Posted by Jim on May 12, 2014
The Following Letter was sent on behalf of the Irish Republican Brotherhood to Justice Susan Denham of the Provisional Irish State Government on September 7th 2012
Lee House,
Cappagh,
Askeaton,
Co. Limerick.
Regarding the European Stability Mechanism Treaty and Other Related Issues
Dear Justice Denham,
How dare you attempt to trespass into jurisdiction of the Sovereign Republic of Éire.te;ire.
You have no right to hear a sovereignty case before the Four Courts. All Sovereignty matters can only be heard in The Óglaigh na hÉireann Court in McKee Barracks Dublin and it is mandatory in that circumstance that all cases be heard under the 1916 Proclamation.
The Sovereign Republic of Éire, Dáil Éireann Courts and The Óglaigh na hÉireann Court are owned by the people of Éire and are the property of the People who gave the Irish Republican Brotherhood the mandate and to establish the Sovereign Republic of Éire, Dáil Éireann and the Dáil Éireann Courts.
You and the judiciary do not recognise, acknowledge or respect the State that was founded by the Irish Republican Brotherhood under the direct authority of the people which was ratified on the 21st of January, 1919 in the Cabinet room in the Mansion House Dublin under the thirty-two county election of 1918 from GHQ Vaughans Hotel Dublin.
Dáil Éireann sat later in the day in the Round Room and conducted the business with regards to the affairs of the Irish State, the Sovereign Republic of Éire.
The Irish State has no other authority but that which was granted to it by the Irish People of the Nation of Éire who accepted that all Authority came from God as defined in the 1916 Proclamation and as ratified in the 1918 Thirty-Two County Elections.
You and the judiciary do not recognise, acknowledge or respect the foundation document of this State under the Authority of the people of the Nation derived under God; the 1916 Proclamation of Poblacht na hÉireann, our Sovereignty and our Constitution Bunreacht na hÉireann that could only have derived its continuing authority from the 1916 Proclamation which was written by the Irish Republican Brotherhood for the Irish People/Citizens and State in Vaughan’s Hotel, 29 Parnell Square, Gramby Row, Dublin. More specifically I refer to;
Article 4 “the name of the State is Éire”
Éire denotes the 1918 thirty-two County elections in Ireland;
Article 5 “Ireland is a Sovereign independent democratic State”
All Sovereignty coming from God, through the People to the State.
Article 12 “there shall be a President of Ireland, Uachtaráin na hÉireann”
In keeping with that mandate the President, having the authority and responsibility to restrict the powers of the Oireachtas which was imposed by King George V of England in 1922 is thereby obliged to represent the people against the Government and particularly so when the government is a provisional one as is the case with our country.
Article 12 was written for the President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who holds the ‘Thirty-Two-County’ mandate of the Sovereign office of the State of the Sovereign Republic of Éire and is Head of State.
To be a member, TD or a minister of Dáil Éireann it is mandatory to have and hold a thirty-two County mandate. To be a member of the Oireachtas as imposed by King George V of England needs a twenty-six county mandate. There is no member of Dáil Éireann in Leinster house today.
I refer your attention to a book, ‘De Valera’s Constitution and Ours’, edited by Brian Farrell and published by Gill and MacMillan for Radio Teilifís Éireann in 1988, – Constitutional Making; page 23,
“This arose in January 1922 after the Dáil by a narrow vote accepted the Treaty. De Valera resigned; Griffith was elected as Head of the Dáil Government and Collins Head of the Provisional Government established under the terms of the Treaty in fact although the formal existence of two Governments was contentious and confusing.”
Following that time Éamon De Valera and others who sat in Leinster House were using the mandate of the first and second Dáil Éireann using the ‘system’ of Leinster house. The Oireachtas ‘system’ was imposed by King George V in 1922 as a sham Provisional Government.
The Oireachtas is not a State; it is a ‘Corporation’ by royal assent to make Ireland remunerative to the Crown of England. The changes that were made to the Constitution of Ireland in 1922 in the Shelbourne Hotel Dublin by Michael Collins were not done in accordance with the democratic mandate and were therefore not valid. Collins had resigned from the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Arthur Griffith was elected as Head of the Dáil Government and was also President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Head of State. According to the same book ‘De Valera’s Constitution and Ours,’ Collins gave the committee involved with the invalid modifications to the Constitutional texts their terms of reference. It is well established by the documented historical fact from that time that, by coercion or otherwise, Michael Collins was forced to return an improvident Treaty document by the Crown of England which gave King George V the unconstitutional claim to counties Antrim, Armagh, Down, Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Derry as well as 25% of the shipbuilding of the world, 80% of the linen trade, the heavy industries and the right to maintain his Crown forces to protect the assets he had been given. The Treaty by its nature had to ultimately be put to a referendum before the Irish people to become binding but by subsequent devious tactics the people of Éire were denied their Right to make that crucial decision by the houses of the Oireachtas which had been appointed to protect the Crown interests and the negotiations were subverted to prevent the enactments of our Nation as defined in the Irish Proclamation of 1916. That was not legal, valid or bone fide.
Michael Collins later claimed that at the last minute Lloyd George had threatened the Irish delegates with a renewal of “terrible and immediate war” if the Treaty were not signed by the Irish, but this was not mentioned in the Irish memorandum as a threat against the Irish delegates, but as a personal remark made by Lloyd George to Robert Barton, which was clearly meant to reflect the reality of the measure of the blunt force being applied which turned the negotiations into just another military tactic against the Irish. Barton later noted that:
“At one time he [Lloyd George] particularly addressed himself to me and said very solemnly that those who were not for peace must take full responsibility for the war that would immediately follow refusal by any Delegate to sign the Articles of Agreement.”
The actual Treaty was not, and could not have been signed in England by the Irish delegates as they were not given that authority to do so. It is also notable that the British delegates also did not have the mandate to sign the treaty. In fact, Arthur Griffith spoke in the Dáil on 14th December, 1921 to say;
“Now the British Ministers did not sign the Treaty to bind their nation. They had to go to their Parliament and we to ours for ratification.”
What was signed by the delegates during the negotiations in England was an agreement to have an agreement which had to be discussed and agreed by Dáil Éireann and more importantly had to be put to a decision by the people of the Irish Nation by referendum. Michael Collins was later to be implicated by the British propagandists and their Irish collaborators in the Oireachtas to suggest the he had unilaterally signed the improvident Treaty with the foreign oppressors but the facts are that when they returned, Collins and Griffith brought the details of the treaty, which included British concessions on the wording of the oath and the defence and trade clauses, along with the addition of a Boundary Commission to the Treaty and a clause upholding Irish unity. The final decision to sign the Treaty was made unilaterally by the Oireachtas in private discussions and was finally signed at 22 Hans Place, London on 5 December, 1921.
The Crown’s Oireachtas which had been appointed by King George V under his control by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 alleged that Michael Collins and the other Irish delegates had concluded negotiations by signing the Treaty when they were ‘unauthorised’ by the Irish people. However, it was the Oireachtas that made the unconstitutional decision to betray the will of the Irish people at 2.20am on 6 December, 1921.
The record shows that Michael Collins had set the record straight and unveiled the truth.
Dáil Éireann – Volume 3 – 14 December, 1921
DEBATE ON TREATY
MR. MICHAEL COLLINS (MINISTER FOR FINANCE): “The original terms that were served on each member of the delegation have not been read out. The thing has already taken an unfair aspect and I am against a private session. I have no particular feeling about it. I suggest that a vital matter for the representatives of the nation, and the nation itself, is that the final document which was agreed on by a united Cabinet, should be put side by side with the final document which the Delegation of Plenipotentiaries did not sign as a treaty, but did sign on the understanding that each signatory would recommend it to the Dáil for acceptance.”
http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/DT/D.T.192112140002.html
The malicious intent of the Crown and its agents to infect Ireland with a false and ungodly Treaty has without doubt promoted the current economic, moral and ethical condition of our Nation. King George V had no right to interfere with Ireland in 1922 and nor did his representatives in the Oireachtas have any mandate from the people to subsequently concoct their version of an Irish Constitution where, for example, they included Articles 1, 2 and 3 of the Constitution of their Saorstát Éireann to try to make Ireland remunerative to the Crown of England and from that time, to substitute the Authority of God in defiance of the Irish Proclamation with the English monarch. This action was invalid in 1922 and remains permanently invalid today and all subsequent documents that emanated from this travesty could never become valid.
The further changes made to Bunreacht na hÉireann in De Valera’s 1937 Constitution were also clearly invalid as it was voted on by the Citizens of only 26 Irish counties when it has to be a thirty-two county mandate to implement the decrees of our 1916 Proclamation.
From then on the Oireachtas has continued to impose even more amendments and legislation on the Irish people in continuity of the fraud that, by its very source, is null and void. King George V had no right to interfere with the legal and constitutional matters of Ireland in 1922 albeit unbeknownst to the people of Ireland and neither did the Crown or its subjects in the Oireachtas have a right to attempt to hand Irish Sovereignty over to the European Union, particularly as it was, again, without the full knowledge, and therefore full consent, of the people of Ireland.
The existing Standing Orders of the Oireachtas are stated as having been adopted by Resolution of the “Provisional” Parliament set up by King George V on the 11th of September, 1922 just 20 days after Michael Collins was shot. I will show how subsequent amendments to those Standing Orders further benefited the Oireachtas against the People of Éire further on in this document.
The records also show that Michael Collins was the Finance Minister of the ‘Provisional Government’ from the 26th of August, 1921 until the 22nd of August, 1922 and yet this provisional establishment has denied the existence and authority of Dáil Éireann and thereby the independence of our Nation since that time. Both the Civil Service and the politicians in the Oireachtas have consistently held contempt for the Irish Proclamation and Dáil Éireann in direct contradiction to the mandate given by the people. Furthermore, the Mahon Tribunal Report, compiled by your own Judge Mahon has confirmed the existence of corruption and illegality by politicians of the Oireachtas, as when referring to the Oireachtas he said, “Politicians are corrupt.”
It is notable also that the actions of the Civil Service in Ireland, of which the Judiciary and the Court Service are members, have consistently contradicted the intention of the Irish Proclamation as it persistently refers itself to and complies with the regular interference of the foreign Crown in the affairs of the Irish Nation.
The Oireachtas has purposely redefined the word “birthright” from its original purpose of providing for the rights of our future generations to a misleading understanding of the word to suggest that our future generations could achieve their Sovereign Natural Rights under God only ‘if’ they were allowed to be born in direct contradiction to our Christian ethos. This point is particularly evident in our Proclamation when it refers to the ‘birthright’ of future generations as those who need our care and protection in becoming our future leaders and benefactors. Our God-fearing principles are exemplified by our ancestral, traditional and accepted understanding of the way we asserted that we “…cherishing all the children of the nation equally…” understood the value of all past, present and future generations, irrespective of their stage of life.
In 1923 King George V and the Oireachtas made Dáil Éireann an illegal assembly and therefore Dáil Éireann has never sat in Leinster House in accordance with the 1918 thirty-two county election. The facts are that you and the judges are not appointed by Dáil Éireann. You were appointed by the Oireachtas under English control to tacitly, covertly and illicitly impose ‘English Common Law’ in the four courts into areas of jurisdiction that are explicitly denied by the Irish Proclamation. This was verified by the welcoming speech of Mary McAleese, whose qualifications include being a barrister under the Crown’s BAR, to the British Queen when in 2011 she said;
“It has been a fascinating two way street with Britain, bestowing on Ireland our system of Common Law, Parliamentary tradition, Independent Civil Service and gracious Georgian Architecture…..”
All political power in Éire is inherent in the People. Our Proclamation ensured that our Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit of our People and not the other way round. Only the people of Éire have the right to alter or reform matters related to public policy at their behest, and only when the public good may require.
The thirty-two county Elections were a clear declaration of our will to remain an independent Nation. Our people trusted that those elected would carry out that decision and to create the necessary three branches of government; each with intentionally limited powers, as a safeguard against the potential of abuse; the Legislative to create laws, the Executive to carry out those laws, and the Judiciary, designed to hold all government in check should it reach outside its remit, the remit being the Constitution. And, of course, regarding the Justice System of which you hold responsibility, the People – in the forum of the jury. Most importantly, the People are not a part of the three branches of government, but are rather the Sovereign which the three branches of government serve. Therefore, there are no powers of government that can overrule the consent of the governed. If it does, it is not government, but rather usurpation, as also described in our Proclamation. History has shown that any such wrongful seizure or exercise of authority opens the door for revolt against such tyrants when posing themselves as “government,” as the Proclamation manifestly states;
The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people.
It is indisputable that the Oireachtas has combined with others to subject our People against their free will to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving their unauthorised assent to their acts of pretended legislation.
Further issues emphatically show how this usurpation has damaged our Nation. It is clear from the use of the word “deem” in the originating Constitution, Saorstát Éireann, most clearly seen at Article 40, that a Bill can be CONSIDERED lawfully enacted only when it has been passed by either House of the Oireachtas and accepted by the other.
SAORSTÁT ÉIREANN Article 40.
A Bill passed by either House and accepted by the other House shall be deemed to be passed by both Houses.
“Passing” means that the register of votes cast by the members shows a simple majority of votes indicating “Aye” as opposed to the number indicating “No”.
Article 40 in Saorstát Éireann is repeated exactly and verbatim in Bunreacht na hÉireann at Article 20.3 when referring to money Bills, budgets and votes of confidence.
BUNREACHT NA HÉIREANN Article 20.
3 A Bill passed by either House and accepted by the other House shall be deemed to be passed by both Houses.
However, in Article 25 of Bunreacht na hÉireann this definition of what “deemed” means is changed and the use of the word “deemed” is the one that has been employed as being sufficient to enact legislation. This time there is no explanation of what it means and a constructionist interpretation would allow it to mean that a Bill could either be “passed” or “deemed” meaning by default passed.
BUNREACHT NA HÉIREANN Article 25.
1. As soon as any Bill, other than a Bill expressed to be a Bill containing a proposal for the amendment of this Constitution, shall have been passed or deemed to have been passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas, the Taoiseach shall present it to the President for his signature and for promulgation by him as a law in accordance with the provisions of this Article.
This deceptive amendment to the previous unambiguous wording, without reference to the relevant Articles in Saorstát Éireann or Article 20 of Bunreacht na hÉireann has allowed the use of misleading statements in Standing Orders to the point where it is accepted as procedurally correct and custom and practice for there to be a complete absence of the recording of a vote for or against a piece of legislation* by each of the TDs and Senators who have been elected to represent their constituents. (* with the possible exceptions on money Bills, budgets and votes of confidence where a piece of legislation is not at issue)
The distinct unwarranted alteration from the original Saorstát Éireann – Article 40 text that falsely empowered the Oireachtas to secretly create legislation which was never explained to, or decided on, by the People of Éire although it radically altered the power structure within our Nation. It is a deplorable indictment of the contempt of the Oireachtas for our Sovereignty. It is also clear from the wording in Saorstát Éireann that the false interpretation in Bunreacht Na hÉireann is not just incorrect but is invalid. This deception further sets us apart as the only democracy in the world where there is no publicly available record of how each Member of Parliament voted for each Bill proposed.
What is worse for Éire is that, being a Constitutional Republic, any proposed amendment to the Constitution must be passed by the Government BEFORE it can be lawfully put to the people for them to exercise their Sovereign powers. However, and notwithstanding the usurpation of the Sovereignty of the People as vested in Dáil Éireann under the categorical conditions of the Proclamation, the last numbers of referendums, including those on amending the Constitution to incorporate Treaties declared to have been required by membership of the EEC/EU have been deemed to have been passed by the Oireachtas – without being passed by a majority in one house of the Oireachtas before being put to the people. This has nullified the European Treaty Bills claimed to have been passed by the Oireachtas in any circumstances.
Dáil Éireann has never ratified the EEC Accession Treaty or the EU Accession Treaty nor has Dáil Éireann ever borrowed any Euro currency from the EU or the EU Central bank. It was the Oireachtas that has borrowed the EU currency from the European Union.
The contradictions in the fraudulent position taken by the Oireachtas on these issues are rife!
- • Could Dáil Éireann have ratified any such agreements when Dáil Éireann has not sat since 1922?
- • When or where was the State founded?
- • On what specific annual date might we celebrate our independence?
- • What Bunreacht na hÉireann are you and the judges using in the four courts if any?
- • Can you confirm in your reply when and where was the Bunreacht na hÉireann that you and the judges are using in the four courts was written and ratified?
President Michael D. Higgins when he was inaugurated in Dublin Castle said that Bunreacht na hÉireann would be 75 years old this year which is a blatant lie. Bunreacht na hÉireann is 93 years old and was written by the Irish Republican Brotherhood in GHQ Vaughans Hotel Dublin and ratified on the 21st of January 1919 in the Cabinet Room in the Mansion House Dublin under the 1918 thirty-two County elections as well as the 1916 Proclamation, the very foundation document of the State, the Sovereign Republic of Éire.
I asked Enda Kenny to not hand over the Sovereign Seal of Dáil Éireann to Michael D. Higgins in Dublin Castle. However it was you Justice Denham who illegally and fraudulently handed over the Sovereign Seal of Dáil Éireann, the ancient Biblical and sacred symbol of our Sovereignty, the psaltery with 12 strings in AD 2011 to Michael D. Higgins at Dublin Castle. The Sovereign Seal and Harp used by the State, Dáil Éireann and the Dáil Éireann courts are owned by and are the property of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who holds them in trust for the People/Irish Citizens.
Therefore, can you explain where you as Chief Justice are getting your Sovereign authority from to hand over our national Sovereign Seal or even to hold a court in the four courts?
The European Union presidency returns to the Sovereign Republic of Éire on the 1st of January, 2013. The Irish people have only a Provisional Government that does not have the right to sit at the EU table as a Provisional Government. Ireland’s Sovereignty is unique because it does not rely on a man-made construct but comes directly from God and therefore could never be compatible with any other man-made authority and yet our people were not informed that the Oireachtas had set about damaging that definitive position by contriving the illusion of our integration with other peoples who do not have same Sovereign authority and are actually subservient to their respective states in a blatant attempt to fetter the control of Irish destinies, which remain sovereign and indefeasible. Without our Sovereignty we are unable as a Nation to establish the concord with other nations as prescribed in the Preamble of Bunreacht na hÉireann which you have sworn to uphold.
The Irish Republican Brotherhood has made this position very clear to Enda Kenny and the Provisional Government as well as to Herman Achille Van Rompuy the president of the Council of the European Union, that if the European Union comes here on the 1st of January, 2013 it shall be deemed an act of war until Dáil Éireann has ratified the EEC Accession Treaty and the EU Accession Treaty in a thirty-two county referendum by the Sovereign Citizens, the Irish people of the Nation.
We have had 90 years of corruption and maladministration by the Provisional Government who have fraudulently aligned us with European Union member states without informing our people of the potential compromise of our Sovereignty. Dáil Éireann can no longer tolerate the connivances and undue interferences of the Oireachtas whether the wrongs done were carried out knowingly or unwittingly by its members. It is time to have an Irish Sovereign led Government in its rightful order and time for the Crown’s Oireachtas to stand down and be abolished.
Are we as a Nation expected to tolerate a denial of a Sovereign Government by King George V and his successor Queen Elizabeth II of England or by any similar oligarchy?
The so-called Sovereign debt imposed by the Crown’s Irish Provisional Government is in fact the responsibility of the Crown of England Queen Elizabeth II, the British Government and the unfortunate British taxpayer and not the Irish people whose resources and wealth continue to be plundered.
Enda Kenny is the only Provisional party leader sitting at the European table in the European Parliament. Enda Kenny has wrongly and fraudulently claimed to be the Taoiseach of Dáil Éireann and that his party founded the State. He is not, he is the chairman of the Oireachtas and subject and servant to the crown of England and to his Queen.
The Oireachtas does not have the right to appoint a judge or a member of the judiciary or a member of Dáil Éireann. This could occur only by means of a valid thirty-two county referendum. The Oireachtas seems to be basing its false and undemocratic claim on some unprecedented form of illusory squatter’s rights for 90 years.
The Tricolour, the flag of the State of Ireland that flew over the GPO in 1916 and that is on all State buildings, is owned and is the property of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The EU flag should not be elevated beside the Tricolour until Dáil Éireann has ratified the EEC Accession Treaty and the EU Accession Treaty.
Enda Kenny is not a member of Dáil Éireann; he is a member of the Oireachtas. Michael D. Higgins was never a member of Dáil Éireann; he was a member of the Oireachtas and he is president of the Oireachtas and therefore he is subject to and servant of the Crown of England Queen Elizabeth II. Michael D. Higgins is illegally and fraudulently claiming to be Head of State. Article 12 of Bunreacht na hÉireann was written by and for the Irish Republican Brotherhood and is for the president of the Irish Republican brotherhood who is Head of State of the Sovereign Republic of Éire and holds the thirty-two county mandate.
After 90 years of corruption and maladministration by the Provisional Government which has bankrupted the State and caused immeasurable harm to the Nation the country is now at its lowest ebb since 1916. The Oireachtas ‘must’ be abolished immediately. The Provisional Government is incapable of governing the State of the Sovereign Republic of Éire. The Provisional Government should be abolished as its ruination of our Nation is exactly what the Oireachtas was designed for by King George V and the British Government to hold Ireland remunerative and subservient to the Crown of England.
You Susan Denham, the Judiciary, Enda Kenny and the Provisional Government are in denial of the fact that the Oireachtas was ever only a Provisional Government. Only a Sovereign Government has the right to issue licences, collect taxes, make appointments and appoint members of the Judiciary. It is mandatory for the Sovereign Citizens as people to be governed by a Sovereign Government.
Signed and Sealed this day 7th September Anno Domini 2012 under the Sovereign Seal of the Sovereign Republic of Éire.
However, there are many in the legal fields who work diligently for the greater good of humanity. They strive, against the odds, to bring into existence a more equitable system of justice. They labour tirelessly on behalf of their clients, and do not succumb to the expediency of the moment. They represent the proud standard bearers of a profession that has, to a great extent, lost its way.
William James McGuire
President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
President of the Sovereign Republic of Éire
Keeper of the Sovereign Seal of the Sovereign Republic of Éire
Head of State of the Sovereign Republic of Éire
Posted by admin on
I came voluntarily from the Dail in Dublin to Antrim PSNI barracks last
Wednesday having contacted the PSNI two months ago through my solicitor
Seamus Collins, to tell them that I was available to meet them following
yet another spate of media speculation, part of a sustained malicious,
untruthful and sinister campaign alleging involvement by me in the
killing of Mrs Jean McConville.
When the PSNI contacted my solicitor on Monday afternoon I was concerned
about the timing, given that Sinn Fein is involved in very important EU
and local government elections across the island of Ireland.
But I quickly made arrangements to come here and I left Leinster House –
the Oireachtas – and Leaders Questions with the Taoiseach to do so.
I want to thank my solicitor Mr. Seamus Collins for his diligence and
professional approach and his colleague Eugene McKenna.
I also want to thank everyone who has sent goodwill messages to Colette
and our family and to my comrades in Sinn Fein for their solidarity.
Ta me fior bhuioch daoibhse uilig.
I am conscious that there is another family at the heart of this. That
is the family of Mrs Jean McConville.
Let me be very clear. I am innocent of any involvement in any conspiracy
to abduct, kill and bury Mrs McConville.
I have worked hard with others to have this injustice redressed and for
the return of the bodies of others killed and secretly buried by the IRA
and I will continue to do so.
The Commission set up by the two governments at the request of myself,
and the late Fr Alex Reid, has said that it is receiving 100% support
from republicans.
Martin McGuinness and I were actually to meet the Commission around this
time as part of this work.
I am mindful also that tomorrow is the anniversary of the death on
hunger strike of H Block martyr Bobby Sands MP.
Sitting in my cell here in recent days I reflected on that and on the
dreadful summer of 1981.
Of course this is not 1981 or 1972.
The people of this island – with a few exceptions, have carved out a new
dispensation.
So while the past needs to be dealt with – and Sinn Fein is up for doing
this – including the issue of victims and their families, there can be
no going back.
Peace needs to be built with determination and a consistent focus.
That remains my intention and is Sinn Fein’s constant endeavour.
I bear no animosity to anyone. I have no wish to be treated differently
from anyone else.
I am an activist – this is my live and I am philosophical and I
understand that I have detractors and opponents.
I especially understand that there are sinister elements, who are
against the changes Sinn Fein and others are committed to achieving.
I did not come here expecting special treatment but it is crucial that
everyone is treated fairly. I seek fair treatment not only for myself
but because it is crucially important that everyone knows that these are
changed times, that they can and will be treated fairly and that we can
all have hope and confidence in the new developing dispensation,
including the police service.
To send any other signal is to encourage the bigots.
So I make the case that those who authorised my arrest and detention
could have done it differently.
They had discretion.
They did not have to use pernicious coercive legislation to deal with a
legacy issue – even one as serious as this, which I was voluntarily
prepared to deal with.
They did not have to do this in the middle of an election campaign.
Remember I contacted them two months ago.
Despite this I want to make it clear that I support the PSNI.
I will continue to work with others to build a genuinely civic policing
service.
The old guard which is against change whether in the PSNI leadership,
within unionism or the far fringes of republicanism, or the Dark Side of
the British system cannot be allowed to deny any of the people –
Protestant, Catholic or Dissenter – from our entitlement to a
rights-based, citizen-centred society as set out in the Good Friday
Agreement.
I am an Irish republican.
I want to live in a peaceful Ireland based on equality.
I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will but I am
glad that I, and others, have created a peaceful and democratic way
forward for everyone.
The IRA is gone.
During my interrogations much was made by my interrogators about my time
in the Civil Rights struggle in the 1960s, my arrest and detention in
Palace Barracks, in Long Kesh and in the peace talks in 1972.
Newspaper articles, photographs of Martin McGuinness and I at Republican
funerals, books and other open source material were used as the basis of
the accusations made against me.
Much of the interrogations concerned the so-called Belfast Project
conceived by Paul Bew, University lecturer and a former advisor to
former Unionist leader David Trimble, and run by Ed Moloney and Anthony
McIntyre as part of Boston College.
Both Moloney and McIntyre are opponents of the Sinn Fein leadership and
our peace strategy and have interviewed former republicans who are also
hostile to me and other Sinn Fein leaders.
These former republicans have accused us of betrayal and sell-out and
have said we should be shot because of our support for the Good Friday
Agreement and policing.
The allegation of conspiracy in the killing of Mrs McConville is based
almost exclusively on hearsay from unnamed alleged Boston College
interviewees but mainly from Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes.
Other anonymous alleged Belfast Project interviewees were identified
only by a letter of the alphabet, eg interview R or Y.
One of these is claimed by the PSNI to be Ivor Bell although the
interrogators told me he has denied the allegations.
I rejected all the allegations made about me in the Boston Tapes.
Finally, let me be clear. There is only one way for our society to go
and that is forward.
Yes deal with the past. Yes deal with victims but the focus needs to be
on the future.
That is the road we are on. There will be bumps in that road. There will
be diversions.
Obstacles will be erected.
We know that.
I thank everyone for their support.
I extend sympathy to the McConville family and all those who have
suffered especially at the hands of republicans.
My resolve remains as strong as ever. It is to build the peace and see
off the sinister forces, who are against equality and justice for
everyone.
Posted by Jim on May 3, 2014
By J O’Toole (for swp.ie)
In a conflict that generated horrific atrocities in abundance, few
delivered more grief to its victims than the murder of widowed
mother-of-ten Jean McConville in December 1972. Looking back more than
forty years later it is almost impossible to fathom the pain that such
atrocities inflicted on families and friends.
And yet the conflict in the North brought misery without end in the
early seventies — 15 civilians were killed in the UVF bombing of McGurk’s
Bar in Belfast in late 1971; British Army massacres in Belfast the same
year and in Derry in January 1972 took 11 and 14 lives respectively; and
a devastating IRA bombing at Claudy just a few months before
McConville’s abduction left 9 dead–and these were but the worst in a
long string of staggering atrocities that accompanied the outbreak of
war in the North.
Jean McConville — a Protestant in a mixed marraige — had moved to Divis in
the Lower Falls area after she and her husband were burnt out of East
Belfast by loyalists. After her abduction by the IRA, McConville’s
surviving family was broken up and her children scattered, some of them
taken into care.
Her son Michael insists that the RUC had information on the 32
year-old’s disappearance within two days, yet the police never attempted
to find her.
Although the British government have gone to extraordinary lengths to
resurrect the case over the past couple of years — pouring huge resources
into bringing a high-profile court case in the US to win access to
interview transcripts and, in the last few weeks, arresting high profile
veteran republicans, including most recently Sinn Fein president Gerry
Adams — the fact is they never even opened a file on McConville until
forced to do so by her family in 1995, almost a quarter century after
her death.
While there are few who will not sympathise with the McConvilles in
their search for the truth, many are understandably cynical about the
British government’s motivation in bringing a case now, within weeks of
Tory NI Secretary of State Teresa Villier’s announcement of a “fresh
approach” to the past that will focus on “the wrongdoing of
paramilitaries” and away from reckoning with the “activities of the
state.”
On one level there is nothing “fresh” or new in this:
David Cameron’s rejection of the call for an independent inquiry into
the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane is only the most well-known
attempt to bury the story of the state’s deep complicity in sectarian
murder, and the notion that state forces have come under some special
scrutiny in recent years is delusional. The new turn is a flagrant
attempt to draw a line under investigations into state terror, though
Villiers reserves the power to prosecute republicans and loyalists as
the needs of the ‘peace process’ dictate.
Facing “dozens of inquests” into Troubles-related killings and with a
string of High Court cases “by victims alleging state collusion in
murder,” London is looking for a way to shut down the search for truth,
not to expand it. It is the convergence of interests between the British
state and the most backward elements in Unionism–exposed for their
scuppering of the recent Haass talks–that explains Villiers’s
declaration.
Villiers’ announcement just a day before Adams’ arrest that she would
block an independent review into the 1972 murder by British paratroopers
of 11 unarmed civilians–including a mother of eight–in Ballymurphy
provides clear evidence of the double standards at play.
“When you will stop harbouring murderers in the ranks of the British
Army?” John Teggart, speaking for their families, asked of David
Cameron. “Never” would be Cameron’s response if he were speaking
honestly, and in this he has the full backing of the British and Irish
establishments. All of this comes within days of the grand hooley at the
Queen’s residence in London, after all, when the Irish elite of all
political stripes–including Sinn Fein–fell over themselves in begging
London’s forgiveness for having once intruded on imperial prerogatives.
In the aftermath of Villiers announcement that there would be no review
of the Ballymurphy murders, Enda Kenny expressed his “disappointment”
with the decision. Such a feeble response is to be expected from the
head of a state which has never pressed the British government to
release its files on the 1974 Dublin-Monaghan bombings, the worst single
atrocity of the Troubles–in which 34 civilians were killed and more than
300 injured in an operation described by an Oireachtas committee as “an
act of international terrorism colluded in by British Security Forces.”
The southern establishment also has a stake in seeing Adams and Sinn
Fein taken down. They face an electoral upheaval as a huge sentiment of
disgust with the Troika parties of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour
unfolds. Up to now Sinn Fein has been the main beneficiary, topping two
out of the three Euro seat polls. A surge to Sinn Fein would not
de-stabilise the state in itself and some of the more perceptive
establishment figures know that they can be eventually co-opted into a
coalition with Fianna Fail and neutered.
By contrast, not a single soldier has ever been identified, let alone
prosecuted for the murder of 11 unarmed civilians in Ballymurphy in 1971
or 14 in Derry early the following year. In some cases Army officers who
presided over the slaughter or who have been proven to have lied through
their teeth were decorated and promoted, and went on to serve out long
careers overseeing counterinsurgency in Iraq and elsewhere. In many
cases involving allegations of RUC collusion, important files have been
burned or gone missing, while veterans of the sectarian force have found
their way back into paid employment in the ‘reformed’ PSNI–even as
‘investigators’ on cases going back to the period of their tenure in the
RUC.
But the break-up of the cosy political club that has dominated Irish
politics since the foundation of the state would still create a major
problem. It would raise the expectations of working people and help
remove the thick cloud of fatalism that has demobilised them. If FF, FG
and Labour were destroyed at the polls, the confidence to fight water
charges and spread the example of resistance from Cork would grow. Enda
Kenny and the entire establishment will gloat over Adams’ arrest not
because they feel any particular sympathy for the McConvilles, but
because it diminishes the threat of an electoral thrashing they so
richly deserve.
Villiers’ call for a “proportionate” focus on paramilitaries reinforces
Unionist complaints that too much attention has been paid to state
violence, but this represents an obscene distortion of the record. For
more than a quarter century the full power of the state was applied to
suppressing what was, in effect, a popular nationalist insurgency in the
North. In the process tens of thousands of young men and women were
jailed and interned, and substantial numbers of them tortured or killed,
in an effort to crush resistance and shore up a repressive, sectarian
state.
The state response to the IRA’s horrific 1978 bombing of the La Mon
hotel (in which 12 people died and dozens suffered severe burns) stands
in sharp contrast, for example, to the official response to Bloody
Sunday. In the immediate aftermath of the La Mon atrocity the RUC
assigned a team of 100 detectives to the case; 25 Republicans were
rounded up for questioning in the days afterward, including Adams. Two
were charged and one individual was sentenced to twelve life sentences.
The British state’s selective approach to the past is not just about
maintaining its control over a staggering peace process that requires
permanent life support in order to survive. The kind of stability that
they seek to preside over for Northern Ireland requires a rendering of
the past that casts them as a neutral party presiding over warring
tribes, and in many ways it is Sinn Fein’s complicity in this charade
that has allowed them to get away with it. If all of this is now coming
back to bite Adams and the SF leadership, they can hardly claim to be
shocked that the state they now help to administer has reverted to a
familiar routine. McGuinness now complains about ‘dark forces’ in the
PSNI, but they did not suddenly appear this week.
The sharp contest over what sparked thirty years of war and over who
will be prosecuted and who will be given a free pass for atrocities
committed during the Troubles is not only about embedding a particular
rendering of the recent conflict that exonerates the state. It is also
about who will shape the future. Regardless of whether the McConvilles
get the answers they deserve over the coming months, the chances of
getting a full and honest accounting of the recent past through a
process overseen by a British government up to its neck in perpetrating
violence are nil. That will only come in the course of a fundamental
challenge to the establishment north and south.
