Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from Dixie Elliott (see all)

Dixie Elliott has commented 472 times (18 in the last month).

1. Comment on Defining Success – Sinn Fein Style
   on 23 May 2013 at 8:49 pm

   This is a cracker he posted on another forum today…

   Posted Today, 05:58 PM

   “The british government who are to scared to fight Sinn Fein politically in a election-any other big yarns-”

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2. Comment on Defining Success – Sinn Fein Style
   on 23 May 2013 at 8:28 pm

   Councilor McIvor is still making the exact same comments 7 years later across the world wide web, where he seems to spend more time than he does working for his constituents.

   Maybe in a way they are lucky.

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3. Comment on 55 Hours Part Four: Wednesday 8 July 1981
   on 20 May 2013 at 11:18 pm

   michael-mcivor said….

   “Dixie LieALot-”

   Ahem. Thats me caught out michael.

   Anyway you seem to have won the case single-handedly for Adams and his committee as you race from forum to forum telling us all that the games up because no one running the jail told London Joe had died for a number of hours…

   Why didn’t Gerry or his committee think of this vital piece of information michael?

   I’d get on the ball to them if I were you.
   I’d tell them they should have gone on Spotlight and argued this important point instead of refusing to do so and hiding out instead.

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4. Comment on 55 Hours Part Four: Wednesday 8 July 1981
   on 20 May 2013 at 8:00 pm

   The above sentence should read…

   Not only that in the hours before Joes death he ‘ADAMS’ [In his own words I might add] decided to go somewhere else for a ‘catnap’.

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5. Comment on 55 Hours Part Four: Wednesday 8 July 1981
   on 20 May 2013 at 7:55 pm

   Don’t forget McGuinness he was involved in this too as was Bik. Had The Dark been in charge there’s no doubt he would have accepted the offer regardless of what Adams said.

   Michael-mcivor you’ve been making that same ridiculous comment in every site that this has appeared in. Your whole nonsensical argument revolves round who told whom about Joe dying and at what time were they told.

   The fact is Adams had it in his power to see that Joe didn’t die, instead of accepting what the prison leadership had said was enough to end it he kept upping the ante.

   Not only that in the hours before Joes death he [In his own words I might add] decided to go somewhere else for a ‘catnap’.

   Why the hell could he not have ‘catnapped’ in the safe house near the phone where they were waiting for the Mountain Climber to call back?

   Each time you come on a forum with your comments I can’t believe you hold the position you do in PSF.

   Bloody incredible!

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6. Comment on 55 Hours Part Three: Tuesday 7 July 1981
   on 16 May 2013 at 7:28 pm

   I have read the chapter ‘Hunger for Power’ in Rogelio Alonso’s The IRA And Armed Struggle’ numerous times and each time it gets harder. I am referring to interviews given to the Spanish author by Pat [Beag] McGeown. The 1st [Spanish] edition of the book was first published in 2003, 2 years before Richard O’Rawe’s ‘Blanketmen’.

   (These are notes I took from that chapter and other books)

   Remember that Brendan Duddy brought the first offer from the Brits on July 5th…

   Pat who joined the Hunger Strike on July 9th had made his doubts known to Bik about the tactics handed down from above and regarding the pushing aside of the ICJP.

   On 26th July Bik wrote to Adams…”had a long yarn with Pat this morning and impressed upon him the necessity of keeping firmly on the line. I explained that independent thought was sound but once it began to stray from our well considered and accepted line then it became extremely dangerous. He accepted what I said alright. Also I stressed the need to have confidence in you lot.”

   Other Hunger Strikers came to the same conclusion as McGeown and considered the need for a ‘change of tactic’.

   McFarlane said in a message to Adams on July 28th..”I told them straight that the decision was theirs – either we pursue the course for Five Demands or we capitulate. No inbetween solutions.”

   (But Bik knew that at least 3 if not 4 of the 5 demands, most importantly ‘clothing’, had been conceded since July 5th. Therefore men were dying to achieve one or two of the remaining demands)

   [Now don't forget the Hunger Strikers still weren't, by this time, told about the Mountain Climber [Duddy] offer. Lawrence McKeown confirms this in his own book ‘Nor Meekly Serve My Time’. When he said that Adams told the Hunger Strikers on July 29th that there was no movement from the Brits]

   Pat Beag said to Bik…”How can the Brits know what we want – I don’t even know.” This was in reference to the constant ‘spiral of silence.’ Meaning that the Hunger Strikers weren’t being informed what was going on…

   [Pat was by this time several weeks on Hunger Strike]

   Also the message sent by Bik to Adams on July 22nd regarding the IRAs rejection of the latest [2nd] British proposal proved that the decision was taken by Adams & the Kitchen Cabinet outside the prison. Bik asked Adams to explain…”How far the British went” [Beresford 1994 p.273]

   Pat lamented “not having been more honest’ with Thomas McElwee, when he (Thomas) expressed his doubts about the decision to go on with the Hunger Strike. McGeown in fact shared his comrade’s belief that the Hunger Strike should be ended but he did not admit this to McElwee because he thought this would flout the orders given by McFarlane, who had already warned him: “Don’t make your opinions known.”

   Another of the Hunger Strikers who died, Micky Devine, had confessed to McGeown his belief that the protest should be called off, as the latter explained when describing the consequences of the ‘spiral of silence’…He (Micky) said, “After I die someone has to make the decision.”

   Pat said to Micky…”That’s crazy because if you think now that the decision has to be taken, then why not take it now before you die.”

   To which Micky replied…”No” This boiled down to Micky not wanting to be the one to make the decision, to be the one who appeared to save his own life.

   This meant that men were dying because they didn’t want to betray those who died before them.

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7. Comment on 55 Hours Part Two: Monday 6 July 1981
   on 15 May 2013 at 5:09 pm

   Yes Father Faul did indeed save the lives of Hunger Strikers by his actions. For this he was castigated and shunned.

   However the last Hunger Striker to die, Micky Devine died on the same day that Owen Carron won the Fermanagh/S.Tyrone by election on August 20th.

   3 days later Sinn Fein announced they would be standing in all future elections in the North. This in spite of the fact that the Movement had not been consulted.

   The Hunger Strike ended on 3rd October and 3 days later the new Secretary of State James Prior implemented the same concessions as had been on offer since July 5th which included right to wear our [the Blanket Men's] own clothes at all times…

   At the Ard Fheis which was held at the end of October, Danny Morrison made his ‘Armalite and Ballot Box speech.

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8. Comment on 55 Hours Part Two: Monday 6 July 1981
   on 15 May 2013 at 12:00 am

   Where is or what happened to the comm Bik sent out to Adams accepting the offer, or at least as he himself put it…

   “And I said to Richard (O’Rawe) this is amazing, this is a huge opportunity and I feel there’s a potential here (in the Mountain Climber process) to end this.”

   Clearly if he saw at least this he would have put it to Adams in a comm?

   Yet in ‘Ten Men Dead’ despite the book’s reliance on Bik’s comms there is no mention of nor any inclusion of any such comm.

   However on the same date 6th July, he refers to and details a meeting he had with the ICJP the previous day July 5th. This comm to Adams is in the book.

   As is this comm to Adams written on July 7th….

   “…I don’t know if you’ve thought on this line, but I have been thinking that if we don’t pull this off and Joe dies then the RA are going to come under some bad stick from all quarters. Everyone is crying the place down that a settlement is there and those Commission chappies are convinced that they have breached Brit principles. Anyway we’ll sit tight and see what comes…”

   But no comm mentioning either the Mountain Climber and the offer he passed on or whatever he saw as being a huge opportunity with the potential to end it.

   Why was this comm kept from the author of Ten Men Dead, David Beresford and where is it today?

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9. Comment on 55 Hours Part One: Sunday 5 July 1981
   on 14 May 2013 at 9:37 pm

   Ah they let Ulick out of the field and he does nothing but try and smear Rusty and as I predicted above, what Ulick refers to, in shinner-speak…”the anti-republican zealots”

   A typical example of groupthink in action.

   The thing is, Spotlight did a documentary on the Thatcher documents last week. In the part about the Hunger Strikes Richard O’Rawe was there yet there was no Adams, McGuinness nor Morrison. Surely they should have taken the chance to challenge O’Rawe on his claims – tear him to shreds on air?

   Ah but no they were nowhere to be seen.

   Was it the fact that those making the documentary had the document which contained not only the offer but also had amendments in Thatchers own handwriting?

   Why they might have been asked would Thatcher add amendments if she didn’t intend keeping her part of the bargain?

   See that document here…

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/139275621/EIGHTH8OFFER81JUL6

   Or where they afraid of being questioned about the shocking revelations contained in various other documents in which Atkins and others in minutes to Thatcher referred to the fact – two days before the death of Joe McDonnell – that….

   “The Provisionals need to settle the prisons problem on terms they can represent as acceptable to them if they are to go on – as we know some of them wish to do – to consider an end of the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has ‘lost’ on the prisons is in no position to do this.”

   http://www.irishtimes.com/news/british-believed-elements-of-ira-wanted-peace-in-1981-1.1374645

   And…

   http://www.irishtimes.com/news/margaret-thatcher-was-told-some-ira-leaders-wanted-violence-to-stop-in-1981-1.1374569

   Adams, Morrison and McGuinness who were running the Hunger Strikes from the outside were later to the fore in the eventual move away from armed struggle towards politics, a ceasefire and the eventual so called peace process.

   Try explaining how the British were able to say they knew about this in the middle of the hunger strikes instead of throwing out the usual crap about anti-this or that or whatever some builder did in Dublin.

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10. Comment on 55 Hours Part One: Sunday 5 July 1981
    on 13 May 2013 at 11:51 pm

    This is yet another excellent piece by Rusty and I’m sure anyone reading it cannot be left wondering just who were the more callous, Thatcher and the Brits or Adams and his ‘Kitchen Cabinet’?

    It seems of course that the Adamsite sheep are staying well clear of this field because it has become more of a case of not being able to defend it any longer by throwing dirt at Ricky or throwing out the old anti-SF or anti-peace process accusation.

    Clearly the whole peace process was built on the deaths of 6 men on Hunger Strike who were never told the Brits wanted to end it by those the Brits knew by then wanted armed struggle ended and a path to politics more than they wanted an end to the Hunger Strike.

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