A GAY VIEW ON KINCORA .......
By Sean McGouran .
First published in 'FORTNIGHT' Magazine , May 1984 .
READERS PLEASE NOTE : This article was apparently penned by a gay supporter of McGrath / TARA / Kincora Boys Home . It is published here to give you a taste of the 'spin' which some people attempted to put on that issue ; read it with that in mind ..... Sharon. )
This is a link to the 'objectives' of the TARA loyalist paramilitary organisation with which William McGrath and Roy Garland were associated .
' Welfare on the cheap' was what Belfast wanted - and that's what it got : in William McGrath's day you got a job in Welfare because you ' knew someone at City Hall ' , not because you were qualified for the job or even had an interest in the work .
Sir George Terry is very lenient with the RUC ; he uses the excuse that in the mid-seventies the RUC were in the midst of a campaign of terror . However , they were not so busy that they could not resist arresting twenty gay people over a period of some months in 1976 and asking them questions about practically everything except Kincora .
The 'Northern Ireland (sic) Gay Rights Association' will have no truck with a judicial inquiry , for a number of reasons ; as there was no traffic in boys there is nothing to investigate . The consequences for gays would be dire - they would be driven out of any employment involving young people and they would be kept out of such employment for decades . This would lead to endless complications .
Sexuality is not easily pinned down and codified ; instability would be endemic in teaching , welfare and many other fields . Gay people would be faced with repressing their sexuality or going through life lying and prevaricating at every turn . This would set up destabilising suspicions , and so on ad infinitum , until we had reached the pinnacle of Victorian rectitude , where nobody was honest about their sexuality .
(' 1169 ... ' Comment - The main trust of this article was to attempt to dismiss all fears about Kincora , McGrath and others as "nonsensical" and it was maintained throughout the piece that any investigation into said fears sould be seen as an attack on the gay community as a whole . A truly sickening position to have held on that sordid episode in this countrys history. )
[END of ' A GAY VIEW ON KINCORA' .]
(Tomorrow - 'FIANNA FAIL AND THE IRA CONNECTION' - from December 1986/January 1987.)
SINN FEIN ALONE .......
As Sinn Fein has become more active , members of the government parties have sought to isolate the Provos politically .
The record shows , however , that some of those politicians have for years sought support from Sinn Fein - and some continue to do so in so far as it is politically expedient .
By JOHN McHUGH .
First published in ' MAGILL ' Magazine , September 1984.
At the last local elections Sinn Fein won thirty seats on the State's 117 local authorities which represented an increase of ten seats . There are five Sinn Fein Town Commissioners , two in Ballyshannon and one each in Gorey , Loughrea and Passage West . There are twelve Sinn Fein Urban District Councillors (there were fourteen elected but two have since resigned ) - these Councillors are members of the following Urban District Councils : Midleton , Cavan , Tipperary , Carrick-on-Suir , Athy , Monaghan , Listowel , Clones , Dundalk , Buncrana and there are two Councillors in Bundoran , County Donegal .
Eleven Sinn Fein county councillors serve on nine county councils ; Louth , Clare , Kerry , Donegal , Roscommon , Cavan and Leitrim have one member ; there are two members on both Galway and Longford County Councils . So altogether there are now twenty-six members of Sinn Fein holding twenty-eight seats on different local authorities around the country . The two Urban District Councillors who resigned bring the total number of seats down from the 1979 figure .
On February 1st , Eddie Fullerton , Sinn Fein , who had never before been refused access to a Minister , was told that Environment Minister , Liam Kavanagh , would not see him . Fullerton , part of a delegation which had gone to Leinster House to discuss proposals for a sewerage scheme , says he had a meeting with Alan Dukes last autumn and that there had been no problem then .......
(MORE LATER).
HUNGER-STRIKING AGAINST SHOW-TRIALS.......
From 'AP/RN' , 2 January 1986 .
No By-Line .
Last Friday , December 27 , 1985 , several relatives of the Kirkpatrick defendants travelled from Belfast to Cork to see Free State Foreign Minister Peter Barry , but Barry , despite having had advance notice , was conveniently "...not at home .. " .
Following this snub , Peter Barry called on the hunger-strikers to end their fast and leave the issue to the London-Dublin Inter-Governmental Conference of which he is joint Chair . However , his verbal expressions of concern have been viewed with cynicism by the relatives and indeed by many nationalists ; Cathy Tohill commented -
- " Peter Barry asked the relatives to leave it to the politicians , but we've done that in the past and they've just given it lip service . Barry has condemned the 'supergrass system' in Leinster House but if he had taken some positive action maybe it would'nt have come to a hunger-strike . "
That the hunger-strike poses a challenge to Peter Barry's claims about the 'benefits' to nationalists of the Hillsborough Agreement has been noted by at least one of the deal's media supporters , 'The Sunday Tribune' newspaper .......
(MORE LATER).
