May under threat as top Tories quit over Brexi

Posted by Jim on July 9, 2018

Boris Johnson has resigned as British Foreign Secretary, following the
departure earlier today of Brexit Minister David Davis, amid a growing
crisis within the Conservative Party over London’s Brexit strategy.

Johnson said the Brexit “dream is dying, suffocated by needless
self-doubt”, days after the Tory cabinet had appeared to agree to
support Theresa May’s Brexit plan. “We are headed for the status of a
colony,” Johnson declared in his resignation letter.

In his own letter, Mr Davis said he did not “believe” in the Brexit plan
and he was not the best person to deliver it. Prominent Leave campaigner
Dominic Raab has been appointed to replace him.

Speculation continues that internal discontent by Brexiteers could lead
to an early vote of no confidence against Theresa May. However, at a
meeting this evening of the ‘1922 Committee’, the parliamentary group of
the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, May was reported to have
received “strong backing”.

The committee has not said that it has received the necessary indication
from 48 Tory MPs to trigger a motion of no confidence, meaning that
under parliamentary rules, May’s leadership is secure for now.

However, the conflict seems far from over, and the trickle of
resignations continued this evening with the departure of Chris Green,
Parliamentary Private Secretary to the British Department For Transport.
Conor Burns MP, Parliamentary Secretary under Boris Johnson, has also
quit. Uncertainty remains about the stance of other senior Brexiteers,
such as Liam Fox and Michael Gove.

Even if the current wave of dissent comes to nothing, the fate of the
Irish border hangs in the balance amid doubts over the detail of May’s
Brexit plans.

Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald has said that Ireland must not become
collateral damage amid the Tory ‘civil war’. The Sinn Fein president was
speaking after meeting business leaders in Belfast.

“Our sole priority is the protection of Irish interests north and
south,” Ms McDonald said.

“The civil war within the Tory Party is a matter for the Tories, and let
no-one imagine that Ireland will be the collateral damage for the Tory
Brexit or for that matter that we will pick up the tab for the Tory
civil war.”

The Sinn Fein leader also warned that Britain should not “persist with a
strategy that is about brinkmanship”.

“We need an answer to the Irish question, Europe has provided that
answer by way of the Irish protocol [maintaining the current border
regulations by default]” she said.

“Mrs May seems still to be at sixes and sevens and is causing confusion
in terms of what her and her Government’s position is.

“They say they are leaving the customs union and the single market, we
know that the stated objectives of protecting the Good Friday Agreement,
avoiding a hardening of the border, protecting citizens’ rights, demands
that specific arrangements are agreed for the north of Ireland.”

Asked for her view on the Chequers deal, Ms McDonald said it appeared to
be selective about the freedom of movement of goods.

“I don’t imagine that the European negotiators will countenance that,”
she said. “You can’t cherry-pick the internal market, and Europe can’t
and won’t break its own rules.”

She said she would await the publication of the British government’s
white paper.

“But all of this gets set to nothing if Mrs May insists the north of
Ireland must exit the customs union and the single market.

“You can’t make that assertion on one hand, and on the other hand insist
that you will ensure there is no hardening of the border and protect the
Good Friday Agreement.

“That is a contradictory position.”

She added: “We didn’t choose Brexit, Brexit is a British phenomenon and
Mrs May, or whoever the prime minister is, needs to keep their word and
their stated position in protecting the Good Friday Agreement.”

Policing in Northern Ireland: how the past threatens the futu

Posted by Jim on

By Paul Nolan, 09 July 2018

The UK government is holding a consultation on plans to deal with the legacy of the Troubles. But Paul Nolan examines how the lengthy delay in tackling the issue has undermined the new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland.

ONE perspective on the special nature of policing in Northern Ireland can be found in the most recent Europol Terrorism Situation and Trend Report. Terrorism is the flashing red light for police forces across Europe, and this annual monitoring exercise provides the basic data to allow for the coordination of police efforts across national boundaries. The 2017 report showed that in the previous year there had been a total of 142 failed, foiled and completed attacks reported by eight member states. Of the 142 the majority (76) were in Northern Ireland and were the work of dissident republicans. Most of these fell into either the ‘failed’ or ‘foiled’ categories rather than ‘completed’; moreover one measure of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) success in frustrating their efforts is that in January of this year one of the most dangerous of the dissident groupings, Óglaigh na hÉireann, decided to call off its campaign.

This isn’t the only area of success for the PSNI, though some of the biggest achievements may be hard to spot. A quick pointer on how to detect them can be taken from Sherlock Holmes. In the story Silver Blaze Holmes, investigating a burglary, draws the attention of a Scotland Yard detective to the curious incident of the dog in the night. But the dog didn’t do anything, replies the hapless detective. That, says Holmes, was the curious incident. There have been many such curious incidents in Northern Ireland in the past year, many dogs that didn’t bark and many others that lost their bite. For the fourth year in a row the marching season passed off peacefully. Not one plastic bullet was fired, there was no large-scale disorder, and water cannon was never used. This form of normality may be taken for granted elsewhere, but in Northern Ireland this all makes for quite a remarkable achievement.

The good news doesn’t stop there. It may not be widely known but Northern Ireland has the lowest crime rates in these islands. The most recent figures issued by the Northern Ireland Crime Survey (NICS) estimate that 9% of households were victims of at least one crime in the preceding 12 months; the corresponding figure for England and Wales was 15%. It is difficult to make direct comparisons with the Republic of Ireland as crime totals are not aggregated by the Central Statistics Office in the same way, but on serious crimes like homicide the Northern Ireland rate is much lower. For example, in 2017 there were 14 murders in Northern Ireland compared with 42 in the Republic. What’s more, the Northern Ireland crime rate has been steadily falling. If a comparison is made with 1998, the year of the Good Friday Agreement, today’s crime rate is just three-fifths of what it was 20 years ago.

This may go some of the way to explain why approval rates for the PSNI are at a record high. The NI Statistics and Research Agency conducts a rolling annual survey and the latest results, published in December 2017, show that 90% of respondents said they had either a total, a lot, or some degree of confidence in the PSNI’s ability to provide an ordinary day-to-day service, and that 93% felt either very, or fairly, safe in their local community. These figures take a little unpacking of course, because when the questions zone in on particular aspects of policing the approval rates dip. That happens in all surveys on policing: people tend to make a distinction between their local policing experiences and concerns, and the way they think about the police as an institution. The good news for the PSNI in these figures is that even when people’s direct experience of policing has been poor it does not dent their support for the PSNI as a body. In fact, when Pablo de Grieff, the UN Special Rapporteur on Truth, Justice and Reparation, issued a report on Northern Ireland last year he drew attention to the “extraordinarily high levels of public trust” in the PSNI, and adjudged policing reform to be the part of the Northern Ireland peace process as the area where “the greatest achievements have been made.”

Loyalist flag protesters pictured outside Belfast City Hall in 2014.

Policing also happens to be the area where some of the greatest problems are concentrated. Problems that politicians can’t solve leach out of the debating chambers and are then played out on the streets. When the parties were unable to agree on the flying of the union flag at Belfast City Hall in December 2012 the result was four months of public disorder that resulted in 160 police receiving medical attention. The ‘thin blue line’ was stretched to breaking point, with 2,980 ‘occurrences’ recorded in one night at the height of the protest. On occasion, as at the time of the G8 summit, additional officers have been brought in from English police forces, and the bills have been paid out of PSNI budgets. That would not be an option if there was a large-scale challenge to public order today. There simply isn’t the money to cover the costs; over the past three years the PSNI’s budgets have been slashed by £180 million. As a result, the number of officers has reduced by 8% since 2012. The Patten Report which in 1999 produced the blueprint for policing in Northern Ireland had recommended a standing total of 7,500 officers for peacetime policing. The peace that was envisaged never arrived: nineteen years later some 27% of the budget still has to be given over to security-related issues, and the total number of officers is down to 6,689.

The PSNI currently has 6,711 officers despite the Patten Report recommending a level of 7,500 officers during peacetime.

One consequence of the budget squeeze has been a cutback in local neighbourhood policing. Researching this article I found a consensus that took in sources as diverse as the Police Federation and Sinn Féin around this key concern: neighbourhood policing needs a larger share of resource. The argument is a compelling one. If money was front-loaded into having a friendly police presence in each local community, it would reduce crime and the investment would return larger dividends than money spent on the detection and prosecution of crimes further down the road. The senior command of the PSNI is aware that this view has political traction, but feels it doesn’t take into account changes in the nature of crime. Put simply, crime has been moving indoors. There has been a steady decline in the traditional forms of acquisitive crime such as robbery, car theft and burglary, and a steady increase in intimate crimes, such as those relating to domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse. In addition there are new internet-driven crimes that were unknown even ten years ago – blackmail as a result of sexting, fraud and cyber-crime – things that officers on the beat can’t be expected to police effectively.

But the PSNI has another problem in its relationship with communities, or rather with the extent to which it is representative of the whole community. This is the problem that has dogged policing in Northern Ireland since the foundation of the state. The committee which sat in 1922 to advise on the setting up of the RUC recommended that Catholics should make up 30% of the police force in order for it to be representative of the whole community. That never happened, and in fact by the time the Patten Commission delivered its report in 1999 on the future of policing Catholics made up only 8% of the force. The quota system introduced by Patten guaranteed that year-on-year 50% of new recruits would be Catholic, but in March 2011 the then Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, decided that with overall numbers standing at 30% the upward trajectory was secure and the quota system (strongly resented by unionists) could be dropped. The trajectory did not continue in the way Paterson expected. Instead the Catholic percentage has more or less flatlined at just over 30 % – today’s total is 31.5% when, if it was really representative of the working age demographic, it would be 50%.

There is one more problem that may in fact dwarf all the others. James Joyce wrote that history is the nightmare from which we are trying to awaken; substitute the word ‘legacy’ for ‘history’ and that describes the PSNI’s deepening crisis. The Patten report of 1999 was actually titled A New Beginning, and the hope was that a line could be drawn under the past and a new start made. It explained that its central purpose was ‘restorative not retributive’. That still left some questions as to what was to be done about murders and other crimes committed before the Good Friday Agreement. The decommissioning process of 2005 allowed for the physical destruction of paramilitary armories, and with them the forensic evidence needed for successful prosecutions. What then was supposed to happen? The first Chief Constable to face the post-accord dilemma was Sir Hugh Orde who frequently demanded from politicians the answer to the question: were the police supposed to clear up the 3,200 historic murders still on the books, or to put their resources into present-day policing? There was never a clear answer on how to deal with this dilemma, and over time the horns of the dilemma have grown longer and more pointed. An amnesty has never been a realistic political option, nor has amnesia. The past keeps bursting through into the present. First there were the official inquiries like the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday, then the campaigns taken by individual families, followed by the group campaigns like those taken by the relatives of the Ballymurphy shootings or the Loughinisland killings. The Chief Constable currently has 300 claim letters on his desk, and these are no longer coming just from the nationalist side: re-opening the past is now a concern for unionist communities, anxious for new police investigations into events like the Enniskillen bomb.

The largest inquiry is the one called Operation Kenova, which was announced in May 2016. This five year investigation will take into account approximately 50 murders by the alleged IRA informer known as Stakeknife. Even that, however, pales beside the possibility of a wholesale review into the activities of the notorious UVF unit, the Glennane Gang, linked to security force members and responsible for as many as 100 killings. The PSNI has been given an order by the High Court to re-open investigations into these killings as a themed inquiry, one that would almost certainly cost double the £35 million dedicated to Operation Kenova.

Had the raft of measures in the Stormont House Agreement been rolled out then there would be an Historical Investigations Unit in place with its own dedicated budget and, alongside it, a large-scale societal process of truth recovery. Those proposals, gratefully accepted by the PSNI, were made four years ago. Now the Secretary of State has launched a new, four month consultation on how to deal with legacy issues. Already, the parties have re-opened the old divisions that the Stormont House Agreement had resolved, principally around the respective weight given to state actors and non-state actors. Moreover, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory, has declared the proposed arrangements “unworkable in practice”. Without a new consensus emerging the problem is going to leave policing marooned in the icy waters that have proved so difficult to navigate. What is foreseeable – because it has already begun to happen – is that the ship will collide with the iceberg. A police force that was designed for the future may yet founder on the past.

• Paul Nolan is an independent researcher who writes on the Northern Ireland peace process and the problems of post-conflict societies. He is also a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, though writes in a personal capacity. This article forms part of a project marking the 20th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement produced by The Detail with Queen’s University Belfast.

NEW YORK STATE FREEDOM for ALL IRELAND BULLETIN  

Posted by Jim on July 8, 2018

FFAI ISSUES UPDATE

A-Pat Finucane family in Supreme Court appeal-The family of murdered civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane, took the fight for an independent judicial inquiry to the Supreme Court in London. Pat Finucane battled for justice in the British non-jury Diplock courts which replaced Internment, despite threats by British Minister Douglas Hogg, and Royal Ulster Constabulary members telling clients “Finucane would not be alive to finish your case”. Brutally murdered in front of his family on February 12,1989,British Army and RUC agents who were involved had warned crown officials of the planned murder. The case broke open denials of collusion. The family has been fighting for a public inquiry, where their lawyer could question witnesses, instead of a crown appointed judge merely reviewing documents.  Counsel Barry MacDonald called it “murder by proxy whereby the state engaged in terrorism through loyalist paramilitaries”. Geraldine Finucane pledged her family “had come for an inquiry and for justice. We will never stop”. A decision is expected in the fall.

B-Choice of Drew Harris as Garda Commissioner alarming-Civil rights and legacy groups are critical of the choice of the crown’s Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris as Garda Commissioner heading  Irish police in the 26 counties. Harris was a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary before its name was changed to Police Service of Northern Ireland and worked closely with MI5

British intelligence . His father was a high ranking RUC officer killed by the IRA. Harris has been a major obstacle on legacy truth. Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice said “Drew Harris has had a stranglehold on legacy and has acted partially and with vested interest at all times not least concerning incidents of shoot-to-kill and collusion carried out by the state during the conflict”. The Irish government thought Harris’ appointment would be favorably received by unionists. Harris oversaw the decision to arrest, rather than interview former Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and veteran Republican Ivor Bell in connection with the Jean McConville case. Because Ivor Bell refused to inform on Adams, he still faces charges despite serious medical issues.

C-British troopers stonewall Ballymurphy Inquest- There are fears that the inquest into eleven Ballymurphy murders, scheduled to begin on September 11th,may be further delayed because British trooper witnesses refuse to comply. The “Ballymurphy Massacre” took place over a three day period, beginning on August 9,1971.Ten people, were fatally shot including Catholic Priest Fr. Hugh Mullan, and mother of eight Joan Connolly. An eleventh victim died from a heart attack after a mock execution. Victims were shot as many as 14 times. The British crown blamed all killings on the victims, claiming the Paratroopers were under fire, despite  no British casualties nor IRA weapons found. British news broadcast crown accounts. Some troopers took part in Bloody Sunday,5 months later. British troopers and veterans groups are trying to delay the inquest, crying “witch-hunt”, and refusing legal requests for testimony or contact information. Families of the victims have been fighting almost 47 years for a chance to prove their loved ones innocent.

D-Orange marching season hinders Stormont moves– While the  Stormont Assembly deadlock continues, attempts at new talks will be hindered by the onset of the Orange marching season. The British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, after an eleven year interval, will meet on July 25th.This meeting would allow the governments to publish suggestions for new talks. The Orange marching season, extending through the summer will include huge bonfires where Irish flags, pictures of the Pope and various nationalist politicians  are burned. British and loyalist flags  fill towns and more than 4,000 parades will be held. This year the Mid-Ulster District Council, with its nationalist majority will be a special target. The Council voted to add signs in Irish to Council properties and wants to regulate bonfires located on council land. Loyalists responded by distributing specially made Mid-Ulster Council flags to be burned atop bonfires across the six counties. Last February the DUP backed out of an agreement, which would have put Arlene Foster back as First Minister, merely because it included an Irish language Act subject to a Respect for Languages Act and in tandem with an Ulster Scots Act. This was too much for unionists. No DUP compromises are expected in this political atmosphere.

                  EMMET MONUMENT REDEDICATION

The words “Emmet Monument” have a special place in Irish history. In the nineteenth century when all hope of freedom seemed to have been crushed, Emmet Monument Societies were created. The subtle joke was clear to any Irishman or woman. Robert Emmet told Norbury, known as the  “hanging judge”, that he wished his epitaph to be inscribed on his tombstone only after Ireland  “takes its place among the nations of the earth.” Emmet Monument Societies meant freeing Ireland from British rule, and became the forerunners of the Fenians and other patriot groups which made 1916 a reality.

On Sunday July 22,2018 the anniversary of Robert Emmet’s rebellion, there will be a special rededication and unveiling of a monument to the Emmet family in Beechwood Cemetery ,New Rochelle at 3pm.

The family plot includes the graves of Thomas Addis Emmet, an exiled United Irish leader, among other family members who were patriots of Ireland, as well as the United States. There will be a reception afterwards at the Heritage on McLean Avenue. For information call-718-877-0345.

Many of the organizers are young AOH members who started a new Division. This should be a great event.

TOM CLARKE-KATHLEEN DALY CLARKE MEMORIAL

During the Suffolk County meeting on July 18th,the framed certificates from the Tyrone AOH in appreciation of the Tom Clarke -Kathleen Daly Clarke Memorial will be formally presented to our State President Vic Vogel and to the Suffolk County members who built and maintain this great memorial.

                   NATIONAL CONVENTION

Looking forward to the National Convention, meeting FFAI leaders from around the Country and sharing some of the ideas that have worked for us in New York with other states!

Please contact me at MGALVINESQ@AOL.COM.

Martin Galvin

Marquette University goes Orange

Posted by Jim on

Joe McDonnell – Died July 8th, 1981

Posted by Jim on

A deep-thinking republican with a great sense of humour

THE FOURTH IRA Volunteer to join the hunger-strike for political status was Joe McDonnell, a thirty-year-old married man with two children, from the Lenadoon housing estate in West Belfast.

A well-known and very popular man in the Greater Andersonstown area he grew up, married and fought for the republican cause in, Joe had a reputation as a quiet and deep-thinking individual, with a gentle, happy go-lucky personality, who had, nevertheless, a great sense of humour, was always laughing and playing practical jokes, and who, although withdrawn at times, had the ability to make friends easily.

As an active republican before his capture in October 1976, Joe was regarded by his comrades as a cool and efficient Volunteer who did what he had to do and never talked about it afterwards.

Something of a rarity within the Republican Movement, in that outside of military briefings and operational duty he was never seen around with other known or suspected Volunteers, he was nevertheless a good friend of the late Bobby Sands, with whom he was captured while on active service duty.

Not among those who volunteered for the earlier hunger strike last year, it was the intense disappointment brought about by the Brits’ duplicity following the end of that hunger strike, and the bitterness and anger that duplicity produced among all the blanket men, that prompted Joe to put forward his name the next time round.

And it was predictable, as well as fitting, when his friend and comrade Bobby Sands met with death on the sixty-sixth day of his hunger strike, that Joe McDonnell should volunteer to take Bobby’s place and continue that fight.

RESOLVE

His determination and resolve in that course of action can be gauged by the fact that never once, following his sentencing to fourteen years imprisonment in 1977, did he put on the prison uniform to take a visit, seeing his wife and family only after he commenced his hunger-strike.

The story of Joe McDonnell is of a highly-aware republican soldier whose involvement stemmed initially from the personal repression and harassment he and his family suffered at the hands of the British occupation forces, but which then deepened – through continuing repression – to a mature commitment to oppose an occupation that denied his country freedom and attempted to criminalise its people.

It was that commitment which he held more dear than his own life.

FAMILY

Joe McDonnell was born on September 14th 1951, the fifth of eight children, into the family home in Slate Street in Belfast’s Lower Falls.

His father, Robert, aged 59, a steel erector, and his mother, Eileen (whose maiden name is Straney), aged 58, both came from the Lower Falls themselves.

They married in St. Peter’s church there, in 1941, living first with Robert’s sister and her husband in Colinward Street, off the Springfield Road, before moving into their own home in Slate Street, where the family were all born.

These are: Eilish, aged 38, married with five children; Robert, aged 36, married with two children; Hugh, aged 34, married with three children; Patsy, aged 32, married with two children, and now living in Canada since 1969; Joe; Maura, aged 28 and single; Paul, aged 26, married with two children and Frankie, aged 24 and single.

Frankie is currently serving a five-year sentence on the blanket protest in H6-Block on an IRA membership charge, following his arrest in December 1976, and is due for release this December.

A ninth child, Bernadette, was a particular favourite of Joe’s, before her death from a kidney illness at the early age of three.

“Joseph practically reared Bernadette”, recalls his mother, “he was always with the child, carrying her around. He was about ten at the time. He even used to play marleys with her on his shoulders.”

Bernadette’s death, a sad blow to the family, was deeply felt by her young brother Joe.

DATING

One of his friends at that time was his future brother-in-law, Michael, and he began dating Goretti from around the time he was seventeen.

Joe and Goretti, who also comes from Andersonstown, married in St. Agnes’ chapel in 1970, and moved in to live with Goretti’s sister and her family in Horn Drive in Lower Lenadoon.

At that time, however, they were one of only two nationalist households in what was then a predominantly loyalist street, and, after repeated instances of verbal intimidation, in the middle of the night, a loyalist mob – in full view of a nearby Brit post, and with the blessing of the raving Reverend Robert Bradford, who stood by – broke down the doors and wrecked the houses, forcing the two families to leave.

INTERNMENT

The McDonnells went to live with Goretti’s mother for a while, but eventually got the chance to squat in a house being vacated in Lenadoon Avenue.

Internment had been introduced shortly before, and in 1972 the British army struck with a 4.00 a.m. raid.

Joe was dragged from the house, hit in the eye with a rifle butt and bundled into a jeep. Their house was searched and wrecked. Joe was taken to the prison ship Maidstone and later on to Long Kesh internment camp where he was held for several months.

Goretti recalls that early morning as a “horrific” experience which altered both their lives. One minute they had everything, the next minute nothing.

On his release Joe joined the IRA’s Belfast Brigade, operating at first in the 1st Battalion’s ‘A’ Company which covered the Rosnareen end of Andersonstown, and later being absorbed into the ‘cell’ structure increasingly adopted by the IRA.

RAIDS

Both during his first period of internment, and his second, longer, internment in 1973, as well as the periods when he was free, the McDonnell’s home in Lenadoon was constant target for British army raids.

During these raids the house would often be torn apart, photos torn up and confiscated letters from Joe (previously read by the prison censor) re-read by infantile British soldiers, and Goretti herself arrested.

In between periods of internment, and before his capture, Joe resumed his trade as an upholsterer which he had followed since leaving school at the age of fifteen. He loved the job, never missing a day through illness, and made both the furniture for his own home as well as for many of the bars and clubs in the surrounding area. His job enabled him to take the family for regular holidays but Joe was a real ‘homer’ and always longed to be back in his native Belfast.

BOMBS

Part of that attraction stemmed obviously from his responsibility to his republican involvement. An active Volunteer throughout the Greater Andersonstown area, Joe was considered a first-class operator who didn’t show much fear. Generally quiet and serious while on an operation, whether an ambush or a bombing mission, Joe’s humour occasionally shone through.

Driving one time to an intended target in the Lenadoon area with a carload of Volunteers, smoke began to appear in the car. Not realising that it was simply escaping exhaust fumes, and thinking it came from the bags containing a number of bombs, a degree of alarm began to break out in the car, but Joe only advised his comrades, drily, not to bother about it: “They’ll go off soon enough.”

Outside of active service, Joe mixed mostly with people he knew from work, never flaunting his republican beliefs or his involvement, to such an extent that it led some republicans to believe he had not reported back to the IRA on his second release from internment.

The Brits, however, persecuted him and his family continually, with frequent house raids, and street arrests. He could rarely leave the house without being stopped for P-checking, or held up for an hour at a roadblock if he had somewhere to go. A few months before his capture, irate Brits at a roadblock warned him that they would ‘get’ him.

Outside of his republican activity Joe took a strong interest in his children – Bernadette, aged ten and Joseph, aged nine – teaching them both to swim, and forever playing football with young Joseph on the small green outside their home.

CAPTURE

His capture took place in October 1976 following a firebomb attack on the Balmoral Furnishing Company in Upper Dunmurray Lane, near the Twinbrook estate in West Belfast.

The IRA had reconnoitred the store, noting the extravagantly-priced furniture it sold, and had selected it as an economic target. The plan was to petrol bomb the premises and then to lay explosive charges to spread the flames.

The Twinbrook active service unit led by Bobby Sands, was at that time in the process of being built up, and were assisted consequently in this operation by experienced republican Volunteers from the adjoining Andersonstown area, including Joe McDonnell.

Unfortunately, following the attack, which successfully destroyed the furnishing company, the escape route of some of the Volunteers involved was blocked by a car placed across the road.

During an ensuing shoot-out with Brits and RUC, two republicans, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett were wounded, and four others, Bobby Sands, Joe McDonnell, Seamus Finucane and Sean Lavery, were arrested in a car not far away.

Three IRA Volunteers managed to escape safely from the area.

A single revolver was found in the car, and at the men’s subsequent trial in September 1977 all four received fourteen-year sentences for possession when they refused to recognise the court.

Rough treatment during their interrogation in Castlereagh failed to make any of the four sign a statement, and the RUC were thus unable to charge the men with involvement in the attack on the furnishing company despite their proximity to it at the time of their arrest.

ADAMANT From the day he was sentenced Joe refused to put on the prison uniform to take a visit, so adamant was he that he would not be criminalised. He kept in touch instead, with his wife and family, by means of daily smuggled ‘communications’, written with smuggled-in biro refills on prison issue toilet paper and smuggled out via other blanket men who were taking visits.

Incarcerated in H5-Block, Joe acted as ‘scorcher’ (an anglicised form of the Irish word, scairt, to shout) shouting the sceal, or news from his block to the adjoining one about a hundred yards away. Frequently this is the only way that news from outside can be communicated from one H-Block to the blanket men in another H-Block.

It illustrates well the feeling of bitter determination prevailing in the H-Blocks that Joe McDonnell, who did not volunteer for the hunger strike last year because, he said, “I have too much to live for”, should have become so frustrated and angered by British perfidy as to embark on hunger strike on Sunday, May 9th, 1981.

IMPACT

In June, Joe was a candidate during the Free State general election, in the Sligo/Leitrim constituency, in which he narrowly missed election by 315 votes.

All the family were actively involved in campaigning for him, and despite the disappointment at the result both they and Joe himself were pleased at the impact which, the H-Block issue had on the election, and in Sligo/Leitrim itself.

Adults cried when the video film on the hunger strike was shown, his family recall, and they cried again when Joe was eliminated from the electoral count.

MARTYR

At 5.11 a.m., on July 8th, Joe McDonnell, who – believeably, for those who know his wife Goretti, his children Bernadette and Joseph and his family – “had too much to live for” died after sixty one days of agonising hunger strike, rather than be criminalised.