By Anthony McIntyre welcomes the decision to halt vindictive police proceedings against investigative journalists, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey.
the police tell lies, they scheme and they manipulate. Every word they say, every line and sentence of every communication should be interrogated and challenged. Look behind their assertions and often you will find they are haphazard, incompetent and quite literally just making it up as they go along in the hope no one will challenge them. The emperor quite often has no clothes – Jamie Bryson
An alternative title considered for this piece was Judge Tells Thieving Bastards To Fuck Off. It would hardly have been inappropriate given the circumstances pertaining to this case where Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey had their homes raided and their journalistic material seized. Decorum prevailed over sentiment, so the more mundane option made it to the top of the page.
Nevertheless, decorum diminishes absolutely nothing about the mala fides the British police brought to this intimidation dressed up as investigation. Birney and McCaffrey called it right:
The police have dropped the case for one reason only – finally, they accept that by arresting us and raiding our homes and offices, they were the ones that acted unlawfully … The PSNI put the cudgel in the hands of Durham constabulary and let them loose on us and on press freedom itself.
The British police, whether based in Belfast or Birmingham – it makes no difference – will lie through their teeth. The cover up surrounding the unlawful killings of 96 supporters of Liverpool FC at Hillsborough in 1989, has taught us to be wary of anything they say about everything. There they lied from day one and are still lying thirty years on. There is just nobody out there left to believe them any more. Police ranks brim with chronic liars from constable to chief constable. The courts in Belfast have loudly told them where to go and it is most welcome to hear.
I have never found cause to have much faith in courts, believing in the old Belfast barrister quip that, that if you want justice go to a brothel, if you want screwed go to a court. But on this occasion, the court upheld the principle of journalistic privilege and protected the right to free inquiry, absolutely vital to any society purporting to be democratic and transparent.
Free inquiry was so essential to the wellbeing of the project both journalists were involved in. They had investigated the loyalist massacre of 6 men in a Loughinisland bar in 1994 – in a way the lying police had not – where there was extensive state forces collusion with the gunmen. The journalists subsequently produced a documentary. No Stone Unturned. A furious PSNI, already baleful towards the ombudsman Michael Maguire, were further enraged that journalists too should get uppity. Enraged that the RUC reputation was once again in tatters, the PSNI in consort with Durham Constabulary took aggressive and invasive action. “Rather than follow up leads in the documentary, police targeted the journalists.” The British police desperately wanted to drag their probing work down a judicial cul de sac and suffocate it.
Incredibly they said they did so in order to protect those unfortunate enough to have become involved in killing people. In their view investigative journalism had lives “put in danger for merely having the misfortune of being involved in terrorist atrocities at whatever level.” Well, bless my cotton socks, and pardon me Lord for ever having thought the British police lacked compassion for loyalist killers. I am left to feel discriminated against.
This “staggering proposition” and “warped mindset” might be newly expressed but it is most certainly not a newly found empathy for people they had long officially called terrorist killers. It was always there. What wasn’t there was the aggressive stupidity with which the sentiment was expressed.
The barrister for the targeted journalists concisely caught the police motive in his presentation to the court:
This was the kind of operation associated with a police state rather than with a liberal democracy that has laws to protect journalists so that they can fulfil their proper function of holding governments to account.
Intimidation, and no other, was the purpose of the arrests.
For the PSNI, it was a humiliating climbdown and means they might actually now have to do something to find those behind the Loughinisland killings.
Meanwhile, it is Victory to the Commentariat!
Last week, a report leaked of a briefing in which President Trump learned of polling by his team that showed that he trails Joe Biden in 11 states vital to his 2020 election strategy. Rather than approach the information as a valuable tool or as a moment to recalibrate strategy, Trump reportedly told his aides to deny that the internal polling existed.
When that didn’t work, Trump axed the pollsters who’d provided him with the news. According to the New York Times, Trump aides have spent the past week or so trying to determine the source of the leak. Per the codes of the current White House, this made the problem worse: “Aides violated a long-held unofficial rule of campaigns not to comment publicly on internal polling, even if the numbers leak.” Campaign manager Brad Parscale has now reportedly removed several pollsters.
Trump, a stickler for one-way loyalty, has reportedly retained two poll experts who’ve been around since at least 2016. Tony Fabrizio, a pickup by Paul Manafort who worked on some of his efforts in Ukraine, has remained with the campaign despite an incident in 2016 when the Trump campaign tried to stiff him on a $767,000 bill for his services. John McLaughlin, who did unofficial work for Trump when he flirted with a run in 2011, will stay on as well. On the cutting floor are Adam Geller, who previously worked for Chris Christie, and Michael Baselice, who worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger — two politicians the president has had public spats with. Also let go was Kellyanne Conway’s former firm. Some aides told the Times that “the president appeared to be using the episode to undermine” Conway, who now serves as White House counselor.
It’s easy to see why Trump tried to dismiss the release of the information as “fake polls.” In Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states vital to the president’s 2016 win and his 2020 strategy — Trump was behind Biden by double digits. Voters in Georgia, a reliably red state, favored Biden by six points. Voters in Minnesota, which Trump has targeted as an aspirational state, seem beyond reach, as he’s down 14 points.
In an immediate sense, these general polls are alarming for the president: His own team determined that his map to reelection could lead nowhere. (Also concerning for the campaign is his choice to ignore the information: General polling is essential for gauging voter interest and testing out where to invest resources.) But generals over a year out from the big day are historically worthless as a method of prediction, as FiveThirtyEight noted in 2015: “If you look at polls that tested the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees in the last two months of the year before the election, the average absolute error of the polling average is 10.6 percentage points.” To put it another way, Trump is currently trailing five Democratic candidates, according to a Fox News poll released Sunday, with a ten-point margin separating him and Biden. That’s better than four years ago, when he was trailing Hillary Clinton by 17 points.
A short biography of the late IRA hero by Republican Sinn Féin.
Billy McKee was born in Belfast in 1921 and joined Na Fianna Éireann in
1936. He was first arrested by British Crown Forces in 1938 for
membership of that organisation. On his release he joined Óglaigh na
Eireann (the Irish Republican Army).
In 1940 he was again arrested and spent a seven-year sentence in ‘A’
Wing of Crumlin Road Jail. He was not released until 1946. During the
Resistance Campaign of 1956-62 he was interned in 1947 and spent
three-and-a-half years in Crumlin Road with his fellow internees in ‘D’
Wing.
In August 1969 Billy McKee took over the defence of the Clonard area of
Belfast which was under constant attack at the time by the B-Specials,
RUC and loyalist mobs.
During the split in the Republican Movement later that year he remained
on the Republican path and gave his allegiance to the All-Ireland
Republic proclaimed in 1916 and established by the First Dáil Éireann in
1919. He led the opposition to the reformist ‘Stickies’ in Belfast and
in 1970 he was appointed OC of the IRA in the city.
He reorganised the IRA in Belfast and under his leadership three
Battalions were formed into a Brigade there for the first time since
1921. The Belfast Brigade (which included over 1,000 Volunteers early in
1971) was described at the time as the “scourge of the British army”.
On the night of June 27, 1970 he was seriously wounded while leading the
IRA defence of St Matthew’s Church in the isolated Short Strand area in
east Belfast which was attacked by loyalists while Crown Forces looked
on.
The battle began at about 10pm and continued for the next five hours.
Loyalists began attacking the church and surrounding property with
petrol bombs. A nearby nationalist pub was also looted and burnt.
A small group of IRA members and members of the Citizens’ Defence
Committee took up positions in the church grounds and in adjoining
streets. The IRA members were armed with M1 carbines and were led by
Billy McKee, commander of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade.
The loyalists withdrew after about five hours, as dawn broke. IRA leader
Billy McKee stated that his unit had fired 800 rounds during the battle.
Major-General Farrar-Hockley, then British commander of Land Forces in
the Occupied Six Counties, named Billy McKee among the five leading IRA
members in Belfast. Two months later an undercover British army unit
holed up in the Lower Falls arrested Billy and he was brought to court
on an arms charge. He refused to recognise the court and was sentenced
to five years in jail.
In Long Kesh Billy was elected OC of the sentenced prisoners and led the
successful 1972 hunger strike which forced the British to concede
political status to the Republican prisoners. “Special Category Status”
as the British termed it, lasted until 1976 when its withdrawal
triggered the blanket protest which eventually culminated in the 1981
hunger strike in which 10 Volunteers died.
Released in 1974 Billy became OC of Belfast again until 1977. He took
part in secret peace talks involving the British government in Derry and
in County Clare alongside Sinn Féin leader Ruairí Ó Brádaigh.
A faction led by Adams managed to get McKee voted off the IRA Army
Council, effectively forcing him out of the leadership of the
organisation.
In November 1986 when the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis voted to recognise the
26-County State, Billy McKee joined the delegates and visitors who left
the Mansion House, Dublin. He attended the first press conference of the
reorganising Republican Sinn Féin later that evening in the West County
Hotel.
In 1993 he was the Honoree at the annual CABHAIR (Irish Republican
Prisoners’ Dependants Fund) Testimonial Dinner.
Billy McKee believed strongly in the abstentionist policy of the
Republican Movement. Throughout his life he remained an advocate of
armed struggle.
Speaking later in life Billy said he had no regrets about his IRA past.
“From I was 15 until 65 I was in some way involved. I have had plenty of
time since to think if I was right or I was wrong. I regret nothing.”
The funeral of veteran republican Billy McKee was held at St Peter’s Cathedral on Saturday morning June 15, 2019. Mr Mc Kee died on Tuesday aged 97.
The funeral of Billy McKee, one of the founding members of the Provisional IRA, has taken place in Belfast.
Thousands lined the streets of west Belfast as republicans from across Ireland descended on the city for the service at St Peter’s Cathedral.
Draped in a flag Mr McKee’s coffin was carried from the church in a gun carriage, with men wearing the military-style black berets associated with the IRA part of the procession.
The veteran republican who opposed the peace process died “unrepentant”, mourners were told.advertisement
A eulogy was read at a memorial garden on the Falls Road, a short distance from the church.
A mourner said: “Billy remained steadfast to the end and had no regrets, despite all the hardship that he endured for his republicanism.
“For him it was not for a new Ireland or an agreed Ireland, it was for a 32-county independent republic that was declared at the front of the General Post Office in 1916.”
He was a former “Officer Commanding” of the IRA and involved with D Company of the organisation, the spokesman added.
Mr McKee was also a devout Catholic who went to Mass every day, and whose deafness meant his prayers were audible to other worshippers.
The address said: “We will remember you with pride.
Billy McKee passed away at his Belfast home on Tuesday
“You were one in a million and a true republican to the end – unbowed, unbroken, and most of all – unrepentant.”
Mr McKee passed away at his Belfast home on Tuesday at the age of 97.
The lifelong republican first joined the IRA in the 1930s and was imprisoned for IRA activity numerous times over the years.
When the Troubles broke out in the late 1960s he became the OC (Officer Commanding) of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade.
He was involved in a gun battle at St Matthew’s Church in the Short Strand during which two Protestants were killed alongside a Catholic civilian. Mr McKee was shot five times during the fighting but survived.
While imprisoned in Crumlin Road in the early 1970s, the veteran republican led a hunger strike in a bid to win political status for paramilitary prisoners.
Mr McKee was forced out of the IRA in 1977 and spent his remaining years as a fierce critic of Sinn Fein’s move towards peace.
