Why now? January 14, 2013
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Interesting that this report should appear, but as they say, cui bono, and as importantly, who doesn’t?
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2013/0114/1224328806007.html
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Curious that they would be ‘files seen’ rather then a release of historical documents or similar. Is the Garland issue likely to flare up again or is someone hoping to undermine other current, or more plausibly, former WP members?
Word is Seamus McDonagh is planning a run in Meath East but even under the CAHWT banner probably poses a bigger threat to SF then any of the other three and some distance of yet.
Could be effort to draw distinctions, refresh memories or could be nothing at all.
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Would like to see if the lucky winner still has the marquetry of Lenin mind.
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“Curious that they would be ‘files seen’ rather then a release of historical documents or similar.”
Are old DDR files released in the same way the Irish National Archive files are made available in “a release”?
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Not sure but files seen by …. would imply they are not available to the public and something a bit more clandestine
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Or it might mean they were released — say — three years ago and Scally is only finding them now, and his “news” hook is they they have been seen. Journalism has lots of those kinds of formulas.
Or it could be Scally making a point that he has looked at the files and not relied on agency reports.
(My current ‘favourite’ journalistic formula is the use of “elsewhere” in an article to signal a change of subject when the second story is not big or important enough to merit a story on its own. I saw it used last week when the second story was very definitely not happening somewhere else. And damned of I can find it just now 😦 )
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Given the mention of the communist party of Ireland would it come from Matt Tracy’s research? or else Hanly and miller. the piece makes reference to the jockeying of position between those two groups with favour in eastern europe, wasn’t that a theme of their book. when you narrow it down there is probably only a handful of people that would have the patience to read through a decades worth of documents on this stuff.
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Could it revive interest in a certain law case.
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Discussion title could do with some expanding.
Was this the Repsol press from 1983:
‘Raising party funds was crucial to fight effective campaigns on both sides of the Border, he wrote, particularly as the party had just ordered a new offset printing press costing a total of £170,000 with a five-year bank “laese” (sic).’
One wonders how long such a loan would take to pay back.
Is mise srl.,
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I think Mary Lou McDonald should raise this with Eamon Gilmore in the Dail, perhaps prefacing her inquiry with the words ‘the neck of you.’
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Well I just noticed plenty of searches for “Eamon Gilmore Workers Party” and hits to various of his WP leaflets.
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Much though I dislike witch hunts, it serves him right.
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You should stick on a list of the most popular searches on your site IEL sometime, it would be really interesting to see.
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“The most important things are not always to be found in the files”-Goethe
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Well now. Much of interest in the Times today.
One wonders how long it’ll take before John Joyce rolls out his Chicken Licken impression … given that around these parts, defamation doesn’t mean uttering an unturth in a malicious attempt to harm some upstanding citizen’s reputation.
(Rather it serves as a shield to silence discussion about the more unsavory aspects of political allies’ past actions, and a convenient excuse to ban commenters you don’t agree with)
Ah well, I bid you all adieu, and cede the floor to the Captain Moonlights and John Joyces of this world.
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Kcarc tearg er’uoy og t’nod
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given that around these parts, defamation doesn’t mean uttering an unturth in a malicious attempt to harm some upstanding citizen’s reputation.
Defamation does not mean that anywhere, but thank you for the histrionics. So long, farewell, auf wiedersen, good night.
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Oh dear, not you too Yeltrab, another victim of social media? You know, because I mentioned it so many times, that far too much of what you did was not reasonable criticism, but was snide coat trailing. It’s not that I thought when you were banned that you were about to bring down the wrath of PdeR, and by the way John Joyce is little better (and in terms of what might actually be expected, considerably worse). It was that you wouldn’t accept that it’s not your judgement call. Add that to everything else – and an increasing, indeed more or less permanent tendency to try to get other people’s hackles up, and patience was gone. And so were you.
I’ve no gripe with anyone, left right or centre coming on here in a courteous and restrained manner. But you couldn’t quite do that, now could you? But by all means think it was your politics. Another martyr – eh?
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“I think Mary Lou McDonald should raise this with Eamon Gilmore in the Dail, perhaps prefacing her inquiry with the words ‘the neck of you.’” – is there a moral equivalence between sectarian murder and relieving banks of a tiny proportion of their money and forgery – not in my book there isn’t – at this time was not every political party, bar maybe Labour, funded by illegal means.
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The point is not that there’s a moral equivalence between the two acts but that if Gilmore thinks it’s acceptable to defend government budgetary policy by frivolously berating Mary Lou McDonald over events which happened when she was three years old it would serve him right to be embarrassed by stuff which happened when he was a Workers Party TD.
The murder of Jean McConville happened just a few months after the Aldershot bombings, perpetrated by the very same Official IRA who remained in existence during Gilmore’s time as a WP TD (read The Lost Revolution).
And I somehow doubt that Gilmore will use the ‘relieving banks of a tiny proportion of their money and forgery’ defence.
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I’m not by the way suggesting that Gilmore has a case to answer. Just that he’s in no position to be following Enda Kenny’s lead by using Jean McConville as a political punchline. Or indeed bringing up the Militant Tendency’s behaviour in Liverpool when he’s arguing with Joe Higgins. Militant, after all, never had an armed wing of any sort.
The Workers Party always argued that they should be allowed to move on from their Official IRA connections. Their former members should extend that argument to Sinn Fein.
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Points well made Eamonn – largely agree with you
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Sorry if I came across as aggressive in the first answer JS.
I suppose it boils down to the fact that in Irish politics things aren’t as black and white as, ‘your crowd used to shoot people so that means everything you say is wrong.’ And that Gilmore, because of his past associations, should know that.
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On sell-outs berating people for activities that organisations they were members of earlier in their career path used – see Blair Horan’s muck from yesterday.
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I see Horan’s comments came in an interview with Denis O’Brien’s sometime fundraiser Sarah Carey, on a radio station owned by tax exile O’Brien. And ex-WP member Horan thinks a few SP members in his union is the biggest problem in Irish society…
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The story in today’s paper has the clunkiest headline I’ve seen in a long time: “Closer to Berlin – not politically but by begging letter”. The sub probably thought it was really clever, but couldn’t be bothered fiddling with the wording so that it actually made sense. How can you be ‘closer … by begging letter’ to anything? Maybe they think, since nobody is linking to them anyway, they can just throw up any half-assed headline.
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Maybe there is more to follow?
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Is any of this really news?
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Derek Scally did a piece from the DDR archives in January last year and the January before that.
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