Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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As the two victims had been involved with the Communist Party there were protests from the Communist Party
about this incident to the leadership of SFWP. The latter
denied any knowledge of the incident or the involvement
of any of its members in the affair.
In the course of an interview for this article with Tomas
MacGiolla, President of SFWP, and Sean Garland, General
Secretary, they both recalled hearing of the incident at
the time and remembered the correspondence with 'the
Communist Party. They both denied that members of
SFWP had been involved and said that as they were un.aware of the existence of the Official IRA they were not in
ike most organisations, SFWP remains to a large extent a prisoner of its past, although it has made remarkable effotts to disengage itself from its ideological heritage.
The leftward drift of Sinn Fein during the 1960s under
the direction of the Trinity intellectual, Roy Johnston, has
been well chronicled by now. However, the significance of
this development in terms of Marxism has been much exaggerated - it reflected much more the very non-marxist
radicalism of the 1960s, more popularist, more issueoriented in terms of fish-ins, housing agitation, etc. than
a strict marxist strategy would allow.
It was also very republican, in the traditional sense of
that word. The national question remained central to its
ideology and the struggle against "British imperialism" was
seen as the focus of the party's main line of activity both in
economic and nationalistic terms.
The IRA was run down during that period with the main
emphasis on civil rights. The belief was that concentration
on civil rights would have the effect of destabilising the
state in Northern Ireland. But when violence flared on the
streets of Belfast in August 1969, the republican movement
reacted instinctively in the traditional republican manner.
Although its rhetoric didn't catch up for a while and the
split with the Provisionals confused the issue, the Official
IRA got caught up in a military campaign against British
presence in Northern Ireland as much as did the Provos.
Although the party now seeks to minimise the significance of the issue, the Battle of the Lower Falls was a
major macho boost to the Officials in July 1970. They
boasted at the time that it was "the first major battle
between the forces of the Republic and the British army
since 1921". Some enthusiasts even went so far as to claim
that it was the heaviest military engagement involving the
British army since the Second World War - nowadays
Tomas MacGiolla refers to it merely as a confrontation
between the people of the Falls and the British army.
"Slates were thrown from the roofs", he says minimising
the degree of military engagement that occurred.
The military campaign of the Official IRA stepped up
considerably in the months after the introduction of internment in August 1971. Local O/Cs were encouraged to outdo the Provos in militancy. The Derry O/C at the time
recalls being berated at the time by very senior members
of the Official IRA for not shooting enough British soldiers.
The course of the campaign began to go sour on the
Official IRA from an early stage and in fact it was the Officials who were most associated in the public mind with
atrocities rather than the Provisionals in early 1972. The
following is a sequence of incidents which caused considerable public outrage and pressure on the movement to halt
its campaign:
December 12, 1971: Senator Jack Barnhill was shot dead
when he resisted attempts to burn down .his house. Although it seems that there was no intention to kill him, in
fact, his name had apppeared on a death list of prominent
individuals, compiled by the leadership of the Official
IRA, to be assassinated at some future date. The list included several resident magistrates and prominent unionist politicians.
February 22, 1972: Seven people, including five cleaning
women, a priest and a gardener, were killed when bombs
went off at the headquarters of the Britsih parachute regiment at Aldershot. The Official IRA planted the bomb in
MAGILL APRIL 1982 9
The Murder of
(June 21, 1973)
David
Walker
The Official
(1975)
IRA/INLA
Feud
(June
One of those convicted of this murder was Barry Doyle who had been
SFWP organiser in the Munster area.
The ofhers convicted were Bernard
Lynch of 30 Charles Day Road,
Togher, Co. Cork; David O'Donnell of
147 Rosewood Estate, Ballincollig,
Co. Cork;
in the head
Beatings,
knee-capping
intimidations (1975-1982).
and
There are countless stories in Belfast of these incidents involving members of the Official IRA, and certainly a weekly, if not daily, occurrance.
Only earlier this month they were involved in kneecappings of two brothers in the Moyard estate. During the
hunger strike protest last year they intimidated several public house owners
in the Leeson Street area into either
refusing to close during hunger striker
funerals or, as in one case, forcing a
publican to remain closed for a week
in retaliation for closing during a
funeral.
In early April members of SFWP
seriously injured an American reporter outside McEnaney's pub beside
Andersonstown police station and left
him unconscious on the pavement.
His offence was to be in the company of a woman who was selling the
IRSP newspaper. The brother of a
well known SFWP member was present during the beating of this reporter and then walked by saying that he
had seen nothing.
In 1973 a former member of the
party was beaten by two very prominent members of SFWP in a bar in
Belfast for indiscipline - they cracked his ribs, broke his nose, etc. One of
these people involved in this beating
is a very prominent spokesperson of
the party in Belfast. Later this same
victim was kneecapped by the Official
IRA having been enticed to Dundalk.
Ardmonagh
29,1982)
Evictions
(January
man at the site at the time was able to remember only the
above details. Sources connected with the Official IRA
have informed us that they were responsible for the robbery.
\
AlB Head Office Site (6,000)
This robbery took place in 1977 when the AlB headquarters was under construction. Two armed men forced
their way into the site office of Crampton's, the builders
and got away with 6,000 - a third man was waiting for
them in a car opposite the RDS. Specific details of this
robbery were not available from Crampton's - the foreMAGILL APRIL 1982 13
However the terms of the cease fire were deliberately qualified in a manner that allowed a continuance
of the campaign more or less as before. The statement said:
"the IRA has agreed to this (cease fire) proposal reserving
only the right of self-defence and defence of areas if attacked by the British army or sectarian forces."
Throughout the rest of 1972 and the early part of 1973
the military campaign continued more or less as before. This
fact is best illustrated by just two incidents in this period.
On December 5, 1972 a massive mortar attack blitz was
launched throughout Northern Ireland. British army in-
owever it is true that from the middle of 1973 onwards the screws were put on military activity. This
was done not by any formal decision but by the more rigid
in terpretation of the terms of the cease fire . Operatives were
fmding it .harder and harder to get clearance for jobs and
even when clearance was given the delay involved meant
that the operation often couldn't be carried out anyway.
Also there was a problem of equipment. While the leadership repeatedly promised new, more and better arms and
explosives, the actual provision of these was a very different matter. There were always excuses why something
couldn't be delivered and it was only in retrospect that
volunteers recognised this as a means of stopping the military campaign altogether.
Thus the campaign was stopped not by fiat following the
cease fire announcement but by a gradual process which
effectively choked off military activity without any accompanying major decision to that effect.
It amounted to a masterstroke on the part of Cathal
Goulding who for the most part didn't want a military campaign at any stage. Yet he managed to bring the movement
with him into 1974 without any major rift, having effectively hoodwinked the organisation into a real ceasefire
to which it never really consented.
ut, in spite of the cleverness by which this manoeuvred, it was inevitable that it would give rise to tensions
andthese surfaced in the latter part of 1972. A convention
of the Official IRA was held in October and there a document presented jointly by Seamus Costello, and another
senior member, clearly defined the objectives of the movement in traditional republican terms, in contrast to the
more civil rights emphasis of Goulding. The Costello line
won through and Costello followed this up with a detailed
proposal for a resumption of the military campaign officially. In this he was heavily defeated at a resumed army
convention the following month.
But the differences didn't end there. Proposals emerged
for the restructuring of the organisation and a commission
was set up in early 1973 to examime proposals. One paper
dealt with Garland's concern of "the revolutionary party"
which he had first postulated the previous June in Bodenawn. The main aspect of this proposal was that one
organisation, the party, would be responsible for all the
activities of the movement - i.e. military as well as political.
The IRA became primarily merely a fund-raising organisation but it served other purposes too. It kept order in the
vast drinking clubs that the organisation owns in Northern
Ireland and in Dublin. It maintained internal discipline
through intimidation and beatings. It also provided the
means of self-defense for the party which got into feuds from time to time with the Provos.
The Official IRA has also been responsible for running
MAGILL APRIL 1982 15
rr\ e
The courts are plagued with erratic sentencing, which encourages the belief
that the scales of justice are bent, if not broken
CRIME
Death (2 victims) by arson
Beating to death
Rape leading to death
Indecent assault at knifepoint
Armed robbery with fatal shooting
Robbery (2,000) and shooting
Three armed robberies (40,000)
Robbery (1,290) without violence
PUNISHMENT
2 years
3 years
4 years
5 years
6 years
7 years
7 years
12 years
MAGILL APRIL 1982 17
The police claim that they need more powers to deal with crime.
Nicky Mulcahy
E
of
prepared a memorandum incorporating the Heads of a new Criminal Justice Bjll which he 'iritended to introdue this March to coincide with the
Gard~O'~onferenyes 9 the Fine..G4el
Ard Fheis. This t
. able had been
agreed with the former Taoiseach Dr.
FitzGerald, but the general election in
February scotched his plans and the
proposals never even got to the stage
of Cabinet approval.
Now Mr. Doherty has made a vague
promise reiterating the intentions of
his predecessors, and he knows the
Gardai will sustain their pressure earnpaign for new laws ulltil they get w4a:t
they want. At theAGSI confere
their pn\sident Mr. Philip Callahan
the Garda position toMr, Doherty ina
most fortright manner: "We dori.;t
need any more assurances from you
today," he said bluntly, "instead we
want action."
against them. It is also there to ensure that the police do not have the
opportunity to abuse their power by
intimidating or forcing suspects into
admissions of guilt.
What has changed though is the
awareness of this right, and in effect
the police are saying that the law must
be changed because they can no longer
rely on the suspect's ignorance. The
professional competence of the police
is threatened as a result, for in the absence of self-incriminating evidence,
they face the much more difficult task
of collecting evidence to prove their
case.
Of course the right to silence makes
a policeman's job more difficult, but
the laws are there to see that justice is
done, not to boost the police detection
rate, and the problem is that the interests of justice and the interests of
the police are not compatible.
The Mitchell proposals currently
being considered by Mr. Doherty include most of the demands being
sought by the Gardai, and are a direct
result of a concerted pressure campaign by the Gardai during the last
three years. Both the Government and
Mr. Doherty will have to decide whether they are prepared to trust the
Gardai with powers the judiciary consider they are not fit to exercise without the established safeguards, safeguards which strike a balance between
the community's right to protection
and the right of the individual suspect.
Pat Brennan
s far. as pol.itical deals go - and they go as far as, international a~rports
for villages in the West of Ireland - Tony Gregory s deal for Dublin was
among the most thought out of political bargains. Its strengths lie in the simple
fact that Gregory knows Dublin and its problems better than most. Its weaknesses lie in the fact that this is a last minute deal, not a plan that was studied,
costed, discussed, and finalised as being in the best interests of the people of
Dublin.
No one knows just how much the Gregory deal will cost. No one knows if it
is the most appropriate answer to the needs of the inner city. As yet, except
for a tax on derelict sites and a levy on office space, no one knows who is going
to pay for the Gregory deal, whether it will represent a transfer of resources
from rich to poor or a simple addition to the borrowing bill which will eventually be paid for by ordinary tax payers.
pie are unskilled, poor and live in substandard accommodation. Many of them are unemployed. A high percentage
of them are old people living alone.
The decline of the city centre has coincided with the
growth of the Dublin region. Cities exist in the first place
because of economies of scale. Grouping people together
lowers the costs of services, and makes markets more
readily accessible. Since the late 1960s the large groupings
in Dublin have shifted from the city centre to the suburbs.
This was facilitated and encouraged by different local rates
in Dublin city and county areas. Simply, it was cheaper
to live in the suburban areas and people moved to the
suburbs.
Dublin city had a declining population from which to
extract revenue yet the need for revenue remained high
because people used the city during the day. And so services and maintenance of the city deteriorated. As the costs
of operating a business in Dublin rose, businesses, especially
manufacturing businesses, moved out. At the same time,
there was a huge influx of people from rural areas into the
Dublin area, further encouraging the growth of suburbs.
Now, there are almost no middle income people living
in the inner city and the economies of scale, that once
encouraged inner city business life, have shifted to the
.suburbs. The most obvious example of this is the growth of
shopping centres with late night shopping facilities, in the
suburbs, while city centre shopping diminishes.
he first item on the Gregory-Haughey deal is the provision of 500 jobs for unskilled workers in Dublin
Corporation. This - it is hoped - will have a two-fold
effect. First, it should take 500 inner city dwellers off the
dole. Second, it will add 500 maintenance workers to the
Corporation's staff and Dublin will be a nicer place because
of it. The money was provided for these jobs in the last
budget, but the Corporation has not yet advertised for
workers simply because the Department of the Environment has not yet stated whether the jobs are to be permanent or short term. If they are to be permanent there
will be certain economic and social advantages. If they are
short term, once off jobs that won't be here next year,
A"to
Monday 15th.
Saturday 27th.
this guy?
Perfect. What we have to do is dig a
hole, go down maybe a couple of hundred yards. Lead box, the works. Take
a copy of this thing down, bury it safe
30 MAGILL
APRIL
1982
Gotta
write it in an attic . . .
And
you
was my
..
father and then her husband. Her selfdefined function is solely to please
him. She is his "little skylark", "little
squirrel", "little songbird", or when
she is naughty his "little spendthrift",
"little prodigal". However inane the
nicknames, the inequality of the relationship is believable and uncomfortably recognisable in modern terms.
Yet, beneath all this saccharin, there
is more substance to Nora. In desperation, to save her husband's life, she
has borrowed money, and she has
broken the law and forged her father's
name as guarantor, to do so. Her husband doesn't know. "Torvald has his
pride - most men have - he'd be
terribly hurt and humiliated if he
thought he owed anything to me. It
would spoil everything between us and
our lovely happy home would never
Above:
Fidelma
Cullen
as
Nora,
Stud, Osborne could have recommended that the horse be retired immediately and avoid the possibility
of being defeated in what was obviously
going to be the most competitive mile
race of the season. Osborne did the
reverse and the horse went to France
to win the Prix Du Moulin in record
time. Sallust had not been expected to
beat horses such as Lyphard, Daring
Display and High Top. In so doing he
had trebled his market value. Already
Osborne's acumen had saved the
National Stud over 500,000.
At stud, Sallust continued on where
he had left off on the track. He has
proved himself to be an outstanding
sire - among his progeny are Tap On
Wood (winner of the 1979 English
200 Guineas), and Sandetki (twice
winner of the Prix de La Foret
amongst other races). The success of
Tap On Wood was particularly satisfying for the National Stud, since he
was bred out of one of the stud's own
mares, Cat O'Mountaine. Tap On
Wood had been bought at Goffs for
12,500 and yet when he was syndicated for stud, he was valued at 1
million.
Up to the summer of 1980, Sallust
had sired the winners of over 1 million of prize money. For the last six
years his yearlings have totalled
1.9 million at public auction. In 1977
he was the leading individual 2 year
old sire, in 1978 he was the fourth
leading 2 year old sire and in 1979
he was 5th overall leading sire. Not a
bad return for an investment of ~
million.
ccording to a Department of
Agriculture spokesperson, the
Department is not unaware of the problems of the National Stud. It is,
Magill was informed, a matter of priorities. Racing is a semi-luxury industry,
with exports of less than 20 million
_per year and as such cannot receive.the
same consideration given to other
areas of agriculture,
A problem facing Osborne and his
board in their negotiations with the
Department of Finance is the unpredictability
of their
demands.
Michael Osborne: "Buying a stallion
is not like buying a ton of peas. I
38 MAGILL APRIL 1982
Adding injury to insult and frustration, one of the few decisive interventions made by the Department of
Finance has been to reward Osborne
with a downgraded salary. In 1979 his
salary was demoted from Grade III
to Grave IV of the semi-State manager's salary scales, as defined by the
Devlin Report. This means Osborne's
salary is limited to a maximum of
15,000 per annum. It is probable
that Osborne's future employers, the
North Ridge Stud; USA, will be in a
position to offer Osborne three times
that amount.
Lack of adequate renumeration is
not Osborne's main frustration, but it
has certainly not helped. In his work
at Tully, he acts as a stud manager,
a PR person for Irish breeding, a
bloodstock buyer, a bloodstock advisor, a veterinary surgeon (he is a
qualified vet), a scientist carrying out
field experiments, a farmer and a lecturer (he lectures the students for one
hour every day). On occasion he even
works as a groom.
Last Christmas Day tells a story
about Osborne. Because of the cold
conditions, the horses automatic water
supply froze. Given the day it was,
staff were short and Osborne spent the
most of the day carrying buckets of
water round to the horses ... Grade
IV of semi-State managers, all right!
Kenny Sansom. likely to be England's left back against France in England's opening World Cup game.
when that cross arrived on the Irish six yard line, the two
Irish defenders, Chris and Jimmy Nicholl failed to pick up
the lone English attacker, Kevin Keegan. Again an English
attacker was given a free shot at goal from less than six
yards.
Had these two goals come from situations in which any
one of two or three supporting players might have been the
target for the cross, then Northern Ireland could have been
excused. But both Robson and Keegan were alone and both
were the predictable target for the cross and yet both were
left totally unmarked. Nonsense soccer!
'T'
hatever about the inadequacies shown by both England and Northern Ireland in recent matches, no
one could claim that it was a surprise to find that both
teams have severe problems. Scotland, on the other hand,
qualified for Spain on their own merits and not with the
help of an unlikely combination of results. Furthermore
Jock Stein has been carefully rebuilding and reorganising
this side since the great Argentinian debacle. In the qualifying eight games he used only 22 players (For comparison's
sake, England used 26, France 30, Holland 36 and the Republic of Ireland 25 in their eight games.) There are grounds
for suggesting that Scotland are the strongest British or
Irish side of the moment.
It was therefore all the more disappointing to find that
an admittedly understrength Scottish side failed to impress
in their recent 2-1 defeat of Holland. A dubious penalty
for Scotland, a disallowed Dutch goal and two easy chances
missed by the Dutch could all have combined to see the reverse result.
What was most alarming about Scotland was the extent
to which the midfield of John Wark, David Narey and Jim
Bett were almost totally eclipsed from the game in the
second half. Given that of these three, only Wark could be
regarded as first choice, it was hardly surprising that they
should be outshone by Metgod, Peters, Muhren. But it was
disconcerting to find that manager Stein could say afterwards in relation to this period of the game: "I admired the
way my boys kept at it, stuck at their game, they never
allowed Holland to get into the game where it mattered."
Stein's analysis of the match failed to acknowledge that
the Dutch winger, Simon Tahmatta, and the new cap, midfielder Rijkaard, were able to go down the flanks as they
liked, making as experienced a defender as Frankie Gray
look very ordinary. With Peters and Metgod knocking the
hall around in imperious fashion in the space of the midfield, many were the chances granted to Tahamatta and
Rijkaard to show their class. Like England and Northern
Ireland, and for exactly the same reason, Scotland too look
vulnerable to the attack on the ground. Skill will get past
this Scottish defence, where Alan Hansen was badly missed.
In his absence both Miller and Evans were suspect to the
chip over their heads. Holland scored twice (once disallowed) from balls which were knocked just behind the two
defenders for the attacker to run onto. One wonders what
the likes of Shengalia and Kipiani of Russia and Ze Sergio,
Paulo Isodoro and Eder of Brazil will do to such a static
defence.
In the front line, the news for Scotland was better. Joe
Jordan elbowed his way through the Dutch defence and
showed that his presence can be still a nuisance, long before
he touches a ball. Archibald and Dalglish are obviously
players who, with a service from both midfield and the
wings, will trouble
any defence. On this occasion, (and
perhaps on occasions to come) they did not receive such
service and thus with the exception of Scotland's second
breakaway goals, neither player figured much in the half
of the game which they played.
The best news for Scotland came in the performance of
Alan Brazil, the Ipswich striker. Brazil was always on the
move, putting himself about so much that his marker, the
elegant Michel Van Der Korput, simply could not stay with
him. Even on those occasions when Van Der Korput did
stay with Brazil, he was still easily shrugged off by the
powerful running of the Scotchman.
Were Scotland to avoid a rather obvious flat defence and
were they to find a linking and a blending in midfield then
they might become worthy opponents for such as Brazil
and Russia. At the moment it would look like both Brazil
and Russia will so completely starve them in midfield, that
they will suffer embarrassing defeats.
..
ome devaluation
of the punt is
now seen as a real possibility
by
monetary
strategists
within the EEC
commission.
Such a devaluation
is,
however, likely to be small - probably
not greater than five per cent. It could
come within weeks, or perhaps not for
six months.
Such a move should be seen in the
context
of any new re-alignment
of
the EMS, which would probably
involve a further
devaluation
of the
French
and Belgian francs.
In the
event of these currencies going down
we would, if we did nothing, in practice be revalued
upwards. And it is
against that possibility
that government action could be considered likely.
Not that a change in the value of
the punt would come as any surprise
to our EMS partners. There is evidence
that they, perhaps not understanding
our
government's
policy
properly,
have been expecting
a punt devaluation anyway.
On Saturday,
February
20 of this
year, for example,
members
of the
EMS Monetary
Committee
met in
Brussels to agree the latest re-alignment
of currencies. They met on a Saturday
because exchanges are by then closed
all around the world.
The committee
is composed of experts from finance ministries in the
national capitals, and leading the team
from Ireland was Mr. Maurice Horgan.
second secretary in the Department
of
Finance.
APRIL
1982
47
48 MAGILL
APRIL
1982
f the
exchange controls
makes it
easier to hold the punt rate, the
converse is also the case. All observers
in Brussels agree that without the controls the Central Bank would not have
a snowball's
chance in hell of holding
our position in the EMS.
This douche of cold water will do
It is virtually
impossible to speculate
against the punt.
..
MAGILL
APRIL
1982
49
I
E
51
Would
Billy
please
ring
Magilll