Danny
Morrison - well known Republican and convicted criminal
wrote an article for the Daily Ireland newspaper
on 15/02/2006 (Establishment
Be Warned — The Truth Will Out), in
which I believe he knowingly penned inaccurately.
Let us examine his article.
You
might think that it would be to the advantage of
Tony Blair and incumbent Prime Minister Gordon Brown
to expose the involvement of their main opponents
— the Conservatives — in murder. They
certainly have the information and power to do it
— but not the will or inclination. For there
are some things bigger than party politics and that
thing is the untouchable body politic and its keeper,
the British establishment, guided not by integrity
but by the cardinal rule — “our country,
right or wrong”.
Clearly
Danny is being a touch tongue in cheek here, having
a little dig at Gerry’s mates Tony and Gordon.
That said, I believe Danny is failing to embrace
a subject which is very much closer to home and
which many [of this papers] readers want to understand
and get the Sinn Fein leadership to go on the record
about. Danny should be asking why Gerry and Martin
are not willing to engage in a public debate at
the Ard Fheis about why and HOW the movement is
riddled with informers and the subject of Republican
collusion.
It
would be easy to argue that the movement are not
interested in this subject but we all know this
is not true. I suppose it’s as Danny argues
— they are perhaps guided not by integrity
but by the cardinal rule — ‘Our movement,
right or wrong’.
The
leadership clearly has no responsibility for these
matters. Suspiciously, I wonder why the last two
or three agents have all been career agents —
that is, they have been in place for more than twenty
years standing. Never mind — the cardinal rule
applies: ‘our movement right or wrong’.
Can
you imagine the British Labour party not wanting
to discuss at a party conference the impact of,
say, Alistair Campbell being exposed as a Soviet
spy for over twenty years? Of course they would!
So why would Sinn Fein not want to debate and learn
from its past mistakes; after all this is what normal
political parties do.
Let
us move on to another point raised by Danny.
At
Westminster there is all-party consensus: soldiers
should not be caught beating civilians, should
not be caught torturing prisoners, and should
not be caught murdering enemies and critics of
the state.
This
is what the Finucanes and other families, whose
relatives were victims of collusion between state
forces and loyalist death squads, are up against.
It explains why, in the Finucane case, the campaign
has gone on for 17 years. It explains all the
procrastination, the feints of pretence about
wanting to give the family justice, the censoring
of the Stevens Report and the carefully fashioned
Inquiries Act of 2005 which is designed to facilitate
the withholding of sensitive information and to
control what appears in any published report.
It explains why the British government slipped
a virtual amnesty for its forces into the proposed
legislation which was originally to cater solely
for republican ‘on the runs’.
Danny
just cannot resist a dig at the British Army! I
suppose, given that he was caught red handed by
them back in the eighties committing an offence
where he felt the need to run for his life and dive
into the nearest pensioners home and lie to those
same dastardly soldiers and police chasing him that
he was merely a family friend of the pensioner,
I suppose an eight-year prison sentence sort of
makes you want to have a dig at those who caught
you out.
Daily
Ireland, though, should not be used for his
personal grudges nor should he use it to make points
regarding his allegation that the British Gov't
slipped a little matter of an amnesty for its Crown
Forces right under the nose of the ever-so-trusting
Sinn Fein negotiators. Danny
knows that this agreement was reached years ago
in 2003 and we have the SDLP to be thankful too
for providing the documentary evidence.
The
agreement makes clear where it states, “A qualifying
offence would be any scheduled offence … committed
before 10 April 1998.” Now, let us be clear
as to what constitutes a scheduled offence. Scheduled
offences are offences like murder, bomb making,
and possession of weapons, and are always tried
in Diplock Courts. State killings in Northern Ireland
are scheduled offences. That’s why people like
Guardsmen Fisher and Wright and Lee Clegg were tried
in Diplock Courts. Now Danny knows that he is being
economical with the truth on this subject, yet he
tries to hoodwink Daily Ireland's readers with the
party line. Oh, yes, I forgot, it's called the cardinal
rule: ‘our party right or wrong.
Danny
should be asking the leadership of Sinn Fein how
the Bloody Sunday victims and of course the Finucane
family would have felt if the NI offences bill had
been passed. Now if this bill had been called 'IRA
volunteers on the run bill' AND the sneaky Brits
had sneaked in a bit about state forces being included,
then they would have had an argument but it was
not called the OTR bill, nor should it have taken
weeks to fathom out once the extent of the bill
was made public. After all, the sight of Connor
Murphy standing outside Westminster defending this
bill was very telling.
Danny
goes on once more to make a facile point.
The
Republican Movement is more than resilient to absorb
a Donaldson or Scappaticci here or there, and I
think it is ironic that the Branch and Brits are
naming touts. After all, the IRA can no longer unearth
informers and somebody should do it. I welcome it
because it demonstrates how truly stupid these intelligent
people are and, I repeat, it helps clarify who caused
and stoked the violence — the handlers of the
agents and the handlers’ superiors.
A
few years ago and well before Freddie Scap was outed,
Danny asked a mutual friend of ours to pass on his
home telephone number to myself. Danny was concerned
that the Stake Knife rumours were getting out of
hand. He was concerned at the erroneous belief being
put forward in the press that the agent was a political
animal and connected to the peace process. I told
him that Stake Knife was NOT CONNECTED TO PEACE
PROCESS and that I would write an article to
that end. I shared his wish that this gossip should
not damage the peace process.
Sinn
Fein then suggested the term 'Stake Knife' was a
composite name of a few agents and not just one
individual. The IRA at this point already knew who
Stake knife was and had debriefed him. What they
did not want though was for their supporters to
know the extent of the problems of infiltration
and collusion.
The
leadership of Sinn Fein even defended Freddie Scap
on national TV shortly after the exposure of this
agent and mass murderer of republicans, this man
who used the Republican Movement as a tool of the
FRU. Indeed, it is my belief but for the tapes of
Freddie having a pop at Martin McGuinness being
made public, Freddie would be sharing his retirement
time between Belfast and that other well known European
hot spot of central Italy.
Danny
says he welcomes the recent exposures of agents.
I bet he does — after all, the IRA had a very
poor record at getting that right. Indeed, many
innocent volunteers were killed by agents of the
state. It is time Danny stopped having a petty dig
at the Brits at every opportunity and deal with
the issues that matter to the likes of the McKiernan
family who went public in the Irish News
recently.
That
said, Danny has a poor record at getting it right.
He once said collusion did not affect Republicans.
In the Guardian newspaper on 16 May 2003,
he wrote a piece entitled “The
Story Of StakeKnife is Full of Holes”.
The article went on to cast doubt upon Freddie Scap
being an informer.
Shortly
after Freddie Scap was outed Danny requested that
I meet with his legal representatives to discuss
the issue given that he had been involved in the
Sandy Lynch IRA operation along with Freddie Scap.
At that meeting it was made very clear that Freddie
and one other volunteer was suspected by Danny of
being the source of his arrest. So for Danny to
argue in the press that Freddie Scap was Ok was
a little difficult to understand. Oh, yes, the cardinal
rule, eh, Danny, 'It’s our movement right or
wrong!'
The
issue of informers within the movement is a real
one and the grass roots want answers to the many
questions being posed by supporters. This subject,
if left unchecked is explosive, and when the truth
finally emerges it will be thanks largely to those
like myself who want to see victims given closure
and have a desire to see a United Ireland. If Sinn
Fein does not deal with the issues of infiltration
and collusion among IRA/SF ranks, it has the potential
to reward the British and its agents who murdered
almost at will. Your choice.
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