(Still here.....!)
WHERE SINN FEIN STANDS.......
The following statement was issued subsequent to a meeting of the Caretaker Executive of Sinn Fein on January 17th 1970 .
The recommendations of the Sinn Fein Commission which were made , were two in number :
(A) ' That the relationship with "other radical groups" involving co-operation for the achievement of limited objectives be now brought a stage further ; that it be formalised into an alliance to be known for the sake of convenience as the 'National Liberation Front' ' .
(B) ' That , subject to certain conditions etc , Republican elected representatives should participate in Westminster , Leinster House and Stormont . '
Some of those who came into the Republican Movement from the Irish Workers' Party were prominent on both the Conference of 1965 and the Commission of 1968-1969 ; in point of fact , by 1969 they had , with the aid of a few long-standing members , become the 'master minds' and policy makers of the Republican Movement .
One of them in particular had been in charge of an 'Education Department' for the stated purpose of educating new members and re-educating older members into certain social and economic policies . ('1169....' Comment - a dangerous position for the Movement to have placed those people in . As we will see ...).......
(MORE LATER).
FR. DENIS FAUL : A CONNIVING AND TREACHEROUS MAN .......
First published in 'IRIS' magazine , Volume 1 , Number 2 , November 1981 .
On Sunday August 23rd 1981 , Fr. Denis Faul eventually rectified the scurrilous and baseless assertions made in the 'Irish News' newspaper on August 14th 1981 , villifying hunger-strike supporters outside the prison and implying manipulation of the hunger-strikers - but it took a blistering row with Brendan McFarlane and other Republican prisoners to achieve that .
Emerging from the prison after saying Mass there on Sunday , August 23rd 1981 , Faul put the public record straight on that score - still declaring the hunger-strike situation as "...hopeless.." he nevertheless said that the prisoners "...insisted that the chain of command on the hunger-strike is inside the prison and they are not taking commands from outside . They asserted , very strongly , that all statements issued in their name do , in fact , come from them.. "
The public record was one thing - enforced as it was by a confrontation with the prisoners who needed a public response from Faul to satisfy them but , privately , as part of his on-going campaign of undermining and vilification , Faul was to adhere to his untruthful claims about the authorship of prisoners' statements in order to wean the hunger-strikers' families to his own ends . And his more subtle and less dramatic tactics paid off in the end .......
(MORE LATER).
THE 1985 ANGLO-IRISH AGREEMENT - THE SHADOW OF THE GUNMEN .......
As the Anglo-Irish talks reach their conclusion , FINTAN O'TOOLE talks to activists of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party and hears that they would prefer civil war to an accommodation with Dublin .
First published in 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1985 .
As symptoms , the behaviour of the UDR and the behaviour of the RUC have also been massive irritants in preventing the evolution of basic structures of law and justice which could win even a temporary and contingent consensus of 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' support ; Charles Haughey is again right to identify the disbandment of the UDR as a central pre-requisite to a meaningful agreement .
All but a handful of the 7,500 members of the UDR are Protestants and the increasing role that that British regiment has played in 'security' in the North has meant that through it and the RUC one 'community' has been given the task of 'policing' the other - 'security' has been hopelessly compromised as part of a sectarian apparatus , and much of the hatred and disgust which Catholics feel at the operation of the 'State' in the North has been directed at the UDR , a disgust quite properly strengthened by the role of UDR members in sectarian crimes .
This is not in itself the problem as John Hume says * , but the disbandment of the UDR would be an achievement which would give the Northern Nationalist 'community' reason to believe that the Southern government was acting as an effective guarantor ** of its immediate interests . Without the disandment of the UDR what can the Southern government hope to achieve by being 'consulted' about the operation of an innately sectarian 'security' system .......?
('1169...' Comment - * As far as Hume and his SDLP are/were concerned [and , indeed , the Church hierarchy and the rest of the 'Establishment'] , the "problem" was not the British presence , but those that opposed that presence [which is now the PSF line , too] ! ** The bastard Free State administration in Leinster House has always been an "effective guarantor" to the British - it never had , in the first place , a 'back' to turn to Republicans . And , regardless of its composition - it never will .)
(MORE LATER).
