Posted by Jim on November 25, 2018
This is the time of year when republicans traditionally remember those
‘faoi ghlas ag gallaibh’, behind bars in the cause of Ireland. This is
the current list of prisoners as collated by welfare groups, families
and friends. They are preceded by the relevant prison address for
sending cards or letters.
Castlerea Prison
Harristown
Caslerea
Roscommon
Ireland:
Eugene Kelly
Robbie O’Toole
John Costelloe
Kevin Devlin
Darren Gleeson
Joe Finnegan
Hydebank Wood Gaol
Hospital Road
Belfast BT8 8NA:
Christine Connor
Portlaoise Gaol
Dublin Road
Portlaoise
Co Laois
Ireland:
[E1 Portlaoise]
Donal Billings
Sharif Kelly
Vincent Banks
Paddy Kennedy
Jonathan Hawthorn
[E2]
Charles Anthony Deery
Garret Mulley
Seamus McGrane
Ryan Glennon
[E3 & E4]
Philip Barney McKevitt
Patrick Brennan
Stephen Hendrick
Dean Byrne
Donal O Coisdealbha
Edward McGrath
Connor Hughes
Darren Fox
Conan Murphy
James Smithers
Joe Walsh
Sean Walsh
Mick Gilmartin
Martin McHale
David Murray
Dylan Cahill
Jim Smyth
Colm Mannion
Brian Mannion
Kevin Braney
Ciaran Maguire
Dean Evans
Robert Day
Julian Flohr
Kevin Hannaway
Sean Hannaway
Edward O’Brien
David Nooney
Dochas Centre
N Circular Rd
Inns Quay
Dublin
Ireland:
Eva Shannon
Magahaberry Prison
Old Road
Ballinderry Upper
Lisburn
BT28 2PT
Ireland:
[Roe House S.S.U.]
Barry Petticrew
[Roe 3]
Tony Taylor
Conor Hughes
Ciaran McLaughlin
Seamus McLaughlin
[Roe 4]
Brendan McConville
Vincent Kelly
Darren Poleon
Sean McVeigh
Joseph Hughes
Gavin Coyle
Patrick O’Neill
Matt Johnston
Brian Carron
[Quoile House]
Brian Walsh
[Bann House]
Niall Lehd
[Erne House]
John Paul Wottoon
Posted by Jim on
Britain’s Direct Ruler in Ireland, Karen Bradley, has been widely
condemned for comments that families of victims of British war crimes
are part of ‘the problem’ for seeking coronial inquests, and that she
was ‘outraged’ by the legal pursuit of the soldiers involved.
The comments were made by Bradley while she was attending the
Westminster parliament’s ‘Northern Ireland Affairs Committee’.
Asked about creating a statute of limitations for British soldiers and
other military personnel accused of crimes, Bradley said it wouldn’t
stop inquests from taking place.
“Those inquests are much of the problem, they are civil matters, they
are not criminal and no statute of limitations could end those,” she
said.
Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill described the comments as “highly
offensive” and “traumatic to families of victims”.
“The comments by Karen Bradley are entirely unacceptable and a
fundamental breach of her government’s supposed support for the legacy
proposals agreed at Stormont House,” she said.
“The British Secretary of State needs to clarify if she is rowing back
from commitments made on legacy by the two governments and the political
parties in the Stormont House Agreement.
Families seeking the right to an inquest are not ‘the problem’, said Ms
O’Neill.
“The problem is that the British State continues to deny families access
to the truth and to due legal process.
“Karen Bradley may well be outraged about but her anger is centred on
the fact that State forces might actually be exposed and held
accountable for crimes they committed during the conflict.
“Her suggestion that the judicial system is biased against British state
forces is absurd and she must stop interfering in the judicial process.”
JOHN McKERR
Meanwhile, the inquest into the Ballymurphy massacre has heard the final
family testimonies.
Anne Ferguson wept as she told the inquest into John McKerr – one of 10
people shot dead by British soldiers in a small west Belfast community
over 36 hours – her family need to “set the record straight” about his
death.
British military officials briefed the media in 1971 that the
father-of-eight “had a gun in his right hand”, despite him having lost
that hand while serving in the British army during the Second World War.
“It would have been important for our daddy to have the misreporting
corrected,” she told coroner Mrs Justice Keegan.
“My father had been a soldier in the British army in the Royal
Engineers.
“He was proud of his military career and was a member of the British
Legion. He would not have wished to be associated with any paramilitary
or terrorist organisation.”
The family discovered Mr McKerr was critically injured after his
daughter Maureen read it in a newspaper as she waited for a lift to
work: ‘A Willie John McKerr had been shot and wounded in the Whiterock
Road area the day before’.
“Mo showed her [mother] the newspaper and she says she can remember
Mum’s screams to this day,” Mrs Ferguson said.
Mr McKerr died in the hospital a week after the shooting. His youngest
child, eleven-year-old Bernadette, tried to visit him before he died but
was “advised by a nurse not to go to see him but to remember him as he
had been”.
JOHN LAVERTY
Meanwhile, Carmel Quinn told the coroner her brother John Laverty “is
not just another statistic of the conflict”.
“He was a son, a brother, an uncle. He was deeply loved,” she said.
Mr Laverty, who was just 20 when he was “shot in the back” on August 11
1971, was “called after his uncle John who fought in the Second World
War”.
“A kind, loving child who grew up to be a 6-foot-tall laid-back, easy
going lad,” he worked for the Belfast Corporation and “to the outside
world… was a quiet big fella but in the comfort of our home he was a
prankster”.
“John always tried to look after us. He helped our sister Tilly, who had
two daughters at the time. He would mind them on a Friday night to make
sure Tilly and her husband Edmund could get a night out.”
Their mother Mary McKerr refused to leave her husband and sons when
women and children were being evacuated from Ballymurphy ahead of
internment, so her 24-year-old daughter Sue went instead with Mrs Quinn
and her sister Rita.
“John helped us over to our local community centre, carrying our bags
for us.
“I began to cry because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my
mummy and my family. I remember having a real sense of fear.
“John told me that it would be all right, I was only going on a holiday
and when we come home everything would be OK again.
“We got on the bus and left. Our John stood waving to us until we
couldn’t see him any more.
“Unknown to us, this would be the last time we would see our beautiful
brother.”
When John and his brother Terry went missing, it was 36 hours before
their parents found out one was dead and the other arrested and tortured
by soldiers and military police.
“One soldier said to [Terry]: ‘I have already shot one Irish b*****d
dead, another won’t matter.’ Terry, at this stage did not know he was
talking about our John,” Mrs Quinn said.
Posted by Jim on
A breakaway anti-abortion, nationalist/republican party being set up by
former Sinn Fein TD Peadar Toibin is organising meetings across the
country and has already recruited two councillors, Sinn Fein Kildare
councillor Ide Cussen and former Sinn Fein Cork councillor Ger Keohane.
Mr Toibin said he had experienced an “avalanche of interest” in just the
last week since he formally resigned from Sinn Fein and announced a new
32 County movement.
“Its like watching a pressure cooker have the weights taken off it,” he
said. “There is so much pent up frustration in the Irish political
system.”
While the party has no name yet, Toibin said his new party will be a
grassroots, activist organisation which will take decisions collectively
among its members.
He urged people to be patient. “Hundreds of people have contacted us,”
he said. “We are getting through you expressions of interest as fast as
we can.”
Meetings which have been organised so far include Kildare, Dublin,
Tralee, Cavan, Navan, Dundalk, Wexford, Mayo and Monaghan.
The party’s draft manifesto declares: “We seek an Irish Republic, where
the objectives of the 1916 Proclamation, to ‘Cherish all the Children of
the Nation Equally’, are achieved.”
One of its core values is that it believes “all human life should be
protected and that no mother or child should be left behind”.
The party is a “Euro-critical party” — one that opposes European
federalism and a European army. It also states it will be a party that
protects the freedom of conscience of elected representatives.
Councillor Cussen said she resigned from Sinn Fein due to there being no
freedom of conscience within the party in relation to the abortion
issue. While she said her resignation was a sad day for her, she said
she intends to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Mr Toibin.
It is the fifth political party with roots in Sinn Fein to form since
1986, the others being Republican Sinn Fein (1986), the 32 County
Sovereignty Movement (1997), eirigi (2006), and Saoradh (2016).
Mr Toibin said other elected representatives will be announced in the
coming days. He says that he is in talks with 20 and is confident that a
“good chunk will come on board”.
“I look for forward to working with them to give a voice to the hundreds
of thousands of people with no voice in the political spectrum,” he
said.
* In a separate development, a Dubliner Brian Kenna has been selected as
the new chairman of Saoradh at the party’s ard fheis [annual conference]
in Dundalk, County Louth, last Saturday. The former political prisoner
replaced Tyrone republican Davy Jordan who served as chairman since
2016.
The incoming chairman told those in attendance it was an honour to be
selected as the new chair. He spoke about Brexit and the impact it was
having on British politics. “What matter to us – if the British
establishment implodes? England’s difficulty will always be Ireland’s
opportunity,” he said.
He said Saoradh members have been active in social and political
campaigns on both sides of the border and vowed the organisation would
“consolidate and move forward with greater strength and vigour.”
Posted by Jim on
Amid a hostile reaction by unionist politicians to a draft Brexit deal,
one TUV politician has warned that the border through Ireland will be
“maintained by the gun”.
Barrie Halliday of TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice) made the apparent
threat of loyalist paramilitary violence in response to a draft
agreement on Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Published earlier this
month, it seeks to guarantee that the area around the border will not be
remilitarised.
In a video posted to Facebook, the politician and pastor said “men and
women… paid for that line to remain where it is by laying down their
lives. It was defended by the gun and will be maintained by the gun. The
border in 20 years time will be where it is today.”
His comments are at the extreme end of unionist reaction to the
withdrawal agreement, which could see a differential in the regulatory
and customs regimen on either side of the Irish Sea. Unionists fear it
could become the first crack in a political separation of the north of
Ireland away from Britain.
The agreement includes a ‘backstop’ for the Six Counties to retain
future access to the EU Customs Union and an assurance that customs and
other checks will not be required at the border. An ancillary political
declaration, published by Britain and the EU this week, includes a
statement of their “determination” to replace this backstop with
alternative arrangements.
Nevertheless, the DUP has continued to threaten to collapse Theresa
May’s minority government in London, which depends on their support. As
part of an escalating response at Westminster this week, the DUP
abstention on a number of divisions, forcing the Tories to accept a
series of opposition amendments.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said that in the coming days and weeks his
party “will be tried and tested like never before”. He was speaking at
his party’s annual conference, with senior Tories Boris Johnson and
Philip Hammond in attendance.
Escalating the party’s rhetoric, he declared it would “require the
collective will not just of this party but of all who value and cherish
our precious union to stand firm in the face of the inevitable
onslaught.”
Mr Dodds said that those who supported the backstop must consider “the
effect of the trade barriers and growing divergence that would
inevitably emerge – some immediately, most in future years – between
Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK”.
He vaguely threatened that there would be “consequences” for the British
government if it pressed ahead with the withdrawal agreement.
Earlier this week, Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald said the DUP had got it
“catastrophically wrong” by pursuing a hard Brexit and rejecting the
withdrawal agreement.
“They’re wrong about the draft agreement,” she said. “It’s not perfect
but it is certainly a baseline to protect our economic interests and
agreements.
“It’s now very clear right across Ireland, North and South that that key
voices from business, agriculture and other sectors are coming out and
facing down the very negative politics advanced by the DUP and the Tory
Brexiteers.
“Now is the time to ensure that the bottom lines around no hard border,
the protection of the Good Friday Agreement and citizens’ rights are
met.
“This is vital to protect everybody who lives and works on the island of
Ireland.”
Posted by Jim on November 23, 2018
RADIO FREE EIREANN will broadcast this Saturday November 24th on WBAI Radio 99.5FM or WBAI.ORG at 12 noon-1pm New York time or 5pm-6pm in Ireland or anytime after the program on WBAI.ORG – Archives (scroll back to 12 noon Saturday)
CARMEL QUINN of the Ballymurphy Massacre families, will describe how it felt to speak at the inquest into the British troop murders of 11 people including her older brother,a Catholic priest and mother of 8 children,and also report on her American tour which included meetings with Congress a special Irish Embassy reception and public events.
Balladeer,historian and songwriter DEREK WARFIELD, now with the Young Wolfe Tones, will talk about Evacuation Day,on November 25th, celebrating the day British troops left New York and Washington’s Army took the city back in triumph at the close of the American Revolution.
JOE JAMISON,longtime Irish American labor activist, and also a peace activist will report on the Peace And Neutrality Alliance Conference in Dublin and growing concerns about Irish neutrality and independent foreign policy.
We will preview an upcoming WBAI Special Event,staring MALACHY McCOURT and co-host JOHN McDONAGH, with a special intervention by Fr. PAT MALONEY.