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Posted by Jim on April 6, 2019
Official communication from thr UFA
WTC
Retired Lieutenant
Timothy P. O’Neill
Ladder Company 5
FUNERAL
Friday, April 12, 2019
11:00 AM
Sacred Heart Church
981 Castleton Avenue
Staten Island, NY 10310
All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform.
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Posted by Jim on
The British government has provoked anger after it said Irish citizens
born in the north of Ireland cannot vote in a unity border poll or any
other referendum under British law, and cannot have the same rights as
other EU citizens.
Direct Ruler Karen Bradley blankly told the London parliament this week
that Irish citizens living in the North of Ireland could not vote in any
referendum.
Under current British legislation, voting rights of Irish and British
people living in each other’s jurisdiction are reciprocal. Bradley
claimed this only extends to local and parliamentary elections.
Her comments were apparently designed to address continuing confusion
over the rights of EU citizens living in British jurisdiction, but only
served to increase it. They followed a statement from the British
government’s Home Office that Irish citizens born in the Six Counties
will always be considered British, and therefore their rights as EU
citizens would not be recognised.
The combination made for a shocking one-two punch to northern
nationalists and their perceived status under the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement.
Sinn Féin Deputy Leader Michelle O’Neill said: “Once again, the British
Secretary of State has betrayed a staggering ignorance of the Good
Friday Agreement which guarantees the rights of citizens, whether they
identify as Irish, British or both.”
“The agreement clearly recognises ‘that it is for the people of the
island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively
and without external impediment, to exercise their right of
self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently
given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland’.
“For Karen Bradley to suggest that Irish citizens would not be entitled
to vote in a unity referendum is patently ridiculous.”
Ms O’Neill pointed out that thousands of Irish citizens voted in the
Brexit referendum in the North, in 2016.
“Is she now saying that they did so illegally?” asked Ms O’Neill. “Her
comments may be laughable but they are also typical of a wider disdain
within her government for the Good Friday Agreement and the protections
contained within it.
“At every stage of the Brexit process, they have sought to undermine the
Good Friday Agreement and have recently declared their intention to
treat everyone in the North as British citizens.
“That is entirely unacceptable. The British Government cannot and will
not be allowed to redefine Irish citizenship or rewrite the Good Friday
Agreement.”
Deputy Director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice Daniel
Holder said: “The lack of any understanding of the GFA among the current
government is getting beyond a joke.”
He said that the changes are not only incompatible with the Good Friday
Agreement, but also Theresa May’s own Withdrawal Agreement with the EU>
This week’s statements have increased concerns that the weakened hull of
the Good Friday Agreement will not withstand the pressures being exerted
by Brexit. The political crisis is exposing the London government’s
failure to take the GFA seriously, a legal expert has said.
Colin Harvey, a Queen’s University Belfast law professor, said that
Irish citizens who are also considered British citizens will not be
entitled to EU “settled status” after Brexit, and therefore could lose
the right to be considered an EU citizen.
“There is little evidence thus far, including in the latest immigration
rules, that the birthright provisions of the Good Friday agreement are
being taken seriously,” said Prof Harvey.
“These latest rules confirm what we already know about the
implementation gap that predates Brexit, but that Brexit is exposing.”
Emma DeSouza, a County Derry woman and Irish citizen fighting a
labyrinthine appeals process for residency for her US-born husband, has
argued that British citizenship is being imposed on the people of the
north of Ireland.
She says they two tiers of Irish citizens are being created, those who
can retain their EU rights and those who cannot. She questioned how
London could justify opening the ‘settled status’ scheme for EU citizens
differentially to Irish people based on their birthplace [south or north
of the border].
“To me, that is the definition of second-class citizenship,” she said.
She found it “extremely distressing” to see that she no longer met the
definition of EU national, which has been used to deny her the right to
live with her husband in the north of Ireland, a matter which is the
subject of an ongoing court battle.
Una Boyd, a lawyer at the Committee on the Administration of Justice who
previously represented Ms DeSouza, said the change in the definition
underpinning eligibility in the EU settlement scheme was “not
surprising” but that it was “disappointing”.
“There was an opportunity here for change to ensure the UK government
fulfil the commitments under the withdrawal agreement and the Good
Friday Agreement,” said Ms Boyd.
In Brussels, Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson described it as another
“breach” of the Good Friday Agreement due to Brexit.
Ms O’Neill said the crude attempts by London to undermine or redefine
the rights of Irish citizens were “reckless” would be rigorously
opposed.
“The Good Friday Agreement, and the rights afforded by it, are
international obligations,” said said. “They cannot be ignored or set
aside.
She urged the Dublin government to defend the rights of Irish citizens
as a co-guarantor of the peace deal. “This is not the first time London
has sought to undermine the Good Friday Agreement to suit its own
needs.”
Posted by Jim on
In January this year, it was announced that the inquest into the 1974 Guildford Pub bombings that killed five people would be resumed.
The inquest had been suspended in 1975. At the time there wasn’t any question over who was guilty of the bombings. Three Irishmen, Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill and Gerry Armstrong, and Gerry’s English girlfriend, Carole Richardson, all signed confessions stating they carried out the attacks.
For many of the public, and for the judge who presided over their trial, the only contentious issue was that the three men could not be hanged for their crimes.
In 1974, the IRA’s bombing campaign in mainland Britain was causing panic. The people and the press were angry. There were repeated calls, inside and outside parliament, for the return of capital punishment.
Irish people in England hid their accents in public; they were spat at in the streets, beaten up outside pubs. There were attacks on Irish homes.
A panicked Labour Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, introduced the temporary Prevention of Terrorism Act which allowed police to hold suspects without charge for a week.
The first man held under the new powers was a young Belfast lad called Paul Michael Hill.
Paul had come to London to pick up casual work and escape the Troubles back home.
After a week in the cells of Guildford Police Station, he had confessed to his part in eight murders and three pub bombings and he implicated every person he knew in London.
Paul remembers his rationale back in the interrogation room. His confession and the list of people he implicated were so ridiculous and absurd the police would soon dismiss it.
Instead, his testimony set a ball rolling that would led to more arrests, more interrogations and more confessions that would decimate the lives of the other members of the Guildford Four.
The confessions Paul and the others signed had been beaten out of them. Paul underwent mock executions, was beaten and thrown down metal stairs along with sleep, water and food deprivation and threats made against his family and his pregnant girlfriend.
Evidence that would have helped clear the suspects, including forensic data and witnesses who could provide alibis when the bombs went planted, was not revealed at the original trial.
Equally compelling was the 1977 trial of the so-called Balcombe Street gang, genuine IRA bombers who confessed in court to carrying out the bombings. They exonerated the Guildford Four.
Despite all this it would take 15 years and a lengthy, frustrating campaign that garnered support from former Law Lords and Home Secretaries, including Roy Jenkins, US Senators, Archbishops and even Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev, before the Four had their convictions quashed and they were released.
Paul Hill sent letters to his family across those stolen years. The letters are, at turns, poignant, angry, philosophical and funny, but always articulate and filled with the rage of an unjustly accused man.
After his release, Paul donated the letters to the Irish archive of the London Metropolitan University.
When I contacted Paul, who now lives quietly in Washington DC, to ask permission to use them he told me what he hoped people would learn from the letters.
“I took some comfort from the thought that at least my misfortune would lessen the possibility of it happening to others.
“It would appear that nothing has been gleaned from the many miscarriages of justice, especially those with political overtones.
“We live in an age in which you can disappear into a black hole, be held without charge indefinitely and be subject to torture, whilst Ivy League educated politicians play verbal gymnastics with the meaning of the word.”
It feels like Paul is right.
The Guildford Four, Maguire Seven, Birmingham Six. These notorious miscarriages of justice are a stain on the name of British justice.
They occurred because the authorities, fearing to the mob in the streets, withheld basic tenets of our criminal system to suspects and turned a blind eye to police brutality and torture.
Today, there’s a President in the White House who repeatedly praises torture.
Closer to home, we see a UK and Europe where an ugly strain of angry, popularist politics is on the rise, and a climate of nationalist swagger and intolerance are becoming increasingly normalised.
The mob are being listened to again.
Fifteen is a short film that tells the story of the Guildford Four and has been selected to be part of the Belfast Film Festival, which runs from 11 to 20 April.
Posted by Jim on April 4, 2019
WTC Retired Firefighter Kevin E. Lennon Ladder Company 175
WAKE Monday, April 8, 20192:00 PM – 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM Brueggemann Funeral Home of East Northport522 Larkfield Road East Northport, NY 11731
FUNERAL Tuesday, April 9, 11:00 AM St. Francis of Assisi Church
29 Clay Pitts Road Greenlawn, NY 11740
All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform.
