Rusty Nail

Cartoon by Brian Mór Adams, signaling ‘Poor Gerry’ mode with his choice of blog title, ‘The ides of March?’, folksily expands on his earlier press release regarding the publication of Voices from the Grave. One wonders how the contents of the book are reduced to a schoolyardish tug-of-war over who was a better friend to the most popular kid, but Adams seems to feel the need to boast. An old friend of mine, Brendan Hughes, has been in the news …

Read more…

The Belfast Telegraph reports that “calls have been made for a specialist police unit to deal with dissident incidents”: Sinn Fein Policing Board member Daithi McKay warned that people’s lives could be put at risk, and has called for a specialist unit to deal with difficult incidents. “These are dangerous situations,” he said. “We saw the threat when a device went off in Newry. It could have done a lot of damage and killed people in the area. “There is …

Read more…

Gerry Adams’ appearance on the Late Late Show was notable for his Palinesque answers. • Well I have to say, even yet, and I know an awful lot more about these issues now, it still, beyond, uh, part of my, I can understand it to a certain degree, you know, intellectually and because I’ve learnt a huge amount about abuse and how they happen and about the trauma for, uh, victims, and about how, how, how so many victims, apart …

Read more…

How the Catholic Church must look on with envy: the student has surpassed the master. Aine Tyrell’s first interview since Insight is a huge story – and many, many journalists were attempting to land it, as it would have been quite a coup. Normally a story that big, once broken in the Sundays, would be all over the Monday news, repeated in every outlet. So, what happened? The Bishop of West Belfast holds the most powerful office on the island …

Read more…

Last Sunday, Ciaran Barnes ran a story in the Sunday Life quoting a ‘senior republican source’ who expressed anger about the Liam Adams scandal and made a bit of a stink about his involvement with Sinn Fein in West Belfast. Photos of Liam Adams with Fra McCann, Tom Hartley and West Belfast youths were printed. These photos had previously been published in the Andersonstown News, whose coverage of the scandal has been more or less supportive of Adams and by …

Read more…

Former Hunger Striker Gerard Hodgins has called upon Gerry Adams to resign from the Bobby Sands Trust in light of his actions surrounding the accusations against his brother, Liam Adams. The Sands Trust is currently run out of the Sinn Fein offices on the Falls Road, and its members are Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, Jim Gibney, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, Sile Darragh, Caral Ni Chuilin, and Peter Madden (Madden and Finucane represent the Trust). Hartley, Morrison and Adams have …

Read more…

Turgon noted yesterday ‘unionist fury’ over new Chief Constable Baggott’s comments about border policing. Baggott’s comments about dissident republicans are also interesting, given the campaign of harassment the PSNI are currently engaged in against them. He claims that he has no problem with people who hold different political opinions from himself, and is only concerned with those who engage in acts of violence, yet under his helm his police force are aggressively targetting people because of their politics. This is …

Read more…

Lots of ground to cover today, with a lot of detail. In today’s Irish News, former hunger striker Bernard Fox says the matter should be laid to rest out of respect for the families, while Richard O’Rawe and Tony O’Hara seek answers. This post jumps off a quote referenced in one of today’s articles, and expands the background.Richard O’Rawe’s article references a quote from Nor Meekly Serve My Time. This book, first published in 1994 and reissued in 2006 for …

Read more…

Just a short update for those following the story or just catching up. As Slugger readers know, An Phoblacht has publicly apologised to the Irish News for lying about it in their preface to Adams’ article on the Hunger Strike. Adams’ article has now been revised and stripped of all inflammatory references to the Irish News – its content is otherwise exactly the same. Both the apology, which is also on An Phoblacht’s website, and the revised article, are published …

Read more…

This week’s issue of An Phoblacht, as noted below, contained an attack on the Irish News written by Gerry Adams, which was prefaced by a claim that the Irish News had refused Adams a right-of-reply. This comment has appeared on Gerry Adams’ blog this evening, from a Paul Doran (no relation to Noel Doran), who wrote to the Irish News to complain about their treatment of Adams after reading about it in An Phoblacht. He has reproduced the exchange between …

Read more…

UPDATE – This is the introduction to the Adams article as printed in this week’s An Phoblacht: “Sinn Fein asked The Irish News for a full right of reply and the newspaper agreed. When the response from Gerry Adams was harshly critical of the Irish News itself, the article was blocked. An Phoblacht carries the article below. We are waiting for the Irish News to do the same.” Interesting that the Stormont Press Officer, who tweeted the same allegation, and …

Read more…

This afternoon we’ll be looking at Laurence McKeown’s Irish News piece, in a ‘fisky’ sort of way. Other articles are in the works to be looked at. It may be that some of the material will be revisited at a later date. To begin with today’s piece, former hunger striker Laurence McKeown wrote: “When O’Rawe first made the claim that the British had been prepared to reach a deal during the 1981 Hunger Strike but that it was rejected by …

Read more…

The Irish News followed up Monday’s coverage of the hunger strike controversy with a further special focus in Tuesday’s edition. It contained viewpoints from the SDLP and unionists, Ruairi O Bradaigh, Brendan Duddy, Willie Gallagher and Ed Moloney, and featured an article by former hunger striker Gerard Hodgins. It also looked at the question of an Irish government mole in the prison and reviewed the FOI documents obtained by the Sunday Times earlier this year. Slugger is still sifting through …

Read more…

A couple of analogies to start. And then an extended deconstruction of McGuinness’ article from the Irish News. Picture Gerry Adams as manager of the team, Danny Morrison as Captain. Bik McFarlane is a star player. Gibney is a coach. Imagine the Irish News special as the Cup final. The manager, who never gave public interviews all season, has disappeared. The Captain has absented himself from the field, and taken his star player with him (probably after consulting with Coach …

Read more…

WAS THERE A DEAL? ask the Irish News in its two part special on the Hunger Strike. Today’s issue is damning, featuring commentary by Deputy First Minister and, according to the Ed Moloney’s Secret History, Chief of Staff of the IRA at the time of the hunger strikes Martin McGuinness, who admits to his role as the Derry messenger between Mountain Climber Brendan Duddy and the Belfast cadre of Adams, Morrison, Gibney and Hartley. Former Hunger Striker Laurence McKeown also …

Read more…

In a bold act of solidarity with President-for-Life Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison blogs about his own problems misremembering who sang what when – pointing out he misremembered a song from the movie Reds when writing a love letter to his wife whilst in prison. When compiling his prison letters for his book, Then the Walls Came Down, he realised he had gotten the song all wrong but decided to print the letter as it was without correction, staying true to …

Read more…

Writing on his blog, Gerry Adams relates an anecdote from his 29 July 1981 visit with Owen Carron to the hunger strikers in Long Kesh. This anecdote is sourced from his autobiography, Before the Dawn. It is important to put the account of this conversation into context, in order to fully appreciate its meaning. Firstly, Kieran Doherty’s condition was dire; he was nearly blind, had considerable difficulty hearing, and was demonstrably ‘delirious’, hallucinating and unaware of his surroundings. At this …

Read more…

In addition to last week’s expanded timeline, two interesting articles originally in the Washington Post in 1981 have been added to the new hunger strike archive: Break Seen In Ulster Jail Crisis and 5th IRA Hunger Striker Dies Before Settlement Reached. They are very detailed about the ICJP offer and, put together with what we know today about the Adams negotiations with the British over the Mountain Climber offer, paint a very stark picture of how needlessly the hunger strike …

Read more…

A new reference website has been created as a archive of material relating to the events of the 1981 hunger strike. Already its archives are extensive, and new items are being added to it on a regular basis. Today, an expanded timeline based upon Danny Morrison’s narrative of events has been released. This time line combines Morrison’s 2006 and 2009 timelines with former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald’s account of the same time period, and merges information from a number of books …

Read more…