IRISH NEWS ROUND-UP
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Wednesday-Friday, 9-11 August, 2000
1. UFF RENEW THREAT TO SHOOT CATHOLICS
2. Derry agreement over main Apprentice Boys parade hailed
3. British Army patrol in Louth
4. Galway man wins legal battle but still faces eviction
5. Appeal to Dublin over list of names
6. Third annual Damien Walsh lecture by Gerry Adams MP
7. Analysis: The North, Democracy and the Irish Nation
8. International Week of Action for Peter McBride family
9. Events in Ireland and Britain
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>>>>>> UFF ATTACK CATHOLICS. THREATEN TO KILL
The Ulster Freedom Fighters' renewed threat to kill Catholics in
Belfast and overnight attacks on nationalist homes has put their
so-called 'ceasefire' into question.
North Belfast Assembly member Gerry Kelly called on the loyalist
paramilitary group to withdraw its threat to following a series
of loyalist attacks.
Several houses in the nationalist Ardoyne area had windows
smashed and orange paint thrown on to them last night at around
the same time the UFF staged a show of strength in the adjoining
loyalist Shankill area.
Four masked gunmen, displaying an array of firearms, stopped
motorists and asked for identification in front of around 30
people before posing for photographs.
The RUC, apparently stung by criticism of its failure to disperse
road blocks during this year's Drumcree crisis, moved in on the
UFF gang.
RUC men pursued the men and during the chase a shot was fired. A
breeze block was also thrown through the windscreen of an RUC
car.
The UFF earlier told journalists that they were reinstating
threats to kill Catholics because of their alleged attacks on
Protestant homes.
Similar claims were made in July when the threat was originally
aired, but were denied by the state agencies which monitor such
activities.
WITHDRAW THREAT
Mr Kelly said during a visit to the homes of nationalist families
attacked in the Ardoyne area that the UFF must lift this threat.
"It seems to be that the UFF ceasefire is obviously not intact,"
he said.
"If they appear to be saying that they are going to attack
Catholics, then how can there be a ceasefire? That is the first
thing and they need to deal with that.
"All I want is that the threat against Catholics and nationalists
is withdrawn. It may be me calling for that does no good but
there is little else I can do."
Mr Kelly said the government must decide how it would respond to
the latest UFF threat and its indications for the peace process.
He urged nationalists living in interface areas in Belfast to be
on their guard and accused loyalists of trying to criminalise the
entire nationalist community for attacks on cars and homes in the
Shankill Road and other loyalist areas.
"Once they said that the attacks (on the loyalist homes) came
from Ardoyne - and I have yet to find evidence that it did - that
led to the attacks on the Catholic homes nearest to loyalist
areas.
"It is a very dangerous and very stupid way to behave but are
they telling us that the people who live in these houses, the
84-year-old woman who lived at the end house here, carried out
the attacks in Denmark Street off the Shankill? It is absolute
nonsense."
TERROR
A woman living in the Ardoyne area today described the terror of
the loyalist attacks.
"At about 10.10pm we were sitting in the living room and the next
thing we heard a bang," she said.
"At first we thought it was shots. We jumped up and went to the
front door and it was covered in orange paint. There was paint
everywhere and broken glass.
"In all the houses everyone ran out and my wee sister was walking
down the street at the time - she is disabled - and she was
petrified. She did not know what to do.
"We were more worried about her at the time and then we saw the
damage. I actually saw the cars driving away and there were seven
to eight boys in each car, aged between 19 and 20."
The eyewitness said most people in the area were shocked by what
had happened and had tried to wash the paint off the houses with
a hose.
"We haven't been able to sleep or anything because we are afraid
of them coming back and doing more.
"You don't know what to do. You're just staying in the back of
the house, keeping away from the front in case they come back."
Loyalists blamed a series of stone-throwing incidents in the
Shankill Road on republicans. But the only credible reports from
the area indicated the violence emanated mainly from loyalists.
SLEDGEHAMMER
A resident in the Carrick Hill area at the foot of the Shankill
Road suffered one such early morning attack. His house had its
glass front door smashed with a sledgehammer and red, white and
blue paint thrown at it.
The man who lives in the area did not wish to be identified but
said that the attack occurred around 3am and the perpetrators had
shouted: "Up the UFF" as it was carried out.
He said the woman occupant and her two children were hysterical
and did not want to return to the house.
John White, chairman of the Ulster Democratic Party which has
close links with the UFF, blamed Sinn Fein and the IRA for the
violence against Protestants. He also accused "Sinn Fein/IRA"
of telling people not to attend a meeting he set up on the issue.
"The consistency of these attacks by nationalists on the loyalist
community has increased. There is no doubt they are orchestrated
and if Sinn Fein/IRA are not behind it they are certainly not
doing anything to stop it."
'TACTICAL'
In South Belfast, a number of homes had windows smashed after
they came under attack from youths firing ball bearings and bolts
from catapults. This week it was anounced that a Protestant
parade is to be re-routed away from the nationalist Lower Ormeau
on Saturday, raising tension in the area.
Gerard Rice, of the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community, blamed
loyalist representatives for ignoring pleas to restrain rioting
youths from Donegall Pass.
He said community workers in his area had managed to quell
reprisal attacks by "keeping people on the ground".
"It's tactical. They are allowing their side to give off steam
while punishing us because of our parades poll last week," Mr
Rice said.
'HE'LL DO'
Meanwhile, a Catholic man has been attacked with a meat cleaver
by loyalists in Ballynahinch. It was the latest in a series of
nightmare sectarian assaults on nationalists in the town.
Father-of-six Trevor O'Brien was walking to a chip shop when he
was attacked by a 12-strong gang.
"Someone shouted 'he's a fucking fenian, he'll do', and the next
thing I was hit in the head and they started kicking and punching
me," he said.
"They picked on someone alone and defenceless, but I was lucky
enough to be able to get away." Mr O'Brien received treatment in
hospital but his injuries were not serious.
* In other news, a pipe bomb was found on a roadside today near
Magherafelt, Co Derry. The device, of a type used by loyalist
paramilitaries in the past, was later defused. And in Donegal,
some 500lb of explosives was uncovered and destroyed by Irish
Garda police after a van was abandoned near the village of
Carrigans.
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>>>>>> Derry agreement on Apprentice Boys parade hailed
The Bogside Residents Group has said there will be no nationalist
protests in Derry on Saturday during the Apprentice Boys of Derry
parade, following an agreement between the residents and
representatives of the Protestant marching order. The commitment
was given following talks between the residents and
representatives of the Apprentice Boys.
Chaired by Mr Garvan O'Doherty and Mr Brendan Duddy of the Derry
Town Centre Management Group, the talks ended speculation about
the annual parade which has led to violent clashes in recent years.
A decision by the Parades Commission to reroute another contentious
Apprentice Boys' parade, scheduled for Saturday, away from south
Belfast's nationalist lower Ormeau Road -- and similar decisions in
other areas -- is believed to have been a factor in the Derry deal.
Mr O'Doherty said both sides had agreed to have a protest-free
day. "We were focused on getting both sides together to produce
results and we feel now we are producing results. The process has
been successful and there will be tangible benefits from that."
A spokesman for the Bogside Residents Group, Mr Donnacha Mac
Niallais, said his group had reached an understanding with the
Apprentice Boys.
"It's an agreement for this weekend. There are outstanding issues
that we have to deal with. We would appeal to members of the
Apprentice Boys coming to Derry to respect the wishes of the
people of this city. We appeal to young people within the
nationalist community not to be provoked into confrontation."
"There will be no opposition from the Bogside Resident Group to
the Apprentice Boys commemorations in Derry this coming
Saturday," he said.
But Derry Sinn Fein councillor Gerry O'hEara warned that RUC
might use the march as "an excuse for provocation and
harassment".
Mr O'hEara said: "There is no reason to erect a ring of steel
throughout the city centre as they have vindictively done in the
past, and this force should make no attempt either to detain or
impede the citizens of this city from carrying out their daily
business.
"The potential for a peaceful day can be realised if the RUC do
not use the Apprentice Boys march as an excuse to invade and
saturate the town."
Wednesday night's agreement between Apprentice Boys and Bogside
residents was widely welcomed in Derry.
The city's mayor, Cathal Crumley, said it offered the potential
for a trouble-free day, and should allow Derry's nationalist
majority to accommodate the Apprentice Boys.
Head of the city's chamber of commerce, Alan McClure, said the
residents and Apprentice Boys acted with courage and
responsibility.
"Their willingness to meet and discuss their differences has
delivered a result that reflects well on the bodies they
represent and on the city," Dr McClure said.
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>>>>>> British Army patrol in Louth
A County Louth resident last night confronted British soldiers
who crossed the border into the 26 Counties.
The man, who did not want to be named, claimed he saw four
British soldiers on the Edentubber Road on Wednesday evening.
The farmer said he was alerted to the British Army patrol at
around 6.40pm on Wednesday.
"I confronted them after getting a call from a friend who said
his kids were terrified," he said.
"I told them they were in the south and that the Garda had been
notified and they got out a map. A short time later they ran
across the field and headed back to the north."
The father-of-four said residents in the area are concerned at
the development.
"I was very annoyed. They should know where they are going," said
the man.
"My friend's kids were very frightened, they are not used to
seeing armed men like this."
Sinn Fein's north Louth councillor, Arthur Morgan, said he would
call on the Taoiseach to put pressure on the British government
to explain the latest allegation of incursion.
"Where is the peace dividend for the people of north Louth?
"Republicans and nationalists are extremely angry at the
continuing and very visible British army presence in south Armagh
and consequent incursions into north Louth," he added.
Last night Toni Carragher of the South Armagh Farmers and
Residents committee pointed out that British soldiers are
crossing the border nearly every day.
"We will be reporting the latest incident to the Department of
Foreign Affairs," he said.
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>>>>>> Galway man wins legal battle but still faces eviction
BY ROISIN DE ROSA
On Shop Street, Galway's main pedestrianised thoroughfare,
teaming with cosmopolitan city life, there is a little corner
house, on a patch of land measuring 18 foot by 7 foot. The house
is at least 250 years old. It has little tables outside and large
umbrellas for the rain. This is "Thimble Castle". It's become a
very small take-away.
Small as it may be, there is a family of English landlords who
are threatening to take the shop away. The Mullins family, who
have lived and worked in this shop over the past 100 years, are
facing eviction by the landlord, one Isobel Davis, who claims
ownership and the right to evict the Mullins's.
Back in 1739, Galway Corporation agreed to grant a lease on this
little plot of land to the sheriff, one Simon Trulock, no doubt
in return for some unrecorded favours he had rendered as sheriff,
or later, as coroner and burgess of the city. The rent was one
shilling a year. History does not record how this lease turned
into a freehold, if it did, and Trulock built a little house on
the land.
A century and a half later, in 1874, Brigade Surgeon Colonel John
Norman Davis's father bought some title to the premises for the
sum of #88, which was added to the considerable Davis Estate of
some 42 properties in Galway and county.
In 1894, the grandfather of Michael Mullins, who now runs the
take-away family business, took a lease on the property for #19
per annum, from which he ran a butcher's shop and reared a family
of six children. By 1899, the close of the last century, the
Mullins family had paid more in rent than the Davis family had
paid when they first bought the property. Nevertheless, the
Mullins went on paying their rent of #19 per annum to the Davis
Estate.
Letter to quit
In 1978, the Mullins received a letter from solicitors, acting on
behalf of Wing Commander Davis, the Surgeon's nephew, suggesting
that the rent payable should henceforth be #1,300 per annum, a
7000 per cent increase. On 1 January the following year, when
Michael's father, aged 74, was lying sick in his bed, a notice to
quit was summarily delivered to his mother by auctioneer Andrew
Roche. He was acting on behalf of a firm of solicitors, Blake and
Kenny, of which the present Minister of Housing, Bobby Molloy's
brother is the principal.
"Imagine how it must have been for them," Michael Mullins says.
"Neither my mother nor father had gone beyond fourth class in
school. My father was very sick. My mother was terrified. They
had three months to quit." The notice to quit was of course an
encouragement to accept the 35-year lease offered at the new
rent.
They did nothing, and the eviction never came, because by that
time the Landlord and Tenants Acts of 1978 had been passed,
giving rights to tenants to buy out the properties. There was
therefore doubt over the legality of the notice to quit.
Bad advice
Neither Michael Mullins' father, William, nor his wife, Rita,
knew any of this. The family sought advice from solicitors Sands
and Brophy, who sought barrister's opinion from no less a fry
than Seamus Egan, later a Supreme Court judge, and a Galway-based
barrister, Conor Fahy. They concurred in recommending that
Mullins should accept the offer of a 35-year lease from the Davis
estate.
Michael Mullins, who took over the shop in 1983, began to realise
that this had been bad advice and in fact meant that in accepting
the lease from the Davis Estate, he had foregone his opportunity
to acquire the leasehold. At the time, he could have bought the
fee simple, Michael says, for under #300, 12 times the annual
rent of #19 which he had been paying. "They never told me it was
a ground rent the family was paying, nor did they tell me that
with a 99-year lease, I had the right to buy it out."
Michael Mullins looked for a firm of solicitors who would take
High Court proceedings against solicitors Sands and Brophy and
the barrister Fahy, who had proffered this mistaken advice. But,
as is well known in any case where professionals are invited to
challenge fellow professionals, they were hard to find.
Advertisement for a solicitor
Finally, an advertisement in the Irish Times, which said
"Solicitor wanted. Courage essential. Money no object" brought
some 90 replies, though it remains unclear whether it was courage
or expenses which was the attraction. Michael Mullins selected
Ray Gilmartin from Kirby and Gilmartin, and away they went with a
plenary summons in 1992, against Solicitors Sands and Brophy, and
Barrister Fahy.
Finally ,the case came to the Four Courts last June, listed to be
heard before Judge Peter Kelly, who has a the reputation of being
judge who doesn't suffer fools, bureaucrats or incompetents
kindly.
The defendants spared themselves the publicity and settled the
very morning out of court with a payment of #75,000 damages to
Michael Mullins, split between both defendants. "It was a great
victory, against all the odds," says Mullins. "But above all the
result shows that I am a fighter and will stand my ground. I
won't concede to the injustice of all of this."
Davis Estate carries on
Immediately after the case, Bobby Molloy's brother, Michael
Molloy, "specifically divested himself of the Davis Estate so far
as Michael Mullins is concerned", and handed the file to a firm
of Dublin solicitors. Nevertheless, he continues to deal with the
rest of the Davis Estate, which is still dealing in several
properties in Galway and is hoping to realise substantial sums on
what remains of the estate, including a property up the road from
Trimble Castle on sale for around one quarter of a million
pounds.
"It's the Dail I blame for this," says Michael. "They took over
the republic for which men had given their lives, and yet they
have done nothing to end this usury by absentee landlords,
selling property over the heads of those who have lived there for
years. What was the republic for if it was not to stop this
injustice, and all the suffering that it brings?
"My parents endured years of hardship rearing us children. It
wasn't easy. Yet they struggled to pay the rent, and now after
all these years, Isobel Davis wants to evict us. It is a
disgraceful situation. It's time the government brought it to an
end. One thing is sure. I'll not be moving out of here."
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>>>>>> Appeal to Dublin over list of names
Sinn Fein has called on the Dublin government to investigate the
case of 23 republicans whose personal details were discovered in
a British soldier's wallet.
The wallet, containing names and vehicle details, was found in a
taxi in Dungannon and handed into the local Sinn Fein office.
At the time the British army declined to comment on
"unsubstantiated allegations" -- but the RUC has finally confirmed
the wallet belonged to a member of the Royal Irish Regiment.
In a letter to a lawyer representing one of the 23 republicans
named, the RUC also stated that "no-one had been arrested and no
further criminal investigation was being mounted".
Fermanagh-South Tyrone MLA Michelle Gildernew last night revealed
that the issue was highlighted at a recent meeting with the Irish
premier, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
She confirmed the wallet was handed over to the Dublin
authorities and called on the government to investigate the case
along with allegations of collusion between members of the
British Crown forces and loyalist paramilitaries.
"We are obviously very, very concerned that this incident
happened and that the soldier was so careless," she said.
"We are also concerned that the RUC has not contacted those who
were named on the list, although this happened back in March.
"People on this list are very concerned about their personal
safety but no one has been arrested.
She added: "It calls into question the whole credibility of the
RUC."
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