Good Afternoon All, Hope this finds you well. As the Brooklyn Cyclones get ready to kick off our 2021 season I wanted to get some information out about our July 22nd Irish Night to some new and old perspective Irish Heritage Groups within the local community. Some of you have been to Coney Island for a baseball game on the beach before with your own Irish Group or family or another group while for others it could potentially be a first time. There will be more details to come but I wanted to get that date and some preliminary information out to you. Thursday, July 22 @ 6:30pm Tickets will be available at the discounted rate of just $15 per for groups of 12+ people 1st 2,000 fans in attendance will receive a 2021 Irish Night Heritage Baseball CapA special jersey + ticket package will be for sale also. Pricing TBD In addition, O’Malley’s Irish Dance Crew as well as the Breezy Point Pipes and Drums will hopefully be able to have some kind of performance here at the stadium or we’ll record a virtual performance in advance and play it on the videoboard. I look forward to carving out sometime with you to possibly discuss how we can work with your Emerald Society, AOH, or another Irish Group on this special night. Let me know what time works best for you.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians has reacted to the appointment of Trevor Ringland as Northern Ireland Special Envoy to the United States. And the reaction is one of concern. In a statement by way of National Freedom for All Ireland Chairman Martin Galvin, the Hibernians stated: “The appointment of Trevor Ringland as the North’s Special Envoy to the United States has heightened concerns that the British government plans to renege on the Stormont House Agreement and shut the door on legacy justice for those killed during the Troubles.”Mr. Ringland has been advocating this approach in a letter writing campaign for more than a decade, and now describes his role to the Belfast newspaper, the News Letter, as “challenging” the strong Irish American lobby, and what he regards as Irish America’s “simplistic views” on the North. “Continued Galvin: “The job was created for Mr. Ringland less than one month following the Ballymurphy Massacre inquest verdict and United States Senate passage of a bipartisan Resolution backing the Stormont House Agreement and action to resolve the injustices of state-sponsored violence .”Galvin described Mr. Ringland “as a vocal opponent of any investigations of British crown forces. “Mr. Ringland, in his first interview after his appointment given to the Belfast News Letter, had attacked Pennsylvania State Representative Kevin Boyle for saying “The British government -through its intelligence, army and police – ran the UDA and UVF in the north of Ireland but still wants to hide that fact. ”Added Galvin: “There is substantial evidence to support Boyle’s statement in the de Silva report commissioned by former British Prime Minister David Cameron on the death of Pat Finucane, and a host of investigative reports on collusion. Ringland’s refutation is: ‘My father was a policeman. My grandfather was a policeman. There’s no day my father went out to kill anybody without casting any aspersions on Mr. Ringland’s family members, nationalists are unlikely to be convinced that because Mr. Ringland’s father may not have been engaged in collusion, that, therefore, no members of the RUC or British military were guilty of collusion. “For hundreds of families who saw loved ones murdered by British crown forces or loyalist agents, their loss was compounded by the belief that the British state was complicit the murder of their loved ones. The Good Friday Agreement promised them a chance for justice. Families then found the British government was blocking their hopes for truth. The AOH and other Irish American organizations have been supporting these campaigns for legacy justice, organizing American tours, and bringing them to Congress .“Sixteen years after the Good Friday Agreement, the British and Irish governments entered the Stormont House Agreement in December 2014, offering bereaved families hope for legacy justice. They agreed four new legacy bodies among them a Historical Investigations Unit, which could investigate controversial conflict killings including those by British forces or collusion killings .It also proposed an Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, an Oral History Archive, and an Implementation and Reconciliation Group. “Instead of keeping its agreement, the British began a series of delays including consultations which have shown 95% support for the Stormont House Agreement. Last year, as part of the New Decade New Approach agreement, the British pledged to introduce Stormont House legacy mechanisms within 100 days. “Then the British government reneged. Instead of a Historical Investigations Unit investigating hundreds of controversial killings, including British crown force and collusion killings, Britain proposed a review by their appointed ‘independent body.’ This panel would close all cases, unless they saw ‘new compelling evidence and a realistic prospect of a prosecution.’ They would hold no investigation to look for new evidence, before ruling there was none. “Last month’s Ballymurphy Massacre inquest verdict highlighted the threat that legitimate investigations into controversial Troubles killings would pose. Justice Keegan not only confirmed that the ten victims of Britain’s Ballymurphy Massacre were totally innocent, but highlighted the orchestrated cover-up used to brand each victim guilty. “The British government has already announced plans to avoid such revelations in future. They want an amnesty for British troops and to break its Stormont House Agreement pledge of a Historical Investigations Unit. Mr. Ringland is expected to serve as an apologist for the new legacy measures.” Concluded Galvin: “Mr. Ringland’s appointment is a challenge and opportunity for Irish America. The AOH supports the hundreds of victims’ families who have been fighting for justice for murdered loved ones for decades. “We are confident that if Americans hear the facts, they will understand why Britain fears legitimate investigations into crown force or collusion killings. Mr. Ringland’s visits will be opportunities for Irish Americans to present the facts.”
See the article in its original context from September 29, 1994, Section B, Page 4Buy ReprintsNew York Times subscribers* enjoy full access to TimesMachine—view over 150 years of New York Times journalism, as it originally appeared.SUBSCRIBE*Does not include Crossword-only or Cooking-only subscribers.About the ArchiveThis is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
Artfully casting off his old role as official outcast, Gerry Adams, the political spokesman for the Irish Republican Army, beamed from the steps of City Hall yesterday as New York politicians vied to be at his side and hail him as honored guest and newborn statesman.
With his State Department visa ban now a thing of the past, Mr. Adams, once imprisoned and often denounced by Britain as a Northern Irish terrorist, received multiple awards and heroic praise from city officials who welcomed him as a “harbinger of peace” and “a civil rights activist.”
A relatively small lunch-hour crowd of a few hundred cheered him, but the domestic political value of Mr. Adams’s official turnabout was demonstrated by the throng of local politicians who crowded about Mr. Adams. They pressed him to accept three different government proclamations, the Crystal Apple award extended by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to ranking foreign dignitaries, and a private New York Police Department boat tour of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
The tall, darkly bearded man from Belfast was officially hailed as an Irish leader to be reckoned with by Mayor Giuliani, whose former duties as United States Attorney in Manhattan included taking action against aliens who were I.R.A. partisans. But with a cease-fire by the I.R.A. this month, Mr. Giuliani yesterday credited Mr. Adams with leading the guerrilla movement to a courageous step.
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“I think President Clinton should greet him,” declared the Mayor, joining the Irish visitor’s own campaign for the Clinton Administration to honor him with a personal White House visit, which would add to the pressure on London for peace talks open to leaders of Northern Ireland’s militant republican movement.
Mr. Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.’s political arm, stepped forward happily beneath a City Hall welcoming banner as the Police Department’s Emerald Society offered the bagpiped skirl of “Wrap the Green Flag Around Me, Boys.”
Expressing “sad and glad appreciation,” Mr. Adams thanked the city government for an “unwavering commitment” to economic-boycott pressures on Britain’s Northern Irish Government in behalf of the Catholic minority. Then he addressed the British Prime Minister, John Major, as if his voice might carry out beyond the Brooklyn Bridge to London: “It is time, Mr. Major, to go — to leave our country and to leave us in peace.”SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more.Sign Up
He received no shortage of sympathy from a phalanx of politicians led by City Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, City Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi and Mayor Giuliani. The Irish group was particularly delighted to hear Mr. Giuliani talk of the North’s suffering under an “outside occupation force” — precisely the characterization resented by the North’s Protestant loyalists, who worry that the British might eventually leave Northern Ireland.
“We don’t have peace,” Mr. Adams said, complaining that British troops still patrol the North while loyalist gunmen have been attacking Catholic republicans and the Sinn Fein headquarters in Belfast.
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Mr. Adams seemed in an ebullient mood for the visit, part of a multicity tour of the United States that is to include Washington next weekend. Shadowed by one persistent British reporter demanding to know whether a suspected I.R.A. gunman was part of his entourage, Mr. Adams drew laughter at a City Hall news conference when he replied that the world now knows British justice is a matter of “innocent until proven Irish.”
Beyond the rush of praise from city officials, Mr. Adams said he was “humbled and overwhelmed” by the many people shouting to him from the streets. One New Yorker bellowed with a thick brogue: “I’m McKenna from Coleraine! You’re doing a grand job, Gerry!”
“I never thought I’d see the like of this,” said the man, Bernard McKenna, an immigrant from Northern Ireland who is a city food inspector and who made a beeline to Mr. Adams’s side when he spotted him outside the Municipal Building. “Great stuff!”
