Monthly Archives: August 2015

UPDATE 1

The Irish News is reporting late tonight that the dead man has been named locally as Kevin McGuigan. The victim has the same name as the figure accused by the IRA of killing Jock Davison.

UPDATE 2

The Irish Times does not have the McGuigan killing on the front page of its internet edition as of 8.26 pm, EDT, 1.26 am GMT. A story inside is by the Press Association, not a staffer. This used to be a newspaper. The BBC NI webpage leads with the incident but has no details about the victim. At least they recognise it is an important story.

Initial reports from Belfast are speculating that the 50-year old man shot dead in the Catholic Short Strand area of Belfast last night might have been the figure blamed by the IRA for the gunning to death of one of their leading members, Jock Davison in early May this year.

Davison, a prominent IRA figure in the city, was shot dead in clinical fashion from behind as he walked to work in the Markets area of Belfast. Davison was a leading suspect in the stabbing murder of Robert McCartney whose savage killing in 2005 caused a crisis in the peace process for the Provos, especially in their dealings with a Bush administration in Washington already furious about the Northern Bank robbery; the White House withdrew a funding visa from Gerry Adams in retaliation.

Don’t mess with these guys! Jock Davison’s funeral in Belfast attracted a significant contingent of IRA mourners.

Davison’s funeral was attended by many leading IRA figures, including the organisation’s chief of intelligence, Bobby Storey, an indication of the respect he was held in by the Provo hierarchy.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the Short Strand killing but if the IRA is suspected, and the victim does turn out to be the alleged killer of Davison, there will be an inevitable political controversy over the continued existence and capability of the IRA, notwithstanding the peace process and supposed decommissioning of IRA weapons.

In the past when the IRA wished to disguise its part in violence it used cover names, notably Direct Action Against Drugs. In the past week a group calling itself ‘Action Against Drugs’ emerged in the columns of The Irish News, threatening alleged drug dealers.

The figure accused of killing Davison has himself been labelled a drug-dealer,which may mean only that he has offended the group, or its sponsors, in other ways.

Whatever the truth about last night’s killing the incident shows that violence is never far from the surface in Northern Ireland, peace process or no peace process.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed politics in the North of Ireland in recent years, that Sinn Fein has become the richest of all the political parties operating there. (There are some spin-off’s from the peace process that are never mentioned in polite company!)

Figures released by the Electoral Commission yesterday show that SF’s annual income for 2014 at £1.19 million tops the league table, followed by the DUP at £482k, the SDLP comes third at £440k and last, the once mighty Ulster Unionists, with a paltry £342k.

In other words, SF’s income in 2014 was not far shy of the total income of all the other major parties combined!

Sinn Fein’s income is not broken down into any real detail but into categories: ‘Donations’, ‘Grants’ and something called ‘Sundry Income’. Only ‘Grants’ are described in any detail, and they provide evidence of the financial benefits of dropping abstentionism, or in the case of Westminster, partial abstentionism: ‘Donations’ presumably refers in part to all those Yankee greenbacks Gerry collects every time he travels to Manhattan and hosts dinners for various Irish-American construction companies and their, um, Italian-American friends. (Incidentally SF have Tony Blair to thank for exclusion from the requirement applied to parties elsewhere in the UK to list in detail their foreign donors. Jeremy Corbyn, how are you?)

The rest may be made up of contributions from elected parliamentarians who are obliged to give part of their income to party headquarters (depriving some, alas, of necessary cosmetics and hairdo’s).

But what on earth does ‘Sundry Income’ mean? Last year it amounted to nearly £243k, a sum not to be sniffed at.

Any ideas, dear readers?

Answers on a postcard to Sean ‘Spike’ Murray, c/o Sinn Fein offices, Stormont Parliament, Belfast. (Before you buy the stamp, have a quick read of this)

In the meantime here, for what it is worth, is the electoral commission’s financial report on NI’s wealthiest political party.

Thanks to a German reader for sending these YouTube links to a talk given by Kevin Hannaway, at a conference in Derry hosted by Éirigi last year to mark the anniversary of the 1971 internment swoop. As the reader commented, it is clear that he has been a member of the ‘dissident universe’ for some while. Getting arrested, allegedly for that sympathy, puts things on a different level however.

Here are the three videos. Enjoy:

News tonight that veteran West Belfast Republican,  Kevin Hannaway, one of the ‘hooded men’ tortured by British intelligence after the 1971 internment swoop has been arrested in Dublin on charges apparently connected to dissident armed republican activity. He appeared in court yesterday evening along with four others, including another member of the Hannaway clan.

Kevin Hannaway, arrested in Dublin, accused of involvement with dissidents.

The significance of the allegation is twofold. First of all Kevin Hannaway’s father Liam was a brother of Gerry Adams’ mother, Annie Hannaway, which makes Gerry and Kevin cousins. The fact that such a close relative of the architect of the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA peace process strategy has been accused of being in sympathy with enemies of the peace process is likely to be a source of considerable embarrassment and political discomfort for the SF President – at least in pre-peace process republican circles.

When things were simpler. A young Gerry Adams, in spectacles, poses with his uncle Liam Hannaway, Kevin Hannaway’s father, who is on the extreme right. The other two are Geordie Shannon and Eddie Keenan, famous IRA men from the Forties. None of the early media reports in Ireland about Kevin Hannaway’s arrest mentioned his connection to Gerry Adams, evidence of either appalling ignorance or unforgivable timidity. Or both.

The second important feature of Kevin Hannaway’s arrest is that he is one of the most respected survivors of the Provisional IRA’s founding fathers and won enormous respect for surviving British Army and RUC Special Branch torture during the 1971 internment swoop.

In a sidebar to the internment operation, he was one of twelve men selected for in-depth interrogation by British intelligence, an experience which the victims said was torture. They took the case to Europe, initially won but lost on a British appeal. The decision was later cited as justifying CIA torture by the Bush White House.

Following a recent decision to re-open the case, their legal action is now being re-fought at the European Court of Human Rights; one of the leading lawyers acting for Hannaway is Amal Clooney, wife of the movie star George Clooney.

Kevin Hannaway rose to become Quarter-Master General of the IRA and held that post when the IRA negotiated the ‘Eksund’ arms deal with Libya’s Col Gaddafi. However he became ill shortly afterwards, suffering from the long lasting after effects of his torture, and quit that post. His successor was Michael McKevitt, who along with Tom ‘Slab’ Murphy, then Northern Commander of the IRA, successfully transported all the Libyan arms shipments to Ireland, bar the final one on the Eksund.

Hannaway became Adjutant-General after leaving the QMG post but not long afterwards resigned from the IRA, again citing ill-health.

The fact that such a distinguished and high-ranking IRA veteran has been accused of a relationship with dissident republicans – even though the details are not yet clear – is a development that will not be welcomed by the ‘New Provos’, especially after a weekend which saw one of their leaders, Martin McGuinness, condemn republicans who clashed with the PSNI as they commemorated the anniversary of internment.