Posted by Jim on February 1, 2016
Decrypted classified documents obtained by the Provisional IRA have
shown that a state agent was behind one of the most notorious tragedies
of the conflict, the Shankill Road bomb attack in 1993.
According to a report this morning, a former IRA ‘commander’ in Ardoyne
has been exposed as an informer and double agent working for RUC Special
Branch for more than a decade. Known to Special Branch as ‘AA’, he
cannot be named for legal reasons.
According to the documents, the informer’s handlers were fully informed
of the plan to target the offices used by loyalist death squad leader
Johnny Adair and other UDA leadership figures.
For reasons still unknown the bomb exploded prematurely, killing eight
civilians as well as IRA Volunteer Thomas Begley and injuring his
comrade Sean Kelly. The outcry over the loss of life increased pressure
on the Provisional IRA to call a ceasefire, which they did ten months
later. It also brought about a wave of ‘reprisal’ attacks by loyalists
such as the Greysteel massacre a week later.
The informer in question was identified after the IRA decoded
information from documents taken from inside the Special Branch’s
headquarters at Castlereagh on St Patrick’s Day in 2001. Calls made to
his special branch handlers are logged throughout the documents,
including the information that he carried out the scouting operations
for the attack himself.
He was also involved in numerous other IRA actions at the time he was
working for the RUC. He was quietly replaced by the Provisional Army
Council in 2002, although no explanation was given to the Volunteers
under his control, and continues to live in the Ardoyne area.
The British Crown forces have previously been accused of allowing other
attacks to proceed for their own sinister agenda, such as the devasting
‘Real IRA’ attack in Omagh in 1998. Twenty-nine people died in that
attack after telephoned bomb warnings failed to clear the area around
the bomb. The public outcry led to the organisation calling a ceasefire
three weeks later.
The Police Ombudsman has now been asked to investigate the evidence that
the RUC “could have prevented” the Shankill bomb. The complaint has been
made by a family member of one of the victims, and was lodged on Friday.
Posted by Jim on
Imbolc, known as the Feast of Brigid, celebrates the arrival of longer, warmer days and the early signs of spring.
It is one of the four major “fire” festivals (quarter days, referred to in Irish mythology from medieval Irish texts. The other three festivals on the old Irish calendar are Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain (Halloween).
The word Imbolc means literally “in the belly” in the old Irish Neolithic language, referring to the pregnancy of ewes.
In ancient Irish mythology, Brigid was a fire goddess. Nowadays, her canonization is celebrated with a perpetual flame at her shrine in Kildare.
St. Brigid represents the Irish aspect of divine femininity in her role as patron of babies, blacksmiths, boatmen, cattle farmers, children whose parents are not married, children whose mothers are mistreated by the children’s fathers, Clan Douglas, dairymaids, dairy workers, fugitives, Ireland, Leinster, mariners, midwives, milkmaids, nuns, poets, the poor, poultry farmers, poultry raisers, printing presses, sailors, scholars, travelers, and watermen. Here’s a busy saint!
One folk tradition that continues in some homes on St. Brigid’s Day (or Imbolc) is that of the Brigid’s Bed.
The girls and young, unmarried, women of the household or village create a corn dolly to represent Brigid, called the Brideog (“little Brigid” or “young Brigid”), adorning it with ribbons and baubles like shells or stones. They make a bed for the Brideog to lie in.
On St. Brigid’s Eve (Jan 31), the girls and young women gather together in one house to stay up all night with the Brideog, and are later visited by all the young men of the community who must ask permission to enter the home, and then treat them and the corn dolly with respect.
Brigid is said to walk the earth on Imbolc eve. Before going to bed, each member of the household may leave a piece of clothing or strip of cloth outside for Brigid to bless. The head of the household will smother (or “smoor”) the fire and rake the ashes smooth.
In the morning, they look for some kind of mark on the ashes, a sign that Brigid has passed that way in the night or morning. The clothes or strips of cloth are brought inside, and believed to now have powers of healing and protection.
On the following day, the girls carry the Brideog through the village or neighborhood, from house to house, where this representation of the saint/goddess is welcomed with great honor.
Adult women — those who are married or who run a household — stay home to welcome the Brigid procession, perhaps with an offering of coins or a snack. Since Brigid represents the light half of the year, and the power that will bring people from the dark season of winter into spring, her presence is very important at this time of year.
Neopagans of diverse traditions observe this holiday in a variety of ways. As forms of neopaganism can be quite different and have very different origins, these representations can vary considerably despite the shared name.
Some celebrate in a manner as close as possible to how the ancient Celts are believed to have observed the festival, as well as how these customs have been maintained in the living Celtic cultures. Other types of neopagans observe the holiday with rituals taken from numerous other unrelated sources, Celtic cultures being only one of the sources used.
Imbolc is usually celebrated by modern Pagans on February 1 or 2 in the Northern Hemisphere, and August 1 or 2 in the Southern Hemisphere, or at the solar midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox, which now falls later in the first week or two of February.
Posted by Jim on
This article was published in Republican News in the 1973 Easter
Commemoration issue (21st April). This may be a reprint from an earlier
publication (possibly Wolfe Tone Monthly). The language, such as Irish
Ireland suggests a date in the 1930s or 1940s. Some of the detail may
also be inaccurate. Enough of those who mobilized in Belfast in 1916
were Protestant, like Sam Heron himself and Herbert Pim, that the idea
of a march to an anniversary mass in 1917 reads more like a vision of
1917 seen through the prism of the conservatism of the 1930s.
According to Roger McCorley, in a memoir, in the aftermath of the 1916
Rising and the releases from Frongoch that autumn, the Sinn Féin
movement was re-organised in Belfast in early 1917 and the Sean McDermot
branch of the Irish Volunteers was re-established in February/March
1917. This was followed in May by the formal re-structuring of the units
in the city (including, for a time, a political commissar). As Easter
was on 8th April, the 1917 Easter Rising commemoration took place
between these two events.
————————————————————————
Belfast Easter Commemoration, 1917
Easter Sunday 1917 dawned bright and clear over the Falls Road, Belfast.
In the Irish Ireland Club which stood on the site of what is now Barrack
Street School, the Irish Volunteers made last minute plans for the first
Easter Commemoration Parade to honour those comrades who had given their
lives in the Rising of the previous Easter.
The Irish Volunteers had been formed at an inaugural meeting on 25th
November, 1913 in Dublin at a meeting chaired by Eoin McNeill. They were
re-organised in the North after the Rising.
The enrollment form of the Irish Volunteers put forth the objectives
clearly:-
I the undersigned, desire to be enrolled in the Irish Volunteers
founded to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all
the people of Ireland without distinction of creed, class or politics.
Easter Sunday 1917 evoked bitter-sweet memories of the Glorious stand in
Dublin. The Volunteers from Belfast had assembled at Coalisland on
Easter Monday 1916 and had formed a junction with Volunteers from Tyrone
and other areas. Now, the leaders Pearse, Connolly, Clarke, McDonagh,
Plunkett, Ceannt and MacDiarmada were all dead, and other leading
Republicans had also been summarily executed. Two of these leaders had
associations with Belfast. James Connolly organiser of the Irish
Transport and General Workers Union had lived at 420 Falls Road from
1910 to 1913. Sean MacDiarmada, a native of Leitrim, lived in Butler
Street, Ardoyne, prior to 1916. He was employed as a tram driver with
Belfast Corporation.
Republicanism in the North was at a low ebb, and whilst the citizens of
Dublin made a show of strength in their new found aspirations to Liberty
by hoisting the Tricolour over the G.P.O. the ripples on the pool barely
reached Belfast. Belfast was a long way from Dublin in 1917.
It was in these circumstances that Sam Herron mustered his party of
about 150 men in Divis Street. At 11 oclock the order rang out and the
gallant band of Irish Volunteers which included Mick Carlin, Cathal
Bradley, Senior, Pat Nash and Sean Malone, started out on the march to
Clonard Monastery for an Anniversary Mass, which was to be celebrated at
Noon.
The March proceeded peacefully enough along the Falls Road. It is
recorded that the people came to gaze with something akin to
astonishment at this small party of men who dares to challenge the might
of the British Empire, by proclaiming openly their allegiance to their
beloved Irish Republic. No women took part in this match, no bands
played, no emblems were worn, no banners were carried, save at the head
of this gallant company, a lightening breeze rippled the folds of the
National Flag.
The march is over, the Mass is said, and the men dispersed. All appears
to be the same on the Falls Road, yet it is not unseen the men on the
1917 Easter Commemoration March had sown the seeds of Freedom as they
went along, soon the Tree of Liberty would put forth a profusion of
blossoms.
The British Occupation Forces recognized the danger and a few days
later nearly all those who had taken part were arrested. The people of
Belfast made no protests at the arrests and the following year the Falls
Road was bedecked with Union Jacks to welcome home the troops from the
1914/18 War. Belfast was not yet ready…
Who will measure the passionate bravery which impelled the men on the
1917 march to seek to attain what seemed to many the unattainable
Freedom. Who will measure the passionate bravery of those who gave their
lives in the Rising, and whose blood sweetened the arid ground where it
fell. Liberty might well hide her head and blush at the gifts her Irish
Patriot Sons have showered on Her.
By Sarah Murphy
Posted by Jim on
Former H Block blanketman Gerard Hodgins spoke this week at the
Foresters Club in West Belfast in honour of the late IRA volunteer,
Paddy Joe Rice. The event was hosted by the Anne Devlin Society,
Belfast.
—————————————————————-
It is an honour and a privilege to be here tonight to remember our
friend and comrade, Paddy Joe Rice.
As we advance into 2016 and commemorations blossom all over Ireland in
remembrance of the heroes of those far off revolutionary times, we will
be regaled with tales of the visionary insights of the traitors who sold
out the republic of Easter Week for the servitude of a Free State in a
partitioned Ireland.
The politically sanitised will be exulted while most of the heroes of
Easter and subsequent campaigns by the Irish Republican Army will be
forgotten or ignored.
The foot-soldiers of the Republic will be air-brushed out off history to
reduce our historical narrative to a gombeen version of the Kings and
Queens of England history we endured at school. But we who lived through
history know who the genuine heroes and heroines of the struggle for
Irish freedom truly are, they are people like Paddy Joe Rice who as a
young man made a conscious decision that he was going to join the IRA
and contribute to the defence of his people and advance the cause of the
Irish Republic.
Throughout his life Paddy Joe remained faithful to his republican
principles which were forged in the smoke and fire of a Belfast which
saw his Falls Road placed under military curfew and people being shot
dead by rampaging British soldiers and their Unionist allies.
The intensity of the onslaught launched by the British to strangle
rebellion at its birth didnt frighten or intimidate Paddy Joe Rice or
others of his generation; rather they stepped forward with courage and
indignation to give birth to The Dogs, one of the most successful and
tenacious of IRA units of the Belfast Brigade, who continued the
honourable tradition of resistance and ingenuity as the volunteers of
the Raglan Street Ambush who caught the murder gang out in 1921.
Despite politics and despite the chasm that has erupted between men and
women who participated in struggle in those not so distant days, our
arguments of faith and betrayal in the republican legacy should have no
negative reflection on the integrity of volunteers who fought in those
days.
Paddy Joe Rice is one such volunteer. His commitment and leadership
abilities transformed ordinary Belfast boys and girls into one of the
most formidable fighting machines in the history of the IRA. And he
sought neither glory nor recognition for his contribution to The Cause,
he sought neither riches nor patronage of any sort; Paddy Joe was just
Paddy Joe, going through life committed to his wife, his family and the
welfare and well-being of his ageing Dogs from the old D-Company in the
political quagmire of a failed revolution and revisionism of the most
opportunistic and devious type.
Paddy Joe Rice was animated by a love of freedom for Ireland and the
betterment of his people in the impoverished working class community of
the Lower Falls. Paddy Joe Rice was an unashamedly and unrepentant
Fenian of the old school who fought for freedom – not a love-in between
Paisleyism and Provisionalism for salaries and pensions while the people
are left to austerity, poverty and increasing mental health and suicide
incidences.
When Paddy Joe died I wrote a piece in memory of him which ended with
the words Glory-oh, glory-oh Bold Fenian Man. Sadie, his wife, asked me
why I used those words and I told her Paddy Joe was a Fenian like the
rest of us and then she told me The Bold Fenian Men was Paddy Joes
favourite song which he would listen to often and she thanked me for
those words. A few days later Sadie followed her beloved Paddy Joe. They
were inseparable in life and death would not separate them.
Paddy Joe Rice was our friend, our comrade, our fellow member of that
noble association of bold Fenians all of whom fought the British and
struck out for Irish freedom. We gather tonight to pay homage to a good
man and recall his selfless life of commitment and devotion to his
family, friends and comrades.
We may have some great men but well certainly never have better:
Glory-oh Bold Fenian Man: Paddy Joe Rice
Posted by Jim on
There has been a shocked reaction to evidence that the 1993 Shankill
Road bomb, in which nine civilians and one IRA Volunteer died in a
premature explosion, was planned by a double-agent working in concert
with the British Crown forces.
It is believed that an informer working for the RUC Special Branch
police may have deliberately tampered with the device to cause an
outrage which would weaken the Provisional IRA ahead of negotiations
with the British.
With the announcement of a complaint to the Ombudsman, the Shankill
bombing has now joined a list of atrocities that are being investigated
over covert Crown force involvement, including the Omagh bombing in
1998, the Dublin-Monaghan bombings in 1974, Bloody Sunday, Bloody
Friday, and the killings carried out another IRA double-agent, codenamed
Stakenife.
Although the informer — known by his security force code of AA — was
involved in a number of successful IRA operations as a leading figure in
the Ardoyne IRA, questions have been asked about to what extent IRA
Volunteers were set up for capture or death.
In October 1993, Volunteers Thomas Begley and Sean Kelly walked into a
fish-shop on the loyalist Shankill Road with orders to clear it of
customers and then detonate an explosive device, aimed at a meeting of
paramilitary leaders believed to be taking place upstairs.
The device is understood to have been a directional device, intended
to explode upwards, towards the meeting of the UDA death squad
‘brigadiers’. But it exploded virtually as soon as Begley carried it to
the counter, killing him and eight others and injuring Kelly, as well as
dozens of passersby.
Anger over the ‘botched’ mission heralded a series of loyalist reprisals
in which 14 people were murdered and scores more injured.
It is now reported that ‘AA’ was identified by the IRA as early as 2002
or 2003, shortly after the IRA deciphered Special Branch files on agents
recovered from the RUC base at Castlereagh. Leaks from the stolen papers
suggest ‘AA’ had extensively briefed his MI5 and Special Branch handlers
on the aim and likely timing of the attack on the UDA, who may have been
warned in advance.
The alleged double-agent is reported to have admitted recently that he
had possession of the bomb used in the Shankill Road in October 1993
before it was handed over to Begley and Kelly.
Former republican prisoners say they strongly believe AA was given the
go-ahead by his handlers to manipulate the device so that it exploded
without any possibility of clearing the area around the device.
One ex-Belfast prisoner said: It raises massive questions for the
state, as to what extent it allowed its own citizens to die, who made
those decisions and can they ever be made amenable.
But for the IRA the questions will now start to re-emerge as to what
extent volunteers and supporters were sacrificed by agents in the ranks,
and what has the IRA done to rectify this, if anything?
Still living in Ardoyne, the alleged double-agent refused to attend a
commemoration in memory of Thomas Beagley on the 20th anniversary of the
blast in 2013.
Relatives of the victims called for a full investigation. Charlie
Butler, who lost three members of his family, said he and other families
were devastated by the development.
He said: Collusion is not a nice word for anyone but when it is
collusion with innocent people losing their lives to protect someone
else there has to be a line drawn to say that is wrong.
[The security forces] were there to do a job, to protect people. If
they knew about [the bombing] then they should pay.
Sinn Fein, the DUP and both governments have declined to comment on the
development, while PSNI chief George Hamilton has denied any knowledge
of the plot. He said he did not want to “prejudge the outcome” of the
ombudsman’s investigation.
“We dont want to do anything that is going to traumatise families
further and add to their grief and pain which will still be very real
after all of these years,” he said.
The journalist who reported the revelations, Allison Morris, said that
any confirmation by the Police Ombudsman that the Shankill bomb was
“preventable” would change the understanding of that period of the
conflict.
“This development raises allegations of collusion that overshadows all
that has gone before it,” she said. “Was a botched attack allowed to go
ahead and did the State allow civilians to die to shame republicans into
a ceasefire?
“That’s now a question for the police ombudsman to answer.”