Part 2
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>>>>>> Book Review: The Price of Peace
The Price of Peace: An Analysis of British policy in Northern
Ireland
By Michael Gove
Published by the Centre for Policy Studies, London
Price Stg#7.50
It is almost tempting when reading this pamphlet to burst into a
chorus of hallelujahs - a strange feeling given that Michael Gove
is a former Home Editor of the Times, biographer of Michael
Portillo, and much admired by the likes of Max Hastings. The
reason is that, according to Gove, we have done it. The
Republican Movement has achieved everything it ever wanted; it
won the war, its prisoners are free to pick up where they left
off (because, of course, it is exactly what they want to do), it
has cowed the British government into total acquiescence and the
abandonment of unionists and has sucked the Irish government into
wholehearted pursuance of its objectives along the way. A united
Ireland is only a matter of a couple of years away, but long
before that, everyone will be speaking fluent Irish and the sight
of a fluttering Union flag will be just a misty memory.
Oh, would it were true. Sadly, this analysis of British policy in
'Northern Ireland' represents little more than an appeal to
unionist extremists and their associates in the loyal orders.
Worse, it is also a concerted attempt to thoroughly frighten any
unionists who might gradually be inching towards the centre
ground and accommodation with nationalists. It could be dismissed
as just another right-wing diatribe if it were not for the fact
that it has received considerable and approving coverage in the
British press and is likely to find great favour with the most
stridently anti-Good Friday Agreement camp.
It is not difficult to comprehensively refute almost all of what
Gove says but it would take an essay at least three times longer
than his own. One or two points he raises, however, are worth
analysing here. Gove employs the Trimblesque tactic of referring
to any argument with which he does not agree as "flawed" and
couching his own in the language of morality. Like Trimble, he
does not think it is necessary to provide any evidence for such
assertions; he merely labours on in the belief if one states it
with enough authority, that is enough.
So firstly, for example, the section entitled 'The Case Against
the "Peace Process"', is entirely predicated on a bald statement
that "The first flawed assumption of the 'peace process' is the
belief that the 1922 partition of Ireland was an historic
injustice, that Northern Ireland is inherently unviable as an
integral part of the United Kingdom and that history demands the
"greening" of Northern Ireland".
No explanation is offered as to exactly why such an argument is
"flawed"; it just is. Of course, in reality the argument is
profoundly rational; indeed it is one which, being such a perfect
democrat, Mr Gove ought to understand very easily. The reason
that partition was an historic injustice etc is because it
deliberately went against the democratically expressed wish of
the majority of the people of Ireland. Ireland was partitioned at
the point of a British and Unionist gun and all else flows from
that.
Secondly is a frankly absurd section objecting to the proposed
introduction of a clear ethos of human rights and equality into
the Six Counties. Gove raises the kind of ludicrous
scare-mongering spectres that would probably even make the editor
of The Sun blush. Human rights and equality legislation, he
claims, will lead to women fire fighters who are too physically
frail to do the job and disabled police officers (or even worse -
disabled female police officers) unable to pursue criminals.
At heart of this nonsense is not only Gove's dislike of New
Labour but also his demand that Ulster must at all costs remain
British - forever. To that end, he says, any expression
whatsoever of Irishness within the Six Counties must be
immediately crushed; no gesture towards the identity of the
nationalist community should be tolerated. Further, he is
appalled that the outward symbols of what he quaintly refers to
as the "legitimate sovereign authority" - particularly the
British Army - are to be largely removed from the Six Counties,
and any reform whatsoever of the RUC is an anathema.
Gove bemoans the fact that those to oppose the peace process have
been marginalized or accused of the "heresy" of "opposing peace".
What he does not acknowledge, however is the fact that it remains
the case that those who voice their opposition to it are entirely
incapable of coming up with any alternative. And in the case of
the DUP, "opposing peace" is actually a fairly accurate
description of their policy.
As an alternative policy of his own, Gove can only offer
"resolute security action". Oh dear. In other words, the means by
which the "legitimate sovereign authority" should teach
"terrorists" that violence cannot work is to employ, er,
violence. It would, I suspect, be a fruitless exercise to point
out to Gove that the peaceful civil rights demonstrations in the
1960s were met with extreme state violence. The unionist
authorities, the Orange Order and their British sponsors clearly
believed then, as Gove does now, that violence against the
nationalist community works.
That his preferred policy option of "resolute security action"
was tried but failed miserably, at the cost of several thousand
lives, does not trouble him in the least. Nor, crucially, does he
pause to wonder whether the reason he stands on the margins as
the British government, as well as the Irish and American
governments, begins to accept the case made by Sinn Fein, is
because he and his kind have simply lost the argument, moral and
practical, for maintaining Unionist power in the Six Counties.
The Good Friday Agreement is not, as he says, a means of
"levering" the Six Counties out of Britain; rather it is the
means by which Britain is finally beginning to let it go.
BY FERN LANE
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>>>>>> History: The Kilcoole gunrunning
One of the least known but most important gunrunning operations
in Irish history took place in Kilcoole, County Wicklow on 1
August 1914. It arose from an initiative taken in early 1914 by
Michael, The O'Rahilly, Director of Arms of the recently formed
Irish Volunteers, in conjunction with Erskine Childers, Sir Roger
Casement and other prominent nationalists.
Funding from the American-based Clan na Gael and several wealthy
donors enabled Darrel Figgis to purchase 1,500 Prussian rifles
and 45,000 rounds of ammunition from the Hamburg firm of Moritz
Magnus in June 1914. The mission was given added urgency by the
arming of the Ulster Volunteer Force in April with the tacit
support of high ranking British army officers and the
Conservative Party. Many Volunteers and revolutionaries of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood were determined to hasten the
armament of their followers to protect northern nationalist
communities and to encourage the weak London government to honour
its commitment to granting Home Rule for Ireland.
With the guns and ammunition expected in Hamburg from a Liege
warehouse on 4 July, advanced planning for getting the contraband
to Ireland took place. Two yachts, the Asgard, captained by
Childers, and the Kelpie, owned by Limerick Volunteer Conor
O'Brien, sailed separately to meet a German vessel hired by
Figgis off the Belgian coast on 10 July. Kelpie left the Shannon
river port of Foynes on 29 June and made slow progress towards
Cowes in the Isle of Wight, where it eventually met up with the
Asgard. As Childers was delayed by unfavourable weather and did
not arrive from north Wales until 9 July, the rendezvous was
postponed until the 12th. Contact was then made off the Scheldt
near the Ruytigen lightship and the weaponry was quickly loaded.
Asgard, famously, landed its guns in broad daylight at Howth on
29 July, where Bulmer Hobson had arranged a large party of
Volunteers and Na Fianna Eireann to spirit way the cargo. The
Kelpie's munitions, however, had been expected in Kilcoole at
midnight on the 25th after transhipment to the Chotah off Bardsey
Island in the Irish Sea. Sir Thomas Myles' Chotah had an engine
and as such could be relied upon to time its night arrival in
Kilcoole but, once again, adverse weather and storm damage
prevented its meeting with the Kelpie. Instead, both ships took
shelter in St. Tudwell's Roads, off Abersoch, Wales, and plans
were laid to complete the mission the following week.
In Dublin, Sean MacDiarmada helped Hobson select Volunteers to
unload the Chotah and move its contents to safety. On 1 August
the men went in small groups to Kilmacanoge posing as tourists
and after dark made their way to Kilcoole beach, where Sean
Fitzgibbon supervised the unloading. Liam Mellows, tasked with
getting the 600 rifles to secure dumps, was driven to Kilcoole by
Eamon de Valera, a rising figure in the Volunteers. Disaster
almost struck in Bray near dawn when the overloaded charabanc
used as the main transport broke down. The day was saved when a
fleet of taxis was summoned from the city to bring the arms and
Volunteers to safety.
An added concern for the IRB clique on the Volunteer Executive
was keeping the precious guns away from moderates influenced by
John Redmond's constitutional nationalists. Mellows consequently
delivered the rifles to Joseph Plunkett, who apparently hid them
on his Kimmage property yet disclaimed all knowledge when pressed
by the Redmonites. The availability of the Kilcoole guns in the
Dublin area gave the Volunteers a tremendous morale boost and
obliged the British government to take the movement seriously. A
secondary effect of the Howth and Kilcoole landings was the
temporary lifting of the arms importation ban, a useful respite
which enabled The O'Rahilly to obtain a large stock of modern
British rifles. An arguably more important outcome of the
gunrunning, however, was its role in shaping and consolidating
the republican leadership cadre that triggered the 1916 Rising
and later commenced the War of Independence.
BY JAMES KIRWAN
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>>>>>> Analysis: Felons and Fellonis
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The 26-County prison system is designed to punish rather than
rehabilitate. MICHAEL PIERSE takes isue with media coverage of
the recent absconding of prisoner Regina Felloni and argues that
government attitudes, as personified by 'hard man' Justice
Minister John O'Donoghue, are out of touch
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When Regina Felloni escaped from Mountjoy jail guards this week
during a prison outing, the media coverage and comments that
followed reflected much of the establishment's attitudes towards
crime and criminals.
Felloni, the daughter of one of Dublin's most notorious drug
barons, nicknamed "King Scum", was herself jailed for drug
dealing, a horrible and disgusting crime that has caused so much
pain and death to many communities. But does that mean that her
rights as an individual to dignity and rehabilitation are
automatically revoked?
The Evening Herald stated that the "jailed drug dealer is still a
craving junkie". What does this contribute to society? Calling
someone who is obviously suffering from an addiction, a young
woman who has known nothing but drugs, a "craving junkie", indeed
calling any addict a "junkie", what does this achieve?
Felloni was found several hours after her escape at the Pope's
Cross in Dublin's Phoenix Park. It is suspected that she
overdosed on heroin. She was admitted to the James Connolly
Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown and then brought back into
Garda custody. But still, two articles in The Star skimmed over
this minor detail and went for the tongue in cheek headline
'Regina back in jail after a wee break - drug dealer flees from
restaurant' and 'Chalets, comfort and shopping trips', referring
to the activities and conditions at the women's prison in
Mountjoy.
The fact that major newspapers feel comfortable flippantly
labelling Felloni a 'junkie' and giving priority coverage to the
recreational facilities in Mountjoy, above the news of her
overdose, says a lot about their attitude towards convicted
criminals. Talk of 'chalets' and 'comfort' is only taking cheap
shots at the prison system and pandering to those who, in their
ignorance, think that punitive 'justice' is the only way to solve
crime.
While the 26 Counties has a relatively low ratio of prisoners to
population as compared to other EU countries, the statistics are
somewhat misleading. The state also has a relatively low rate of
crime as compared to European countries. Comparing the number of
crimes in the state to the number of prison sentences reveals
that it has the highest level of imprisonment for recorded crime
in Europe after the Six Counties, where 'crime', of course, is a
much more misleading term.
Despite this apparently damning evidence, Ian O'Donnell, who
directs the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT), believes that Irish
people are not really that supportive of punitive measures when
it comes to crime.
The IPRT is a registered charity that campaigns for reform of the
26-County penal system. They are currently researching a document
which O'Donnell says is intended to offer a blueprint which, if
implemented, will radically change the way the penal system in
this state works. He aims for a "model penal system".
"I don't think Irish society is that punitive," O'Donnell says.
"There isn't a punitive constituency in the country." He bases
this belief on the views he heard at the National Crime Forum,
which visited several constituencies in the state during 1998 and
found that most of those who contributed to the debate were, even
when angry at the criminal justice system, not in favour of
punishment alone as a solution to crime.
"People who generally have a more sophisticated view of how to
deal with crime are the people who live in the areas most
affected by it," he says.
The IPRT is campaigning for a halt to the 26-County government's
prison building campaign. Currently, the Minister for Justice is
half way through his pre-election pledge to provide an extra
2,000 places. This is despite the absence of governmental
research or statistics on the prison service in the past six
years or any projections on the amount of spaces actually
required in years to come.
"We are asking the minister to stop the prison building programme
until he can demonstrate these spaces are needed," O'Donnell
says. "This is a fairly conservative request."
The extra 2,000 places will cost in the region of #200 million,
with each prisoner filling those spaces averaging #894 per week
for their upkeep.
"The minister's decision to provide these spaces was based on an
electoral promise he made following public reaction to the
high-profile deaths of Veronica Guerin and Jerry McCabe,"
O'Donnell says. "If there was the same kind of enthusiasm when it
comes to prevention of crime and rehabilitation, which Fr Peter
McVerry and Judge Peter Kelly have been highlighting, then we
would be far better off."
The most recent statistics available (from way back in 1994) show
that 38% of the state's prisoners are on short-term stays for the
non-payment of fines. Many others are heroin abusers who have
been involved in persistent petty offending. In Mountjoy Jail,
roughly two-thirds of the prisoners are chronic heroin abusers.
"The prison service is obliged under various UN treaties to
provide an 'equivalence of care'," O'Donnell points out. "This
means that addicts and prisoners in general should be entitled to
the same facilities when they are behind bars as they would
receive in the community. Prison should be seen as a serious
opportunity for change. At present many addicts develop more
serious addictions while imprisoned."
Those prisoners jailed for the non-payment of fines are also
being subjected to a system which is very unfair, he says. "The
only option currently available to the courts for an individual
convicted for the non-payment of fines is prison. This has to
change. One option is to impose a sentence of community service
on those who fail to pay fines. A means assessment should also be
provided prior to hearings, to assess what fine is appropriate to
the individual based on their earnings and other relevant
factors."
Despite all the money being spent on the building of prisons, the
need for penal reform has not so far been seriously assessed.
While the new women's prison in Mountjoy has been applauded for
its relaxing, friendly atmosphere, the new prison at Wheatfield
is an example of how little has changed. Men are still to be
held, on remand, before trial, in three-bunk rooms. "This new
prison lacks the adequate medical and psychiatric treatment need
for remand prisoners, who are often at great risk of committing
suicide," says O'Donnell. "Remand prisoners tend to feel anxious
and uncertain, as they have not jet been tried, and they deserve
to be in conditions which are as close as possible to normal
life. These are innocent men."
Some holding cells in Mountjoy Jail have twice the number of
prisoners for which they were designed. There are 776 prisoners
in the jail, which was built to accommodate 450, putting great
pressure on facilities and staff. The level of violence in the
women's prison in Mountjoy, by contrast, declined when the prison
moved to housing just one woman in each cell. The incidence of
self-mutilation also fell.
There may well be a need for more prison spaces, but Justice
Minister John O'Donoghue needs to compile clear, recent statitics
before he runs off spending hundreds of millions of Irish
taxpayers' money on a prison system designed to punish rather
then rehabilitate. Prisoners invariably get out at some stage and
if they have not been treated, the chances are that they will
reoffend. Self-righteousness in our society is an evasion of the
truth that many of us could easily be in the position of Regina
Felloni. The message should be that society condemns the crime
committed, but not the human being.
c. RM Distribution and others. Articles may be reprinted with credit.
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