HERE’S TO YOU MRS. RICHARDSON!
Posted by Jim on June 18, 2015
by Michael Cummings
Who is Louise Richardson? In 2003, as a terrorism expert and Dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, she testified before the U. S. Senate Banking Committee. Recently as the new Vice-Chancellor of St Andrew’s University, Professor Richardson spoke before the British Council and revealed a contempt for both President Bush’s “incompetent” post 9/11 policies and for the American public by claiming the British population was more resilient in coping with terrorist activities. The Senate testimony, her remarks before the Council and in an interview with the FINANCIAL TIMES in 2009 suggest this Irish born Harvard educated woman is just the ‘shill’ the British want and need when the U. S. State Department and Members of Congress raise questions and demand answers about British violence in Ireland. She also gets to focus the government dollars of St. Andrews University ‘s Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence set up in 1994. What better way to define terrorism than to buy the people doing the defining? You can be sure the American public will be hearing more from Mrs. Richardson as new revelations of Britain’s lawlessness and killing spree in Ireland unfold.
So what might we expect from the academician turned terrorism expert? In 2003 testimony she defined the characteristics of terrorist movements and distinctions between them. She mentioned the IRA 5 times in six pages but asserts “terrorism, as we understand it, is conducted by clandestine groups not states”[emphasis added]. Can’t you just hear the imperial “We”? Although there is nothing the IRA has done in the UK that Her Majesty’s government hasn’t done in Ireland, British actions are nicely labeled by her as “covert actions of the state.” That is surely a distinction without a difference and cold comfort to the victim’s families. She then has the temerity to say that State covert actions, although often depicted as terrorism, can be addressed by “…the whole panoply of international laws to assist us.” She failed to note, of course, that Britain has veto power in the U. N., has managed to fight every violation of the European Human Rights Convention, has the U. S. Department of State in its back pocket and has the Irish government so scared it has never invoked any treaty, international protocol or covenant to challenge its murder of Irish citizens .
In addition, Professor Richardson made distinctions between State sponsorship of terrorist groups. It is no surprise she failed to cite the example of the United Kingdom as a State exercising “…considerable control over the [terrorist]movement it sponsors…” e. g. MI-5 and Special Branch control of loyalist death squads like the Glenane Gang, the violence of the uniformed Ulster Defense Regiment and the manipulation of the IRA itself. You can be sure this was no casual omission but an academic sleight of hand to ‘not bite the hand that feeds her.’ Similarly, her reference to the aims of the 1981 hunger strike were erroneously referred to as “…to secure political prisoner status…”. With this half-truth she hid from Members of the Senate panel that the strike was to restore [emphasis added] political prisoner status which Prime Minister Thatcher chose to revoke in favor of her own ‘criminal’ stamp.
Her remarks before the British Council about President Bush’s handling of the 9/11 aftermath as “incompetent” and about the British population coping with terror better due to their IRA experience were both ignorant and insulting. First, in 30 years of conflict with the IRA nothing like 9/11 was ever inflicted upon the British public. Nor since WW II has England ever experienced anything like 9/11. The Taliban killed twice as many people in one day than the IRA did in 30 years. To suggest the British public faced anything like that from the IRA may have gratified her new British masters but was a tawdry fabrication. Second, the response to 9/11 by the Bush administration and Congress was measured, comprehensive and proportional to the attack. On the other hand, the British Parliament and public, were so frightened by civil rights protests in N. I. they unleashed lawless police and loyalist thugs and embraced draconian legislation in Northern Ireland like the Special Powers Act, the Internment Act (1971), the Emergency Provisions Act (1973) and Diplock courts instituting arrest without charge and trial without jury. American citizens were never the victims of any such dictatorial powers after 9/11 as were Her Majesty’s Subjects. Such remarks from a ‘so-called’ terrorism expert may have pleased Whitehall and the University but are insulting to Americans and their elected officials.
Perhaps when Vice-Chancellor Richardson next visits America’s university’s or our President and Congress, the students and elected officials might pose these questions and challenge her understanding of the conflict in Ireland.
- You stated : “A deliberate strategy of targeting non-combatants is what sets terrorism apart from other forms of political violence.” So when the British Army in 1974 built and delivered car bombs to the shopping centers of Dublin and Monaghan for the largest massacre of innocence in the history of the Irish state killing 34 (mostly women and children), in your opinion this was not an act of terror but a “covert action of the State”?
- Lawyers Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson and journalist Martin O’Hagan and hundreds of other innocent Catholics were assassinated by agents, uniformed and otherwise, working under the direction and control of the British government. You have indicated that “…the terrorist movement is rendered more effective and more lethal by support of the sponsoring State. In your expert opinion, doesn’t this “covert action of the State” strategy of presumably trying to end a conflict actually become a strategy for its continuation?
- In your academic experience is it common in a modern democracy for the handlers of informer agents to allow murders…even mass murder as in the case of the Dublin/Monaghan & Omagh bombings? Baroness O’Loan stated serial killers and psychopaths were used as informants and agents in the killing of nearly 900 Catholics; six elected officials among them? Can you identify any other democracy besides the UK that has done this on the scale of the UK?
- Is it common for terrorist movements, as you define them, to employ the non-violent hunger strike protest? Specifically with respect to the 1981 Hunger Strike led by Bobby Sands, an elected Member of Parliament, where 10 members of what you describe as a terrorist movement gave their lives for the RESTORATION of political prisoner status, is there any parallel anywhere in the world in the last 30 years?
- You have made a distinction between “terrorism by clandestine groups” and “covert actions by the State” because you apparently have great faith in “…the whole panoply of international law to assist in interpreting and responding to their actions.” Can you specify any law or convention that has proven to be effective in altering the violence of Britain against its own Subjects in Northern Ireland? Or against the citizens of Ireland who have been murdered by British agents in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings or what is more correctly described as an ‘undeclared act of war’ by some scholars? Isn’t it Great Britain that should have been put on a Terror Watch List?In 2009 Mrs. Richardson was baited by Jennie Erdal of the FINANCIAL TIMES to explain why some book reviewers said she had an “over-romantic view of terrorism” because of her Irish roots. “My moral code,” she responded , “is simple: inflicting violence on others is utterly and incontrovertibility reprehensible.” Her recent references to the IRA and the absence of any public references to British violence In Ireland and her characterization of that violence as “covert actions” suggests her employers have had a profound effect on her moral code.