Monthly Archives: June 2020

The Balaclava Street blog takes a closer look at the supposed UVF threat to Charles Haughey, sent in a letter carrying a supposed UVF letterhead, which was eventually released publicly by the Dublin authorities in 2017: https://balaclavastreet.wordpress.com/2020/06/28/charles-haughey-dodgy-dets-a-bogus-uvf-letter-and-a-water-pistol-full-of-sheep-spit/

Two things about the photo below: even without the virus, this seems to me to be the very least compelling way to spend a sunny day. Just imagine, for instance, how much piss and shit is floating near the shore. Talking of such things, the second thing is that Boris Johnson is in deep doo-do. His government has given the green light to behaviour that will likely cause a new spike in Coronavirus deaths with consequent economic damage. It might even mark the end of his political career, for which we will have one thing to thank the virus for. And with luck Trump will be with him.

Crowds at the beach in Bournemouth today

I can’t say I knew ‘Big’ Bobby Storey at all well, not least because he was in jail for a lot of the time that I worked as a journalist in Belfast. And when he came out of jail the peace process was in acceleration mode and my life was dominated by the need to keep up with that story.

But I knew that he had been an acolyte of Gerry Adams’ down to his fingertips in jail and that Adams recognised that he needed to keep Storey on his side as the process trundled towards…well, where it is now.

I also suspected then and more so later, that such was his uncritical adoration of the Big Lad that he was either naive in the extreme about Adams, what drove him and where he was going politically, or that he chose cynically to ignore the obvious.

My suspicions in this regard were rooted in  the episode I know best about Storey’s relationship with Gerry, and that was about the disappearance of Jean McConville.

In pursuit of the fiction that none of this had anything to do with him, Adams had given Storey the job of finding out what had happened to Mrs McConville, who had been involved in her disappearance and, most importantly, where her remains had been buried.

This was at a point in the peace process when clearing up the issue of the ‘disappeared’ had assumed urgency and priority, so much so that Bill Clinton had taken sides in favour of justice for the disappeared.

For Adams to ask Storey to find out what happened to Jean McConville was like Stalin asking Beria to discover who gave the order to bury an icepick in Trotsky’s skull. Gerry knew, and knows more about what happened to Jean McConville and why, and who was involved in her ‘disappearance’ and how, than anyone still living.

When Storey went to interview Dolours Price he was, according to her account to me, astonished to hear her side of the story, which was of course that Gerry had given the order to ‘the unknowns’ to send Jean McConville to her maker. Clearly Gerry had denied all knowledge and put the blame on others, especially Ivor Bell, a line the British state and their police chiefs dutifully followed in later years.

From that point on ‘Big’ Bobby knew the truth but it didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest or raise doubts in his mind about his leader, who he continued to serve unquestioningly and, in terms of his intelligence work, very effectively.

But he must have known, or at least strongly suspected that Gerry had lied to him about Jean McConville and in the process laid the blame for his actions onto comrades. In that respect he was the Big Lad’s patsy, or maybe his Beria would be nearer the mark.

Here it is: https://www.flipsnack.com/workersparty1/enough-is-enough-may-2020/full-view.html – many thanks to a source who must remain anonymous.

The kernel of the dissidents’ argument, against the current WP leadership, written last month, comes in the fourth paragraph in a description of the leadership’s reaction to a request by the dissidents to meet the party leadership to outline a complaint about the increasingly nationalist direction being taken by the WP.

It reads: “Within 24 hours of that meeting request being made, a train of events was put in motion which is on track to set this party back a generation which seeks to align the party with a dangerous and divisive nationalist narrative and signal to the world that we are comfortable with that’.

So, you could say that the Workers Party is being riven by a split between its Sticky wing and its Provo wing…..yes?

A year’s free subscription to the Elbow to anyone who can explain what the heck this is about….! And more to the point who is leading it…..? And where are Seamus Lynch and Mary MacMahon these days? Thanks to JM for the tip.

ADDITION: This post recently appeared in the Cedar Lounge Revolution:

1. Gavin Mendel-Gleason – June 19, 2020

Thanks to JM for the tip:

While the in-depth story of the 2020 Southern general election really has yet to be told, I think we can all safely say that the Shinners really screwed up. By that I mean that they failed to detect the real mood of the electorate and when that happens to a political party it usually means that the leadership is a) either totally out of touch with the voters or b) has appointed people who are supposed to be in touch with electorate but failed to do that simple job. Or, more probably, both.

Had SF known what the real mood of the electorate was, that the voters were sick and tired of the usual FG-FF choice and were busting for something really different, then the party leadership would have gone to great pains to ensure that enough of their party’s candidates would have stood to reap the benefit of the electorate’s disdain of the status quo.

But that didn’t happen. SF did not run enough candidates to take full advantage of the flood and the consequence of that is a new government composed of the same old tired failures, not least a Green Party which really should be renamed ‘Fuck The Environment, Nothing Beats The Smell Of The Leather In The Back Seat Of The Minister’s Merc’ party.

The buck here stops at the top. Not at Gerry Adams, who has chosen quasi retirement in Donegal or wherever, but at the feet of Mary Lou McDonald. She failed to detect the voters’ mood and as a result SF have lost the best chance of seizing power in the Southern State since the 1920’s.

In any other party, they’d be showing such a leader the door.But this is Sinn Fein and that is unlikely to happen. Plus ca change!

Jonathan Cook is one of the most perceptive observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict writing today. He lives in Nazareth and contributes to a wide range of publications but is best known for his blog – and for his often biting criticisms of Israeli policy in the region. In this piece he draws the parallels between events in that part of the Middle East and recently in Minneapolis. You can read his article here.