The Green Ribbon

Dáil debate on collusion

Bertie Ahern renewed his call on the British Government to co-operate with inquiries into collusion during a Dáil debate on the issue yesterday:

The willingness of the British authorities to co-operate with the various inquiries has been tested and in many cases found wanting. We tried to address these issues by establishing inquiries in certain important and representative cases in discussions with the British Government at Weston Park in July 2001. For our part, we have abided by the commitment to establish the inquiry into the murders of Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan, which is now proceeding under Judge Smithwick. While inquiries are under way in the cases of Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson and Billy Wright, the inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane has not been established by the British Government. The House and the Government have made clear our view that a proper independent inquiry must be established as recommended by Judge Cory. I again repeat that call today. While I regret that all of our efforts to date have not been fully successful for the victims, that does not mean we will give up trying to get those commitments honoured. I know we have the support of the entire House in that regard.

 

A Neocon manifesto for NATO

While we're on the subject of neocons, I ought to mention the recent CSIS report entitled Towards A Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership.

The report was ostensibly written by five former NATO generals, including Britain's Lord Inge, the chairman of Aegis Defence Services.However, a postscript adds that "to assist in the writing process, the authors were joined by Benjamin Bilski, who lectures in philosophy at the Faculty of Law of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands; and by Douglas Murray, an author and Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion in Westminster."

Douglas Murray happens to be the author of Neoconservatism - Why We Need It, so it's not surprising that the report reiterates familar neocon themes:

Hain resigns

Anthony Barnett suggested to me recently that Peter Hain's troubles were a good example of the centrifugal forces engulfing the union. In Wales, Labour has just just lost a Secretary of State. In Scotland, the pressure on Wendy Alexander has just ratcheted up a notch.

Smearing Livingstone: The latest episode from neocon TV

There's a huge amount of knocking copy about Ken Livingstone in the press at the moment, ahead of Martin Bright's Dispatches documentary on Channel Four tonight.

Bright writes:

I was delighted when Livingstone became Mayor of London in 2000 against the full might of the Labour spin machine. I believe he has been a courageous politician whose once-derided "loony left" ideas about the promotion of the rights of minorities are now so mainstream that they are even official Conservative policy. Livingstone has been right about many things, but I believe his behaviour is symptomatic of a man who has grown too comfortable with power. (New Statesman)

Perhaps it's not Livingstone who's changed since 2000, but Bright who has fallen in with Dean Godson's neoconservative crowd at Policy Exchange.

As I have documented ad nauseam previously, Godson has a family background in cold war covert action methods whose use he advocates today:

During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals. And magazines such as Encounter did hand-to-hand combat with Soviet fellow travellers. For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence. At the moment, the extremists largely have the field to themselves. (Times)

Interestingly, this 'hand-to-hand combat' that these circles engaged in included a number of documentaries that appeared on British television.

e-border only for 'air and sea routes between Great Britain and Northern Ireland'

Slugger's Pete Baker brings us important news on the e-borders scheme. Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Owen Paterson has pinned down a key detail that was glossed over when the e-borders team responded to my Freedom of Information request earlier this month:

                Owen Paterson (North Shropshire, Conservative) | Hansard source

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the implications are of an e-borders system circumscribing Great Britain for travel between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland; and what documents will be required under the proposed e-border system for travel between Britain and Northern Ireland.

                Liam Byrne (Minister of State, Home Office) | Hansard source

The police service already screens passengers travelling between Northern Ireland and the mainland and there are no plans to introduce passport controls for those travelling on domestic journeys.

Section 14 of the Police and Justice Act 2006 introduced a new power that will allow the police to capture passenger, crew and service information on air and sea journeys within the United Kingdom. The intention is that the power will be brought into force by secondary legislation in 2008. The specific police requirements under this power, which will include details of the routes affected and data required, are still under discussion within Government. Once the proposals have been finalised they will be subject to a 12-week public consultation.

It is expected that this police power will only apply to air and sea routes between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Passengers will not be required to use passports, but may be required to produce one of several types of documentation, including passports, when travelling, to enable the carrier to the meet the requirements of a police request. (Via TheyWorkForYou.com)

 

DUP MPs losing patience with Paisley

Today's front page story in the Irish Times suggests that Ian Paisley may be under pressure to step down as First Minister of Northern Ireland sooner than he had planned.

Frank Millar reports that Paisley "will retire as a Westminster MP at the British general election now widely expected in the summer of next year."

As Slugger notes, a DUP spokesman has dismissed the story as 'unfounded press speculation.' Nevertheless, Millar, a former UUP general secretary and one of the most respected observers of Stormont affairs, is not lightly to be disregarded.

The idea that Paisley would step down rather than defend his North Antrim seat is intrinsically plausible given that he will be 82 in April. However, his preferred replacement is surely his son, fellow North Antrim MLA and junior Stormont minister, Ian Paisley Jr, and that may be something of a problem just now.

Thirty Year Rule Review

The National Archives has launched an online consultation on planned changes to the thirty year rule which governs the availability of public records to researchers. Anyone interested can contribute here.

The rationale for the changes was outlined by Gordon Brown in his speech on liberty in October:

It is an irony that the information that can be made available on request on current events and current decisions is still withheld as a matter of course for similar events and similar decisions that happened 20 or 25 years ago.

Under the present arrangements historical records are transferred to the national archives and are only opened to public access after thirty years or where explicitly requested under the FoI Act. It is time to look again at whether historical records can be made available for public inspection much more swiftly than under the current arrangements.

Dean Godson on truth in Ireland

Slugger points us to last Thursday's Times and an attack by Dean Godson on the British Government consultative group set up to look at ways of dealing with the legacy of the Troubles:

Concepts such as “transitional justice” may be suitable for describing events in South Africa, Guatemala or Argentina, where state forces committed the lion's share of the atrocities. They have no place in Northern Ireland where the lion's share of the atrocities was committed by terrorists.

The leaks from the consultative group suggest that its focus will be on British state crimes. Why? Surely the role of elements of the Irish State in setting up the Provisionals in 1970 is at least as worthwhile a subject of inquiry. Why are there never inquiries into the IRA's campaign of ethnic cleansing in Fermanagh? (Times)

What's strange here is that Dean Godson assumes that British state violence and IRA violence are mutually exclusive categories. Yet this is the very person who claims he was told by the late Fr Denis Faul that Martin McGuinness was an MI6 agent, an allegation that potentially implicates the British state in a whole swathe of IRA activity, if true.

If we are to take Godson seriously on that point, then surely that is exactly the kind of issue that a truth commission should be investigating.

And if we are not to take him seriously on that point, then why take him seriously on anything else?

Speaking of contested versions of the truth, has anyone heard any more about Policy Exchange's threatened lawsuit against Newsnight?

What England Means to Me

Perhaps no group of people have been more ambivalent about their English identity than those of us born in England of Irish descent.

It is no secret that the history of Anglo-Irish relations is in large measure a story of conflict. At different times, each nation has defined itself in opposition to the other, leaving little room for those with connections to both.

But it was not always so. At the very dawn of English literature, the Venerable Bede records the first contact between the two nations, a literary and spiritual flowering which first brought Christianity to the English, and then brought orthodox Catholicism to the Irish.

From my essay at the What England Means to Me website.

Britain considered Italian coup

The Independent has unearthed a remarkable find in the National Archives:

A secret Foreign Office memo dated 6 May 1976, entitled Italy And The Communists: Options For The West, floated one possible course of action as "action in support of a coup d'etat or other subversive action". The authors admitted: "By its nature, a coup d'etat could lead to unpredictable developments." But they added that, in theory at least, "it could be promoted. In one way or another, the force of the right could be counted on, with the support of the police and the army". The idea of a coup to remove the PCI or stop it coming to power "could be considered attractive" – but the idea was rejected as "unrealistic". (Independent)

A coup might have been discounted, but the mechanism to promote one did exist, in the form of the NATO stay-behind network Gladio, revealed by Giulio Andreotti in 1990.