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Seamus Kearney 🎤 'False friends will launch their covert sneers,
True friends will wish me dead.
And I shall cause the bitterest tears that you have ever shed' -  Emily Bronte.

After watching Freddie Scappaticci deliver his odious speech in his solicitor's office on 14th May 2003, Sylvia Jones became enraged at this charade and decided to bring it to an end. Jones had been the journalist with the Cook Report back in August 1993 and had secretly bugged the car Scappaticci climbed into at the Culloden Hotel. She felt her profession was being undermined and dragged through the mud so wrote an article in the newspaper, The People, on 20th July 2003, in which she recounted meeting Scappaticci on 26th August 1993 in the car park of the Culloden Hotel outside Hollywood, County Down. She wrote:

A senior officer in the then RUC warned us in the strongest terms that everything possible should be done to protect Scappaticci because even the slightest slip could put his life in danger and threaten their most important source of intelligence. 

She then released the tape recording of Scappaticci from the bugged car to settle the matter. When Scappaticci was presented with the tape recording in the solicitor 's office he had the audacity to ask could he challenge the tape recording, but was told he couldn't because an independent' voice over expert ' had verified that the voice on the recording matched Scappaticci's voice, in other words they were one in the same person.

The man who had duped the IRA leadership for so long and ironically had entered into a dubious pact with them in order to save his own skin while indirectly helping the IRA hierarchy to save their credibility, had finally run out of road. He contacted his military handlers who faithfully extracted him from the island of Ireland, leaving behind his wife and children. And thus began his life in exile.

In early June 2003 I received a phone call to go to a house in West Belfast in relation to my brother Michael's death. When I arrived i was greeted by a man who told me that he had been Michael's Company OC in 1979. He actually went on to say that he felt guilty about meeting me because 'I am the man who handed your brother over to those shower of traitors and still don't feel good about it'.

When I pressed him further he explained:

When Michael was released from Castlereagh in June 1979 he came to me and I debriefed him. It was me who told him to write out his de-briefing report and to put it somewhere safe as he would need it in the near future. He told me he had been given a severe beating by the Special Branch in Castlereagh and was under pressure. So, to take the pressure off him somewhat he had revealed the whereabouts of a small cache of explosives which were redundant and waterlogged. I myself knew about the cache and knew it was waterlogged, so told Michael not to worry about a useless dump. Immediately after this I informed Brigade about Michael's situation and told Brigade I had debriefed my Volunteer.

Their reply: 'That's not a problem, we value your counsel'.

I thought that was the end of the matter until a few days later, Wednesday June 27th 1979, I was ordered by a Brigade Staff Officer to go and collect Michael and hand him over to 'the Security Team', which was the newly formed Internal Security Unit (ISU). When I protested and told him there was no need for the ISU to be brought in, I was told Brigade had invited the unit in, as was now standard procedure, and they wanted to interrogate Michael in depth. When I said I would need to be with Michael as he wouldn't know anyone in the Security Team, I was told by the Brigade officer,  'He will be fine, there will be a familiar face there.' Which meant Michael would know someone who would be familiar to him. I was ordered to drop Michael off near the Glenowen Inn, Glen Road, West Belfast and that there would be two cars waiting for him in the car park. After I dropped him off at the roundabout on the Glen Road, I watched him walk toward the Glenowen and never saw him again.

When I heard that Michael Kearney was executed in the early hours of 12th July 1979 I went ballistic and demanded an explanation from Brigade who had orchestrated this and invited in Internal Security to further interrogate Michael. To say there was 'dissatisfaction among rank and file' would be an understatement, as other IRA Volunteers and our own support base in Lenadoon were outraged at what had happened to Michael.

A few months later those of us who were disgruntled the most over Michael Kearney's execution were taken aside and had to listen to a statement being read out from Brigade, which claimed Michael Kearney had been a paid agent who had compromised weapons and tipped the British off over the Short Strand bombs, 42 cylinder bombs which had been captured on 6th March 1979. I never believed the validity of this Brigade statement, and thought Michael Kearney had been scapegoated to die to cover up someone else.

After the meeting ended I thanked Michael's former OC for his honesty and returned to my group for a further update. A complicated situation just got even more complicated.

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


Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act XVIII

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3144

Gary Robertson ⚽ By the time I write my next column it’ll all be over.

The SPL champions will be crowned and a bonkers season will be put to bed.

It’s hard to remember one quite as ridiculous as season 25/26.

Helicopter Sunday and the title win by The Rangers in 1991 but they pale into significance when we look at this year. With two matches remaining the title could be won or lost by Celtic at Celtic Park next Saturday (May 16th).
 
Of course they have the formidable hurdle of Motherwell to overcome on Wednesday whilst Hearts face Falkirk at Tynecastle.
 
Providing Hearts and Celtic win their midweek matches, whilst a draw against Motherwell wouldn’t be a disaster for Celtic providing they can better the goal difference on the last day these permutations can be tricky to navigate and I’m fairly certain both Martin O’Neill and Derek McInnes along with the fans prefer a “winner takes all” 90 minute battle under the high noon sun. 

Strictly from a Celtic point of view I hope the sun continues to shine as it seems to bring the best out of the enigma that is Daizen Maeda. In horse racing circles there’s a saying that some horses run better in the spring with the sun on their backs, Maeda is one of those horses or so it would seem.
 
There are matches of course still taking place. At the weekend past on Saturday we had the “New Firm Derby”, Aberdeen v Dundee Utd which resulted in a 2-0 victory for the Dons. Dundee putting 3 past hapless Livingston and Kilmarnock doing their survival hopes no harm with a 3-0 victory over St Mirren.
 
Further down the leagues promotion and relegation playoffs are under away and I need to quickly apologise to fans of Edinburgh City who aren’t quite out of it yet but are currently involved in a battle with Brora Rangers to stay in the SPFL.
 
Others include:

A championship promotion playoff final on Saturday at 5-30 between Stenhousemuir and Alloa Athletic, available on BBC Alba and of course the aforementioned Edinburgh City who face Brora Rangers at 3pm (which coincidentally is the same time as the English FA Cup final),

The teams for the SPL playoff final have yet to be determined but they will be announced next week.
 
Other matches of note this weekend include Hibs hammering Falkirk 3-1 away and Hearts putting the title into Celtic's hands by dropping points at Motherwell in a fiercely contested 1-1 draw.
 
Then there was the usual skirmish on Sunday in the shape of the Glasgow Derby.
 
A game neither side could afford to lose and for 45 mins that showed as at half time there was nothing between the teams. 1-1 at the break was about right but the second half, that was something else.
 
Sure we had the Yang controversy over Celtics first goal but Walsh and the VAR team allowed the goal to stand and that was good enough for me.
 
The argument Butland couldn’t see has been proven nonsense several times from different angles and it’s nitpicking and sour grapes to suggest otherwise. Yang's goal was a gud ‘un but better was yet to come.
 
After the break Celtic were a different animal, hungry, full of desire while worryingly for some of The Rangers fans their team looked beaten and dejected. A lack of passion and a “it’s just another game” attitude rather than being the biggest derby on earth.
 
Even Kris Boyd on Sky Sports questioned the players' mentality. The lack of care if you like was visible throughout the second 45 mins.
 
Before we get to that we have to discuss the Alastair Johnston tackle. He clearly got the ball in what was a fabulous tackle and whilst he also caught the Rangers' Moore afterward the intent wasn’t there in the tackle. Sure he was booked and possibly rightly so for a bad tackle it wasn’t an intentional move to injure the opposing player, therefore the yellow was the right decision. Anyone with any qualms about this feel free to read the rules and take it up with Mark Clattenburg. He got the ball; yes, he caught the man, but he got the ball first and the secondary tackle wasn’t made with intent, therefore a yellow is the right decision on this occasion.
 
So to the second half and it took little time for Celtic to impose their authority on the match. Just seven mins after the break a cross from Tierney was met by Maeda who slotted the ball past the Rangers player of the year Butland to put the Celts in control.
 
I genuinely hope we (Celtic) can keep hold of him in the summer as he’d be a massive hole to fill, a very difficult player to replace.
 
Still the magic is yet to come.
 
The 56th minute (I’ll provide a link) produced a goal the likes of you’ll be hard pushed to better in a Glasgow Derby.
 
A ball controlled first time then an overhead bicycle kick by the man of the moment, Daizen Maeda, landed in the net past a statuesque Butland, sending the Celtic fans into dreamland.

Game highlights including that goal can be found here.

Coming too late to usurp Chermitis’ overhead kick against Celtic for Goal of the season, it was truly sensational stuff. Leaving Celtic fans open mouthed and Rangers fans heading to the exit.

After which there was only going to be one winner and whilst the Rangers did at times attempt to threaten what little fight they had was fairly easily dealt with by Celtic

And so another weekend is over, two games to go for both Celtic and Hearts. Whoever wins both will be Champions.
 
It’s really that simple.
 
This’ll be a week remembered long in the memory of both sets of fans.

Til next time …

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Winner Takes All

Evangelical Times ★ Written by Mike Judge.

A court has delivered its ruling in the Jonathan Fletcher abuse case. 

The findings against him are grievous. They are painful to read. They are painful to write about. Yet truth matters. Justice matters. The protection of the vulnerable matters.

A court has now found the allegations against Fletcher proved at an examination of the facts hearing, after he had earlier been ruled unfit to plead due to his dementia. 

Reports state the court accepted evidence that men under his spiritual influence were subjected to abusive treatment over many years.

This included naked beatings, coercive discipline, and degrading conduct presented as pastoral care or character formation. I’ll spare you the grim details. The offences were said to span decades and involved those who trusted him as a minister and mentor.

Many readers will know the wider background. Fletcher was once a prominent figure in conservative evangelical Anglicanism. He served for many years at Emmanuel Wimbledon. He influenced numerous younger ministers. He was widely respected in some circles. 

That history makes this case even more sobering. ‘Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall’ (1 Corinthians 10:12).

Continue @ ET.

A Warning To Every Evangelical Leader, As Jonathan Fletcher Is Found Guilty Of Naked Beatings

Barry Gilheany ✍ The week gone past marks the centenary of a seminal moment in British labour and political history . . . 

. . . the General Strike, when on 1st May an overwhelming majority (3,653, 526 for and 49,911 against) of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) General Council voted to support nationwide industrial action in support of the coal miners who almost for a year had been resisting attempts by mine owners to impose wage cuts and longer working hours. 

Unlike the 50th anniversary, the occasion has largely been ignored by the mainstream media. There are no drama documentaries of the sort that commemorated the 30th and 40th anniversaries of the 1984-85 coal strike which arguably had as consequential an impact on workers’ rights and trade union activism as the 1926 event. There were no academic discussions or historical features on television or radio reaching back into the archives to recall the testimonies of strikers or other actors such as the volunteers who signed up to run daily services such as trains and trams and distribution of essential supplies as there were in 1976 – possibly the highest watermark of trade union influence on decision making and membership. 

It is certainly remembered in locally organised activities such as the Colchester Trades Council commemorative walk that I took part in (at least until my dodgy osteoarthritic knees forced me to pull out!) as part of the Jane’s Walks programme that occurs annually in early May; named after the urban geographer and activist Jane Jacobs. The TUC General Council organised events up and down the country to mark the General Strike and the liberal left’s newspaper of record, The Observer/Guardian, did carry a review of four recently published books on it, which I will reference throughout this article. It is featured in exhibitions and events in libraries and museums. But it is a largely forgotten event, from a vanished era which unlike other events from over a century ago such as World War One and the Easter Rising with a mini cottage industry of literary and broadcasting output that they have generated, which has largely disappeared from public consciousness. It is the intention of this article to resurrect the memory of “The revolution that never was.”[1]

Background to the General Strike

The General Strike lasted from the 3rd to 12th May. Approximately 1.7 to 3 million workers across heavy industry, printing and other key sectors effectively brought Britain to a standstill. The TUC ended the strike after nine days in the realisation that that it could not sustain disruption to essential services and the miners themselves remained on strike for nearly eight months.

The principal economic driver of the process that led to the General Strike was the fall in the international price of coal in the aftermath of the First World War. The Dawes Plan in 1924 allowed Germany to re-enter the international coal market by exporting “free coal” to France and Italy as part of the reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles for the war. This extra supply reduced the price of coal. Worse was to follow when Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925 reintroduced the gold standard against at its pre-first world war parity of $4.86 to the pound. It would not be the last time in the twentieth century that decisions taken by Chancellors on currency and exchange rate mechanisms would have momentous and deleterious effects on the UK economy. In this sterling became too strong for effective exporting and so there was a further fall in the price of coal. Coal production had fallen to just 199 tons by 1920-24 and total coal output had been in decline since 1914.[2]

The response of the mine owners attempted to force down wages by up to 25% and impose longer hours. Miners resisted and demanded: “not a penny off the pay, not a minute off the day.”

To get some understanding of the issues involved and virtually existential nature of the conflict in the coal mining industry and the raw emotions it generated, it is necessary to briefly explain the structure of the coal mining industry in the early part of the twentieth industry. It was a particularly badly run sector of the British economy, with around 1,400 separate firms owning nearly 2,500 collieries. Many of these were small enterprises, with 95% of the coal produced by a mere 600 collieries.[3] The polarised mindsets of both pit owners and miners’ union leaders were legendary. One member of the Sankey Commission into the state of British coalmining in 1919 remarked:

It would be possible to state with certainty that the union leaders were the stupidest people we had ever met, if we had not on occasions to meet the owners.

One Tory cabinet minister said of the coal owners: “They are about the stupidest and most narrow-minded employers I know.”

The working conditions of the miners need to be described in the starkest of terms which Jonathan Scheer does in his book Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926. Miners were paid for their shifts of seven hours at the coalface. But it took them sometimes a couple of hours of crawling on hands and knees to get to and from the seams. Proposing to extend the working day by an hour as the mine owners did was a matter of life and death in the subterranean depths of the coalfield. For it was at the tired end of the working day – the “murder hour” – that most industrial accidents occurred. On average, during the first half of the 1920s, three miners were killed in accidents daily across Britain. In addition there were on average about 500 injuries, at least ten of which were serious. Herbert Smith, the president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, had lost his father in a mining accident and the union’s secretary, Arthur Cook, had seen a fellow worker killed beside him in a rockfall during his very first day underground.[4] Such tales of death and disability including memories of mass casualty pit explosions have left powerful emotional legacies such as miners as supreme pantheons of labour struggles and wider reverence and awe for what these authentic heroes of class struggle experienced in their everyday working lives.**

After the owners had made their wage cut and work extension proposals, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin intervened with a compromise: a nine-month government subsidy to the coal industry to maintain the status quo. On “Red Friday” 31st July 1925, the owners backed down and the government commissioned the Samuel Commission to investigate the industry. However, the government began to make arrangements for a general strike. They set up OMS (Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies); stockpiled food and fuel and trained university students and other young people from upper middle-class families to drive trains and operate essential services. In March/April 1926; the Samuel Commission report called for wage cuts of 13.5% and the withdrawal of the subsidy. The miners refused to accept these recommendations and after the failure of negotiations initiated by the TUC, the general strike commenced at a minute before midnight on Tuesday 2nd May 1926.

Course of the Strike

The General Strike went ahead despite the concerns of Labour Party leaders who were troubled by revolutionary or anarcho-syndicalist elements within the union movement and of the damage they could do to the party’s new reputation as a party of government.[5] However the point of return was passed because of an eleventh-hour decision by printers of the Daily Mail newspaper to refuse to print an editorial titled For King and Country, objecting to the following passage; “A general strike is not an industrial dispute. It is a revolutionary move which can only succeed by destroying the government and subverting the rights and liberties of the people.” Fearing that an all-out general strike would bring revolutionary elements to the fore, the TUC limited the participants to railwaymen, transport workers, printers, dockers, ironworkers and steelworkers as they were regarded as pivotal in the dispute.

The printers’ strike gave Stanley Baldwin’s government a pretext to break off negotiations to break off negotiations – freedom of the press. Churchill then took control of the state’s media operation by publishing The British Gazette as a government newspaper for the strike’s duration. The government had no need to put any restriction on the new medium of broadcasting as John Reith, the managing director of the then British Broadcasting Company (BBC), self- censored to such an extent in order to avoid any threats of state takeover that, for example, he prevented Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, from issuing a conciliatory message on the BBC.[6]

In an ecclesiastic contrast, in a rare political radio broadcast, Archbishop Francis Cardinal Bourne, the leading Catholic prelate in Britain, condemned the strike, knowing that many strikers were Catholic. He advised his flock that “It is a direct challenge to lawfully constituted authority … All are bound to uphold and assist the Government which is the lawfully constituted authority of the country and represents the authority of God himself.”[7]

Rather than a syndicalist strategy influenced by the revolutionary ideology popular in France and Spain at the turn of the century and which influenced the thinking of then leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) Arthur Scargill during the epic miners’ strike of 1984-85, the General Strike was in the words of Jonathan Scheer “an enormous sympathy strike”. The TUC General Council sought merely to force the government to re-open negotiations rather than overthrow the state. As has already been pointed out, the leadership did not mobilise the full complement of the unionised workforce and maintained some provision for essential needs. The central organisation of the strike included a Food and Essential Services Committee, while its Building Committee permitted construction work to continue for ordinary housing and for hospitals.[8]

By contrast, the government in its objective of the defeat what it regarded a clear and defiant anti-constitutional challenge to its authority. In a manner which prefigured the Thatcher’s years preparations for the 1984 coal showdown, it made comprehensive contingency plans well in advance of the collapse of the talk. Both Baldwin and Thatcher governments posed the question that Ted Heath asked of the UK electorate in February 1974 when the three-day working day and power cuts were imposed in response to the miners’ strike: “Who governs?” and were determined to answer, in the affirmative, the government of the day. It has also been pointed out earlier, that Baldwin’s administration stockpiled food and fuel and mobilised its volunteer strike breaking battalions just as the Thatcher government had stockpiled sufficient supplies of imported coal.[9]

Much saccharine accounts of the General Strike claim that it was a largely peaceful affair and tell comforting stories about football matches between strikers and police in Plymouth and sentimental stories of young persons realising ambitions to drive trains. However the full panoply of the state was deployed to ensure that the country ran as normal as possible. On 4th May under the Emergency Powers Act; troops were employed against workers taking united action for fair pay. Battleships with guns were aimed at docks in the major port cities of Hull, Bristol, and Liverpool. There were also more than a few incidences of violence and sabotage. For example, a group of miners in Cramlington in Northumberland removed rails from the track of a train ahead of a train, which caused its engine to overturn and the derailment of five coaches with mercifully only one person injured.

One strike participant and dock worker from East London, Harry Wilson, recalls the increasing violence with which the police handled the strikers:

One morning we had word that there were troops in the docks unloading ships and the lorries were coming up the Victoria Dock Road… We got to Barking Road outside Canning Town station. Up come the lorries with barbed wire all-round the lorries’ canopy with troops with guns sitting behind the barbed wire… The people were jeering and boing but that was the extent of it. Then the police started pushing from behind and they kept pushing and pushing and pushing and we were pushed onto the road, and it led to arguments and before we knew it the police were laying about us with their truncheons. There were a few broken arms as a result of the blows we had been subjected to[10]

In Britain’s Revolutionary Summer, Edd Mustill rightly takes apart the myth that the strike was a sedate affair in which nobody died. Untrained volunteers were ill-equipped to handle buses and trains with several deaths in train collisions and bus crashes that were attributable to their incompetence. On other occasions, their efforts led to farcical outcomes such as the 37 hours it took for a mishandled steam train to get from King’s Cross station in London to Edinburgh[11]

In the words of Harry Wilson:

We were never voting to involve ourselves in any physical violence in any shape or form. And the strike itself never needed it. I was being guided in my thinking by the elder men that we were going to win this one because it was a national strike and by the kind of power and authority that they exercised. There was no question that there would be capitulation by the government on this matter.[12]

Such hopes were to be crucially dashed by the decision by the TUC on 12th May to call off the strike with no resolution if the government offered a guarantee that there would be no victimisation of strikers. The government stated that it had “no power to compel employers to take back every man who had been on strike.” The miners maintained their resistance until they were virtually starved back to work at the end of November 1926 for longer hours and lower wages. The miners were to taste more bitter fruit with many denied their jobs leading to the choice of the workhouse or emigration with Canada a common destination. The divisions that emerged within the ranks of the miners with the decision of the “Spencer” unions in Nottinghamshire to break the strike by an early return to work added another layer of pain and bitterness in mining communities which returned with a vengeance in the 1984-85 strike.

Legacy of the General Strike

The immediate legacy of the General Strike was the 1927 Disputes and Trade Union Act which included the prohibition of sympathy strikes and mass picketing and which led to trade unions having to implement the opt-in political levy to Labour arrangement. But the disappointed expectations of Harry Wilson powers the radical left view of the outcome of the General Strike as a “sellout” the consequences of which we still live with. Callum Cant and Mathew Lee’s book The Future in our Past locates the plight of today’s precariat in the might-have-beens of 1926: we live now in a future that could and perhaps should have been so different. In the same vein, Mustill bemoans the “squandered solidarity” of 1926, the “unfulfilled promise of working-class power” betrayed by a supine leadership. The “will to unity” seen in 1926, he notes, has long since dissipated even among moderate trade union leaders.[13]

As against this recurring meme of betrayal of the working class by the Trade Union and Labour establishments, are the facts that one of the trade union movement’s big beasts of history Ernest Bevin who co-ordinated the General Strike was never persuaded of its utility again. The basic demand of the TUC was the reversal of the wage cuts and longer working hours being forced on the miners and it was on those grounds that it can be termed a failure at least in the short to medium term sweep of history. But in a much wider historical context, the TUC argues that the strike reinforced the importance of a collective voice for workers. It also claims that such workplace rights such as paid holidays, safe workplaces, protections against unfair dismissal, maternity and paternity rights and the national minimum wage are the true legacies of 1926 as these gains were the results of workers organising together and demanding change.[14]

The much-reduced collective bargaining power of labour a century on from the General Strike is rather more the consequence of the defeat of the NUM in 1984-85 (followed by the defeat of the printers in Wapping in 1987) that of 1926. I would argue that that had the NUM strike had the same undoubted democratic mandate that the General Strike; that means there should have been a national ballot of members, then victory would have been much more likely and that Thatcher could have been ousted from power and the attack on employment rights could have been prevented. In a vastly changed world of work, the General Strike still has something to offer in the historical memory of worker solidarity. Can they be applied to the world of the Amazon distribution worker, the social care worker, the call centre operator and all the other casualised sectors of work? Yes, they can.

References

[1] Colin Kidd, The Revolution That Never Was, The Observer New Review Books 3 May 2026 pp.34-35

[2] Wikipedia

[3] Kidd, p.34

[4] Ibid

[5] Martin Pugh (2011)

[6] Kidd, p.35

[7] Neil Riddell, (1997), The Catholic Church and the Labour Party, 1918-1931. Twentieth Century British History 8 (2) pp.165-193 at p.172

[8] Kidd, p.34

[9] There is a corrective to this narrative which is often promulgated by supporters of the 1984 coal strike. Richard Vien agrees that the Tories certainly discussed the prospect of a strike from the mid-1970s. However he argues that they did not have a clearly worked out plan or much confidence in their ability to win such a dispute. They were even more reticent after their humiliating retreat for the threat of a miners’ strike in February 1981 (a possible sign of the weakness of the Thatcher government at that time). So he argues that stockpiling coal was initially designed to deter a strike rather than to defeat one. Furthermore Thatcher was not always keen to confront the miners and many of those who designed and executed the strategy were not Thatcherites. Indeed some were civil servants not politicians. Richard Vien, A War of Position. The Thatcher Government’s Preparation for the 1984 Miners’ Strike. The English Historical Review Vol.34. No.566. February 2019 pp.121-150

[10] Harry Wilson Memories of the general strike.

11] Kidd, p.35

[12] Wilson, op cit

[13] Kidd, p.35

[14] TUC Website General Strike 1926: Why It Happened and Why It Still Matters 

⏩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.

The 1926 British General Strike 🪶 A Revolutionary Movement Thwarted?

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3143

Remembering Frank Hughes On The 45th Anniversary Of His Death On Hunger Strike In The H Blocks Of Long Kesh.

Frank Hughes 🏴 45 🏴 Eternal Dreamless Sleep

People And Nature ☭ Written by  Simon Pirani.
1-May-2026
Try Me For Treason is a 50-minute film, in English, featuring speeches made by anti-war protesters in Russian courts. 
It has been made by a group of actors to draw English-speaking audiences’ attention to the stand taken by Ukrainians, and Russians, against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Youtube premiere of the film will be broadcast on Sunday 17 May at 20.00 UK time. To participate, go to this link and hit “Notify me”:
☭ Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, thousands of people have been arrested for protesting against the war. Many appear in court, facing years of imprisonment. What do they say to the judges? What would any of us say? This 50-minute film, in English, features some of their speeches in court.

☭ The speeches are from the book Voices Against Putin’s War: protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts (Resistance books, 2025). You can buy a copy, or download a free PDF, via this page.

☭ Readings by John Graham Davies, Leila Mimmack, Gareth Brierley, Maya Willcox and Nick Evans. Script by Simon Pirani and John Graham Davies. Videography by Anthony Aldis.

☭ From Sunday 17 May the film will be free to view, or download, on Youtube, under a Creative Commons licence.

And here is a trailer to share:

There will be an in-person film premiere in London at 6.30pm on Sunday 17 May, just before the Youtube premiere – all welcome! – details below.


☭ This film (which I helped to put together) conveys something of the reality of opposition in Russia to the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine: defiant individual protests, and these brave speeches in court, are almost the only public expressions of this opposition. But the importance of the stand these people are taking can not be measured in numbers. At a time when not only Russia but also the US, Israel and other powers are plunging the world into a terrifying array of new wars, this has international relevance. So I ask readers to sign up for the Youtube premiere and circulate information about the film -  Simon Pirani, 1 May 2026.

☭ Political prisoner Aleksandr Nesterenko: they fabricate cases, just as they did in Soviet times.

☭ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitter, whatsapp and telegram. Please follow! Or email peoplenature@protonmail.com, and we’ll add you to our circulation list (2-4 messages per month)

Try Me For Treason 🎥 The Film

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his expansive body of work. 

Bullet

Bullet Slice, slick, shape cut deep, air burst
 Spiral, twisted point to pain, copper
 Flacked jacket deep in shattered bone
♞♜♝
Mouth let smoke assist to open wound 
With hopeless vision of soft hollowed stare
 Halted, gasp, flashed bright in darkness 
♞♜♝
 Snarled, whistle, clashed with sound,
Convulsed shape splashed on red washed ground
 bold, streaks, none in line. Ending time

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Bullet

Dr John Coulter ✍ The might of the Right! 

That’s the message which the Reform UK party has sent not just to 10 Downing Street and the Prime Minister’s desk, but right across the entire Westminster political establishment.

One of the key messages from Reform’s victories in mainland Britain’s elections in Scotland, Wales and England is that Hard Right politics are now part of the mainstream. Being Hard Right is no longer dismissed as being on the lunatic fringe of the political spectrum.

If the weekend results in Britain are taken as a benchmark and repeated in the next Westminster General Election, Reform boss Nigel Farage will be the next UK PM.

While such a prospect may well initially be welcomed with much cheering among Unionism in the UK generally, it could well bring the Northern Ireland pro-Union community down to earth with a rapid political bump.

In sporting terms, as a life-long Arsenal supporter, I’d compare the Reform victory at the weekend to the euphoria I felt when my beloved Gunners reached the Champions League final later this month for the first time since 2006 - only to learn that their opponents will be the fast-flowing Paris Saint-Germain team, affectionally known as PSG!

While Farage has consistently proven himself to be a vote winner - you need only look at his record in European elections with the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) and later with the Brexit Party - the big question for the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland remains; can a Farage-led Westminster Government be trusted with the Union?

Oh yes, Scottish and Welsh nationalists can kiss goodbye to any hopes of an independence referendum while Farage has the keys to 10 Downing Street, but given past experiences with supposedly Right-wing administrations in Downing Street, perhaps the weekend euphoria at the Reform Hard Right victory will soon evaporate in Ulster.

Let’s not forget the track record of supposedly Right-wing Tory administrations in their treatment of the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland. In 1972, when Ted Heath was PM, he was responsible for the proroguing of the original Unionist-dominated Stormont Parliament which had run Northern Ireland for decades. Okay, Heath was regarded ideologically as a ‘Tory Wet’, but his administration was still - albeit slightly - Right of centre.

But the real lesson for Ulster’s pro-Union community from a Right-wing Tory administration in Downing Street came in 1979 after the Westminster General Election when Maggie Thatcher swept to power.

Unionists were hoping for a ‘no punches pulled’ policy towards the terror campaign by republicans. Even then Ulster Unionist Party leader, the late Jim Molyneaux, would talk privately about his ‘special relationship’ with Thatcher.

That was all to come to a crashing halt in November 1985 when Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement which gave Dublin its first real saying in the running of Northern Ireland since partition in the 1920s.

While Thatcher was viewed nationally as a tough-talking Right-wing PM, Northern Ireland Unionism felt totally betrayed by the 1985 Hillsborough accord. Even all the marching as part of the Ulster Says No campaign failed to scupper the so-called Dublin Diktat.

Northern Ireland’s position within the Union was perceived to be further diluted in December 1993 when then Tory PM John Major signed the Downing Street Declaration with Dublin, a document which laid the foundation stone to the disbanding of the RUC and its replacement with the PSNI.

Okay, so those PMs were Tories of various shades of the Right. But with Reform, we in Northern Ireland Unionism must never forget that many who have defected to Reform have come from the Conservative party.

During my time as Northern Political Correspondent with the Irish Daily Star, I had the opportunity to interview Farage during his time in Ukip. While it was more a pub conversation than a formal interview, Farage made the same Right-wing uttering I’d heard in my past interviews with Right-wing Unionists, such as Rev Martin Smyth, Molyneaux, Enoch Powell, and Rev Ian Paisley.

So what should Unionists be learning from Reform’s weekend victory? The answer is tactically simple. Unionist leaders must be holding talks as soon as possible with Farage and his team to draw up a policy which will be set in political concrete in the event of Farage becoming PM in the next few years.

It must be a clear manifesto commitment with Reform; not a Molyneaux-style ‘special relationship’ of private conversations in the corridors of Westminster.

The combined Unionist leadership must not sit on their hands and simply pray for a Farage victory in a couple of years. Now is the time for forward planning. Firstly, they must persuade Farage that while Reform has organised in Northern Ireland, the party should not contest elections and further fragment the pro-Union vote.

Unionism should also campaign for the reform (forgive the pun please!) of the Stormont institutions, making the posts of first and deputy first minster elected as in 1998 - by designation, not by the largest parties as was given away by the DUP in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement.

And there must be a guarantee by Reform that the current hounding of security forces veterans for Troubles-related incidents will be binned.

Likewise, the names of those suspected of committing some of the heinous terrorist atrocities during the Troubles, especially unsolved murders, bombings and attacks, should be revealed in the Commons using parliamentary privilege.

There should be no more wasting of millions of pounds on needless inquiries. Parliament should be the place for naming and shaming.

Reform caused a lot of controversy during the election campaign in Britain with talk of detention camps for illegal immigrants while they are being processed for deportation.

Perhaps if Reform comes to power, those camps could be established in Northern Ireland as a welcome jobs boost for the construction industry, prison service and supporting employment.

And if Reform is pledging to halt the small boat crisis, then the UK will require a much expanded Royal Navy to mount an iron blockade across the English Channel. Northern Ireland has an impressive record in ship building. Those contracts for the new much-needed ships must come to Ulster.

During the Troubles, Northern Ireland had a reputation of housing some of the worst terrorists of that era. Given that experience, the creation of the special camps for illegal migrants and illegal asylum seekers and the funding and jobs it would bring to Ulster should be top of a PM Farage’s agenda. But will Farage turn out to be another Thatcher? Only time will tell, but Unionism must tread carefully if it is to play the Reform card.
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

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