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Showing posts with label Sinn Fein Intimidation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sinn Fein Intimidation. Show all posts
1916 Societies ✊For the most part, the 1916 Societies do our best to ignore Sinn Féin and their antics.

To us, they represent little more than another vestige of a movement that long ago departed from genuine Republican principles in favour of pursuing neo-colonial power, a story that is, after all, nothing new on the island of Ireland. However, the actions they have taken recently, and the lengths to which they have gone to undermine our activists and the projects we are engaged in, are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

As an organisation, the 1916 Societies are accustomed to facing petty hostility from Sinn Féin. But the latest actions have escalated into something far more serious, ranging from outright intimidation to political censorship. It is one thing to be harassed while handing out flyers for an event to commemorate our Republican dead, or to be barred from meeting in local community halls. But in the most recent incident, attempts have been made to prevent us from creating a mural in Beechmount, West Belfast, in collaboration with international comrades. When local intimidation failed to stop the project, Sinn Féin turned its attention to our comrades abroad, exerting pressure on the political party to which they belong, the Catalan ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya).

Following a barrage of phone calls, the activists involved were forced to withdraw the party logo from the mural. Yet even that did not satisfy Sinn Féin. They continued their campaign of harassment until the young activists' trip to Ireland was cancelled altogether. The question, then, is what explains such a low and cowardly response from Sinn Féin? Why would a party that claims the mantle of Republicanism act in such a vile manner, so utterly antithetical to the principles it purports to uphold? As far as the 1916 Societies are concerned. The answer lies in an article published in the Irish News by Patrick Murphy, which suggests that Sinn Féin have found itself stuck in a cul-de-sac, and that their actions are now serving to cement partition rather than working to eliminate it.

Sinn Féin have reached its "emperor has no clothes' moment, as it becomes increasingly clear that they are acting as a harbinger of British rule in Ireland. Rather than engaging in any form of self-reflection or critical self-analysis, they behave like the schoolyard bully, lashing out at everyone else when things go wrong. Sinn Féin are doubling down on its harassment of anyone they perceive as a threat to their project or to their grip on power. This includes those who are genuinely working to bring about a sovereign Irish Republic. Gone are the Republican political aspirations; all that remains is self-interest and ego.

For our part, the 1916 Societies remain as committed as ever to the cause of a 32-county, all-Ireland Socialist Republic. If you are interested in bringing about genuine radical social change, both nationally and internationally, we invite you to join the 1916 Societies.

Sinn Féin 🪶 The Harbingers Of British Rule In Ireland

Anthony McIntyre  ☠  Sam McBride’s contribution to investigative journalism and public understanding has been huge. 

His tenacity and stamina brought transparency to an institution that responds to probing much like a vampire to sunlight - the Power Splitting Executive in the North. His book Burned is arguably the best investigative journalism to have emerged on this island in the past decade. It ruffled the feathers of the DUP as the party sought to swan around on the moral high ground before it faced its swansong as head honcho on the political block.

While not having produced anything as detailed or forensic in respect of the party that upended the DUP, four weeks ago McBride charted the journey that Sinn Fein has made in order to position itself for high office in Dublin. He would not claim to have come up with anything spectacular, even new. All he did was craft a common-sense observation, much the way a sports reporter would trace the history of a soccer club and the changes it had undergone on its way to the cup final. His crime was to write it in an economy of words with a pen that worked like a scalpel.

If the Sinn Féin which might soon lead Ireland’s government had been around in the 1970s, it would have been denounced by Gerry Adams as a traitorous, partitionist, capitalist capitulation to the popular mood; the antithesis of the willingness of the 1916 rebels or the Provisional IRA to disregard public opinion.

Later McBride would itemise the type of changes he had been referring to three weeks earlier,

And it’s not just Sinn Féin’s approach to violence which is different. The party’s revolution is seen in its embrace of capitalism, its support for abortion, its abandonment of hostility towards the EU, its backing for the PSNI and An Garda Síochána, its endorsement of the Special Criminal Court, and in a plethora of other areas.

Nobody yet has pointed out what in any of that is untrue. It reads much like a claim that Liverpool lost the Champions League final last season to Real Madrid. A case of stating the obvious. 

Some of the things the party has changed its position on are welcome – such as supporting the right of women to choose to opt out of their own pregnancy. It seems logical that many people who previously recoiled from the party now vote for it because it has changed so much.

For pointing this out McBride has been pilloried by people not happy with him laying the facts out.

The response was wearily familiar to anyone who writes about Mary Lou McDonald’s party in anything less than reverential terms.
There were various strategies adopted. Anonymous accounts pretended to be terribly disappointed in me — they apparently thought I was a great chap when I was criticising the DUP, until this article opened their eyes to my inalterable bigotry.
This is transparent: Do what we like, and we’ll praise you; step out of line and we’ll decry you . . . 
Others were sneering. It was “fake news” from a “unionist scribe” who as a “west Brit” was too stupid to understand the sophisticated reasons behind their beloved party’s u-turns.​
But the abuse quickly started, as it invariably does. Some of it was sectarian. There were references to “planters” and my “overindulgence and self-intoxication in bigoted Orangeism.

In his 1995 article on Ur-Fascism Umberto Eco warned of mechanisms employed to 'limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.' It would be ludicrous to accuse Sinn Fein of being fascist or Mary Lou McDonald of being an Irish Giorgia Meloni but not so to point out that in its harassment of Sam McBride the party or its online goondas are drawing on tactics which frequently appear in the far right play book. This in a bid to stymie critical reasoning.

In a world where the far right is increasingly pushing irrational obscurantism coupled with the smear that disagreement is treason (echoes of Eco), democratic culture and vulnerable communities will depend on robust journalism strategically positioning itself at each echelon of society's defence in depth. Yet there are ongoing efforts by Sinn Fein to curb such journalism either through SLAPP - which won McDonald the SLAPP politician of the year "awarded to the politician who has proven most reliant on SLAPPs and legal intimidation to respond to opposition, dissent, or efforts at accountability" - or the type of online bullying and intimidation that is being directed at Sam McBride.

Investigative journalism is a vital asset and will prove even more so in a climate where, in the chilling words of Brecht, the bitch that bore the bastard is in heat again. Perhaps now we can better understand why they oppose abortion.  

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

In Defence Of Sam McBride

Anthony McIntyre  ✒ Twenty-two years ago this very day, we had just returned home from the BBC where myself and Tommy Gorman had been interviewed by David Dunseith on Talkback. 

The subject matter was the Provisional IRA killing of Joe O'Connor the previous Friday. That morning a joint piece by the two of us in the Irish News had laid the blame for the killing firmly at the door of the IRA. The evening before, in the offices of the paper, its editor had expressed concerns about our safety following publication. His fears would prove not to be groundless.

The Irish News piece led to the IRA issuing a denial. Like many later denials of other activities it had been responsible for this one had no substance and was blatantly false. By early afternoon the apprehensions of the Irish News editor began to prove well founded.

In our living room sat Brendan Hughes where he was being interviewed by a Boston journalist, Jim Dee. I looked out the window and said, here's the IRA. The journalist immediately said I know Bobby. It was a reference to one of two men about to ring the doorbell, Bobby Storey. I answered the door and invited them in. In the kitchen I offered them tea or coffee in the sure knowledge that I was going through the motion of a polite formality. They were there for neither coffee nor pleasantries. It was the calm before the storm. The night before I had drunk more than a few cups of Irish coffee in the home of Victor Notarantonio, an uncle of the slain man. Like the Irish News editor he too had concerns about safety. I suddenly wished I had remained sober and availed of the benefits of a clear and pain-free head.

Immediately the IRA figures raised the issue of the article in the Irish News. Storey, wearing a combat style jacket, tapped his shoulder to indicate rank - that it was the senior echelons of the IRA in our home and not some local who I might be tempted to tell to fuck off. They denied the IRA had any role in killing Joe O’Connor. My response was to ask them if not the IRA, then who. Storey nonchalantly but chillingly said I don't give a fuck who killed him but it wasn't us. I responded that in such circumstances he would hardly mind an investigation along the lines that Tommy Gorman and myself had called for.

That seemed to rile his colleague who assumed a menacing posture. He asked with more than a hint of menace are you looking an inquiry into the IRA? My response increased his anger: So the IRA did it. We faced up in the centre of the kitchen. He placed his forehead against mine although not violently, more like boxers do during the battle of wills before they step into the ring. My heavily pregnant partner - we would later marry – moved to intervene. Storey raised his hand in a calm down gesture, telling her not to worry about the standoff in front of her eyes, that we all knew each other from jail and understood the rules of the game. It was one of the lighter moments during what was a very tense affair. Yeah, this is how we conduct business in West Belfast, nothing to get excited over - that type of thing. 

When we both stepped back, the man who seconds earlier had his head pressed to mine said to my partner that she needn’t stand there like little Ms Innocent, a pregnant woman merely defending the father of her child, that she too had been up to her neck in maligning republicans online. She lit on him, telling him to learn how to turn on a computer before raising objections to matters that had appeared on the internet.

They left the house as quickly as they arrived, their parting shot a sarcastic dismissal  that I could inform the press that they had been by. I lifted the landline phone right beside the front door and said I’m ringing them now.

As much as I resent their calling to my home in what was an overt act of intimidation, Storey at least was courteous, almost as if this was a routine type of thing he had to do. He was assertive without being aggressive. I guess he felt he did not need to be given that he carried the authority of the IRA.

Later the Boston journalist would publicly state that he had heard a heated row from behind two closed doors but was unsure of what was said. 

I knew both men pretty well, having spent considerable time in their company over many years. I knew the calibre of the opposition on the day. I had made my bed so was prepared to lie in it. My wife just said she felt they were like the LA gangs she knew of in California. Not only did she take no nonsense from Storey’s colleague on the day, later when Sinn Fein assembled a mob outside our house when she was home alone she stepped into the garden and faced them down. We can never forget the neighbour from across the street who pushed her way through the mob, and stood alongside her in the garden, giving out spades about ganging up on a pregnant woman.

It's water under the bridge now although it irrevocably changed my relationship with the local Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein members, raising their animus towards me to a new level. There was the exception but most of them never spoke to me again. Given what has since come to pass, I can hardly say I miss most of them.

When I look back on those dark days in Springhill, I now wonder if anyone among the assembled mob reflects that all of their energy might just have been expended in protecting a British agent at the heart of Joe O’Connor’s killing. Up until recently I thought Christine was a supernatural car Stephen King wrote about. Now I think it is indicative of the spectre haunting the IRA.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

A Visit From The IRA

Anthony McIntyre ✒ What happened outside the home of Tánaiste Leo Varadkar last week was nothing short of thuggish intimidation. 

A mob comprised of “far-right, anti-vaccination and hardline Catholic activists” descended on the property to pollute the Varadkar home with its unsolicited noise, some of which was hateful abuse aimed at sullying Varadkar's right to live his life as a gay man.  

The protest group, which calls itself We the Sovereign People, were behind the demonstration. One of the far-right protesters regularly posts videos online spouting conspiracy theories and has previously targeted Jewish people online. Videos posted to social media show around 25 protesters, some with placards bearing anti-vaccine messages, and another in which homophobic insults can be heard.

The group had, a week earlier on two separate occasions, gathered outside the home of Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and are said to be planning protests outside the surgeries of GPs over the latter's endorsement of vaccination for Covid-19.

On top of this, Varadkar had earlier been the recipient of death threats which were reported as having been taken “extremely seriously" and which at the time led to round the clock Garda protection. 

I have some idea of what it is like to have the peace of my home disturbed by a mob intent on intimidation. I was not at home on either occasion when the mob arrived, led by a local Sinn Fein personality who later became a councillor for the party. We who lived there were not drug dealers or engaged in anti-social behaviour like house breaking or car theft. The ire of the mob was sparked by myself and a fellow former blanketman having spoken out against a Provisional IRA killing of a local republican: Joe O’Connor’s crime was to have belonged to a different IRA from the one the mob supported. On the second occasion, unfortunately,  my heavily pregnant wife stood in the garden facing the mob. I, ironically, was in Cookstown at a conference on free speech, while those gathering outside my home were virulently opposed to any such thing. A neighbour joined my wife and asked the protestors to disperse and desist from harassing a pregnant woman. As unnerving as it was for me, it was much more arduous for my wife who later wrote about her experience:

It first began in earnest in the wake of the IRA’s murder of Joe O’Connor, where I was subjected to a picket of my home, new in a foreign country with no family and few friends, six months pregnant. I had been a union organizer and was no stranger to pickets, although picketing a home in the dark of night was unusual ... A monster had taken over my life. I suffered from severe depression and exhibited all the hallmarks of PTSD ... For speaking out against Sinn Fein, I have been traumatized. Vilified, intimidated, and threatened, I have lived in fear and under surveillance.

When the home of Simon Harris was mobbed by people from the opposite end of the political spectrum to those outside the Varadkar residence, the then Health Minister described it as "intimidation and thuggery. It felt like a violation, it was a violation." So, I instinctively empathise with Leo Varadkar in the face of the violation he endured. His partner too, who like my wife, cannot carry on as normal once the mob seeks to stigmatise the family home.

For these reasons it is welcome that Sinn Fein has jettisoned its previous practice of mobilising home-intimidation against its critics. My local MP at the time our home was mobbed, Gerry Adams, said absolutely nothing against the killers or the people assembled at my home, instead maliciously and falsely labeling myself and Tommy Gorman "fellow-travellers of the Real IRA." Mary Lou McDonald, in a departure from the stance of her predecessor, was unambiguous in her criticism of the gang at the Varadkar home, while her party and Dail colleague Martin Kenny said “intimidating protests outside homes are just not acceptable and are something we all need to stand up against." 

Let's hope, borrowing from the lyrics of an old Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes number, this time it's for real. 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Mob At The Door

Anthony McIntyre muses on why an alleged party member asked for clearance from the Sinn Fein leadership before assisting Gardai in a murder investigation.

The conviction of Crossmaglen man Aaron Brady for the capital murder of Garda Adrian Donohoe sparked a wave of public commentary which saw Sinn Fein caught in the wash. There was no compelling reason for the party to find itself immersed in controversy about a killing for which it bore no responsibility. Yet as the product and prisoner of its own history, it is not unremarkable that it should find a media microphone planted right beneath its nose just before a question was fired about its attitude to law enforcement. 

According to the now retired senior Garda detective Pat Marry, during the murder inquiry he approached a Sinn Fein TD to establish if a party member would be free to assist the force in its pursuit of Adrian Donohoe's killers. The member allegedly had heard Aaron Brady boasting of his exploits.  

Darren O’Rourke, an East Meath TD for the party, said it was his belief that the Garda approach was made to the then Louth TD Gerry Adams. Adams would at the time have been President of Sinn Fein but Marry in making his move would have been aware that he was talking to a former Provisional IRA chief of staff and a person who sat on the body’s ruling army council for decades. The significance would not have been lost on Marry, nor the distinction between monkey and organ grinder. Marry needed to obtain assurances from the power behind the throne that there would be no sting in the tail for the potential witness. 

Darren O’Rourke waxed puzzled as to why Marry might feel the need to get the nod of approval from Sinn Fein in the first place:

The party has been very clear that in so many cases and so many instances that people should come and make statements and if they have information bring to the guards or the PSNI.

This might ring more true today than it did seven or eight years when the situation was not so clear. Just over a year after the murder of Adrian Donohoe, when Adams himself was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the disappearance and killing of Jean McConville, Sinn Fein was at its most vociferous and venomous, labelling as touts and informers people who had not even assisted policing agencies but who had merely taken part in an oral history project that was upended by the British state. Danny Morrison and others fronted a Sinn Fein campaign of vilification against those involved. Intimidation strutted on stilts in a failed bid to force acquiescence in the suppression of any discussion the party felt deleterious to political careers. 



In such a toxic atmosphere it is understandable that a witness might be reluctant to assist the Gardai without first running it past the party leadership. 

There are other factors that any witness then might have had to consider before coming forward with evidence about the murder of a Garda. Sinn Fein had a history of not robustly opposing the deaths of Gardai. Some of its senior leaders served on the army council of the Provisional IRA, a body that claimed the lives of more than a few Gardai over the course of its armed struggle. The senior party figure Martin McGuinness, still alive and well at the time of the Donohoe murder, had been very clear in his 1985 interview in Hot Press Magazine where he specified the conditions under which IRA volunteers could kill members of An Garda Siochana.

in certain circumstances, like in Ballinamore where IRA volunteers felt they were going to be shot dead and were defending themselves against armed gardaí and soldiers.

That ruthless mindset coupled with the Morrison smearwa could only ever induce a safety first mindset of why take a chance? Much easier to have the leadership give the green light before making the offer to assist.  

O’Rourke claims also not to have known of the existence of the culture of fear in the party, which had  been routinely resorted to throughout its existence. This is in spite of the well documented litany of bullying and the activities of the online risk-averse goonda gang who thought vilifying was a safe way to conduct active service.  East Meath no doubt is hardly comparable to West Belfast where the party and the IRA were as one in intimidating and threatening people who spoke out against their more nefarious activities. Shoot to kill in broad daylight was permissible on the streets of Ballymurphy so long as those gunning down unarmed victims were linked to Sinn Fein and not the Parachute Regiment.  

There are some signs that with the autocratic Adams no longer President the party is stutteringly moving in the direction of becoming normalised. An instinctive and natural bully, he had made the party an extension of his own personality whereby the default position was to smear, malign, ostracise and intimidate. Since he stepped back into the shadows there have been calls from the party hierarchy for its members to desist from the online smearing campaigns for which it had become notorious. One smear merchant, Paul Hefferman, was forced to walk the plank after he was caught in the act.

Nevertheless, old habits die hard, and in a party that made a religious-like observance out of Elbert Hubbart's maxim If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names, the temptation to revert to form is not easy abandoned.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Hesitant Witness

Matt Treacy thinks brownshirt sentiment is never far beneath the surface in Sinn Fein.
The Sinn Féin office moving squad

Now politics can come with its share of rough and tumble and is no place for the feint-hearted. So when a senior member of Sinn Féin burst in to Peadar Toibín’s Leinster Office to evict him, perhaps he ought to have taken it in the correct spirit and just fucked off, like.

That has been the suggestion from many Shinners who made light of the witty exchange, and even hinted that perhaps Peadar had forgotten to put on his Big Boy Pants. One wonders too what the “something” might have consisted of.

Such a worldly wise attitude would carry a bit more weight were it not for the fact that the Shinners are ultra sensitive about any slight, perceived or imagined, directed at themselves. They are drama queens of soap opera proportions.

And of course any light being shone on them or truth telling regarding their activities is not an attack on the party, per se. Rather it must be an attack on the “struggle”, whatever that means these days, or even the Irish people as a whole.

I once had the amusing experience of being in the company of an electoral candidate asserting her right to order a drink well after closing time on the basis that she was not a “second class citizen.” She was given the same direction as Peadar.

Sinn Féin are clearly unnerved by the prospect that Aontú will significantly dent their vote in the upcoming local elections. The week before the stormtrooper raid, Pearse Doherty had been put out to insinuate that Peadar is a racist because he had the temerity to suggest that there needed to be a debate on sustainable immigration.

Given Pearse’s emotional opposition to abortion on demand which he abandoned on the orders of the Gauleiter, we might perhaps expect to see him turn up at a KKK hootenanny soon, should votes be perceived to lie in another direction than currently. It is all in the dialectic.

It is nonsense to suggest that Peadar is a racist. His reference to immigration was simply common sense and reflective of what most sane people outside of the open borders ultra left and their race to the bottom robber baron capitalist allies actually believe.

But the ongoing focus of SF on the perceived gap left by the anaemic Labour Party and the large pool of liberal voters who can be placated by faux emotional sound bites rather than actually doing anything practical means they will persist with the current baiting of their opponents rather than engage in any meaningful grown up debate.

Sinn Féin on Dublin City Council have learnt that lesson well. Rather than address the not exactly Schrodingerian conundrum of having a large stock of boarded up local authority houses at the same time there are thousands on their waiting list, they prefer the Student Union politics of flying nice flags, bridge naming and fraternal visits to Hamas in Gaza. They have even taken part in homelessness protests against a council on which they are the biggest party.

Likewise in the part of Ireland they recently administered for Teresa May, they are trying to use opposition to welfare cuts they approved in Stormont as a means to get votes. Both they and their partners in crime (it’s only a figure of speech) in the DUP are both running an Orwellian campaign based on the need to stop the other being the biggest party in Airstrip One.

Let us hope it keeps fine for them both. They deserve one another.

So the most unprofessional actions of the Leinster House chekist should be seen not as the chap having the head staggers, but as a reflection of the real fear within SF that they are going to do badly in the local elections.

While they fobbed off the dreadful performance of ni Riadh in the presidential election as some sort of glitch, even they are not convinced.

It will be interesting to see then how well the array of Aontú and other republican candidates -some of whom were elected as SF candidates – will do. They will certainly take votes from the Shinners, but on what scale we do not yet know.

Republican Army is also available @ Amazon. 


Matt Treacy blogs @ Brocaire Books. 

“Get The Fuck Out Or Something Will Happen.”

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