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Showing posts with label Boston College Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston College Project. Show all posts
Dixie Elliot ✍ Who exactly is this Rory Donaghy?

I never heard of him whereas the name of Brendan The Dark Hughes is and will always be enshrined in the hearts and minds of Republicans for generations to come.

Proof of this is the reaction to the Sinn FĂ©iner Donaghy's vile and repulsive Tweet across social media, including The Falls Facebook page.


I am proud to say that I knew The Dark and witnessed first-hand his leadership qualities and that of Bobby Sands, firstly in H6 from February 1979 until we were moved to H3 in September that same year, and I found myself in the same wing with them again.

The Dark, unlike Adams and McGuinness, led from the front at all times.

I would like to remind Rory Donaghy that his so called great leader Gerry Adams sent an email to the Garda Commissioner naming three colleagues, who had remained loyal to him, for the killing of the screw Brian Stack.



Now that is touting.

History is a cruel mistress and as we've seen, since the emergence of social media, there will always be investigative journalists and writers brave enough to dig up the dirty secrets that have been buried in the hope that they might never be brought to the surface.

It's easy to sleep on another man's wound, but it's not so easy to sleep knowing what the future could reveal about your past.


It was pointed out to me that this all began with a post from The Rat in a Hat Danny Morrison which comes as no surprise...

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Rory Who?

Dixie Elliot ✍ Ask Yourselves This đŸȘ¶ Why Did Both Sinn FĂ©in And The PSNI Want The Boston Project Shut Down?

This so called reformed 'police service' continues to withhold the files on RUC collusion with Loyalist murder gangs, such as the Miami Showband Massacre, the mass murder in Sean Graham's Betting Shop and the Loughinisland Massacre, to name but a few. In fact they arrested the investigative journalists, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, who exposed the Loughinisland collusion in their No Stone Unturned documentary.



Yet Sinn FĂ©iners such as Gerry Kelly and this rat Rory Donaghy sit on policing boards with them and only open their mouths for a bit of banter or to bite into a ginger nut.

Without a shadow of doubt both the PSNI and Sinn FĂ©in feared what would be exposed about 'The Dirty War' in the recorded interviews. Don't forget that it wasn't just Republicans who were giving these interviews but Loyalists as well. I've heard that former British soldiers were about to become involved in a similar project unconnected to Boston.

What really shook the Sinn FĂ©iners was The Dark revealing that 'Belfast was rotten' and how right that turned out to be.

The real touts had to brand the whistle-blower as a tout so they unleashed the rabid dogs on Brendan.

Rabid dogs like Danny 'The Rat in a Hat' Morrison and Rory the Unknown Shinner Donaghy.



The interviewees in the Boston Project didn't give their names, only the person doing the interviews knew who they were. They used a letter of the alphabet - Interviewee A etc - that's why the PSNI where so desperate to find out who they were, that they brought Bobby Storey in for four hours to listen to the recordings. Obviously to try and put names to the voices.

I remember when he got 'released' from his duties he was given 'a heroes return' in some Belfast drinking club. He made it obvious what he was really doing while 'under arrest' when he started slagging off the interviewees, calling them Walter Mittys etc.

Now here's the thing, the only person charged because of the interviews was, as we know, another legendary IRA Volunteer, Ivor Bell.

Ivor was charged because Gerry Adams publicly accused him of being 'Interviewee Z.

Did Big Bob recognise Ivor's voice?

I only met Ivor a few times and would have no bother recognising his soft-spoken voice so it's without a shadow of a doubt that Storey or Gerry Adams did.

As for The Rat in a Hat Danny Morrison, he would have known all this but he's just a rat who wears a stupid hat and lies a lot.

The most ironic thing about all of this is that Ernie O'Malley, the legendary IRA Volunteer from the War of Independence, did a similar set of interviews with surviving Volunteers from that period during the 1940s and 1950s.
This book can be obtained in the Sinn FĂ©in bookshop for €19.99.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Why Did Both Sinn FĂ©in And The PSNI Want The Boston Project Shut Down?

Muiris Ó SĂșilleabhĂĄin ✍ "Life can only be understood backwards, but yet it must be lived forward." - Kierkegaard.


A hat tip to TPQs Henry Joy for reminding me of the importance of Kierkegaard’s paradox on the meaning of life.

I have often grappled with my own meagre contribution to the struggle, which thankfully did not include gaol or active service. It did, nevertheless, require me to put my life and liberty on the line, daily, for most of twenty years, for what I thought was an honourable cause: the establishment of a 32-county socialist republic.

When it became apparent to me that the Republic had been jettisoned, superseded by the imperative to make Stormont work, I decided that my race was run and quietly got on with living my life.

Leaving the movement is not an easy thing: “friendships” end overnight, life takes on a whole new meaning and structure (or lack thereof), and it was a battle. I resolved that to cocoon myself away from all things republican and politics was the best way to keep the black dog, that had savaged so many of my former comrades, at bay.

I am eternally grateful that this self-isolation was readily reciprocated by many of those who remained loyal to the “project”. The rumours, the lies and the threats all expediated the transition into a much happier and much more balanced life, one that I have been enjoying since.

It was during this period of self-imposed exile that the hullabaloo surrounding the Boston College History Project emerged. I saw the graffiti on the Falls Road, which was orchestrated by a defunct organisation and heard that Mackers was being labelled a tout, once again, by people who have subsequently been exposed as being actual British agents.

I was too busy studying, travelling the world and making up for the lost years, so the kerfuffle somewhat passed me by. And, to be honest, I didn’t really care. My education had afforded me a level of critical thinking and self-reflection that was absent in my youth. I had known Mackers from my earlier years and while we seldom agreed on political direction, for him right was right and wrong was wrong. I warmly remember the day I drove him from a Sinn Fein Office in the city to a house in Springhill. He was a happy man, having received his first payment for an article he had written for the Sunday Tribune. Right being right, Mackers, who was skint, was giving the money to a prisoner’s wife to buy a new TV.

It was through this lens that I sat down a few weeks ago with my partner and watched Say Nothing. I hadn’t read the book, and I have since read up on the Boston College saga.

I knew many of the key protagonists, and thought Brendan was magnificently portrayed by Belfast native Anthony Boyle. While a questionable amount of artistic license was used by Disney, the key messages were crystal clear.

The series evoked a considerable emotional response from me and brought me back to a time that I thought I had securely compartmentalised in lieu of forgetting someday. In equal measure, I was nauseous, embarrassed, angry and happy, but overall, the series left with me a feeling of “fuck it”.

My partner, who has no knowledge of the conflict or the subject matter, found it disconcerting that I had ever been involved with a liberation struggle that could so easily commit war crimes, such egregious human rights violations and treat its own members in such a venal way.

The “fuck it” moment (a la The Deer Hunter 1978) reached its crescendo when we watched the hapless Joe Lynskey walk to his death. It was after this episode that I stopped trying to explain, make sense of, or fathom what was unfolding on my TV screen.

In the hierarchy of victimology that has been infused into dealing with the past and our conflict, surely there is no group of people who transcend the suffering inflicted needlessly as the families of the disappeared. By all contemporary definitions what happened to these poor souls was a war crime and should be viewed as such by all. The lies, the subterfuge and the horrors that were inflicted upon these families should never be forgotten. The Boston College project brought further disclosure to some of the families, and highlighted that the IRA had lied about Joe Lynskey, to his family, and to the world, for 10 whole years after the discovery of the first of the disappeared. For this alone, the project, in my view, has confirmed its worth.

But the importance of Say Nothing and ergo the Boston College project goes beyond the exposure of these human rights abuses. The series laid bare, in a horrendous way, the utter futility of the war since the early 80s and how loyal volunteers were cast aside with turpitude by those who displayed an unnerving sociopathy and craving for power. It told the story of Brendan and Dolours, it was their truth as they saw it, at that time. In many ways their truths, have more legitimacy than Before the Dawn or Playing My Part by the two Gerrys who also featured in the series. Neither Brendan nor Dolours sanitised their truth or their roles in a dirty war for a book deal, a retrospective reach around or an opportunity to become reputable.

By allowing republicans from that era to tell their truths, in a warts and all exposé both Say Nothing and the Boston College project have an authenticity and validity that many of the emerging oral history projects vis a vis peace monies will not be able to replicate.

Some of these fledgling oral history projects, controlled by the “community sector” (Absolute Power Act 2) appear to nothing more than an attempt to control the narrative and decontaminate the actions of a rapacious leadership, whose sole desire appears to be the re-writing of history.

The purpose of labelling such a hugely important historical body of work as the “tout tapes” had little to do with the truth and justice.
Schivelbusch's seminal work on the culture of defeat contends that the vanquished, more often than not, reinvent themselves, try to control the collective memory and try to build legend and myth. Say Nothing and the Boston College project effectively challenged an attempt to control the truth and prevent families from getting justice.

The vulgarity and offensiveness of the denial of IRA membership and activity at the end of each episode of Say Nothing should act as a wake-up call to all those who value the truth and strive for justice in post conflict Ireland.

It is easy to sleep on another man's wound.

⏩Muiris Ó SĂșilleabhĂĄin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fĂĄs.

Say Nothing . . . Fuck It . . . Say Everything

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