Commentary by National Board member Michael Cummings:
 
He may be new but  British Prime Minister  David Cameron will  soon  be dealing with an old  problem…the conflict in Ireland.  The coalition  of the Conservative and Liberal Democrats will be the first change in government since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.   What will this change mean for the  N. I. peace process, a topic barely mentioned in the campaign?   The Prime Minister is due to release the Saville Report reviewing the events of January 30, 1972 in Derry, otherwise known as Bloody Sunday.  The  Report, 16 years in the making and at a cost of 200 million pounds, was  made necessary by Lord Widgery’s  farcical 1972 account  of the killing of 14 unarmed civil rights protestors by the British Army.   Saville will  spin the deaths as isolated, accidental, the result of poor training and communication and a  cover-up of all that was misguided.  It will   not be the last word on  one of the conflict’s most grisly episodes.    A key  provision  of the 1998  peace pact  requires an  independent inquiry into the   1974   Dublin-Monaghan bombings and that is where it gets dicey for Mr. Cameron.    Together these two acts of slaughter transformed the civil rights struggle for jobs, housing and voting equality into a violent conflict to end  British garrison rule.    Will the  Cameron government  give us the truth of these monstrous events or offer  more delay, cover-up and absolution of wrongdoers?  Lord Saville’s report is just the beginning of the  struggle for the  facts and truth of the conflict.  
 
What is at stake for  the British is the credibility,  particularly in America, of   Britain’s widely promoted  ‘honest broker’  image in the conflict and the credibility of  England’s image  as a  effective  promoter of  democracy, justice and the rule of law around the globe.    Will  the Cameron-Clegg coalition continue this legacy of deception or embrace a more candid and accountable chapter in British history.

Please join us for an important event in Washington, DC to highlight the need for rights-based protection for Irish language speakers in the North of Ireland.  This is a non-partisan event sponsored by the IAUC, AOH, INA, Irish American Republicans, Irish American Democrats, and the Brehon Law Society.

Congressional Briefing on Irish Language Equality & the Irish Peace Process

Rayburn House Office Building, Room B-340 Washington, DC

The Irish language is at the center of the contemporary struggle for equality in the north of Ireland and is an issue of primary importance to the Irish peace process yet to be resolved.  Irish speakers are penalized under policies like the obsolete 1737 Administration of Justice (Ireland) Act, which prohibits the use of Irish in the court system. In addition, we believe that the lack of government funding and support is choking economic renewal and investment opportunities related to the Irish language, particulary in marginalized communities. We believes that the Irish Language Act will create an opportunity for the growth of the language and for the provision of services to current speakers.

On May 4th we will host an educational panel discussion featuring Janet Muller, Chief Executive of POBAL; Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, Managing Director, Belfast Media Group and Publisher, Irish Echo; Micheál Duibh, Development Officer of Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta (the Council for Irish Medium Education); and Domhnall Ó Cathain of the Brehon Law Society. Please join us for this opportunity to educate the Congressional community and provide suggestions on how Congress can support American and Irish interest in this important equality issue.

Janet Muller is the Chief Executive of POBAL, the non-governmental umbrella organisation for the Irish speaking community in the north of Ireland. She is responsible for the organisation’s strategic direction in relation to advocacy work and community development. She has spearheaded the initiative to establish an Irish Language Act for the north and been active in work around the Bill of Rights NI and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. She has overseen the drafting of POBAL’s monitoring and research reports on the first nine years of implementation of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. She has researched legislative and planning initiatives nationally and internationally as well as studying and promoting models of good practice. She has a PhD from the University of Ulster and will shortly publish her first book, on conflict resolution and language policy in planning. She has been invited as an expert by the Council of Europe to conferences in different parts of Europe regarding language legislation.  She is a member of the Committee of Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, the north’s premier Irish language Arts Centre, and a member of the Board of Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta (The Council for Irish Medium Education).

Máirtín Ó Muilleoir is the managing director of the Belfast Media Group which publishes community newspapers in Ireland and the US, most notably the Andersonstown News in Belfast and the Irish Echo in America. A graduate of QUB, he is a former Sinn Féin councillor and longstanding Irish language advocate. He developed the first training facility for young Irish speakers, the award-winning An Nasc building, which opened in West Belfast in 2001. He has also developed new headquarters for the Belfast Media Group, Teach Basil, a 10,000-square foot £1.25m building which opened in 2000 and includes press offices and a print hall. Latterly, he developed the Aisling Business Park in West Belfast, 10,000 square feet of industrial units which are occupied by, among other businesses, a daycare centre. He is heading the group behind the public artpiece Aisling an Phobail, the largest-ever public artwork in West Belfast which will celebrate the Irish language and welcome visitors to the Gaeltacht Quarter. The work, by Irish American artist Brian O’Doherty is part of a £225,000 project due for completion by the summer of 2010. Dr. Micheál Ó Duibh is currently employed by Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta (the Council for Irish Medium Education) as Development Officer.  His main job responsibilities lie in the strategic development of IM post-primary provision, IM ethos, IM trustees and IM governorship.  Previous to this post he spent 3 years as Senior Development Officer with Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta.  Dr. Ó Duibh is the Chairperson of POBAL and is also a Board Director and the Policy and Planning Officer on the Board of Directors of GAELSCOILEANNA TEO, an Irish-medium representative Body based in Dublin.  He graduated from the University of Ulster, Coleraine with a Doctorate in Philosophy.  Micheál first started to work in the Irish-medium sector as an Irish Language Development Officer with Pobal an Chaistil in Ballycastle, which is the founding organisation of the IM primary and pre-school in Ballycastle.  After working 2 years and achieving grant-aided status for Bunscoil an Chaistil he changed employment and went to work with Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta as a Development Officer.   After 3 years as a Development Officer he was promoted to Senior Development Officer, a post which entailed responsibility, amongst other duties, for the strategic development of the IME sector.  Previous to working in the IME sector he has taught as a part-time lecturer in both University of Ulster and University College Galway.  Micheál’s working life so far has been spent working with the promotion and development of the Irish Language and Irish-medium Education.    Dr. Ó Duibh is a native of Armagh and has a keen interest in Hurling and Gaelic football. Domhnall O'Cathain is Secretary and Publicity Director of the Brehon Law Society, New York. He is associated with the law firm of Lesnevich & Marzano-Lesnevich, LLC.

Domhnall was born and raised in Ballincollig, Co. Cork. He was raised in a bilingual household, where Irish and English were spoken. All of his schooling through age 18 was done in Irish.  His family has a long tradition of advocacy for the Irish language. Most notably, his mother, Blanaid Ui Chathain, is a published author and expert on Irish poetry and the Irish language in the former Irish speaking districts of west Co. Cork. Her grandfather, Peadar O hAnnrachain, devoted his life to the preservation and growth of the Irish language.

Domhnall continues this tradition with the Brehon Law Society. The Brehon Law Society is a staunch supporter of all efforts to continue the growth of the Irish language.

Domhnall has lived in the USA since 2002. His parents and two sisters continue to live in Ireland. Domhnall and his wife, Francesca O'Cathain, a native of New Jersey, live in Jersey City. They are expecting their first child this summer.

Article from the Irish Times by Deaglán de Bréadún:

THERE WAS “no greater stain” on the policing and justice system in Northern Ireland than the assassination of Belfast lawyer Patrick Finucane, a prominent Irish-American congressman has said.

Chairman of the Congressional Friends of Ireland, Democrat Richard Neal of Massachusetts was speaking at the unveiling of a Robert Ballagh painting of Mr Finucane, commissioned by Belfast Media Group and Belfast art collector Paul Cooper.
A 39-year-old father of three, Mr Finucane was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries in front of his family at their North Belfast home on February 12th, 1989 and his wife, Geraldine, was wounded. The circumstances of the attack immediately gave rise to allegations of involvement by state security services.

The British government has offered to hold an inquiry into the case, but this was rejected by campaigners on the basis that it would take place under new legislation whereby the public could be excluded from part of the hearings and material withheld from the final published report.

“There is no greater stain on the policing and justice system in the north of Ireland than the Finucane assassination and I think the continued presence of American interest is pivotal,” Congressman Neal said at the ceremony, which took place last Thursday.

Artist Robert Ballagh said: “Being asked to do this portrait was a huge honour for me.” Pat Finucane had “displayed enormous courage in defending the human rights of people who got caught up in the conflict in the North”. Máirtín Ó Muilleoir of the Belfast Media Group said the painting would be displayed in a number of state houses throughout the US.
 

From the Pat Finucance Centre:

Representatives of the Bloody Sunday families will this week leave for London and the US to further highlight the need for urgency and vigilance regarding the long-awaited release of the Saville Report.
 
John Kelly and Jean Hegarty (sister of Kevin McElhinney) will travel to Washington to coincide with planned events at the Whitehouse and will meet senior US politicians to appraise them of recent developments concerning the imminent release of the Inquiry Report.
 
John Kelly in a statement said that “We feel that is very important to take our just demands of truth and justice at this time to both Britain and the US.  Just hours after our loved ones were mown down on the streets of Derry by the Parachute Regiment, the British Embassy in Washington were able to describe and condemn the dead as gunmen and bombers.
 
“We cannot allow an open field for the British Government, either officially or unofficially, to stage and manipulate the release of the report for their own ends.  While we are confident that our long campaign for truth and justice will be completely vindicated, the next few weeks will be crucial in seeing the hated Widgery Report entirely repudiated.
 
Reclaiming history in London
 
Meanwhile several relatives will travel to London on Wednesday, St Patrick’s Day, to ‘reclaim the history of Bloody Sunday’ at 10 Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence and Buckingham Palace as part of the ‘Set The Truth Free’ Campaign.  In order to illustrate this, family members will return an original copy of the Widgery Report to 10 Downing Street on St Patrick’s Day, symbolising the end of  Widgery’s 38-year tenure as the only official British record of Bloody Sunday. At the MoD the families will return the infamous ‘shot list’ drawn up by former Chief of General Staff of the British Army General Mike Jackson. At Buckingham Palace the families will hand in a list of the dead and injured to remind the British Monarch of the ‘real heroes of Bloody Sunday’. Months after the massacre the Queen decorated Para commander Lt Col Derek Wilford who was awarded an OBE. Tony Doherty said “Wilford was no hero-the dead and the injured were the real heros who went out that day to demand civil rights and ended up as targets for the Paras. Wilford should be stripped of his honour.”

 
Families also announced that there will be a rally this coming Saturday in Derry-details to be announced later this week.
 
END
 

Click here to help Set the Truth Free and sign the petition in support of the Bloody Sunday families.  The text of the petition is as follows:

To:  British Government
We the undersigned support the following statement released by the Bloody Sunday families and call on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to "Set The Truth Free" and instruct Lord Saville to publish his report independent of any government interference.

Statement from Bloody Sunday Families and Wounded
Lord Saville - Set the Truth Free!
 
It is now more than 12 years since the Bloody Sunday Inquiry was announced by Tony Blair in 1998.  It could be only a matter of weeks until the report from that Inquiry sees the light of day.  Lord Saville has indicated that the report will be ready in the week beginning 22nd March.  Time and timing are now very much of the essence.
 
The public will know that we have had discussions in recent months with the northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun Woodward, An Taoiseach Brian Cowan, and officials from both the Irish and British states regarding the timing and modalities of the release of the report.  We have kept Lord Saville appraised of the content and import of these discussions at all stages.
 
At this moment in time we are gravely concerned regarding two critical issues:
 
Firstly, the NIO Secretary of State has indicated that he expects to hold the report for a period of up to 14 days to scrutinise it for breaches of Article 2 of the Human Rights Act 2000 and for breaches of ‘national security’ before he publishes it.  This means that the securocrats within the NIO and other government departments will see the report before we do.
 
Our second grave concern is around timing: with the proximity of the Easter Parliamentary recess and the imminence of an announcement of a general election in the week of or close to 22nd March, should the report be given to government at that time for the above-stated purpose, there is little or no chance of the families receiving it this side of an election.  To make matters worse, the report will be in the hands of officials within the NIO for a period of several months without any political control from above.  This is a frightening prospect for the families as we believe that the report will fall victim to selective leakage and other partisan usage long before the full report sees the light of day.
 

IAUC board member Michael Cummings has written another fantastic letter on the media's coverage of politics in the north of Ireland, this time to the Christian Science Monitor:

February 1, 2010

Dear Editor:

I wish to commend  the insight of  “Northern Ireland:  power-sharing dispute threatens to freeze peace process” (1/30).  Your coverage of the conflict in Ireland has generally been more accurate and substantive  the other major papers but  10 years after the so called Good Friday Agreement  some still can’t get it right. 

Three points stand out in your summary which merit mention.  First, unlike a recent New York Times article by John Burns,  Jason Walsh did  not use the misleading buzzwords often supplied by British Information Services e. g. “the mostly Protestant DUP and the mostly Roman Catholic Sinn Fein.”  These phrases are meant to continue the myth of a religious struggle within Christianity in Ireland.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The struggle has always been about national and unionist politics and governance.  It amuses those in Sinn Fein to be so referenced as their positions often oppose Catholic church social teaching.  Second,  Professor Bean’s reference to the “choreographed …cyclical crises”  is right on point.  What many have come to realize is that the instigator and choreographer of all the staggering and stumbling politically is  a British government manipulating and pandering to their loyalist allies.  Third, the selection of commentators in the article are not the usual suspects.  In citing the views of Ms Purvis, Caragh O’Donnell, and Mick Fealty you more accurately portrayed the community views then the platitudes of politicians. 

Sincerely,

Michael J. Cummings

Member, National Board

From Relatives for Justice:

In the media maelstrom of last week the UPRG press conference announcing UDA/UFF decommissioning was somewhat overshadowed by affairs unfolding at the swish family Robison household and the pending implications.

Like all big set pieces of the jigsaw over the past decade the UDA/UFF banked on capitalizing on their announcement seeking to use the opportunity to lodge credit for decommissioning. However, their announcement carried little currency in West Belfast, the killing fields of North Belfast, North Armagh, South Derry and East Tyrone where these state sponsored death squads roamed freely - or for that matter, as I ascertained this week, in their own areas where they built criminal empires and plied their drugs trade.

Now that is not to say that the putting beyond use of some weapons is not to be welcomed – of course it is – but that misses the point. The UDA/UFF instead of decommissioning years ago engaged in a very public and cynical exercise seeking to extract money for arms much in the same way they extorted through racketeering down the years.

And whilst many of those most directly affected by their actions found this particularly odious others, whilst vehemently abhorred by this attempted stunt, saw an irony in that they were now seeking money in part from the very government that had provided their deadly arsenal. In reality a few former British ministers, generals, and Special Branch operatives was all that was missing from the UPRG press conference table – then we could have probably paid more attention.

Money for guns was always a logical move given the organisations habitual tendency for crime amongst its leadership which always made it rife for infiltration. A tendency that British Intelligence and RUC Special Branch fostered during their dirty war whilst Catholics were slaughtered and working class loyalist communities turned into wastelands through drugs, prostitution and extortion.

It has long been argued that anyone within the UDA/UFF who were free political thinkers attempting to move the organisation along the political road were either killed or ousted. It is no secret that John White thwarted any political future of the UDP. Gary McMichael and Davy Adams being effectively sidelined and removed by White who was eventually exposed in the Belfast Telegraph by security correspondent Brian Rowan as being a Special Branch agent.

Essentially it was Special Branch and MI5 securocrats who were preventing positive political moves by UDA/UFF, through the UDP, keeping them within their grip during political negotiations. The spooks were keeping their options open and their gunmen within the UDA/UFF in the ascendancy and at the height of negotiations many Catholics were consequently killed as the political stakes were raised.

Key UPRG figures cite privately the hand of MI5 and Special Branch in the assassination of John McMichael and others intent on moving down the political route.

Interestingly in August 2000 when Peter Mandelson returned Jonny Adair to jail at the height of the loyalist feud, in which the Lower Shankill was being devastated by White and Adair et al, the Sunday Tribune’s then Northern Editor ran an excellent article entitled ‘Security Forces created the UDA’. This detailed the British government’s responsibility for much of the UDA/UFF development over three decades into a sectarian killing machine and criminal fraternity.

Take for instance Billy Stobie who handed UDA/UFF weapons over to his RUC Special Branch handlers and which were later returned to the UDA/UFF who then used them in a number of killings like the Ormeau Rd bookies attack that claimed five lives and injured many others – and subsequently the killing of Aidan Wallace here in West Belfast at the Devenish bar - this killing completely disproving claims that these weapons were handed back ‘deactivated’ – some of these weapons were never recovered. Presumably – hopefully – they were part of the armaments put beyond use.

This is just one of numerous examples spanning four decades revealing the hand of the state within the heart of this organisation and a microcosm of the way in which guns from the UDR, RIR and ultimately South Africa flooded its ranks.

Families affected by loyalists are not particularly interested in UDA/UFF decommissioning. They want the truth about collusion between these same loyalists, how they were armed, infiltrated, directed and controlled to carry out hundreds of sectarian killings and political assassinations by MI5 and RUC Special Branch with the full sanction of Whitehall and Downing Street.

There was more of a reaction from families to Martin McAlease’s role in seeking to obtain ten million pounds in what appeared to be a pay-off for weapons when it became public more recently. That he actually gave the idea legs and spearheaded the initiative was particularly upsetting for scores of relatives. When Vincent Kearney first broke this story our offices in Tyrone, South Derry and West Belfast were inundated with families expressing their opposition to any such move.

In a BBC Evening Extra interview British secretary Shaun Woodward, when pressed, revealed that he had met Martin McAlease regarding seeking a reported five million from the British for his ten million pound plan. Woodward stated that he referred the Presidents husband to the OFMDFM and the Executive.

In other media interviews Gerry Kelly stated that there would be no funding for guns and that funding for loyalist areas would be solely allocated on need and criterion. We have yet to hear from the Irish Government concerning their intentions. It is highly unlikely that the McAlease venture was of his making alone.

But suspicion about some sort of deal or promise and of how it may possibly work its way out lingers in the air. And in a world of deals and political horse trading people are right to be suspicious.

So as Robinson seeks an inquiry into a few quid – and our interim First Minister recently implemented an official inquiry into flooding in Fermanagh - why can’t more serious matters like arming and controlling loyalist death squads not merit the same kind of inquiry? – Or is it that we can only have inquiries when it doesn’t concern Catholics being killed in which the hand of the state is complicit?

Many of the South African arms remain in circulation – in the control of Ulster Resistance. As one relative put; ‘if the IRA had to have said we will decommission everything except the guns in South Armagh’ imagine the pandemonium. Maybe those with knowledge of or involvement in Ulster Resistance will assist this decommissioning – though I doubt that any cash will exchange hands. We don’t want any inquiries do we?

Let’s hope for two things – that working class loyalists can effectively represent their communities politically and that all families affected by the conflict can have a truth process.

January 11, 2010--The Irish American Unity Conference (IAUC) has called on the British government to come clean about its involvement in arming loyalist paramilitary groups following last week's announcement that the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)/Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) have completed the decommissioning process.

IAUC National President Kate McCabe said, "While we welcome news of the UDA/UFF disarmament, the irony of the fact that these groups were armed by MI5 and RUC Special Branch is not lost on us. We cannot hail this as any kind of real achievement without an honest discussion of British complicity in arming loyalist paramilitary groups over the years of the conflict."

"We know that the UDA/UFF were armed with weapons smuggled in from apartheid South Africa through paid British agent Brian Nelson under the watchful eye of Whitehall and Downing Street in 1987 and 1988--and that these very same weapons were then used in hundreds of sectarian murders."

There continues to be an active interest within Irish America and Congress in uncovering evidence of the collusion that took place with the blessing of the British government. The IAUC submitted evidence to this effect at last October's Congressional hearing into Collusion between Police and Paramilitary Groups in NI. Also at this hearing, Representative Bill Delahunt said he believed a key factor in the developing peace process lies in the unsolved murders of the conflict.

The IAUC will continue to lobby for American political support for an operationally independent, international truth commission. Additionally, the IAUC also seeks a Congressional hearing into the Brian Nelson affair and the arming of loyalist paramilitaries by British Military Intelligence.

ENDS

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