Pearse to his Mother while waiting to be executed
Posted by Jim on November 10, 2021
Tom Kelly: Reform of policing must go further
Posted by Jim on November 9, 2021
Former Northern Ireland Policing Board vice chairman Denis Bradley is pictured alongside then PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde in 2006. Photo Mark Pearce/Pacemaker
Tom Kelly 08 November, 2021 01:00
Tom Kelly
It’s hard to believe it is twenty years since the PSNI was established.
Even harder to believe it’s twenty years since allowing my name to go forward as a member of the inaugural Policing Board.
Taking the decision to participate in the reform of policing was not an easy one and was made more difficult by continued loyalist and dissident threats and violence.
Watching your family home being turned into Fort Knox, with bullet proof doors and windows, security cameras and panic buttons, was a wake up call as to the seriousness of my decision.
Full credit is due to the spouses of those who joined the new structures.
Following a bruising encounter with some unreconstructed militant republicans, my late boss, Seamus Mallon, asked if I would consider applying for a personal firearm. I didn’t warm to the idea. There were already too many guns in Northern Ireland. Gun possession ran against my non violent principles.
The first policing board was a serious challenge to the actual implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Mallon used to say: “Solve policing and the politics will solve itself”.
Thankfully the stewardship of the board was entrusted to an unusual couplet – the sober, considered and calm academic, Professor Desmond Rea, and the pastoral, enigmatic and sage-like, Denis Bradley.
Despite their obvious differences in background, culture and approach this was a leadership team which worked well.
A horrific and cowardly attack on Denis Bradley in Derry not only demonstrated his bravery but also the risks involved in peace building.
An early mistake in the construction of the board was the appointment of too few women. The board certainly wasn’t as diverse or representative as it could have been. That said, those on the first board were determined to make it work.
My own history of engagement with the RUC was wholly negative. I feared them as a teenager. Like others, I was frequently humiliated with their policy of stop and search. As a parliamentary assistant, I suffered the indignity of making constituent complaints from the streets through the Sangers at RUC fortifications. And worst of all, whilst being attacked by a gang of loyalist thugs who tried to pull me from my car, two RUC police tenders with mobile support teams sat and watched the episode without intervening.
As the grandson of a War of Independence veteran who was court-martialled, imprisoned and then exiled from the north after the Treaty, I was now sitting and working alongside Alan Brooke, grandson of the unionist icon Basil Brooke. Basil who never wanted a Catholic about the place.
That first board was forged in adversity but bonded by sense of purpose. Human rights were put at the centre of policing for the first time. It was to become a police service – not a police force.
As usual with political developments Sinn Féin were slow to get on the bus. Their ambivalence would not slow down the implementation of the Patten reforms. Unionists could sulk about these reforms but they could not change them. The RUC was no longer.
Whilst he may never get the credit, Alex Attwood, the former SDLP MLA, was tenacious in ensuring the Patten proposals were implemented to the full. It certainly cost him in the popularity stakes as a politician.
Without diminishing the sacrifices of those members of the RUC who bravely lost their lives during the Troubles, the RUC was not fit for purpose. It was wholly unrepresentative of the community it sought to serve and that wasn’t sustainable.
Increasingly many good and decent RUC officers were continually undermined by colleagues who were institutionally sectarian and actively engaged in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. The rotten apples were rotting the barrel.
Reform of policing is ongoing but now the challenge is to remove the dead hand of stale politics and partisan politicians from controlling the PSNI.
Politicians owe that much to those who wear the uniform of the PSNI.
This Day in Irish History
Posted by Jim on November 6, 2021
This day 134 years ago – 6 November 1887 – a meeting was held in St Mary’s Church Hall in Calton, Glasgow.At it, Brother Walfrid (Andrew Kerins), a native of Ballymote, Co Sligo, founded a football club to help alleviate poverty.It was the Celtic Football and Athletic Club.To read more about the founding of Celtic, pick up a copy of This Day in Irish History, available online and in all good bookshops. Perfect for those with an interest in Ireland’s past.You can order it here: https://www.easons.com/this-day-in-irish-history-padraic…(image source: The Irish Times)
Connecticut Attorney General investigating Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum closure
Posted by Jim on October 29, 2021
The Attorney General acted after a plea by Irish Americans to investigate the closure, concerned over the break-up of the large art collection.
IrishCentral Staff@IrishCentral Oct 28, 2021
The Irish Great Hunger Museum in Hamden located on the grounds of Quinnipiac University.
The Connecticut Attorney General has commenced an inquiry into the closure of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum in Hamden located on the grounds of Quinnipiac University.
William Tong’s office has an open and ongoing inquiry into Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum’s closure, a spokesperson told the Quinnipiac Chronicle. The office acted after a plea by Irish Americans to the attorney general to investigate the closure.
The letter to Tong “stated that the attorney general should look into the closure because it involves selling or distributing the museum’s collection, which is in the public interest.”
“Furthermore, donors want to know what happens to their gifts of artwork and money to a museum that is now closed,” the letter stated.
Michael McCabe, attorney for the Ad Hoc Irish group, said he was certain the Attorney General is looking into the matter.
“We’re not really considering any other legal options,” McCabe said. “We’re a group of private citizens, we have no real standing to challenge the decisions made by Quinnipiac. That’s why we got the attorney general involved,” McCabe told the Chronicle.
Tong’s office already reached out to Quinnipiac to inquire about the closure. Spokesman John Morgan said the university ”is being cooperative.”
The university “will provide the necessary information requested about Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, including relevant policies about gifts, any donations that were received, and the financial operations of the museum,” Morgan wrote in an email statement.
Morgan has stated the Famine museum raised only 25 percent of the funds needed to keep it operating. Critics have said given the pandemic, that is not surprising. 1,300 Irish have signed on to a protest letter.
Partition 100 years on: Ulster and the Treaty
Posted by Jim on October 27, 2021
In the latest in his series looking at the events which shaped partition 100 years ago, historian Cormac Moore explores the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations
Cormac Moore27 October, 2021 01:00
The artist at the Illustrated London News captured the British and Irish negotiation teams at work
IT is regularly stated that during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations, which began 100 years ago in October 1921, Sinn Féin was primarily interested in issues related to sovereignty and the crown, and not on the issue of partition.
Given the amount of time and energy spent on Ulster before and during the negotiations, most of it instigated by Sinn Féin, this stance does not bear up under scrutiny.
It is important to note, though, that while Sinn Féin did care deeply about the essential unity of Ireland, it lacked a coherent policy on Ulster and was unable to press home its advantage on the British government’s reluctance to break on Ulster.
In the talks between British prime minister David Lloyd George and Sinn Féin president Éamon de Valera that began immediately after the Truce of July 1921, de Valera rejected Lloyd George’s offer of dominion rule for Southern Ireland primarily over Ulster, claiming that, “We cannot admit the right of the British government to mutilate our country, either in its own interest, or at the call of any section of our population”.
During the Treaty negotiations from October 11 to December 6, the two primary issues discussed were Ulster and the crown. Even though Northern Ireland had been established under the Government of Ireland Act months earlier, the Irish plenipotentiaries were successful in re-opening the Ulster question, rekindling matters that unionists thought were settled.
On October 17 Arthur Griffith articulated the semblance of an offer on Ulster: “We are prepared to reason with them (Ulster unionists), and can probably come to an agreement with them if you (the British government) will stand aside. But, if they refuse our reasonable proposals, then people must be entitled to choose freely whether they will come with us or remain under the Northern Parliament.”
In a memorandum the Irish delegation sent to the British negotiators on October 24, their policy on Ulster was further crystallised: “Should we fail to come to an agreement (with Ulster unionists), and we are confident we shall not fail, then freedom of choice must be given to electorates within the area.”
With the Irish delegation stating that their allegiance to crown and empire was contingent on Ireland’s “essential unity”, Lloyd George and others within the British government pushed to change Northern Ireland’s status if Sinn Féin would accept allegiance to the crown.
Lloyd George told Griffith and Collins that he “he could carry a six county parliament subordinate to a national Parliament”. He was probably being disingenuous here as the Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig had emphatically rejected similar proposals in July.
Lloyd George also assured Griffith and Collins that he would resign “if Ulster proved unreasonable” rather than use force against Ireland. But, his cabinet secretary Tom Jones added the threatening caveat that the returning Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law would then probably form a government and would introduce Crown Colony government for the south for a couple of months.
Lloyd George met Craig in early November and unsuccessfully tried to squeeze Craig into accepting an all-Ireland parliament. Craig did not budge.
He was aware of Lloyd George’s cunning and duplicity and also of Northern Ireland’s vulnerability. Even though Northern Ireland had been established in the summer of 1921, it was in a vulnerable position.
Powers had not been transferred to the new political entity. It had no control over policing, local government, education, in reality all powers needed for it to function as a viable government. Instead of Craig agreeing to compromise, he ended up winning concessions from Lloyd George, which calls into question Lloyd George’s commitment to securing Irish unity.
On November 5, Lloyd George agreed to transfer government services to the north without the existence of a government in the south, with services scheduled to be transferred to the north from November 22 1921 to February 1 1922.
The Irish delegation were aware that the northern jurisdiction was not fully functioning when the conference began in October, services being withheld by the British demonstrated that partition could be negotiable, but they appeared unaware on how to use this to their advantage. The significance of services being transferred to the north seemed lost on almost all back in Dublin too.
With the avenue of reaching a settlement by pressurising Craig now closed, Lloyd George looked to squeeze the Sinn Féin delegation instead. Tom Jones dangled the idea of a boundary commission to Griffith and Collins.
Collins was eventually convinced by Lloyd George on December 5 (just hours before the Treaty was signed) that the boundary commission would save “Tyrone and Fermanagh, parts of Derry, Armagh and Down” for the Free State. Griffith also believed that the boundary commission “would give us most of Tyrone, Fermanagh, and part of Armagh, Down, etc.”.
He naively interpreted his assurances on the boundary commission as a ploy to help Lloyd George secure Irish unity. Instead, his assurances resulted in an animated Lloyd George using them against him as the negotiations reached their conclusion, leading to Griffith and the rest of the Irish delegation signing the Anglo-Irish Treaty on the morning of December 6.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty’s main provision relating to Ulster was Article 12. It stipulated that if Northern Ireland opted not to join the Irish Free State, as was its right under the Treaty, a boundary commission would determine the border “in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions”.
Central to the problem with the boundary commission was its ambiguity. No timetable was mentioned or method outlined to ascertain these wishes; how exactly economic and geographic conditions would relate to popular opinion, and which would prove most important.
No plebiscite was asked for, the clause was open to a number of different interpretations, and no time was specified for the convening of the commission.
The ambiguity suited Lloyd George perfectly. On the one hand, he could give the impression to Sinn Féin that large tracts of Northern Ireland would be transferred to the south, and on the other, to Craig, that it would just rationalise the cumbersome border, with perhaps the inclusion of Protestant strongholds to the north.
The Sinn Féin delegation clearly blundered greatly in acceding to such a vague and indefinable clause.
Nationalist leaders in the six and 26 counties were overly optimistic, as it would transpire, on the outcomes that would be achieved from this boundary commission, believing many areas in Northern Ireland would be transferred to the Irish Free State.
They were lulled into a false sense of security, believing they could continue to ignore the northern jurisdiction and its institutions. Their hopes would soon prove illusory.
Although the boundary commission provided for under the Treaty subsequently resulted in no change to the border, at the time of the signing of the Treaty, it was seen by most nationalists as a satisfactory method to end, or at least limit, partition.
And while Sinn Féin can justifiably be criticised for agreeing to such an ambiguous boundary commission clause and for not having a coherent strategy on Ulster, it is clear that Sinn Féin was responsible for making Ulster and partition a central component of the Treaty negotiations and that it cared deeply about the division of Ireland.
::Cormac Moore is author of Birth of the Border: The Impact of Partition in Ireland (Merrion Press, 2019).