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Showing posts with label Muiris Ó Súilleabháin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muiris Ó Súilleabháin. Show all posts
Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how Sinn Féin can extricate itself from the political position it has created for itself, both North and South. 

Voices that would once have defended every leadership decision are now questioning the party's direction. Some are calling for a change of leadership, others for a fundamental reassessment of strategy, many for both. Either would require an acknowledgement that much of what has been presented as success to date has, in reality, fallen short.

In the north, Sinn Féin entered government promising change. Michelle O'Neill spoke of being a First Minister for all. Yet the party ends its first full legislative term at the head of the Northern Ireland (sic) Executive with little tangible evidence that it has delivered any of the transformation promised to workers, families or the communities that have formed the backbone of its electoral support.

The explanation now being offered as an election approaches is familiar: delivery was blocked by the British Government and/or the DUP. Power-sharing does impose real constraints, but that is only part of the story. As Samuel Johnson observed, "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." The same might be said of political promises. Many of Sinn Féin's manifesto commitments were neither distinctive nor achievable. The adaptation of Johnson's other observation comes to mind, what was good was not original, and what was original was not good.

None of this should have come as a surprise to the Party. The institutional vetoes that were negotiated by Sinn Féin at St Andrews in 2006 ensured that fundamental change would always depend upon unionist consent. Those who warned at the time that these arrangements would constrain any future Sinn Féin First Minister were dismissed as cynics. Events have proven otherwise. Equally significant was the DUP's strategic decision to forgo the Finance and Economy portfolios in favour of Communities and Education. It was a calculated judgement about where their political influence would be greatest, and one that has left Sinn Féin struggling to explain why many of its flagship ambitions remain unrealised. The consequences of those decisions are now becoming impossible to ignore.

The much-publicised Good Jobs Employment Rights Bill, presented as a flagship commitment of the party of change after Sinn Féin assumed responsibility for the Department for the Economy, will not be enacted during this Assembly mandate. For legislation heralded as a defining reform, its progress was remarkably slow. The Bill remained with the Sinn Fein Minister for years before finally reaching the Assembly, leaving limited time for meaningful consultation, democratic scrutiny and legislative passage before the end of the mandate.

Even then, the legislation fell well short of the rhetoric that accompanied it. Much of what was proposed would simply have extended to workers in the north employment protections already available elsewhere in the United Kingdom, rather than creating a new or distinctive set of rights.

The lack of attention given to drafting the Bill, became apparent almost immediately. Within twenty-four hours of the Bill's introduction, the Sinn Fein Minister was forced to amend a central proposal following universal criticism of its practical implications. The DUP seized on the reversal, rightly claiming that the Economy Minister had been "forced into a screeching U-turn which recognises a major flaw in her original proposals." Whether one accepts that characterisation or not, the episode reinforced the impression of legislation that had been inadequately prepared despite the time available to develop it.

Upon becoming leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Jon Burrows, a former RUC officer, remarked that when he first entered the Assembly, he could not decide whether Sinn Féin was attempting to undermine Northern Ireland's institutions or whether it was simply incompetent. Having observed the party in government, he said he had reached the latter conclusion.

It is not a harsh judgement, and one that has become increasingly difficult to dismiss. The handling of the Irish place names project, together with a succession of uncomfortable Assembly exchanges in which Sinn Féin ministers and senior representatives, including Gildernew, have struggled under sustained and pointed questioning from Timothy Gaston, Phillip Brett and Jonathan Buckley, has contributed to a growing perception that the party is less assured in government than it once appeared.

For a movement that built its reputation on discipline, strategic planning and political competence, such episodes matter. They do not simply provide ammunition for opponents, they raise legitimate questions among supporters about whether the party has adapted successfully from opposition and agitation to the demands of government.

After a full Assembly term leading the Northern Ireland Government, Sinn Féin ministers appear to have little political capital left to demonstrate that the promised era of change has materialised. Increasingly, ministerial announcements are dominated by photo opportunities around routine infrastructure projects, pothole repairs, road resurfacing and traffic management schemes, rather than the structural reforms that featured so prominently in the party's election campaign.

The party's defence has become equally familiar. Speaking after being promoted to a Senator, former Economy Minister Conor Murphy argued that Sinn Féin was trying hard to make the institutions and Northern Ireland work, but that progress was being frustrated by unionist resistance. There is, of course, an element of truth in that claim. The institutions were designed to require cross-community agreement on contentious issues. Yet that was not an unforeseen obstacle. It was the constitutional architecture to which Sinn Féin itself signed up, and which many critics warned would allow the DUP to frustrate significant change whenever it chose to do so.

To attribute the absence of delivery principally to unionist obstruction is therefore to overlook an uncomfortable reality, many of the constraints now cited as an explanation were negotiated, accepted and defended by Sinn Féin itself.

There is an unmistakable irony in a republican movement lamenting that unionism is preventing the institutions of Northern Ireland from functioning as intended. For decades, Sinn Féin's ambition was to challenge, disrupt and ultimately replace those institutions. Today, it finds itself defending them, explaining their limitations and appealing for their effective operation. In doing so, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the party from the constitutional order of the SDLP it once sought to overturn.

Perhaps the greatest political transformation of the peace process has not been the capture of the institutions by Sinn Féin, but the capture of Sinn Féin by the institutions. The movement that once promised to turn Stormont upside down now finds itself constrained by its procedures, dependent upon its survival and invested in its continuity. The revolutionary has become the custodian.

Casement Park is a case in point. It may be uncomfortable for some to acknowledge, but the principal reasons for the project's failure lie not with unionist opposition but with those who carried political responsibility for delivering it. The prolonged dispute with local residents, the collapse of the original planning approval, and the persistent failure to secure a fully funded and deliverable scheme cannot simply be attributed to unionist obstruction. The greatest responsibility rests with Sinn Féin, the SDLP and those charged with managing the project, not Gordon Lyons.

Had the objective remained the timely construction of a modern stadium for Antrim GAA, Casement Park could have been completed many years ago. Instead, the ambition, driven by Sinn Fein, evolved into something far more complex. The aspiration to develop a multi-purpose venue capable of hosting major commercial events fundamentally altered the scale, cost and controversy surrounding the project. Whether that mistake was well-intentioned or not, that change of course delayed rather than advanced the interests of Gaelic games in Antrim.

The greatest losers have not been politicians but Gaels. For more than a decade, Antrim footballers, hurlers and supporters have been denied the stadium they were promised while political parties traded blame and expectations repeatedly outstripped reality.

Casement Park will almost certainly be built. When it is, it should stand as a home for the GAA and the people of Antrim rather than an outdoor concert venue or a monument to avaricious political ambition.

Casement Park is only one example. More troubling is the apparent ease with which Sinn Féin has been able to attribute their political failure, whether in government or in opposition, to unionism or to the British Government. This manufactured narrative has proved remarkably resilient, often insulating the party from any scrutiny of its own decisions and responsibilities.

The willingness of many Sinn Fein supporters and the media to accept those explanations without demanding a more searching analysis has, for years, reinforced that dynamic. There are signs, however, that this may be changing. Recent elections in the Republic and opinion polling north and south suggest that the party's carefully cultivated image of competence coupled with perpetual victimhood is beginning to encounter greater public scepticism even within their own base. Whether that scepticism becomes the catalyst for political realignment remains to be seen, but the assumption that Sinn Féin can indefinitely externalise responsibility for its own policy and political failure appears less secure than it once did.

The leadership of the movement is not oblivious to these changing political realities. Across Ireland, poorly attended republican family meetings have been hosted as the leadership sought to reassure supporters that a border poll, and ultimately Irish unity, remains within reach. Yet the momentum that once appeared to surround the constitutional question has undoubtedly slowed. The certainty with which unity was presented as an approaching political reality has given way to a more cautious and qualified narrative.

The UK's latest Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, on entering office, made clear that constitutional change within the United Kingdom was not a priority for his government, continuing a position adopted by successive British administrations since 1922. His newly appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has likewise indicated that a border poll is not under consideration. That position is not surprising. The electoral evidence has yet to even remotely demonstrate the sustained shift in public opinion that would justify the exercise of the British Secretary of State's discretion under the Good Friday Agreement.

The shift, in opinion is being reflected elsewhere. Sinn Féin's much-heralded Unity Bill failed to gain any meaningful political traction beyond the party's own ranks. Opinion polling across both jurisdictions continues to suggest that voters are more concerned with housing, healthcare, the cost of living and public services than with constitutional change. Performative politics, once one of Sinn Féin's greatest strengths, appear now, to have diminishing returns when measured against the everyday concerns of the Irish electorate north and south.

None of this is to suggest that Irish unity is impossible. Constitutional change remains a possibility. What has become increasingly difficult to sustain is the claim that it is either imminent or inevitable. The language of inevitability has collided with the real arithmetic of electoral politics and Government. For all the certainty with which it was once proclaimed, it is a destination that, in my judgement, lies beyond my generation.

I suspect Sinn Féin is fast approaching the political crossroads that many seasoned observers have long predicted. The strategic assumptions that served the party so well over the past two decades are beginning to encounter electoral and political realities that can no longer be ignored.

The choices facing the leadership are stark. In the Republic, difficult questions will inevitably arise about whether lame duck McDonald remains the person best placed to lead the party towards government. In the north, Sinn Féin faces a different but equally profound dilemma. Having invested so much political capital in the institutions established by the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements, it can neither transform them in the manner once promised nor abandon them without accepting responsibility for the resulting instability.

That is the paradox of Sinn Féin's political journey. A movement that once fought to overturn the constitutional position of the north is now one of its principal custodians. It has become bound to institutions that make the achievement of Irish unity contingent upon the consent of others, yet from which it cannot easily withdraw. The once revolutionary movement has become the establishment, and in doing so has created challenges for itself that cannot readily be resolved.

They are, indeed, interesting times.

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

Hope Springs Eternal

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ The race riots of recent weeks, and the responses they produced, revealed something uncomfortable about the North. 

Despite decades of peacebuilding, racism remains embedded in our society. So too does sectarianism. The two are often treated as separate problems. They are not. Increasingly they feed one another.

I write as an Irish republican, not as a northern nationalist. One of the most damaging developments in recent years has been the tendency to treat racism as a problem that belongs exclusively to the Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist community. When racist incidents occur in loyalist districts, entire communities are condemned. When similar hostility emerges elsewhere, particularly within nationalist areas or across the south, they are explained away as isolated incidents, a product of deprivation, or an unfortunate exception.

Neither approach survives serious examination.

If one community can be judged collectively by the actions of its worst elements, then every community can. The logic is identical. The result is absurd. Neither the PUL nor the CNR population is a single political or cultural bloc. Both contain decent people, prejudiced people and people who simply wish to get on with their lives. Racism does not recognise constitutional preferences. It is carefully constructed and crosses every boundary that we know.

By turning racism into another front in the constitutional argument, the political class and the community gatekeepers have managed to sectarianise a human rights issue. The result is predictable. Communities retreat into defensiveness. Politicians score cheap points. Nothing changes.

The language employed in these debates exposes the contradiction. Terms such as “hun”, “planter” and “knuckledragger” are frequently deployed by Republicans under the banner of anti-racism. They are sectarian slurs. Their purpose is not to challenge prejudice but to reinforce it. They reduce complex communities to caricatures and then they congratulate themselves for doing so.

When Irish Republicans use sectarian slurs to condemn racial prejudice, they are not fighting intolerance, they are simply engaging in a different form of it. Weaponising anti-racism to score points against a traditional constitutional rival strips Republicanism of any moral authority it may hold.

Sectarianism and racism share the same intellectual foundation. Both begin by reducing individuals to a category. Both rely on inherited assumptions. Both permit collective guilt. The target changes. The method does not.

Nowhere is the reality of prejudice within the broader Irish population more starkly exposed than in the treatment of Irish Travellers. This is why the treatment of Irish Travellers matters. Travellers experience levels of discrimination that would provoke outrage if directed at any other group. They are refused access to businesses, excluded from opportunities and treated with suspicion based on surname, identity and background. Their health and social outcomes remain among the worst in Western Europe.

Yet this reality rarely features in conversations about racism within Irish society. Shared religion, shared geography and shared history have not protected Travellers from discrimination and racism. The lesson is obvious. Racism and exclusion are not confined to one tradition. They emerge wherever societies decide that some people matter less than others.

The institutional response in the North has been no more impressive.

The Executive’s record on racial equality is defined less by achievement than by inertia. The Racial Equality Strategy for 2015–2025 was widely criticised throughout its lifespan. During the same period race-hate incidents and crimes continued to rise. The most recent figures recorded by the PSNI are the highest since records began.

Faced with this reality, the Executive led by Sinn Fein has produced another framework. In March 2026, First Minister for All, Michelle O’Neill launched a public consultation on a new draft Race Relations Framework. Critics from across civil society responded with unusual consistency. Amnesty International described it as unfit for purpose. Others called for its withdrawal and redrafting. The criticism centred on a simple point. The framework treated racism as a problem of community relations and integration rather than a problem of structural inequality and discrimination.

Without targets, funding, timelines or accountability, strategy becomes performative. The draft strategy creates the appearance of action and change while avoiding its substance.

Alongside political failure sits another problem. Over the past three decades a substantial industry has developed around conflict management and community relations: the peace industry. Much valuable work has been undertaken by some within the community and voluntary sector, but the funding environment has also produced perverse incentives.

For years organisations relied upon large-scale peace funding. As those resources diminished, new funding priorities emerged. Anti-racism became one of them. The danger is not that racism receives attention. It should. The danger is that racism replaces sectarianism as a funding opportunity.

When organisations depend upon demonstrating crisis in order to secure resources, crisis acquires value. The problem is no longer solved. It is managed. This year, community organisations that once argued there was no racism in Republican areas in Belfast for example were to the fore in claiming funding allocated by the British Home Office to tackle anti-migrant sentiment.

Good relations funding is now allocated to the established gatekeepers, often to the detriment of the emerging support and advocacy groups established by the new migrant communities themselves.

Cultural awareness workshops, diversity seminars and performative events do nothing to address racism or sectarianism. They serve a dual purpose for both community gatekeepers and the political and social elites. It is highly cost-effective theatre. It is significantly cheaper for the Stormont Executive to throw a minor grant to a local community group for an "anti-racism workshop" than it is to build social housing.

Workshops, awareness sessions and symbolic events have their place. They may improve understanding. They may challenge ignorance. What they cannot do is substitute for aspiration, education, healthcare and economic opportunity.

The consequence of this approach is visible in working-class communities across the North. Areas experiencing poor housing, weak services and limited opportunity become vulnerable to resentment and manipulation. Far-right activists exploit those conditions. Migrants become convenient targets. The underlying causes remain untouched. There were no riots on the Malone Road.

When disorder follows, entire communities are denounced as backward or racist. This approach absolves government of responsibility. It transforms political failure into a cultural defect.

The North will not address racism through moral grandstanding. It will not address it through sectarian score-settling. It will not address it through endless declarations of concern.

It will address it only when we are prepared to apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others. True anti-racism requires looking inward with an unblinking, critical eye, regardless of the flags flying at the end of the street

That requires several things.

First, collective guilt must be rejected. Individuals should be held accountable for their actions. Communities should not.

Second, racial equality policy must move beyond rhetoric. Strategies require measurable objectives, funding and enforcement.

Third, public funding should be linked to demonstrable outcomes rather than the perpetual management of social problems.

Finally, inequality must be addressed directly. Housing, healthcare, education and economic opportunity are not distractions from anti-racism. They are part of it.

The recent riots did not create these problems. They exposed them.

The choice now is whether we continue to explain racism through the comforting language of tribal politics, or whether we recognise it for what it is: a societal failure shared across communities, institutions and governments alike.

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

After The Riots

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ The Oxford English Dictionary defines a smear as an attempt to damage someone’s reputation by saying unpleasant things that are untrue.

The civil case against Gerry Adams fizzled out last week, just as many suspected it would. In that narrow respect, I find myself on the unfamiliar ground of agreeing with Adams and Sinn Féin that the case should never have reached the courts. That, however, is where any agreement ends. My own view is simpler: no one should ever again find themselves in the dock over a conflict that ended almost thirty years ago.

I am no lawyer, and I have genuine sympathy for the three victims of the IRA who brought the case. But they appear to have been badly advised and insufficiently alert to the financial risks that civil litigation carries.

I know nothing of how the case began. I can only take the plaintiffs at their word: that they were innocent victims of the IRA seeking the same truth and justice that should be available to all who suffered during the conflict.

Having followed the proceedings closely, I was struck by how thin the evidence against Adams actually was. Stripped of presentation and theatre, it amounted largely to repetition: material long in circulation, drawn from public sources, and allegations that have persisted for decades without substantiation, many of them traceable to British military and RUC Special Branch briefings. John Ware aside, there was little that could honestly be described as new, and even less that could be described as probative. On the few occasions when Adams came under pressure in the witness box, I admit I felt a brief flicker of schadenfreude. It did not last. The reality remained that this was a British court.

It came as no surprise that former IRA figures who had served alongside Adams were not prepared to appear in a British court to testify against him. That remained true even of those who had since broken with the strategy he led or had criticised him publicly. For Irish republicans, participation in a British court attempting to adjudicate on the legitimacy or conduct of the armed struggle remains a line that is not crossed.

In that context, Shane Paul cut a sad and isolated figure, separated from a wider tradition which, whatever its internal quarrels, still maintains its red lines.

The fact that the trial was years in the making gave Adams and Sinn Féin ample time to choreograph their response. The arrival at court in a top-of-the-range Land Rover, wearing an Israeli-made bulletproof vest and accompanied by a security team using Israeli-made communications equipment, was a mistake. The choice of public-facing security personnel was deliberate. It included men who had played a central role in policing the peace and suppressing dissent in Belfast. The message was understood.

Adams had raised the stakes even before proceedings began, issuing a carefully worded statement pre-trial in which, he said, his primary concern was for the victims, while insinuating that they had been manipulated by darker forces intent on advancing the case. He cast it as a full-frontal assault by the British establishment on the legitimacy of the republican struggle.

Safe in the knowledge that this was not, in fact, what the case was, Adams doubled down on the same performance on the opening day outside the court. Saint Gerry of the peace process was once again being victimised by perfidious Albion. It was not Gerry on trial, we were invited to believe, but the republican struggle itself, of which he was merely the embodiment, guilty only of being an Irish republican.

The evidence presented against him told a different story. Had either the British or Irish governments wanted this case to succeed, they could have strategically leaked contemporaneous documents from multiple sources to help make that happen, not least material from figures such as Scappaticci or “Wee Roy”, Gerry’s former driver. The outcome of the case was always set to vindicate not just Adams, but the peace process and both governments that underwrote it.

And that is the heart of it. The case, the evidence, and the outcome changed no one’s mind. Not about the legitimacy of the armed struggle, and not about who or what Gerry Adams was, or remains. Like many others, I do not need a British court to tell me what I know, or what I do not know.

What the case did confirm was something else: the extent to which Adams is prepared to construct and defend a legacy as a man of peace. He is not a foolish man. Given months to prepare, his evidence was delivered without error. There were no slips, no deviations, no uncertainty.

He joined Sinn Féin. It was separate from the IRA. He was never in the IRA. Former comrades were recast as liars or disappointments. Presidents, prime ministers and Taoisigh were mistaken. He had delivered the peace process to the British “on a plate” and, in doing so, had brought the IRA to heel. Resentment followed. The allegation that he had been a member of the IRA was framed not as history, but as smear. He was, he insisted, a man of peace, not an IRA volunteer.

At times, I was unsure whether we were part of the same movement. Sinn Féin was always an army project, even at the point when I left. That was understood internally, whatever was said publicly.

Some of the commentary now circulating, often from those who should know better, suggests otherwise. It reflects not confusion, but revisionism. The past is being recast by people who were either not there or not yet lucid enough to understand what it was they were looking at.

Within the movement, to say that someone was a member of the IRA was never a smear. Many regret their involvement. Very few are ashamed of it. Fewer still would have described it as an unpleasant or false accusation.

That is why the spectacle of former IRA volunteers now supporting Adams, as he recasts IRA membership as a smear, is so difficult to reconcile. It is not ambiguity. It is contradiction, openly stated.

The contradictions were once again visible as Gerry delivered his valedictory speech on returning to Belfast. Standing beneath a mural of IRA Volunteer Bobby Sands, he again asserted that he had never been in the IRA. Behind him stood Sinn Féin MPs and MLAs, arranged and attentive, their presence signalling adulation and loyalty.

At the same time, multiple Sinn Féin TDs, MLAs and MPs issued near-identical statements across social media. Only Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill diverged. The message was uniform: Gerry had gone to the belly of the beast and struck another blow for Irish freedom.

Gerry repeated his concern for the victims who had brought the case. If it was delivered sincerely, it sat uneasily with the reality that one of those involved in planting the bombs stood alongside him.

And so it ended.

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

The Smear

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ responds to Robin Livingstone's open letter to Gavin Robinson.

Dear Robin,

On 10 February 2026 you issued a public statement, via your solicitor, addressed to Gavin Robinson MP, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.

I too have lost someone close to me in violent and unexpected circumstances. I too have lived with the hurt and heartbreak you describe. It is beyond crass for any politician, from any party, to tell bereaved families to “move on”.

Like you, I do not wish to know who killed my family member. I do not want them imprisoned, nor punished. I stopped searching for the truth—an fhírinne—not because I do not want it, but because it would reopen a period of mourning I could no longer endure. I made no promises over a coffin. I do not share the binding commitment to justice that you describe.

Where we diverge is here.

In your letter to Mr Robinson, you range far beyond grief, moving into political challenge and moral instruction. You claim that right, and I accept it. I now claim the same latitude in responding to you.
You have been, at various times, Chief Executive, Editor, and part-owner of the Belfast Media Group. Have you reflected on your own conduct during those years? Have you considered the impact—human, not abstract—of the articles you wrote as Squinter, as Robin Livingstone, or as staff reporter? Do any of those ghosts return to you at night?

Did you, or your paper, ever apologise directly to the families of Stakeknife for the macabre article you authored, which compounded their grief? Did your paper ever apologise to the families of those killed by the IRA as informers, when it carried statements that forced those families to absorb their loss in isolation?

When my own relative was killed, your paper—like many others—participated in that same grim choreography. It hurt.

This is where grief, truth, and justice collide, and where clarity dissolves. None of us—myself included—emerges innocent. The difference is this: I am at peace with the ghosts that come to my door. I own them. I have apologised where apology was owed. I try, consciously, not to repeat what I once did.
So, I return your challenge.

The next time, If you—or one of your journalists—charges off, felon-setting, or into language that brings harm to innocent people, will you pause? Will you consider the hurt that your words might bring or the grief you may be amplifying? Will you recognise that words outlive publication, that they bruise long after headlines fade?

Your sales may dip if you do. But your paper already fishes in shallow waters. If you wish your paper to escape its own macabre past, you will need deeper waters and a larger catch.

And in that sense, it is maybe you who most needs to move on.

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

Dear Robin

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ Gerry Adams was once my hero, a figure who I revered from afar so much so that I felt compelled to join the Republican Movement and play my part in the struggle for a 32 Country Socialist Republic. 

It was Gerry Adams who stirred me into entering a war that I could have so easily ignored from my cosy middle-class suburb.

My hero became my leader, he embodied the struggle, the strategy and the endurance that the long war demanded. His clinical ruthlessness, his unbending demeanour and his personal dignity were traits that were admired by even his most ardent enemies at a time when republicans and republicanism were under fire.

In the post ceasefire years, I got to know him, not closely but well enough to confirm the old adage that you should never meet your heroes. Unlike Martin McGuinness, I found Gerry A quite a disagreeable person. Martin always had a smile and a handshake, a most charming man. Gerry was cold and demanded veneration.

To question Gerry now is a deeply uncomfortable reckoning. There is guilt in it and a sense that I am betraying my past self. Like Michael Phillips, when I look in the mirror, the young man, who gave so much, fleetingly looks back at me and wryly informs me that I should have known better.

In castigating The Beard, it hurts and it shames because it necessitates that my past and my present collide reopening old and painful wounds. Silence, however, would extract too great a cost from my conscience and impede my journey of healing.

Q. What is the difference between Gerry Adams and God?

A. God does not think he is Gerry Adams.

There is unique pathology which takes hold of men (mostly men) who have survived history and helped shape destiny. The Emperor Caligula, Stalin and Bonaparte all exhibited the personality traits associated with “God Complex”. God complex is a phenomenon that does not manifest itself as insanity but in an unnerving conviction that events and history can be shaped according to their will.

Deus Vult: God Wills It

Adams, remapped Republicanism, throughout the last period of our conflict. Every road, the armed struggle, negotiations, decommissioning and the peace process ran back through his leadership of the IRA and Sinn Fein.

His function now, while no longer Presidential, remains of critical importance to the Sinn Fein project and also his careful curation of his own memory. Writing his own epitaph pre-mortem requires the redrawing of moral and historical boundaries.

Denial and reinvention are now his most trusted weapons. He was adjacent to the IRA but not intimate (allegedly) and therefore not accountable for their actions, he alone had the vision for peace, and he alone possessed the knowhow and cunning to deliver it; and Saint Gerry delivered.

Adams’ gerrymandering of history is slowly unravelling, with every legacy investigation and every time the unburied dead bear inconvenient witness, the truth emerges bit by bit. His commentary increasingly demonstrates that his god complex cannot tolerate such disruption to his well-managed eulogy.

The Andytout News affords Gerry A a weekly platform to share his insight with its few hundred readers, a column which is more akin to a papal edict than an opinion piece in a low brow tabloid. Like the Pope, Adams, who now claims to speak “ex cathedra”, writes with the cadence of infallibility and an arrogant conviction that he is immune from error and shall not be challenged or contradicted. Infallible by definition rather than by argument, for his flatterers, if Gerry says it then it must be so.

While the Church has largely moved away from the idea of Papal infallibility, Gerry surrounds himself with a group of sycophants who cater to his ego and uphold his sense of being infallible. These people are not fools (not all of them), rather opportunists who have learned that proximity to power and wealth necessitates the suspension of curiosity.

Their brownnosing is as dishonest as it is corrosive, but it offers them the comfort of a rationale that the bloodshed while regrettable was also unavoidable, and that the final settlement vindicates us all of guilt or blame. The duty of the gaggle of Adams’ flatterers is to accept the myth, applaud the amnesia and nod through the contradictions while genuflecting at the altar of the peace process.

There is a cost to this parasitic arrangement, and as always it is paid by the victims outside the room, those whose experiences and memories do not align with the infallible former MP for Belfast West. There are claims that critical examination threatens to undermine a nearly 30-year-old ceasefire, and that those who seek transparency or accountability and the truth are opponents of the never-ending peace process.

Saint Gerry does not tolerate heresy, not because heresy is wrong but because it is a reminder that believing in Gerry was always optional and dissent from his teaching may well expose him as an ordinary and fallible human.

No Big Suprise - No Shit Sherlock

In his latest Papal Bull, Adams broaches what should have personally been an awkward subject: Kenova. Unlike the Catholic Church, Adams and the Movement have yet to learn that public opinion can be quickly swivelled by humility, an unconditional admission of guilt and a meaningful apology.

Adams’ piece offers a familiar choreography, written as a bystander, someone who was not central to the creation of the Internal Security Unit and therefore not diminished by its actions. He resurrects the ghosts of Brian Nelson, the securocrats and the RUC to confirm his analysis that the “Kenova revelations come as no big surprise”.

Adams deploys his gravitas and privilege to blame the Brits and assert that, just like the Stevens Investigation, the Brits hindered the Kenova investigation team. No explanation is given as to why the IRA refused to cooperate with Kenova even though the movement now endorses the legitimacy of British policing in this part of Ireland. No clarification is given as to why Sinn Fein provided political cover for Scap for years.

Kenova is contextualised within the comfort zone of British culpability through its perfidious intelligence agencies, yet no similar analysis is provided on the machinery deployed by the IRA to maintain internal security.

Stakeknife was an IRA Volunteer, he did not operate independently. Every single act of torture, interrogation and every single execution was at the behest of the IRA and primarily the IRA Army Council who directed the ISU. In an epistle where Adams could have and should have displayed a modicum of humility and contrition, he chose the detachment and arrogance of the infallible.

More importantly what is absent from the Adams opinion piece is any acknowledgement of the people who carried the cost of the ISU. The men and the women who were abducted, interrogated, brutalised and murdered. Families who continue to demand the truth, real people whose suffering is as real as those families championed by the horde of “relatives’ groups”. When their relatives were murdered by the IRA (not the Brits) families were told by the IRA that they had to absorb their grief and not “create a fuss.” These are the families Adams continues to ignore. His omission of an apology was not an oversight, it was not a neutral position, it was a continued exercise of his power and further demonstration of his god complex.

Similar to other infallible leaders such as Stalin, Churchill et al, Adams’s legacy will be tarnished over time. However diligently Adams and his flock of sycophants attempt to launder the record, history will not be kind to him. No amount of slick suited libel lawyers can supress forever what is already known. Adams was not a peripheral figure nor a passive observer of events that ran beyond his control. He was the leader of a ruthless guerrilla organisation, that included the ISU and the consequences of that leadership are his to own.

For those of us that once believed.

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

The Beard

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones, never having met Freddie Scap in his professional capacity as interrogator and executioner in chief for the IRA. 

I recall bumping into him in a crowded Emerald Bar, Dundalk, in 1993, and then a few years later in a pub in Belfast. These encounters were social and accidental and on both occasions my company, who would have been widely respected Republicans in their own right, left me in no doubt as to his standing within the movement.

The first happenstance was the more remarkable of the two, because Scap was with another “fallen angel” John Joe Magee. John Joe who was plastered was keen to impress the crowd with a display of his physique which was not that dissimilar to the wrestler Big Daddy. Having dispensed of his shirt and his vest in a packed bar with the arrogance of the untouchable, someone decided that flicking a lit cigarette butt at his obese torso was their idea of fun.

Things started to get out of hand, and it was only the intervention of Alex Maskey that prevented an awkward escalation into fisticuffs or worse for a young republican from Belfast. Order was eventually restored but it was the first occasion that I heard the watchword “ScapMageed”.

Timelines are important when dealing with the past and the truth, and I clearly remember both encounters. The first was on the Sunday night that the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis ended in Dundalk in 1993. The second was 96/97 when a team of people who had been on “interface” standby over July were having some much-needed pints at the end of an arduous few weeks. Scap was already in the bar, and he joined the small group that I was with. Just like our first encounter, I was in the company of people of authority within the movement, people who would have known if Scap had been stood down or been dismissed as alleged in January 1991. Quaffing pints and engaging in “bar talk” with persona non grata or suspected informers would just not have been the done thing for these boys.

The next time Scap entered my radar was the beginning of May 2003, when the cover up into his criminality, war, crimes and collusion was entering overdrive. Contrary to the brazenly absurd commentary by John Finucane MP on Kenova, the cover up at this stage was being instigated and managed by the hierarchy of the IRA. That IRA cover up continues to this day and remains the greatest barrier to the truth being established.

O’Mulleoir and Livingstone, somehow manged to get an exclusive interview with Scap which headlined in what its critics described as the Provo weekly. Their scoop detailed how Scap, the mild-mannered bricklayer and good neighbour had been maligned by the spooks and was aghast at the allegations that he was an informer or a murderer. The detail that Andytown’s Woodward and Bernstein failed to disclose to their readership was that during the stage-managed interview and photoshoot, Scap was in close proximity at all times to senior members of the Republican movement. Likewise, when Scap went public with his solicitor, he was once again shadowed by his IRA handlers.

Perhaps young John, MP, is blissfully unaware that the most widely used photograph of Scap, is the one taken outside the offices of the Andytout News. A photo taken on the day when the Republican Movement approved a Scap interview in the local Pravda, in an attempt to cover up his bestial crimes.

Mary Lou, not to be outdone by the stupidity of her northern comrade, has once again raucously called out the Brits. Kenova, she says, 'confirms that the British state played a central role in the murder of Irish Citizens north and south.'

Displaying a neck like a jockey’s bollocks, the President of Sinn Fein failed to mention that Kenova primarily confirms without a shadow of a doubt that the IRA also murdered and tortured Irish Citizens north and south. Kenova further verifies that the IRA shattered international humanitarian laws and the laws of war (Article 8 of the Rome Statute) by kidnapping, torturing and murdering civilians and its own members.

In committing what can legitimately be described as war crimes, the leadership of the IRA - those who unleashed the luciferous Internal Security Unit, those who dispatched young men and women to be “scapmageed” - are more culpable than the foot soldiers who carried out their orders. Scap, as inhuman as he was, could not have committed a single murder or a single act of torture without the imprimatur of the IRA Army Council.

Therin lies the rub; Kenova’s outcome was predetermined by the main protagonists from the start. I have no misgivings about Jon Boutchers sincerity or the lengths that his team went to in furtherance of the investigation. He gives the impression of someone who was genuinely moved by the stories of the families and shocked by the horrors that he heard.

The British establishment was always going to protect itself and likewise the IRA establishment was never going to cooperate with Kenova. The British and the IRA hold enough information to bring much-needed closure to all of the families concerned. That both establishments chose not to share their information with Kenova, says much for the future of legacy investigations in the north and demonstrates a sordid commodification of truth by both in their ongoing legacy wars.

The British authorities and Sinn Fein authorities yet again displayed little concern for the needs of the families, for victims and survivors. Their set piece responses to the publication of Kenova reflect the absence of either contrition for wrongdoing or any sense of guilt for what was essentially a joint enterprise.

The response by Relatives For Justice in particular was partisan and macabre to say the least, and their call to reattribute the murders of the IRA to the British was repulsive as it deliberately overlooked the role of IRA in the killings.

Thus, we see a strategy to protect PIRA’s leadership while simultaneously frustrating its fighters, not necessarily killing them. In the end the Northern Ireland conflict was ended not by the insurgents who were killed, but by those who lived - Colonel Richard Irons

Freddie Scappaticci was Stakeknife. Stakeknife was the IRA establishment and Stakeknife was the British establishment, in equal parts. He served both masters loyally. 

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

The Dog That Didn’t Bark 🪶 Operation Kenova

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ The discourse in recent weeks has been dominated by the continuously vexing subject of remembrance and the legitimacy of remembering those who died in war including our own.

I pen this opinion piece cognisant of the fact that that I speak only for myself. I write as someone who has attended too many funerals of lives that were cut short by violence: family, friends and comrades. I have also watched an inordinate number of funerals of those who were killed by the army that I supported and witnessed the heartbreak, the tears and a grief on a par with any at the funerals that I attended.

As the years have passed, the ghosts rarely visit me unexpectedly now. When they do knock at my door it is frequently as a reaction to media interest in a family’s search for the truth. With the fullness of time my guests no longer induce an angry or anxious response, rather of period a reflection and a private personal act of remembrance.

Never Again Shall a Single Story Be Told As Though It Were The Only One - Berger

Lance Corporal David Jones of the British Army was killed in an encounter with volunteers from the Irish Republican Army on St Patricks day 1978. Recognised as a courageous soldier, he was survived by his mother and father, and sorely missed by his family, friends and comrades. Lance Corporal Jones was buried with full military honours, and he is remembered at Upperlands Remembrance Garden in England.

Volunteer Séamus McIlwaine of the Irish Republican Army was killed in an encounter with soldiers from the British Army on the 26th April 1986. Described by his Chief of Staff as “a brave and intelligent soldier” he was survived by his family and sorely missed by his family, friends and comrades. McIlwaine was buried with full military honours, and he is remembered in a monument erected in Corlat County Monaghan.

The armies for whom these two men fought remember them yearly. November for the British Army and Easter for the Irish Republican Army. Their families may also choose to remember them at these times too or they may not, they may choose to wear the poppy or the lily or they may choose not to. That is their prerogative and there is no one and no organisation who should attempt to dictate how or when these families should remember their loved ones. How they choose to remember is a personal matter for themselves alone, be that privately or be that publicly, and we should all respect that unambiguously.

The British State has chosen to remember its fallen soldiers on or around Armistice Day in November since 1919. The leaders of the devolved UK nations of Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland (sic) have respected this tradition since their establishment. Lance Corporal Jones like all British Soldiers is solemnly remembered across the UK and beyond on Remembrance Sunday.

The Irish State has chosen not to remember those volunteers of the Irish Republican Army who have fallen in the most recent phase of the struggle for freedom, and it should be noted that the President of Sinn Fein has confirmed that she will sustain this policy in the unlikely event that she becomes Taoiseach. Volunteer Séamus McIlwaine of the Irish Republican Army will not have his name read out on the steps of the GPO until the republic for which he fought and died has been established.

None of this is new, and the statement of facts as laid out above, should not suggest that there was an equivalence or that there ever could be an equivalence in what these two young men fought and died for. If we are to heal, however, we must accept that grief, hurt and mourning are universal as a starting point.

What passes for mature and reflective discourse on remembrance focussed this year on the decision by Sinn Fein First Minister to lay a wreath at Belfast City Hall on Remembrance Sunday. Sinn Fein were “behind the eight ball” on this one, damned if they did and damned if they did not. My own view is that the “leadership” chose the path of least resistance. The political furore and the probable collapse of the northern institutions that would have followed an abstentionist position would have been far more damaging to the Sinn Fein “project” than the angry words of a few disgruntled former members. Despite my cynicism about the motivation for Sinn Fein to participate in the British States remembrance of their fallen soldiers, the decision they made, and the public rationale given for taking that decision was, in my view, correct.

The north, Northern Ireland, remains an integral part of the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland. Under the peace accord signed in 1998, it will remain so, until the majority of people in the north decide otherwise. That the success of the Sinn Fein “project” is dependent upon the impossible task of persuading a significant number of Unionists to become Nationalists, is not relevant to this discussion. The laying of a wreath will not change a single mind.

The GFA kicked the critical issues of legacy, remembrance and reconciliation down the road because they were too hot to handle at the time. This should not preclude republicans, especially the families of our fallen comrades, from having the mature dialogue that is necessary to map out a principled position on these subjects.

There are communities in the north who believe that Lance Corporal Jones, died fighting a righteous battle against terrorism. This is unlikely to change even in the unlikely event of constitutional change, but the question must be asked, and we must provide an answer as to how these views will be reconciled in our Republic for all. Will our Republic, erase all history of the Irish men and Irish women who served the British State. Are we not obliged to support and provide leadership for those people in Ireland who wish to commemorate and remember their (British) war dead or will we ban the poppy and Remembrance Sunday?

As Republicans are we advocating the obliteration of official remembrance for people who served in the British forces in much the same way that the Free State parties have purged all mention of the volunteers from our era in the States official history.

In the Republic that I aspire to, we will cherish our British children, as wholeheartedly as our children from Ireland, India, Romania, Somali etc. In developing an understanding that there is a different story, and in accepting that other people hold different beliefs, we do not need to diminish our own beliefs or change our own story.

Therein lies the only criticism that I can see of the public Sinn Fein position on remembrance in 2025. It was not the laying of a wreath at City Hall by the First Minister of a British State, but the statement made simultaneously by comrade Kearney at Edentubber.

Unapologetically asserting “the legitimacy of honouring the dead of recent generations” is the antithesis of unapologetically asserting the legitimacy of Volunteer Séamus McIlwaine of the Irish Republican Army and associated actions in pursuit of the Irish Republic. Without honouring and naming the legitimacy of our phase of the struggle, Sinn Fein have by omission, allowed a parity to be drawn between the actions and validity of the Irish Republican Army and the British Army in Ireland. Perhaps it was not the right time to make clear the distinction, maybe the political repercussions of reaffirming the legitimacy of the Irish Republican Army and their actions were too great for a party walking a tightrope in the north and trying to enter Government in the south.

My personal view is that it was a deliberate omission, and one further step in the process of Sinn Fein distancing itself from the Irish Republican Army. Political power is being pursued at all costs, and I predict that at some time in the near future we will all be informed that overt remembrance of the Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army was tactical and no longer conducive to achieving the strategic objectives that Sinn Fein have set themselves.

The dead will not die completely until they are remembered by no-one - Ildan

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

Remembering

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. To understand the world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom." - Bertrand Russell

I am not convinced that when the renowned philosopher Russell penned these lines as part of his series of essays “Mortals and Others” between 1931 and 1935 that even he could have predicted the extent to which the “fools and fanatics” would control the world and dominate the narrative in the early part of the 21st Century.

By the same token, I remain decidedly ambivalent as to whether I would even wish to understand the world as it currently is. I cling to the forlorn hope that good people speaking truth to power can reset the horrific genocidal trajectory now being taken, even though we are witnessing an era readily comparable to Germany of the 1930s.

My interest in Republicanism and world affairs fluctuates. My attention to such matters is occasionally drawn to key touchpoint moments such as elections, the passing of former comrades and genocide. At this juncture in my life, I enjoy reading about our recent past, not the sanitised and “cleared” versions, that I do not recognise, but the ones that challenge the fictions that have been grafted onto the “peace process”. The pressures of work mean that it is only during periods of leave that I have the opportunity to dissect the multitude of books and papers that are now emerging.

I inwardly mapped the skeleton for this article, in August, on perhaps the shittiest RyanAir flight ever, returning from a week’s rest and relaxation in Northern Europe. As before, the catalyst for my writing were the papers released by the UK Government on some seminal moments of the “peace process” but also Trigg's book on East Tyrone and my sabbatical conversations with a group of elderly communists who shared much of my world view.

My holiday hosts had decades of experience in subversive activity in political parties and trade unions. They were vexed and amused by my naivety when we discussed Ireland, the revolution and the current state of nation. Their perceptions on revolution and the inexorable abandonment of principle had been shaped by the multiple betrayals that they had to endure from former comrades who are now very wealthy establishment politicians. As we spent several nights drinking a plentiful local wine, they tried to imbue me with their stoic and pragmatic mindset.

They laughed loudly at my foolishness in thinking that my revolutionary goddess would never become just another cheap whore and for believing that the Irish struggle could ever have culminated in the socialist republic we had toiled for.

They asserted that adopting a binary perspective on life is simplistic and neglects the intricate realities of the world and human nature. The contemporary era is characterised by paradoxes, subtleties, and contradictions: “get used to it” they urged, as if at my age, I am for turning. People and revolutionary movements are inevitably subject to compromise, and at times, may themselves become compromised in pursuit of their objectives. They encouraged me to acknowledge certain unavoidable truths: politicians are a corrupt class, and absolute revolutionary purity is unattainable.

“The rich will always betray the poor” - Henry Joy McCracken.

This presents a challenge for me, as I tend to be a sensitive soul and take dishonesty from others personally. I am offended that we live in such a dystopian reality and that in an era where information and knowledge are so readily available, utopian thinking, rational analysis and honesty appear to have been lost in a fictional world where strawman thinking is paramount.

The intensification of the genocide being inflicted upon the Palestinian people by the state of Israel, we are told, is a justifiable response to the horror inflicted upon them by Hamas on October 7th, 2023. There is no contextualisation of the brutal assault on innocent civilians and an entire population whose survival has been almost totally dependent upon the UNs longest standing mission since 1947. It didn’t start in October 2023!

Children, Doctors, Hospitals, Journalists and aid workers are considered collateral damage in an asymmetrical conflict that has seen all the major conurbations in Gaza razed to the ground. Gaza no longer has any functioning hospitals. Starvation is being used a means to control the movement of millions of people and the inevitable consequential increase in infant mortality barely merits mention.

Similar to the Nazi sacking of Warsaw in 1944, some in the Western World have looked on in disbelief, others have turned a blind eye but most have facilitated the obliteration of Gaza in pursuit of their wider geo-political agenda. October 7th, the fall of Assad and the invasion of Ukraine have all paved the way for the Israeli state to aggressively pursue their final solution to their Palestinian problem.

The belated recognition of a Palestinian State by a handful of Western Governments, who have hitherto actively supported the Israeli state genocide, is nothing more than fig leaf political posturing. Starmer, Macron et al. in trying to reposition themselves to the right side of history, have given far too little far too late. The previously agreed two state solution, which was never optimal for the Palestinian people, can now never be realised - ask Bibi. The newly established Palestinian missions in France and the UK are likely to be the only sovereign territory that a Palestinian State ever again controls.

Trump, Starmer and our very own Mary Lou, the great and the good, have all avowed that the State of Israel has the right to self-defence. Having received this almost universal carte blanche, the State of Israel has defensively attacked Yemen, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and the Occupied Territories since October 7th, 2023, with weapons primarily supplied by the USA and UK. The ill-fated recipients of these pre-emptive, self-defence measures have all experienced the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure in breach of international law.

Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman - Huxley.

Back in the Narnia of Ireland, we are showing the world that when you stop killing each other but fail to address the underlying socio-economic conditions, you really are just kicking the can down the road. Our dystopian post-GFA paradise exploded yet again during the summer recess and brought once more into sharp focus that the sectarian polarisation that continues to plague us has now been inculcated with an overtly racist dynamic. This newer dynamic to the north is as depressing as it was predictable and even more so because it was entirely preventable.

August marked 20 years since the IRA’s final statement which formally approved the GFA as the only legitimate route to Unity and/or the Republic. The GFA was supposed to bring about new dispensation, prosperity, equality for all and radical change. At the time, the late Brendan Hughes referred to the GFA in a manner that was somewhat sarcastic and definitely prescient as “Got Fuck All”.

The Shinners, public masturbation over how much Northern Ireland has changed since the IRA Statement and the return to Stormont was abruptly cut short by the pre-eminent think tank Pivotal.

According to Pivotal, the “Government of change” led by Sinn Fein has delivered fuck all (DFA) socially, economically or politically. There are few who could argue with this assessment and Gerry Adams ceded as much in an article written to counter the growing public and internal discontent with the underperforming Provos in Stormont.

Adams’s missive in the Andytout News explicitly acknowledged his party’s failure to address the issues of real importance to real people such as health, education, sectarianism and poverty. Of course, as one would expect, the Brits, the Unionists and the Free State still shoulder the blame, almost 30 years after the signing of the GFA/DFA.

In what will someday be used as the apotheosis of the “Dunning Kruger Effect” Adams enunciated that Stormont is the only vehicle upon which to build “on the opportunities for progress created by the peace process”. Whatever to fuck this gobbledygook is supposed to mean, it will be little of comfort to the poor, the sick and the hungry as they struggle to survive in our little northern utopia.

In a powder puff piece in the Irish News, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the decommissioning of the IRA (and the completion of IRA decommissioning), Adams was once again given a free rein to rewrite our collective past. Stressing that his greatest fear in 2005 was that the IRA would reject his peace proposals, cuddly Gerry reminisced, that the IRA would not have been sighted on his proposals or his speech in which he was to ask the IRA to “leave the stage”.

There are two aspects of the Adams interview that are jaw droppingly incredulous. The first being that Adams was not challenged on this denial and the second pertains to the report from the “Kew files” published by Sam McBride, also in August.

It is inconceivable (or is it?) that Adams would expect anyone to swallow the falsehood, that neither the IRA nor the British would have advance notice of the keynote speeches he was delivering throughout the peace process. Indeed, McBride’s research, spotlighted a level of choreography between the leadership of the IRA and the British establishment that would not have looked out of place on “Strictly Come Dancing”.

Jonathan Powell, who has been credited with writing key tracts of a crucial Adams’s speech in 2002, did not ascend to the role of UK National Security Advisor without having honed his “tradecraft” during his time in the FCO. His part in the speech where Adams predicts a future “without the IRA” specifically related to the lines on the disbandment of the IRA.

The revelation that British Intelligence contributed to the central sections of the public pronouncements for an individual serving on the Army council presents several scenarios, with the least plausible being that the IRA leadership was unaware of the Adams/Powell tango.

A truth can walk naked, but a lie always needs to be dressed - Gibran

The perpetuation of such dishonesty barbs now as much as the initial act of dishonesty does itself. It was not realistic to expect that the leadership of the movement could inform every member about every detail during critical negotiations. Lies had to be told at that time, and information withheld from the base, that is a given. But it is not unreasonable to expect that (now the “butterfly has flown”), the leadership would at some point in time, bestow the truth upon those who sweated and bled in the fields and the streets.

While we were sent out to paint hollow slogans such as “no return to Stormont” and “not an ounce, not a bullet,” it is now abundantly clear that the leadership had already decided to take a predetermined course of action that included decommissioning and a return to Stormont. The only debate that remains is when that decision was taken.

If one is to believe the recent utterances of Mr Morrison, the chameleon of Carrigart, then the decision to wind down the armed struggle was taken by the kitchen cabinet in the early 80s in the wake of the hunger strikes. The obvious problem with this analysis is that the rank and file were not privy to this decision and it could well be the case that history is now being manipulated to harmonise with the narrative that beatifies former military leaders.

“Hail glorious saint Gerry, dear saint of our isle, he converted the RA with fine words and a smile”.

If Morrison and others are being truthful (oxymoronic I know) then every negotiation and every IRA action from that period onwards should be viewed through the prism of the leadership’s imperative to “maintain the unity and cohesion of the movement” while simultaneously marshalling the movement victoriously up the steps to Stormont. Some of us unknowingly played a bit part in that deception by painting walls, delivering leaflets, protesting on streets and relaying internal briefings with fervour, others paid a much heavier price and none more so than the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA.

Only bad generals need heroes - Brecht

I have strong familial ties to East Tyrone and was domiciled in the area for quite a few years. I knew the towns, the villages, the families and some of the players depicted in Trigg's book on the killing fields of East Tyrone. The book was in my view a fine if somewhat chilling read. Previously reviewed on The Pensive Quill (by Packy Carty and The Fenian Way) here it received a mixed reaction from Republicans and British establishment figures alike.

East Tyrone and its hinterlands were never short of heroes willing to volunteer for active service in the army. Trigg empathetically portrays the internecine conflict as it played out in this small close-knit community where the hunter and the hunted (depending on your perspective) lived cheek by jowl. The British, Loyalists and the IRA all contributed to an attrition rate not matched in any Brigade area in the most recent phase of the struggle. It was however the East Tyrone Brigade of IRA who were to carry the supreme burden of the fallen.

What struck me about the detail that Trigg has added to the post-conflict discourse is that his research is almost entirely reliant upon “grassroots” sources. His innovative approach has provided a valuable insight into some of the most challenging periods of the war, but it also is his work’s weakness.

As someone who did not have an insight into the command structures of the IRA at that time in a rural Brigade area, I would be shocked if the same level of centralised operational planning and oversight did not exist in East Tyrone as for example would have been in place in Belfast.

While some of the operations where volunteers lost their lives seem to have been opportunistic responses to British “come ons” others such as Loughall, Coagh and Clonoe do not give the impression of having been adequately planned, without, for example, realistic fall-back options. One can only speculate as to why the Brigade OO and the Northern Command would have let these operations proceed, but the failure surely rests with the Generals and not with the men who perished. What puzzles more notably than the speculation around informers is why the disasters of Loughall etc. were not seized upon by the then leadership to sue for peace.

The scale of death at Loughall could have been used by those who now state they were “doves” to bring an honourable end to the long war. Why then, did that same leadership choose to send more young volunteers to their deaths and to Long Kesh?

Trigg's book screams from the pages that Loughall was the turning point in the conflict. If the generals who oversaw the IRA could not see this, then they should not have been generals. If they did see it and ignored it then they should not have been in the IRA.

It may have been the cynic in me, or the wine, or just the candour of the company with whom I had just spent a very convivial few days, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the interconnectedness of all of these matters. The dystopian and dishonest nature of the modern world is now enthusiastically embraced by the people who promised us we were fighting for a utopian Ireland. These same people now dispense deceit, injustice and inequality in doses that are equivalent in measure to any historical British and Unionist misrule.

The simple step of the courageous individual is not to take part in the lie - Solzhenitsyn.

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

Summertime Blues

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