Posted by Jim on January 8, 2019
British intelligence knew in advance about the Enniskillen bombing of
1987 and altered the timing to kill civilians and create a “massive
backlash” against the IRA, according to an anonymous letter by an MI5
agent, written 30 years ago and declassified this week in Dublin.
Twelve people were killed when an IRA bomb exploded prematurely, for
reasons which have never been explained. Six days after the bombing, an
anonymous, typed letter was sent to then Tanaiste and 26 County
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan. It has now been released
as part of the 1988 State papers.
The letter was sent by a man who wrote that he was an MI5 agent
operating in the North of Ireland for 18 months and that he worked in
the special section which was set up to infiltrate republican armed
groups.
He stated that his section of MI5 knew in advance of IRA plans to plant
a bomb in Enniskillen on Remembrance Day. He said British intelligence
knew when and where the IRA gang were going to plant the bomb, its size
and technical make-up.
“Our section decided to change the timing device and let the explosion
take place so that the IRA would score an own goal and create a massive
backlash against itself,” he wrote.
“Our section also calculated that in the climate of a backlash against
the IRA all kinds of security measures could be implemented including
extradition.”
The self-admitted MI5 operative also revealed that MI6’s involvement in
the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which had killed 33 civilians in
1974 and were blamed on the UVF, had been “well established” in his agency.
He listed ways in which British intelligence sought to target
republicans, including the covert bugging of arms dumps. British ‘dirty
tricks’ had included efforts to manipulate Irish National Liberation
Army leader Dessie O’Hare through his wife, and the murder of Mary
McGlinchey, the wife of another INLA leader.
He said he had no concern for “terrorists”, but that “the results of
our interference with the Enniskillen bomb absolutely shocked and
horrified me.”
He added: “I am not even sure that I am doing the right thing, but I
feel I must do something to make people aware of what is happening, and
get it stopped. If I had more courage I would come out openly and prove
with more detail what I am now saying.”
It is not known what investigation took place into the claims, if any.
No official documents on the allegations have ever been released.
Posted by Jim on
BLACK SUNDAY MEMORIAL MASS
On Saturday, January 19, 2019, at 1100 hours, E-46/L-27 will have a Memorial Mass honoring the memory of Lt. Curtis W. Meyran, B-26, Lt. John G. Bellew, L-27 and Lt. Joseph P. DiBernardo, R-3, all of whom made the supreme sacrifice as a result of injuries sustained while operating at Bronx Box 3-3 2997, January 23, 2005. The mass will take place in quarters, 460 Cross Bronx Expressway, Bronx, NY. All off-duty members and their families are invited to attend. Members are requested to attend in dress uniform.
On Wednesday, January 23, 2019, at 1000 hours, E-290/L-103 will have a Memorial Mass honoring the memory of Firefighter Richard T. Sclafani, L-103. The mass will commemorate the 14th anniversary of his supreme sacrifice and will take place at St. John’s Church, 479 New Jersey Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. All off-duty members and their families are invited to attend. Members are requested to attend in dress uniform.
On Friday, February 1, 2019, at 1100 hours, a WTC Plaque Dedication Ceremony will be held honoring the memory of Lieutenant Edward T. Meehan, Ladder 22. The dedication will take place in the quarters of Engine 76 & Ladder 22, 145 West 100th Street, New York, NY. All off-duty members and their families are invited to attend. Members are requested to attend in dress uniform.
Posted by Jim on January 2, 2019
The killing of eight people at Loughgall by the SAS and the murder of Raymond McCord by Loyalists are among the cases in the backlog.
The scene following an IRA attack on Loughgall RUC station in Co Armagh
The sister of one of eight IRA men killed by the SAS at Loughgall in 1987 has said she hopes a fresh inquest into his death will prove there were alternatives to what happened.
The case is one of a number of historic cases from Northern Ireland’s troubled past that are awaiting or undergoing new inquest proceedings.
In response to a Freedom of Information request from the Press Association, Northern Ireland’s Courts Service provided a database of the cases currently running and those which have been delayed.
It revealed 44 legacy inquest cases, some of which are incidents involving multiple deaths. More cases are believed to be under consideration.
A lack of funding has caused some of the delay.
A £150 million package to deal with legacy issues was agreed at Stormont House talks in 2015. However, that money is not set to be released until politicians agree a way to deal with the past.
As part of the FoI response, the Lord Chief Justice said he is committed to hearing legacy cases in line with his five-year plan when funding is made available.
The inquests currently running include one into the murder by republicans of 10 Protestant workmen at Kingsmill in 1976, and one into the shooting of 11 men and women in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in 1971. Soldiers are believed to be behind those killings.
The Kingsmill inquest has been running since 2016 and remains ongoing.
The Ballymurphy inquest officially opened in November 2018 after several years of preliminary hearings and will continue in 2019 with military witnesses set to be called.
But scores more inquests have been delayed despite numerous preliminary hearings having taken place.
These include the the Stalker-Sampson cases into an alleged RUC shoot-to-kill policy in the 1980s which involved nine deaths, the shooting of four IRA men at Clonoe, Co Tyrone, in 1992 and the murder of Raymond McCord Junior by the UVF in 1997.
Mairead (left) and Roisin Kelly, sisters of Paddy Kelly, one of eight IRA men killed in an SAS ambush at Loughgall nearly 30 years ago, outside the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast (Niall Carson/PA)
Mairead Kelly, whose brother Patrick was one of eight IRA men killed at Loughgall on May 8 1987, said she is hopeful that inquest will start in 2019.
An inquest previously took place into the killings of the eight along with civilian Anthony Hughes in 1995.
She told the Press Association they first applied for a fresh inquest in 2011 and she hopes the outcome will be that there was an alternative to what happened.
The families took a judicial review earlier in 2018 to secure the release of funds to enable the inquest to start.
The eight-man IRA unit killed in a shootout with SAS soldiers following the bombing of the Loughgall RUC station, Co Armagh, in May 1987, (clockwise from top left) Gerard O’Callaghan, 29, Antony Gormley, 25, James Lynagh, 32, Eugene Kelly, 25, Declan Arthurs, 21, Patrick McKerney, 32, Seamus Donnelly, 21 and Patrick Kelly, 30 (PA Archive)
Ms Kelly was 25 when her brother, a 30-year-old father of four, was killed.
She described Patrick, the only son in her family, as someone who could do no wrong in their mother’s eyes.
The family had lived for many years in Carrickfergus before having to leave the Co Antrim town following threats from the UVF.
Ms Kelly acknowledged that many will have different opinions to her brother’s killing because he had been a member of the IRA.
But she said she wanted to see Anthony Hughes’ name cleared as he was a civilian.
“People judge the Hughes because of the situation they ended up in,” she said.
“My brother was an active IRA man who was on an active IRA operation, people will have opinions on that, it may not be my opinion, but they are entitled to that.
“But it is very wrong to judge the Hughes family.”
Posted by Jim on December 28, 2018
The Irish did not invent the Backstop to thwart Brexit. The crisis is a British one
Fintan O’Toole. Irish Times. Dublin. Saturday, December 22, 2018.
Before we declare a Christmas truce in the Brexit wars, let’s clear away one large piece of debris. In Britain, and even in Ireland, a narrative has taken hold: the Border problem was not a big issue until Leo Varadkar replaced Enda Kenny as Taoiseach in June 2017.
The issue would all have been settled amicably if a callow new administration had not come to power in Dublin. Varadkar was insecure, looking over his shoulder at Sinn Féin and determined not to be outflanked.
So the Irish became unreasonable, egged the EU on to take a hard line and created the Backstop.
They were too successful for their own good – the Backstop has made an acceptable deal impossible. There will be no deal and it will all be Ireland’s fault.
This narrative – popular among the Brexiteers, in the DUP, in the Tory Party, and in the right-wing press – feeds the larger story that nothing that has happened is their fault. It takes the self-pity that is at the heart of the Brexit project a stage further: bad enough being tyrannized by the Germans, but poor little England is now being bullied by the Irish.
Nicholas Watt, political editor of BBC’s Newsnight wrote recently of a conversation with a Tory grandee who told him: “We simply cannot allow the Irish to treat us like this . . . The Irish really should know their place.”
This kind of language brings out the worst in us all, so let’s try to keep this civil and factual.
First, a little chronology. Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach on June 14th, 2017. Was the Border question a crucial issue before then? Yes, it was.
Almost five months earlier, on January 17th, Theresa May made her now infamous speech on Brexit at Lancaster House, in which she told the Brexit ultras everything they wanted to hear. They agree with every word of it and want her to return to it.
And in this speech, May said: “Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past, so we will make it a priority to deliver a practical solution as soon as we can.”
So, of course, the Anglo-Irish mood music was good at this stage because here was the British prime minister saying clearly that she was prioritizing a “practical solution” to the Border question and that it would be delivered soon.
Also while Kenny was still in charge, another big thing happened. On April 29th, 2017, a month after May triggered the Article 50 process for leaving the Union, the EU issued its riding instructions to its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.
The instructions were clear on the centrality of the Border question to the withdrawal talks: “Continuing to support and protect the achievements, benefits and commitments of the Peace Process will remain of paramount importance. In view of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, flexible and imaginative solutions will be required, including with the aim of avoiding a hard Border . . . ”
So both sides knew and accepted by the end of April 2017 that the Border question was “a priority” and of “paramount importance”. And both sides fully understood that dealing with the Border in the context of the peace process meant one thing above all: no physical infrastructure.
No proposals
Don’t take my word for this. Here is Theresa May in Florence in September 2017, in another speech that had the full backing of the Brexit ultras: “We and the EU. . . have both stated explicitly that we will not accept any physical infrastructure at the Border. We owe it to the people of Northern Ireland – and indeed to everyone on the island of Ireland – to see through these commitments.”
So what actually happened after June 2017? It was not the change of government in Dublin that suddenly made the Border question central to the withdrawal process. What really happened is something much less dramatic: nothing.
May had said that her government owed it to everyone on the island to see through the commitments she (and her government, including Boris Johnson and David Davis) had made to “everyone on the island of Ireland”.
But the British did damn all. Again, don’t trust my interpretation on this.
The House of Commons all-party committee on Brexit noted just two weeks ago: “In December 2017, we said that we did not see how it would be possible to reconcile maintaining an open border on the island of Ireland with leaving the Single Market and Customs Union . . . Since then, we have seen no realistic, long-term proposals from the Government that would address this.”
But it is not just that the British didn’t follow through on their commitment to produce a “practical solution” in 2017. They didn’t even try. The staggering fact is that even though they knew that the Border was the key to Brexit, they left it out of their Brexit planning.
In November 2017, the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster asked the woman charged with planning for Britain’s post-Brexit borders, Karen Wheeler: “Obviously, we have the situation of Northern Ireland and the land border there; we have 300 crossing points where people and goods can freely move. From your point of view, in your team’s planning, what are the specific challenges associated with planning for these changes between the UK and southern Ireland?”
Her reply was breathtaking: “I am not really able to say. That area is not within the scope that we in the Border planning group have been working on.”
In its report the following month, the PAC noted dryly that, “Some incredibly important issues have not yet even been considered by the [border planning] group; for example arrangements for the 300 crossing points across the land border in Ireland are currently outside the scope of the group.”
And this never really changed: the British have to date not produced a single credible proposal for how they intend both to leave the Customs Union and avoid any Border infrastructure in Ireland.
The only logical conclusion is that the British don’t in fact believe that there is a technological solution. For if they did, why would they worry about the Backstop?
If the problem can be made to go away by the use of ingenious technology, then the Backstop will never be used.
Conversely, if you’re so worried about the Backstop being activated, it can only be because you don’t believe your own high-tech “solutions”.
So how could any Irish government of any hue simply take it on trust that the British would keep the commitments they had so freely given?
It simply didn’t matter who was in power in Dublin.
If the British either would not or could not come up with credible proposals to deal with what they knew to be the single biggest obstacle to Brexit, there were only two things any Irish government could do. It could ask for a legally binding assurance.
Or it could “know its place” and shut up about its own vital national interests.
