Friday, March 28, 2008
Blink and you’ll miss it
Just FYI for the files: The Andersonstown News has removed Blinker’s, er, Squinter’s, article about Gerry Adams from their websites, and from Squinter’s blog. (Hint: it’s quite easy to start your own blog - ask Newton Emerson, Eamon Lynch or Anthony McIntyre, who also benefited suffered from the censorship control-freakery of Teach Basil, for tips*). We print it below for posterity’s sake - to remember the day the bold men struck a blow for freedom of speech.
* Insert your own “Told you so” here
UPDATE: The Belfast Telegraph reports: “A pro-Sinn Fein newspaper has apologised to Gerry Adams after an unprecedented attack on him by one of its best-known columnists.” Only “here” would an MP be able to stop a local paper from criticising his political performance, not to mention getting a front page apology in the bargain, with barely an eyebrow raised, eh?
P.S. You can still access the heretical article via Belfast Media and Irelandclick sites using their Pagesuite viewer and paging through the archived edition - well, until they black that out or something. SHhhhh, keep that to yourself though. Don’t give them any ideas....
Squinter: Taking a sideways look at the week
20 years on, Gerry must face the truth
“The cruellest lies are often told in silence.” Adlai Stevenson wasn’t far wrong when he said that. Not that Squinter can be accused of keeping quiet too often, but it is the case as we prepare to bury Bap McGreevy that there are some things that are said and some things that aren’t, and one of the things that isn’t being said - publicly at least - is that it’s time for Gerry Adams to shoulder his share of the blame for the mess we’re in and stop blaming everybody else.
Adams has been the West Belfast MP for 20 years. First elected in 1983, he has served continuously since then, save for a five-year break when Joe Hendron took back the seat for the SDLP in 1992.
If a week is a long time in politics, then 20 years is the Upper Paleolithic Age. It is in that same 20-year period that the slow, steady decline into chaos in certain parts of West Belfast began, and it was on his watch that it has gathered pace to become the runaway train that it is today.
First thing to be said is that there are many people and many agencies to blame for the state of the lower Falls, to take that as an example: the Chief Constable, the Housing Executive, the courts, the Prison Service, the Probation Board, Social Services, certain local parents - the list goes on. But while Adams can and does point the finger at some or even all of the above, Squinter has to say that he has never heard Adams accepting any responsibility for the fact that large parts of his constituency are no-go areas, but without the bellbottoms, the parkas and the armalites, of course.
It definitely wasn’t Adlai Stevenson who said: “You don’t drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there.” Whoever said it had a point. Like every one of us, Bap McGreevy fell into the water when Harry Holland was slaughtered. It was hoped back then that the wave of community disgust and horror might be fashioned into a life raft which would carry us all on a tide of community solidarity and determination to a safer shore. Didn’t happen. What happened was that Bap McGreevy was left to drown - in his own blood - while the rest of us continue to flail around hoping that we won’t go under too.
Who’s to blame for the failure to press home the Harry Holland momentum? Gerry Adams is to blame, that’s who. He’s not the only one to blame, of course. Squinter refers you back to the list above, and every one of us who complains and then pulls the curtains and turns up the TV when the sun sets is to blame in our own collective way. But Gerry Adams is the MP, has been for 20 years. He’s supposed to know how to marshal and direct; he’s supposed to give us the ideas and the leadership; he’s supposed to make things better. When he asks for and gets our votes he accepts a host of very onerous responsibilities, and the most basic of those responsibilities is to make his constituency a good place for decent people to live and for parents to bring up their families. In that he has failed terribly.
Of course the police are falling down on the job, but how long is it possible to get away with that excuse? Bears crap in the woods, fat babies fart, the Pope wears a funny hat, the Trevors are jaw-droppingly useless. Tell us something we don’t know. Gerry Adams knows a lot better than Squinter that while the PSNI might have a lot of intelligence about the people of West Belfast, they know them as well as they know the remotest tribe of Western New Guinea - and they care even less. Against that background, complaining about the PSNI not doing their job is like complaining about the cold weather we’re supposed to be getting over the Easter weekend.
And every time Sinn Féin gets together at another fist-clenching Stormont meeting (the 2008 equivalent of Long Kesh political lectures), we’re told that economic deprivation underpins the myriad social problems that are convulsing the West Belfast community. They hope nobody will think to ask whose job it has been for the past 20 years to get investment and jobs and to generate community confidence and optimism.
It wasn’t as if Adams didn’t have the clout and the contacts. A former aide of Tony Blair has been making frankly embarrassing revelations in a new book about how close Adams and Blair were. Adams was the Oprah Winfrey of Irish-America. And what did we get? InBev gone and Visteon going. A huge investment conference that holds its nose as it swishes past West Belfast ferrying ministers and Invest NI suits to Hillsborough and Cultra. Adams might have got away with pointing to the lack of investment in his constituency in 1983 and saying: “Nothing to do with me, mate.” 20 years on and you’d buy a house in Ross Street quicker than you’d buy that.
20 years. Two decades. Four parliamentary terms. Four US Presidents. Two Popes. 11 Secretaries of State. Five UN Secretary-Generals. Five Taoisigh. Five Prime Ministers. In Ross Street the wind of change blows in empty Budweiser boxes and despair; it blows out good people and hope.
As a friend bitterly told Squinter over a St Paddy’s Day pint, Ourselves Alone are not the proud and risen republican people surging shoulder-to-shoulder towards a new Ireland, but the abandoned pensioners of the lower Falls who now fear the night a million times more than they ever feared the Brits or the loyalists. And don’t tell Squinter they’re not right to be afraid. When the bad guys can kill a well-known and popular ex-prisoner who was a fit and strong body-builder, then quite frankly Squinter’s more than a little concerned himself.
And so, next election day, Squinter thinks he’ll stay in the house in solidarity with those who are staying in their homes simply because they’re afraid to leave.
ADAMS RESPONDS TO THAT SQUINTER ARTICLE
A chara,
The ‘Squinter’ article of March 20, following the murder of Bap McGreevey, was both offensive and hurtful.
I am well used to and welcome criticism but I am disappointed at the tenor and tone of his tirade.
It was more reminiscent of a Sunday Independent columnist than the Andytown News.
Squinter’s advice that we should stay at home is also bad advice.
The duty of citizens is to join in the efforts to achieve more change, more jobs, better housing, and safer communities.
That’s the way forward for this constituency.
Gerry Adams, MP MLA
The Andersonstown News accepts that the tone and the timing of the Squinter article last week, during a period of community mourning, was inappropriate and unnecessary and apologises to Gerry Adams and our readers for any hurt caused.—Ed.
Previously on Slugger: here, here, here, and here.
Rusty Nail @ 11:05 AM
What this truth rusty?
Adams’s ex-bodyguard rejects informer claim By Barry McCaffrey
28/03/08A FORMER bodyguard to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams last night dismissed allegations that he is a British agent.
Paul ‘Chico’ Hamilton spoke out for the first time yesterday to rubbish claims that he was an informer.
The 52-year-old – who was Gerry Adams’s minder for eight years, – accused “faceless securocrats” of being behind a whispering campaign against him.
“At no time have I ever worked for any of the so-called intelligence agencies or any other arm of the British establishment,” he said.
Insisting that he would be carrying on life as normal in west Belfast, he said: “As a republican all I have is my name, that’s why I’ve decided to speak out.
“I’m not the first republican the securocrats have tried to destroy and I doubt I’ll be the last.
“All I can say is that I’m here in
my own community and if anyone has a problem they can come and speak to me.”
Earlier this week, Jim McCarthy, a former driver for Mr Adams who is now Community Restorative Justice Ireland coordinator, also denied he was a police informer.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 11:52 AMThey deleted it from their website? What next? The Great Firewall of West Belfast?
Surely he’s not just going to carry on his blog and pretend not to notice one of his most important posts has been deleted by the powers that be?
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 12:24 PMAs an outsider and of course someone who loathes Gerry Adams’s politics I am not in a good position to comment.
Adams’s does not strike me as the sort of man who would be interested in spending time arguing for investment in jobs for West Belfast, in setting up community enterprises except in that they assisted the “cause”.
I have always felt that Adams’s self perception is of himself as the intellectual almost poet / soldier / statesman. As such I suspect he has little interest in, application for, nor ability at the sort of day to day political issues which squinter is raising.
Indeed keeping the citizens of West Belfast and other working class nationalist areas deprived and frequently unemployed may well have had significant advantages. It helped provide recruits to terrorism by resulting in people having the time to take part in such, the anger and sense of disengagement which helps breed violence and the absence of as much like jobs to loose by getting involved.
Once this violence was channelled into things useful to the Republican movement such as terrorism; now it is channelled into anti social behaviour against local residents.
Had Adams heavily promoted investment and useful community projects and there been greater oppportunities in west Belfast such people in a previous generation might have been less keen to get involved as they would then have faced loss of their jobs and position in society. Instead with no such position to loose and the prospect of local respect from being a terrorist they were probably more easily persuadable.
Although these problems exist in all deprived urban areas in West Belfast I suspect in addition to the usual relative disinterest even from supposedly left wing politicians there is the additional problem that the likes of Gerry Adams and the IRA positively benefited from social deprivation and it is probably very difficult for Adams to discover a real interest in the lives of and actual probelms facing his constituents.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 12:45 PMI just think it is terrible the way folks are targeting Big Brother No 1,
I would also like to say in relation to Little Sister No 1, that Angela’s Smith’s child protection audit in 2006 discovered no Brit agents in the CCMS.
Sadly, a leading pedophile had however been working for DENI. The FBI came aross that fella without consulting Big Brother No 1
So there you have it.
G.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:04 PMIsn’t it ironic? It used to be the shinners had their voice silenced by Governments now they are in Government they are silencing others…
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:04 PM“The 52-year-old – who was Gerry Adams’s minder for eight years, – accused “faceless securocrats” of being behind a whispering campaign against him. “
They’re all around at DENI offering advice.
:o))
I’m being serious.
No joke
G.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:07 PMTurgon,
Once this violence was channelled into things useful to the Republican movement such as terrorism; now it is channelled into anti social behaviour against local residents.
This sounds like saying that there’s so much violence to go around and that as the IRA are out of business this violence dissipates around the community. Anyone from the area will tell you that the anti social types are almost entirely drunk kids. The murders of Bap McGreevy and Harry Holland were both carried out by drunken track suit bedecked teenagers. These kids, (extremely well known in the area), were not potential IRA recruits.
The real problem, which everyone has a small responsibity for, is that the community police went off the streets (and by that I mean paramilitaries), but the actual police were neither welcome nor safe in the area (for very obvious reasons IMO but I won’t go down that tangent). So in the absence of any police the kids can do what they like and the victims are on their own to fight or cower away.
I’m not going out to defend Gerry, to be totally honest I voted for an independent last time out. But Gerry has been in government for a reasonably short period of time. His ability to tout for investment or to affect change in government was halpered by the fact that he wasn’t in government for most of the past 25 years, so it’s difficult to blame him for these problems.
is the additional problem that the likes of Gerry Adams and the IRA positively benefited from social deprivation
I laugh at that, to be honest. So Gerry and the IRA benefited from social deprivation caused by whom? When Gerry came about the deprivation was there already, there weren’t a lot of jobs around for catholics at the time. Gerrymandering ensured that we couldn’t get power in any form and we were discriminated against by the state at every turn including jobs, housing, hostile and sectarian state police.
If the IRA benefited from the situation that’s because the government of the day created the situation, and if the IRA have benefited from increased social deprivation, that is the responsibility of those who created the situation. At that time Gerry still had an actors voice and wasn’t allowed in government.
Out to lunch back in 2.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:10 PMI know you have to consider the source, but after reading McGartland’s book, Chico Hamilton and McCarthy definitely seemed to be a “protected species” and it also seemed like the people of (West)Belfast have had their doubts about them for years,
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:18 PMIsn’t it ironic? It used to be the shinners had their voice silenced by Governments now they are in Government they are silencing others…
Posted by ironynotlost on Mar 28, 2008 @ 12:04 PM
YeS. Section 31 for Slow Learners.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:23 PMFuller version on the inside.
Republican speaks out to deny informer claims By Barry McCaffrey
28/03/08A FORMER bodyguard to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams last night spoke out publicly to reject rumours that he is a British agent.
Paul ‘Chico’ Hamilton was bodyguard to the Sinn Fein leader for eight years in the 1990s and was regularly seen at Mr Adams’s side at key political events.
The 52-year-old spoke out publicly for the first time last night to rubbish claims that he is an informer.
“At no time have I ever worked for any of the so-called intelligence agencies or any other arm of the British establishment,” he said.
“I’ve been a republican all my life and remain so to this day.
“Like other people I’ve had concerns over some things in the peace process but I support the Sinn Fein leadership fully.”
In 1997 Special Branch agent Martin McGartland claimed in his book Fifty Dead Men Walking that Hamilton and former IRA man Jim McCarthy had abducted and held him prisoner in 1991 after the Provisionals suspected he was an informer.
McGartland escaped by jumping through a window of a third floor flat.
However, in recent months informer allegations against Hamilton and McCarthy have surfaced in republican circles.
Earlier this week Jim McCarthy publicly denied being an informer.
Yesterday Paul Hamilton confirmed that he had been visited by the PSNI twice in the last two months with claims that he was about to be exposed as a British agent.
“For someone who is supposed to be a top informer the PSNI didn’t even know where I lived because they went to two wrong addresses looking for me,” he said.
“When I challenged them they wouldn’t even tell me where this supposed reliable information came from.
“I can categorically state that it is all lies.”
In 1977 Hamilton was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for the attempted murder of a British army major.
“I was an active republican for 36 years.
“My war ended in July 2005 when the PIRA announced it was standing down.
“I believe the faceless securocrats are trying to destroy my reputation and the reputation of other well known republicans to try and create tensions within the republican
family.”
The 52-year-old said his family had suffered “hugely’’ since informer allegations against him first emerged in 2006.
“It started two years ago when these faceless securocrats started to spread deliberate lies that myself and a number of other prominent republicans were informers.
“I wanted to speak out then but was advised it would only give credibility to the lies.
“When more of these lies started to emerge six weeks ago I wanted to speak out then to refute them.
“Again I was advised it would only give them credibility.”
The father-of-four said his solicitor had repeatedly written to the chief constable to challenge police about the source of the claims.
“The PSNI has refused to even acknowledge his correspondence.”
Revealing the hurt that the informer allegations had caused to his family, he said: “I’ve only started to get my life back together in recent years through the help of the ex-prisoners’ group.
“I’m training as a counsellor now because I want to give something back to my community.
“No-one knows the effect this type of slur has on a republican and their family.
“I’ve people phoning me up telling me they’ve heard I’ve been taken into protective custody.
“My friends and family have rallied round but you’re always thinking someone else is thinking the worst about you.
“It’s hard enough for me to deal with it but it’s even harder for your family.
“As a republican all I have is my name, that’s why I’m speaking out.
“I’m not the first republican the securocrats have tried to destroy and I doubt I’ll be the last.
“All I can say is that I’m here in my own community and if anyone has a problem they can come and speak to me.
“My war is over but the Brit securocrats seem to want to use me as a pawn in their sordid
little games.”
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:23 PM“Surely he’s not just going to carry on his blog and pretend not to notice one of his most important posts has been deleted by the powers that be? “
It is basically sad, I predict a bout of re-education, followed by a John Pilger documentary,
‘The victims of group-think’
John Pilger : “And nobody knows what happened to them”
Black Taxi Driver “The unpersons were slapped on the arse for being negative blackwhite”
I think it is a doubleplusgood thing that Squinter is to be held accountable for his crimes, I really do.
G.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 01:25 PMGee maybe the republican community of west Belfast isnt as fractured as anti-Sinn Fein posters would like us to believe and maybe just maybe a capatalist owner of a relatively small newspaper wants to protect his circulation by not pissing off its readership?
I know many of you will come on here and whinge about his lack of journalistic courage and how he should be willing to sacrifice his newspaper for the sake of integrity but as the guy who has to pay the bills he would probably disagree.
hardly the first newspaper owner to travel down that road
integrity doesnt by any ink or newsprint
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 02:03 PMSorry Steve,
but that won’t wash. Mairtin is loaded - and the papers are doing very well. Think of another local newspaper publishing a front page apology to a party leader after one of their columnists criticised their record. You can’t, because they wouldn’t.
I will never buy said paper again
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 02:06 PMGee Steven, you have a fairly low opinion of people in West Belfast. The ATN’s conduct over this issue is exactly the reason why Daily Ireland failed - nobody wants to pay for party propaganda. It is amazing that the “capitalist owner” involved has still not cottoned onto this.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 02:07 PMThat fellow Adams gets more like Robert Mugabe every day.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 02:22 PMI am quite sure there’s more to this than meets the eye. Sinn Fein are astute political operators.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 02:28 PMGrassy Noel
but that won’t wash. Mairtin is loaded - and the papers are doing very wellAnd that wouldnt have anything to do with his supporting the local community?
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 02:35 PMThere’s been a squeak from the DUP mouse!!
Anderstown (sic) News climb down confirms what we already knew.
“The truth of the matter is that whilst the Andersonstown News continues this slavish devotion to a single political party it should not be receiving one penny of public money, either from the government or through various European funding programmes as it has in the past. By groveling to Adams in this way, the Andersonstown News has confirmed what many people already believed, that it is the Sinn Fein equivalent of Pravda.”
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 02:50 PMNo Steve, it has more to do with the extremely generous financial support he’s received from the British government down the years, including the construction of a highly-profitable printing press entirely at taxpayer expense.
Who exactly in his “local community” was he supporting to get that?
Anyway, you’ve now switched from calling the publisher the poor owner of a small paper to a gazillionaire thanks to the same paper, so you’re clearly not here for a serious argument. Drone.Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 03:03 PMNever/SRR
So really its the equivalent of the DUP and the Newsletter
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 03:23 PMSRR I never called him poor I called him a Capatalist and I sure never called him a gazillionaire so whos the drone here?
And since you made no arguement yes it is over being as it never started
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 03:26 PMSteve,
for me the issue isn’t so much about the apology, but about the way the post has been removed from the Squinter blog, excised from history as if it never existed. You do know what Winston Smith’s job in 1984 was, don’t you?
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 03:29 PMNo, Steve, YOUR ma.
Glad you see the DUP/Newsletter parallel. Surprised you’d think that was something to defend. Is there anything to your case here beyond party tribalism?Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 03:33 PMLook, Steve. As a politician and as an elected representative, Gerry Adams has every right to object to any and all aspects of Squinter’s essay he feels are inaccurate, unfair or unwarranted.
However, as a republican and as a writer, Gerry Adams has an additional responsibility to defend to defend the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. To expect nothing more, and to accept nothing less.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 03:37 PM“I am quite sure there’s more to this than meets the eye. Sinn Fein are astute political operators.”
That is not denied, however on this occasion i believe you have failed to appreciate one of the main ingredients in a politician’s DNA - i.e. ego!
The Sainted Beard was so outraged at the direct attack on him in his heartland by a publication that has been the Provisional movement’s lickspittle for so long that he simply lost the run of himself.
Others have commented on previous thread’s, and i agree, that SF should’ve exercised some restraint in their approach to Teach Basil by demanding right of reply in an open letter or lengthy interview etc.
This was not a masterplan hatched by Connolly House, they just massively over-reacted and in doing so exposed just how much their right hand can tickle Teach Basil’s tonsils.
The fact that a governing party can get away with it without causing massive consternation in the wider media is merely a reflection on the standard of press-release reguritators...sorry i mean’t journalists, that we enjoy in ‘our wee country’.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 03:48 PM
