Posted by Jim on January 19, 2016
Irish News Editorial (Belfast). Monday, January 18, 2016
The case of the notorious west Belfast IRA figure Freddie Scappaticci – widely believed to be the top-level British army agent known as Stakeknife – is deeply disturbing in every respect.
Scappaticci has been linked to at least 20 murders carried out by the IRA internal security unit called ‘the Nutting Squad’, although there have been strong hints that the actual total is much higher.
However, despite a comprehensive list of statements from the families of victims which specifically implicate him in the killings over a prolonged period, he remains a free man and has yet to be charged with even a single offence.
Scappaticci led a charmed life throughout the worst years of the Troubles, when he was allegedly allowed by his handlers to participate in killings in order to cover up his role as an informer.
He always denied the claims but eventually fled Northern Ireland more than decade ago after overwhelming evidence confirmed that he was the most high-ranking mole within the ranks of the IRA.
Scappaticci is thought to have been living in England under an assumed identity ever since, where police officers are aware of his location and believed to have been in contact with him.
After a probe by the Police Ombudsman, Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory called for a full independent investigation into the Stakeknife saga last October.
The PSNI announced the following month that the task would be undertaken by officers from outside forces with a budget of up to £50 million but there is still no sign of any form of a breakthrough.
What is particularly concerning is that Scappaticci was brazen enough to meet grieving relatives in the past and provide them with face to face information about the murder of their loved ones.
Although witnesses insist that he was in possession of details which proved he had been directly involved in the killings, and have made formal statements to this effect, Scappaticci has yet to appear in a dock.
There will be obvious fears that the official protection which was extended to him down the decades remains in force and is frustrating the pursuit of justice. A prosecution must be properly structured, and will take time to finalise, but there can be little doubt that the authorities have been well aware of Scappaticci’s full history for more than 20 years.
It is essential that the courts are given the opportunity to carefully assess the grave claims which have surrounded Scappaticci for so long and finally establish the truth behind the Stakeknife scandal.
Posted by Jim on January 18, 2016
By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)
William Faulkner wrote: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’
How right he was and nowhere is that remark better exemplified than in
Ireland. James Joyce said: ‘History is a nightmare from which I am
trying to awake.’ He meant Irish history of course and like some
nightmares it recurs again and again always with the same ending.
The two governments, but particularly the Irish government, hoped that
by developing a load of claptrap about a ‘shared history’ they could
somehow exorcise the nightmare of Irish history 1912-22. In the flawed
concept of a shared history first enunciated by Brian Cowen in 2010 both
sides in the northern conflict would be encouraged to participate in
each others’ commemorations joined by the Irish government. They had to
be ‘inclusive’ and ‘shared’ as in that awful Americanism, ‘I share your
pain.’ It’s a desperate unhistorical attempt to read the political
correctness of 2016 back into the history of that decade a century ago
and it’s nonsense.
‘Rogues and renegades’ Foster is absolutely correct to have nothing to
do with it. Yes of course there’s an election on May 5 and she would
look daft standing with a stony face at some commemoration of 1916 just
after Stormont shut down at Easter to prepare for the election campaign.
She’s not doing it, not even contemplating it, not because of the
election but because it would be an exercise in hypocrisy. She shares
nothing about the 1916 Rising its aims, its motives, its beliefs.
Her remarks show she knows nothing about history a century ago either
but she knows what she doesn’t agree with and that’s republicanism in
any shape or form. She said the Rising was ‘an attack on democracy’ and
added, ‘I believe in the democratic will.’ Well yes, up to a point Lord
Copper. First, democracy in our terms didn’t exist in 1916. Only 700,000
men in Ireland had the vote but no women. It wasn’t for want of trying.
In 1912 a suffragette, Mary Leigh, got five years for throwing a hatchet
at Asquith as he crossed O’Connell Bridge in Dublin in a carriage. She
missed and it hit Redmond harmlessly on the arm. Was that ‘an attack on
democracy’?
Secondly as many people have pointed out to Foster, the first attack on
‘democracy’ as it existed in those days was the unionist rebellion
against the third Home Rule Act of 1912 including importing 25,000
rifles and three million rounds of ammunition from Germany in 1914.
Curiously no interviewer has asked Foster if she endorses that rebellion
involving tens of thousands of UVF paramilitaries threatening the
British government. A rebellion incidentally which inspired Home Rulers
to establish the Irish Volunteers as a counter force.
None of it matters. It’s all stupid stuff. You can’t transport the
standards of 2016 back a hundred years. Suffice to say the Rising stands
for everything ‘Rogues and renegades’ opposes, including the concept of
an Irish Ireland. Her objection is political. At least she’s
straightforward about it unlike republicans trying to ‘share’ the
commemoration of the Somme when republicans a decade before 1916 were
already making speeches objecting to people joining the ‘Crown forces’
which included the RIC. In 1915 Sean MacDiarmada, the main organiser of
the Rising, got himself arrested in Tuam and jailed for making a speech
opposing recruitment for the British army.
For unionists joining the British army en masse was their way of
demonstrating loyalty to Britain and they got a separate division, the
36th as a reward. They didn’t anticipate it would turn into their blood
sacrifice. It has nothing to do with republicans. Claiming they share
ownership is just daft and embarrassing and politically correct and that
goes for the Irish government muscling in on it too.
Incidentally talking about attacks on democracy such as it was in 1916
you hear a great deal about the fact that the organisers of the Rising
had ‘no mandate’, a modern expression and a modern concept. Here’s a
question. What mandate did the British government have for ruling
Ireland in 1916 considering that for nine successive elections since
1885 the Irish had voted for Home Rule. Was it the Act of Union? Very
democratic.
Posted by Jim on
“So while the 1916 Rising was a fight for freedom, the Somme was a battle to deny freedom to the one quarter of the world’s population in the empire, including 13 million new subjects won in the war.”
Yep Arlene, Rising and Somme not same
Patrick Murphy. Irish News.Saturday, January 16,2016
Congratulations to Arlene Foster on becoming First Minister and, more unexpectedly, on displaying a more comprehensive understanding of Irish history than all the nationalist parties.
Mrs Foster stated bluntly (and correctly)that the Easter Rising was an armed attack on the United Kingdom (and thus on the British Empire). The taoiseach was disappointed at the first minister’s inevitable conclusion that she would not attend any 1916 commemorations. He argued that since nationalists are willing to commemorate the Battle of the Somme, unionists should be prepared to commemorate the Rising.
In an interview with this newspaper (a welcome change for a DUP leader) Mrs Foster became the first modern politician on the island to suggest that there is no equivalence between the two. Is she right? If so, why are nationalists, including the Irish government, associating the two events?
The Great War was essentially a conflict between two empires, Britain and Germany. (It was also a family squabble: the Kaiser was Queen Victoria’s grandson and therefore a cousin of England’s George V. Poor George had to change the family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor, when his cousins ignored the rules of cricket and bombed London from a Gotha aircraft.)
In Germany, 93 intellectuals, including 11 future Nobel winners, argued that the war was a sacred mission in support of Christianity. In Ireland the Catholic Church supported the war in defence of “Catholic Belgium”. (Being God must be difficult in times of war.)
So the Battle of the Somme in 1916 was just another fight (claiming God’s backing) for the ownership of foreign territories. From July to November, the allies advanced six miles and suffered 419,654 casualties – 40 men killed or wounded for every yard of ground gained. (In 1918, the Germans re-captured it all.)
Whether they knew it or not, the Irish at the Somme were fighting for the injustice, tyranny and genocide inherent in the British Empire. They may not have known, for example, that the British deliberately adopted policies which killed 29 million Indians through famine and disease in the late 19th century. But they were hardly ignorant of the causes and consequences of the Irish Famine.
Nationalists believed they were fighting for Home Rule. Unionists believed they were fighting against it. Both sides could not have been right.
The 74,000 Indian troops who died in the war for dominion status for India (a form of home rule) were betrayed by Britain, which rewarded their sacrifices with the post-war Rowlatt Act (a predecessor to our Special Powers Act).
At one protest meeting against the new law, British soldiers fired on 15,000 unarmed civilians at Amritsar, killing 1,500 of them. One side or the other would likely have suffered the same fate in Ireland.
So while the 1916 Rising was a fight for freedom, the Somme was a battle to deny freedom to the one quarter of the world’s population in the empire, including 13 million new subjects won in the war.
Irish nationalists closely followed news of the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in which Britain first used concentration camps. It was begun by Cecil Rhodes, who introduced enforced racial segregation in South Africa, in the belief that the British were a master race.
Lord Patten (effectively founder of the PSNI) suggested this week that Oxford students who do not like the statue of Rhodes on the university campus might go and study in China. Imperial culture is not dead in England.
Concentration camps were used again in Kenya in the 1950s when an estimated 100,000 Kikuyu people were beaten to death or died from disease in the full knowledge of British cabinet ministers. British control of Kenya was established in World War I.
Some nationalists argue that the Somme should be commemorated because so many Irish fought there. However, an estimated 170,000 Irish-born men fought in the American civil war, almost as many as served in the Great War. Last year was the 150th anniversary of the war’s closure. There was no Irish state commemoration.
Most of them fought on the Union side in opposition to slavery. The Somme soldiers fought for an empire founded on slavery. If those commemorating the Somme wish to illustrate that the Irishmen who fought for Britain were victims, duped into fighting for fascism, repression and tyranny, that is understandable.
However, if their commemorations suggest that fighting for Britain was somehow noble or moral, then they understand neither the Rising nor the Somme.
Mrs Foster is right to suggest that there is no equivalence between the two. It will be interesting to hear the Taoiseach’s counter-argument – if he has one.
Posted by Jim on January 15, 2016
Posted by Jim on January 14, 2016
Letters Editor
IRISH CENTRAL
Dear Editor:
Fr. Murphy’s “Rite and Reason…” (1/12) commentary is thoughtful and thought provoking. However, several points about the 100th commemoration of the Easter Rising need context.
- He claims the Easter Rising was not justified and that the commemorative events planned imply that it was. No doubt he would feel the American Revolution was unjustified because of a dispute over a Stamp tax on tea. Nor would the Declaration of Independence’s long list of grievances satisfy his criteria for a “…model of political action.” Ireland’s grievances were far greater than were America’s and the price paid for their subservience and more destructive of Ireland’s people and culture.
- He states: “A real Republic is created by voters, is established in structures of representative democracy, and the rule of law and lives in the people’s democratic practices and culture.” In the last General Election in all of Ireland in 1918, which was run by the British government, Sinn Fein and Nationalists won three quarters of the seats and the Dail created by those representatives was declared a criminal conspiracy. The British followed with assassinations and the Black and Tans. Is this the “legitimate authority” Fr. Murphy cites?
- The author declares: “ the Rising’s leaders were men of violence” and to celebrate their actions is “…to celebrate anti-democratic elitism and a bloodlust.” This is straight from the British propaganda playbook. But if it were so, how do you describe centuries of lawless persecution by a hereditary monarchy? What’s the buzzword for the single most monstrous act of a British ‘democracy’ against the Republic; the no warning bombing of Dublin and Monaghan shopping centers? Bloodlust? Isn’t it right to label the perpetrators of that crime aristocratic men of violence and an anti-democratic elite? I’ve never heard or seen those labels from religious, Fine Gael or the Independent newspaper. It seems “bloodlust” and “anti-democratic elite” are reserved for those striking a blow for Irish freedom.
In 40 years of activism I never expected sympathetic religious in Ireland or in America to support the IRA or violence of any sort. But the manifest failure of those religious to speak out against injustices and to speak truth to power of the violence done to Irish society 100 years ago and today is indicative of a church filled with careerists NOT a church filled with men and women with vocations. It’s clear Fr. Murphy represents the best and brightest of the careerists.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Cummings
