There was a deal of harrumphing in Downing Street at the recent appointment by President-elect Trump of The Nige as the UK Ambassador-elect to Washington.
The noive of the naïve New Yawker to poke his nose into the Court of Saint James and name his own g-damn Ambassador ! Gadzooks ! Imagine GB aka UK (GBUK) taking an undiplomatic look into the entrails of another country’s politics and all that that entails ? Nev-ah !
Hmmm. Indeed, harrummmmmmm.
What exactly is going down here between the fluttering in the dovecots of Downing Street and the squawking in uptown New Yawk? How could the Orange Man have come to such a dippy take on diplomacy and the august protocols thereof?
Hmmm.
Could The Donald , perchance, have been, as part of his bedspreadtime speedread, along with ‘140 Characters in search of an Oughter’, boning up on (gulp) a recent book on the Irish Supreme Court by Ruadhán Mac Cormaic?
After all, Supreme Courts are to The Donald what, say, Tupperware Parties are to La Bono. Both are into each, bigly.
Consider the following. Or, as they might say in The Big Apple, hometown of The Orange Man, listen up:
-In response to unionist complaints that the Republic was sheltering gunmen the Minister for Justice, Des O’Malley, told the Dáil in December 1971 that extradition for political offences was ‘positively forbidden’ under international law. That was how the Supreme Court saw it. When extradition cases arrived at its door through the 1970s, it would apply the same broad interpretation.
So far, so should.
-Naturally, the situation caused fury on the British side. In the background, London put pressure on Dublin to amend its extradition law, ‘making clear it was part of the price they would have to pay in they wanted to be consulted about the future of the North’.
(See ‘harrumphing’ above).
-Behind the scenes Lord Hailsham found an ally in the one Irish Supreme Court judge who had shown himself in favour of narrowing the interpretation of the extradition law so as to hand over more suspects to the British. Supreme Court Justice Billy FitzGerald consistently dissented in key extradition cases, often finding himself in a minority of one arguing for cooperation with the British, but his unexpected elevation to the position of Chief Justice after O’Dálaigh’s departure in December 1972 had put him in a position where he could exert greater influence on how the court dealt with such cases.
(That would be Lord Hailsham of Hailstonia).
Fasten your safety belt, dear loyal reader, we are now entering some turbulent weather (political).
-In September 1973, three months after meeting him in person, Hailsham wrote privately to FitzGerald about the extradtion issue. The letter was ostensibly about a technicality.
(Hail ! Hail ! Hail Bellow, Well Met Hailsham !).
-Pointing out that the difficulties could probably only be ‘fully and effectively remedied’ by amending the Irish extradition law, Lord Hailsham then suggested to FitzGerald that he might use his influence to lobby for a change in the law.
(The pork stroganoff sound one hears is that of a, erm, hog inserting his snout into a Western Trough over the peat-bog).
-I need not go into the suggestions which have been made as this is more appropriately a matter for your Minister of Justice. In this and other fields I have no doubt that it is in the interests of both our countries to work towards harmonisation of laws. I will certainly do what I can here to that end, and I hope you may also feel it right to use your influence in Ireland in the same direction.
(All hail, Hailsham: so fair and foul political weather we have not seen !)
Back to the book:
-If the Lord Chancellor’s request was unusual, FitzGerald’s reply was perhaps even more extradordinary. He first pointed out to Lord Hailsham that their functions were quite different and that his own role as Chief Justice was ‘primarily judicial’.
The Chief Justice of the Irish Supreme Court continued:
-Notwithstanding this limitation I do, when the occasion arises, urge the Atorney Gerneral, when I consider the necessity arises, as to my views on anything which requires to be attended to…….e.g. to consider what I regarded as the necessary amendment to our Extradition Act of 1965. …, I fully appreciate that in the present atmosphere this outlook of mine is political dynamite’.
Ruadán Mc Cormaic, author of the book, comments:
-It was a remarkable exchange: a Chief Justice privately informing a British Cabinet minister that he disagreed fundamentally not only with his own colleagues on the Supreme Court but also with the policy of his own government towards a law that he was charged with interpreting and applying.
Political dynamite?
Hmmmm.
-Des O Malley revived the non-jury Special Criminal Court for subversive crimes in May 1972 and in December 1972 the law was changed also as to make it easier to sercure convictions on the basis of a garda superintendent’s unsupported evidence that he believved someone to be a member of the IRA.
Hold it there, little Des ! It wasn’t political dynamite which the ‘Littlejohns’ detonated in downtown Dublin, in December 1972 but, as a forensic examination showed , ‘political nitrate bombs’.
We are not talking here, folks, about a banana republic (alleged) such as Mali, West Africa.. But, rather, The I Do Be Standing by The Republic of Des O’Malley, West Britannia.
To conclude: as to where the Dublin bombs of December 72 came from? The following lines were almost written by a Lord (Tennyson, not Hailsham):
-I come from haunt of coot and hern
I make a sudden sally;
And sprinkle out among the fern
To bicker down a Liffey valley’.
This is the first verse of ‘The Brook’ which is not, repeat not, short for ‘The Brookeborough’.
Hail Sham! who, with Edward Heath, briefed Lord Widgery on what was equired of him after
Bloody Sunday!
Hail Sham whose father backed the UVF in 1912!
Hail Sham whose son pointed the finger at Solicitors and Barristers who defended Republican
suspects, lawyers who were subsequently murdered!
And a Judge, a citizen required to give fidelity to the Irish Nation and loyalty to the State who
did his damnedest to do Hail Sham’s bidding!
Was Cearbhaill O Dalaigh nominated to the European Court by Jack Lynch to make way
for Billy Fitzgerald, John Bull’s more pliable candidate?
A Dhonail, a chara, the omniverous Hogg does not differentiate between the two ‘sides’ of The Black Sow’s Dyke.