The British police in the Six Counties (PSNI) have been in the news here recently in connection with their recruitment , as an informer , of a 13-years-young boy with special needs ; the youth was offered sums of money to report on the movements of a number of people in his area , and arrangements were put in place wherby the youth could pass this information on to his British handlers .
The use of informers by the British is as old as the struggle itself , and one such infamous tout springs to mind ~
Thomas Reynolds , the son of a wealthy merchant , was born in Dublin in March 1771 , and became a successful dealer in silks . He married into a family connected with the Tone clan , and he joined the United Irishmen in 1797 . Such was his popularity that he was elected leader of the Kildare Society of United Irishmen and was soon promoted to membership of the Leinster Provincial Directory . In 1798 , his financial situation took a turn for the worst , and his father died . He inherited considerable property from his father and , for a time , this stopped him from becoming bankrupt . One of his creditors , a man named Cope , persuaded him to sell information to the British authorities as a means of keeping himself going financially . Reynolds was desperate for cash and agreed - his position within the United Irishmen gave him access to valuable detail regarding the planned Rising for that year .
More on this informer later ....
Quickie on Llyod George - On Monday , December 22 , 1919 , his ' Bill for the Better Government of Ireland ' (known here simply as ' The Partition Bill') was read to the British Parliament and was passed into British law in 1920 , but did not come into force until May 1921 . And has caused nothing but trouble since ....

'Quickie' on Lloyd George -
The man's son once said " Father was sick of the Irish Republicans .He was quite willing to let them have what they seemed determined to have ; an impoverished semi-peasant country with their peat fires and undrained bogs and dreams of glory seen in a fine mist of alcohol " . The nerve of that man ~ and after all we done for him ....

Another decent Brit who promised to look after us was Henry 8th - he operated a policy known as 'Surrender and Regrant' , wherby 'Pardons' and English titles were offered to Irish ' terrorists ' if they surrendered to him and pledged to follow English laws ! ( So thats where Blair got it from ) .

Those Irish people that refused to ' cut deals' with the likes of Lloyd George etc were treated the old-fashioned way by the British ; after the executions of the leaders of the 1916 Rising (and leaving out the deaths on hunger-strike of Tomas Aghas in 1917 and Terence MacSwiney in 1920) the British Government executed 24 Irish Republicans in the five years of conflict from late 1916 to 1921 ; but the new Fianna Fail regime in the Free State executed some 77 Irish Republicans in the six months from November 1922 to April 1923 . "Poachers turned gamekeepers" ~ still with us to this day ; they have no ' bottom line ' , no principle , no new low they won't stoop to - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing . But they have always been with us ,and have always failed to carry out their paymasters instructions . As it should be .

More on OLIVER CROMWELL ~
He apparently had much to gain , personally , from the invasion of Ireland ; in 1642 , following the passing of the ' Adventurers Act ' by the English Parliament ( the aim of which was to defray the cost of subduing Ireland by inviting 'contributions' from the wealthy merchant class , in return for which they were guaranteed land in Ireland following the conquest ) in which Cromwell invested to the tune of £2,050 , which ensured that he was subsequently granted land in the ' Barony of Eglish ' ( Co Offaly) .
The historian James Leyburn stated - " What Cromwell did (in Ireland) deserves to be ranked with the horrors perpetrated by Genghis Khan . His 'pacification' of Ireland was so thorough that it left scars on that country which have never been forgotten or forgiven " .

" One perplexity after another.Crises chasing each other like the shadows of clouds across the landscape . Miners , unemployment , reparation , Silesia and , as always , Ireland " .
------ Lloyd George , June , 1921 .
Lloyd George became British PM ( in an administration comprising Liberals and Unionists ) in December 1916 . More on this man ,and a quote from his son ,later .....

A 'quickie' on Fine Gael-- A woman from Co Down contacted Fine Gael Head Office in Dublin earlier this year and enquired about membership . A M/S Sarah Belton wrote back to the woman , stating - " We are always delighted to hear from people with new ideas. As you are living outside Ireland , associate membership is the only option available to you " . That explains Fine Gael's political position better than I could !
Britain has the worst record on human rights in Western Europe- to date, it has lost more than 50 of the cases brought against it at the European Court of Human Rights ; 12 of those cases (almost 25% of the total) have been directly connected to the conflict in the Six Counties , where Britain has been found to have breached articles of the European Convention on Human Rights(ECHR) on the right to life , on the prohibition on torture , on the use of inhuman or degrading treatment , on unjustified detention and on the right to a fair trial . Twice , Britain has been forced to derogate from the ECHR under Article 15 because of it's use of illegal seven-day detention orders . The ECHR was finally incorporated into British law in October 2000 , some 50 years after it came into being !
The refusal to incorporate the Convention was based on Britains continued use of the ' temporary ' Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) , most specifically the use of seven-day detention orders which were in flagrant breach of all human rights conventions and legislation . Under Blair's Labour Government , the British state has managed to circumvent the threat to the PTA posed by incorporation of the ECHR simply by making the legislation permanent (the new 'Terrorism Act') and by making seven-day detention dependent upon a magistrate rather than a police officer !
The British administration are a devious bunch to cut a deal with - the Provos have apparently taken them on their word in relation to the Stormont treaty and , while the Adams family may make a living on the ' rubber chicken' lecture circuit and promote themselves as world leaders , no date has been given for a British withdrawal from Ireland . Have you a ' Plan B ' , Gerry ?

The Fine Gael party has been in the news here recently due to the death of one of its Dublin ex-Leinster House members . The party has an interesting history , which is hardly ever mentioned --
During their lifetime , the Blueshirts underwent four name changes; The Army Comrades Association , the National Guard , the Young Ireland Association and the League of Youth . The name changes were due to proscription by the then Fianna Fail administration in Leinster House . Eoin O Duffy , who was sacked as Commissioner of the Free State police , was elected as leader of the Blueshirts - on his instruction , in 1933 , the ' right-arm salute ' (think Nazi) was adopted !
From then untill September 1934 , the Blueshirts enjoyed their greatest period of support and activity .
it was at that period that O Duffy was ousted as leader and replaced by Ned Cronin , who promptly took the group downhill ~ it struggled on for two years but ceased to exist after 1936 . Most of its members jumped camp into the fledging Fine Gael .
Following his explusion , O Duffy founded his own organisation and led an ill-fated crusade to Spain to support Franco's fascists during the Civil War . The Fine Gael party is not alone anti-Republican but is a pro-British and pro-Unionist political party . It has no time whatsoever for the Republican position re the political issue in our six north-eastern counties , and would be of the opinion that the British won the issue a long time ago ; with this in mind , I will annoy the Blueshirts by quoting the words of Padraig Pearse in his last few hours before he was executed by the British -
" We seem to have lost . We have not lost . To refuse to fight would have been to lose ; to fight is to win . We have kept faith with the past , and handed on a tradition to the future ..... if you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight . You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom . If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom , then our children will win it by a better deed " . Look out , Fine Gael - it's not over yet ....

....Austin Stack was sent to Strangeways Prison in Manchester , from where he escaped in October 1919 . During the Black and Tan war , as Minister for Home Affairs , he organised the Republican Courts which replaced the British legal system in all parts of Ireland . He rejected the Treaty of 1921 and , following a short PR tour of America , returned to Ireland to take up arms on the Republican side in the Civil War .
In the general round-up of Republican leaders in April 1923(during which Liam Lynch was shot dead by Free State troops) Stack , the Deputy Chief of Staff , was arrested in a farmyard in the Knockmealdown mountains . This was four days after Lynchs death . Imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail , he took part in a mass hunger-strike by Republican prisoners in October 1923 , which was his 5th hunger-strike in 6 years . Shortly after the end of the 41-day hunger-strike , in November , he was released with hundreds of other political prisoners . He married Una Gordon in 1925 .
In April 1929 ,he entered the Mater Hospital in Dublin for a stomach operation - he never recovered , and died 2 days later , on April 27 , 1929 . Austin Stack is buried in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetary , Dublin .
Go ndeanaidh Dia trocaire ar a anam usual calma.
Martin Ferris and others like him have no shame to attempt to link themselves to those men and women like Austin Stack . Make a career for yourself by all means , Martin , but not on another mans wounds .

Shortly after his election earlier this year to Leinster House , Martin Ferris (PSF) claimed to be the first "Sinn Fein TD" for Kerry North " since Austin Stack" - He's right in a Provo sort of way ~ Austin Stack was never elected for Kerry North ! On five occasions , Stack was returned as a Sinn Fein Deputy ; 1) 1918 for Kerry West ; 2)1921 for Kerry and West Limerick ; 3)1922 Kerry and West Limerick; 4)1923 for Co Kerry and 5)1927 for Co Kerry . He was still Ard-Runai of Sinn Fein when he died in 1929 . It must be noted that Austin Stack was each time elected to an All-Ireland Dail , not a 26-County institution calling itself 'Dail Eireann' .
Austin Stack was born in Tralee , Co Kerry , in 1880 . In 1904 , he captained the Kerry team which won the All-Ireland final and , for many years afterwards , he held a postition on the Kerry board of the GAA . He was arrested with Con Collins on April 21 , 1916 , while planning an attack on Tralee RIC barracks in an attempt to rescue Roger Casement . He was sentenced to death but this was later commuted to twenty years penal servitude . Released in the general amnesty of June 1917 , he became active in the Irish Volunteers again and was elected Secretary of Sinn Fein - a position which , as stated , he held up to his death . His health was shattered due to the number of prison protests and hunger-strikes for political status he took part in . In the 1918 General Election , while a prisoner in Belfasts Crumlin Road jail , he was elected to represent West Kerry in the First Dail . He was sent to Strangeways Prison in Manchester , from where ...(more later..)