ZEIG HEIL OUR QUEEN #BoycottBritish

Ulster loyalism; lost and without a real friend.

A map highlighting the areas subjected to British plantations in Ulster, using modern county boundaries. (Photo credit:Wikipedia)

‘For God’s sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country.’ Visiting Northern Ireland as home secretary in 1970, Reginald Maudling, whose mellow moderation verged on a slothful desire for an easy life, was understandably exasperated by the Ulster problem – but no more so than a long line of politicians, before and since. Churchill – not so easily depicted as a faint-heart – lamented in the aftermath of the First World War that, while the cataclysm had transformed the rest of Europe, the Ulster question remained as intractable as ever and politicians would once more have to pay attention to the ‘dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone’.

Fifty years and another world war later, Ulster remained a needling presence in British political life. At the time of the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of 1974, which helped bring down the cross-community power-sharing executive agreed at Sunningdale in 1973, a peeved Harold Wilson openly denounced Ulster Protestants as ‘people who spend their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy’. The prime minister’s accusation riled the Protestants, who thought themselves harder-working than their feckless Catholic neighbours, the real spongers in their eyes. Incensed Ulster Unionists began to sport sponges on their lapels.

Are the people of Ulster – as its Protestant champions claim – an integral part of the British nation? Or is Northern Ireland rather, as Irish nationalists insist, a relic of empire, whose close proximity to Great Britain obscures the otherwise bald fact that British colonialism is the ultimate cause of the modern Ulster Question? Both claims are valid, while neither tells the whole story. Certainly, the Northern Irish problem has its roots in a colonial project, the Ulster Plantation of the early 17th century. Yet with the passage of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800, the north-eastern counties, with their Protestant majority, became the most self-consciously British region of the United Kingdom. By the same token, Britishness of the Ulster kind – Orange parades and kerbsides painted red, white and blue – seems demonstrative and stridently un-British. To the summer visitor from Britain who pulls off the ferry at Larne, the proliferation of Union Jacks along roads and at roundabouts is alienating. Unintentionally perhaps, the puffed-up hyper-Britons of Ulster exhibit colonial insecurity and make clear the precariousness of their position on what its current first minister, Peter Robinson of Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, once described as ‘the window ledge of the Union’.

A colonial strangeness lurks behind such seemingly familiar phenomena as student drunkenness. Belfast’s Holy Land is an area between Queen’s University and the Ormeau Road where the streets, built by a biblically minded Victorian Protestant, are named for Jerusalem, Damascus and Carmel. Originally, Protestants lived here, and later, the area became more mixed, with young lecturers bringing in a dash of counter-culture; but in recent years the Holy Land has become a place of student-dominated multiple-occupancy housing and raucous anti-social behaviour, which tends to culminate in riotous stand-offs with the police on St Patrick’s Day. The authorities would rather not confront the fact that many of the rioting students – ‘culchies’ (yokels) from mid-Ulster – wear Celtic tops or Gaelic Athletic Association shirts, and are asserting an instinctive quasi-sectarian command of what is now their territory. Protestant students prefer to rent accommodation further south in Stranmillis.

In Belfast the urban motorway – something that has done much to blight city life across the United Kingdom – has a sinister, though not altogether unhappy significance. As Dominic Bryan argues in his lively essay in Belfast 400, the M2 and the Westlink have served as a bleak cordon sanitaire between some of the rival sectarian ghettoes in the west of the city. Moreover, as the security forces were quick to recognise, the limited number of crossing points for vehicles meant that the centre of Belfast could be more effectively secured against disturbances spilling over from the Shankill and Falls Road areas. This estrangement persists, long after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Peace did not bring the ‘peace walls’ tumbling down, or strip away the protective netting which covers tiny back gardens within lobbed-bottle distance of the other community.

Ulster is, and remains, a collage of confessional territories. As the late A.T.Q. Stewart remarked in his history of Ulster, The Narrow Ground (1977), every resident of the province carries around in his or her head a complex and detailed geography: they know which villages or streets are Protestant or Catholic, or mixed. These internalised microgeographies – of small urban pockets such as Sandy Row or the Short Strand – provide the matter of sectarian conflict, for, as the acerbic historian Joe Lee lamented, Ulster has a ‘dearth of major atheist settlements’.

Geography also presents challenges on a larger scale. The incomer from ‘GB’, as Ulster folk call Great Britain, quickly learns not to call the nearby larger island ‘the mainland’, while apparent synonyms for Northern Ireland – such as ‘Ulster’ or the ‘Six Counties’ or ‘the North of Ireland’ – betray the politics and religion of the speaker. Where, indeed, is Ulster? This seemingly straightforward question opens up a rich seam of history. Ulster is one of the historic provinces of Ireland, and comprises nine counties, six of which – Armagh, Down, Antrim, Londonderry (or Derry), Fermanagh and Tyrone – are today in Northern Ireland, and three – Monaghan, Donegal and Cavan – in the Irish Republic. The colonial Plantation of Ulster in the reign of James VI and I covered six counties, but not those of today’s Northern Ireland. Ironically, the counties which became the redoubt of British Protestant settlement – Antrim and Down – were not technically part of the Plantation, which instead encompassed Donegal (then known as Tyrconnell), Londonderry, Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh and Tyrone.

During the Home Rule crisis of the early 20th century, Sir James Craig, the founding father of Northern Ireland, envisaged hiving off the four most strongly Protestant counties – Antrim, Down, Londonderry and Armagh – to form an Ulster statelet. In the event, Fermanagh and Tyrone were added to the new self-governing province of Northern Ireland established under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, but Article XII of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, between the United Kingdom and the Irish Free State, was deliberately vague on the future resolution of the border. In the event, the proposal of the Boundary Commission of 1925 to shave off southern Armagh for the Free State and transfer parts of eastern Donegal to Northern Ireland was much too controversial to implement, or even acknowledge in public.

Certain areas near the border in Armagh became notorious for atrocities more than a century before there even was a border. Uncanny congruences of this sort reinforce the assumption of outsiders that Ulster is a land of memory, where the horrors of an inescapable past forever haunt the present. However, as Sean Connolly notes more precisely in Belfast 400, memory is all too often selective memory, if not ‘historical amnesia’. When 19th-century Belfast became ‘the capital of Irish Unionism’, its citizens conveniently forgot that in the 1790s the city had been ‘the birthplace of a United Irish movement committed to the establishment of an independent Irish republic’. At the centenary of the Rebellion of 1798, the leading officials of the Orange Grand Lodge of Belfast misremembered the largely Presbyterian rising in Ulster as ‘a series of most foul and cowardly murders and massacres of innocent men and women whose only offence was their Protestantism’. James Loughlin notes in his essay in Ulster since 1600, that ‘former Presbyterian rebels’, keen in the early decades of the 19th century to reinvent themselves as loyal Britons, were ‘only too ready to frame the rebellion through the lens of 1641 as a vast Popish conspiracy’. In other words, although Ulster Catholics had been largely quiescent in 1798, the supposed history of the rebellion was cunningly – but convincingly – turned upside down to fit with an existing memory of the Ulster Catholic rising of 1641 (and, to be fair, with the strikingly different pattern of hostilities in other parts of Ireland during 1798).

Moreover, an entrenched rhetoric of civility and barbarity, which dated back to the Ulster Plantation, and beyond, appeared to confirm such perceptions. After the flight to the Continent in 1607 of the harassed Gaelic earls – Hugh O’Neill, Second Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O’Donnell, First Earl of Tyrconnell, along with Cúchonnacht Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh – the Plantation of 1609 was designed to bring civility to these rude parts. The new king, James VI and I, had already attempted to colonise the fringes of Scottish Gaeldom with civilising Lowlanders, as Martin MacGregor’s essay in the collection edited by Eamonn O Ciardha and Micheál O Siochrú makes clear. From Giraldus Cambrensis to the chronicler John of Fordun, medieval commentators from Britain had demonised the Gaels for their barbarous ways. Such sentiments still persist in the expected quarters. Ian Paisley claimed in the early 1980s that the forebears of the good Protestant folk of Ulster had ‘cut a civilisation out of the bogs and meadows of this country’, while the Gaels ‘were wearing pig-skins and living in caves’. These Yahoo Gaels were not only uncivilised, but so addicted to violence that it had permeated their entire culture. Paisley’s daughter, Rhonda, at one stage a Belfast councillor, complained that the Irish language itself ‘drips with their bloodthirsty saliva’.

Although there was a Scots presence in the north-east of Ireland from the early 17th century, Scots Presbyterian culture wasn’t consolidated there until the arrival of General Robert Munro’s Scots Covenanter army in the 1640s. The Scottish famines of the late 1690s brought a further exodus to Ulster of Scots, particularly from the south-west, the stronghold of Covenanting Presbyterianism. The Scots Covenanters were decidedly not republicans; they preferred to be governed by kings, but owed them a highly conditional allegiance. If the king failed to uphold the community’s Covenant with God, then the people were entitled to take up defensive arms against his malignant rule, and in certain circumstances even to execute divine vengeance on the apostate ruler. It is ultimately from this branch of the Scots Presbyterian tradition that Ulster inherits the peculiarities of loyalism, a commitment to queen and country so anarchic and tenuous as to be downright disloyal.

Loyalism has taken different organisational forms. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was set up in the mid-1960s by a former British soldier called Gusty Spence, as a proactive means of combating the upsurge in IRA activity which, it was expected, would follow the fiftieth anniversary in 1966 of the Easter Rising. The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) emerged in the early 1970s as a form of vigilantism by the Protestant working class against the insurgency of the Provisional IRA (which had split in disgust from the torpid Marxism of the Official IRA in 1969). The UDA used a proxy, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), for its terrorist activities. So self-defence was followed by the unprovoked sectarian killing of Catholics – regardless of whether they had any links with the Provos – and eventually, in some areas at least, by psychopathic gangsterism. Clearly, there is a major cleavage within Ulster Protestantism between Unionism and loyalism, but it’s not easy to trace its course.

Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) once stood on very uncertain terrain between the ‘big house Unionism’ of the old Ulster gentry, from which it recoiled, and a proletarian loyalism it sometimes appeared to court. How was one to interpret Paisley’s night-time rally on a hill in County Antrim in 1981, at which five hundred supporters waved their firearms licences? The Paisleyites’ reckless disregard for the rule of law, for Westminster and for British constitutional norms earned them the contempt of Enoch Powell, a Conservative turned Ulster Unionist, who favoured the full integration of Northern Ireland into the UK. Powell claimed Paisley and his followers were ‘Protestant Sinn Féin’.

The distinction between Unionism and loyalism revolves not only around violence and the nature of Ulster’s commitment to the British state, but also around class – that omnipresent yet largely invisible factor in Northern Irish politics. Loyalism has been an underappreciated expression of working-class consciousness. Andy Tyrie, the supreme commander of the UDA between 1973 and 1988, admitted that challenging the dominance of Unionism was an important part of being a loyalist. Of course, loyalism was an uninhibited demonstration of anti-Republican hostility, but it was also a form of resentment against the middle-class Unionists in their leafy suburbs, who seemed content enough to let their proletarian co-religionists bear the brunt of the internal struggle with the Provos.

Why, an outsider might ask about the situation in Ulster, did the region fail to develop the same class-based politics as the rest of the UK? Northern Ireland seems to be stuck in a conservative limbo, with voters preferring to vote along religious lines without regard to their material interests. But this analysis is oversimplified. Ulster is, in fact, rather left-wing. In one of the most surprising essays in Ulster since 1600, Graham Brownlow calculates that, factoring out coal and iron and steel manufacture, which the province lacks, Northern Ireland was ‘much more strike-prone than the UK average’ between the 1940s and the mid-1980s. UK trade unions enjoy considerable support, in spite of the divided national allegiances of the workforce. Indeed, Northern Ireland has a higher density of trade-union membership – that is, actual membership divided by total potential membership – than other parts of the United Kingdom, including Labour’s heartlands in Wales and Scotland. The Northern Ireland Labour Party, established in 1924, had offered an appealing alternative to ethnic politics, but just as it had emerged as the official opposition in Stormont it was overwhelmed by the onset of the Troubles. Similarly, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) – formed in 1970 out of various groupings, including the Republican Labour Party, and supported by some former members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party – shed its Labourite origins under John Hume’s leadership, but could not present an Irish enough identity to see off the electoral challenge of Sinn Féin. In any case, people in Ulster might wonder whether they needed class-based political parties. Sectarianism had done more to protect the working class in Northern Ireland than a powerless Labour Party had achieved in Britain after 1979. The Troubles helped to keep Thatcherism at bay, so that in 1989 the journalist Ian Aitken could describe the province as ‘the Independent Keynesian Republic of Northern Ireland’.

Here the middle classes flourished during the Troubles, their high-living maintained by a bloated public-sector-cum-security-state. The North Down constituency is a haven of peace and material amplitude, though notorious in cliché for its all too stark social division between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-yachts’. Nothing is as likely to shock the preconceptions of the visitor who comes to view the grim locations of ‘Troubles tourism’ as the sight of Ulster Tatler on newsagents’ shelves. Middle-class life in the province has its own variations. South Belfast has a multicultural bohemian flavour, as obvious in the boutiques of the Lisburn Road as around Queen’s University itself. This is a world captured with deliberately baroque exaggeration in Chris Marsh’s comic novel A Year in the Province (2008), whose humour comes from a pitch-perfect rendering of the cadences and sing-song inverted repetitions of Ulster speech. Ian Sansom’s deadpan novel Ring Road (2004), on the other hand, explores the dour and parochial absurdities of Ulster’s less flashy middle classes in the dormitory towns around Belfast.

While the Troubles did very little to threaten the middle classes, events have recently taken a potentially worrying turn. The recent spasm of unrest was provoked by Belfast City Council’s decision in December to restrict the flying of the Union flag at the City Hall – it had always flown there year-round – to selected dates in the political calendar, such as the Duchess of Cambridge’s birthday. The decision was not just the doing of Sinn Féin, but was supported by the somewhat priggish middle-class do-gooders of Alliance, a political party which has traditionally floated consequence-free above the streetfighting of proletarian Ulster. On this occasion, however, loyalist protesters chose to single out Alliance for facilitating the outrage. The party offices and the homes of prominent Alliance politicians became targets. The riots which have followed have been blamed – rightly – on loyalist recidivism.

There is, however, another unexpected side to loyalism, as Peter Shirlow’s book demonstrates. Whereas middle-class Unionist Ulster was for decades happy enough to say no, time and again, to changes in the government of the province, working-class loyalists – despite their own reputation for intransigence – could not afford to indulge in the same endless rejection. Shirlow distinguishes between the ‘idiocy’ of rejectionist loyalism and an avant-garde of ‘progressive’ or ‘transitional’ loyalism willing to engage with the demands of the Catholic community and to think imaginatively about conflict resolution. Working-class loyalists experimented – long before their snooty Unionist cousins – with a ‘non-sectarian mode of Unionist politics’, which recognised the shared sufferings of working-class Protestants and Catholics alike.

In 1979 the UDA-backed New Ulster Political Research Group published a report called Beyond the Religious Divide, which explored the common ‘Ulster’ identity of the province’s Catholic and Protestant peoples. The UDA also flirted with the idea of an independent Northern Irish republic as an ingenious solution to the underlying cause of the Troubles, namely the rival British and Irish claims of sovereignty. In 1987 the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP), which would become a front for the UDA, put out Common Sense, which called for power-sharing and equality across the sectarian divide. The hard men of the UVF also caught the peace and reconciliation bug. In 1984 the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), the political wing of the UVF, proposed a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, which was too daring for the authorities, and followed it up with an ecumenical document entitled ‘Sharing Responsibility’. Needless to say, not all loyalists were impressed. Transitional loyalists were seen by traditionalists as ‘lundys’ (the Ulster Protestant term for ‘quisling’). Another grouping, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, denounced the PUP as ‘atheistic communists’ determined to impose ‘a socialist ideology over a conservative people’.

This is, of course, to beg the question. Ulster has an ingrained conservatism, to be sure, but also an old-fashioned socialism about which it often seems to be in denial. The future remains uncertain. The dispute about the flag shows how much symbols matter in Northern Ireland, and unfortunately Ulster has just embarked on a ‘decade of centenaries’. Some are uncontentious, such as the four hundredth anniversary of Belfast’s receipt of a royal charter in 1613 and the Titanic centenary of 2012; others are pregnant with menace. The contrasting blood sacrifices of Dublin’s Easter Rising and the Ulster Division’s losses in the Battle of the Somme loom ominously in 2016. And, if we get past them without incident, the centenary of the Protestant statelet itself and the partition of Ireland arrive in 2020-21.

By Colin Kidd.

Winston Churchill wrote: “The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist.”

BELFAST FLAG TAKEDOWN GIVES QUEEN THE RUNS

PSNI officers injured in Belfast Riot Again

The cost of policing the continuing union flag protests has soared to over #15 million (?17.5 million

Crowd of 100 loyalists in Newtonabbey last night.

The trouble broke out just after 8.30pm, according to a police spokesman. A building containing the constituency office of Justice Minister David Forde was targeted  by the rioters and a number of windows were smashed. A car was also set alight in the violence.

An office belonging to another Alliance Party politician, Stewart Dickson in Carrickfergus, was destroyed by arsonists in December. The party’s only MP, Naomi Long, and a number of local councillors have also received death threats.

Last week, Mr Ford said unionist parties 'drove' the flag protests. Mr Ford the Alliance party's annual conference that the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party had cynically targeted his party and in particular the Alliance MP for East Belfast Naomi Long for crude electoral purposes.

“It seems to suit unionism better to have people worried about flags and identity, protesting at the City Hall, than have them focus on the fact that their children are leaving school without the essential skills they need to make it in today’s world, and lobbying about that at Stormont,” he added.

It emerged last month that the cost of policing the continuing union flag protests has cost more than £15 million (€17.5 million). PSNI chief constable Matt Baggott outlined the financial implications of the disturbances during a briefing to members of his oversight body, the Policing Board.

Comments (2)

Lot

a)This thuggery occurs not just in the context of the initial opportunism of the DUP but is further componded by the more recent disgraceful and irresponsible commments by Peter Robinson in relation to the PSNI and Sammy Wilson in respect of the judiciary. The First Minister and his cohorts clearly still have a long way to go when it comes to respect for democracy. 
The silence from the political and media establishment in the 26 counties is deafening. We were first treated to the initial symapathetic noises from the usual quarters towards the flag protests but since the "protestors" haveshown their true colours these commentators have gone silent. 
Unionists / unionism should be no more beyond criticism from southern quarters than republicans when it is justified. A more direct and honest approach over the years may have helped to avoid prolonging the conflict. 
The unionsit leadership has once again displayed their complete inability to self-analyse and develop. They still practise the philosophy to be "first to offend and first to take offence".

B)Time to remind loyalists who are the majority in Ireland and quieten down this howling dog.

Time to remind loyalists who are the majority in Ireland and quieten down this howling dog.

In a small town just outside Belfast, a man has just saved a woman and her daughter from a vicious Doberman attack by wrestling it to the ground and chocking it to death. 3 news reporters run to the scene. 

1st reporter. "Please, I need this story, Brave Republican, saves a family from a brutal canine attack"

"Sounds good but I'm not from the Republic" he says.

2nd reporter. "Please let me have it. Amazing Fenian risks all for mother and child."

"I'm not Republican and I sure as hell ain't no Fenian, I'm a loyalist." He said proudly.

3rd reporter. "Orange bastard kills family pet"

A primary teacher explains to her class that she is a Rangers fan. She asks her students to raise their hands if they, too, are Rangers fans. Everyone in the class raises their hand except one little girl. The teacher looks at the girl with surprise and says, "Mary, why didn't you raise your hand?"
"Because I'm not a Rangers fan," she replied.
The teacher, still shocked, asked, "Well, if you are not a Rangers fan, then who are you a fan of?"
"I am a Celtic fan, and proud of it," Mary replied.
The teacher could not believe her ears.
"Mary, why, pray tell, are you a Celtic fan?"
"Because my mum is a Celtic fan, and my dad is a Celtic fan, so I'm a Celtic fan too!"
"Well," said the teacher in an obviously annoyed tone, "that is no reason for you to be a Celtic fan. You don't have to be just like your parents all of the time. What if your mum was a prostitute and your dad was a drug addict, what would you be then?"
"Then," Mary smiled, "Then I'd be a Rangers fan."

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A Celtic fan, Rangers fan and a Falkirk fan are lost in the woods together and spot a farm . The three of them approach the farm and knock on the door. A man answers.
"Do you have a room for the night? ", asks the Falkirk fan.
"Yes, I do but one of you will have to sleep with the pigs".
"Fine I will sleep with pigs", replies the Celtic fan. At 2:00 o'clock in the morning the Celtic fan appears at the door, "It is too smelly down there", says the Celtic fan.
"Fine then I will sleep with the pigs ", says the Falkirk fan. At 3:00 o'clock in the morning the Falkirk fan says " It's too smelly down there".
"Fine then I will go sleep with the pigs" says the Rangers fan . At 4:00 o'clock in the morning the pig appears at the door and says:
"It's too smelly down there!!"

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A man goes to Glasgow airport and eventually goes into the departure lounge to wait for the call for his flight home. The place is a mess. All around him are overturned tables, smashed windows, upturned chairs, broken flight monitors and crowd control barriers littering the floor. "Christ, what happened here?" he asks one of the ground crew.
"Oh," he replies. "Bloody hopeless it was, we had the Rangers squad in here this morning filming the new Nike ad!"

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A Tim, an hun, a hot blonde and a fat woman get on the tube. They go into a tunnel and the lights go out, and suddenly they all hear a loud slap. When the lights come on, the Hun has a big red handprint on his face.
The blonde thinks: "Oh, the Hun must have made a move for me, but fondled that fat woman by mistake and she slapped him."
The fat woman thinks: "Hmm, that Hun tried to put the moves on that blonde and got slapped. Good for her."
The Hun thinks: "Hey, that Tim must have gone for the blonde and she slapped me by mistake!"
The Tim thinks: "Boy, I hope we go through another tunnel, so I can smack that Hun fucker again".

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Alex McLeish and Michael Mols in the pub and there is a cat sitting on the table. One man comes in, picks the cat up and looks under it.. Another man comes in and does the same. McLeish annoyed says the next man to do that I'm going to ask them why. So the next man comes in picks the cat up and looks under it. McLiesh says "Why did you just do that?". The man replies "A man outside told me that there's a cat in here with two arseholes!"

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Alex McLeish died and went to heaven. God showed him to his new dwelling and it was a rundown shack with with an old tattered Union Jack hanging over the front door. McLeish wasn't too happy with this at all. He looked off into the distance and saw a beautiful mansion with a massive Celtic Flag hanging over the doorway. McLeish thinks to himself, "Martin O'Neill must have died too" and so he says to God, "I don't mean to be ungrateful, but how come Martin gets that gorgeous mansion for a home and all I get is this rundown shack?" God replied, "That's not Martins home, that's mine!."

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Mols: Hey boss! do you remember that jigsaw puzzle I was doing? Well I've finished it and it only took 6 months!
Alex McLeish: 6 months??? What's so good about that?
Mols: Well, it says on the box "3 to 6 years"

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A Celtic fan enters a pub, after a few drinks he turns to the guy next to him and says, "Do you want to hear a Rangers joke?"
The guy turns to him and says "Listen mate before you tell the joke I should warn you, I’m 6ft 10 and a Rangers fan, that guy to your left is 6ft and a member of a flute band, and the guy there is 6ft 5 and a member of the orange order, Now do you still want to tell your joke?"
The Celtic fan replies, "No, not if I have to tell it 3 times."

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Following Rangers success in Scotland this season, they have decided to release videos, keyrings, replica shirts and even a new OXO-Cube as the attempt Europe. They have called this a "Laughing Stock".

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Barry Ferguson is in a restaurant with Greame Souness. The meal was going great, they were all drinking an laughing then the starters arrived.
"Excuse me," said the waiter to Ferguson, "would you like some ginger with your melon?"
"Naw," replied Barry, "the gaffer got me some wine."

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Alex Mcleish takes the Rangers team out for dinner after another defea. The waiter comes up and asks him what he'd like.
McLeish: "I'll have the prawn cocktail to start, followed by the 16oz steak."
Waiter: "And the vegetables sir?"
Mcleish :" Oh! They'll have the same"

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The Rangers board have decided to change sponsorship with Carling to Tampax with effect immediate. They considered it a good change since the club was going through a very bad period!

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Whos the only women with two fannies... Mrs De Boer

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What does a hun do after he's just watched rangers beat Barcelona?
Turns off the playstation.

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After an Old Firm match Henrik Larsson and Fernando Ricksen go out for a drink. After their drinks they go looking for some nice woman for a laugh. They find a prostitute. Barry feruson asks how much is it for a wank. The prostitute replies £20. Larsson then asks how much is it for a superstar...

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Today is Stefan Klos' 30th birthday and he will be having a meal with his team-mates tonight. However, they will have to eat with their hands as they have no silverware.

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Q: Did you hear that the Post Office just recalled their latest stamps?
A: They had pictures of Rangers Players on them and people couldn't figure out which side to spit on.

Q: What do Rangers Fans and sperm have in common?
A: One in 3,000,000 has a chance of becoming a human being.

Q: What do Rangers Fans use for birth control?
A: Their personalities.

Q: How is a pint of milk different then a hun?
A: If you leave the milk out for a week it develops a culture!

Q: What's the difference between a Hun and a sperm?
A: At least a sperm has one chance in ten million of becoming a human being.

Q: How many Rangers fans does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It doesn't matter, they're all condemned to eternal darkness anyway.

Q: What's the difference between a Hun and a bucket of shit?
A: The bucket...

Q: What do you get when you cross a Hun with a pig?
A: I don't know, there are some things a pig just won't do.

Q: Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, an intelligent Hun and an old drunk are walking down the street together when simultaneously they each spot a fifty pound note. Who gets it?
A: The old drunk, of course, the other three are mythological creatures.

Q: What does Rangers and a three pin plug have in common?
A: They're both absolutely useless in Europe.

Q: What's the difference between a busload of Rangers fans and a Hedgehog?
A: On a hedgehog, the pricks are on the outside.

Q: What is the difference between a Rangers Fan and a trampoline?
A: You take off your shoes to jump on a trampoline!

Q: What do you call a Rangers fan who goes to University?
A: A janitor...

Q: What's the difference between a Hun and a coconut?
A: One's thick and hairy, and the other's a tropical fruit.

Q: What do you call a hun in Europe?
A: A tourist...

Q: What do you say to a Rangers supporter with a good looking Woman on his arm?
A: Nice tattoo!

Q: How can you tell E.T. is a hun?
A: Because he looks like one.

Q: You're trapped in a room with a Lion, Cobra snake and an Rangers Fan. You have a gun with two bullets. What should you do?
A: Shoot the Hun Twice.

Q: How do you make Barry Fergusons eyes light up?
A: Shine a torch in his ears.

Q: What do you call a Hun in a three-bedroomed semi?
A: A burglar.

BRITISH QUEEN'S DIRECT INVOLVMENT IN BBC SAVILE SCANDAL

The Queen has kept silent about the child rape scandal of the BBC and their superstar Jimmy Savile, which is the worst crisis to hit the BBC in 50 years. She has been hiding from the subject, despite the fact, that the scandal is a moral issue directly involving her and public interest, where she is directly involved in the BBC as it's boss, which is run by 21 trustees appointed by the Queen herself. She granted Savile knighthood in 1990, who was supposed to be vetted by her secret services M15 ?

She knighted  Savile at a time, when his child rape was well known in British establishment circles and the Queen should have stopped the royal family, from being further intimately involved with her pedophile employee at that time, immediately after allegations of his perverted activity was originally made public. However the Queen herself has not taken responsibility, neither has her her office for the royal family. Despite all she knew of the Savile’s scandalous behaviour, she still decided to decorate him regardless, why ?

The BBC is employed  under a Royal Charter, with the present one having come into force from 2007, which runs until 2016. The BBC Trust, with a board of 21 trustees is directly appointed by the Queen, to choose the BBC’s director general, who is in charge of the BBC's Executive Board, governing its services and output. She was also well acquainted with Savile's intimate relationships with several British Prime ministers over several decades, which includes intimate activity over 10 Xmas holidays.

Was it not her duty to prevent this abuse of Parliamentary privilege? We can be certain that either the head of M15 or the Queen, depending on which of them are really in charge of governing the UK were well acquainted with the facts.The question of who is really in charge of running the UK, is a bit of a hot potato in the corridors of power in Britain currently, with a broad consensus being, that MI5 are really in charge of running the UK, with a pedophile ring involving the British Prime Minister’s office and the British Royal family being a major power point of leverage.

The seriousness of the Savile child rape scandal, with the drama of Tom Watson MP openly suggesting in parliament, that there is a pedophile ring involving the British Prime Minister’s office at No 10 Downing Street, raises more questions about the Queen of England. Why, if the Queen is aware of the facts of the scandal, which is being kept secret from the public, including police investigators, why is she and her family not helping inquiries?

The Queen appears to be evading responsibility for knighting Savile, her former employee of the BBC, a sovereign body of members, directly appointed by the Queen, which leads many to believe, she is taking her orders from MI5. This begs some very serious questions about her role and that of several members of her extended family, with regard to their relationship with Savile and his pedophile ring. A Royal Prerogative recently stolen and destroyed by the UK's Secret Services in British Occupied Ireland, without even a Royal rebuke for this criminal perversion of justice, suggests MI5 are calling the shots. The Presidential maxim of its special democratic partner, certainly demonstrates that Sterling pound, neither stops at Cameron or the Queen's desk and that Britain is being administered from the spooky shadows.

Calls for Fascist Regime Change in the UK to Restore Habeas Corpus

Britain terror bombed Germany, with deliberate targeting of civilians and destruction of their homes, in total disregard for human life on a  breathtaking scale, during the second world war. The Queen of England as the Sovereign Head of British Armed Forces, is the only person who can declare war, dating back to when the Monarchy was responsible for raising, maintaining and equipping the  British Army and Navy. She is also of direct German ancestry and her family's role in bombing Germany is so controversial, that there is still considerable British censorship about the British Royal family's involvement in the deliberate targeting of civilians, the deliberate destruction of homes and utter disregard for human life. In fact it was quite simply unadulterated state terrorism of the most crude kind. Britain therefore is the last nation on earth, in any position to lecture anyone on human rights and most certainly terrorism. Their history in the matter, disqualifies them from having any credibility whatsoever.

From 1942 the Royal British cabinet took a strategic decision, to bomb densely packed working class areas, to cause firestorms and disrupt industrial war production. The pretence was that they were attacking military targets but it was cities, that were the main British target. Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg were targeted, with enormous numbers of planes which continued right to the end of the war. The city of Dresden was bombed to dust, in February 1945, even though its population had increased considerably with refugees caught in a firestorm, that flattened the city, killing hundreds of thousands of people in March 1945 as the RAF dropped levels of ordnance, greater than that of the entire war. This continued despite there being no question by 1945, that the Nazis were already defeated by invading armies from the east. All British terror achieved, was destroying huge numbers of lives particularly refugees and buildings. The bombings were simply meant to inflict shock and awe on an already defeated German population.

Tony Blair was the first Primes minister to indefinitely suspend Habeas Corpus in Britain, while at the same time warning senior Judges in Britain who expressed alarm at the attacks on civil liberties, that he would tolerate no dissent. He did so from a British Parliament of cons and neo-cons, who legislated new authoritarianism, from a second-rate political autocrat with a third-rate mind, while his Tory echo-chamber Cameron a third-rate politician with a second-rate mind was handicapped with a royal Viceroy in British Occupied Ireland called Patterson, who doesn't rate on any political scale whatever, all denouncing their own law lords and judges, who stated that the indefinite detention without trial of terror suspects, contravenes the Human Rights Act.

Even a senior Tory minister stated at the time, "Parliament must be supreme. Aggressive judicial activism will not only undermine the public's confidence in the impartiality of our judiciary. It could also put our security at risk and with it the freedoms the judges seek to defend. That would be a price we cannot be expected to pay." The important section of the establishment, driving the current reality is MI5, the intelligence agency, with tried and tested political internment without trial during years of the Irish 'troubles'. Special courts have sanctioned imprisonment without trial for years, etc., with sectarian judges ever reliable in those days. Now even judges themselves have to be security-vetted by MI5, with files opened to determine the reliability of judges. What chance ordinary British commoners.


Central to all of this is Habeas Corpus, a centuries-old British central legal reform, that prevented authorities from arbitrarily throwing a person into a dungeon and leaving them there forever without presenting charges in a court of law. Without this protection, there is no liberty of any sort for anyone. This political internment is a newly disguised form of tyranny for everyone. It is not law and it is not justice. It is also suppression of the truth, as it is impossible to have truth and at the same time beat your neighbor whether Irish, black or Arab, your dog or a large part of your kingdom. When will Britain recognize this principle or desirable truth? The War on terror is a war on Truth. There is a seat in the dock for the queen of England, when real War Crimes Trials begin.

Karl Marx said "All wars are class wars." Internment without trial in British Occupied Ireland and in Britain are designed to deprive suspects of internationally-recognized human rights like other repression tested in their laboratory of Ireland the English can expect more of the same when they stand up for their rights.The current internment without trial of Marian Price, her torture and the torture of political prisoners, is in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions and permits the queen's non elected English Viceroy in Ireland to use his own bigoted judgment, with the sectarian approval of loyalist political bedfellows, as to the precise meaning of “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment.

Britain are once again breaking undertakings given to the court of Human Right in Strasbourg when they were found guilty of torture in British Occupied Ireland. It also reinforces Paterson's subjective racist  interpretation of “Irish dissidents” which now includes anyone who opposes the non democratic, royalist, writ in British Occupied Ireland. This unelected English autocrat is free to imprison Irish citizens, who may simply disagree with his subjective analysis of the war on terror, bearing in mind the British tradition and culture of ceaseless, terror worldwde. For example the queen's man in Ireland, McGuinness recently attacked independent journalists, as dissidents, with a follow up attack attempting to also silence them with political imprisonment.

Internment without trial and the dumping of the centuries old safeguard of Habeas Corpus is a vigorous attack on any form of a Bill of Rights a prerequasite for any basic form of republicanism. Witnessing a former Irish republican commander, shaking hands with the Queen of England on Irish soil, while her Government currently and systematically breaks, almost all of its GFA undertakings, without the slightest protection for what the royalist call British commoners, is an insult to any basic form of humanity, never mind any thinking republican with a brain cell. From the very beginning of the current Tory administration, they have set about dismantling the rudimentary protections of the sold call GFA or Bad Friday Agreement. This has resulted in a long list of systematic violations of international human rights, with secret intelligence based detentions, torture, humiliating treatment, indefinite detention without charge and criminal treatment. British activities are transparently flouting European law, without the slightest, conventional sense of human decency, not exactly surprising then this power hungry careerist is sucking the royal paw.

In conjunction with the loyalist fanatics surrounding the current unelected British Viceroy, they have all focused their attacks on Habeas Corpus as their point of attack, since the arrival of the Tory elite. If the English Viceroy has the statutory authority in Ireland to incarcerate Irish citizens or even loyalist commoners without filing charges, any illusion of Irish republican gains, after 40 years of war or any element of even the most basic form of a republican Bill of Rights is irrelevant. Thus the attack on Habeas Corpus as a primary lever of British tyrannical rule in Occupied Ireland, explains why the Tories, Paterson and his loyalist extremist loyalist, henchmen, have been working to undo Habeas Corpus, with political internment without trial. The sadistic British government with their Ghengis Khan want to be, Patterson have daily tortured Marian Price in solitary confinement, without any coherent charge or producing any evidence, as they savage Habeas Corpus and the centuries old inalienable right of a rudimentary form of protection, now itself reduced to being arbitrarily rescinded, like their lost royal edicts and dishonourable, broken, royal promises.

It is but another form of British terrorism in Ireland, as they attempt to cow and bully with kidnapping and violence, ordinary Irish people, standing up for their basic rights human rights as Irish citizens not British commoners. The British have been trying to bully their smaller island neighbour for 800 years, as they have done for centuries all over the world, with tens of millions of human beaings, loosing their lives, at the hands of British state terrorism invading their lands. Britain's terror bombing of Germany, with deliberate targeting of civilians, is every bit as much a crime against humanity, as the Nazi holocaust itself, indeed Britain's engineered holocaust in Ireland has cost more lives, than Hitler caused with his holocaust. Handshakes without proper restitution, as a mark of contrition and sincerity from British royalty to ensure it will never happen again, in both the current political context or class context, is an insult to all who lost their lives, their families, communities and particularly all those working class people from every quarter, who made the supreme sacrifice and were often simply used as cannon fodder by both sides of the political clown's handshake.

Lord Muck of Londonderry Rims the Queen of England

“If there's anything better than a good rimming I've never felt it”
~ Oscar Wilde

"Oh I do say, Lord Muck of Londonderry! ​untongue me immediately, you vile rat!" Shrieked her majesty. "Yes ma'am, please do not shriek your majesty it upsets me terrribly." answered Lord Muck " "I do not moan, I am officially your Queen after today's public display Muck and don't you ever forget it, she shrieked again." "Yes your majesty," said Lord Muck as his eyes gleamed with joy.
"Fickle fuckers." replied his queen. “Well Ma'am, I'm trying to help Anglo-Irish relations and I can reccomend it thoroughly" answered Lord Muck. "Untongue me you vile peasant." and with that his queen farted into Lord Muck's filthy mouth!

"Ma,am on this auspicious occasion of your visit to Ireland and our first public display of affection, I am now going to recite for you a poem by a fellow Irishman Oscar Wilde whom you people, imprisoned," replied Lord Muck, it's called:

The Sphinx

In a dim corner of my room
    For longer than my fancy thinks,
    A beautiful and silent Sphinx
Has watched me through the shifting gloom.
Inviolate and immobile
    She does not rise she does not stir
    For silver moons are nought to her
And nought to her the suns that reel.

Red follows grey across the air,
    The waves of moonlight ebb and flow
    But with the Dawn she does not go
And in the night-time she is there.
Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old
    And all the while this curious cat
    Lies couching on the Chinese mat
With eyes of satin rimmed with gold.

Upon the mat she lies and leers
    And on the tawny throat of her
    Flutters the soft and fur
Or ripples to her pointed ears.
Come forth my lovely seneschal!
    So somnolent, so statuesque!
    Come forth you exquisite grotesque!
Half woman and half animal!

Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx!
    And put your head upon my knee!
    And let me stroke your throat and see
Your body spotted like the Lynx!
And let me touch those curving claws
    Of yellow ivory and grasp
    The tail that like a monstrous Asp
Coils round your heavy velvet paws!

A thousand weary centuries
    Are thine while I have hardly seen
    Some twenty summers cast their green
For Autumn's gaudy liveries.
But you can read the Hieroglyphs
    On the great sand-stone obelisks,
    And you have talked with Basilisks,
And you have looked on Hippogriffs.

O tell me, were you standing by
    When Isis to Osiris knelt?
    And did you watch the Egyptian melt
Her union for Anthony
And drink the jewel-drunken wine
    And bend her head in mimic awe
    To see the huge pro-consul draw
The salted tunny from the brine?

And did you mark the Cyprian kiss
    With Adon on his catafalque,
    And did you follow Amanalk
The god of Heliopolis?

And did you talk with Thoth, and did
    You hear the moon-horned Io weep
    And know the painted kings who sleep
Beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid?

Lift up your large black satin eyes
    Which are like cushions where one sinks,
    Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx,
And sing me all your memories.
Sing to me of the Jewish maid
    Who wandered with the Holy Child,
    And how you led them through the wild,
And how they slept beneath your shade.
Sing to me of that odorous
    Green eve when crouching by the marge
    You heard from Adrian's gilded barge
The laughter of Antinous,
And lapped the stream, and fed your drouth,
    And watched with hot and hungry stare
    The ivory body of that rare
Young slave with his pomegranate mouth.
Sing to me of the Labyrinth
    In which the two-formed bull was stalled,
    Sing to me of the night you crawled
Across the temple's granite plinth
When through the purple corridors
    The screaming scarlet Ibis flew
    In terror, and a horrid dew
Dripped from the moaning Mandragores,
And the great torpid crocodile
    Within the great shed slimy tears,
    And tore the jewels from his ears
And staggered back into the Nile,
And the Priests cursed you with shrill psalms
    As in your claws you seized their snake
    And crept away with it to slake
Your passion by the shuddering palms.
Who were your lovers, who were they
    Who wrestled for you in the dust?
    Which was the vessel of your Lust,
What Leman had you every day?
Did giant lizards come and crouch
    Before you on the reedy banks?
    Did Gryphons with great metal flanks
Leap on you in your trampled couch,
Did monstrous hippopotami
    Come sidling to you in the mist
    Did gilt-scaled dragons write and twist
With passion as you passed them by?
And from that brick-built Lycian tomb
    What horrible Chimaera came
    With fearful heads and fearful flame
To breed new wonders from your womb?
Or had you shameful secret guests
    And did you harry to your home
    Some Nereid coiled in amber foam
With curious rock-crystal breasts;
Or did you, treading through the froth,
    Call to the brown Sidonian
    For tidings of Leviathan,
Leviathan or Behemoth?
Or did you when the sun was set,
    Climb up the cactus-covered slope
    To meet your swarthy Ethiop
Whose body was of polished jet?
Or did you while the earthen skiffs
    Dropt down the gray Nilotic flats
    At twilight, and the flickering bats
Flew round the temple's triple glyphs
Steal to the border of the bar
    And swim across the silent lake
    And slink into the vault and make
The Pyramid your lúpanar,
Till from each black sarcophagus
    Rose up the painted, swathèd dead?
    Or did you lure unto your bed
The ivory-horned Trageophos?
Or did you love the God of flies
    Who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed
    With wine unto the waist, or Pasht
Who had green beryls for her eyes?
Or that young God, the Tyrian,
    Who was more amorous than the dove
    Of Ashtaroth? or did you love
The God of the Assyrian,
Whose wings that like transparent talc
    Rose high above his hawk-faced head
    Painted with silver and with red
And ribbed with rods of Oreichalch?
Or did huge Apis from his car
    Leap down and lay before your feet
    Big blossoms of the honey-sweet,
And honey-coloured nenuphar?
How subtle secret is your smile;
    Did you love none then? Nay I know
    Great Ammon was your bedfellow!
He lay with you beside the Nile!
The river-horses in the slime
    Trumpeted when they saw him come
    Odorous with Syrian galbanum
And smeared with spikenard and with thyme.
He came along the river bank
    Like some tall galley argent-sailed
    He strode across the waters, mailed
In beauty and the waters sank.
He strode across the desert sand,
    He reached the valley where you lay:
    He waited till the dawn of day:
Then touched your black breasts with his hand.
You kissed his mouth with mouth of flame,
    You made the hornèd-god your own,
    You stood behind him on his throne:
You called him by his secret name,
You whispered monstrous oracles
    Into the caverns of his ears:
    With blood of goats and blood of steers
You taught him monstrous miracles,
While Ammon was your bedfellow
    Your chamber was the steaming Nile
    And with your curved Archaic smile
You watched his passion come and go.
With Syrian oils his brows were bright
    And wide-spread as a tent at noon
    His marble limbs made pale the moon
And lent the day a larger light,
His long hair was nine cubits span
    And coloured like that yellow gem
    Which hidden in their garments' hem,
The merchants bring from Kurdistan.
His face was as the must that lies
    Upon a vat of new-made wine,
    The seas could not insapphirine
The perfect azure of his eyes.
His thick, soft throat was white as milk
    And threaded with thin veins of blue
    And curious pearls like frozen dew
Were broidered on his flowing silk.
On pearl and porphyry pedestalled
    He was too bright to look upon
    For on his ivory breast there shone
The wondrous ocean-emerald,
That mystic, moonlight jewel which
    Some diver of the Colchian caves
    Had found beneath the blackening waves
And carried to the Colchian witch.
Before his gilded galiot
    Ran naked vine-wreathed corybants
    And lines of swaying elephants
Knelt down to draw his chariot,
And lines of swarthy Nubians
    Bore up his litter as he rode
    Down the great granite-paven road,
Between the nodding peacock fans.
The merchants brought him steatite
    From Sidon in their painted ships;
    The meanest cup that touched his lips
Was fashioned from a chrysolite.
The merchants brought him cedar chests
    Of rich apparel, bound with cords;
    His train was borne by Memphian lords;
Young kings were glad to be his guests.
Ten hundred shaven priests did bow
    To Ammon's altar day and night,
    Ten hundred lamps did wave their light
Through Ammon's carven house, and now
Foul snake and speckled adder with
    Their young ones crawl from stone to stone
    For ruined is the house, and prone
The great rose-marble monolith;
Wild ass or strolling jackal comes
    And crouches in the mouldering gates,
    Wild satyrs call unto their mates
Across the fallen fluted drums.
And on the summit of the pile,
    The blue-faced ape of Horus sits
    And gibbers while the fig-tree splits
The pillars of the peristyle.
The God is scattered here and there;
    Deep hidden in the windy sand
    I saw his giant granite hand
Still clenched in impotent despair.
And many a wandering caravan
    Of stately negroes, silken-shawled,
    Crossing the desert, halts appalled
Before the neck that none can span.
And many a bearded Bedouin
    Draws back his yellow-striped burnous
    To gaze upon the Titan thews
Of him who was thy paladin.
Go seek his fragments on the moor,
    And wash them in the evening dew,
    And from their pieces make anew
Thy mutilated paramour.
Go seek them where they lie alone
    And from their broken pieces make
    Thy bruisèd bedfellow! And wake
Mad passions in the senseless stone!
Charm his dull ear with Syrian hymns;
    He loved your body; oh be kind!
    Pour spikenard on his hair and wind
Soft rolls of linen round his limbs;
Wind round his head the figured coins,
    Stain with red fruits the pallid lips;
    Weave purple for his shrunken hips
And purple for his barren loins!
Away to Egypt! Have no fear;
    Only one God has ever died,
    Only one God has let His side
Be wounded by a soldier's spear.
But these, thy lovers, are not dead;
    Still by the hundred-cubit gate
    Dog-faced Anubis sits in state
With lotus lilies for thy head.
Still from his chair of porphyry
    Giant Memnon strains his lidless eyes
    Across the empty land and cries
Each yellow morning unto thee.
And Nilus with his broken horn
    Lies in his black and oozy bed
    And till thy coming will not spread
His waters on the withering corn.
Your lovers are not dead, I know,
    And will rise up and hear thy voice
    And clash their cymbals and rejoice
And run to kiss your mouth, and so,
Set wings upon your argosies!
    Set horses to your ebon car!
    Back to your Nile! Or if you are
Grown sick of dead divinities;
Follow some roving lion's spoor
    Across the copper-coloured plain,
    Reach out and hale him by the mane
And bid him to be your paramour!
Crouch by his side upon the grass
    And set your white teeth in his throat,
    And when you hear his dying note,
Lash your long flanks of polished brass
And take a tiger for your mate,
    Whose amber sides are flecked with black,
    And ride upon his gilded back
In triumph through the Theban gate,
And toy with him in amorous jests,
    And when he turns and snarls and gnaws,
    Oh smite him with your jasper claws
And bruise him with your agate breasts!
Why are you tarrying? Get hence!
    I weary of your sullen ways.
    I weary of your steadfast gaze,
Your somnolent magnificence.
Your horrible and heavy breath
    Makes the light flicker in the lamp,
    And on my brow I feel the damp
And dreadful dews of night and death,
Your eyes are like fantastic moons
    That shiver in some stagnant lake,
    Your tongue is like a scarlet snake
That dances to fantastic tunes.
Your pulse makes poisonous melodies,
    And your black throat is like the hole
    Left by some torch or burning coal
On Saracenic tapestries.
Away! the sulphur-coloured stars
    Are hurrying through the Western gate!
    Away! Or it may be too late
To climb their silent silver cars!
See, the dawn shivers round the gray,
    Gilt-dialled towers, and the rain
    Streams down each diamonded pane
And blurs with tears the wannish day.
What snake-tressed fury, fresh from Hell,
    With uncouth gestures and unclean,
    Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen
And led you to a student's cell?
What songless, tongueless ghost of sin
    Crept through the curtains of the night
    And saw my taper burning bright,
And knocked and bade you enter in?
Are there not others more accursed,
    Whiter with leprosies than I?
    Are Abana and Pharphar dry,
That you come here to slake your thirst?
False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx,
    Old Charon, leaning on his oar,
    Waits for my coin. Go thou before
And leave me to my crucifix,
Whose pallid burden, sick with pain,
    Watches the world with wearied eyes.
    And weeps for every soul that dies,
And weeps for every soul in vain.

McGUINNESS PRIVATELY SUCKS QUEEN SECRET NIGHT VISION PHOTO

Irish Republican News repnews-reply@irlnet.com	1:53 AM (8 hours ago)
to me

   IRISH REPUBLICAN NEWS
   http://republican-news.org

   Friday-Thursday, 22-28 June, 2012


1.  AN ENDING OR A BEGINNING?
2.  Breakthrough for family of Manus Deery
3.  Anti-royal protestor recounts murder bid
4.  Marian Price move linked to UN visit
5.  New evidence in rubber bullet death
6.  Feature: Interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
7.  Analysis: A cordial union
8.  Analysis: Bridging the gulf between compromise and abandonment


---------------------------------------------------------------------


>>>>>> AN ENDING OR A BEGINNING?


 Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness put clear blue water between himself and
 mainstream Irish republicanism when he shook the hand of English queen
 Elizabeth Windsor on Wednesday in a historic but hugely divisive act of
 political theatre.

 Always a controversial figure, the Deputy First Minister's latest move
 has confused his supporters and enraged his critics. It has touched a
 nerve in a manner unlike Sinn Fein's many other 'unionist outreach'
 initiatives.

 Greeting the British commander-in-chief while the north of Ireland
 remains under British rule may have been intended as a headline
 grabbing peace move, but the wave of nationalist condemnation in its
 wake has confirmed Sinn Fein fears that it was too much, too soon.

 Grassroots party activists have been left struggling to justify
 McGuinness's actions while bemoaning the expected loss of support and
 (potentially) thousands of voters.

 Although welcomed by many unionists (but openly mocked by some), the
 symbolic handshake infuriated ordinary republicans and has undoubtedly
 boosted support for so-called 'dissident' groups.

 It was clear from well before the actual event that Sinn Fein had not
 accurately gauged public sentiment.

 But the surprise announcement that a jubilee 'party' involving 25,000
 flag-waving unionists was to be held at Stormont to mark Windsor's
 visit threw party officials into a full-scale damage-limitation
 exercise.

 Even senior Sinn Fein figures such as Caral Ni Chuilin baulked at the
 plans, which had to be continually revised thereafter. The biggest
 change was the sudden invention of an early morning 'culture' event,
 organised by a former member of the PSNI.

 The difficult question of how much kowtowing McGuinness would be seen
 to perform was averted when it was agreed the key initial meeting was
 held behind closed doors. Photographs of the second, less formal
 handshake would be issued to capture the event. McGuinness did not bow
 his head, and spoke to Windsor in Irish.

 But his use was of an Irish language blessing - 'Slan agus beannacht'
 [Farewell and bless you] to Windsor also served to remind nationalists
 of the continuing refusal of the British to pass an Irish Language Act
 to protect the language in the north of Ireland.

 LONDON NOT CALLING

 An address the following evening at Portcullis House, part of the
 houses of parliament in London, was intended to bolster McGuinness's
 nationalist credentials.  But few were listening, least of all the
 British government.

 In the speech, he accused the British Prime minister of "a lack of
 engagement" in northern Ireland politics.

 "This lack of engagement by David Cameron is a serious mistake and may
 provide a rationale for some of the damaging decisions made by Owen
 Paterson during his tenure at the Northern Ireland Office," he said.

 He chose to soften the language of a prepared script that accused the
 British government of having made "a series of stupid and unhelpful
 decisions" on Northern Ireland in recent times. Instead, he said they
 had made "wrong and unhelpful decisions".

 The list of British mistakes, Mr McGuinness said, included the
 internments of Marian Price and Martin Corey; the refusal to hold a
 full public inquiry into the Ballymurphy massacre of 1971, along with
 the decision not to honour the previous pledge to properly investigate
 the murder of defence lawyer Pat Finucane, added "to the sense of
 hurt".

 But he insisted his meeting with Windsor was an important step forward.

 "It was a meeting which, although short in length, can I believe, have
 much longer effects on defining a new relationship between Britain and
 Ireland and between the Irish people themselves," Mr McGuinness told
 the invited audience.

 Last night a spokesman for the Conservative Party again,
 diplomatically, dismissed McGuinness as irrelevant, and made clear that
 David Cameron had bigger fish to fry.

 He said "thanks to the efforts of a large number of people - including
 Sinn Fein - Northern Ireland enjoys political stability, and we are
 able to move beyond the politics of the peace process.

 "It is impossible to think of any political crisis in Northern Ireland
 today that requires the attention of the PM over and above dealing with
 the worst global economic crisis in 80 years and the crisis in the euro
 zone - something which would of course benefit every single person in
 Northern Ireland," the spokesman declared.

 The evident lack of any reciprocal gesture from the British government
 for the historic peace move will make it more difficult for Sinn Fein
 to convince sceptical nationalists and republicans.

 Many victims of British violence in the North are instead lining up to
 denounce McGuinness.

 Linda Nash, whose brother William was killed on Bloody Sunday,
 described the former IRA commander as a "traitor" -- echoing a
 notorious insult he once hurled at his republican rivals.  It is a word
 that could now come back to haunt him.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 >>>>>> Breakthrough for family of Manus Deery


 The family of Manus Deery has won a fresh hearing into the
 fifteen-year-old's murder in the nationalist Bogside area of Derry in
 May 1972.

 The 15-year-old was shot by a British soldier firing from Derry'swalls
 while he was standing close to a chip shop with friends.

 Nobody was ever prosecuted over his death. The shot was fired by a
 member of C company, 1st battalion, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. The
 British Army claimed the soldier opened fire after a gunman was seen.
 Eyewitnesses at the time said no gunmen were present.

 The first inquest returned an open verdict and his family have fought
 for answers for 40 years.

 A report by the police Historical Enquiries Team (HET), released in
 February was angrily dismissed by his family as a "whitewash" when it
 backed claims that the soldier responsible was shooting ata gunman.

 The request for a new inquest was made under the Coroners' Act. The
 previous inquest returned an open verdict. The family hope this one
 will conclude that Manus was unlawfully killed.

 Manus's sister, Helen Deery, welcomed the news that their efforts had
 finally brought movement.

 "We are absolutely delighted. For 40 years we've fought for justice and
 now we finally seem to be getting somewhere.

 "Manus was an innocent child whose young life was brutally taken from
 him. He did nothing wrong. He wasn't -- as the British Army initially
 claimed -- a gunman. He wasn't rioting. He was eating a bag of chips
 and chatting to friends when a soldier opened fire on him.

 "My mother's and father's lives were destroyed after Manus's death.
 They went to early graves. But we pledged to continue our campaign
 until the truth is told about our brother and the British Army comes
 clean."

 Manus had just started work in a factory when he was shot dead on May
 19, 1972. He received his first pay packet that evening.

 "Manus had his own money in his pocket for the first time. Life seemed
 full of promise," Ms Deery said.

 He was standing with friends at Meenan Square in the Bogside when a
 soldier, anonymously labelled 'A', opened fire from Derry's Walls,
 fatally shooting him in the head. Soldier B, who was with him, didn't
 fire but said he'd also seen a gunman.

 Neither soldier had to appear at the original 1973 inquest. Their
 depositions -- later given to the family -- were illegible.

 No civilian witnesses were interviewed by the RUC. Nor did the RUC
 interview the soldiers.

 Ms Deery said: "We fought for years to see the RUC investigation file.
 When we got it, we couldn't believe it. It contained a statement from
 our mother 'Margaret'.

 "Our mother's name was Mary and the RUC had never taken a statement
 from her.

 "It also contained a statement from Manus's 'cousin James'. We have no
 cousin James."

 Ms Deery said that, unlike the first inquest, her family would be
 legally represented at this one and the soldiers could be called to
 give evidence and cross-examined.

 "This new inquest will give all of those involved, witnesses and
 soldiers, the chance to tell the truth. After 40 years it is the least
 my young brother deserves," she said.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 >>>>>> Anti-royal protestor recounts murder bid


 A west Belfast man badlybeaten by a gang of loyalists on Black Mountain
 earlier this week says he is lucky to be alive.

 James McCoubrey was one of five men who were protecting a 120ft by 60ft
 tricolour erected on the mountainside to coincide with Elizabeth
 Windsor's arrival in the north on Tuesday. The massive flag was visible
 from most of Belfast.

 A message in large writing above it read "Eriu is our queen". Eriu was
 the goddess queen  of Ireland in Celtic mythology.

 Mr McCoubrey said the 100-strong gang shouted "kill the Fenian b*****d"
 as he ran for his life. He was taking a nap in a nearby tent when the
 gang struck at around 5pm on Tuesday.  He said he thought he was going
 to die. His friends who were standing outside the tent managed to run
 to safety.

 The former republican prisoner suffered three fractured ribs, a broken
 nose and extensive bruising over his body during the incident.

 "I am lucky to be alive," he said. "I was in the tent and I heard
 cheering and thought it was my mates carrying out a prank.

 "Then a man shouted 'we've got a Fenian b**** *d here, we have one'.

 "Then a man hit me with a hatchet or a hammer. I fell back into the
 tent.

 I then climbed under the side of the tent to get out and they started
 to beat me and were shouting things like 'don't let him get away' and
 some were shouting 'kill him'.

 "If you have ever seen the film Zulu, that's what it was like as I was
 surrounded. All I could hear was 'kill the Fenian b'*****d, kill him
 here' and 'throw him off the mountain'.

 Mr McCoubrey said after being beaten to the ground, he managed to roll
 down the mountainside to safety.

 "It was the rolling that saved my life," he said. "I rolled down the
 hillside and it was too steep for them to follow me."

 Mr McCoubrey was later treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital for his
 injuries.

 He said the protest was organised by people living in the Springhill
 area of Ballymurphy.

 "It was a peaceful protest organised by republican ex-prisoners and
 people living in the area," he said.

 "There were no political groups involved. I don't agree with the
 queen's visit and that is what it was about.

 "There was no intention to offend and there was nothing provocative."

 West Belfast Sinn Fein assembly member Pat Sheehan condemned the attack.

 "I am horrified and disgusted by this unprovoked attack that could have
 ended a lot worse than it did. It was a peaceful, dignified protest
 unconnected to dissident organisations and should have been allowed to
 continue," he said.

 Protesters bravely returned to their camp on Black Mountain on
 Wednesday despite the vicious loyalist attack.

 The protesters had vowed to remain at the west Belfast site until the
 queen left the North. Their numbers had swelled to around 50 people who
 vowed the flag, 120ft by 60ft, would remain on the hillside until the
 end of the historic royal visit.

 Among the protesters were Eirigi member Padraig Mac Coitir and veteran
 republican Tony Catney. Several representatives of the Ballymurphy
 Massacre families also joined the protest.

 Mr Catney said the protest had been a "peaceful and highly effective"
 way of highlighting opposition to the two-day visit by the British
 monarch.

 Crowds of republicans also gathered in separate protests at City Hall
 and on the Falls Road during the royal visit.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 >>>>>> Marian Price move linked to UN visit


 Jailed political dissident Marian Price was moved to an outside
 hospital last weekend without her consent, her family have said.

 Doctors from the United Nations were due to visit the interned west
 Belfast woman in Hydebank Wood prison on Monday.

 However, last Friday warders moved the former hunger-striker to a
 Belfast psychiatric care unit for treatment ahead of the visit.

 Prison authorities said they had done so on medical advice from
 psychiatrists.

 Earlier this year, Ms Price was moved from an isolation cell at
 all-male Maghaberry Prison to Hydebank, also on medical advice.

 Her husband Jerry McGlinchey said that a prison doctor had already
 given evidence that "going to a secure hospital unit would compound
 Marian's acute illnesses and would mitigate against any beneficial
 treatment."

 Supporters and prominent human rights activist Bernadette Aliskey said
 the chief medical officer had overridden this evidence before the UN
 visit on Monday.  She said that "to transfer her to the psychiatric
 hospital without her informed consent added another dimension to the
 violation of her rights."

 Her family welcomed the intervention of the UN doctors who will visit
 Marian over the coming days.  Her husband said he hoped they would make
 a speedy report on her condition given the urgency of the situation.

 "The family hope that this move to a secure unit is not a cynical ploy
 on the eve of a visit by UN doctors to stymie any criticism of Marian's
 treatment."

 Although gaining a royal pardon in 1980, British Direct Ruler Owen
 Paterson ordered the former prisoners' welfare campaigner be returned
 to jail two years ago as he considered her to be a "threat". It was
 later claimed by the British her pardon document had been lost, or
 accidentally shredded.

 Lawyer Peter Corrigan of Kevin Winters law firm, who represent Ms
 Price, protested that his client had been moved without her consent and
 against medical advice.

 "While the aim is to receive proper medical care for our client all the
 doctors who have examined her to date have agreed that any treatment
 under a high security situation would be counter therapeutic," he said.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 >>>>>> New evidence in rubber bullet death


 An inquest has been ordered to be reopened after new evidence was
 uncovered about the death of the first child killed by a rubber bullet
 in the north of Ireland.

 Seventeen people have died in the north of Ireland at the hands of
 rubber or plastic bullets, including seven children, and hundreds
 injured.  The weapons continue to be used by the Crown Forces as a form
 of crowd control during 'public order' situations.

 Schoolboy Francis Rowntree, known to his family as Frank, died in 1972
 after being struck in the head with rubber baton round that it is
 believed had been 'modified' in order to make it more deadly.

 The 11-year-old from Lower Clonard Street in west Belfast sustained
 catastrophic head injuries after being hit as he played with a friend
 close to Divis Flats in April 1972.

 At the original inquest held in October 1972 the soldier who fired the
 fatal shot from the Royal Anglian Regiment, known only as 'soldier B'
 was not called to give evidence and instead a statement taken by
 military police was produced at the hearing.

 A witness has now came forward to say that within minutes of the
 shooting, the soldiers involved appeared to be searching the scene for
 the fatal round which was believed to have been hollowed out and a
 battery placed inside the rubber casing.

 Soldier B claimed the bullet ricocheted off a lamppost. However, a
 recent forensic reexamination of the fatal injuries by state
 pathologist Professor Jack Crane undermines this account and suggests
 that the child was shot directly at close range.

 A Historical Enquiries Team report into the shooting confirmed that he
 was an "innocent bystander who posed no threat whatsoever to the
 soldier".

 In a letter to the family, Six-County Attorney General John Larkin said
 that having considered all new evidence, "I have concluded that it is
 advisable that a fresh inquest beheld into the death of Francis
 Rowntree and I so direct".

 Frank's brother Jim said the family were relieved to hear that a fresh
 inquest would now be held. "Frank was just an innocent child and yet
 the army tried to blacken his name saying he was involved in a riot,"
 Mr Rowntree said.

 "My parents were told by a consultant in the Royal that his head had
 been crushed like an eggshell.

 "An apology would go a long way to healing the hurt. My Mum is 86 and
 so ifs important for her that we have this inquest now."

 The family's solicitor, Padraig O Muirigh, said the decision by Mr
 Larkin was a"significant step forward for the family's quest for
 truth".

 "In 1970 an agreement was reached between the British army and the
 chief constable of the RUC, whereby the interviewing of soldiers
 involved in the death of Francis Rowntree was carried out by the Royal
 Military Police," Mr O Muirigh said.

 "There was nothing approaching a proper police investigation into the
 incident."


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 >>>>>> Feature: Interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Hugh Hamilton (HH) of WBAI Pacifica Radio interviews Bernadette
 Devlin-McAliskey (BDM) about the imprisonment of Marian Price
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 HH: Marian Price is a former Irish Republican militant who first gained
 international notoriety nearly forty years ago following her conviction
 in the 1973 bombing of London's Old Bailey.

 She was subsequently freed in 1980 when she was thought to be on the
 brink of death from severe anorexia nervosa and suffering multiple
 complications from hundreds of forced feedings while on hunger strike
 in prison.

 But now, her supports say that Ms Price, who is also known by her
 married name, Marian McGlinchey, has been illegally imprisoned in
 northern Ireland for more than a year on the basis of secret evidence
 that neither she nor her lawyers have been allowed to see. They say she
 is a political prisoner effectively detained without trial, sentence or
 release date.

 And unless the courts intervene she could spend the rest of her life in
 prison.

 In fact just this past weekend the authorities issued a statement
 saying that she's been transferred to hospital on the advice of
 psychiatrists but remains in custody.

 Among those demanding justice for Marian Price and calling for her
 immediate release is the noted northern Ireland civil rights leader and
 former Member of Parliament Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey.

 Ms McAliskey was herself imprisoned for her part in defending a
 Nationalist ghetto which was under attach northern Ireland police and
 she's currently a leader in the campaign to free Marian Price. She
 joins us now. Good Afternoon, Ms McAliskey.


 BDM: Hi. How are you?

 HH: Very well, thank you and thank you very much for joining us. You've
 said of Marian Price that while she's not the only political prisoner
 who's being detained in this manner, her case is urgent and becoming
 critical. How so?


 BDM: Marian is not the only person in prison at the minute in violation
 of due process.

 And while that's important, it's important to set the context:
 following the peace process and the restoration of a democratic
 assembly in northern Ireland and the restoration of justice and
 policing to northern Ireland, all of these matters should be matters
 for due process of law and for the democratic process.

 However, running along side that, we have still got essentially secret
 policing, secret intelligence run directly by the military
 intelligence, MI5 in London, through the UK Secretary of State, who is
 a British appointment, and seems to over-ride the democratic authority
 of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

 And in Marian's case the urgency relates directly to the impact of this
 unwarranted imprisonment on her physical and emotional health.

 There are charges pending against her in that she is alleged to have
 supported a terrorist organisation by holding up a piece of paper at a
 rally in a rainstorm from which somebody else read.

 And she was granted bail on that charge.

 But the Secretary of State over-rode the court's decision to grant bail
 and ordered her detention in prison.

 And she's now been in there for over a year.


 HH: And what is her state of health right now? I've read that over the
 weekend - I think on Friday - she was moved to a hospital?

 BDM: The present position is that as the result of her deteriorating
 health and the refusal of the the Parole Commissioner, the Secretary of
 State or Minister of Justice to exercise their authority and restore
 her bail, an urgent alert was made to the United Nations Rapporteur on
 Health.

 It's important to remember that when Marian was on hunger strike,
 unlike the later hunger strikes when people literally starved, Marian
 Price as a young woman was forced fed three times a day by having a
 tube pushed down a throat, she was forcibly restrained and liquid
 nutrition was poured down her throat three times a day.

 If she brought that up the process was repeated.

 And that experience is what led to her anorexia nervosa and eating
 disorders. And (it) also exacerbated a condition that had existed from
 childhood relating to tuberculosis and it's impact on her emotional and
 mental health because of the trauma of the re-incarceration in that
 environment.

 So the was a UN alert and the UN Rapporteur on Health, Anand Grover,
 who's an Indian lawyer, an excellent, excellent defender of health, he
 sent a UN Inspector to the prison.

 And the UN Inspector was denied access to the prison.

 But had finally secured an inspection meeting for today.

 On Friday, the Chief Medical Officer of the prison issued a press
 statement that Marian had been transferred to hospital.

 But when the press statement was issued Marian was still in the prison.

 And she was fundamentally being coerced to agree to go to a psychiatric
 unit outside of the prison despite a medical report that she was not
 suffering from any form of psychosis - she was suffering from mental
 and emotional trauma directly as a result of her environment.

 And that medical report recommended that she be released to the care of
 her family to recover her health so that she could answer the charges.

 So it looked on Friday that the authorities were attempting to remove
 her from the prison environment to head-off the UN inspection.

 Or alternatively, attempting either to discredit Marian by putting her
 in a position where she would be refusing medical help.

 The other alternative to the prison authorities was of course to use
 use The Mental Health Act which would allow them to place her in
 psychiatric care against her will.

 But from their point of view, to have done that, to have used the
 Mental Health Act and forcibly placed her in a psychiatric unit, would
 then have undermined their capacity to charge her with any offence
 because she couldn't be both mentally incapable and mentally capable of
 being charged.

 So at present, Marian is in hospital we believe...but we are unsure, at
 this precise point, as to whether that's a temporary assessment within
 the prison regime.

 We're waiting today to hear the outcome of the United Nations medical
 visit.

 And we have at this point no idea whether that will lead to a
 recommendation again that she be released that will be acted upon or
 whether she will be returned to the prison environment.

 It's very important that people do campaign and do contact,
 particularly those Irish-American and other politicians in America, who
 played such a role in setting up the peace process, to recognise that
 these violations are still going on.

 So, on the one hand we have Her Majesty the Queen feeling it's safe
 enough for her to stand on Irish soil and be greeted by the leader of
 Sinn Fein in the new assembly but it's not safe for Marian Price to
 stand on the same ground because she has no access to due process of
 law.


 HH: We're talking with the noted northern Ireland civil rights leader
 and former Member of Parliament, Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey.

 We're discussing the case of Marian Price who her supporters say has
 been illegally imprisoned in northern Ireland as a political prisoner
 for more than a year on the basis of secret evidence that neither she
 nor her lawyers have been allowed to see.

 There is growing international campaign, including here in the United
 States. In fact, on Wednesday there's going to be an evening in
 solidarity with Marian Price here in New York at O'Lunney's - I'll give
 you more information about that a little later on in the programme.

 But if you have questions about Marian Price or if you've got questions
 for Bernadette McAliskey will take them at 212-209-2900. (repeats
 number)

 Ms McAliskey, the question arises, particularly for those people who
 might not be very familiar with the situation in Ireland and in
 northern Ireland. The question arises...Why is this issue important?

 I've seen you as quoted as saying that: "Ms Price's case reflects the
 increasing powerlessness of global organisations, including the United
 Nations, to defend human rights."

 I'd like you to expand on that and explain why that is relevant to this
 case.

 BDM: Hugh, I'm losing your voice intermittently.


 HH: I was just asking, you're quoted as saying that - The Marian Price
 case: "It reflects the increasing powerlessness of global
 organisations, including the UN" and I'd like you to explain what you
 mean by that.

 BDM: Yes. I think what is very important for people to recognise that
 what is happening to Marian is not an isolated case.

 While it's happening here in northern Ireland and we have had to call
 upon the UN Rapporteur for Health to exercise his authority to examine
 it, the fundamental disrespect that the prison authorities here treat
 that, as if to say:" "what business is it of his?" and try to avoid
 their responsibilities is, although in a very small and certainly less
 traumatic than for example what is happening in Syria what is happening
 in Palestine, what happened in Egypt, what happened in Iraq, what goes
 on throughout the world is not only in unstable, if you'd like,
 political societies or clear dictatorships, but the confidence and the
 arrogance with which many of the western powers, who created the UN in
 the middle of the twentieth century, and actually undermine that
 organisation in both its protection of the UN Charter on Human Rights,
 on it's collective role for peace keeping, for democracy, for
 compliance with UN resolutions...

 I think Marian's case is symptomatic of those things we see every day:
 the impunity with which Israel flouts UN resolutions in regard to
 Palestine, the manner in which Syrians are now just massacring their
 own people, and the fact that Guantanamo Bay, despite the promises of
 Obama, is still there. That we still haven't had the truth on
 renditions...

 That people can still be imprisoned without due process and that many
 countries, particularly in the very powerful western alliances, feel
 that UN resolutions and UN protections are for protecting them from
 their enemies but not people from powerful states.

 And that's what I was saying. That Marian's case is not just something
 peculiar to the northern Ireland situation.

 The increasing confidence with which fundamental human rights and due
 process and protections are being ignored - I think is frightening.


 HH: We're talking with the noted northern Ireland civil right leader
 and former Member of Parliament Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey. We're
 discussing the case of Marian Price who her supporters say has been
 illegally imprisoned in northern Ireland for more than a year on the
 basis secret evidence that neither she nor her lawyers have been
 allowed to see.

 They say that she is a political prisoner effectively being detained
 without trial, sentence or release date and without the intervention of
 the courts could end up spending the rest of her life in prison.

 There's been some discussion and debate on this question of whether Ms
 Price was out on parole as we say in the United States or licence as
 you say in northern Ireland.

 There was an argument that said she wasn't out on parole at all but had
 in fact been granted a full pardon, The Royal Prerogative of Mercy,
 when she was released from prison in 1980.

 Are you in a position to clarify exactly which of those two
 situations...

 BDM: Yes. There are two clear positions on that and there's a very
 clear legal position on it.

 Marian Price was released on a royal pardon.

 Now what the Secretary of State claimed when he imprisoned her was that
 she had been imprisoned on two separate charges and that she got royal
 pardon on one but was released on parole on the other.

 Now the likelihood of that is very small. That you would actually get
 out on a pardon... you know, half of you would be on pardon and the
 other half would be on parole... since it's only one person.

 But the law is perfectly clear and there's a lot of British case law to
 substantiate that. The law is perfectly clear:

 that if the information and advice provided to Marian Price at the time
 of her release was such as to give her a reasonable belief, that is to
 say the belief that any reasonable person would hold, that she had been
 released on royal pardon then the law must accept she was released on
 royal pardon.

 And that's where the legal battle is.

 So that there is a precedent in UK and European law.

 If she believed at the time of her release and ever since that it was a
 pardon, then she had a legitimate expectation that that's what it was.

 Now the matter could be readily resolved if the document of release and
 pardon or parole was produced.

 But when the northern Ireland Secretary of State was asked to produced
 it he said it had been mislaid. It had been lost.

 He claims it was lost in the period after which she was sent to prison.

 And it also appears that in the history of the British state, Marian
 Price's pardon, that is to say the physical document signed by Her
 Majesty, is the only one such document to ever have disappeared.

 And you have to really ask yourself questions about that.


 HH: The question arises: Why is this happening to Marian Price now?

 BDM: I think it's happening for a number of reasons.

 There are parts of it have very, for me, have resonance for the arrest
 of my own daughter and the context in which that happened at the
 beginning of the peace process. I think the normalisation and the peace
 process here has reached a position where the voices of Republican
 dissidents have, according to the state, to be silenced.

 There are many, many, particularly, in the present economic climate,
 there are many poorer people, particularly the youth who have not had
 any social, political or economic benefits from the peace.

 There are people of course who have had significant benefits.

 And overall there is an absence of war. There is political stability.
 There has been economic development.

 But large sections of the most impoverished people have not seen any
 economic or social benefits from the peace.

 And it's amongst those young people, many of whom suffer from
 trans-generational trauma of war, and many who fundamentally disagree
 with the politics of their former political leaders.

 That dissidence has steadily grown - fueled by the lack of economic and
 social opportunity, fueled by the lack of any understanding of that
 group of disaffected people or lack of any opportunity for them to
 articulate what their grievances are.

 So as the dissidence has grown, the repression has grown and the
 numbers of people in prisons have grown.

 And then with that we begin to see again the development of a prisoner
 support constituency.

 And I think the government has decided, which is fairly traditional
 here as well as elsewhere, to use repression as a means of stifling
 discontent and dissent.

 And Marian Price is therefore identifiable as a kind of flexing of the
 government's muscle - that they're not afraid to take on a woman -
 they're not afraid to take on a Republican of long standing.

 And the irony of course is: that the young man who went to London on
 the same bombing expedition with Marian Price is now a senior member in
 the government.


 HH: When this case was brought to my attention by my colleague, Sandy
 Boyer, and I asked him for some additional information, I was rather
 surprised by the volume of information that is out there and which had
 not yet come to my attention.

 And I'm wondering whether, in your estimation, the case of Marian Price
 is resonating as extensively as it should within the Irish-American
 community. The...

 BDM: No! I think there are two things happening there, Hugh.

 The first is: the degree of co-option, which to me is sad.

 The degree of co-option and, in my understanding of the word,
 corruption of people's principles that have come with their
 participation now in the administration of government.

 It is always harder to say that things are not going well -always
 harder to say things are wrong when you have a stake in the government
 as opposed to when you have no stake in that class.

 And Irish-Americans were very influential in helping to develop
 peaceful structures here, in helping to bring about political
 stability, but they have a stake in that stability so they now have a
 stake in the suppression of information.

 They now have a stake in that stability so they now have a stake in
 denying the imperfections.

 And I think that makes life very, very difficult then for principled
 opposition for highlighting these issues and it makes it all the more
 important for people whose principles are justice - regardless of its
 nationality. Whose demand is for peace - regardless of its geographic
 location - to stand up for the principles of due process and of human
 rights.


 HH: So what's next in the international campaign for Marian Price?

 BDM: There are a number of groups supporting Marian locally.

 There's a Free Marian website which people can get to if you just go
 on... Marian Price... if you google Marian Price ...Free Marian...
 you'll get that website. I think it's freemarian.nr

 The prison crises group of which I am a member is drawing the
 international parallels and seeking solidarity with other human rights
 organisations fighting against unjust imprisonment in other places. So
 we're building that. We have produced a pamphlet. There are a number of
 local rallies.

 We are building in the United Kingdom; I've just spoken in Glasgow.

 Sandy Boyer, as he has done for as long as I have known him - forty
 years - championed human rights in Ireland, continues to build in the
 United States and we are building across Europe as well.

 It is a long, slow process that sounds like we're doing great things.

 It's a slow process because many of those we would have relied on in
 the past are now in denial because of their stake in the current
 administration.

 But we continue to highlight it. We continue to build. We continue to
 draw the levels of solidarity.

 And her very good legal team continues to challenge in the court.

 So we will await the outcome of the UN visit. We hope to have a
 judicial review of the Parole Commission's latest decision.

 And we just keep battling on until we have her released.

 The sadness is, that all that Marian Price is asking for, all she is
 asking for, is that she be granted the bail that she has repeatedly
 been given in the court.

 The original charge against her has in fact been dismissed by the court
 because of the violation of not bringing the case to trial for over a
 year.

 A new charge has been instigated for which no evidence has been
 produced - that's the one about the secret MI5 evidence. But she was
 granted bail on that charge as well.

 And she is demanding only so that she be released from prison and
 allowed to recover her health at home so that she defend herself
 against these charges.

 She is not asking to be released from prison and not charged with
 anything simply on the grounds that she's is ill.

 The position is that she has been charged without evidence. She has
 been denied bail.

 The incarceration in prison, for the greater part in solitary
 confinement, has re-traumatised her from the early experience and she
 asks only for her right to be released as the court has ordered so that
 she can go home, regain her health and answer the charges against her.


 HH: We've been talking with the noted northern Ireland civil rights
 leader and former Member of Parliament Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey.

 Ms McAliskey, thank you very much for elucidating this issue for us on
 the case of Marian Price. We will of course keep our listeners
 informed. I'll be announcing an event this weekend...

 BDM: Might I say thank you again to WBAI who for many years have helped
 tell the truth and defend democracy across the USA. I don't know where
 we would be without you.


 HH: Thank you very much indeed, Ms McAliskey.

 (Interview ends)



 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 >>>>>> Analysis: A cordial union


 ------------------------------------------------------------------- The
 following article by Gerry Adams (for Leargas) was written in advance
 of Wednesday's meeting between Martin McGuinness and the queen.
 -------------------------------------------------------------------


 The peace process has seen some strange and unexpected and remarkable
 developments in its almost 20 years. Sinn Fein leaders in Downing St
 and the White House; US Presidents shaking hands with Sinn Fein
 leaders; unionist leaders, who wouldn't sit in the same television
 studios or talk to us in the negotiations, now sitting in an Executive
 and all-Ireland Ministerial Council; and Martin McGuinness and Ian
 Paisley demonstrating that former enemies can be friends. And that work
 being continued by Martin and Peter Robinson. There has been much more.

 It is evidence of the success of the process in achieving change. Of
 course, it doesn't mean that unionists are now republicans and prepared
 to agree to a united Ireland or that republicans have become unionists.
 And there are still many issues of difference and concern between us.
 But we have a process, rooted in equality, which has the capacity to
 resolve these with patience.

 This week will see another historic moment. Martin McGuinness has
 received an invitation from Co-operation Ireland to attend an event in
 Belfast next week - unconnected to the Jubilee - to celebrate the arts
 and culture across Ireland. The event will also be attended by the
 President of Ireland, the Queen of England and by First Minister Peter
 Robinson.

 Last Friday the Sinn Fein Ard Comhairle agreed that Martin could accept
 the invitation. This is a significant initiative involving major
 political and symbolic challenges for Irish republicans.

 As the record of the peace process demonstrates Irish republicans have
 frequently been prepared to take bold and historic initiatives and
 risks for peace to break stalemates and find agreements.

 We do so as activists whose primary political objective is the
 re-unification and independence of Ireland, and we have a coherent and
 viable strategy to achieve this.

 Key to uniting Ireland is our ability to persuade a section of
 unionists that this is the right decision for them. To make it work it
 has to be part of a genuine process of national reconciliation and
 transformation.

 I understand that a meeting between a Sinn Fein leader and the Queen of
 England is difficult for some republicans and for the victims of
 British state violence, even if the President of Ireland and the First
 Minister Peter Robinson is present and they are all participating as
 equals.

 The Irish republican and nationalist experience with the British
 monarchy and the British state over centuries has been tragic and
 difficult and the vexed and unresolved issue of sovereignty remains
 paramount.

 But Irish republicanism is rooted in the ethos and philosophy of Wolfe
 Tone and the United Irish Society, who sought the unity of Catholics,
 Protestants and dissenters. We are about the work of building a new
 republic, a new Ireland. And that means demonstrating to our unionist
 neighbours that we are serious about creating a society on this island
 that they will be comfortable in.

 The British Queen has a unique place in the hearts and minds and
 sentiments of the unionists. As republicans we reject the idea of
 royalty or monarchy or elites or hierarchies but unionists have a
 different perspective. We have to understand that if our conversations
 are to have relevance and make sense to them.

 Last year, Queen Elizabeth II visited Dublin. Sinn Fein declined to
 participate. That was exactly the right decision. That visit marked a
 rapprochement in relations between that state and the British monarchy.
 That was a good thing. It took 100 years to achieve.

 In the course of her visit she made some important gestures and
 remarks, including an acknowledgement of the pain of all victims, which
 demonstrated the beginning of a new understanding and acceptance of the
 realities of past. I welcomed that at the time and said it should be
 built upon.

 This is a different visit -- in a different context.

 This week's meeting is a clear expression of the determination of Irish
 republicans to engage with our unionist neighbours and to demonstrate
 that we are prepared, once again to go beyond rhetoric, as we seek to
 persuade them that our new Ireland will not be a cold house for
 unionists or any other section of our people.

 Unionists don't need me to tell them that they have lived on this
 island for centuries. This is their home. It is where they belong and
 it is where they will remain.

 Our Protestant neighbours also have a proud history of progressive and
 radical thinking. The founders of Irish republicanism where mainly
 Protestant. They were for the emancipation of their Catholic neighbours
 and for equality.

 Republicans are democrats and the new republic we seek is pluralist. An
 Ireland of equals in which there is space for all opinions and
 identities. Sinn Fein is for a new dispensation in which a citizen can
 be Irish and unionist. Where one can also claim Britishness and be
 comfortable on this island.

 Our vision of a new Republic is one in which, in Tone's words, Orange
 and Green unite in a cordial union.

 The Sinn Fein decision reflects a confident, dynamic, forward-looking
 Sinn Fein demonstrating our genuine desire to embrace our unionist
 neighbours.

 It also reflects the equality and parity of esteem arrangements that
 are now in place. It will also create new platforms and open up a new
 phase in our relationships and will be another important and necessary
 step on our collective journey.

 James Craig, the first unionist Prime Minister of the North recognised
 this when he said: "In this island we cannot live always separated from
 one another. We are too small to be apart or for the border to be there
 for all time. The change will not come in my time but it will come."

 It is clear that legacy issues have to be dealt with and Sinn Fein will
 continue to engage in that work.

 By our actions Irish republicans will be judged, as well as our
 beliefs. We have to change Irish society now, North and South, to
 accommodate the unionist population and their cultural identity. The
 meeting between Martin McGuinness and the Queen of England will assist
 in that process.

 If the peace process has taught us anything, it is that the process
 cannot remain static. It must continue to expand and we must constantly
 build on the progress that has been made.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 >>>>>> Analysis: Bridging the gulf between compromise and abandonment

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 The following article by Anthony McIntyre (for the Guardian) was
 written in advance of Wednesday's meeting between Martin McGuinness and
 the queen.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

 Tomorrow the former Provisional IRA chief of staff Martin McGuinness
 will shake hands with the British queen at the Lyric Theatre in
 Belfast. The event has been made possible by the earlier negotiated
 surrender of the IRA. Surrendering honourably is better than holding
 out to the last. The leaders of the 1916 Rising in Dublin chose to
 surrender rather than subject the city's population to further
 bloodshed.

 In politics as in other areas of life it is often necessary to
 compromise principles. But there is a gulf between compromise and
 abandonment that should not be bridged. Otherwise radical ideas and the
 notion of oppositional currents are devalued. What does it say about
 the plausibility of the adversarial position if the values espoused in
 opposition are jettisoned just to make it into office?

 McGuinness will not be standing in front of the British head of state
 on equal terms: as head of another state that had gained its
 independence from Britain. He is there as deputy head of a state over
 which the British hold unalloyed sovereignty and which he ostensibly
 spent much of his adult life trying to destroy.

 Peter Hain, the former secretary of State for the North of Ireland, has
 said that 'many Republicans will see it as a betrayal.' He is right.
 They will feel that McGuinness and Sinn Fein have not simply
 compromised core principles but abandoned them, principles that he and
 his colleagues in positions of leadership directed others to both take
 life and risk losing possession of their own mortal coil in pursuit of.
 In Derry where McGuinness is domiciled, graffiti has appeared on walls:
 'U Dare Marty' and 'Sinn Fein sellouts.'  At a rally in South Armagh on
 Sunday, where many British troops and policemen exhaled their death
 rattle, courtesy of the IRA campaign, McGuinness was denounced as a
 traitor who had persistently lied to his volunteers.

 Whatever about the intemperate language in which it is adorned, the
 substance of republican opposition to tomorrow's meeting hardly renders
 it the perspective of past-hugging dinosaurs. Plaid Cymru leader Leanne
 Wood recently declined to attend a service in the Queen's presence at
 Llandaff Cathedral which was laid on to mark the Diamond Jubilee. The
 Plaid Cymru Assembly member for South Wales West, Bethan Jenkins,
 described Martin McGuinness as 'naive' for going ahead with the
 meeting. Boycotting monarchy is a perfectly legitimate position for
 republicans to adopt.

 Irish republicans who express that dissent do so in the context of a
 British state which continues to behave badly: just last week it denied
 a public inquiry into the massacre of civilians in Belfast in 1971
 while continuing to seek prosecution of republicans they suspect of
 involvement in the IRA campaign. This week it is indulging in
 gratuitous flag waving by having the Armed Forces flag hoisted for six
 days at Belfast City Hall, riding roughshod over nationalist protests
 that such action is coat trailing triumphalism.

 The British monarchy in opting to shake the hand of McGuinness is
 hardly unaware of the perspective outlined in the Boston Globe: 'there
 are many law enforcement officials, Irish and British, who believe
 McGuinness was running the IRA or was at least on its ruling Army
 Council, when the plan to blow up Mountbatten was approved.'

 Yet it is the path the monarchy has decided to tread, even if holding
 its nose. Why? Norman Tebbit, who survived the Brighton bomb in 1984,
 explained it succinctly: McGuinness and Sinn Fein have 'now accepted
 the sovereignty of Her Majesty over Northern Ireland.' Strange
 bedfellows perhaps but The Daily Telegraph is not out of sync with
 peeved republicans when it proclaims 'the British establishment
 completes the decommissioning of Martin McGuinness.'

 Tomorrow's event will be tarted up in the discourse of the peace
 process, which invariably serves to mask essences and runs with the
 decoy of appearances. Despite much discursive massaging the matter has
 little if anything to do with reaching out to unionists. If Sinn Fein
 and McGuinness were really concerned with embracing unionist
 sensitivity they would desist from denying that the IRA carried out the
 Kingsmill massacre in 1976, an act on an ethical par with Derry's
 Bloody Sunday in Derry 1972.   The strategic thinking behind tomorrow's
 initiative is consistent with Sinn Fein's expansionist strategy in the
 South of Ireland where everything is gauged in terms of conquering
 electoral terrain, not creating ethical terra firma sufficiently
 fortified to bear the reconciled weight of two separate traditions.
 Sinn Fein's electoral ambitions, not reconciliation with unionism, is
 what fuels Martin McGuinness meeting the Queen.

 However, having scorned the opportunity during the royal visit to
 Ireland last year, Sinn Fein's transparently crass manipulation of

 tomorrow's event may end up alienating more votes than it attracts.