Reality Behind the Windsor Spin

By AM Wednesday, August 24, 2011

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Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer David McSweeney who raises a number of serious concerns about far right elements and influence.

The recent visit of the Windsor’s, David Cameron and Barack Obama cost the citizens of the 26 county state forty million euro.

You will remember the attendance of Elizabeth Windsor at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin was depicted by some as somehow having some cosmic significance for relations between Ireland and Britain.

Yet it seems that no matter how much the British state and their fellow travellers spend on fluff, waffle and subterfuge the reality of the poisonous position towards Ireland by the ruling British establishment will come to the fore.

In early August 2011, months after the Windsor visit, Mr Andrew Bell, Director of Complaints for the British Broadcasting Corporation, the state broadcaster in Britain deemed the Irish ballad “The Boys of the Old Brigade” a sectarian song. Bell was giving his support to two BBC Scotland commentators who tagged football supporter’s singing the ballad as sectarian. In support of his position Bell alluded to comments made by Strathclyde police in April only weeks before the Windsor visit in which a senior officer told local media ‘the singing of the “Boys of the old Brigade” will lead to arrest’. The reality is that under new legislation brought on to Scottish law books in 2011, singing in praise and remembrance of Irish Republicans from generations ago could lead to a five year jail term in modern Britain. Makes you wonder about the real agenda behind the public relations stunt in Parnell square in May.

The mantra churned out ad nauseum pre the British monarchs visit was that Ireland and Britain had a new relationship, and if you would not buy that, then the visit would help the crippled economy in some never explained way. The sector that has been devastated most by the current meltdown in the 26 county state has been the construction industry.

It is therefore breathtaking to consider what the Deputy Lord Mayor of London, Richard Barnes said at a meeting on the 14th of July of this year in London City Hall in relation to the redevelopment of London’s Euston train station. He asked of a finance committee looking into bids for the project: ‘are they like most Irish builders, saying it is going to be roughly that? Are we working on estimates?’ Barnes then licked his finger and held it up in a wind direction gesture, an accepted indication of graft and dishonesty the world over. The fact Barnes, the second most senior Tory in London’s administration, is in charge of Equality issues for the city of London makes it impossible to depict these comments as off the cuff, made by someone unaware of the implications of what they have said. To their credit several of those present condemned the comments and called on Barnes to withdraw them

The context of it being Olympic year in London with huge international delegations both sporting and commercial in the city exacerbates the potential damage of Barnes vindictive comments.

On the 22nd of July 2011 Andres Brevik killed seventy seven people in Norway; Brevik was a far right neo-Nazi who preached race war. Brevik has released into the public domain the background to, and motivation  for, his twisted thinking in a one thousand five hundred page self styled manifesto. He tells how his original inspiration was an English far right figure who set him on his road of hate. Consistently and throughout his writings Brevik refers to the English Defence League as “inspirations” to his political philosophy. On the 23rd of October 2009 English Defence League founder Paul Ray posted on a social network site pictures of himself and notorious German neo-Nazis holding t-shirts emblazoned with a UDA logo.

Two shorts months before this in September 2009 the EDL had been responsible for the most serious rioting in Britain for years prior to the recent London riots. There were ninety arrests in Birmingham in EDL sparked clashes. In the days that followed the trouble,   MP for the area of Birmingham affected,  Khalid Mahmood, responded to reports of a coming together o the EDL and the UDA by saying ‘the EDL are becoming more dangerous. They are interested in working with this group (UDA) to train for more trouble and I am worried about this alliance. It puts the public at risk’.

Mahmood’s concerns were soundly based. In June 2009 in prolonged, organised and vicious attacks by UDA members and others, over one hundred Roma people were driven from their homes in and around the Loyalist Village area of South Belfast. At the same time UDA elements attacked Polish families in Belfast and Mid- Ulster.

The Islandbridge leg of the Windsor visit in Dublin saw the presence of senior UDA figures. These individuals were guests of the state allowed to bring a gang of hangers on of their own choice. The prominent UDA figure Jackie Mc Donald was among the UDA figures present. McDonalds stomping ground is South Belfast.  In May 2009 Kevin Mc Daid was beaten to death by a gang of thirty men carrying cudgels at the front door of his house in Coleraine. Mr Mc Daids wife was badly beaten, as was a pregnant neighbour. A short distance from the Mc Daids, Damien Fleming was left for dead with serious injuries. What did the lover of peace and understanding Mc Donald have to say about this barbarity ? In weasel words he said ‘I don’t believe for one minute those men set out that day to hurt anyone.’

For those of you who think it important to keep tabs on far right elements and their groupies, note the following. Last week, Jackie Mc Donald endorsed an individual by the name of Martin Mc Aleese for President in the 26 County state.

What was it all about then? Why for example cause gratuitous hurt to the families of victims of the 1974 Dublin bombings? Self-determination for the people of Ireland still needs to be addressed, today, just as it did the week before the visit.