Danny Morrison on Freddie Scappaticci and how the north has transformed but unionism hasn’t changed
Danny Morrison has witnessed dramatic changes in his 72 years.
A teenager at the beginning of the conflict, he has lived to enjoy the fruits of the electoral seeds he and others sowed in the 1980s, with Sinn Féin now topping the polls in Westminster, Stormont and council elections.
But electoral success doesn’t automatically deliver political solutions.
“The objective is to improve people’s lives, to move resources from the rich towards the poor, but obviously they (the Sinn Féin-led Stormont executive) are constrained by being connected to Westminster and the British exchequer,” he says.
“But I have never viewed Stormont as a permanent institution. To me, this is an experiment and it’s an experiment that unionists continually undermine.”
He argues that rather than “quote unquote making Northern Ireland work, unionists do the exact opposite”.
He accuses unionist politicians of a failure to reciprocate gestures by republicans, such as Michelle O’Neill laying a wreath at the Belfast cenotaph or attending King Charles‘s coronation.
But despite intransigence, Morrison says he has seen northern society transform.
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The charlatan of Carrigart- hiding in plain sight
ReplyDeleteThat would be my view. What is your own take on what was going on there if you care to share it?
DeleteThere is no coincidence only the illusion of coincidence. From an intelligence perspective the Carrigart operation does not make any sense and the multiple happenstances that ensured that all those who were in Carrigart eventually walked free, some with hefty compensation can only lead an objective observer to one conclusion.
ReplyDeleteThe battle for supremacy in the intelligence world was being played out on the streets of West Belfast in 1990. The RUC Branch at that stage thought they had the IRA on the run, penetrated and compromised. British Military Intelligence was playing the longer game helped by agents and agents and agents of influence, they knew the war was “drawing to a close”.
The Branch Sacrificed a mid-level informer in Belfast in the hope of catching a “bigger fish” from the Army Council. The net they cast caught more than they had wanted including the “golden egg” and someone who by their own admission was intent on pursuing entirely political means from at least 81.
Heaven and earth were moved by the prosecution to ensure that this case collapsed, the withholding of evidence from the defence and the subsequent admission that evidence was withheld paints a picture of incompetence that the Brits just are not renowned for.
Scap, Maguire, Hodgies and the Martins were all busted flushes by this stage, the theatrics, the chance “witnesses” and all the “fluke” circumstances surrounding the collapse of the case benefitted only one person.
Muiris, you touch on an important point here. Morrison was central to the peace process as it was emerging then. Why we he snapped up? It's a crucial question that was not addressed in any of these interviews, nor the BBC podcast series on Scap.
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