LETHAL ALLIES : British Collusion in Ireland

[Nally Stand]

All the above is paraphrasing, but is the gist of what was said. As for the book, it is an astonishingly detailed, evidence based account. Evidence stands on it's own merit. And if it was OK for Noel Dorr to slabber about the emotion that "people" felt at hearing Queen Elizabeth speaking Irish ("and in the accent she spoke it in"), then Anne Cadwallader was well within her rights to speak about the emotional anguish of the victims families (whom she had worked with for around twelve years in producing her book) who held a silent and dignified protest on the day and who have a damn good reason to be feeling pain she spoke of. If she stood with them on the anniversary and saw them crying, then she has every right to say so. They might not be IRA victims but media references to their suffering should still be tolerated in the same way at least! If her speaking of this is enough for you to not want to buy a book outlining overwhelming evidence of collusion, then I suspect you likely had no intention of buying it anyway. I'd highly recommend you do though.

Fair enough.

But it isn't ok for this Noel Dorr to speak as you say he did. To dismiss British collusion, claim he knew all about Gárda collusion and then talk about emotion is obviously absurd of him. But it can't be used as an excuse to justify the same treatment to the opposing argument.

It seemed Anne's only reason for bringing up the topic of emotions was as a direct reply to Dorr's comment that the situation in the north was settled. She simply responded by pointing out how absurd a statement that was considering she stood with victims' family members who were literally in tears from pain and anger on Talbott St during the state visit by queen Elizabeth because they continue to be denied closure by a state which had it's Head of State parading around their city on the anniversary of their loved one's deaths. Her arguments overall on the programme, and in her book, were almost exclusively fact/evidence based, rather than emotive.

Personally speaking, the way those families (any anybody who dared voice support for them) were at best ignored that day, and at worst, told to stop living in the past, by an Irish society conditioned to fawn over queen Elizabeth made my skin crawl every bit as much as did the comments of Noel Dorr last night. And for the record, Britain's most recent refusal to hand over the files came the very next day after the "historic" state visit ended. The newfound mutual respect lasted less than 24 hours.

[Nally Stand]

Anne Cadwallader: I just listened to Noel say that the issues around the north have been solved. Well I saw emotion when Queen Elizabeth came to Ireland too. I stood on Talbott St with the families of the Dublin & Monaghan bombings when the visit happened, which was on the anniversary of the bombings, and they were crying out of sheer pain and frustration that after all these years and despite these two states supposedly being such good friends and having such a close relationship and trusting eachother, and the talk about mutual respect, that Britain still refuses to hand over their files on the bombings, to help these grieving families find closure.

They must think McGuinness really sold out when he met her only a year later... and still no files on the Monaghan / Dublin bombings.

I can't tell you what they think about him doing so. I'd imagine they probably wouldn't have liked it if he had met her in Dublin on the anniversary of the bombing though.

[Main Street]

Thanks for the link, Sludden, but being in the states, I can access it.  Don't know the nuances of body-swerving an Irish IP address.

TV3's Tonight with VB isn't just reserved to Irish IP's.
I don't have an Irish IP and I can watch it,  just as if it was an open web video.

[Oraisteach]

Main Street, any suggestion on how I should go about watching it here in the US?

[Main Street]

Main Street, any suggestion on how I should go about watching it here in the US?

I can't say what is your issue, it's a curious one.
Is it the same for all others in the USA and Canada?

[cadhlancian]

Yes, California here. Just tried to open it. Not available in my region.

[lawnseed]

All the above is paraphrasing, but is the gist of what was said. As for the book, it is an astonishingly detailed, evidence based account. Evidence stands on it's own merit. And if it was OK for Noel Dorr to slabber about the emotion that "people" felt at hearing Queen Elizabeth speaking Irish ("and in the accent she spoke it in"), then Anne Cadwallader was well within her rights to speak about the emotional anguish of the victims families (whom she had worked with for around twelve years in producing her book) who held a silent and dignified protest on the day and who have a damn good reason to be feeling pain she spoke of. If she stood with them on the anniversary and saw them crying, then she has every right to say so. They might not be IRA victims but media references to their suffering should still be tolerated in the same way at least! If her speaking of this is enough for you to not want to buy a book outlining overwhelming evidence of collusion, then I suspect you likely had no intention of buying it anyway. I'd highly recommend you do though.

Fair enough.

But it isn't ok for this Noel Dorr to speak as you say he did. To dismiss British collusion, claim he knew all about Gárda collusion and then talk about emotion is obviously absurd of him. But it can't be used as an excuse to justify the same treatment to the opposing argument.

It seemed Anne's only reason for bringing up the topic of emotions was as a direct reply to Dorr's comment that the situation in the north was settled. She simply responded by pointing out how absurd a statement that was considering she stood with victims' family members who were literally in tears from pain and anger on Talbott St during the state visit by queen Elizabeth because they continue to be denied closure by a state which had it's Head of State parading around their city on the anniversary of their loved one's deaths. Her arguments overall on the programme, and in her book, were almost exclusively fact/evidence based, rather than emotive.

Personally speaking, the way those families (any anybody who dared voice support for them) were at best ignored that day, and at worst, told to stop living in the past, by an Irish society conditioned to fawn over queen Elizabeth made my skin crawl every bit as much as did the comments of Noel Dorr last night. And for the record, Britain's most recent refusal to hand over the files came the very next day after the "historic" state visit ended. The newfound mutual respect lasted less than 24 hours.

no doubt poetry muppet will mention the files when hes in London next year some chance

[Maguire01]

All the above is paraphrasing, but is the gist of what was said. As for the book, it is an astonishingly detailed, evidence based account. Evidence stands on it's own merit. And if it was OK for Noel Dorr to slabber about the emotion that "people" felt at hearing Queen Elizabeth speaking Irish ("and in the accent she spoke it in"), then Anne Cadwallader was well within her rights to speak about the emotional anguish of the victims families (whom she had worked with for around twelve years in producing her book) who held a silent and dignified protest on the day and who have a damn good reason to be feeling pain she spoke of. If she stood with them on the anniversary and saw them crying, then she has every right to say so. They might not be IRA victims but media references to their suffering should still be tolerated in the same way at least! If her speaking of this is enough for you to not want to buy a book outlining overwhelming evidence of collusion, then I suspect you likely had no intention of buying it anyway. I'd highly recommend you do though.

Fair enough.

But it isn't ok for this Noel Dorr to speak as you say he did. To dismiss British collusion, claim he knew all about Gárda collusion and then talk about emotion is obviously absurd of him. But it can't be used as an excuse to justify the same treatment to the opposing argument.

It seemed Anne's only reason for bringing up the topic of emotions was as a direct reply to Dorr's comment that the situation in the north was settled. She simply responded by pointing out how absurd a statement that was considering she stood with victims' family members who were literally in tears from pain and anger on Talbott St during the state visit by queen Elizabeth because they continue to be denied closure by a state which had it's Head of State parading around their city on the anniversary of their loved one's deaths. Her arguments overall on the programme, and in her book, were almost exclusively fact/evidence based, rather than emotive.

Personally speaking, the way those families (any anybody who dared voice support for them) were at best ignored that day, and at worst, told to stop living in the past, by an Irish society conditioned to fawn over queen Elizabeth made my skin crawl every bit as much as did the comments of Noel Dorr last night. And for the record, Britain's most recent refusal to hand over the files came the very next day after the "historic" state visit ended. The newfound mutual respect lasted less than 24 hours.

no doubt poetry muppet will mention the files when hes in London next year some chance

Did McGuinness take the Queen to task on them last year?

[Maguire01]

Wish I had a link to the Vincent Browne show.

As for Lethal Allies, I'd strongly recommend it.  What I liked most about it was its measured and meticulous analysis, a careful join-the-dots that leaves little room for ambiguity and misinterpretation.  In fact, its strongest characteristic is a quality that some might dislike—its deliberate repetitiveness.  But the repetition is essential in reinforcing the carefully woven fabric that is this book.  The author carefully follows the threads of victims, interweaving the victims with their murderers, linking ballistic evidence to killers and then to victims.  I like, too, her flowcharts that join events and people and weapons.

Further, her painstaking connecting of the murder gang to the security forces leaves no doubt about collusion.  All that remains is a question of degree.  Just how systemic was that collusion? It was certainly more than the popular "few bad apples." The authorities' mishandling and loss (read deliberate bungling) of evidence as well as failure to investigate according to rudimentary forensic protocol casts a dark pall over the integrity of those charged with upholding justice.  Not a shocking revelation to those of us who lived through it.

Though Cadwallader veers away from the emotional, at times she sprinkles occasional remarks from the victims' families, and though such interjections do little to bolster her central thesis, they serve to remind us that we readers are dealing not with raw statistics but with real people, people still struggling to cope.

As a post script, a couple of things struck me.  I picked up the book expecting an overt SF blas, which really wouldn't have bothered me, but I was surprised that not only did the book lack a Sinn Fein bias, some of its central characters, apart from the victims and their UVF/UDR killers of course, were SDLP reps and Fathers Murray and Faul.

And on a personal note, I was jolted to discover that one of the victims was almost certainly the father of a girl I dated briefly during the early 70s.

Presumably the SDLP reps were simply popping up to deny collusion? That's what Nally tell us.

[Nally Stand]

Wish I had a link to the Vincent Browne show.

As for Lethal Allies, I'd strongly recommend it.  What I liked most about it was its measured and meticulous analysis, a careful join-the-dots that leaves little room for ambiguity and misinterpretation.  In fact, its strongest characteristic is a quality that some might dislike—its deliberate repetitiveness.  But the repetition is essential in reinforcing the carefully woven fabric that is this book.  The author carefully follows the threads of victims, interweaving the victims with their murderers, linking ballistic evidence to killers and then to victims.  I like, too, her flowcharts that join events and people and weapons.

Further, her painstaking connecting of the murder gang to the security forces leaves no doubt about collusion.  All that remains is a question of degree.  Just how systemic was that collusion? It was certainly more than the popular "few bad apples." The authorities' mishandling and loss (read deliberate bungling) of evidence as well as failure to investigate according to rudimentary forensic protocol casts a dark pall over the integrity of those charged with upholding justice.  Not a shocking revelation to those of us who lived through it.

Though Cadwallader veers away from the emotional, at times she sprinkles occasional remarks from the victims' families, and though such interjections do little to bolster her central thesis, they serve to remind us that we readers are dealing not with raw statistics but with real people, people still struggling to cope.

As a post script, a couple of things struck me.  I picked up the book expecting an overt SF blas, which really wouldn't have bothered me, but I was surprised that not only did the book lack a Sinn Fein bias, some of its central characters, apart from the victims and their UVF/UDR killers of course, were SDLP reps and Fathers Murray and Faul.

And on a personal note, I was jolted to discover that one of the victims was almost certainly the father of a girl I dated briefly during the early 70s.

Presumably the SDLP reps were simply popping up to deny collusion? That's what Nally tell us.

Makes it all the more absurd that they same bunch of cretins refused to meet families of collusion victims in stormont on the day they facilitated Jim Allister's anti-agreement SPAD bill, and at an another event in Westminster.

[lawnseed]

All the above is paraphrasing, but is the gist of what was said. As for the book, it is an astonishingly detailed, evidence based account. Evidence stands on it's own merit. And if it was OK for Noel Dorr to slabber about the emotion that "people" felt at hearing Queen Elizabeth speaking Irish ("and in the accent she spoke it in"), then Anne Cadwallader was well within her rights to speak about the emotional anguish of the victims families (whom she had worked with for around twelve years in producing her book) who held a silent and dignified protest on the day and who have a damn good reason to be feeling pain she spoke of. If she stood with them on the anniversary and saw them crying, then she has every right to say so. They might not be IRA victims but media references to their suffering should still be tolerated in the same way at least! If her speaking of this is enough for you to not want to buy a book outlining overwhelming evidence of collusion, then I suspect you likely had no intention of buying it anyway. I'd highly recommend you do though.

Fair enough.

But it isn't ok for this Noel Dorr to speak as you say he did. To dismiss British collusion, claim he knew all about Gárda collusion and then talk about emotion is obviously absurd of him. But it can't be used as an excuse to justify the same treatment to the opposing argument.

It seemed Anne's only reason for bringing up the topic of emotions was as a direct reply to Dorr's comment that the situation in the north was settled. She simply responded by pointing out how absurd a statement that was considering she stood with victims' family members who were literally in tears from pain and anger on Talbott St during the state visit by queen Elizabeth because they continue to be denied closure by a state which had it's Head of State parading around their city on the anniversary of their loved one's deaths. Her arguments overall on the programme, and in her book, were almost exclusively fact/evidence based, rather than emotive.

Personally speaking, the way those families (any anybody who dared voice support for them) were at best ignored that day, and at worst, told to stop living in the past, by an Irish society conditioned to fawn over queen Elizabeth made my skin crawl every bit as much as did the comments of Noel Dorr last night. And for the record, Britain's most recent refusal to hand over the files came the very next day after the "historic" state visit ended. The newfound mutual respect lasted less than 24 hours.

no doubt poetry muppet will mention the files when hes in London next year some chance

Did McGuinness take the Queen to task on them last year?

don't think hes the president.. don't think hes a representative of the 26 government..

[Maguire01]

All the above is paraphrasing, but is the gist of what was said. As for the book, it is an astonishingly detailed, evidence based account. Evidence stands on it's own merit. And if it was OK for Noel Dorr to slabber about the emotion that "people" felt at hearing Queen Elizabeth speaking Irish ("and in the accent she spoke it in"), then Anne Cadwallader was well within her rights to speak about the emotional anguish of the victims families (whom she had worked with for around twelve years in producing her book) who held a silent and dignified protest on the day and who have a damn good reason to be feeling pain she spoke of. If she stood with them on the anniversary and saw them crying, then she has every right to say so. They might not be IRA victims but media references to their suffering should still be tolerated in the same way at least! If her speaking of this is enough for you to not want to buy a book outlining overwhelming evidence of collusion, then I suspect you likely had no intention of buying it anyway. I'd highly recommend you do though.

Fair enough.

But it isn't ok for this Noel Dorr to speak as you say he did. To dismiss British collusion, claim he knew all about Gárda collusion and then talk about emotion is obviously absurd of him. But it can't be used as an excuse to justify the same treatment to the opposing argument.

It seemed Anne's only reason for bringing up the topic of emotions was as a direct reply to Dorr's comment that the situation in the north was settled. She simply responded by pointing out how absurd a statement that was considering she stood with victims' family members who were literally in tears from pain and anger on Talbott St during the state visit by queen Elizabeth because they continue to be denied closure by a state which had it's Head of State parading around their city on the anniversary of their loved one's deaths. Her arguments overall on the programme, and in her book, were almost exclusively fact/evidence based, rather than emotive.

Personally speaking, the way those families (any anybody who dared voice support for them) were at best ignored that day, and at worst, told to stop living in the past, by an Irish society conditioned to fawn over queen Elizabeth made my skin crawl every bit as much as did the comments of Noel Dorr last night. And for the record, Britain's most recent refusal to hand over the files came the very next day after the "historic" state visit ended. The newfound mutual respect lasted less than 24 hours.

no doubt poetry muppet will mention the files when hes in London next year some chance

Did McGuinness take the Queen to task on them last year?

don't think hes the president.. don't think hes a representative of the 26 government..

What difference does that make?

[Maguire01]

Wish I had a link to the Vincent Browne show.

As for Lethal Allies, I'd strongly recommend it.  What I liked most about it was its measured and meticulous analysis, a careful join-the-dots that leaves little room for ambiguity and misinterpretation.  In fact, its strongest characteristic is a quality that some might dislike—its deliberate repetitiveness.  But the repetition is essential in reinforcing the carefully woven fabric that is this book.  The author carefully follows the threads of victims, interweaving the victims with their murderers, linking ballistic evidence to killers and then to victims.  I like, too, her flowcharts that join events and people and weapons.

Further, her painstaking connecting of the murder gang to the security forces leaves no doubt about collusion.  All that remains is a question of degree.  Just how systemic was that collusion? It was certainly more than the popular "few bad apples." The authorities' mishandling and loss (read deliberate bungling) of evidence as well as failure to investigate according to rudimentary forensic protocol casts a dark pall over the integrity of those charged with upholding justice.  Not a shocking revelation to those of us who lived through it.

Though Cadwallader veers away from the emotional, at times she sprinkles occasional remarks from the victims' families, and though such interjections do little to bolster her central thesis, they serve to remind us that we readers are dealing not with raw statistics but with real people, people still struggling to cope.

As a post script, a couple of things struck me.  I picked up the book expecting an overt SF blas, which really wouldn't have bothered me, but I was surprised that not only did the book lack a Sinn Fein bias, some of its central characters, apart from the victims and their UVF/UDR killers of course, were SDLP reps and Fathers Murray and Faul.

And on a personal note, I was jolted to discover that one of the victims was almost certainly the father of a girl I dated briefly during the early 70s.

Presumably the SDLP reps were simply popping up to deny collusion? That's what Nally tell us.

Makes it all the more absurd that they same bunch of cretins refused to meet families of collusion victims in stormont on the day they facilitated Jim Allister's anti-agreement SPAD bill, and at an another event in Westminster.

I'm surprised you're so precious about the agreement - SF is more than happy to ignore aspects of it when it suits.

[Nally Stand]

Wish I had a link to the Vincent Browne show.

As for Lethal Allies, I'd strongly recommend it.  What I liked most about it was its measured and meticulous analysis, a careful join-the-dots that leaves little room for ambiguity and misinterpretation.  In fact, its strongest characteristic is a quality that some might dislike—its deliberate repetitiveness.  But the repetition is essential in reinforcing the carefully woven fabric that is this book.  The author carefully follows the threads of victims, interweaving the victims with their murderers, linking ballistic evidence to killers and then to victims.  I like, too, her flowcharts that join events and people and weapons.

Further, her painstaking connecting of the murder gang to the security forces leaves no doubt about collusion.  All that remains is a question of degree.  Just how systemic was that collusion? It was certainly more than the popular "few bad apples." The authorities' mishandling and loss (read deliberate bungling) of evidence as well as failure to investigate according to rudimentary forensic protocol casts a dark pall over the integrity of those charged with upholding justice.  Not a shocking revelation to those of us who lived through it.

Though Cadwallader veers away from the emotional, at times she sprinkles occasional remarks from the victims' families, and though such interjections do little to bolster her central thesis, they serve to remind us that we readers are dealing not with raw statistics but with real people, people still struggling to cope.

As a post script, a couple of things struck me.  I picked up the book expecting an overt SF blas, which really wouldn't have bothered me, but I was surprised that not only did the book lack a Sinn Fein bias, some of its central characters, apart from the victims and their UVF/UDR killers of course, were SDLP reps and Fathers Murray and Faul.

And on a personal note, I was jolted to discover that one of the victims was almost certainly the father of a girl I dated briefly during the early 70s.

Presumably the SDLP reps were simply popping up to deny collusion? That's what Nally tell us.

Makes it all the more absurd that they same bunch of cretins refused to meet families of collusion victims in stormont on the day they facilitated Jim Allister's anti-agreement SPAD bill, and at an another event in Westminster.

I'm surprised you're so precious about the agreement - SF is more than happy to ignore aspects of it when it suits.

Whataboutery. I think my point was about the stoops ignoring the agreement in this discussion.

[Maguire01]

Wish I had a link to the Vincent Browne show.

As for Lethal Allies, I'd strongly recommend it.  What I liked most about it was its measured and meticulous analysis, a careful join-the-dots that leaves little room for ambiguity and misinterpretation.  In fact, its strongest characteristic is a quality that some might dislike—its deliberate repetitiveness.  But the repetition is essential in reinforcing the carefully woven fabric that is this book.  The author carefully follows the threads of victims, interweaving the victims with their murderers, linking ballistic evidence to killers and then to victims.  I like, too, her flowcharts that join events and people and weapons.

Further, her painstaking connecting of the murder gang to the security forces leaves no doubt about collusion.  All that remains is a question of degree.  Just how systemic was that collusion? It was certainly more than the popular "few bad apples." The authorities' mishandling and loss (read deliberate bungling) of evidence as well as failure to investigate according to rudimentary forensic protocol casts a dark pall over the integrity of those charged with upholding justice.  Not a shocking revelation to those of us who lived through it.

Though Cadwallader veers away from the emotional, at times she sprinkles occasional remarks from the victims' families, and though such interjections do little to bolster her central thesis, they serve to remind us that we readers are dealing not with raw statistics but with real people, people still struggling to cope.

As a post script, a couple of things struck me.  I picked up the book expecting an overt SF blas, which really wouldn't have bothered me, but I was surprised that not only did the book lack a Sinn Fein bias, some of its central characters, apart from the victims and their UVF/UDR killers of course, were SDLP reps and Fathers Murray and Faul.

And on a personal note, I was jolted to discover that one of the victims was almost certainly the father of a girl I dated briefly during the early 70s.

Presumably the SDLP reps were simply popping up to deny collusion? That's what Nally tell us.

Makes it all the more absurd that they same bunch of cretins refused to meet families of collusion victims in stormont on the day they facilitated Jim Allister's anti-agreement SPAD bill, and at an another event in Westminster.

I'm surprised you're so precious about the agreement - SF is more than happy to ignore aspects of it when it suits.

Whataboutery. I think my point was about the stoops ignoring the agreement in this discussion.

This discussion was about collusion - you brought the agreement into it. And maybe my comment is whataboutery. But it's double-standards. Why should one party have to rigidly comply with the agreement when others take an 'a la carte' approach?