimi-nalises
a whole range of movements
here and liberation struggles in many
parts of the world. People involved in
resistance to truly appaling regimes
were all criminalised. All of that was
sitting there waiting in the wings.
There was not a lack of legislation,
but what happened post September
11th was that it was said there were
people who could not be deported
(because they would be deported to
places where they would be tortured)
and that these people couldn’t be
prosecuted because there was insuf-ficient
evidence but that there was
plenty of intelligence. So they intro-duced
internment and that has been
a truly wicked piece of legislation.
Think too, we’ve been told that we
needed all of that previous legislation
to deal with people here supposedly
assisting terrorism abroad. And yet it
was never used. Its very odd, but at
least people haven’t been detained
and questioned under that legisla-tion.
Instead of that, people have
now been rounded up (who are all
but one - asylum seekers) as scape-goats
and there is no doubt about it,
but that legislation will ensure that
they’re not put on trial. Yet the allega-tions
are appaling with appaling con-sequences
for them and their fami-lies.
They are locked up, on the face
of it for life, without trial and they are
branded international terrorists. They
are in Belmarsh in the Special
Secure Units (SSUs) with all of what
that implies and they are locked up
22 hours a day. The regime is even
worse than it was five years ago
when it drove people to mental and
physical annihilation and all of this for
no reason whatsoever. One just sees
further writing on the wall if this works
and if these people don’t win their
challenge. The Government had to
lodge notice of derogation with the
European Court of Human Rights
with the Council of Europe saying
that there was a national emergency
threatening the life of the nation so
that it could dispense with the protec-tions
of Article 5 (no detention without
trial). So they’ve claimed that there is
a national emergency threatening the
life of the nation when there clearly
isn’t. That is absolute rubbish. If they
get away with it, one will see more
and more secret trials because they
are heard by judges who are going to
hear most of the evidence in secret
because it is based on so called intel-ligence
and it is a recipe for dictator-ship.
I think the answer to your ques-tion
is this legislation has been sitting
in a cupboard somewhere with
nobody thinking ever in a million
years would they get it past parlia-
Gareth Peirce
one will see
more and more
secret trials
because
they are heard
by judges
who are going
to hear most
of the evidence
in secret
because
it is based on
so called
intelligence
and
it is a recipe
for
dictatorship
ʻ
Internationally renowned human rights lawyer Gareth
Peirce
13
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
ment and instead it was rushed
through without a squeak.
PC: I would like to ask you about
conditions for prisoners and the horri-fying
pictures of the hooded and
shackled prisoners in Camp X-Ray.
This is very obvious sensory depriva-tion,
the type of treatment Irish politi-cal
prisoners were subjected to in
1971 and in Britain’s Special Secure
Units which you described as “con-crete
coffins”
GP: You’d be surprised that some of
the detainees in Belmarsh now are
saying that by comparison,
Guantanamo Bay looks pretty good.
They’ve got daylight and fresh air and
they can communicate with each
other. The prisoners in Belmarsh, in
the category A. Special Secure Units
are locked up 22 hours a day.
PC: Irish Republican Prisoners are
still held there?
GP: Absolutely. All sorts of people
are kept in there. It was actually
under used up until nine months ago
and now it is bursting at the seams
with many prisoners who can’t speak
English, who have no way of commu-nicating
with the outside world, who
are on closed visits because the pris-ons
have never got round to clearing
their families. You watch people
crumble in front of your eyes and they
are facing the prospect that this is
going to go on for ever because there
will never be the resolution of a trial
because they are detained without
trial. The intelligence services must
be chuckling with absolutely massive
satisfaction. No more the necessity of
bothering with a trial and no more
needing to get evidence. They can
proffer any old rubbish, behind
closed doors in secret to a judge and
the detainee is never going to know. I
would like to say something about
Guantanamo Bay because there are
a number of British lads there. It is
clear from the letters they’ve written
out (Just a couple of letters have
come through and they have taken
six weeks to get here) that the pris-oners
are absolutely weakened and
emaciated. One boy who is very tall
and normally weighs 11 stone, wrote
to his family that he had lost 3 stone
and he is now around 8 stone weight.
It was written about 6 weeks ago, (in
January 2002) and he said in his let-ter,
“I don’t know where I am and I
can’t take the heat”… So he must
have just got to Cuba…. “MI5 have
been interviewing me and I’ve lost 3
stone” Now what that means is that
British intelligence services are right
in there latching on like parasites with
the unlawful, undefined, American
detention. They are interrogating
people who are clearly inca-pable
of being interrogated.
People at their weakest and
most vulnerable. Whatever
pathetic rule book there
was has been ripped up
and thrown away and
there appears no necessity
to abide by any law, national or inter-national.
Victor’s justice, isn’t it?
PC: It is disturbing that all of this is
happening now in the 21st
century in the new
Millennium
GP: Of course its
horrific. It is just the
old Wild West and
people talking as if
its gun law. From the
President down, the
way they are speak-ing
is quite extraor-dinarily
crude. At
least one comprehends that America
is in emotional trauma post-
September 11th. It is comprehensi-ble,
America is in a state of extreme
emotional reaction. Britain has no
such excuse because there isn’t the
equivalent here and yet we’re doing
more than the Americans. America
hasn’t introduced interment but we’re
rushing in to help ourselves to the
spoils. Certainly, you know more than
anyone what all of the past legislation
did to the Irish community. You know,
but one can only begin to imagine
what this has done to the refugee
communities in this country. It is com-pletely
terrifying. They see people
disappearing literally, people
interned. Those who know them,
know that it is nonsense and so if it
can happen to them it can happen to
any one. The press has behaved like
hyenas, ‘outing’ the families, finding
the family where some one is
detained, regardless of their privacy
or their vulnerability, they have
stalked them, published photo-graphs,
aerial maps in the papers
with the numbers and names of
streets and houses. And this
-
particularly in the West Mid-lands, in
the middle of National Front territory.
It is reckless, reckless, reckless.
PC: And outright racism
GP: Oh, totally. Say terrorism and it
excuses anything.
PC: One photograph in the Guardian,
which I found to be very poignant,
was of a para-trooper, heavily armed,
wearing his red beret, walking in the
destitute streets of Kabul with the
poverty stricken and desolate people
looking on. As a British lawyer and
taxpayer, what are your thoughts on
that regiment currently being in
Afghanistan?
GP: On a number of legal basis the
whole series of offensives since
October has again been extraordi-nary.
In the sense that, in so far as
there are laws of war and rules as to
when war can be embarked upon,
the pre-conditions are not there for
the waging of war on Afghanistan by
the United States. The waging of war
on a country Cont. Page 14
Gareth Peirce
14
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
Schisms within the Irish Left
have become a humourous
past-time not only among its
enemies but particularly among left
republican groups who espouse the
cause of Labour as the cause of
Ireland. The demise of the Workers
Party must serve as a prime exam-ple
of what happens to a radical, rev-olutionary
party when it abandons its
basic principles and tenets and
embarks on a constant and continu-ous
re-alignment of its policies and
strategies which distinguished them
from 'the parties of the State'. There
are salient lessons here for any party
claiming to be a revolutionary party or
a party of dissent. Ultimately they will
become exposed to the vagaries of
political vice, careerism, opportunism
and the inevitable outcome will be
total absorption into the system …if
they survive. Within the arena of con-stitutional/
parliamentary politics the
dye is invariably cast against those
who maintain a connection with mili-tant
republicanism, i.e. who continue
to maintain an armed wing or pres-ence
even though it has dumped
arms and remains on cease-fire. The
accusing finger will always be lev-elled
at the militants and this was
very much the case with the Workers
Party as it is today with Provisional
Sinn Fein. In fact things can only get
worse. To their credit the Workers
Party continually campaigned against
the futility of the PIRA's campaign
stating that it only served to create
and deepen divisions thus keeping
the Irish people divided. Their candi-dates
and policies were rejected out-right
by the nationalist/republican
electorate and it seemed that in the
end the only thing they had to lose
north of the border was their election
deposits.
To their credit and given lim-ited
resources they built a reputable
political power base in getting elected
seven TDs and one MEP. This suc-cess
was obviously not paralleled in
the North yet ironically much of their
What happened by John
where there was no proven connec-tion
by anyone to the events of
September 11th. Where laws of war
insist military targets are the only per-missible
targets and yet a bombing
campaign from the air on a country
where military targets are indistin-guishable
from civilian population is
bound to constitute a lack of propor-tion.
There never was proper and full
Security Council clearance and
therefore the whole basis of the
premise in which war was embarked
upon appears to have been unlawful.
The way that it was then conducted,
was guaranteed to turn an already
starving, war-torn population into
refugees who were not going to sur-vive.
The level of civilian casualties
has been quite extraordinary. On top
of that, one now sees that
Afghanistan is ridden with political
division and that the Northern
Alliance is not the homogeneous
group of peace keepers. So on top of
all of that, to be superimposing British
troops is compounding a situation
that was never justifiable or permissi-ble
in the first place.
PC: In the USA it would appear that
the wealthy can often evade the law.
For example, very few rich people
are on death row because wealthy
people can afford better legal repre-sentation.
Is there a system similar to
that in Britain?
GP: I think there is a whole range of
answers. Any analysis of wrongful
convictions in Britain or America have
as a common ingredient, terrible
legal representation, terrible defence
representation. So if money is the
ingredient that buys good represen-tation
then obviously that is a factor. I
think its more complicated in Britain
because on the face of it legal aid
could get people good lawyers. In
America, I think the system seems
more hit and miss. I think its pretty hit
and miss in Britain too but I think in
America its more obviously so with
more extreme examples, but then
there are dozens of cases in this
jurisdiction too. I think the common
features are recurrent dreadful
defence representation and use of
informant evidence. In America I
think they call this ‘prison snitches’.
and usually people in prison have a
great deal to gain from giving false
evidence. Those seem to be the
recurrent ingredients.
...those who
adhered to
whatever diluted
form of
republicanism
that survived
would've been
equally happy within
Fianna Fail or
Fine Gael
ʻ
15
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
political and electoral strategy has
been adopted by those who reviled
and condemned them as 'reformists',
'revisionists' and 'political careerists'.
But of course it will be argued by all
Unionists and most
nationalists/republicans that the cam-paign
of violence, for all the tragedy
and horror, brought about or created
the conditions for substantial change.
But the problem with the Workers
Party was that they became more
and more aligned with everyone
else's anti-Provisional strategies.
There are lessons to be drawn here
and not just in retrospect. The WP's
hatred for the Provisionals consumed
much of the potential that could have
been channelled into the creation of a
party that would be focussed on
issues which were more relevant and
which would have afforded them
greater credibility and support. The
party attracted all the wrong kinds of
people for the wrong reasons. Many
members would have been more at
home with the Labour Party (and
eventually did) and those who
adhered to whatever diluted form of
republicanism that survived would've
been equally happy within Fianna
Fail or Fine Gael. Then came the
gradual abandonment of socialist
principles and the process of demo-cratic
centralism. The baby being
thrown out with the bath water. All
sound familiar ? There's more.
The north/south schism
became more acute leading ultimate-ly
to the isolation and alienation of the
more radical republican constituency
in the North. Those in the south had
failed to grasp the harsh realities of
the northern conflict. When the
cracks began to appear the 'parties
of the state' simply piled on the pres-sure
and exploited every opportunity
to use them to whip those whom they
seen as the supporters of the physi-cal
force axis, Provisional Sinn Fein
and the IRSP. No outcry against
Section 31, opposition to the hunger
strikes and support for the introduc-tion
of an unreformed RUC. The WP
became aligned with the parties of
the state who saw militant republi-cans
and socialists as a threat to sta-bility
and the status quo; in essence
the WP, the party that advocated
change was perceived as a bulwark
against change. Their usefulness to
the parties of the state diminished
rapidly when their electoral power
base and popularity increased; then
they were perceived as a threat, not
to the state but to the political and
ideological hegemony of the parties
of the state.
Things got worse. WP links
with the Official IRA became an
ongoing theme in the media and
Leinster House. Accusations of OIRA
involvement in robberies and punish-ment
attacks (doesn't it all sound so
topically familiar), denials and count-er
allegations followed by rumour and
counter rumour within the ranks,
ambiguities, duplicity and internal
disputes all of which was grist to the
mill of those who now wanted to
destroy them. In a recent article (Irish
News, Feb 6th) Sean Swan, a cur-rent
member of the WP reflecting on
the tenth anniversary of the split that
led to the formation of the Official
Republican Movement (ORM) New
Agenda and Democratic Left
acknowledges why things went
wrong:
What we had failed to do was
to make our republicanism clear
…We failed in the vital job of educat-ing
our members. Perhaps the dread
of splits had led to some cracks being
papered over, to some ambiguities
being allowed to exist Those who left
did exactly what we knew they would
- abandoned their members in
Northern Ireland then joined the
Labour Party".
Many indeed, within the rem-nants
of the party must be wondering
what it was all about. A lot has
changed on the Irish political land-scape
north and south since that divi-sive
day in 1992. There are real les-sons
to be learned here. Time now
for the WP to pick up the pieces and
move on. No point crying about the
gap in the bush after the mare has
fled.
to the Workers
16
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
The United States is the country with
more people locked up, both as a
percentage of population and in
absolute numbers than any other country
in the world. The U.S. puts to death
dozens of people a year who are retard-ed
or were children when they supposed-ly
committed the crimes they were con-victed
of. Now the U.S. is putting prison-ers
of war in cages.
Since September 11th erstwhile
liberals and defenders of civil liberties
and former radicals and anti-Vietnam war
protesters have been queuing up to extol
patriotism in this new "War for
Civilisation." With the self-appointed sta-tus
as "Ambassadors of Freedom", as
President Bush has called his new friends
in Hollywood and the media, many on the
soft left of American politics are entirely
engaged in the propaganda effort.
Some deny any inconsistency
between their warmongering and their
principles. Others, like noted liberal law
professor and defence attorney Alan
Dershowitz, who says he now accepts
the use of torture to prevent acts of terror,
argue that there are necessary excep-tions
to their principles concerning human
rights.
Happy in the fact that the US is
finally engaged in a war they can support
and thereby be viewed as fully American
by the citadels of power in this country,
they paint a picture with dangerous impli-cations
for the rest of the world of a
United States both omnipotent and vic-timised.
This squalid war of power and
revenge (with happy and not entirely
coincidental benefits for the defence and
oil industries) is best viewed by the
means with which it is being fought. One
must ask oneself what kind of "War for
Civilisation" is the US fighting this time
when it makes common cause with the
gangsters of the Northern Alliance to
bring to heel the gangsters of the Taliban,
both descendants of the Mujahedin gang-sters
it made common cause with in the
last "War for Civilisation" against the
Soviet Union?
With the aim of criminalising any
opposition to its policies or its rule by
dehumanising and depoliticising its oppo-nents
the United States has engaged in
the most egregious treatment of those
captured. Those who survived the execu-tions,
massacres and suffocations of pris-oners
in Afghanistan find themselves in a
legal limbo without rights and at the whim
of their US captors.
The United States under
George W. Bush, already noted in his
brief tenure for a propensity to pull out of
or disregard international treaties it had
previously signed, denies that the cap-tured
Taliban fighters are prisoners of war
and that the Geneva Conventions apply
to the captured Al Qaeda fighters. Citing
legal ambiguities as to the prisoners’
exact status, it ignores the clearest legal
pronouncement of the Geneva
Conventions -- that the captor has no
right to decide the status of the captured.
Kept in cages on a stolen sliver
of Cuban soil in Camp X-Ray, the prison-ers
are routinely degraded and tortured
psychologically and physically, using
British and Israeli methods. Some have
been drugged against their will, all have
been forced to wear manacles, blindfolds
and earplugs on their long trip to
Guantanamo Bay. One can imagine the
howls emanating from Washington or
London if one of their soldiers were treat-ed
this way and paraded around as tro-phies
by Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Because of their ambiguous
status the prisoners do not know where
they will end up or for how long they will
be held. If they are tried by military tribu-nal,
it is very likely that no one will know
their fate. Most are foot soldiers, though
some are leaders possibly responsible for
crimes committed in Afghanistan against
women, gays and lesbians, ethnic and
religious minorities or leftists among oth-ers.
Those who committed crimes
against the Afghan people should be tried
by their victims, not by the imperialists or
the imperialist-backed government, who
are guilty of the same or worse crimes!
The United States government has no
"right" to try anybody concerning war
crimes or crimes against humanity while it
continues to practice such offences itself
and on a global scale.
The policies of dehumanising
and depoliticising prisoners of war by the
United States is similar to the policies
carried out by Britain against Irish prison-ers
of war and, currently and dramatical-ly,
by Turkey against Kurdish and leftist
prisoners and by Israel against
Palestinian prisoners, among many other
countries.
We on the Left have every right to
make a clear and bold distinction
between those like the Irish, Kurdish and
Palestinian prisoners, who belong to the
most progressive forces of their respec-tive
countries, on the one hand, and
those like the Al Qaeda and Taliban pris-oners,
who belong to the most reac-tionary
forces of their respective coun-tries,
on the other. This distinction
between those engaged in a struggle for
liberation and those who seek the room
to exploit on their own terms, so clear to
us, is denied by the imperialists, who
paint all obstacles in their path and resist-ance
to their rule with the same brush.
Those of us on the left who fight
against the barbaric treatment of Al
Qaeda and Taliban prisoners do it without
political sympathy for those held. Neither
do we fight against their brutal treatment
simply because we know the imperialist
governments have used similar regimes
against people we do sympathise politi-cally
with, or indeed with us and our com-rades
personally. We fight not just to
block a precedent that will undoubtedly
be used in an ever expanding "war
against terrorism" concerning the treat-ment
of prisoners.
We struggle for human rights,
dignity and justice because we know that
there is indeed a "war for civilisation"
going on. In that war, which began long
before September 11th, the United States
is not the victim but the aggressor, and
the "civilisation" we want insures the
humane treatment of all people, real jus-tice,
and no need for cages and barbed
wire to confine people.
How the ’Civilised’
U.S. Treats
Prisoners of War
by Matt
Siegfried
17
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
The recent release of the state's
'30 year papers' once again
pointed out how a combination
of terrorism and the bending of the
laws of the land fed the flames of
communal terror and internecine
strife which has plagued the last 30
years of our lives here in Northern
Ireland.
Most people in these islands
can now see that when governments
adopt the methods of the terrorist and
sink to their barbaric level of depravi-ty,
the dragon's teeth they sow take
years to reap. Who can deny that
internment and the proven inhuman
and degrading treatment of prisoners
in 1971 left us with the bitter legacy
still burning itself out in the bitter sec-tarian
clashes of North Belfast and
the ongoing murder of innocents?
Citizens here in Northern Ireland
have learned something, admittedly
painfully slowly,from the experiences
of those dreadful years. At both polit-ical
and community level they have
made valiant efforts to restore civil
society to a state of order with agreed
political structures functioning under
the rule of law valiantly upheld by an
accountable and largely acceptable
policing service.
But what have governments
learned? That question is prompted
by what we see and read of the treat-ment
meted out to the Taliban and al-
Qa'ida prisoners. Added to hooding,
disorientation, de-humanisation and
isolation is depravation in chains half
way around the globe. From the
experiments carried out here 30
years ago the Government of the
USA seems to have learned a new
lesson- to create a No Man's Land
where no law prevails.
What protection has a pris-oner
in that No Man's Land? How is
he designated? Is he entitled to any
rights? To visits? By whom? Who is
to speak to him? In what language?
Is his family enti-tled
to be pun-ished
too by his
banishment? But
the question is
posed, "What can one do
with ruthless terrorists?" "These
men are murderers. Their arrest and
questioning has uncovered untold
amounts of arms and saved count-less
lives."
Maybe so, but that refrain is
familiar to those of us who were
forced to undergo those torturous
methods 30 years ago. We too were
declared murderers and ruthless ter-rorists.
The world was told that these
methods of securing information led
to the uncovering of caches of arms
and thus saved countless innocent
lives. But no arms were found and
not one of those interned or forced to
undergo the cruel and degrading
treatment was ever charged with an
offence or brought before a court.
And when the propaganda war had
abated the International Court of
Human Rights at Strasbourg upheld
our cases and found the Government
guilty of inhuman and degrading
treatment of detainees.
But even in those terrible cir-cumstances
the detainees in
Northern Ireland could be said to
have been fortunate. Thirty years ago
the Government of the day hadn't
learned to create a No Man's Land.
Even ships like the Maidstone were
subject to the laws of the land and
International Conventions. Prisoners
had the opportunity of obtaining legal
redress. What of the Afghanis in the
No Man's Land of Guantanamo Bay?
Where will they seek redress? Who
cares? Wasn't it Winston Churchill
who said that how a nation treats its
prisoners reflects the type of nation it
is? But in the early years of this new
millennium are we talking about
"Nation" or "world domination"?
Does the new definition of "illegal
combatants" of the detainees in
Camp X-Ray presage the arrival and
imposition of a new world order
based solely on the test of what is
seen to be of US National Interest?
Is the Geneva Convention deemed
to be past its "sell-by" date (in this
newly dominated world) as was the
Kyoto Treaty and the International
Criminal Court? With nuclear testing
listed for re-commencement and the
anti-ballistic treaty dead, is the scene
actually set for global submission or
else?
If the last 30 years of murder,
mutilation and mayhem here in
Northern Ireland have taught the
combatants one lesson it is that "or
else" doesn't work. There is another
way.
The presence, the treatment,
the designation and subsequent
repatriation of the detainees now in
the No Man's Land of Guantanamo
Bay may yet provide the challenge to
focus on, would give real meaning to
what President Bush has so far paid
lip service to in a recent speech when
he spoke of "human dignity", "the rule
of law", "free speech" and "equal jus-tice".
He omitted any reference to
"solidarity" or the "international broth-erhood
and sisterhood of man".
Perhaps that concept doesn't square
too well with what is now taking place
A shorter version of this article first
appeared in the Belfast Telegraph,
Friday 18th Jan 2002
by PJ McClean
Camp X-Ray trea-t
ment
A ʻcellʼ in Camp X-Ray
18
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
In the past few weeks there have
been a plethora of stories and
headlines regarding the “explo-sion”
in youth crime with David
Blunkett, British Home Secretary,
promising ever more draconian
measures to deal with the problem.
The policy is dressed up in the lan-guage
of social inclusion and social
responsibility and strikes a chord with
many adults who prefer to forget
about their own so called anti-social
behaviour when they were young.
Now any group of young people
hanging about on street corners are
looked on with suspicion and fear by
many adults and are subject to a new
legislative framework to control their
behaviour. Despite a reduction in
overall crime, people believe there is
a rise in crime, even though they
have had no such direct experience
themselves or in their neighbour-hoods.
In England, the Crime and
Disorder Act 1998, introduced a
range of new orders to be used by
youth courts when dealing with
young people’s behaviour. Young
people on very minor charges, can
now be subject to curfew orders,
community behaviour orders,
Intensive surveillance programmes,
reparation and anti-social behaviour
orders. The state has spent billions
forming multi-disciplinary teams
made up of social and youth workers,
teachers, police officers and health
workers to oversee the behaviour of
young people in each local authority
area.
The British state are con-sciously
using social and youth work-ers
to enforce the new laws as a way
of infiltrating neighbourhoods where
traditionally the police would have
had difficulty in operating. The same
methods will be used in Northern
Ireland, particularly now that Sinn
Fein are part of the state apparatus
and have to look to different ways of
enforcing the new political and legal
realities in their strongholds. At pres-ent,
Sinn Fein are still reluctant to
admit that the new order means that
the laws of the British state will have
to be upheld and that the old ways of
subverting state power wherever
possible, are no longer tenable.
However, as with the enforcement of
TV and dog licenses, the politicians
will eventually have to back up their
new state in matters of law and order
as regards the behaviour of their
young.
At present, so-called “hoods”
are dealt with by thugs who profess
still to be part of the Provisional IRA
and who believe they have the right
to enforce standards of behaviour in
their own neighbourhoods. They are
the judge and jury and the communi-ties
they operate in support to some
extent, their brutal behaviour,
because the community still want to
believe in the myth that the war isn’t
really over and that the state is still
not to be trusted or co-operated with.
The truth is that their political leaders
are now part of the British state and
they are the ones implementing
British rule and law in Northern
Ireland at the same time as having a
quasi-military style police force of
their own. The use of the name of the
Provisional IRA in justifying punish-ment
beatings and shootings is
degrading and demeaning for all
those who fought for Irish Freedom
and is a gift to those who always
believed that the PIRA were mindless
thugs.
Fear and distrust of young people
is a diversion away from the real-ity
that the old order is gone and that
the British state is now the only rule
of law in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein
and their new friends, Labour, will
use fear of crime to criminalise the
next generations and to ensure that
the real problems of poverty, poor
education and unemployment in
working class areas are not on the
agenda. Sinn Fein have no will to
address any of the real issues affect-ing
their old neighbourhoods and as
in their implementation of unfair
health and education policies, they
will also lead the way in criminalising
young people. The youth of today
are the adults of tomorrow and to
demean and disregard their contribu-tion
to society is a mistake and is not
a policy that should be welcomed by
republicans. Let’s hear what young
people have to say about the society
in which they are growing up and lets
instill them with some hope and belief
in the future. The future is in the
hands of our young people and I
would prefer them to be involved in
building that future rather than crimi-nalised,
brutalised and disabled.
Who are the Hoods
now?
comments on the problem of anti-social
crime in working class areas
Siobhan
19
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
There has been much conster-nation
analysing and tut tuting
over the results of the last local
and Westminister elections. They
have been debated in every pub in
the land, column inches galore have
been written in the press and contrib-utors
to “Talkback” and other phone-in
programmes debated the polarisa-tion
in our divided society and the
shift away from any sense of middle
ground, that may or may not have
ever existed in this society. The noted
shift by working class away from the
more “moderate”, although blatantly
sectarian, Ulster Unionist and SDLP
towards the DUP and Sinn Fein
caught many a commentator off
guard. But should it? At a time when
the Belfast Agreement of unionism or
the Good Friday Agreement of
nationalism was under severe criti-cism
and in danger of imminent col-lapse,
working class people felt
uneasy and at a time of concern and
ever growing tension the “natural”
instinct is to withdraw back to their
perceived camp and in Northern
Ireland today that means fundamen-talist
nationalism, British or Irish.
The question that the political
commentators should have asked is-where
has the small but dedicated
socialist vote gone? The collapse of
this constituency is alarming, given
political developments both here and
across the world. The major push
towards globalisation, or to give it its
proper title Americanisation, should
have Socialists, trade unionists and
community leaders clamouring for
the reversal of this on-going econom-ic
strategy, which is further alienating
the marginalised in this and other
societies. It is this alienation that is
causing many to despair and there-fore
turn their back on politics with
the subsequent decline in the use of
the dearly won right of universal suf-frage.
The recent protests in Genoa
at the G7/G8 Conference, with over
700 different groups taking part has
demonstrated the need for the left to
organise. There is a strong argument
for the efficiency of collective action
and the development of a clear pro-gramme
around which the Left can
make significant in-roads into the
political arena. Left-wing co-opera-tion
is a must. Former comrades,
who today refuse to work together,
must bury their differences and offer
a genuine alternative to the sectarian
tribalism, which passes for politics
and dominates political debate in
Northern Ireland. Sectarianism must
be tackled head on, by an alliance of
progressive groups. Post Good
Friday there seems to an attitude that
if everyone ignored sectarianism it
would fade away. A clear and com-prehensive
programme has to be
defined and articulated with the dedi-cation
and commitment that many of
us believe that we have but in truth
only a few possess.
For those who do not believe
that a left alternative can provide an
answer to our divided society, then
look no further than North Belfast.
The almost nightly riots, bombings
and shootings, reminiscent of 1969
and just as clearly orchestrated by
right-wing zealots, has driven a
wedge further between the communi-ties
and widened the artificial dis-tance
between neighbours, leaving in
its wake wounds that will take a very
long time to heal.
Marginalised communities in
Northern Ireland need a strong voice
of sanity that they can identify with
and support. This voice has to be
clear and must show the way forward
out of the morass that we live in
today. For too long marginalised and
disadvantaged communities have
been used by political leaders who
have shown little regard for the
human tragedy that results from sec-tarianisation
of the body politic.
1990 did not, despite right-wing
wishful thinking, signal “the end
of history”. Socialism is even more
relevant today than ever. It is the only
viable check on the poverty, inequali-ty
and marginalisation caused by the
constant pursuit of profit and power
that are the driving forces of the
process of globalisation. Here in the
North of Ireland, the humanitarian
voice of socialism is the only sustain-able
challenge to sectarian intransi-gence
and social division.
All groups on the Left must co-operate
in the process of empow-ering
those communities that have
been pushed to the margins and
politically, economically, socially and
culturally disadvantaged. This is a
process, which will involve the total
democratisation of society and the
breaking down of barriers between
communities. In these conditions trib-al
politics will no longer be the easy
option of career politicians.
This is no doubt a massive
task, sectarian attitudes are buried
deep in the social fabric and will be
difficult to untangle, there will be
stubborn resistance from political
interests which rely on elections con-tinuing
to be tribal head counts and
whose manifestoes would be blank
without the sectarian card. But it is
never the less a task that must be
undertaken and the time to begin is
now.
by Rod erick
W e m ustcoop-or
fade
20
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
Almost everybody in Ireland has
an opinion about the use of
politically motivated physical
force yet not all appear to have a
well-reasoned theory about its use or
rejection. Incredibly too, it appears
that those with the strongest views
are often those most prone to rheto-ric
and least likely to present an
unanswerable case. Indeed, there is
even, sometimes, a degree of confu-sion
over what constitutes force and
what does not.
The dichotomy is of long
pedigree in modern Ireland. It dates
at least from the time of Daniel
O’Connell and his differences with
the Young Ireland movement and can
be traced in one form or another
through Irish politics to the present. In
spite of James Connolly’s funny and
simultaneously despairing remark
about Ireland being the only country
in the world to have a ‘physical force
party’, we are not alone in this
respect. Many other countries in
Eastern Europe, South America,
Africa and the Far East for example
have had a similar experience.
In essence, the argument
has hinged around an ongoing
conundrum as to the best means of
effecting democratic political and
social change. In many countries,
and not just Ireland, democratic
change or progress has been resis-ted
by powerful elites prepared to use
whatever means they found conven-ient.
This in turn has led to people in
many and different areas to conclude
– rightly or wrongly - that only through
use of force could they bring about
change.
One of the factors that most
often tends to distort and confuse the
argument is that opponents of
change very often dress themselves
in the respectable cloak of pacifism
and oppose the use of force, purely in
order to give themselves a moralistic
basis on which to resist political
progress. People for example, who
had no compunction whatsoever
about launching a destructive war in
the South Atlantic on the
Argentineans, frequently deemed
Irish insurgents to be ‘murderers and
terrorists’. Moreover, many of those
who most loudly condemned IRA
killings in the most recent round of
the ‘Irish Troubles’ were quick to
either understand or even endorse
the killing of IRA personnel by the
British Army.
Nor is this inconsistency con-fined
to right wing British Tories. After
all, anyone who offers support to the
state’s army and police is by defini-tion
supporting the use, albeit under
clearly defined circumstances, of
physical force. And even though this
support may not be given for blood-thirsty
reasons, there is a clear
approval of the state’s right to use
coercive and/or lethal violence. The
debate of course then becomes not
one of whether people agree or not
with the use of force, but rather on
the legitimacy and methods for its
proper and correct use.
As a consequence of ambi-guities
and outright disingenuous-ness,
it is hardly surprising that some
republicans fail to distinguish
between arguments making a cri-tique
of blind militarism and others
making a blinkered criticism of repub-licanism.
This is regrettable since it
often prevents a vital and thorough-going
examination and analysis of
Irish republicanism’s philosophy,
strategy and tactics. Far too often, it
encourages the philosophy to be
identified with violent nationalism
rather than with progressive democ-racy.
Unfortunately however, the
crude caricature of the physical force
republican does have a basis in real-ity.
There has long been a substantial
body within Irish republicanism that
believes loyalty to the cause and phi-losophy
is determined solely by ones
support for armed struggle. This limit-ed,
one-dimensional outlook
inevitably causes its adherents to
vest absolute authority – moral and
organisational - in a secret and unac-countable,
armed wing. The frequent-ly
repeated downside for these phys-ical
force men is that their unac-countable
armed wing invariably
decides to settle for much less than
the maximum programme. And due
to its privileged position, it almost
always makes off with a majority of
the membership.
At the heart of their problem
is a lack of faith or even understand-ing
in the power of the common peo-ple.
Coupled with this failure to
recognise the people goes the corol-lary
– arrogance. A misguided arro-gance
that believes that it is possible
for a tiny minority of heroes to create,
by an act of will or courage, that what
the broad majority of people do not
care to support. It is a moot point if
such people are entitled to use the
term republican. What is certain is
that they are disingenuous in calling
themselves democrats.
Therein, lies the quintessen-tial
weakness of the dogmatic physi-cal
force school - an absolute inabili-ty
to understand the essential con-nection
between democracy and
republicanism. By ignoring the cen-tral
role of the people in every politi-cal
struggle, they pay insufficient
heed to the need to win popular
approval. Thereafter, they find them-selves
so isolated numerically that
the forces of the state easily contain
them. It is very much as G. B. Shaw
said; “…a game at which the police
can beat you.”
Compounding their mistaken
analysis is the fact that through a
misguided insistence on pursuing a
losing strategy, they actually make
their own cause more difficult to
achieve. At a time when every avail-able
activist is needed to win new
supporters and rebuild confidence
among the rest, the ‘armed men’ are
Physical force
Tommy McKearney
The debate about the use of military tactics
continues
with an article by
21
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
hiding themselves away from view in
order to preserve ‘security’. When
they do re-emerge from the shadows,
too often it’s to make a blunder that
only further isolates them and dam-ages
the prestige of republicanism.
Napoleon Bonaparte, a man
who knew a thing or two about war,
once said that you can do many
things with a bayonet but you can’t sit
on one. It’s a lesson that some Irish
republicans could
learn to their
advantage.
It would be
a mistake nev-ertheless
to
leave this subject
without examining
both sides of the
coin. The support for
physical force, that
has existed in
Ireland for so long,
cannot easily be
dismissed as
the lunacy of
a few
fanatics. This
phenomenon
has its ori-gins
in real
g r i e v a n c e
and more-over,
owes
its duration
not just to
injustice but
also to real
need in
m a n y
instances. It
is unneces-sary
to
e x a m i n e
every peri-od
in histo-ry
to make
a judge-ment
on
this issue. We
need only look to
the events of the past
thirty years to under-stand
that the peaceful
option is not always pos-sible.
On occasions, it was
not even a matter of choice.
The fact is that the
non-unionist people of the North
asked for basic democratic and civil
rights in the late 1960’s. The
Stormont regime and its support-ers
quite simply attacked
them in a calculated
attempt to end the cam-paign
for democra-cy
by the use of
intimidation
and terror.
Subjected to such an
assault, ordinary people
were faced with two imme-diate
dilemmas – how to pro-tect
their families and homes
and how to protect their strug-gle
for justice. Those that had
provided the leadership through the
initial period of the campaign proved
for the most part, helpless in the face
of organised state violence. That
the only credible voice offering an
answer proved to be the
Provisional IRA was not so much
a question of ‘Provos hijacking
the mass movement’ as others
being unable to meet its
demands. And those who make
textbook criticisms of the
‘Republican Army’’ at that time
must offer viable (not textbook)
alternatives to a better course of
action.
It is not possible to adopt an
absolutist, never-never or always-always,
position on the use of force
and those who do so are either dis-honest
or deluded. People are
clearly entitled to defend them-selves
if the state fails to do so and
they should indeed be encouraged
to openly discuss the best means
of self-defence under such circum-stances.
People are also entitled
to protect their struggle for demo-cratic
rights and justice if the state
fails or refuses to protect them
while campaigning. More, an
accepted democratic majority is
unquestionably entitled to
enforce its mandate.
However, such inalienable
rights do not confer any justi-fication
or authority or even
rationale on any person to embark on
an arbitrary, armed crusade no mat-ter
how worthy the objective. Those
who do so are not only wrong but
also worse – they are being foolish. It
is well past time for Irish republicans
to set aside all fetishes about the use
of force and stop making it t he
litmus test of people’s loyalty.
The clamour for action
The clamour for action is a well known,
often repeated phenomenon in Irish
republican circles and it follows a fairly
well recognised type of argument. It usu-ally
runs along the line that; times are
difficult and support for an armed
campaign is either very scarce or bor-dering
on the non-existent. In order to
remedy the deficit it is then proposed
that a series of high profile, publicity
grabbing military operations will restore
the fortunes of the cause in general and
the ‘Movement’ in particular.The flawed
rationale for this theory is that a signifi-cant
number of people is ready and anx-ious
to join an armed uprising providing it
can be demonstrated that a competent
and dedicated group of militants exists
and is capable of providing leadership
and supplying arms.
That an overwhelming majority
of the population is unwilling to engage
in a military campaign (or indeed hostile
to the concept) is brushed aside with
inaccurate references to the minority
involvement in the Easter Rising of
1916.
Fixated with the need to carry
out military operations at any cost, the
militarists attempt to substitute personal
courage and dedication for adequate
manpower and supplies. Worse, in their
desperation for action, they are forced to
recruit whatever personnel is available
and this invariably leads to the enroll-ment
of incompetents and police agents.
Moreover, no amount of better recruiting
practices will overcome this problem - if
the numbers are not there to choose
from, the consequences are always the
same.
The outcome of this is quite
predictable - people and equipment are
captured, operations are bungled or sab-otaged
and the desire ‘support-enhanc-ing-
publicity’ becomes instead, a tool to
further isolate the men of action. Good
sense would dictate a different course of
action at this stage. Unfortunately good
sense is not always present and difficul-ties
are often compounded by those
insisting that one more operation will
reverse the calamitous setbacks
incurred and like a punch-drunk boxer,
the beaten are sent out for another
damaging often fatal round of punish-ment.
The concept of a tiny handful of
‘heroes’ inspiring the inert masses has
long ago been discredited. In its place is
the proposition that identifying the real
needs of the population and highlighting
the ways and means to meet these
needs is the way to effect change in any
society. Where courage and dedication
come into play is not in rushing to arms
but in refusing to be bought off by the
lure of the Establishment along the way.
22
Fourthwrite Spring 2002
Head of the infidels
Dear Editor
New figures suggest that casualties
in the ongoing war in Afghanistan
exceed those in America on 11th
September. If Mullah Omar could flee
on a motorbike and escape U.S.
troops and the Northern Alliance, it
would appear that Bin Laden might
prove equally elusive.
Indeed, it has been admitted
that evidence suggesting that Bin
Laden was behind the attacks on the
Twin Towers etc. is so inconclusive
that it would not stand up in a court of
law. Yet it was deemed sufficient for
the U.S. government to send their
army in with B52s and Daisycutters
to kill thousands of starving people.
Of course the U.S. interest
lies in profit and the oil of the Caspian
region, with Bin Laden a convenient
scapegoat. The tragic situation in
Afghanistan, where months of carpet
bombing have wiped out innocent
life, is made more offensive from an
Irish perspective by Bertie Ahern's
and Brian Cowan's tolerance of the
use of Shannon airport for refuelling
planes on this murder mission.
While co-operation like this
continues, Ireland's neutrality is com-promised.
And for a country like ours,
which has a history of famine and
invasion, to assist the slaughter of
the Afghan people is an abomination.
Not to mention the cowardly silence
of Sinn Fein and the Labour party
(with the exception of Michael D.
Higgins) who failed to denounce the
war.
Recently on his tour of the
Middle East, in North Korea, George
Bush tactically refrained from further
references to 'the axis of evil' and
used somewhat calmer language.
Then off to China, where thousands
of U.S. flags are produced swiftly by
underpaid workers.
Ominously the British Navy
ship HMS Ocean has already sailed
off to an unknown destination to
assist in 'phase II' of the war. And
both U.S. and British governments
have spoken of the significance of
winning the propaganda war.
The attacks on the Twin
Towers have made any anti-
American opinion dangerous.
Indeed, the definition of the term
'terrorism' itself appears to have
become broader
In the West Bank, Israel has
launched further brutal attacks on
Palestinians, supported by the United
States. Presumably justified by the
Hamas organisation having stated
that the way forward is through Jihad.
Last year in Gaza and the West
Bank, popularity of Al Fatah had
been surpassed by the combined
strength of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Since Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait support Hamas, they become
more unpopular with the Western
powers. Reports suggest that in
Afghanistan SAS forces were
involved in the massacre in Mazar-i-
Sharif. Many of the dead Taliban pris-oners
of war allegedly had their
hands tied behind their backs. Yet,
the British government has ignored
demands for an inquiry by Amnesty
International.The Anti-terrorism act
recently introduced by the Labour
government in England means 'immi-grant'
suspects can be interned with-out
trial and denied virtually any
means of appeal.
The dehumanisation of the Al
Quaeda prisoners in 'Camp X-Ray'
makes their appaling treatment more
acceptable in media coverage, there-fore
easier for political leaders to
appear sincere when speaking of the
need for justice and 'a world free from
evil'.
But regarding 'phase II' of the
war, those at risk of attack include
Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, The Yemin
and Sudan, amongst others.The
threat to U.S. security and oil supply
is a greater reason for this impending
slaughter than Bin Laden or the
teachings of Islam.
Yours,
Laura Duffy
Letters Fourthwrite
Fourthwrite is a group
dedicated to building a radical,
democratic and socialist
republican alternative to the
present unjust and unequal
society, where the Good Friday
Agreement subordinates
democratic rights to
sectarianism and imperialism
and social and economic
coporatism (as manifested for
example in the PFP)
subordinates the rights of
working people to those of big
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The activities of the group are:
Building an open and
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Price: Stg£5 or Euro 10 ( excluding P/P)
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Fourthwrite Spring 2002
Contributors
Maureen Gallagher is a prominent
political activist in Galway and is also
a member of the Irish Workers Group
Margaret McKearney lives in Dublin
and now is a regular contributor to
Fourthwrite
Cathal McGovern lives in Donegal
and is a member of the Ard
Comhairle of the IRSP
John McAnulty lives in Belfast and
is a member of Socialist Democracy
Patricia Campbell is a native of
County Tyrone and is a regular
contributor to Fourthwrite
Matt Siegfried is based in Detroit
USA and is a trade unionist and left
wing activist
Paddy Joe McLean is a former
member of The Police Authority of
Northern Ireland and was one of the
‘twelve hooded men' whose cases
against the British Government were
upheld at the International Court of
human Rights in Strasbourg
John Nixon was a founding mem-ber
of the IRSP and now is a politi-cal
activist in his native Armagh City.
Siobhan O’Dwyer is a native of
Sligo Town and has long been a
campaigner for Irish prisoners in
Britain
Roderick Dunbar is a member of
the editorial committee of United
Irishman publications
Tommy McKearney is editor of
Fourthwrite magazine
Liam Mellows Society
Seminar
Irish republicanism in the 21st Century
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Royal Hotel, Arklow
20 & 21 April 2002
Saturday 20 April 2002
1:00 p.m. Socialism Chair: John Morrissey
Is there still an Irish Working Class and, does it include northern
unionists?
Speaker: Joe Bowers, former executive committee member of ICTU
and past chair of Northern Ireland committee of ICTU
Platform questions from: Dr. Terry Robson founding and former member
of the IRSP, and currently lecturing at Magee University, Derry.
5:00 p.m. Democracy Chair: Sean Doyle,
Do the people have any role to play in the building of and management
of an Irish republic?
Speaker: Bernadette McAliskey, former MP for Mid-Ulster and long-time
advocate and defender of human and civil rights.
Platform questions from: Finbar Cullen, joint editor of The Ireland
Institute’s journal, The Republic
Sun 21 April 2002
12:30 pm Republicanism Chair: Councillor Brian Reese
Does the Good Friday Agreement complete the agenda of Irish
republicanism?
Speaker: Dr. Ruan O’Donnell, lecturer in University of Limerick
Platform questions from:Margaret McKearney, research student at TCD
1:00 pm…Lunch followed by summary and farewell (1:30-2:00pm)
Applications
Attendance at the Seminar costs Euro 25 for a ticket to all events or
Euro 10 per session. Accommodation is available locally in a range of
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Speakers
Bernadette McAliskey
Joe Bowers
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When David Trimble and Ian Paisley backed by thousands of armed unionist RUC men and British Army
marched triumphantly down the nationalist Garvaghy Road the most abiding memory of the event was
not the TV pictures of dour faced Orange bigots that hit TV screens around the world, it was that little
triumphalist jig outside Carlton Street Orange Hall. The fact that it costs the Northern Ireland tourist
industry £250 million a year mattered little to them. It was not the image of the Nobel Peace prize winner,
not the populist crusader for peace on stage with Bono and U2 that will forever epitomise the essence of the
man in the nationalist mind. It was that little Irish (or Ulster-Scots?) jig . That event provided a real but not
rare insight to the complex personal and political nature of David Trimble.
This was not a case of playing to the Unionist gallery as was his gross insult on the nature of
society in the south which he described as a sectarian mono-ethnic mono-cultural state. This was Trimble
the strategist reconciling himself to middle Unionism who in turn could see immediately that his remarks
were intended not as a truism but as a defiant gesture to the reality that whether they like it or not, thing
have changed and the pace of change is steadily increasing. It is no surprise to anyone that among those
who rallied to defend the South were the political and religious leaders of the Protestant community in the
26-Counties. They are doing very well thank you and don't want to hear such diatribe coming from a Unionist
Nobel Peace prize winner. Trimble's statement had the desired impact and evoked the inevitable reaction.
It was not a stale version of DUP gimmickry.
Ultimately, Trimble's remarks say more about the complex personal nature of the man.The outburst
vastly undermines his credibility as a serious politician but it goes much deeper than that; it is borne out of
deep-rooted inner fears. It is the manifestation of a fear that says yes, I know change is here, I know more
change is on the way but I will say anything and do everything to stifle that change because it does not
represent progress to me. Such fears can be exploited and manipulated because they make people feel
vulnerable and while Trimble's Waterfront audience is not made up of low-skilled, unemployed and
disaffected working class people from the Lower Shankill or Ballybean, they do comprise a section of
unionism who know and understand better than most that weak links are appearing in a chain that bound
them to the halcyon days of Unionist domination. Any Houdini could break it.
What Trimble Fears