Go way , peasants

On 9th October, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,  Alister James Hendrie Burt will have to entertain a motley crew. They will be Arab, English , Irish and Northern Irish. Their common bond will be Semtex. That pernicious explosive will have killed their family member, their friend or will have injured them.

Burt, as a junior minister at the FCO has drawn the short straw , meaning that he should entertain this group and tell them once again [how many bloody times must we tell them?] that HMG will not lift a hand to help them.

The peculiarity of this group is that , among all the peoples of the world, they are the only people not to have been compensated for Gadafy’s supply of Semtex to the IRA.

As a member of the Establishment, Head Boy of Bury Grammar School, St John’s College Oxford, degree in Jurisprudence 1977; he will be required by his masters to send the [mostly] Paddies away with some more platitudes.

Burt will have been briefed as to the dangers of this group. To the danger of the history of the UK’s relationship with Gadafy and with the IRA, where HMG ran numerous informers.

So , the outcome of this meeting is pre-ordained. Burt will express sympathy. He will tell the audience of peasants that Libya is a basket case. He will say that we must wait till there is stability. He won’t tell his audience that Libya is producing a million barrels of oil a day or that its  exports to the UK exceed $350 million a year. He won’t reveal how many of his Tory friends want to do business there, including those of Boris, his boss. Remember the joke about clearing the dead bodies so that a casino could be built?

Burt is another of those Tories who believes the rules are for the little people, [over claiming expenses on his flat.] He is just another Tory, on the make, passing through.

Such is the British response to Terrorism. One a  crook and the other a conman. Those of you affected by killings in Tunisia, Manchester or London, don’t believe that the State has any regard for you. The government is in the grip of the Spooks , who drive the agenda. And of chancers, controlled by the spooks.

 

 

 

Sinister forces at work in Northern Ireland

In his novel  “1984”, George Orwell wrote:

“Hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak-‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used-had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.”

A recent Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism campaign encouraged law-abiding citizens to look through each others’ bins to check for “suspicious items such as chemical bottles and to report any troubling findings to the police” Fake blondes-hide that peroxide bottle! I’ve struggled to find the Troubling Findings Act.

China’s Ministry of Supervision has a discipline watchdog which opened the “unified informant hotline” for the public to report discipline offences of civil servants and officials.

Eavesdropping and informing on each other to the Stasi was a way of life in East Germany.

Stalin’s regime relied on “mutual surveillance” urging families to report on each other about ‘disloyalty’.

So how grateful must we be to live in a liberal democracy.

Not so. This blog is not about the programme of informers during the Troubles. Like Scap, Donaldson , Sean Maguire and Brian Gillen, they got their money and , those still alive are living a comfortable life, protected by the British State.

This blog is about what is happening in our communities  now. It is about democracy, freedom of speech and the ability to protest.

Many Loyalist areas of Belfast have taken the Queen’s Shilling in return for compliance. The Greater Shankill is an example of that. The killing of Bobby Moffett has been swept under the carpet so long as  the locals support the GFA. The Spectrum Centre doles out nearly a million pounds  each year ,to the locals in wages. The UVF and Arlene are at peace.

Other communities are not GFA supporters. The result is that they are subject to harassment by the PSNI, as an arm of the State. Frequent use of the Terrorism Act 2000, in dubious circumstances. Searches of legitimate community facilities for “loyalist paraphernalia”. The stop and search of  individuals on a regular basis, in breach of the codes of practice. Stops by ‘Road Policing’ with bogus allegations of no insurance or road tax.

It’s not a crime, of course, to oppose the GFA.

Or is it?

Lets read a new document. It is entitled:

“THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE (ON BEHALF OF THE TACKLING PARAMILITARISM PROGRAMME BOARD)

Building capacity in communities in Transition Project (2017-2021)

Information Memorandum

Tenders are invited to support the delivery of this project.”

The programme “is committed to promoting the use of peaceful and democratic means and upholding the rule of law across all communities”

So consider this , Dear Reader. In the proposals which tenderers can make , is the requirement that they show an “outline of how information will be shared with police on individuals who do not support transition”

“Transition” is not defined anywhere.

The Board is chaired by the Department of Justice and is comprised of civil servants and the PSNI.

So , if you want to get your community nose  into this particular trough you will have to undertake to snitch on those who are not supporting “transition”.

“Feed your Snout-be a Tout” might be the catch phrase.

Of course , the document is keen to espouse the rule of law.  The rule of law encompasses ‘no punishment without law’.

What law is being broken which requires the citizen to “share information” with the PSNI about an individual who does not support transition?

The answer is that this programme , aside from offering monetary bribes, further undermines the rule of law. The PSNI willingly particpates , not only by harassment but by being part of the supervising body. The Stasi would be impressed.

The lesson is that you can be a paramilitary as long as you are a State approved-GFA loving paramilitary. Otherwise you are in big trouble.

It’s unlikely that any mainstream politician will put his/her head over the much funded parapet about this.

Approximately  one third of the workforce depend on the State for their mortgage. In addition, vast swathes of the middle classes , including journalists ,are paid fees by the BBC, the Housing Executive and every other public body for services rendered. The country is in the grip of the Security Service, forget about Brokenshire. Even Stalin would be impressed with such a compliant body, when it is allied to the likes of the Greater Shankill Partnership Soviet.

It’s hard not to conclude that democracy  and freedom of speech died in Northern Ireland years ago.

 

 

The cloth cap barrister

In the 1960s there were about sixty barristers practising in Northern Ireland. It was the preserve of the rich and connected. I was at Queen’s law faculty in the late 1960s when one of these people came and told us not to go to the bar because it was “overcrowded”. I did other things for ten years, then studied at the Institute for Professional Legal Studies. At this point there were about 180 barristers practising. A man called Kennedy came and told us not to go to the Bar because it was “overcrowded”. A few years later his daughter came to the Bar. There are now about 700 barristers in practice , trying to get a piece  of a pie which has shrunk by probably a third, since the 1980s. Legal aid for civil proceedings is rare and the fees paid for serious criminal cases have seriously diminished. The Chief Justice suggested that a solution to the absence of legal aid could  be that young unemployed barristers might do cases for free.

Readers may remember a recent campaign by the profession, complaining about fee cuts and suggesting that it was the end of justice as we know it. Humpty Dumpty- like, the profession was led up the hill and back down again.

Now the Minister of Justice, when told of a muttering by the legal profession will think what Stalin said when told of the Pope’s criticism: “how many divisions  has the Pope?”

The implications for young barristers are dire. More importantly, the outcome for the public is  that they will not be properly represented by experienced counsel. Maybe not an issue until you are falsely accused of a crime.

Worse, we head back to the days of the 1960s when a friend was told by an old hand, who eventually became a Lord Justice of Appeal, “there seem to be a lot of cloth cap barristers arriving”.

Cloth cap no more.

Why Drew Harris is not to be trusted

Readers of this blog will have read my previous articles about the murders of my parents and my attempt to obtain justice for them.

During this campaign I have engaged, inter alia , the RUC, the PSNI, the HET , the Police Ombudsman and others.

A recurring theme, like “Blackpool” through a stick of rock , has been that there is no intelligence as to the killers. Every organisation has said the same thing.

Consider this. The two most deadly areas of conflict in the Troubles were South Armagh and North Belfast. It is likely that these two areas received the most attention from the security forces.

The “supremo” re intelligence in the PSNI is Drew Harris. He is presently Deputy Chief Constable.

In 2014 , when he was an ACC , I raised with him , again, the issue of intelligence, either before , during or after the murders. I had pointed out the persons whom  I alleged were informers to the PSNI, MI5 or the Army. [See previous blogs]. All agencies had told me that no such intelligence existed.

He said in a letter to me dated 11th August 2014, “Whilst is [sic] not appropriate to comment upon the governance arrangements that exist in relation to the exchange of intelligence between agencies, I can assure you that both the SCRT and the HET had full access to all available information and intelligence during the course of their respective Reviews.”

I recommend to you that you read Ed Moloney’s blog entitled “The Tom Oliver Killing-Transcript of Drew Harris’ Testimony to the Smithwick Tribunal”

Aside from the specific references to the killing, Mr Harris is plainly uncomfortable about the twenty pieces of intelligence [not silver] which had lately been laid before the tribunal at his hand.

Where have they been all these years, was one question.

Mr Harris placed these items of intelligence before the tribunal in October 2012. When his testimony  was read into the record, the tribunal had been hearing evidence for 124 days.

More importantly, North Belfast was riddled with PIRA informers. Sean Maguire, now SF/IRA publicity director , operated there. The  command structure encompassed Gillen, Spike Murray, Scap and McGuinness. All likely informers.

To suggest that no intelligence exists for 1990 in North Belfast ,  comparable to that in 1989   in South Armagh, is a lie and a desecration of the memory  of a man who served the RUC and of a woman who was an “innocent victim”

It’s time ‘men’ like Harris and others who populated Special Branch stood up and admitted what they did and the level of collusion between the State and PIRA.

Or are they just happy to spend their pension in Marks and Spencer ?

Does National Police Memorial Day prick any conscience?