“The ‘Outrage’ propaganda should be dropped in the Twenty-Six Counties. It can have no effect but to make certain of our people see red which will …

The ‘outrage’ propaganda should be dropped: from Belfast pogroms to the Hooded Men and Miami Showband

Worth reading, and perhaps re-visiting after the next presidential poll…….

The one person who should be asked for an opinion on Gerry Adams’ most recent piece of foolishness is Mary Lou McDonald who, last time I looked, was still Sinn Fein’s national leader. Yet somehow and for reasons that were neither addressed nor answered, The Irish Times reporters covering this story failed to put the question to her. Extraordinary.

The French-German film maker Marcel Ophuls is best known for ‘The Sorrow And The Pity’, his film on French collaboration with the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. But he also made a memorable film about Northern Ireland, actually mostly Belfast, in the early years of the Troubles. ‘A Sense Of Loss’ has many defects, not least it is about an hour too long, but it captures the time very well. You can watch it here…

There is a very clear message to wannabe whistleblowers from The Guardian’s coverage of the British court decision earlier today to greenlight the extradition to a US federal court of Julian Assange.

The message is this: if you have a scandal to reveal, or dirty secrets the government would rather not see aired in public, do not give the story to The Guardian, if you expect Britain’s premier liberal organ to stand by you, through thick and thin.

The court decision made the front page of The Guardian’s internet edition early in the day but by 10:30 a.m. New York time, the story had been dropped and relegated to the ’UK News’ section. As exercises in hand washing go, this was up there with the worst.

Few outlets made as much hay out of the Wikileaks revelations as The Guardian, but few distanced themselves from their source with such speed and lack of grace when the US and UK governments turned up the heat. Assange, whose mental and physical health is failing by some accounts, now faces the grisly prospect of decades of jail time – if he lives that long.

The British and US governments will no doubt be delighted with this outcome, the prison cell awaiting Assange being a terrible warning to others tempted to tell hidden truths. But if I was running the CIA, FBI, MI5 or MI6 it would be the speed and scale of the media’s desertion of Assange that would bring the broadest grin.

‘If Eta can say sorry, why can’t Sinn Féin?

Earlier this week Irish Times demi-God Fintan O’Toole admonished Sinn Fein for failing to follow the example of the party’s friends in the Basque terrorist group ETA by apologising to the victims of its violence. That brought the following admonishment from Rogelio Alonso, the Spanish scholar whose work on the Provisional IRA, ’The IRA and Armed Struggle’ is required reading for students of terrorism.

O’Toole asked why the IRA had not followed the example of their buddies in ETA which had issued a public apology to its victims, an implicit admission of the wrongness of its violence, a question which prompted Alonso to point out that this was not quite what ETA had done:

Sir, – I respectfully disagree with Fintan O’Toole’s main conclusions in his article “If Eta can say sorry, why can’t Sinn Féin?” (Opinion, December 7th). The propaganda act staged by the leader of Eta’s political wing is similar to others staged by Sinn Féin representatives. None of them can be seen in a positive light.

Last April the mother of Paul Maxwell, the young boy killed in 1979 alongside Lord Mountbatten labelled Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald’s apology as “hollow” and “opportunistic”. The reason: it did not come with a condemnation.

Similarly, Eta’s leader Arnaldo Otegi “laments” the pain inflicted on victims of Eta’s terrorism without condemning or delegitimising the terrorist group that caused such an unjust ordeal. The acknowledgment of the injustice of the victimisation was also absent in his propaganda act.

Otegi did not say that Eta should not have done what they did. The translation is different: it is “the pain” of the victims what should not have existed.

So, he is simply saying Eta should have murdered but without causing pain to its victims. It is surreal that anybody can interpret such twisted language as an apology.

Mary Hornsey, Paul Maxwell’s mother, perfectly described as an “insult” the so-called “apology” by Sinn Féin: “I think the word ‘Sorry’ means very little from the lady who said it.”

Many victims reacted to Otegi’s words in the same way. Similarly, when in 2013 Gerry Adams “apologised” for the IRA murder of Garda McCabe he was criticised because it was felt he had not done everything possible to redress the wrong and provide justice to the victim.

Former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald’s words years ago are still pertinent and applicable to both SF and to Eta’s political wing: “Their propaganda system is very focused. ‘We are the peace party.’ If you murder enough people and then stop, then you become the peace party.” – Yours, etc,’

Oops!

Thanks to HM for the tip.

From James Kinchin-White and Ed Moloney

Fascinating documents describing contacts between the newly-elected British prime minister, Tony Blair and the North’s political leaders, written in the days following New Labour’s historic May 1997 general election triumph, have made their way to The Broken Elbow, and they show that Blair began his stint in Downing Street as he would continue it, by saying one thing in public but doing the opposite in private.

The documents show that despite a public pledge to the contrary, Blair was in almost immediate contact with the Sinn Fein president and IRA Army Council member Gerry Adams in blatant contravention of a public pledge that this would not happen until a new ceasefire had been called.

The documents, which come from British files, also reveal that Blair was advised to avoid elevating the SDLP leader, John Hume into a major player during Blair’s stewardship of the peace process. Writing to Blair on May 9th, 1997, less than a week after Labour’s general election triumph, the new premier’s principal private secretary and senior Foreign Office mandarin, John Holmes gave the following advice: ‘We want to avoid getting into a position where Hume is once again an intermediary. You will need to be careful not to give Hume messages to take back to Adams, and to avoid getting drawn into any text he may have in his pocket.’

A week after Labour’s election victory, on May 9th, 1997, the new Blair administration was in touch with Gerry Adams via his secretary, Siobhan O’Hanlon who contacted the Northern Ireland Office official, Quentin Thomas to pass on a three paragraph message from the SF leader to Blair promising to keep contact with the new prime minister secret, along with Mr Adams’ desire, in a veiled reference to a renewed IRA ceasefire, ‘…..to help create conditions in which real progress can be made. The sooner this is done the better.’

Siobhan O’Hanon was one of the members of an IRA team which plotted to bomb Gibraltar in March 1988. Three of the team were shot dead by the SAS as they apparently carried on a target surveillance operation on the Rock, but O’Hanlon remained at the team’s Spanish base and survived. A sister of a Sunday Independent columnist and fierce IRA critic, Eilis O’Hanlon, she became Adams’ secretary but succumbed to cancer a few years later.

Adams was good as his word. With a challenge from IRA dissidents, led by IRA Quarter-Master General Micky McKevitt faced down at a special IRA Convention, Adams and his allies were, by the Summer of 1997, back in charge of the IRA and free to resume the peace process. A new ceasefire was called on July 20th, 1997, nearly three months after Blair’s general election triumph, although an IRA split quickly followed.

Another document, also from John Holmes, described arrangements for phone calls from the various NI party leaders to Blair. ‘This is a somewhat grisly prospect but necessary’, he wrote, adding: ‘They are getting 30 minutes each. You have to see the party leaders from time to time. But they should not get into the habit of bypassing Mo (Mo Mowlam, Blair’s NI Secretary), which they will be tempted to do, especially the Unionists’.

He continued: ‘It will not be difficult to be in listening mode with Paisley, although he is often the soul of joviality on these occasions. Robinson is much cleverer and more difficult to deal with’. Paisley and Blair went on to cultivate a friendship based on a common interest in religion born out of Blair’s wish to convert to Catholicism.

A third document describes a Downing Street meeting between Paisley, who traveled alone, and Blair, his new NI Secretary, Mo Mowlam and three officials, Jonathan Stephens, Jonathan Powell and John Holmes. It took place on May 12, 1997 and was notable for the following pledge Blair gave Paisley: ‘The Prime Minister said that his priority was to make clear to the Unionists that he was absolutely attached to the principle of consent. His government would not be acting as ‘persuaders’ for Irish unity. He asked Dr Paisley the best way of reassuring the Unionists’.

Paisley singled out the removal of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution which Unionists saw as laying claim to Northern Ireland,

Here are the documents, beginning with the secret messaging to Gerry Adams, via Siobhan O’Hanlon (the final sentence in the second document from John Holmes stubbornly refuses to be loaded. It reads ‘….have to be done in the absence of Sinn Fein. Trimble is trying to see Bruton (which is much t be encouraged)’:

Watch it here…..

You can hear it here….. with thanks to TBG