Irish Republican Info Svc #213 9/9/97 id OAA30992; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 14:01:07 -0400 =========== Posted to multiple newsgroups and lists =========== ===== Redistribute *only* with full header and signature! ===== Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit IRISH REPUBLICAN INFORMATION SERVICE (no. 213) Teach Daithi O Conaill 223 Parnell Street Dublin 1, Ireland Phone: +353-1-872-9747; FAX: +353-1-872-9757; e-mail: saoirse@iol.ie September 9, 1997 Republican Sinn Fein: http://iol.ie/~saoirse/rsf SAOIRSE Online: http://iol.ie/~saoirse Release Josephine Hayden: http://iol.ie/~saoirse/hayden 1798 Ireland: http://iol.ie/~fagann/1798/ In this issue: 1. CIRA's potential worries British and Dublin administration 2. LVF threatens attacks in the 26 Counties 3. RUC wall blights lives of residents 4. Sellafield exempt from nuclear sea dumping ban 5. Third appeal by Para, teenage killer in November 6. Provisonals split over Diana tributes 7. Hope for Casement Two 8. Harryville church protests to recommence 9. Brits launch military 'airship' 10. Crumlin trouble at loyalist parade 11. Nationalist home petrol-bombed in north Belfast 12. Casement diaries forged by British Intelligence 1. CIRA'S POTENTIAL WORRIES BRITISH AND DUBLIN ADMINISTRATION IN BOTH Dublin and Belfast newspapers on September 3 last, journalist Suzanne Breen wrote of her face-to-face interview with a senior member of the Continuity IRA at a secret location just inside the Border in the 26 Counties. Her assessment was that it was the revolutionary armed organisation's potential which worried both the British government and the Dublin administration. The spokesperson told her that CIRA planned to escalate its campaign and was considering a bombing campaign in Britain. "We could be forced to take the war back to England. If that requires bombing Britain into the Third World, so be it," he said. CIRA had been building its base on both sides of the Border and was making significant inroads in rural areas. It was organised in all 32 counties and had a presence even in the Provisional "stronghold" of west Belfast. The CIRA leader expressed concern that in the event of an agreement emerging from the Stormont talks the Provisionals would "police" the peace. "Experience shows that former revolutionaries, like former poachers, tend to be the most vigorous gamekeepers. Fianna Fail set up kangaroo courts, imprisoned, executed and extradited Republicans," the spokesperson told the 'Belfast Telegraph' newspaper. "If the Provos or anyone else attempt to intimidate, harass or murder true Republicans, we will assess the situation and respond accordingly," he added. Suzanne Breen wrote that one "spectacular" could catapult the CIRA into the big league. "A successful attack on that level at a sensitive moment could have serious consequences for the peace process. It could destabilise the loyalist ceasefire, cause discontent among militant Provos who would see their own organisation as 'emasculated', and greatly aid CIRA's recruitment. "As Provo leaders moderate their stance, CIRA is there looking over their shoulder, continuing to voice traditional demands, like an unwelcome, accusing ghost. "CIRA is both a potential home for dissidents and a reminder how far the Provo leadership has travelled towards constitutionalism. "In terms of traditional Republican ideology, the Provos are on shaky ground when challenging CIRA," she wrote. When challenged on its lack of an "electoral mandate" the CIRA spokesperson said: "How many revolutionary groups through history have relied on electoral mandates before they acted? What electoral mandate had the Provos in the 1970s? Our mandate comes from 1916 and the First Dail." "The logical outcome to the Stormont talks was a new Stormont and the copperfastening of Partition," the CIRA spokesperson said, and only armed struggle would secure its objective of a British withdrawal. CIRA would only halt its campaign when the British declared its intention to withdraw and all political prisoners have been released. The Provisionals had sold out 25 years of resistance and CIRA was the true and genuine Republican army. "We are capable of continuing to arm ourselves and of carrying on the struggle for the foreseeable future," the spokesperson said. Loyalist politicians and paramilitary leaders would not be targeted as this would only give legitimacy to Britain's claim that the conflict in the North is between "two warring tribes". Responding to media reports (based on British Crown Forces and 26-County police briefings to their newspaper contacts) that the CIRA was the military wing of Republican Sinn Fein, the CIRA spokesperson said: "We have no formal relationship with Republican Sinn Fein, although we share their political objectives." The CIRA wanted no truck with the INLA, the spokesperson said: "The history and activities of that organisation show that not all of its members have been ideologically motivated". He also denied that CIRA was a conservative, right-wing organisation. "That's absolute rubbish. There is nothing in our statements to indicate that. We stand by the ideas of James Connolly. We demand a secular Ireland. The conservative fuddy-duddies are now with the Provos." Suzanne Breen posed the question: would public opinion in nationalist areas tolerate an onslaught by the Provisionals on CIRA? "At grassroots level," she wrote, "there is sometimes a good relationship between the two groups. Even if the situation never deteriorates to that level, ultimately one side will eventually lose  either republican opponents of the peace process or the Provo leadership. "The CIRA spokesman believes that nationalists have invested too much blood, tears and sacrifice in the struggle to abandon it. Gerry Adams believes that his community craves an historic accommodation. Only time will tell who is right," the 'Belfast Telegraph' article concluded. Speaking on RTE radio on September 3 Suzanne Breen told the 'Daily Record' programme that she believed the CIRA membership was now "into three figures". 2. LVF THREATENS ATTACKS IN THE 26 COUNTIES ANYONE who still believes that an accommodation can be made in a Six-County British colony created on a sectarian head-count must have their illusions shattered by recent threatening noises from the loyalist camp. The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), the group linked to the jailed bigot, Billy Wright (King Rat), has threatened to embark on a campaign of bombings and sectarian killings in the 26 Counties. The group also threatened to kill foreign businessmen working in the 26-County State in order to destabilise its economy. During the first week of September the LVF announced their real agenda in an interview with the press at a secret location in mid-Ulster. They want an end to Articles Two and Three of the Free State's Constitution which is a territorial claim on the Six Counties. "This threat has to be removed. Otherwise, Dublin will reap what it sows," their spokesman said. While they have confidence in British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is adamant that the Union will not end in the lifetime of the youngest person, they don't like Marjorie Mowlam, who they described as "pro-Republican". Mowlam "was not upholding the principle of consent". The pro-British LVF has already killed two nationalists in the Six Counties and planted a bomb in Dundalk, County Louth last May. Their threatening posture and their expansionist drive across the Six Counties including burning nationalists out of their homes is all part of a strategy to keep middle-class unionist control over the economy and politics of the Six-County British colony. Hence their championing of Tony Blair who will keep the "Empire" intact and their dismissal of Marjorie Mowlam who will grant parity of esteem to Castle Catholics. "The Irish Republic cannot withstand a terrorist offensive," their spokesman said. "What scale of violence is necessary to damage it? Mass bombings? Maybe just killing six people  three foreign industrialists and their wives and telling the rest of them to get out. That would put the Republic's economy up the Swanee." Meanwhile there are reports of disaffection among the MI5-controlled death-squad, the UDA. Their spokesperson David Nicholl said: "The UDA is asking the party to reconsider it's position unless there is satisfactory clarification on the issue of consent." It is understood that some members of the UDA and UVF death-squads have defected to the LVF. British Military Intelligence will continue to strengthen its control of the CLMC, the umbrella group for the death-squads, as the Unionist elite will continue to spur on the pro-British LVF death-squad under their control. It is so much jockeying for position. Meanwhile nationalists are still prisoners within the Six-County British colony and are still at the mercy of pro-British death-squads. 3. RUC WALL BLIGHTS LIVES OF RESIDENTS BRITAIN'S policy of containment reminiscent of her corralling of Boers and Africans in the earlier part of the century continues unabated in their last colony. Residents of New Cavendish Square in west Belfast not only have to endure harassment from British Crown Forces but now they must also endure the extension of a British colonial police (RUC) barracks into their neighbourhood which includes a large high wall that blocks off natural light to their living-rooms. Eddie Morris, who lives ten yards from the wall said work began at around 7am on September 1. "How would you like to look out and see an eyesore like that in your face? It was bad enough having the original barracks wall with barbed wire but now they have it right up to the bottom of our gardens." Eddie Morris said that children from the nearby St Paul's primary school had used the street as a playground until Monday. "Now the barracks has been extended to within three or four feet of the school wall." Already two old cottages are due for demolition to allow expansion within the Springfield Road barracks complex, off the Falls Road. The British are continuing to strengthen their bases in occupied Ireland and also building new ones. The Provisionals ceasefire of 1994 gave them a welcome breathing space to do so. 4. SELLAFIELD EXEMPT FROM NUCLEAR SEA DUMPING BAN THE British government decision to ban the dumping of "intermediate and low-level radioactive waste in the sea", announced on September 2, does not apply to ongoing discharges of radioactive waste from the Sellafield nuclear plant and its accompanying THORP nuclear reprocessing plant on the Cumbrian coast facing Ireland. The British Labour environment minister Michael Meacher abandoned Britain's potential opt-out from the ban which has been in place since 1992 by the OSPAR Convention  the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic. It is extraordinary that the ban applies to one-off dumping from a ship but does not cover the 365-days-a-year discharge of radioactive material from outflow pipes of a nuclear dustbin such as Sellafield. Simultaneous with the British government move at the beginning of September it was revealed that lobsters in the Irish Sea close to Sellafield plant were damaged by nuclear effluent. On August 22 last the THORP nuclear reprocessing plant was given the full go-ahead by the British regulating body. Residents of County Louth which faces Sellafield across the Irish Sea have started a court action in Dublin to try to force the closure of Sellafield. 5. THIRD APPEAL BY PARA, TEENAGE KILLER IN NOVEMBER NOVEMBER 17 has been set for the start of an appeal by British paratrooper, Lee Clegg into his conviction for the death of teenager Karen Reilly. He was subsequently jailed for life in 1993. Although technically serving life imprisonment for murder, Clegg was not let down by his British masters who were able to get him freed on licence in July back to the Parachute Regiment. Clegg has previously lost appeals in Belfast and the House of Lords in London. Still the right-wing Empire element are doing their utmost to have Clegg completely exonerated and have his hands untied. The case is expected to last a week. It was originally scheduled for June but an American ballistics expert put a kibosh on plans to free the Para killer at that time when he claimed that the car in which Karen Reilly (18) was travelling was 400 feet away from Clegg and could not have been a threat. 6. PROVISONALS SPLIT OVER DIANA TRIBUTES AS THE terrible trio, Adams, McGuinness and O Caolain, were arriving at Kennedy International Airport for a five-day visit to the United States, their head offices in Belfast and Dublin were enthusing: "Interest in growing in 'Sinn Fein' US delegation". No doubt they were referring to the interest on the 500 dollar-a-dinner bash in the Waldorf Astoria and other functions of great interest. All the better to have bank clerk TD O Caolain in the pack. What price peace? All it takes is decommissioning of Republican principles, even to the extent of eulogising Britain's 'Queen of Hearts'  Diana Spencer. The leader of the pack, Gerry Adams, offered his condolences to the families of the bereaved including the future heir to the British throne. He said Diana, who once served as Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Hampshire Regiment and enjoyed visiting these soldiers when they were on a tour of duty in occupied Ireland, showed sympathy for people who were suffering or in need. "We as individuals appreciate Diana's work and the compassion she has shown over the years for people who were marginalised and people who were on the edges of society". She loved decorating British soldiers, but did she ever show compassion for the victims of British rule in Ireland? Did she ever mount a campaign to bring an end to the use of plastic bullets against the Irish people by those same Crown Forces? The Provisional leader went on to say that his party "recognises the terrible tragedy for all of the families of all of the bereaved, especially for Diana's sons and her own family and the other people who were killed". As he was paying his tribute to Diana on September 2, his party colleagues in Derry refused to support a motion calling for an adjournment of council business as a mark of respect to the British princess. They would, they said, support the observation of a minute's silence. Despite their opposition the motion was overwhelmingly carried. Meanwhile across in Armagh, members of the council, including three Provisional councillors, stood for a minute's silence before adjourning their public services liaison committee. Many councils across the Six Counties adjourned their meetings as a mark of respect. According to the Press Association, Adams, who is very eager to please the Brits, castigated a reporter who asked if the IRA had ever targeted the British royal family for "repeating nonsense stories that sometimes have their birth and inception in Alice in Wonderland". It seems Adams, who wants to appear avuncular towards the children of Charles Windsor has forgotten that the IRA claimed responsibility for the execution of his great-uncle and close confidant Louis Mountbatten after placing a bomb on his boat off the Sligo coast in 1979. But then perhaps the Provisionals have decommissioned all memory of a Republican past. 7. HOPE FOR CASEMENT TWO THE two members of the "Casement Three" remaining in prison, Sean Kelly and Michael Timmons, have received new hope of release. Legal experts say the release of a man in England, jailed under different circumstances, but on a similar point of law, could signal new hope for Kelly and Timmons. The Casement Three -- Kelly, Timmons and Patrick Kane, who was released in June -- were given life sentences in 1990 on the grounds the Crown believed they were part of a crowd which attacked two plainclothes British soldiers, who were later shot dead, and so were involved in a "joint enterprise" in which it was foreseeable that the two soldiers would be killed. In a case that may have implications for Kelly and Timmons, British prisoner Philip English was released during August. English had been jailed on similar charges. The British House of Lords will make its ruling next month on the appeal of Philip English. The Committee on the Administration of Justice said it was a "positive sign" but it needed to be seen exactly on which points of law Philip English was freed. The Law Lords ruling is expected to be made available in October. 8. HARRYVILLE CHURCH PROTESTS TO RECOMMENCE LOYALISTS are planning to recommence the weekly picket outside Saturday evening Mass at Our Lady's Catholic Church in Harryville, Ballymena. Saturday evening Mass was cancelled by the local priest, Canon Sean Connolly, on June 21. At the time the Ulster Executive of Republican Sinn Fein said: "Paying the blackmailer is a direct encouragement to him to return for a further instalment". Mass at the church was cancelled in order to avoid the loyalist marching season. Saturday evening Mass resumed at Harryville Church on September 6. Loyalists had intended to picket the church on that date but they decided to call the picket off in honour of Diana Spencer, the British Princess of Wales who was buried on September 6. The pickets will resume before the end of September, possibly September 20. Loyalists had picketed Harryville church for 41 consecutive weeks before they succeeded in having the Mass cancelled. Every Saturday during the summer a handful of loyalists continued to gather outside the church, despite no Mass taking place. The loyalists had considered transferring their picket to another Catholic church in the town but decided to stay at Harryville. During the 41 weeks of the picket loyalists had clashed with British police (RUC) in riot gear on several occasions. On one occasion a woman parishioner's car was attacked. On another occasion a van and bus were burned out. The church was also attacked. 9. BRITS LAUNCH MILITARY 'AIRSHIP' A 600lb airship is due to make its maiden voyage over north Antrim soon. The new addition to the British range of "spies in the sky" is intended to be quieter and "less intrusive" than British army helicopters. The airship is 61 metres in length, 18 metres high and powered by two 255hp Porsche engines. It's main body is described as "a non-rigid helium" filled structure. Described as an "observation and communications platform" the airships will operate at heights in excess of 2,000 feet above ground level. While the airship may sound like a joke at first they will be so quiet and operate at such a height that you wouldn't know they were there, which is the intention of the project. 10. CRUMLIN TROUBLE AT LOYALIST PARADE SCUFFLES broke out in the County Antrim village of Crumlin during a loyalist band competition on September 5. The trouble started after nationalists who were protesting at the decision to allow the competition go ahead noticed that one of the organisers of the competition was filming them. The implication behind filming the protesters was clearly that the footage could be used again to help "target" the nationalists involved. 11. NATIONALIST HOME PETROL-BOMBED IN NORTH BELFAST ONE of the few nationalists living in a predominantly loyalist area of north Belfast had her home petrol-bombed in the early hours of September 5. Janine Kerr, who was asleep in her home in Deerpark Road was woken by the sound of breaking glass shortly after midnight. When she ran downstairs she found that two petrol bombs had been thrown into her front room and set the curtains and furniture alight. A third petrol bomb was thrown at her bedroom window but missed and failed to ignite. Kerr said that her boyfriend arrived at the house shortly after the attack and it was only with his help that she was able to put out the flames using buckets of water and a garden hose. Kerr has lived in the house for a year-and-a-half but only began to experience problems about six months ago. "About six months ago I started to notice cars slowing down and people looking closely at the house and a couple of nights ago some youths threw planks toward my house," Kerr said. The attack, like countless others before it, had all the hallmarks of a sectarian attack by loyalists on a nationalist home. However the British police (RUC) said they did not regard the attack as sectarian. Similarly the RUC at first denied that the recent killing of a nationalist boy, James Morgan, was sectarian, until it became obvious to everyone that a loyalist death squad was involved. 12. CASEMENT DIARIES FORGED BY BRITISH INTELLIGENCE BRITISH author, Angus Mitchell, who has written the introduction to 'The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement', to be published on October 10 by Lilliput Press in Dublin, contends that the diaries said to have been written by the 1916 patriot and circulated by the British to ruin his reputation were "definitely forged". The notorious 'black diaries', alleged to have been written by the patriot and containing supposed homosexual activities, do not correspond to the 'white diary' of the same period contained among Casement's papers in the National Library of Ireland. Following extensive research of these papers, Mitchell found that references in a journal kept by Casement while traversing the Amazon in 1910 belied references made in the black diaries during the same period of time. Casement was suffering from a severe sight problem following an infection which affected both eyes, and could barely write the entries in the journal found in the National Library. By contrast the 'black diary' for the same period of time is written in a small, neat script indicative of a healthy eyesight. Mitchell believes that papers and journals confiscated from Casement in 1914 enabled British Intelligence to compose the fake 'black diaries' based on factual evidence. The 'black diaries' were circulated by British Intelligence among senior government circles in Britain and the USA in 1916 to turn international sentiment against Casement who the British were trying for treason at the time. Casement had received a knighthood from the British when he exposed the cruelty of other colonial regimes in Africa and South America, but when he turned his attention towards fighting British tyranny in his native land, that was a different matter. The hero became the "pervert", as homosexuality was perceived in those days. Angus Mitchell could not be accused of having a Republican axe to grind. His father, Colin Mitchell, was a Tory MP as well as a senior military figure, dubbed 'Mad Mitch' by the English media. The author himself was educated at Harrow and Oxford. -end- Please circulate the information in IRIS and credit us if reprinting. We welcome your comments and ideas. Send them to saoirse@iol.ie ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-09.09.97-14:01:09-9000