There will always be a gap between those who take the political goals seriously and those who are drawn to the cause because it offers glamour, violence, money and power – Michael Ignatieff.

The 6 women at the forefront of the campaign to achieve justice for their loved one Robert McCartney, murdered by Belfast thugs in January 2005, along the way pushed levers and pressed buttons in the nerve centres of top political institutions from Europe to the US. Against the odds, and on occasion advice, they followed their instinct wherever it took them. As they viewed it there was little choice: ‘the gang in Market Street had the protection of the political and military organisations … we had no one; and Robert had only us.’ Determined not to be battered into silence or submission by the peace process they pulled out every stop to secure for him the justice he deserved. By the year’s end they had given ‘thousands’ of interviews and had received ten awards in acknowledgement of their campaigning. Ultimately, however, as Catherine McCartney, a sister of the murdered man, protests in her book Walls Of Silence, justice may have danced seductively, pregnant with the promise of delivery, but still not one conviction secured in court. The killers today prowl the streets of Belfast free and the women are no further on in legal terms than they were three years ago.

Cartoon by John Kennedy

Imagine the scene that thrust these women onto the international stage: an IRA/Sinn Fein member with a recognisable psychopathic bent for gratuitous violence, aided and abetted by other IRA and Sinn Fein activists, carved up two men in a street for, in his own words, ‘no reason’ other than the presumably orgasmic-like pleasure he derived from the sensation of cold steel tearing its way through warm flesh. The murder was a brutal one. It conjured up all the imagery of killings by the Shankill Butchers in alley ways and pubs back in the 1970s: defenceless victims knifed and hacked in front of an audience. And like the Butcher killings, out of all those to emerge from the pub at the end of the evening, not a witness in their midst.

I read Walls Of Silence before the Robert McCartney murder trial and then again after it. The anguish of the author read as potently each time. The acquittals did not place Catherine McCartney’s writing in some new light. There was not the slightest possibility of a murder conviction in this case. The evidence was not there and like some other cases in very recent Northern Irish legal history this one should never have been placed before a judge so prematurely. The short term expedient of silencing criticism rather than the longer term one of securing a just result governed the decisions made. The gravest indictment that can be levelled at the authorities in their handling of the McCartney murder is that by the spring of 2005 they had decided this was a case they wanted closed rather than solved.

Catherine McCartney would seem to have put her finger on it when she raises the question of informers being protected. ‘There had been up to thirty Provisionals involved that night and it stood to reason that there were informers amongst them.’ When every other possible explanation as to why a conviction has not been secured has been exhausted in terms of its plausibility little else makes sense.

In the days after the murder of her brother Robert, Catherine describes how a rearguard action was fought by the Provisional movement. Rather than immediately move to put clear blue sea between itself and the knife gang, ‘the movement’ dallied and parried, retreating behind a protective shield of a whisper campaign, hissing out allegations that the slain man had been a scumbag, a dissident or drug dealer. The execrable Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein MLA, some of whose party colleagues were involved in the violence and subsequent cover up, decided to hit out at the PSNI pursuit of the killers. Maskey did nothing that we are aware of to proactively assist the gang but his preferences in the immediate aftermath of the murder suggest a politician motivated primarily by the need to divert any political flak likely to come his party’s way. His demands of British officials the day after the killing were that they curb PSNI raids, not that they throw more resources and manpower into finding the killers.

Later when Catherine McCartney confronted Gerry Kelly about the stance of Maskey and other party representatives the response she got was that they were unaware of all the events. Really? In this book the author is unrelenting in giving absolutely no credence to such an unspirited defence. Time and again she returns to the theme of cover up and post-event complicity. The senior IRA commander that both the McCartney women and the PSNI believe ordered the alleyway attack on Robert McCartney and his drinking partner Brendan Devine, emerges throughout the book as having the patronage of senior IRA figures long after he was supposed to have been expelled from the organisation and sent to Coventry. In the book Catherine McCartney gives vent to a sentiment that taxed the minds of many observing events as they unfolded:

We couldn’t understand why Adams would put the Republican Movement through hell to protect the likes of Davison and co … the IRA and Sinn Fein were taking a stance of protection for some reason no one seemed able to understand … Sinn Fein was adopting a dual strategy, showing public support but working hard on the ground to ensure impunity and operating a whispering campaign against the family.

While Martin McGuinness would later describe the assailants as ‘low life’ a central charge in this book is that his party did next to nothing to turn them in.

Once the campaign had kicked in and Sinn Fein began to feel the heat the same whisper weasels that were set on the murdered man’s reputation were unleashed against the McCartney women.

At grassroots level we found ourselves at the receiving end of a well oiled rumour mill and ostracism exercise … some in the community treated us as if we were the guilty party, and we found ourselves shunned, vilified and demonised, accused of being attention seekers or drama queens. Anonymous messengers who claimed to know us well declared that we were harlots, thieves and prostitutes … ‘You’re not the only one this happened to’ became a familiar mantra. An illogical resentment set in. Such people forgot about the sick act of murder and our campaign came to be the bigger crime …

As the campaign wore on graffiti appeared on the walls where the murdered man had lived, his home now housing his partner and children was picketed by a mob. While originally a means of community protest, the picket had evolved into a party political weapon of intimidation. ‘Women who had once been welcomed into our home now stood outside it demanding the exile of Robert’s children.’ Death threats arrived and the editor of a local West Belfast newspaper labelled the campaigning women as ‘unionism on tour’ after their visit to the White House. Obviously incensed by the shunning of Gerry Adams and the public gutting the Sinn Fein leader received from current presidential candidate John McCain, he lashed out in a bid to discredit those he blamed for causing the discomfort. The great leader would not be embarrassed by mere mortals, particularly female ones.

In the course of their campaign the McCartney women found themselves in clandestine meetings with the IRA in Belfast, well publicised meetings with the president of the USA, surreal ‘guests’ at the Sinn Fein ard fheis where the party president unsuccessfully sought to depict party and women as being on the same side. It also gave them face to face access with the Irish Taoiseach and British Prime Minister as well as carrying them into the heart of the European parliament.

And yet, as this poignant book distressingly shows there was no happy ending. Although written from the perspective of a family seeking answers, explanations, honesty and ultimately justice, Walls Of Silence atmospherically conveys the odour of decay emitted from the decadence creeping into the crevices and gaps exposed by the withdrawal from the Provisional project of a more ideological republicanism. It has been said that it is really only when the tide goes out can we see who is naked. When the tide of republicanism ebbed away some of those submersed in it were left without any cover. From active service unit to the ‘do you know who I am gang?’ the order of things had been reversed. The butterfly, to borrow a term, had morphed into a slug. Robert McCartney lies cold in his grave and his family have not obtained justice. The slug slithers the streets of Belfast impervious to the humanity it leeches onto.

Walls Of Silence by Catherine McCartney, 2007. Gill & McMillan. Dublin

The Walls of Silence Still Stand

There will always be a gap between those who take the political goals seriously and those who are drawn to the cause because it offers glamour, violence, money and power – Michael Ignatieff.

The 6 women at the forefront of the campaign to achieve justice for their loved one Robert McCartney, murdered by Belfast thugs in January 2005, along the way pushed levers and pressed buttons in the nerve centres of top political institutions from Europe to the US. Against the odds, and on occasion advice, they followed their instinct wherever it took them. As they viewed it there was little choice: ‘the gang in Market Street had the protection of the political and military organisations … we had no one; and Robert had only us.’ Determined not to be battered into silence or submission by the peace process they pulled out every stop to secure for him the justice he deserved. By the year’s end they had given ‘thousands’ of interviews and had received ten awards in acknowledgement of their campaigning. Ultimately, however, as Catherine McCartney, a sister of the murdered man, protests in her book Walls Of Silence, justice may have danced seductively, pregnant with the promise of delivery, but still not one conviction secured in court. The killers today prowl the streets of Belfast free and the women are no further on in legal terms than they were three years ago.

Cartoon by John Kennedy

Imagine the scene that thrust these women onto the international stage: an IRA/Sinn Fein member with a recognisable psychopathic bent for gratuitous violence, aided and abetted by other IRA and Sinn Fein activists, carved up two men in a street for, in his own words, ‘no reason’ other than the presumably orgasmic-like pleasure he derived from the sensation of cold steel tearing its way through warm flesh. The murder was a brutal one. It conjured up all the imagery of killings by the Shankill Butchers in alley ways and pubs back in the 1970s: defenceless victims knifed and hacked in front of an audience. And like the Butcher killings, out of all those to emerge from the pub at the end of the evening, not a witness in their midst.

I read Walls Of Silence before the Robert McCartney murder trial and then again after it. The anguish of the author read as potently each time. The acquittals did not place Catherine McCartney’s writing in some new light. There was not the slightest possibility of a murder conviction in this case. The evidence was not there and like some other cases in very recent Northern Irish legal history this one should never have been placed before a judge so prematurely. The short term expedient of silencing criticism rather than the longer term one of securing a just result governed the decisions made. The gravest indictment that can be levelled at the authorities in their handling of the McCartney murder is that by the spring of 2005 they had decided this was a case they wanted closed rather than solved.

Catherine McCartney would seem to have put her finger on it when she raises the question of informers being protected. ‘There had been up to thirty Provisionals involved that night and it stood to reason that there were informers amongst them.’ When every other possible explanation as to why a conviction has not been secured has been exhausted in terms of its plausibility little else makes sense.

In the days after the murder of her brother Robert, Catherine describes how a rearguard action was fought by the Provisional movement. Rather than immediately move to put clear blue sea between itself and the knife gang, ‘the movement’ dallied and parried, retreating behind a protective shield of a whisper campaign, hissing out allegations that the slain man had been a scumbag, a dissident or drug dealer. The execrable Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein MLA, some of whose party colleagues were involved in the violence and subsequent cover up, decided to hit out at the PSNI pursuit of the killers. Maskey did nothing that we are aware of to proactively assist the gang but his preferences in the immediate aftermath of the murder suggest a politician motivated primarily by the need to divert any political flak likely to come his party’s way. His demands of British officials the day after the killing were that they curb PSNI raids, not that they throw more resources and manpower into finding the killers.

Later when Catherine McCartney confronted Gerry Kelly about the stance of Maskey and other party representatives the response she got was that they were unaware of all the events. Really? In this book the author is unrelenting in giving absolutely no credence to such an unspirited defence. Time and again she returns to the theme of cover up and post-event complicity. The senior IRA commander that both the McCartney women and the PSNI believe ordered the alleyway attack on Robert McCartney and his drinking partner Brendan Devine, emerges throughout the book as having the patronage of senior IRA figures long after he was supposed to have been expelled from the organisation and sent to Coventry. In the book Catherine McCartney gives vent to a sentiment that taxed the minds of many observing events as they unfolded:

We couldn’t understand why Adams would put the Republican Movement through hell to protect the likes of Davison and co … the IRA and Sinn Fein were taking a stance of protection for some reason no one seemed able to understand … Sinn Fein was adopting a dual strategy, showing public support but working hard on the ground to ensure impunity and operating a whispering campaign against the family.

While Martin McGuinness would later describe the assailants as ‘low life’ a central charge in this book is that his party did next to nothing to turn them in.

Once the campaign had kicked in and Sinn Fein began to feel the heat the same whisper weasels that were set on the murdered man’s reputation were unleashed against the McCartney women.

At grassroots level we found ourselves at the receiving end of a well oiled rumour mill and ostracism exercise … some in the community treated us as if we were the guilty party, and we found ourselves shunned, vilified and demonised, accused of being attention seekers or drama queens. Anonymous messengers who claimed to know us well declared that we were harlots, thieves and prostitutes … ‘You’re not the only one this happened to’ became a familiar mantra. An illogical resentment set in. Such people forgot about the sick act of murder and our campaign came to be the bigger crime …

As the campaign wore on graffiti appeared on the walls where the murdered man had lived, his home now housing his partner and children was picketed by a mob. While originally a means of community protest, the picket had evolved into a party political weapon of intimidation. ‘Women who had once been welcomed into our home now stood outside it demanding the exile of Robert’s children.’ Death threats arrived and the editor of a local West Belfast newspaper labelled the campaigning women as ‘unionism on tour’ after their visit to the White House. Obviously incensed by the shunning of Gerry Adams and the public gutting the Sinn Fein leader received from current presidential candidate John McCain, he lashed out in a bid to discredit those he blamed for causing the discomfort. The great leader would not be embarrassed by mere mortals, particularly female ones.

In the course of their campaign the McCartney women found themselves in clandestine meetings with the IRA in Belfast, well publicised meetings with the president of the USA, surreal ‘guests’ at the Sinn Fein ard fheis where the party president unsuccessfully sought to depict party and women as being on the same side. It also gave them face to face access with the Irish Taoiseach and British Prime Minister as well as carrying them into the heart of the European parliament.

And yet, as this poignant book distressingly shows there was no happy ending. Although written from the perspective of a family seeking answers, explanations, honesty and ultimately justice, Walls Of Silence atmospherically conveys the odour of decay emitted from the decadence creeping into the crevices and gaps exposed by the withdrawal from the Provisional project of a more ideological republicanism. It has been said that it is really only when the tide goes out can we see who is naked. When the tide of republicanism ebbed away some of those submersed in it were left without any cover. From active service unit to the ‘do you know who I am gang?’ the order of things had been reversed. The butterfly, to borrow a term, had morphed into a slug. Robert McCartney lies cold in his grave and his family have not obtained justice. The slug slithers the streets of Belfast impervious to the humanity it leeches onto.

Walls Of Silence by Catherine McCartney, 2007. Gill & McMillan. Dublin

9 comments:

  1. As much as I am still outraged at the murder of Robert McCartney,I am still befuddled at the attention, though deserved, of this particular murder, over other much aggrieved murders.
    Why was there no such outrage over the 'Shankill Butcher's' murders. ? Many more innocent lives where lost due to this sectarian and savage gang of psychopaths
    What was it about Robert McCartney's murder that was different. ?
    The extemporaneous murder of Robert McCartney was done by a group of thugs for no other reason than an implied insult.
    Where as the 'Butcher's' was totally premeditated and nefarious to the point of calculated genocide, or a notion of eliminating the Catholic population of Belfast.
    My only conclusion is, the British government and the propagandized UK media do not want to shed light on the pro British terror gangs.
    Balance and justice, or as the DUP axiom implies,"We believe in equality, as long as we are MORE equal than others."

    ReplyDelete
  2. The timing of this murder and the political opportunity it opened up for the governments to bring the peace process to a conclusion by boxing in the Provisional movement perhaps explains much of it. Coupled with this was the news value of six women taking on a well oiled machine. Also Sinn Fein's bad management of its own response to the murder gave it an added dimension in terms of public interest value. There actually was a lot of outrage over the Shankill butchers but no focussed campaign around it. The antipathy that those murders generated has placed it in collective memory as a vivid savage action. The Butchers were unique in that they were war criminals. The killers of Robert McCartney were simply criminals. There is a lot of light shed on pro British murder gangs. We know lots about them because of that light. There needs to be a hell of a lot more light however shed on the nature of the relationship between those gangs and the British state.

    ReplyDelete
  3. hi,
    You never wrote on Paul Quinns murder in South Armagh?
    Would the parallels you've drawn be the same as Robert Mccartneys?
    Or worse, as by then SF were actually in Gov't with the DUP.

    ReplyDelete
  4. How much did you receive not to discuss paul quinns murder?
    same with view from a balconey.?
    Nothing. Why?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mark
    of Slugger esteem, to what do you put the coincidence down to, that 25 mins after my enquiry, you come along, bearing in mind the last entry was 22 months ago?

    sorry but I don't like coincidences like this?

    what is the cover-up on that poor fella?

    ReplyDelete
  6. that you did my friend. I took a fright.

    But can you ask your handlers why AM and Máirtín Ó Muilleoir didn't touch the story with a barge-pole?

    which brings us neatly and circuitously back to

    "The walls of silence still stand"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mark,

    did you steal my share of the bribe?

    ReplyDelete
  8. damn,
    if I hadn't of erred by delving into my prod collective unconscious, and spwed up a felon-setter; I might have got an answer to my question.
    I'll never know now .

    Well played AM

    ReplyDelete
  9. what is it with that SA Omerta, impenetrable or wot?
    and conor how could you, you're an MP.
    seabird, I want to understand, more than judge against.

    ReplyDelete