Dealing with the Past – Page 8 – Slugger O'Toole

Martin McGuinness believes the NI Assembly is a successor organisation to the Provisional IRA

Mick Fealty on October 18, 2016, 11:59 am

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Sam McBride first reported this from a lively Question Time at Stormont yesterday. It’s Martin McGuinness responding to a rather pointed question from Jim Allister: Worse still is the pretence that there is an IRA when, quite clearly, the IRA has long-since left the stage and handed over the responsibility for the politics of the North of Ireland to the 108 Members in the House. Now that may be the settled view inside Sinn Fein and within whatever remains of …

“…significant evidence against the people responsible for these offences”

Mick Fealty on October 17, 2016, 2:27 pm

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Interesting comments from the Bedfordshire Police Chief Constable Jon Boutcher who has been charged with investigating allegations relating to the activities of the head of the IRA’s crudely appellated Nutting Squad. This week we have heard things that from what the families have told me they have never told anyone before because nobody has asked them. What I have been told this week is significant evidence against the people responsible for these offences. He has asked the victims’ families to …

On dealing with the past, Brokenshire should demand Executive action or withdraw the money

Brian Walker on October 8, 2016, 1:24 pm

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James Brokenshire is at least the eighth secretary of state to utter warm words about dealing with the past. It’s almost two years since the abortive Stormont House Agreement described new structures headed by a new Historic Investigations Unit. £150 million will be made available by Westminster over the next five years to implement the full package. Brokenshire is the latest UK minister to acquaint himself of “the raw emotion, the pain etc” and to repeat the government’s pledge of …

Spotlight on Donaldson shows much of the public narrative around dealing with the past is utterly fake

Mick Fealty on September 21, 2016, 9:59 am

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https://youtu.be/apBLMtOtI9Q Every time a new story comes out of the spy woodwork it is like a walk 0n the weird side. What was interesting about last night’s Spotlight was how calmly it was received on social media. You quickly get to understand why everyone chooses to believe the version they want to hear. I still struggle to believe that Alan McQuillan didn’t know his cops would turn up in force that day, or that Hugh Orde (a politicians cop if ever …

Martin McGuinness’s challenge should be accepted. Offer immunity in exchange for disclosure to those who took decisions on both sides of the long war

Brian Walker on August 29, 2016, 10:50 am

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Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt has mounted “a stinging attack” on Martin McGuinness for saying he would have “ no difficulty “ in disclosing his own role as an IRA leader in dealing with the past. An outsider would be taken aback at the vehemence of Nesbitt’s reaction. On the face of it, McGuinness’s offer sound interesting if not original, particularly with regard to timing. Is something stirring over dealing with the past as outlined in the abortive Stormont House …

Kingsmill, Loughinisland, Stakeknife. New disclosure on collusion has begun that the State can’t control and must answer. The time has come for proper explanations

Brian Walker on June 11, 2016, 7:51 pm

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Hints are constantly being dropped that the Executive are close to agreement about setting up the new institutions to deal with the past, basically as laid out in the Haass report two years ago. After last week, it can’t come quick enough. A draft Bill to set up new legacy bodies is ready and waiting. A flood of consequences emerged from some of the worst incidents of the Troubles, lining up to be tackled. 70 murders connected to Loughinisland. …

What simple, imaginative elisions might suffice a genuine reconciliation for Northern Ireland?

Mick Fealty on June 2, 2016, 7:20 am

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Yesterday, Martin McGuinness (and a cohort of SF politicians from north and south) was at Messines, where thousands of Irishmen died in the Battle of the Somme. An important gesture, no doubt. But in 2016, how is that decade of centenaries coming along in real Northern Ireland? In Derry the council has ordered the halting of work on the war memorial in the city’s Diamond. And in Magherafelt there’s an out of the blue proposal for a statue of Pádraig …

The time is overdue for the two governments to tell what they know about the Dublin-Monaghan and the Birmingham bombings

Brian Walker on June 1, 2016, 10:40 am

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Consider the latest developments about two atrocities, the Dublin and Monaghan UVF bombs in May 1974 and the Birmingham IRA pub bombs of November the same year. What they have in common is knowledge of the identities of what we must call the alleged perpetrators. The deep frustration caused to individuals and states has not gone away. Kieran Conway now a Dublin solicitor, then the IRA’s “director of intelligence.” has again confirmed what is so well known, that the identities …

Time to admit the reduced role of dealing with the past

Brian Walker on April 10, 2016, 12:25 pm

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In the Sunday Times (£) a review by the historian and failed candidate for Canadian PM Michael Ignatieff of a book lets a little air into the deadlocked subject of Dealing with the Past, “ In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies” by David Rieff presents arguments to counter our prevailing orthodoxies of the over-riding claims for justice and healing is remembering. A great Irish historian once said that it would help heal his society if the Irish …

Jeffrey Donaldson admits that Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries will never provide full disclosure…

Mick Fealty on February 5, 2016, 10:37 am

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It ought to come as no surprise, but no doubt it will, that Jeffrey Donaldson said rather bluntly on Nolan this morning, chances of full disclosure from the paramilitary organisations responsible for most Troubles related deaths (loyalists, 29.9%, Republican 57.8%) are none. The full burden of disclosure around killings is apparently only aimed at state forces (9.8%). Even if state agents within the paramilitaries were responsible for individual murders, it’s unlikely that we can move move neatly from paramilitary to …

What if tens of thousands of “Troubles” victims were to litigate?

Mick Fealty on February 1, 2016, 7:35 am

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This is an interesting development. One case is neither here nor there. But considering the death count of the Troubles is a fraction of those seriously injured the whole judicial system could face meltdown if others were to follow in any great number… “More than 300,000 servicemen and women served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles,” he said. “If every one of those made a complaint to the PSNI about attempted murders, how do you think the PSNI would manage? …

What will be the followup to new police move on the Birmingham bombings?

Brian Walker on January 30, 2016, 1:22 pm

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(Kieran) Conway, who is a now a solicitor in Dublin specialising in criminal defence,, voluntarily spoke to detectives in connection with his memoir of life inside the IRA “South Side Provisional”. In the book, Conway revealed certain details about the Birmingham pub bombings to which the IRA has never officially admitted. No one has ever been convicted in relation to the atrocity in England’s second city… For decades the IRA never publicly admitted they carried out the atrocity but Conway …

The biggest losers in failing to come clean on the past is the reputation and authority of the state and its servants.

Brian Walker on January 28, 2016, 12:24 pm

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You don’t have to be a transitional justice zealot or a Provie fellow traveller to recognise that the heat is on the British government, the police and security authorities over dealing with the past. You can be a judge like Lord Justice Weir blasting the police and indirectly the government for the inordinate delays in producing inquest evidence, now that high court judges have taken over the coroner’s service. You only need to be a supporter the DUP or TUV, …

The scheme for gathering information on the Troubles ignores the public interest

Brian Walker on January 26, 2016, 12:42 pm

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News is dribbling out about the proposed cumbersomely- named Independent Commission on Information Retrieval on the Past – despite the fact that the proposals for dealing with the Past have not yet been agreed. Even without a flood of confessions from paramilitaries, this body may yet prove to be the most important in a complicated set -up which includes an Oral history archive. In the Newsletter Sam McBride and his headline writer splutter unnecessarily about Martin McGuinness’s role in making …

Sinn Fein walks an excruciating line between McAuley the hero and McAuley the villain

Donal O'Keefe on December 7, 2015, 4:53 pm

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FORKED TONGUE: Mary-Lou McDonald is right about Ireland’s lenient sentencing regime, but Sinn Féin – having previously campaigned for his early release – has a breath-taking cheek to say Pearse McAuley deserves a longer sentence for failing to kill someone than the sentence he served for actually succeeding in killing someone.

Oireachtas Live: Statements on Fresh Start and other NI issues…

Mick Fealty on November 25, 2015, 1:34 pm

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DAIL LIVE: Given Osborne’s climb down on Universal Tax rate most of the ‘new money’ trumpeted last week has disappeared like snow off ditch… Feel free to bring popcorn… Taniste started the proceedings…

Ex soldier from Bloody Sunday arrested…

Mick Fealty on November 10, 2015, 1:01 pm

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Now, I don’t normally go much on arrests. At best they seem to be as much a political statement as anything more serious. But this one is at least worth marking since the landscape of this case has been well surveyed by Savill even if none of the evidence there can be used… A former British soldier has been arrested by detectives investigating the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry in 1972. Officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Legacy Investigation …

Whether we like it or not there is a very bad smell emanating from the past….

Mick Fealty on October 9, 2015, 2:36 pm

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So victims are ripping for justice whilst the Justice Minister tells them that the new arrangements will bring at maximum two convictions. Those convicted before 1998 have served not more than two years, which neatly fits with the fact that no one has been convicted since then in accordance with a secret plea (bar individuals like Gerry McGeough who was arrested after running against SF in 2007) made by Gerry Adams (to the Brits) that such would be against the …

#SluggerReport – Proposed HIU just another round of ‘Beggar Thy Neighbour’ distraction?

Mick Fealty on October 7, 2015, 12:00 pm

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A blessed return to audioboom for this morning’s Slugger Report which includes the main feature on the hoo haa over the ‘news’ HIU that the the British want to wield the censor’s ‘blue pen’ alongside Sinn Fein and the DUP. Confirming that a good idea once again has been ruined by a combination of false promise and design by committee. It’s a great example of politicians promising to do what they can never afford to let their rivals do to …

Uncomfortable Conversations – the Chief Constable, Sinn Féin Chair and me

Patricia MacBride on August 25, 2015, 9:41 am

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Tomorrow night in Derry, I’ll take part in an “Uncomfortable Conversation” that will include the PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton, Sinn Féin Chair Declan Kearney and Alan McBride, member of the NI Human Rights Commission and victims’ campaigner. The event, part of the Gasyard Féile, is one of a series of conversations around how we both deal with our past and build our future as communities, towns and cities and indeed islands seeking to emerge from conflict. These events and …