I note where an academic unionist is claiming that the Irish government got off far too lightly in the Stormont House Agreement. How so?
Well, it’s all in the comparison between what the Agreement asks of the British government and what it asks of the Irish government. The British government is to “make full disclosure” to the Historical Investigations Unit. The Irish government, on the other hand, merely pledges “full cooperation of all relevant Irish authorities, including the disclosure of information and documentation.” The British, it’s concluded, will be subject to police investigation whereas the Irish won’t.
I’m sure the devil is in the detail of these things. At the same time it looks to me as though both governments are committed to spilling the beans on information they have about the violent past. But there is a difference.
While I’ve no doubt there were occasions when collusion existed between the gardaí and the IRA, the facts show that the gardaí in general were as enthusiastic as the northern ‘security’ forces about capturing IRA men and putting them behind bars. The British army, the UDR and the RUC, on the other hand, have a series of major incidents to explain away. Bloody Sunday was, of course a straight-forward slaughter performed by the British army itself, as was the killing of those in Ballymurphy a few months earlier. And there are literally hundreds of other cases where people had a loved one killed by the ‘security’ forces. Then there are those occasions like the Dublin-Monaghan bombing, which loyalist paramilitaries claimed but which even the dumbest dog in the alley-way knows was fully assisted by ‘security’ force personnel.
But in the end it won’t matter which of the two governments is charged in the Agreement with greater disclosure. The Irish government won’t come clean, even if it has less to come clean about. Enda might allow the digging out of some gardaí involvement, as long as there is no question of Fine Gael involvement and that he could be assured revelation would somehow damage Sinn Féin. As to the British government, there’s as much chance of them coming clean on their part in the dirty war as there is of Paul Berry becoming the next leader of the DUP.
Initial conclusions
“With respect to the responsibility of intellectuals, there are still other, equally disturbing questions. Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyse actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions… to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.” (Chomsky 1967)
There is a word that some academics fail to address when they publish papers (cui bono?) about ‘the past’ and that is the word “planning”. The Ballymurphy Massacre and Bloody Sunday did not just happen without meticulous planning, resources and orders. This is not the stuff of conspiracy theory. We know that politicians used parliamentary privilege to name individuals who were subsequently murdered. Compare the findings of the Widgery Tribunal and the Saville Report if evidence of another appalling vista is required.
The reality facing the British government is that too many issues have been put on the long finger or swept under the carpet. That finger is now like Pinocchio’s nose and the carpet is hovering higher than the Shard of glass. It is fortunate that the Shard has a viewing gallery and an open-air observation deck.
Didn’t I see the British PM marching along a street in Paris in solidarity with those who had been murdered in Charlie Hebdo’s offices and in favour of freedom of speech?
Surely such a man would want to see any similar atrocities committed on “British” soil fully investigated?
The reason, Esteemed Blogmeister, why it will not matter in the end which of the two governments will be charged in the Agreement with greater disclosure is the same reason,one suspects, which has prompted the current referendum in the Free Southern Stateen.
The current one in the never-ending Enda-bending referendums/referenda being, of course, the Same-Sex Marriage one. Twiddle a little knob here and you will find yourself looking at the referendum of 1926 which was craftily disguised as the Findings of the Border Commission. But, of course, was really the Same-Rex Referendum.
But, Perkie’s inner pedant will thus object, we are not in the same position today! To which there is the only one retort: as noted time-traveller E. Harris (Eoghainin na nAontachtoiri in the leprechaun, a knowing nod in the direction of the PH Pearse story, Eoghainin na nEan, or Wee Eoghan of the Birds, for which he is, indubitably) has time and oft truculently remarked: Dat was den, dis is now !
Thus, we are in a Same-Regina Referendum situation which is a different fish-scented sans kettle spout entirely.
Not really. We are, are we not, talking reptiles here, remember.
Soft you,therefore, a word or two before you go.
Perkie’s inner zoot-suited zoologist knows for a scientific fact that: homosexual behaviour between reptiles is not at all uncommon . And particularly so between closely related reptiles. So common or Kensington Garden among the latter indeed has the practice of homosexuality become that the Reptile House in the Buckingham Zoo has of occasion morphed into a veritable H-Block of Hermaphrodite (in a nod to the Greek god/goddess of DIY hanky p., if you so insist).
Thus, Same-Rex Referendum/ Same-Regina Referendum, no difference. And if there is a differ it on only in the price of a refereffin’ heifer.
While the inside chronicles of Princess Di are the ultimate reference books on this matter, doubters still amongst us can be directed to the ground and wind-breaking study of celebrated academics, Kirsch and Rodman, to have their lingering scepticism assuaged.
In their landmark study of 1982, they had this to say: ‘The purpose of homosexual behaviour in some lizards may be territorial. Males may mount other males in a show of domination over a breeding area in order to monopolize the chance to reproduce with female lizards’.
On a related educational matter: what’s referenda, Da? ‘Referendum is the proper plural for referendum but of course being the Free Southern Stateen, Latin has long since been turfed out of the school curriculum on the basis of being too, erm, Roman.Thus, the resulting bog-Latin, referendums, now prevails on RTE and other centres of excellence of Reptile-Worship’.
Perkin Major (for it is he !) is referring here to the time when History and Geography (Chaps and Maps) also featured on the curriculum.Although History and Geometry might well have been nearer the mark, given the Connacht or hellish Hall and Knight tendency of Empah to subject the maps of overseas folks to set squares, protractors, rulers, pencils, stencils, pencil sharpeners, erasers, etc.
Thus, in places as farflung as the Middlesex East or the Dark Continent itself the proliferation of straight lines on the maps. In more nearflung places like Norneverland one finds a crooked line not at all unlike the slimy, shiny overnight trail more commonly associated with a snail.(Or as Liz the Lizard might put it, in her toad-school leprechaun: seilide buca – wow!).
In her inside chronicles Lady Di, with all the verbal fearlessness of a female, openly described the, gulp, ‘nocturnal emissions’ of the same Liz the Lizard. Perkie’s inner squeamish male opts, cravenly, not to go there.
But will choose instead the less fraught route and point out in relation to the above mentioned mathematical instruments of torture relevant to the Orchard County that the ‘protractor’ came in useful during the protracted 30 year Dirty War (assisted in no small measure by the Vivisection 31 of Conor Cruise O ‘Goebbels).
While the no erasure rule (aka no condoms here !) was eventually removed by the Blue Shirts of Fine Gael: a Free Southern Stateen solution to an Irish problem. This came in particularly useful in erasing all memories of the (alleged) Dublin and Monaghan bombings from the Collective Psyche.
To conclude with the heart-warming and spirit-level lifting sight and sound of the Referendum-endorsing Enda wishing a heart-felt bienvenue to his oval-vowelled office with a hearty ‘Allez les Chemises Blues!’to a most peculiar creature called Madame Christine Lagarde.
Now, as the Lagarde is a little known species of the lizard family in the former French colony of Gabon (till they were expelled with a peremptory ‘Gabon out of dat !’ – the French not the lizards) the interest of Perkie’s inner scaly-skinned and zoot-sutied zoologist was naturally et naturellement spiked.
Sufficiently to compel him to ask the following apropos question:
Are Madame Lagarde and Hausfrau Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,perchance, in any way related?
Just asking, like,in the interests of scientific research.
Mind numbing Merkin Old chap I have to lie in a darkened room for hours after reading your epistles to the Ephesians
you got in one Jude
Everyone knows the UVF and UDA was basically run by the “security forces” or the British State, whatever term you prefer. The British state at the very least could have quickly shut down the UVF and UDA because both groups were so heavily infiltrated but as every Tom, Dick and Harry knows, the British State was running these groups, so therefore they were responsible for the murders of over 800 innocent Catholic civilians and also a small number of Protestant civilians (who were mistaken by the loyalist murder gangs as Catholics). This is obviously State murder of civilians and you could maybe go as far as saying it was genocide, it was certainly a crime against humanity by the British State and that’s not even including the open massacres and murders British soldiers were involved in.
I don’t know if the truth will come out any time soon but im certain it will come out one day, whether that’s a few years away or a few decades away, I don’t know but the truth always comes out and the World will see who was REALLY the terrorist in this dirty war…..
Ryan i suspect the average Catholic on the street had much more to fear from the IRA than it did from the Loyalist terrorist groups or the security forces.
As for the Republican campaign it now appears it was being run by the security forces which obviously means the IRA membership was obviously innocent and it was the ghastly british forces which ordered all the killings those bad brits couldnt take them anywhere.
Neill – I think you might have some difficulty convincing the relatives of those killed by the Shankill Butchers of the veractiy of your first sentence…
The families of the disappeared may disagree with you as well.