Irish governments turn to answer claims of collusion

[LeoMc]

My response to the question you no doubt have prepared in response is that the rebels of 1916 would quickly be able to claim the support of the Irish people.

So the rising was legitimate because of the potential for a retrospective mandate for it?

yeap! lets all just 'want' a free Ireland but then when the shooting starts get disgusted and then support it if theres a chance the brits are too busy fighting the germanst too take notice. also worth mentioning that Britain was giving norn iron away for support in the war.. Ireland/dev refused and Irishmen died in british uniforms anyway

Really?

Nobody told you?

As usual you had me scratching my head there but then I realised you had jumped from 1916 to 1940.

So they sold our nordie asses twice collins and then dev

I don't think McDonald and Churchill were actually handing us over, just not objecting if Dev could reach an agreement with Craig.
I've always blamed the Bishops for the first failure to get home rule.

[Nally Stand]

So a report said there was collusion but could find zero evidence to prove it.

Why do you keep repeating this? He didn't say there was 'zero evidence' - he said there was no direct evidence, or 'smoking gun' - i.e. nothing tangible that could prove collusion beyond all reasonable doubt - no phone call, no document, no payment. But weighing up the evidence he heard / read etc. he concluded that on the balance of probabilities, there was collusion. There's no contradiction there, even if you and Gerry don't understand it.

You can read it all here - http://opac.oireachtas.ie/AWData/Library3/smithwickFinal03122013_171046.pdf

And he does state that it is plausible it could have happened without collusion, but he's set out why he came to a different conclusion.

So what you're saying is, Smithwick didn't say he didn't find evidence, but he IS saying he didn't find evidence?

At the end of the day, the findings of this report seem quite bizarre. Hard to ignore the potential for political interference. No evidence found, the man linked to leaking info to the IRA was cleared of wrongdoing, and an acknowledgement of the possibility that there was no collusion and yet we have a supposed "finding" that collusion was there? Wouldn't last long in a court of law would it? Mind you as far as I'm concerned the only collusion I'm sure of where the Guards are concerned is their utterly shameful collusion with the RUC.

[lawnseed]

The idea that the provos in that area needed the help of a guard to spot the man who paraded the loughgall weapons on tv coming out of a garda station in dundalk shows how the police on both sides of the border underestimated how determined these men were. When you are prepared to die for your beliefs you deserve some  acknowledgement of your commitment and your ability. Clearly these cops just didnt get it.  As I said before on that road they were just as likely to be stopped by an IRA checkpoint as a brit checkpoint. No difference in this and the the two soldiers killed at the funerals in belfast

[Jim_Murphy_74]

I'm much happier with the formula ALL IRA = w**kers. The men of 1916 and those who fought the War of Independence won nothing but the partition of my country. Their 'achievement' has been supported by every new generation of w**kers from 1922 until the present day. The result is that Ireland today is a country in which the division runs deeper and is far more firmly entrenched than ever, socially, politically and culturally. Had the men of 1916 not been so keen to demonstrate their machismo and had instead concentrated their efforts on a political strategy, we might not have been in the mess we're in today. Consider this: Sinn Fein took 73 of the 105 seats in 1918, or just over 40 more than the non-republican candidates returned. Assume that this sort of majority would have been repeated in subsequent elections. What would the Sinn Fein influence have been had the party decided to take its seats in Westminster? There have been 25 British general elections since 1918. About 10 of those parliaments have had majorities of 40 or less. How long do you think successive British governments would have tolerated the Shinners holding the balance of power in the mother of Parliaments before they gave them what they wanted just to be rid of them? Ah, but principles, you say. Principles my hole. Where were the principles when they took their seats in Stormont and the Dail? What was lacking was vision and cool heads. Too many psychotics like the blood-fetishist Pearse running about looking for martyrdom. w**kers with a capital W.

This has to be the most ahistorical farrago of nonsense I have ever read in my life. Who was it that brought 'machismo' into Irish politics after decades of political planning had brought Irish nationalism to the cusp of having a trumped up county council to call our own within the Empire? It was Unionism, arming itself and spitting in the face of Westminster. The punishment for their treason was to be rewarded at every step by Westminster. Before the GFA, there was only one instance - the proroguing of Stormont, something that took place because Unionism wanted a Bloody Sunday on the streets of Northern Ireland every day of the week - of the British standing up to Unionism, and yet you say that they would have given Nationalism what it wanted to be rid of them? Remember, Ireland had a disproportionate number of seats in Westminster after the Act of Union. Sinn Féin won more seats than Labour despite getting less than a fifth of the votes (uncontested seats would account for some of the disparity, but not that much). It would have been a simple matter to have rectified this undemocratic anomaly by merging the Irish constituencies and neutering the power of Sinn Féin to control the mother of all Parliaments. Yet in your fantasy world the reaction of a political system that elevated Andrew Bonar Law to the highest office, a man who could "imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support them", would have quickly cut a deal to be rid of the bolshie Micks! You are either taking the piss or utterly clueless. Only you know which it is.

I think the IRB were ahead of the unionists, but that's not the main point of what I was saying. I agree that the British government traditionally caved in to unionist pressure, but there's no certainty that it would have continued to do so, particularly if the British were being impeded in their own parliament by the shinners. In more recent years, for example, the British have faced down unionism (e.g over the Anglo Irish Agreement) when it has been in their interests to do so. I'm not saying that Irish independence would have followed in 5 or 10 years, but I think it would have happened. Even if you're right, what would have been the worst case scenario? We would have reached the present day with Ireland still being part of the UK? So what would that have looked like? We would have had, at very least, a devolved Irish parliament in Dublin - Wales and Scotland have this, we wouldn't have been any different. So we would have been a united country, being governed from Dublin, without the bitterness that 90 years and many thousands of deaths have caused. We wouldn't have had partition, 50 years of unionist misrule, the RUC, B Specials, the Troubles. We wouldn't have had 2 separate states on the island turning their backs on each other, to the extent that many people in the south now regard 'Ireland' as something which stops at the border. We wouldn't have had all that and here we would be in 2013, with the nationalist population in the 6 counties now equal in numbers to their unionist counterparts, making any future partition of the island impossible. We could've called for a referendum, just as Scotland has done. Even in your worst case scenario, therefore, we would've been far closer to an independent, 32 county Ireland than we are now.

And what factors would have swayed unionists to a parliament in Dublin. (even in a United Kingdom context?)

They armed themselves an army against Home Rule did they not? I think you are being very one-eyed in your causes of partition....

/Jim

[Myles Na G.]

I'm much happier with the formula ALL IRA = w**kers. The men of 1916 and those who fought the War of Independence won nothing but the partition of my country. Their 'achievement' has been supported by every new generation of w**kers from 1922 until the present day. The result is that Ireland today is a country in which the division runs deeper and is far more firmly entrenched than ever, socially, politically and culturally. Had the men of 1916 not been so keen to demonstrate their machismo and had instead concentrated their efforts on a political strategy, we might not have been in the mess we're in today. Consider this: Sinn Fein took 73 of the 105 seats in 1918, or just over 40 more than the non-republican candidates returned. Assume that this sort of majority would have been repeated in subsequent elections. What would the Sinn Fein influence have been had the party decided to take its seats in Westminster? There have been 25 British general elections since 1918. About 10 of those parliaments have had majorities of 40 or less. How long do you think successive British governments would have tolerated the Shinners holding the balance of power in the mother of Parliaments before they gave them what they wanted just to be rid of them? Ah, but principles, you say. Principles my hole. Where were the principles when they took their seats in Stormont and the Dail? What was lacking was vision and cool heads. Too many psychotics like the blood-fetishist Pearse running about looking for martyrdom. w**kers with a capital W.

This has to be the most ahistorical farrago of nonsense I have ever read in my life. Who was it that brought 'machismo' into Irish politics after decades of political planning had brought Irish nationalism to the cusp of having a trumped up county council to call our own within the Empire? It was Unionism, arming itself and spitting in the face of Westminster. The punishment for their treason was to be rewarded at every step by Westminster. Before the GFA, there was only one instance - the proroguing of Stormont, something that took place because Unionism wanted a Bloody Sunday on the streets of Northern Ireland every day of the week - of the British standing up to Unionism, and yet you say that they would have given Nationalism what it wanted to be rid of them? Remember, Ireland had a disproportionate number of seats in Westminster after the Act of Union. Sinn Féin won more seats than Labour despite getting less than a fifth of the votes (uncontested seats would account for some of the disparity, but not that much). It would have been a simple matter to have rectified this undemocratic anomaly by merging the Irish constituencies and neutering the power of Sinn Féin to control the mother of all Parliaments. Yet in your fantasy world the reaction of a political system that elevated Andrew Bonar Law to the highest office, a man who could "imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support them", would have quickly cut a deal to be rid of the bolshie Micks! You are either taking the piss or utterly clueless. Only you know which it is.

I think the IRB were ahead of the unionists, but that's not the main point of what I was saying. I agree that the British government traditionally caved in to unionist pressure, but there's no certainty that it would have continued to do so, particularly if the British were being impeded in their own parliament by the shinners. In more recent years, for example, the British have faced down unionism (e.g over the Anglo Irish Agreement) when it has been in their interests to do so. I'm not saying that Irish independence would have followed in 5 or 10 years, but I think it would have happened. Even if you're right, what would have been the worst case scenario? We would have reached the present day with Ireland still being part of the UK? So what would that have looked like? We would have had, at very least, a devolved Irish parliament in Dublin - Wales and Scotland have this, we wouldn't have been any different. So we would have been a united country, being governed from Dublin, without the bitterness that 90 years and many thousands of deaths have caused. We wouldn't have had partition, 50 years of unionist misrule, the RUC, B Specials, the Troubles. We wouldn't have had 2 separate states on the island turning their backs on each other, to the extent that many people in the south now regard 'Ireland' as something which stops at the border. We wouldn't have had all that and here we would be in 2013, with the nationalist population in the 6 counties now equal in numbers to their unionist counterparts, making any future partition of the island impossible. We could've called for a referendum, just as Scotland has done. Even in your worst case scenario, therefore, we would've been far closer to an independent, 32 county Ireland than we are now.

And what factors would have swayed unionists to a parliament in Dublin. (even in a United Kingdom context?)

They armed themselves an army against Home Rule did they not? I think you are being very one-eyed in your causes of partition....

/Jim

They did, and it worked for them on that occasion. That's not to say the same tactic would've succeeded in a different decade. The first Ulster Workers strike in the 70s achieved its objective and made the British government look ineffective, but when the trick was tried again in subsequent years it didn't work. Unionist anger over things like the Anglo Irish Agreement, Drumcree and the 'fleg' have been faced down and shown to be, ultimately, a lot of sound and fury and little else. The British government took the decision to go down the road of devolved government: had things been different, I think Ireland would've been the first to go down this road, but even if we'd had to wait until it was road tested in Wales and Scotland, we'd have got it. We'd have been a united country with our own (limited) parliament in Dublin, without the baggage of 90 years of separation and conflict. It's a smaller step from that scenario to full independence, than it is from where we are now, when reunification and independence is, realistically, a couple of generations away at best.

[Applesisapples]

How long after the events of 1916 did Ireland decide to hold dear the memory of our GPO heroes and why can we not use the same time frame, CD?

It's a myth that Irish Public Opinion was against the Rising from the start and that the subsequent treatment of the ringleaders coupled with British brutality led to a ground swell of support. Public sympathy for the goals of the 'rebels' was always there.
The same time frame can't be used because it's a different time.

I'd say that public opinion in Ireland in 1916 was no different to what prevails in the North currently. That is a majority would perceive themselves as broadly nationalist/republican but in practice would be very accepting of the status quo.

[Jim_Murphy_74]

I'm much happier with the formula ALL IRA = w**kers. The men of 1916 and those who fought the War of Independence won nothing but the partition of my country. Their 'achievement' has been supported by every new generation of w**kers from 1922 until the present day. The result is that Ireland today is a country in which the division runs deeper and is far more firmly entrenched than ever, socially, politically and culturally. Had the men of 1916 not been so keen to demonstrate their machismo and had instead concentrated their efforts on a political strategy, we might not have been in the mess we're in today. Consider this: Sinn Fein took 73 of the 105 seats in 1918, or just over 40 more than the non-republican candidates returned. Assume that this sort of majority would have been repeated in subsequent elections. What would the Sinn Fein influence have been had the party decided to take its seats in Westminster? There have been 25 British general elections since 1918. About 10 of those parliaments have had majorities of 40 or less. How long do you think successive British governments would have tolerated the Shinners holding the balance of power in the mother of Parliaments before they gave them what they wanted just to be rid of them? Ah, but principles, you say. Principles my hole. Where were the principles when they took their seats in Stormont and the Dail? What was lacking was vision and cool heads. Too many psychotics like the blood-fetishist Pearse running about looking for martyrdom. w**kers with a capital W.

This has to be the most ahistorical farrago of nonsense I have ever read in my life. Who was it that brought 'machismo' into Irish politics after decades of political planning had brought Irish nationalism to the cusp of having a trumped up county council to call our own within the Empire? It was Unionism, arming itself and spitting in the face of Westminster. The punishment for their treason was to be rewarded at every step by Westminster. Before the GFA, there was only one instance - the proroguing of Stormont, something that took place because Unionism wanted a Bloody Sunday on the streets of Northern Ireland every day of the week - of the British standing up to Unionism, and yet you say that they would have given Nationalism what it wanted to be rid of them? Remember, Ireland had a disproportionate number of seats in Westminster after the Act of Union. Sinn Féin won more seats than Labour despite getting less than a fifth of the votes (uncontested seats would account for some of the disparity, but not that much). It would have been a simple matter to have rectified this undemocratic anomaly by merging the Irish constituencies and neutering the power of Sinn Féin to control the mother of all Parliaments. Yet in your fantasy world the reaction of a political system that elevated Andrew Bonar Law to the highest office, a man who could "imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support them", would have quickly cut a deal to be rid of the bolshie Micks! You are either taking the piss or utterly clueless. Only you know which it is.

I think the IRB were ahead of the unionists, but that's not the main point of what I was saying. I agree that the British government traditionally caved in to unionist pressure, but there's no certainty that it would have continued to do so, particularly if the British were being impeded in their own parliament by the shinners. In more recent years, for example, the British have faced down unionism (e.g over the Anglo Irish Agreement) when it has been in their interests to do so. I'm not saying that Irish independence would have followed in 5 or 10 years, but I think it would have happened. Even if you're right, what would have been the worst case scenario? We would have reached the present day with Ireland still being part of the UK? So what would that have looked like? We would have had, at very least, a devolved Irish parliament in Dublin - Wales and Scotland have this, we wouldn't have been any different. So we would have been a united country, being governed from Dublin, without the bitterness that 90 years and many thousands of deaths have caused. We wouldn't have had partition, 50 years of unionist misrule, the RUC, B Specials, the Troubles. We wouldn't have had 2 separate states on the island turning their backs on each other, to the extent that many people in the south now regard 'Ireland' as something which stops at the border. We wouldn't have had all that and here we would be in 2013, with the nationalist population in the 6 counties now equal in numbers to their unionist counterparts, making any future partition of the island impossible. We could've called for a referendum, just as Scotland has done. Even in your worst case scenario, therefore, we would've been far closer to an independent, 32 county Ireland than we are now.

And what factors would have swayed unionists to a parliament in Dublin. (even in a United Kingdom context?)

They armed themselves an army against Home Rule did they not? I think you are being very one-eyed in your causes of partition....

/Jim

They did, and it worked for them on that occasion. That's not to say the same tactic would've succeeded in a different decade. The first Ulster Workers strike in the 70s achieved its objective and made the British government look ineffective, but when the trick was tried again in subsequent years it didn't work. Unionist anger over things like the Anglo Irish Agreement, Drumcree and the 'fleg' have been faced down and shown to be, ultimately, a lot of sound and fury and little else. The British government took the decision to go down the road of devolved government: had things been different, I think Ireland would've been the first to go down this road, but even if we'd had to wait until it was road tested in Wales and Scotland, we'd have got it. We'd have been a united country with our own (limited) parliament in Dublin, without the baggage of 90 years of separation and conflict. It's a smaller step from that scenario to full independence, than it is from where we are now, when reunification and independence is, realistically, a couple of generations away at best.

Maybe so but no British government was going to face down unionists in 1918. So imagine if there had been no rising or subsequent support for Sinn Féin. Home Rule would likely have established a Dublin parliament and unionists would have exercised their opt out clause.  Ulster unionist had longed played their card before the rising.

Without acknowledging that or explanation of how it would be reversed, I fail to follow your logic that 1916 and years after caused partition.

Would this change of outlook from creating an army to resisting a limited Dublin parliament and having democratic legislation overruled, have changed gradually or overnight?

Remember too that the toleration of an overtly armed force ready to resist democratic legislation was a significant factor in the events of the following decade. However that is an unwelcome observation if one wants to lay all blame at the door of one group.

/Jim

[Maguire01]

So a report said there was collusion but could find zero evidence to prove it.

Why do you keep repeating this? He didn't say there was 'zero evidence' - he said there was no direct evidence, or 'smoking gun' - i.e. nothing tangible that could prove collusion beyond all reasonable doubt - no phone call, no document, no payment. But weighing up the evidence he heard / read etc. he concluded that on the balance of probabilities, there was collusion. There's no contradiction there, even if you and Gerry don't understand it.

You can read it all here - http://opac.oireachtas.ie/AWData/Library3/smithwickFinal03122013_171046.pdf

And he does state that it is plausible it could have happened without collusion, but he's set out why he came to a different conclusion.

So what you're saying is, Smithwick didn't say he didn't find evidence, but he IS saying he didn't find evidence?

At the end of the day, the findings of this report seem quite bizarre. Hard to ignore the potential for political interference. No evidence found, the man linked to leaking info to the IRA was cleared of wrongdoing, and an acknowledgement of the possibility that there was no collusion and yet we have a supposed "finding" that collusion was there? Wouldn't last long in a court of law would it? Mind you as far as I'm concerned the only collusion I'm sure of where the Guards are concerned is their utterly shameful collusion with the RUC.

I suggest you read up on the legal burden of proof. This finding isn't intended to stand in a criminal court - that wasn't the remit of the tribunal. You also need to understand the distinction drawn with the use of the term direct evidence. If you don't read the report - or at least its conclusions - then you're like Adams, reacting before he had a chance to read it and therefore not understanding what' it said. The case for collusion might not be convincing 'beyond reasonable doubt', but there's no contradiction in what the report says - just a failure by some to understand the language.

[Fear Bun Na Sceilpe]

Has anybody addressed the question of why were these guys were so cavalier in their attitude to self preservation.
Let's do the craziest thing ever- drive through south Armagh in 1989 with no protection. FFs who sanctioned this within the RUC. Only surpassed by the 2 corporals driving into the republican funeral in west belfast.

And before the barrage of abuse starts this is a separate question to why did the lone guard collude etc

[Maguire01]

Has anybody addressed the question of why were these guys were so cavalier in their attitude to self preservation.
Let's do the craziest thing ever- drive through south Armagh in 1989 with no protection. FFs who sanctioned this within the RUC. Only surpassed by the 2 corporals driving into the republican funeral in west belfast.

And before the barrage of abuse starts this is a separate question to why did the lone guard collude etc

What do you mean by 'has anyone addressed' it?
And as these were two senior officers, I doubt anyone higher was sanctioning it - I may be wrong.
Didn't the two soldiers drive into that funeral by accident? No real comparison if so.

[Gaffer]

Has anybody addressed the question of why were these guys were so cavalier in their attitude to self preservation.
Let's do the craziest thing ever- drive through south Armagh in 1989 with no protection. FFs who sanctioned this within the RUC. Only surpassed by the 2 corporals driving into the republican funeral in west belfast.

And before the barrage of abuse starts this is a separate question to why did the lone guard collude etc

I have no doubt that on many many occasions during the conflict police / army in civilian gear have driven through republican areas and returned unscathed.

To believe that these two policemen were the only two RUC men  to have ever driven through south armagh without protection would be foolish to say the least. I am sure that similarily, IRA men have driven through loyalist areas across the north many times without harm coming to them.

[Main Street]

The IRA assassinated RUC personal. The did so regularly, with bomb and bullet, anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

What's the big revelation here, that they might have received a tip off from one source inside the Garda station?
Apart from that detail, there's nothing new, this was a clean hit, a well executed ambush from an IRA perspective.
There's not going to be any sack cloth and ashes performance from Sinn Fein over this ambush, nor would I expect any.
There's a concerted effort to indulge in a post GFA criminalisation process, aimed directly at republican military actions.

Republicanism in the last 50 years was about civil protest, militarism, prison protest, more civil protest, negotiations, truce signed and political process. In all aspects of that, enough of a mandate was sought and achieved.
That's the picture of republicanism in the modern era, violence was one part.
Unless there's going to be a process which deals with all the violence of the the whole era, it's just a blatant indulgent exercise in hypocrisy, to focus on the military actions of republicans  who were pitted against a fascist type statelet who conducted a concerted campaign of coercion against the minority community, with the combined  forces of thugs with guns and uniform thugs with guns, along with the full weight, resources and backing of a parliament of some 60m people.

[Maguire01]

The two corporals didn't drive into a high profile Republican funeral in the middle of Andytown by accident ffs!

If I'm not mistaken, that's what was reported. If not, why did they come to be there?

[Main Street]

Kevin Myers, as one would expect, was found wanting in every aspect to do with credibility and integrity that should befit a journalist.

And you seemed to draw a very clear distinction last week, Mr. Myers, that while you have an opinion, and you have written your opinion and voiced your opinion, you have no evidence whatsoever to offer the Chairman to suggest that there was collusion in relation to the Breen and Buchanan murders?
A. I have no evidence that would be of any interest to any court anywhere, as we understand the word 'evidence', yes.
Q. And certainly, your understanding of what is evidence excludes your opinion being relied upon to come to any conclusion?
A. That is a reasonable assessment, yes.

And I take it, you wouldn't want your fate or your reputation or your name damnified by a columnist's opinion without any evidence?
A. That is correct."

Myers' Acceptance that his article did not tell the truth in a fair and impartial manner
"Q. And do you think your article of March 2000 told the truth in fair and impartial manner?
A. No, I don't believe it did."

Conclusions on Mr Myers
1.340 It is submitted that by reason of the foregoing, in particular Mr Myers acceptance that his article did not tell the truth in a fair or impartial manner, that no reliance can be placed on the content of his article. Unfortunately, Mr. Myers blindly followed a story he wanted to believe.

[lawnseed]

Ok.. So im the provos..

Theres that cop off the telly heading into dundalk garda station quick fone a couple of the boys.

Are you sure its him? Yeah its him and another guy with him.. Be there in 10 mins.. Thats him getting into that red caveller.. Follow them.. Fuksake where are they going.. Theyre on their own.. Cant be.. Im tellin you theres not a thing on the road.. Pass him and put her across the road ive something here for him.. Bang bang
Lets get outta here..

No need for any garda mole