Social Items

TPQ
Azar Majedi 🏴 I like to express my deepest condolences to Yanar’s family, friends and comrades for this great and tragic loss. 


The news of her assassination was extremely shocking and heartbreaking. Yanar was a courageous and dedicated activist who worked hard to bring some degree of civility and humanity into the lives of many women who have been not only the victim of backward traditions but more so the victim of a destructive war that the US and its allies waged on the people of Iraq and further in the region. She is first and foremost the victim of this bloody war that the US and the West spearheading by Israel have imposed on the region.
 
Yanar was the victim of the dark scenario inflicted on Iraq, which became a breeding ground for terrorism. Many Iraqi people have fallen to their death by terrorism, a dark reality that has become so commonplace in the region, thanks to state terrorism.

I met Yanar only a few times. The last time I met her was in an international secular-feminist conference in Macedonia in 2009. I remember Nawal Saadawi was there too. Hundred women activists were there hoping to bring more civility and humanity to their societies which, ironically, all were in one way or another attacked or ruined at one time by the US and its allies. I remember Yanar was very hopeful and energetic. She got her energy from her belief in the possibility of building a better world. This hope and energy kept her fighting until the last moment of her life.
 
She fought for a noble cause; she lived with hope to achieve her goals. This hope helped her overcome the fear for her life. She knew she was in danger, but she didn’t give up. Her legacy is her resistance, endurance, resilience and courage. The best way to keep her memory alive is to fight for a better world.

Today more than ever the world is witnessing destruction, death and cruelty. We need to fight steadfastly for the cause we have fought for years. We will not give up until we can make this world a safer, a more humane and just world, where bombs are dismantled, terrorism belongs to history books; injustice and discrimination belong to the past.
 
She is missed and will be missed by many people who met her, knew her and received her care and support.

⏩ Asar Majed is the Chairperson of Organisation for Women’s Liberation.

In Memory Of Yanar Muhammed

Democracy For Sale ★ Written by Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy,

Exclusive: A discreet lobbying campaign by lawyers who have acted for oligarchs and the super-rich told government that reforming England's libel laws was too difficult.

Cormac Kehoe was in the semi-arid mountains above Málaga last August when he received an unexpected email. A county court in Bromley, south-east London, was ordering him to pay £10,000 for “defamation, aggravated harm and loss of business”. The 28-year-old freelance reporter didn’t even know a libel claim had been made. But the claimant’s name was very familiar: Claudio Di Giovanni.

Before taking a rare week off in the Andalusian hills, Kehoe had published an investigation into Di Giovanni’s property empire on the Londoner website. Now the Italian was suing him personally for libel. “It’s a nightmare, really. You’re trying to take a break from the relentless torrent of work and then you are suddenly faced with this prospect of financial ruin,” Kehoe said. Di Giovanni later filed a separate suit claiming £250,000 in damages.

Cases like Kehoe’s were supposed to be a thing of the past. London has long been called “the libel capital of the world”. 

How Lawyers To The Super-Rich Strangled Labour's Slapp Bill

Christopher Owens 🔖 “I see my sculptures before me: each one a failure. Yes, I mean it, a failure! But in each one there is also something of what I would want to create one day.”


Considering that his sculptures are some of the most reognisable in the world, that’s a bold statement for Alberto Giacometti to make.

Kenan Malik has written about how, when he saw one of the statues in person, he was struck by the way they were both visceral and abstract, conveying both an intangible sense of our own humanity and also a brute yet sensual imagining of our existence as humans.

Some reactions to have, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Produced in 2017 to coincide with a retrospective of his work at the Tate Modern in London, this acts as an essential beginner’s guide to the Swiss artist’s work and legacy, particularly the inclusion of a short biography as well as a few behind the scenes photos in his studio which should be an eye opener for anyone who’s seen Final Portrait

Photographs of his sculptures are reproduced with a cold veneer and clinical detachment which, intentionally or not, highlight the surrealism and the starkness one experiences upon viewing them for the first time.

A minor criticism is that there are very few reproductions of his paintings here. While maybe less well known, works like Diego demonstrate how he was able to flesh out the environment his subjects found themselves in as well as their own alienation from their surroundings.

Quite the feat, I’m sure you’ll agree. And with various jibs taj

As Jean Paul Satre concluded in 1948 when discussing Giacometti:

These figures are already seen as the foreign language we try to learn is already spoken. Each one of them reveals human being as one sees him to be, as he is for other human beings, as he appears in an intersubjective world – not for the sake of simplification at ten or twenty paces, but at a human distance from us. Each imparts to us the truth that a human being is not there first and to be seen afterwards, but that he is the being whose essence it is to exist for others.

Buy this book and gain a better understanding of the world around us.... 

Lena Fritsch (editor), 2017, Giacometti. Tate Publishers. ISBN-13: 978-1849764834

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Giacometti

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3146

Tommy McKearney ☭ It would be entirely understandable if our readers were to take a measure of enjoyment from the latest spat embroiling Fianna Fáil and its leader, Micheál Martin.


Castigated from within and outside the party for his handling of the fuel protests, questions were bound to be raised about his leadership. Coming little more than six months after the Jim Gavin debacle during the presidential election campaign, even his closest allies were concerned for the party’s image and future.


Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the reasonable reaction to seeing a deeply conservative political institution in bother, it remains necessary to reflect soberly on the entirety of the situation surrounding the protests. Although the cost-of-living crisis generated a degree of empathy for the disruption (and discomfort for the coalition) from the less well-off and hard-pressed working people, the genesis of the conflict was neither labour-led nor inspired.

As the Marxist scholar Professor Helena Sheehan pointed out last month on her Facebook page, the protests demonstrated the ''…disproportionate power of those who own heavy vehicles…”. And, moreover, the state’s habit of making:

. . . constant concessions to those who embrace market forces when going their way and demand that the state compensate them when they have losses or even problems . . . 

In relation to the first count, it is indisputable that the owners of vehicles costing well in excess of €100,000 can hardly be considered as proletarian. Admittedly, not every protester was the possessor of such expensive machinery but were, nevertheless, for the most part in business as distinct from being waged employees.

Hardly surprising, therefore, that so many of the Dáil’s pro-business deputies in the coalition expressed sympathy for the plight of the ‘very decent’ people protesting while critical of their blockading of ports and oil depots. In fact it was this sympathy for the protesters that caused such turmoil for the Taoiseach and his ministers from many within the ruling coalition.

All things considered, the outcome of the protests demonstrated the nature and make-up of the 26-county Irish state. Faced with a rebellious cohort of some of those who normally wholeheartedly support the privilege-granting status quo, the government conceded to their demands. Of note was the fact that the price reductions were largely confined to petrol and diesel, with little done to alleviate the plight of low-income households depending on kerosene for home heating.

In short, the existing politico-economic system is designed only for the wellbeing of the more prosperous class. Furthermore, the free-market promoting coalition government is determined to ensure this remains the case. Any doubt as to the veracity of this need only be dispelled by reflecting on the message delivered recently in the government’s Spring Economic Forecast.

While the Department said that a general government surplus of €9.2bn is in prospect, there is no commitment to radically transform society in favour of workers or the less well-off. Speaking at the launch of the report, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers emphasised this point when he said:

. . . There is a need for strong cost controls across Departments to enable continuing delivery of commitments in the Programme for Government . . . 


A Programme for Government that fails to include provision of public housing, a national health service free and accessible to all, a package to offset the cost-of-living crisis, not to mention planning for a sustainable economy into the future.

There is a risk in all of this that those who forced their agenda on a government fundamentally sympathetic to their demands if not their tactics may be encouraged to exert pressure in the future if they feel the need to do so. There is, currently, a real risk that events in the Strait of Hormuz may lead to an economic recession if not a 1930s-like depression.

Were this to come about, would the coalition government divert funds away from granting relief to those ‘decent’ owners of heavy road-blocking machinery and instead direct it towards support for the working class? Only the wilfully naive would believe the latter.

There is a need that a strong signal be delivered to all in authority making it clear such an outcome will not be tolerated. Only one group currently has the wherewithal to carry this out, and that is the trade union movement. Encouragingly, after a meeting last month of the Labour Employer Economic Forum (LEEF), which brings together trade unions, employers, and government representatives, ICTU General Secretary Owen Reidy said:

. . . Our message to the Government today was clear: stop caving in to business demands at the expense of workers’ living standards.

It is very important that every section of left-wing opinion in Ireland demonstrates its backing for the stance adopted by the ICTU and endeavours to ensure that they have the support necessary to make good on their warning to government.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist.
He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament.
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

Fuel Protests 🪶Farmers, Small Business And Rural Communities Under Pressure

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ On Thursday 7th May the British Labour Party and party of government took a real hammering in the elections. 

These elections in England were for local councils and are never a great barometer of how a governing party’s fortunes are holding up. Council elections rarely are mirrored in a general election but that is normally when the loses have been moderate to slightly heavy for the governing party. This was a little different as these losses amount to 1,400 seats largely to the far-right Reform UK, it was a drubbing. 

Back in the nineteen-eighties many people voted with a protest vote at council elections voting for the fascist British National Party (BNP) councillors but nothing on this scale. This appears more than a regular protest and is concerning not only for the British Labour Party but all anti-fascists generally. Reform were undoubtedly the big winners and the BBC poll, the Projected National Share (PNS), which is calculated in 1,000 council wards predicted if people voted along similar lines in a general election it would make the far-right Reform the largest party on 26% of the vote share. The PNS puts the Greens in second on 18% followed by Labour and Conservatives on 17% each. If this is correct it shows up how broken the British electoral voting system of First Past the Post in general elections really is. It is not fit for purpose when a party with just 26% of the vote could form a government. As far-right parties across Europe have been gathering momentum is it an indication that the memories of fascism and the Second World War are fading? Or, are today’s voters not worried by the presence of authoritarian dictatorial parties governing them? Whatever the reason, and immigration is often the major or even only concern voiced by people - wrongly in my view - the presence of the far-right even neo fascism cannot be denied.

Reform by their own admission have no experience of government but have, they maintain, a lot of “business” organisational knowhow, and Reform representatives often criticise the Labour Government for having no “business experience”. This suggests a Reform UK government may introduce corporatism, private enterprise, into the system of government in Britain. This was central to Benito Musolini’s fascist regime in Italy and resulted in the banning outright of trade unions and trade union membership as was also the case in Nazi Germany. Trade unions were replaced with state run bodies like Hitlers ‘Labour Front’ which resulted in worsening pay and conditions and the erosion of worker’s rights! In effect corporatism brings big business into government and the country is organised like a large corporation with the electorate being the employees, with no trade union representation and very few rights. Could a Reform government go down this avenue? 

Another question the electorate should ask themselves at the next British general election before they cast their vote is; if Reform UK were to become the government in Westminster, could it signal the end of liberal democracy and elections in Britain? The last far-right Prime Minister Britain had was Margaret Thatcher but fortunately her party were, though right-wing, not far-right or fascist as was the case with her. When she was ousted as Conservative and Unionist Party leader in 1990, she demanded to remain as PM. She had to be virtually physically removed from that office and was succeeded by John Major, a more moderate Tory. 

Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, was a Thatcherite, a true-blue disciple of Thatcher, and today is a supporter of Trump in the US. Could a Reform UK government put elections into the dustbin of history? Well, Mussolini did in Italy during the twenties as did Hitler did in Germany back in the nineteen thirties and Farage does share some Hitlerite policies like locking immigrants, legal or otherwise, away in remote old army bases similar to concentration camps! Should this come to pass in Britain would anybody protest? Would they dare? Or would they, as was the case in Nazi Germany, just go along with it pretending to agree, fearful of doing anything different? 

Voters should think very carefully before going down the Reform UK unknown entity avenue, though there is an argument which encourages this leap into the unknown and that is; ‘we won’t know till we’ve tried’! Very true but the problem here is a reversal of the electoral decision to elect a Reform government may well prove irreversible? Just a word of caution! 

For those in the Six-Counties who think Farage and Reform will give a ‘border poll’ forget that, they are a strong UK party, a Unionist party, a party whose aims are to strengthen the United Kingdom not weaken it, and though they may make noises sounding as if a border poll might be on their agenda do not bank on it. They could weaponise such a poll, calling a snap vote on Irish unification at a point when it would almost certainly go against Irish unity. Farage would then probably tell all nationalists, including the Twenty-Six-County government; ‘you have had your poll now that’s an end to it’!

In Scotland, elections to the Scottish parliament at Holyrood were being held. Again bad news for the Labour Party was in store. The results there were a fifth term in government for the Scottish National Party (SNP), once called ‘Tartan Toryies', now considered to be to the left of Labour, winning 58 seats. The SNP are down six seats from sixty-four held previously which is significant because the magic number for an overall majority is sixty-five leaving the SNP weaker in this regard than previous. Labour and Reform UK came joint second with 17 seats each, with the Greens coming third with 15 seats, the Conservative and Unionist Party finished fourth with 12 seats and the Liberal Democrats claiming 10 seats. Scotland’s First Minister and SNP leader, John Swinney, is already making noises about another referendum on Scottish independence and why wouldn’t he? A different voting system is applied in Scotland for regional elections to Holyrood with the age of majority being sixteen as opposed to eighteen in a British general election. The system is a little complex for explanation here but involves party lists and constituency MSPs giving the voter two votes.

In Wales the picture for Labour was no brighter with the party leader and First Minister, Eluned Morgan, losing her seat - a major setback. Plaid Cymru won 43 of the 96 Senedd seats with Reform UK coming second securing 34 seats. Labour, hitherto the largest party in Wales, came in with a miserable 9 seats! All in all a very bad day for the British Labour Party and in particular party leader and Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. 

Could these disastrous results for Labour be replicated in a general election? If the polls are correct and at this moment in time well, they probably could be mirrored. These elections resulted in nationalist First Ministers in Scotland, “Northern Ireland” (the Six-Counties), and Wales. Starmer has no worries on this front, at least not immediately, because all these leaders are singing from different hymn sheets. John Swinney, Scottish First Minister, wants an independence referendum right now. Michele O’Neil, First Minister in Stormont, wants a unification referendum by 2030, while Plaid Cymru and expected First Minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth, did not even mention Welsh independence. It appears no unity of minds on the subject of independence or unification referenda among these nationalist leaders. This may come as some relief to Keir Starmer and his government short term.

After this drubbing taken by the party many Labour MPs are demanding Starmer sets an exit plan, a time frame for him leaving, to step down or plainly fucking off. As bad as Starmer is he, like Tony Blair before him, is not a Labour traditional leader or Prime Minister in the Clement Atlee or Harold Wilson mould. The modern British Labour Party bear few similarities to the genuine article and the party’s shift to the right has cost them dearly. To the left of Labour are the Greens who, like their counterparts Reform UK on the far-right, made huge gains in these elections at Labours expense. So, should the PM stand aside? In my view it would be a mistake for Starmer, bad as he may be, to step down because this may well cause a general election. If a new leader were elected, he or she may come under pressure to go to the country and would undoubtedly lose any election. Of course any new leader could refer to John Major becoming leader of the Conservatives replacing Thatcher and not going to the country. They could also look to the example of the walking disaster, Liz ‘take the piss out of MPs’ Truss, who had a brief spell, the blink of an eye, as leader of the Tories and Prime Minister. She was in charge for a couple of hours but again no election was called when Rishi Sunak replaced her unopposed as party leader and Prime Minister. The Conservatives had a huge majority but so too, this time round, do Labour. So, a general election should Starmer resign is not inevitable, though opposition parties would hammer the point. Starmer should, all the same, hang on in there because the alternative is unthinkable, a far-right government who may if elected by sufficient numbers drop their pretence and declare themselves what they are suspected of being, fascist in all but name!

It was not a great day at the races for the main opposition party the Conservative and Unionists led by Kemi Badenoch. They too had huge losses but their losses were less than Labours due to the fact they did not have that many to lose. The Conservatives were drubbed in the 2024 general election by Starmer’s Labour Party and their representation at council level was not great. Of Essex Councils 78 seats in Kemi Badenoch’s backyard Reform won 53 while the Conservatives came in with a paltry 13 seats, down from the 52 they won in 2021. If their representation was not great before these council elections, now it is less than that! 

Will the Tories demand the head of Badenoch? Highly unlikely. They will in all probability divert their losses into attacking Keir Starmer and demanding he steps down. The Tories, like Labour, know in a general election - if called tomorrow - they would be hammered and Badenoch would be a handy scapegoat to blame, they’re good at that. 

It is my prediction both leaders, Starmer and Badenoch, will stay in place for the time being because the alternative is not worth thinking about, a Reform UK government! This scenario does put the Conservatives in a slightly stronger position than Labour because if an election were to be called and Reform won, but not with the huge majority some expect, then a deal with the Tories is always possible. Many Reform UK candidates in any general election will be former Tory defectors. Therefore, a parliamentary pact between the right-wing and far-right is a strong possibility given certain conditions. 

Either way it spells bad news for Labour who, thankfully, still have the ball as far as elections go in their court! They will not by any rule or protocol be forced to call an election should Starmer go, unless Parliament votes for one. However opposition MPs would make huge waves in the Commons should the government not go to the country with a new leader at a time when Labour need to regroup and lick their wounds. They still have a huge majority in the House and could ride the storm. Starmer needs to rally his backbenchers at a time when unity, even a façade of agreement, will be paramount. 

Labour's recent history of supporting the party leader is not great: remember Jeremy Corbyn? Will they do the same to Starmer or will they, albeit reluctantly, back him?
     
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Should Starmer Stay Or Go?

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3145

Jim Duffy ✍ Sinn Féin is well known to be by far the most corrupt party in Ireland, or Britain, or possibly in Europe. 


There are never-ending stories of dodgy money, suspicious transactions, hidden accounts, cover organisations pretending to be independent but really just Sinn Féin.

By law, All parties are required to submit detailed comprehensive accounts to SIPO (The Standards in Public Office Commission). All the parties but a handful obeyed it. Micro-parties said they couldn't afford accountants to do their accounts. Among the larger ones, the only one to refuse to comply point blank was Sinn Féin. SIPO had to threaten to report them to the DPP for prosecution before they agreed to obey the law. The accounts they supplied were so convoluted and dodgy that a specialist forensic accountant who worked with the NYPD on tracing Mafia accounts had to be hired to deal with the Sinn Féin accounts.

In Britain a media investigation into corruption in Westminster among politicians. To the surprise of the London media, Sinn Féin came out as even more corrupt than the Tories. The scams they committed were off-the-scale. In every parliament they win seats in, they are surrounded by sleaze on a gigantic scale.

They are also brazen in their hypocrisy. They once made a big deal about the Oireachtas buying in highly expensive top-of-the-range printers, performing faux outrage. They never mentioned that the party that had demanded the Oireachtas buy those printers was . . . Sinn Féin. Its TDs wanted them.
The media of course never mentioned that fact. I asked a journalist once why they didn't mention that it was Sinn Féin that had demanded those printers be bought. He said "everyone knows it!" No they didn't. That was the problem. Just because he and I both knew it, and people around Leinster House knew it, did not mean voters did.

Then again, Sinn Féin is the embodiment of hypocrisy. I remember before the Lisbon Treaty the Minister for European Affairs invited all the spokespeople on Foreign Affairs, and their advisers, into his office on the Ministerial Corridor in Government Buildings to brief them in detail on the treaty. We all turned up and sat around the round table, but there were two empty seats - for the Sinn Féin spokesperson and his adviser.

Afterwards, Sinn Féin accused the government of excluding them from the briefing. It was garbage. Their names were visible on group email sent. Their office was rung repeatedly, including once by the minister in front of me. Someone from Labour went to the Sinn Féin floor to remind them the meeting was about to start. I rang my opposite number in Sinn Féin, whose number I had, to remind them. After half an hour, we gave up waiting and held the meeting.

We knew what they were up to - pretend they were not invited, to play on their usual tactic of claiming victimisation. They also ran a campaign that was 100% built on lies - including the usual rubbish they say in every single EU referendum (this is about joining NATO, if you vote for this you will be voting away your right to ever vote on treaties again, this will introduce abortion, bla bla bla). They are the single set of reusable lies. 

If the Sinn Féin people had turned up and trotted out that nonsense, in a room full of people who knew the treaty in detail, they would have gotten short shift and couldn't claim "nobody told us we were wrong!". They could spoof journalists, few of whom had read the treaty, and use the ludicrous 'equal time' rule on television and radio to their advantage. The rule is nonsense as it takes far shorter to make an allegation than to disprove it. It is like claiming that someone is a spouse abuser in 8 seconds, and then expecting someone to disprove it in 8 seconds. It is why in US presidential debates, a person usually has two minutes to respond to an allegation. Disproving a claim about a treaty article means being able to quote the article, so by definition that takes longer.

One of the few journalists who knew his facts, of course, was then RTÉ Europe editor Sean Whelan. One left wing anti-EU politician tried to spoof that Article 48 of Lisbon meant voters were voting away their right to have referendums - which was laughable. However, usually they got away with the lie. However Whelan correctly pointed out all the changes were made to how the EU institutions approve treaties, Not to how the member states approve treaties.

The article said "The amendments shall enter into force after being ratified by all the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements." In other words, no change. How countries ratify treaties is decided by them based on their constitutional rules, and nothing there is changed.

In Ireland's case, the rules are simple: If a treaty increases the EU competences, that requires a constitutional amendment to allow that, and that requires a referendum and always will. If a treaty does not increase the competences, then as those competences were authorised by a past constitutional amendment, there is no need for a new amendment, so no need for a referendum. The Oireachtas has the constitutional power to ratify the treaty in that case.

That has been the case for decades. It is dead simple. New competences = referendum. No new competences = no referendum. In other words, not one iota of the procedures in member states changed. The only change was creating two procedures rather than one for how EU institutions, not the member states, approve treaties.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Brazen In Their Hypocrisy

The Guardian 📰 Written by Sam Jones Recommended by Hedley Lamarr. 

7-May-2026

The Spanish government awarded the UN legal expert Francesca Albanese one of its highest civilian honours in recognition of what it termed her “extensive work in documenting and denouncing violations of international law in Gaza”.

Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer who serves as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, has been vocal in her criticisms of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which she has described as genocide.

She has also called out the international community over its failure to prevent and punish acts of torture, genocide and other serious human rights violations.

Albanese has faced the prospect of arrest in Germany over her use of language and has been hit with sanctions by the US government for urging the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate American and Israeli companies and individuals over their alleged complicity in gross human rights violations.

In a ceremony in Madrid on Thursday, Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, awarded Albanese the Order of Civil Merit. Sánchez is one of the most vociferous European critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Continue @ Guardian. 

Spain Awards UN Legal Expert Francesca Albanese One Of Its Highest Civilian Honours

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

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)