NEWS FROM SAOIRSE (freedom). The Voice of the Irish Republican Movement. Republican Sinn Féin http://rsf.ie 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1 229 Falls Road, Belfast

Nationalists claim the PSNI failed to protect a funeral cortege from a loyalist mob, as it prepared to leave St Matthew's chapel (sic) on the Newtownards Road.
— Sunday Business Post, October 20, 2002 re an incident on June 5 last.

This follows continuing violence in the interface areas. Nationalists have repeatedly claimed the PSNI are failing to prevent attacks on their community from loyalists.
— Sunday Business Post.

PSNI assistant chief constable Alan McQuillan said last month loyalists were responsible for the "significant majority" of sectarian violence in east Belfast.
— Sunday Business Post.

Repair work to the "peace-line" between the loyalist Cluan Place and the nationalist Clandeboye Drive had to be abandoned on Thursday following a loyalist death threat to workers.
— Sunday Business Post.

If he [Blair] postpones the [Stormont] elections, he will look like General Pinochet, cancelling democracy because he can't cope with the people's will. He may also ensure the complete alienation of nationalists to the state, at a time they were supposed to be coming to terms with it.
— Seán Mac Cárthaigh, writing in the Sunday Business Post, October 20, 2002.

Crucial to all of this is the position of the Irish government. In recent weeks, the British have pulled a fast one on the Department of Foreign Affairs, saving Trimble, suspending the executive and blaming [Provisional] Sinn Féin.
— Seán Mac Cárthaigh.

But at the heart of Blair's strategy is the notion that he is tired of listening to the whining and complaining, and the implicit threat that he will simply wind up the Good Friday Agreement rather than allow the current stalemate to drag on.
— Seán Mac Cárthaigh.

Tony Blair's speech spelled out his strategy: his government will refuse to implement the Good Friday Agreement unless [Provisional] Sinn Féin agrees to conditions that go far beyond what was negotiated.
— Seán Mac Cárthaigh.

It is, however, a great achievement that the number of No votes remained the same as last year. This is an excellent starting point for a new campaign, if the EU Constitution of 2004 proves (sic) to strengthen the undemocratic and militaristic elements of the Nice Treaty further.
— Message to the National Platform from the Danish People's Movement, which has three members in the EU Parliament, October 22, 2002.

The Yes-side claims that the Nice Treaty will open the door to the EU for the applicant countries. Let us do our best to make it open the eyes of the voters in these countries instead, so that they will realise the undemocratic character of the Union and the second-rate membership it offers them.
— Message from the Danish People's Movement.

What of the value of billions of Euro worth of fish taken from Irish territorial waters by foreign trawlers over the last 30 years? And more will be taken in the decades to come?
— Tom McSweeney, presenter of the Seascape programme on RTÉ Radio One, October 24, 2002.

We have had commentators on the Nice Treaty speaking over the past weeks and months of the benefits accruing from EU membership yet no one even mentioned maritime matters or this clear contribution to other EU members.
— Tom McSweeney.

The recall of the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Dr John Reid to London and his replacement by the Welsh Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, is a clear indication that the British government does not envisage an early resolution of the problems besetting the Belfast Agreement.
— Irish Times editorial, October 25, 2002.

. . . the temporary solutions which have carried the process through what Mr Blair described as "four-and-a-half years of hassle, frustration and messy compromise".
— Frank Millar, London Editor, Irish Times, October 25, 2002. (Mr Millar is a former secretary of the Ulster Unionist Party.)

And if the consent of a majority of both communities is  required to run a mere Stormont administration, it is plainly nonsense to suggest the emergence of a simple nationalist majority would be sufficient to effect a change in sovereignty and statehood.
— Frank Millar. So is the British government about to change the goalposts once more? From a simple majority to a majority of unionists and nationalists? A dual Veto?

Dual consent surely must cut both ways. And whether under cover of renegotiation or, as governments would prefer, a review, this is an issue central to the survival of the agreement which simply isn't going to go away.
— Frank Millar.

Sadly, Liam Neeson decided not to turn up in his Michael Collins uniform when he visited Buckingham Palace to pick up his OBE [Order of the British Empire] from the Queen [of England] last week.

But then he might have found himself detained at her Majesty's pleasure a little longer than planned.
— Sunday Tribune, Artlife, October 27, 2002.

The UDA has long since abandoned its cease-fire, has been on a killing spree which has claimed the lives of several innocent young Catholics (sic), and has, with the Ulster Volunteer Force, been engaged in an ongoing attempt to turn the nationalist enclave of Short Strand in east Belfast into a terrifying cage for Catholics (sic).
— Susan McKay writing in the Sunday Tribune, October 27, 2002.

What we know is that one of the impediments to the delivery of the [Stevens] report has been the refusal of Brigadier Gordon Kerr, who formerly headed the unit which used loyalists as double agents, to comply with the investigation.
— Susan McKay.

Kerr is now a British military attaché in Beijing. Does the British government, which ordered the Stevens inquiry, not control its army? Isn't there a whiff of double standards there?
— Susan McKay.

Responding to Tony Blair's assertion that no more progress could be made with the [Provisional] IRA "half in, half out of the process", he [Adams] said Blair knew [Provisional] Sinn Féin was "bringing an end to physical force Republicanism".
— Susan McKay.

An average of almost two foreign military aircraft per day have landed at Shannon Airport in the past 13 months, 637 in all according to [Foreign Affairs] departmental figures.

Peace activists who are monitoring air traffic in Shannon have kept detailed logs of all military flights landing at the airport and say that the vast majority are from the US.
— Harry McGee, Special Correspondent, Sunday Tribune, October 27, 2002.

It [the draft EU constitution] will supercede the Irish Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, in areas of conflict between the two texts. It is intended that the document will include the unaltered entirety of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
— Pat Leahy, Political Reporter, Sunday Business Post, October 27, 2002.

The former French president [Giscard d'Estaing] set out two possibilities for member states which  decline to ratify the new constitution.

One was that they should be forced out, and the other that they should be allowed to remain in a sort of "external association", although he says that they would be made to leave the Euro.
— Pat Leahy.

Some European observers expect the constitutional treaty will be the most important since the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Giscard d'Estaing has said he expects it to last for 50 years.
— Pat Leahy.

Green MEP Patricia McKenna is among those who have been critical of the way the [EU constitutional] convention has gone about its business.

“The way it's being run is completely unacceptable. The whole thing is directed by this hand-picked praesidium which meets in secret. Now they're going to produce this treaty and ask an ‘in or out’ question. It's fundamentally undemocratic,” she said.
— Pat Leahy.

If a Border Poll were held [in the Six Counties] "the vote for remaining in the United Kingdom (sic) might be close to 65%", according to former taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald in his new book, Reflections on the Irish State.
— Irish News, October 30, 2002.

“. . . It would seem that many decades would have to elapse before the number of voters coming from a Catholic background would equal the number of Protestant voters.”
— Irish News.

Dr Fitzgerald said: “Since 1998 the proportion of Catholics preferring to remain in the UK (sic) has fallen back to 15% from 20%.”
— Irish News.

“My war is over. My job as a political leader is to prevent war.”
— Martin McGuinness quoted in the Irish News, October 30, 2002.

“My job is to continue to ensure a political set of circumstances which will never again see British soldiers or members of the IRA lose their lives as a result of political conflict. I feel very passionate about that.”
— Martin McGuinness.

“My project until the day I retire from politics or die is to build a better future for all of our people. That is my project. It is a political project — not a military one.”
— Martin McGuinness. Of course it is a constitutional project, not a revolutionary political one.

Mr McGuinness's comments come just days after [Provisional] Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said he could envisage a day when the [Provisional] IRA would no longer  exist.
— Irish News, October 30, 2002.

Some unionist commentators have even begun suggesting a change in sovereignty should only come about by "dual consent" - in other words that unionists, even if by then a minority [in the Six Counties], could continue to prevent a united Ireland.
— Sunday Business Post political correspondent, Seán Mac Cárthaigh, November 3, 2002.

The latest results from the Rockall Basin, 125 kilometers off the north-west [Co Donegal] coast, confirmed the presence pf considerable reserves of oil and were hailed as highly significant.
— Sunday Business Post's Seán Mac Cárthaigh.

Some Republicans fear British officials may be softening up their Irish [26 Counties] counterparts for a rowing back of Blair's commitment to pull out of Ireland if a majority in the North want to reunite the country.

Already, in anticipation of the census figures, senior unionists are talking in terms of "dual consent" for any change of sovereignty, the sources noted.
— Sunday Business Post, November 3, 2002 (Seán Mac Cárthaigh and Paul T Colgan).

[General Sir Robert] Ford denied he was advocating a shoot-to-kill policy and disputed that shooting ringleaders was the same as killing them.
— Éamonn Mac Dermott report in the Sunday Business Post, November 3, 2002 on evidence at the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday from General Ford, Commander of [British army] Land Forces at the time.

Since September 11  last year, the US army, navy and airforce have imposed stop-loss orders [preventing people from retiring] on more than 40,000 active-duty members. They want to get out, but they may not be able to for years. US President Bush pronounced the war on terror to be a 50-year campaign.
— Sunday Business Post Agenda opinion by Alexander Cockburn, November 3, 2002.

It's blowback [unforeseen circumstances]. The leading cause of violence in the US is its militarised culture.
— Sunday Business Post Agenda.

Also those who were actually playing football at the secret policeman's gaelic football match definitely did not want it. So we stood around for two hours in a draughty field last Wednesday afternoon pretending we didn't know each other in real life.
— Nell McCafferty in the Sunday Business Post, November 3, 2002.

First up for anonymity was the man from Derry who was the real conduit between the [Provisional] IRA and the British government during negotiations for the 1994 [Provisional] IRA cease-fire, which led to the Belfast Agreement. He lets his fellow Derryman Denis Bradley, deputy chairperson of the Northern Police Authority, take the full brunt of publicity for that.
— Nell McCafferty.

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Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom November 9, 2002  Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie.