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Seamus Kearney 🎤 'I know the path i ought to go,
I follow fearlessly.
Inquiring not what deeper woe,
Stern duty stores for me'. Emily Bronte.

After holding a commemoration Mass for Michael in late June 2003 in a packed Saint Oliver Plunkett Church, Lenadoon, West Belfast, I noticed Michael's Company OC sitting in one of the pews at the back. When I approached him he smiled and said,  ' You done well big lad. If something like this had have happened to me, I would want a brother like you to find out what happened and to never give up.' I replied that my journey in finding the truth about Michael was really just beginning and assured him that I was' fit for battle '. We parted company with a handshake.

When I attended my next meeting with the strategic' think tank' of former comrades in August 2003, we discussed whether to accept the outcome of the 16 month long IRA investigation into Michael's execution, in light of what Brendan Hughes had told me. One of those at the meeting pointed out that Michael may have been cleared but the people who had interrogated him were British agents, therefore by default ' the whole waterhole had been poisoned'. He went on to state that not only was the Internal Security Unit ( ISU) compromised but also those on the periphery of the ISU as well. 

A second member of my team agreed and suggested I withdraw from any further meetings with the IRA leadership. I already knew things weren't sitting right with Michael's case and repeatedly told the two IRA personnel that, but felt I was being stonewalled to some degree. However, I finally told the team that i would go along with the 'sanitised version' concerning Michael because my Mother wasn't going to live forever and I wanted to give her closure and peace of mind before she died. That was my reasoning for my alignment to the IRA 's version of events surrounding Michael, whether right or wrong. 

In one of my many conversations with my Mother I specifically recall her reflecting on her life and being left a widow with four children. She said:

I never brought Michael into the world for anyone to take him away from me for no apparent reason. But I can now go to my grave knowing that my son' s good name and honour has been restored. 

My Mother died brokenhearted nonetheless on 26th May 2010. Thankfully, I was with her when she died and the promise I made to her back in early 1986, to go back in time and find out what had happened to her son, was still unfulfilled even though she was unaware of that fact. Therefore, i resolved to carry on and to fulfil a promise made, so called yet again on spiritual forces to come to my aid. And in the fullness of time they arrived.
 
The final meeting with the IRA leadership took place in September 2003 at an undisclosed location. The two senior IRA investigating officers informed me that an agreed text between the Kearney family and the IRA' s Army Council, (joint Army / Family statement), was ready for public release. They also added that this would be the final meeting and if I had any further questions then they would attempt to answer them.

In response i asked them 2 simple questions:

  1. Was Freddie Scappaticci, one of the men who had interrogated my brother, a British agent?
  2. Was Volunteer Michael Kearney executed for compromising the Short Strand bombs in March 1979?

Their reply was terse. In relation to Freddie Scappaticci they said 'the man is innocent until proven guilty' and 'Michael Kearney was not executed in relation to the Short Strand bombs'.

I immediately interjected and told them that Freddie Scappaticci was a British military officer and not IRA personnel and secondly Michael was executed in relation to the Short Strand bombs. A Mexican stand off ensued and the atmosphere changed dramatically for a moment, before the final meeting was drawn to a close.

Subsequently, the 'sanitised version' of events went ahead and the 'joint Army / Family' statement was released through the local press, as I planned phase 2 of the operation to clear my brother's name fully and expose the British agents lurking in the undergrowth.

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act XIX

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy Seven

 

A Morning Thought @ 3151

Gary Robertson ⚽ It may have, if you’re living on the moon or have been trekking through the Amazon, escaped your attention, but on Saturday Celtic won their 56th title, five in a row or if you like their 13th of the last 14th.
 
It’s been a mad season for sure particularly when you consider that since October Celtic have been top of the table for twelve whole minutes but these were the minutes that mattered. Indeed, until Daizen Maeda scored in the 86th minute (more VAR controversy as every inch was analysed to try and keep the title heading to Tynecastle) were Celtic finally top of the league and looking down on the rest. The joy Maeda displayed, the emotion said it all. He’s never lost that hunger, that desire, and he clearly loves Celtic FC. If he does leave in the summer (which seems to be the general consensus among Celtic fans) then he leaves with our blessing, wishing him well and with no bitter taste in our mouths. Daizen Maeda has written himself into the lore of Celtic and in a time when someone can be called a legend for creating a new sandwich we have what traditionalists would call a “real legend” of the club right here. In years to come his name will be mentioned alongside the Lisbon Lions, Henrik Larsson and Jock Stein.
 
Of course there was controversy, after all there needs to be, for the media and something for the fans of less fortunate clubs to moan about.

It began against Motherwell. At 2-2 and Hearts steamrollering Falkirk, it looked like the title was 99.9% in the hands of Hearts.
 
It’ll come as no surprise to readers of this column that I for one agreed with the decision.
 
The decision in question being to award Celtic a penalty for a handball.
 
I’ve heard all the conspiracy theories including Celtic pay VAR to make decisions in their favour and all the usual paranoia that comes crawling out of the sewer every time Celtic get a controversial winner.
The meltdown in the media led by McCoist, Boyd and Lineker was incomparable to anything we’ve seen in the Scottish game for some time - indeed as I watched West Ham capitulate to Newcastle United on Sunday it was brought up yet again - talks of conspiracy of backhanders, bribery and corruption along with the usual anti-Irish, anti-Catholic crap that floods the pages of social media in a tsunami of word vomit, it was there for all to see.
 
It wasn’t the decision that angered the rabid hordes of losers looking to deflect from their own clubs' failings but who got the decision.
 
As I’ve said before there’s an ever widening sectarian divide in Scotland and it’s shameful.
 
I too have let my emotions at times get the better of me but my words and actions whilst wrong aren’t requiring referees and their young children to be placed under 24hr surveillance by Police Scotland.
 
A nineteen year old lad was arrested in connection with the leaking online of John Beaton's family's details, and I for one hope they make an example out of him to show others that this behaviour won’t be tolerated.
 
It was much to Don Robertson's credit that he agreed to take charge of what was the title decider on Saturday.
 
A match again overshadowed with controversy as after Osmand scored in the last minute of stoppage time to secure the title for the Bhoys in green a few hundred over exuberant fans took to the pitch and in the melee that ensued the media were quick to pick up on “reports of violence toward Hearts players.” This was then downgraded to “reports of intimidation toward Hearts players” til eventual radio silence as videos began to circulate of Celtic fans being punched and assaulted by Hearts players and one fan having his phone knocked from his hand and stamped on repeatedly by a Hearts player (they’re easy to find on YouTube). Indeed, listening to callers mention it on Clyde etc and hearing them say “we have to be careful with these allegations caller” whilst only hours before hinting to the world that shadowy figures in balaclavas run VAR in Scotland smacks somewhat of hypocrisy. Never mind though it’s Celtic and next year will be just the same. These small clubs doing all the shouting should perhaps put more effort into winning a trophy than talking about their rivals. It must be awful when all you have is conspiracy theories to fill your trophy rooms with.
 
This Saturday (May 23rd) brings with it the Scottish Cup final, a match with more implications than first appear and for one day every fan of The Rangers will be praying for a Celtic victory.
 
Why? you may ask well let me explain
 
A victory for Celtic would see The Rangers enter the Europa League at third qualifying round and in the event of messing that up they’d still qualify for a Conference league play off and a chance to remain in Europe.
 
A victory for Dunfermline and The Rangers would be forced to play three qualifiers for the Conference league (starting in July) and defeat in any of those and it’s a season without European football for The Rangers.
 
Considering their business model is built on qualifying and or competing in Europe's premier competition and or its close cousin (the Europa league) a Dunfermline victory would throw a huge spanner in the works and give The Rangers a financial headache they don’t need.
 
As well as suffering financially this would mean a squad reshuffle and players needing to be sold to bring in lesser value players to fill these holes.
 
Rangers fans might like to shout from the rooftops that they’re the richest club in Scotland but Financial Fair Play matters, and given the history of the previous Rangers I suspect they won’t want to be caught in another monetary scandal.
 
So you see ex-Celtic manager Neil Lennon against current Celtic manager Martin O’Neill in a match knowing a victory for one side helps Rangers, a victory for the other hinders them. What could possibly go wrong?
 
The match itself kicks off at 3pm and I’m fairly sure it’ll be available somewhere, BBC Scotland, Premier Sports etc.
 
After missing out on promotion Lennon's men will be up for this and I don’t believe it’s as clear cut as you’d think.
 
Before that though we have the Premiership playoff final between Partick Thistle and St Mirren - first leg is on Thursday the second the Monday after the cup final.

Congratulations to Edinburgh City who retained their SPFL status in League Two by squeezing past Brora Rangers and Hamilton who retained their League One status in an enthralling 7 goal thriller v Clyde.

Til next time …. Enjoy the summer break. Now bring on the World Cup …

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Twelve Mins Of Magic Martin

Europe Says ★ Recommended by Christy Walsh.

Protesters backed by Sinn Fein have occupied the Duke of Devonshire’s bookshop, after claims that sheep farmers on his historic Irish estate faced rent increases of about 900 per cent.

The disturbance at Heywood Hill, in Mayfair, central London, could be catalogued under history, politics, the Easter Rising, aristocracy and economics. It was directed towards the shop’s owner, Peregrine Cavendish, 81, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, who has a 3,237-hectare estate at Lismore, Co Waterford, in the south east of Ireland.

Sheep farmers in the rugged Knockmealdown Mountains claim that some of their rents are being increased from €520 (£454) per hectare to €5,200.

Thomas Fitzgerald, who traces his family’s involvement in sheep farming in the Knockmealdowns to the 1600s, told The Journal: 

We’re getting nowhere with it and we want to negotiate on it, so the lads then in London asked what could they do. They knew the duke has a bookshop in London so they did a sit-in protest to draw attention to it, to say to the duke that this is not just a local story.

He said that a “small number” of the protesters hailed from Lismore . . . 

Continue @ Europe Says.

Protesters Occupy Mayfair Bookshop Over Irish Land-Rent Increases

Barry Gilheany ✍ At the time of writing, the writ for the by-election in the Greater Manchester seat of Makerfield created by the resignation last week of the sitting Labour MP Josh Simons has yet to be moved in the House of Commons. 

But it is a racing certainty that the Labour candidate will be Andy Burnham, the current Mayor of Greater Manchester and former New Labour Cabinet minister. Having been cleared to run by the Labour leadership who had blocked his candidacy for the Gorton and Denton by-election in March in which Labour came an ignominious third behind Reform UK and the Green Party victor Hannah ‘the Plumber’ Spencer, he will be formally endorsed (if he is the sole Labour contender) by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) this Thursday. He will fight a Reform UK candidate who will be emboldened by his party’s clean sweep of the local council seats that were up for contestation in the elections of 7 May and by the promise by his party leader Nigel Farage to throw everything at this election. 

Should the ‘King of the North’ emerge victorious in this contest, he is widely expected to launch a bid for the leadership of the Labour Party and therefore the occupancy of 10 Downing Street as the seventh Prime Minister the UK will have had in the last decade. To many in the Labour movement who despair of the lack of direction and communicative competence of the government of the incumbent PM Sir Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham is the saviour; the knight in glistening armour who can prevent Labour from hurtling towards an extinction event at the next general election and the appalling vista of Nigel Farage becoming PM.

The Makerfield by-election will most likely be held during a major international football tournament, the World Cup, just as the EU referendum in June 2016 was held during the European Championships. Britain’s relationship with the European Union has suddenly been thrust into the contest with the declaration by another potential Labour leadership candidate Wes Streeting, who resigned as Health Secretary last week with a stinging rebuke to Starmer over his government’s lack of direction, that Britain should eventually rejoin the European Union as Brexit had been a total disaster. 

Expect the nativist nationalist fuelled Reform bile about a potential betrayal of the will of the British people over the outcome of the 2016 plebiscite, never mind that the form of Brexit the electorate was asked to vote for was never clarified and that on every available metric, Brexit has been of negative consequence for the UK. Expect also ear-splitting dog whistles about immigration and the “small boats invasion” despite the white working class monochromal demographic of Makerfield and the absence (to my knowledge) of migrant accommodation facilities in the constituency. 

Do not rule out, cynical exploitation of those young working-class girls failed by local authority social service departments in the midst of the Grooming Gangs scandals which affected towns in the North West such as Rochdale and Oldham and on Burnham’s head, Reform will pin blame. It must be emphasised that on his election as Mayor in 2017, he initiated a review of historic child sex exploitation allegations in Manchester and Rochdale and later extended it to Oldham. In January 2025, he backed calls for a national public inquiry with limited scope but with the power to summon evidence.

So the Makerfield by-election looks to be one of the most consequential by-elections in British history. It has the potential to be Brexit 2.0; a prefiguration of Britain’s Trump 2.0 moment in the General Election when another leading Western leading democracy falls into the clutches of the populist far or Alt-Right when Reform UK finds itself in a position to form a government of 25% of the total vote (following on from the election of President Le Pen or Bardella in the French election of 2027 and/or the ascent of AfD into the government of Germany). 

It conjures up for Remainers the traumatic images on the red-shirted Vote Leave celebrations in Sunderland after it declared Out on the night of June 23, 2016, which set the pattern for the rest of the night, the stunned horror on the faces on the losing side and the triumphal Perma smirk on the visage of Farage. And that’s before we get onto the wave of hate crimes perpetrated on EU nationals, immigrants, and people of colour in the aftermath of the result. But it could be the moment that the tide turns definitively in the direction of progressives with a mandate for real change to the stagnant economy and sclerotic structures of the British state including the manifest unfairness of the First-Past-The-Post voting system and the concentration of decision making in Westminster and Whitehall.

For if his pronouncements at the Investment Summit of the North yesterday anything are to go by, then Andy Burnham is the Change candidate. Few if any Labour heavyweights these days have delivered such a coruscating denunciation of the effects of deindustrialisation on the North of England in the 1980s and the consequent hollowing out of civic and community life. He made a clarion call for change at the top of the Labour Party voicing the privately and publicly expressed opinions of many Labour members, activists, and elected representatives that the leadership is headed in the wrong direction - if indeed there is any direction of travel apart from muddling through to the next crisis.

His achievements as Mayor of Greater of Manchester represent a template for radical change on a national scale. The provision of affordable and accessible public transport through the Bee network of buses; the integration of health, well-being and social care facilities through the Live Well Service; the creation of the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate or MBacc as an alternative to university qualifications in collaboration with local and prospective businesses which he aims to be fully operational by 2030 and his aims to end the housing crisis in Greater Manchester by 2038 though  focusing on affordable housing solutions exemplify the best in municipal socialism. His securing of funds for Northern communities to alleviate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 earned him the title “King of the North” by the media. His presiding over a less restrictive regime of counter pandemic measures than national arrangements drew praise from Conservative MPs across Greater Manchester. Through working with other Mayors of differing party and ideological orientations. Andy Burnham embodies a pluralistic approach to politics which should bridge the notorious factionalism within the Labour Party.

For some Labour grandees, Wes Streeting’s call for the UK to rejoin the EU is an unwelcome intervention. Andy Burnham’s has started that he is not prepared to rerun the arguments of a decade ago, perhaps a sage course of action but the B word will be resurrected by his putative Reform opponent in the by-election. However, it has a constant elephantine presence within the Labour Party. Starmer’s red line pledges in the General Election on no return to the Single Market, Customs Union and European Court of Justice have the imprimatur of the departed Morgan MacSweeney’s Blue Labour strategy of winning back the ‘hero voters;’ the supposedly socially conservative and mainly older voters in the “Red Wall” who voted Brexit. But for those of the liberal left within Labour and without, it is arguably the biggest turn off in that it alienates the younger, professional and NGO elements of the Labour coalition. It is a sign of the return of the discussion of ideas within Labour which is so essential for its future direction and survival. The tardiness of the Starmer administration to address the effects of Brexit and to reopen any serious engagement with EU relationships is for many, symptomatic of its reluctance to take risks.

Assuming that that the pathway to Andy Burnham’s candidature in the Makerfield by-election is already a done deal, his central dilemma is to align himself more closely with the wider Labour membership, which is overwhelmingly pro-EU or voters in Makerfield, 65% of whom voted to leave in 2016 and who returned a clean slate of Reform councillors earlier this month. As a former MP for the neighbouring constituency of Leigh; he will emphasise his personal connections to and friendships in the area. He has eschewed any desire to reopen the debate and divisions of 2016 and his pitch to Labour voters that he is a real “Change” candidate; that what has gone before is insufficient and that the old ways of doing things within Labour and within national governance are redundant. At the moment, Labour is in a state of temporary stasis with the leader determined to stay put; a position which to even his loyal supporters looks increasingly untenable. One of Burnham’s allies has told the Guardian that they “would give Andy a 45% chance of winning – maybe a bit more than that.”[1] He will go into the contest defending a Labour majority of 5,539 and the entry of a Green candidate into the fray (against the advice of the former Green leader Caroline Lucas) will likely take voters from him unless progressives “game” the contest to the last vote to ensure Burnham gets over the line.

Should he not and should there be no serious challenger to Starmer, it will be après nous, le deluge.

References

[1] Kiran Stacey: 'Burnham facing ‘perilous’ race in crunch byelection. Battle for Makerfield set to be dominated by immigration and Brexit'.' The Guardian 18 May 2026 p.1 

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

Back To The Future, Present And Past 🪶 The Makerfield By-Election And The Survival Of The Labour Party . . . And Maybe The British State

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy Six

 

A Morning Thought @ 3150

People And Nature ☭ This is the final statement by Aleksandr Nesterenko, one of thousands of political prisoners in Russia, to an appeal court on 31 March. 

1-May-2026

He appeared at the appeal via a video link from prison, and shared the statement in a letter, at the request of the For Human Rights (Za Prava Cheloveka) group.

On 19 December last year, the Liublin district court in Moscow sentenced Nesterenko, a university teacher, to three years’ imprisonment, for storing Ukrainian songs on a playlist in a social media account. He made a defiant final statement there, condemning “power based on lies and violence”, and was convicted of “public incitement to extremist activities” under Article 280.2 of the Russian criminal code.

Aleksandr Nesterenko at his first court appearance in November last year.
Photo: Mediazona

This statement at the appeal hearing was published on the For Human Rights telegram channel.

🔴My case was thought up in the investigator’s office. The first I knew of committing a crime was when I was arrested. Of course there is nothing new in all this. That’s exactly how they fabricated political cases in the VChK-NKVD [the Soviet security police, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs].

I got a three-year sentence for a song that I did not have [on a playlist on the social media site V-Kontakte], on the basis of evidence of so-called “witnesses” – evidence in court that contradicted evidence collected during the investigation, and evidence by witnesses who contradicted each other. I was convicted on the basis of so-called “expertise”, which in one paragraph said that in such-and-such a song it said so-and-so, and in the next paragraph said the opposite.

A year before being found guilty, I was put on the list of extremists and terrorists – that is, deprived of all civil rights and of the means of subsistence.

As a citizen of this country – still! – I can not but express my indignation that all the people who fabricated my “case” are not here, where I am. In the same way as we would not trust thieves and fraudsters to look after our money, we should not entrust the security of the state to those who, in carrying out criminal orders, are happy to transgress the law. Because a state that replaces the rule of law with despotism will perish from that despotism.

You have to be absolutely without any honour or conscience to accuse me of keeping, for myself, songs that have not been forbidden by anyone and are widely circulated on line, not because I like them or am somehow interested in them, but because – to quote the grounds for my conviction – I “feel persistent hostility to a group of people, defined by nationality, i.e. Russians, and am guided by the aim of arousing hatred and antipathy towards that group of people”.

You really have to trample all over the law, and common sense, to find incitement to extremist activity in songs that are a hundred years old – one of which was basically a Scouts’ song, that is, sung by Pioneers [the Soviet youth organisation, comparable to the Scouts]. These songs don’t have the slightest relevance to modern-day realities. Not even hypothetically.

If you follow the prosecution’s logic, then charges of incitement to extremist activity should be used to imprison French speakers, communists and other music lovers for the French national anthem the Marseillaise, for the communist anthem the Internationale, and for that wonderful revolutionary song, the Varshavyanka [popular in Poland and Russia during the 1905 and 1917 revolutions]. All the more so, considering that in these songs – in contrast to those that I am accused of listening to – there are actual calls for the violent overthrow of the existing order.

My “case” doesn’t just discredit the legal system, it makes it into a caricature. Who benefits? Is it those who declaim that they are Russian patriots and that, to do their duty, they must defend the basis of the constitutional order and the security of the state? I don’t think so. I think it’s entirely likely that this is not the result of the criminal activity of enemies of Russia who have infiltrated the law enforcement agencies – but, rather, the result of one of the two eternal Russian misfortunes. [The two misfortunes are “roads, and idiots”, according to a saying, wrongly attributed to the 19th century writer Nikolai Gogol, and more likely thought up by the Soviet-era comedian Mikhail Zadornov.] And if, at the end of the day, the roads can be repaired or rebuilt, how can we get away from the idiots?

It would be interesting to know the opinion of the “experts” at the Professor A.R. Shlyakhov Russian Federal Centre for Judicial Expertise, which is affiliated to the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, as to whether there is a public incitement to extremist activity in the song “Battle With The Idiots”, first sung half a century ago by “Mashina Vremeni” [“Time Machine” – see note at end], which includes the following lines:

Pass the rifles to the lads,

We’ll see who the brave ones are.

Pass the rifles to the lads,

And the idiots will get sorted sharpish.

I state, in full cognisance of my responsibilities, that this song is not on my social media channel, just as the Ukrainian folk song “Bandera is our father” is not and was not there … although the valiant warriors of the Federal Security Service and the Investigations Committee – in spite of the bequest left to them by F.E. Dzerzhinsky [the founder of the Soviet security police], and all the obvious facts – claim the opposite. Thank you for your attention.

🔴 Translated by Simon Pirani, 30 April 2026

🔴 Note. “Mashina Vremeni”, formed in 1969 and still going, is a Soviet, then Russian, rock bad with longevity comparable to the Rolling Stones. “Battle With The Idiots” is a popular name for the song, released in 1978, whose formal title is “Day of Wrath” (“Den’ Gneva”)

🔴 More about Aleksandr Nesterenko by Memorial: Support Political Prisoners

🔴 For more about all Russia’s political prisoners, look first at the English-languages pages of Memorial: Support Political Prisoners, Mediazona, OVD-Info,Solidarity Zone and The Last Word. Ukraine’s prisoners in Russian prisons are supported by Zmina, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, the Crimean Human Rights Group and others.

🔴Try Me For Treason, the film.

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Political Prisoner Aleksandr Nesterenko 🪶 They Fabricate Cases, Just As They Did In Soviet Times

Rumble 📺 A powerful and controversial interview with attorney and human rights advocate Stanley Cohen discussing the escalating tensions between the United States and Iran.



Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.

'Time Of Mass Confusion'

Dr John Coulter ✍ Much is being made by the new pan nationalist front that it has a trio of First Ministers in three regions of the United Kingdom, but all this political spin hides the fact that those three nationalist and republican parties are deeply divided on a way forward.

The recent elections in Great Britain saw not just a severe battering for the Labour Party, but also significant gains for the Hard Right Reform UK party as well as wins for the Hard Left Green Party.

But here in Northern Ireland, where there were no elections, the Provisional IRA’s political wing has been burning the midnight oil spinning the spoof about the significance of Scotland and Wales joining Ulster in having a First Minister.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), in spite of losing seats, remains the largest party in the Scottish parliament holding onto the First Minister’s post. In Wales, the main Welsh nationalist movement, Plaid Cymru (PC), overturned decades of Labour rule to become the top party in the Welsh Assembly, thereby getting its hands on its First Minister position.

If folk swallowed the Sinn Fein spin like a bad tasting dose of cod liver oil, you would be forgiven for thinking the United Kingdom is being politically shattered. Nothing could be further from reality as there are radical differences between the directions of Sinn Fein, the SNP and PC.

What’s the point of the SNP mouthing off that it wants to work with Sinn Fein and PC when the exercise is constitutionally pointless because the IRA’s political wing does not take its seats in the House of Commons.

Indeed, the blunt reality which this supposedly new look pan nationalist front must face is that while Sinn Fein has a terrorist military wing, the SNP and PC are both purely democratic parties with no terrorist factions to their movements.

Put bluntly, neither the SNP or PC - unlike Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland - gained their respective positions in Scottish and Welsh politics on the backs of thousands of people murdered and maimed in Scotland and Wales.

While Sinn Fein’s military wing failed to bomb Northern Ireland out of the UK, the perception is that both the SNP and PC would be quite happy with increased devolved powers for their respective parliaments.

The real issue facing the 2026 pan nationalist front is - who calls the shots politically? Is it Sinn Fein, the SNP, or PC?

Given that both SNP MPs and PC MPs take their Westminster seats, is there the possibility that Scottish and Welsh nationalist MPs could ‘suck the Shinners’ into the British constitutional democratic process by persuading Sinn Fein MPs to ditch their outdated abstentionist policy and actually take their seats on the famous green benches, especially if the next Westminster General Election produces a hung Parliament?

Since its formation in 1905, Sinn Fein’s abstentionist policy of various parliaments has been gradually diluted. Perhaps Sinn Fein is still living in 1918 when it won the vast majority of Commons seats in Ireland when the island was still part of the British Empire? No seats were taken.

When the republican hardliners did not get their way over the Anglo-Irish Treaty in the early 1920s, they walked out of the Dublin Dail and sparked the bloody Irish Civil War which saw more IRA terrorists killed by the pro-Treaty Free State forces than were killed by the British during the earlier War of Independence.

Sinn Fein refused to take its seats in the 1982-86 Stormont Assembly, but 1986 also saw the movement vote to drop its traditional abstentionist policy in Dublin’s parliament in Leinster House. That sparked a walkout by hardline traditionalists to form the fringe Republican Sinn Fein party.

And in 1998, the abstentionist policy was further diluted when Sinn Fein took its seats at Stormont in the Assembly formed as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. Sinn Fein even sits in power-sharing Executive where its ministers spend cash given to their departments by the Westminster Government.

Whilst they may crow about independence, the SNP and PC both know Scotland and Wales cannot survive financially without Westminster. Put bluntly, the Scottish and Welsh nationalist interpretation of ‘independence’ is radically different from the republican myth of Irish unity.

In a united Ireland, Sinn Fein would become a political irrelevance as traditional nationalist parties, such as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, would soon swallow up the Sinn Fein vote.

The best the new pan nationalist front can hope for is even more devolved powers for the three regions from London, along with a bigger budget and perhaps even tax raising powers - a move that may not make the nationalist and republican parties as popular as last week’s election results in Britain.

The really big worry for the pan nationalist front is the ‘stay at home’ brigade. Both the SNP and PC either retained their power or got into power because only around half the eligible electorate bothered to vote.

Unionism in Northern Ireland has suffered electorally in the past because of the ‘stay at home’ brigade in traditionally Unionist constituencies. Now that Sinn Fein is part of a power-sharing government at Stormont, could Sinn Fein suffer the same political malaise in next year’s Assembly elections in traditionally nationalist constituencies?

Just as opinion polls are seeing gradual support creeping up for the once election battered UUP and SDLP which dominated the original Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, could 2027 see the current Sinn Fein/DUP grip on the Stormont Executive radically slackened?

In terms of sound bites, the concept of the First Minister hat trick sounds politically delicious. But I wonder how Sinn Fein would sell it to its traditional hardline republican heartlands if the SNP and PC persuaded the republican movement to take its Westminster seats?

When that bitter political medicine is administered to Sinn Fein, all of a sudden the pan nationalist front’s crowing about three First Ministers can be dismissed for what it really is - republican spoofing!
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

‘First Minister Hat Trick’ Spin Is Only Nationalist Spoofing!

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy Five

 

A Morning Thought @ 3149

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