To download the above please click on the following link:LOYALPRISONDOC

This document [and many thanks to the person who donated it] may seem at first sight an unlikely one to be part of the Left Archive, however it provides both an overview of the general conditions and history of the prison system in Northern Ireland for political prisoners – Loyalist and Republican, and also gives an insight into the relationships between both as well as a developing political consciousness on the part of the former.

Produced in 1998 by the EPIC (Ex-Prisoners’ Interpretative Centre) in Belfast it provides in a series of chapters

The Preface notes that EPIC ‘as a community based self-help organisation welcome [new arena’s for addressing differences and representing communities] and will continue to give our support to these latest developments at the political level, we are also conscious of the impact and legacy of violent conflict at community level’.

And…

EPIC has taken responsibility to assist in the reintegration and transformation of ex-prisoners who engaged in the violent conflict. As an integral part of this work EPIC has undertaken intensive research into prison-related issues – whether describing the background to the prison experience itself, or cataloguing the many predicaments, problems and concerns which politically- motivated ex-prisoners encounter upon release.

The Introduction further notes that:

For the past thirty years there have been thousands of Loyalists incarcerated in NI’s prisons and yet very little has been written about the subject. That neglect is all the more noticeable when one considers the number of books and other publications which have appeared dealing with Republican prisoners.

And most importantly given the left orientation of some Loyalist originating political parties:

Just as remarkable has been the crucial impact former prisoners and their associates have made upon the political process – a process once kept remove from working class aspirations and interventions. Within the Loyalist working-class community parties such as the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party have done much to help move this entire society away from the politics of intransigence and violence to the politics of accommodation and dialogue, while proving that no surrender of identity or aspiration need be involved in the process.

Inside the document there is a chronological approach, with sections addressing ‘The Early Days: Crumlin Road Jail’ – with interesting anecdotes about how the various paramilitary groupings had to liaise in order to maintain discipline, ‘Internment and Long Kesh’ – and demands for political status where, as is noted, ‘we didn’t get much help from the UUP or the wider unionist population’, ‘Early Prison Protests’, ‘Coping with Life inside’, ‘Fighting Criminalisation’ and so on.

A telling point is made when it is noted that:

Not all the prisoners were interested in politics, some just wanted to get on with their sentences, but a small number of men were interested and they got involved in political debates and discussions, not only with fellow Loyalists but with Official Republicans.

The sense of the prison experience as a crucible for ‘fresh political thinking’, as the document puts it, is strongly reinforced by these observations.

Snapshot in time of Dublin City Centre probably about 1958. Taken by my Dad while driving and walking in Dublin city centre. Clip shows Trinity College, Nassau Street, Grafton Street, St Stephens Green, O’Connell Street Bridge and College Green finishing inside St Stephens Green.

Other ones we’ve posted to date
Driving in Dublin Circa 1982
and
Driving in Dublin 1974

Much though I hate to disagree with our esteemed President, on Hayek, I have to. Far from being discredited, Hayek is our inspiration now. It was he who showed how state intervention — the US Fed and Bank of England setting ultra-low interest rates in the Twenties — contributed to the Great Depression, and how, far from causing recovery, Keynesian economics resulted in the US economy sliding back into recession in the late Thirties. Likewise, low interest rates and sub-prime mortgages a decade ago caused this crisis. Last week’s temporary pick-up in US growth is less a sign of recovery and more a sign that quantitative easing has moved from being a needed and justifiable tool to save the US financial system to an unsustainable counter-productive tool for pump-priming US domestic demand.

Hayek shone a beacon against the forces of state tyranny, forces that led ultimately to totalitarianism, evil and war.

Marc Coleman. Just after the bit I’ve quoted, he goes on to complain about the Front National. I’d like to say he’s just ignorant of Hayek and Pinochet, but he probably just doesn’t care.

Fine Gael: 30% (-2)
Independents/ Others / Greens: 21% (+1)
Fianna Fail: 18% (no change)
Sinn Féin: 17% (+2)
Labour: 14% (-1)

Seat wise Dotski over at Irish Polling Report ran the numbers through the magic spreadsheet and got

FG 30%,60
FF 18%,31
SF 17%,24
LP 14%,25
OTH 21%,26

The poll was taken before Enda told us we all went mad borrowing.

Since the last General Election the figures are

Fine Gael: 36.1% – 6.1%
Fianna Fail: 17.4% +0.6%
Sinn Fein: 9.9% +7.1%
Labour: 19.4% -5.4%
Independents/Others/ Greens: 17.2% +3.8%

So between them Labour and Fine Gael have declined 11.5% since the election. Sinn Fein and The Independents/Others/Greens have picked up most of the slack with Fianna Fail only slightly up.
Again and these are headline figures, no mention of the constituent parts of the The Independents/Others/Greens so we cant tell exactly which part of that group is picking up votes.
A very good poll for Sinn Fein though at 17% and with the tribunal findings coming out soon they could easily overtake Fianna Fail.
No real shocks though in the results of that part of the poll.

Pollsters then asked

Do you think that the Irish people should be asked to ratify any proposed treaty change through a referendum?*

Yes – 72%
No – 21%
Don’t know – 7%

And then a surprising amount answered Yes to the other question asked…..

*How do you think you would vote in such a referendum?*

Yes – 40%
No – 36%
Don’t know – 24%

Its early days yet but I wouldn’t have expected there to be 40% in favour. The gap is only 4% and there are plenty of don’t knows but still I’m sure the government will see the numbers as encouraging.

In its own way it’s a depressing story and it is only the political angle which is of particular interest. As the Irish Times report notes:

After the court case, Mr Kelly was highly critical of the handling of the matter by Fianna Fáil and said he had felt “betrayed”.

This latter part is expanded upon in the Mail interview.

However, Kelly stresses that he was‘ordered’ not to speak while the Garda investigation was in progress and while Fianna Fáil held its own internal inquiry. For some inexplicable reason, the Fianna Fáil inquiry took substantially longer than the Garda investigation into the incident. But when Kelly was finally exonerated and welcomed back into the political frame, it was on the condition that he apologise for any embarrassment to the party and not speak publicly about the scandal.

It continues:

This latter condition was the ‘final straw’ for Kelly, who felt it would be impossible to remain silent forever about the incriminating photograph. So he quit the party. ‘I had reason to believe that Fianna Fáil was briefing against me to the media, not only to disassociate themselves from me but to pile on the pressure for me to relinquish the whip.

And Kelly didn’t see this as the end of his political life.

Kelly fought on in the next local election as a Fianna Fáil candidate, but failed to retain his seat — losing by a mere 55 votes. ‘The loss of a council seat is a brutal experience, unlike TDs you don’t get a lump sum or bonus — merely four days’ pay!’

An interesting point, but probably not one that is likely to endear him to a broader electorate.

Kelly now plans to consult lawyers about the possibility of taking legal action against Fianna Fáil because of how the party conducted its inquiry. ‘I am considering legal action. I reached an agreement with Fianna Fáil HQ at the time that I would not speak to the press while they had their inquiry. ‘The agreement was that the inquiry would last for four months and that I could account for myself to the media at the end of that four-month period. I honoured that agreement which led to a situation where the media got the impression I was afraid to talk to them or believed myself unaccountable to them. ‘But they stalled — and it made me look like a liar.’ Kelly is still angry about how he was treated by Bertie Ahern, who he says denounced him, further upsetting his family.

And his ire at Fianna Fáil knows no limit:

‘They had an inquiry into me and treated me terribly — yet Fianna Fáil didn’t have an inquiry into the party leader over his unorthodox finances.

Which is also a fair enough point too.

‘It’s very obvious that if I had come from a political dynasty or been higher up the hierarchy as a TD I would have been treated differently. ‘At the end of the day, the State found that I had been a victim of crime. Fianna Fáil should take responsibility for all that unfolded during the inquiry. ‘I was discriminated against. They should compensate me for the actual costs involved.’ He now hopes that with the court case wrapping up yesterday it will enable him to ‘move forward’ and rebuild his life. Kelly — who once worked in PR at RTÉ star Bill O’Herlihy’s communications firm — has been unable to secure employment since the controversy blew up.

The piece also notes that:

…It’s certainly been a dramatic fall from grace for Kelly — a contemporary of Ryan Tubridy at university who had once been described by political pundits as the ‘golden boy’of Fianna Fáil and regarded by his local cumann as the heir apparent to his senior constituency colleagues, ex-ministers Noel Ahern and Pat Carey.

In a way it exemplifies, and without getting into the details of the specific case, how the world has changed, how Irish society has changed and how FF has and hasn’t. Of course there’d be a closing of ranks behind a leadership, as against a local councillor, but one wonders was there a degree of incomprehension on the part of the party as to how to deal with the allegations, as distinct from more ‘traditional’ accusations.

Granted, this is little off the beaten track in terms of New Order’s discography. It is an album that has been too readily dismissed as sounding Joy Division like. Yet to reposition this in its rightful place in their canon is in no way to dismiss the power of their subsequent albums. But their excellence – and the clear distaste the group itself had for Movement, has tended to overshadow its mastery of the post-punk form and its status as arguably their most cohesive single body of work.

A cold, almost tinny artefact, the album is filled with filter effects – Hannett was either the greatest chancer ever or an absolute stone genius, and I tend to the latter view. Despite the greater use of keyboards, the filters and the glacial production make it sound almost entirely unlike anything they would do subsequently. There’s lots of space here, but there’s also a layering that wasn’t present before. In part that’s due to the keyboards – which are used sparingly but with a determinedly elegiac quality. That this should sound almost retro but doesn’t is perhaps due the emotional cast of the album. Lyrically and vocally it’s far too easy to write this album off as depressed – and the near emulation of Ian Curtis’s vocal style probably doesn’t help in that regard, but that’s not quite it. The vocals are urgent, reflective and often balanced between weariness and also a sort of anger. But whereas with Joy Division they seemed at times to drive the music, here it is the reverse as Sumner and Hook eschew front man status and allow the music to carry that role – an approach that characterised much of New Orders output through the 1980s and after.

And as the album continues this increasing emphasis on tone and texture is ever more evident. It starts with “Dreams Never End”, vocal duties taken on by Peter Hook. A song with an almost perfect introduction that sounds initially like Joy Division redux but then sharpish moves into a more complex layered sound. “Truth”, the next track might have cosmetic similarities with Joy Division too, but with synth drums and some odd melodic foreshadowing of tracks off Power, Corruption and Lies it too represents a shift. Then we’re into “Sense”, propelled by a none-more-deep synthesised bass, which uses a bunch of filters to provide more synthesised percussion. “The him” starts and stops and starts again, the rush of instrumentation reflecting the lyrical concerns. But the fullness of the sound pushes out vocals entirely as the track moves to its end.

It’s the second but last track, “Doubts Even Here”, which in a way provides the bridge between Joy Division and New Order. Once more, and for the last time with New Order, Hook took over lead vocals and provided a sound remarkably close to that of Curtis. A keyboard courtesy of Gillian Gilbert provides stately chords. So far so Joy Division, albeit at a slower pace. But then the percussion goes slightly mad with crashes and bangs that cut whipcrack across the track [and Stephen Morris deserves recognition for just how central he is to the overall sound], and a woman’s voice, again Gilbert, intones matching spoken vocals, an absolute first for New Order (and in some respects a last – unfortunately), something that gives it a post-punk edge that positions it directly in 1981 but somehow doesn’t quite date it.

Listen to the bass line in “Chosen Time” which lopes along, the urgent reiteration of a simple succession of notes… Even 31 years later… gulp, that has a raw power and urgency pushing it forward. It’s different to that which was to come later, more primitive – but it strongly hints at an electronica and dance inflected future. Finally “Denial”, a track that also presages future developments with a rapidly strummed guitar sound and a bassline that although on the surface seems to reference back to Joy Division is by contrast faster, almost funkier. They were decisively changing gear. And if it’s not quite what they would do next, it does indicate where they might have gone.

Pervading the music is a sense that they couldn’t take their original sound much further – even if the last Joy Division album had seen the introduction of touches of keyboard here and there. The weight of their history, only three or four years old, but already cohering into a near mythic body of work, wouldn’t allow them, and some sort of further experimentation, something different, was the only way forward.

Perhaps that’s the real power of this album. There’s much less sense of a group constrained by their past than might be expected, instead it sounds like a group, despite pro forma nods to that past, which is willing, and almost enthusiastic, to try to break free of it and in the process mapping out a range of alternative paths forward.

I think that was an achievement in itself.

Dreams Never End

Senses

Doubts Even Here

Chosen Time

ICB

The Him

Denial

Dreams Never End (Live NYC 1981 and with Peter Hook on vocals)

1. It charges very high prices — so far above the average that it seems quite extraordinary that they can get away with it.

2. One method that they have for getting away with it is a practice known as “bundling”, where instead of giving libraries the choice of which journals they want to subscribe to, they offer them the choice between a large collection of journals (chosen by them) or nothing at all. So if some Elsevier journals in the “bundle” are indispensable to a library, that library is forced to subscribe at very high subscription rates to a large number of journals, across all the sciences, many of which they do not want. (The journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals is a notorious example of a journal that is regarded as a joke by many mathematicians, but which libraries all round the world must nevertheless subscribe to.) Given that libraries have limited budgets, this often means that they cannot subscribe to journals that they would much rather subscribe to, so it is not just libraries that are harmed, but other publishers, which is of course part of the motivation for the scheme.

3. If libraries attempt to negotiate better deals, Elsevier is ruthless about cutting off access to all their journals.

4. Elsevier supports many of the measures, such as the Research Works Act, that attempt to stop the move to open access. They also supported SOPA and PIPA and lobbied strongly for them.

And now there is a site where academics can sign up to “occupy Elsevier”.

I left maths behind a long time ago (Gowers’s department is holding seminars on “C^{1,α} regularity of solutions of degenerate elliptic equations” and “Scaling limits for anisotropic Hastings-Levitov type clusters” — crikes, I really have left it behind). I recently took an interest in what is known about apples and their genetic diversity, and was irritated to find publicly-funded research held behind pay-walls, at €34 a pop. And I used to work for a sub-contractor to Elsevier’s Shannon outfit, where we dealt with medical journals (and one on forensic science). All in all, I am glad to see this initiaitve.