Working for justice and praying for peace in Ireland...
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Ceade Mile Failte -- hundred thousand welcomes!
We believe the U.S. has a vital role to play by applying a single -- not a double-standard in its foreign policies towards human rights in Ireland. In particular, we believe the U.S. must not subsidize anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland. That is why the Irish National Caucus in 1984 initiated the MacBride Principles.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Open Letter to Dr Mitchell Reiss
BUSH'S IRISH DOUBLE STANDARD -- REAL OR PERCEIVED --
AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. REISS FROM FATHER SEAN MC MANUS , PRESIDENT , IRISH NATIONAL CAUCUS
Dr. Mitchell Reiss Special Envoy for Northern Ireland U.S. Department of State 2201 C St., NW Washington, DC 20520 Wednesday, February 22, 2006.
Dear Mitchell,
This is " An Open Letter"
As you know, I have many times privately and publicly expressed my appreciation for your good work on the Irish Peace-Process.
But you also know I have constantly tried to explain that the one thing Catholics in Northern Ireland cannot stand -- about the way officialdom treats them -- is "the double standard"(real or perceived). And the specter of that double standard also inflames Irish-Americans.
Now, however, I am forced to accept that my humble efforts have singularly failed, as the Bush Administration increasingly appears tone deaf on this matter.
President Bush embraces (no visa restrictions) Dr. Paisley, who has spent 60 years of his 80-year life trying to keep Catholics at the back of the bus, and the last 10 years trying to wreck the Irish peace-process and the Good Friday Agreement. Yet President Bush refuses to embrace (visa restrictions) Gerry Adams, who more than any other person has made the Irish peace-process and the Good Friday Agreement possible!
Surely you can see what's wrong with that picture? Surely political correctness alone (whether one agrees or disagrees with that current coin of the realm) should have dictated caution?
Therefore the question ineluctably arises, " Why is President Bush so desensitized on the Irish-Catholic issue "? Didn't his famous visit to Bob Jones University, Dr. Paisley's main American sponsor, teach him anything? Or has the extreme fundamentalist wing of the U.S. Republican Party so captured the President's ear that he actually wants to be seen as endorsing Paisley's anti-Catholicism? This, of course, would not have become an issue if the President were seen to be even-handed, embracing equally all the political Parties in Northern Ireland. It has been forced upon us as an issue by the President's perceived double standard and apparent overt bias.
I enclose yet another article by Brian Feeney ("SF won't make the same mistake twice." The Wednesday Column. Irish News. Wednesday", February 22, 2006.) regarding the ongoing concerns about the PSNI.
As you well know, Mr. Feeney is a former SDLP elected official, not a member of the IRA or even a member of Sinn Fein. (I feel I have to emphasize this, because sometimes it appears to me that the Bush Administration and your good self seem to act as if you thought only Irish Republicans have problems with the PSNI). Mr. Feeney states, among other things, " ... those same transient British politicians have not picked up the growing anger and frustration among nationalists at the refusal of the PSNI or anyone else in authority to deal with loyalist terrorism and the evidence of continuing collusion between the police and loyalists who have murdered both Catholics and Protestants since the Good Friday Agreement".
You have put restrictions on Mr. Adams's visa because you are trying to force (blackmail?) Sinn Fein into endorsing the PSNI. Such tactics seem to trivialize the whole vitally important issue of creating an acceptable police for Northern Ireland -- a police service that is "fair and impartial, free from partisan political control; accountable, both under the law for its actions and to the community it serves..." as the Good Friday Agreement envisioned.
Mr. Feeney's article helps to explain Sinn Fein's well-known difficulties with the PSNI and elaborates on their conditions for endorsing the police.
But setting aside, for the moment, the issue of Sinn Fein's position on the police, could it not be argued that Dr. Paisley is even more opposed to the PSNI than Sinn Fein? After all, Dr. Paisley totally opposed any change to the old RUC, vigorously fought Patten, gleefully trounced David Trimble for allegedly colluding in the demise of the RUC, and still advocates, in effect, not an acceptable police service but a Protestant militia , which would continue to be the armed wing of Unionism, keeping uppity Catholics in their place... And for this, the Bush Administration embraces him!
Now, Mitchell, needless to say, I am not advocating that Dr. Paisley be shunned (indeed I have " embraced " him myself). I am advocating that the Bush Administration shuns the double standard and returns to being an honest broker in the Irish peace-process -- being even-handed, not taking sides or being seen as the Recruiting Sergeant for the PSNI.
Is that too much for Irish-Americans to expect as we approach St. Patrick's Day?
Shalom.
Sean Father Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus P.O. Box 15128 Capitol Hill Washington, D.C. 20003-0849 202-544-0568
*********
SF won't make the same mistake twice Irish News. Wednesday, February 22, 2006.
The Wednesday Column By Brian Feeney
So Sinn Fein won't be endorsing the PSNI or joining the Policing Board any time soon. As Gerry Adams pointed out on Saturday, there's not much likelihood of the legislation being passed and the DUP agreeing to accept the democratic decision of the vast majority of people on this island before the new Policing Board is up and running in April.
Adams is quite right to tie this all into a package because self-evidently that's what it is.
Joining the Policing Board before the legislation is through Westminster would be like going to the bookies to collect your winnings with your horse in the final furlong of a steeplechase. Sinn Fein have been badly burnt by the double-dealing of the British administration here on the on the run legislation. They're not going to make the same mistake twice in six months. Anyway, the DUP's not even talking to Sinn Fein.
That aside, there are many other considerations which prevent Sinn Fein from endorsing the PSNI. Our visiting British rulers conveniently forget SF stood for election last May and received an increased vote and an extra MP on a manifesto committing them to withhold support from policing until there is new legislation allowing devolution of justice and police powers to a northern executive.
Perhaps just as important, those same transient British politicians have not picked up the growing anger and frustration among nationalists at the refusal of the PSNI or anyone else in authority to deal with loyalist terrorism and the evidence of continuing collusion between the police and loyalists who have murdered both Catholics and Protestants since the Good Friday Agreement.
Just as disquieting is the revolving-door policy operated by the courts here when loyalists are arraigned. There is a manifest imbalance in giving bail to loyalists compared to republicans. Even worse is the failure of the prosecution service and the Assets Recovery Agency to act against prominent loyalists except when one of their rivals kills them.
It is well known that one of the reasons for this failure is that the self-proclaimed shiny new police are still protecting loyalist informers taken on the payroll, in some cases more than a decade ago. Everyone knows the fruitless efforts of Mr McCord to get the UVF killers of his son, men personally known to him, prosecuted. Equally well known is that the police are protecting a UVF man in Mount Vernon who has killed maybe as many as a dozen people in his murderous career. How many other informers?
We now hear that the police took back on the payroll their agent, the notorious Greysteel and Castlerock killer, Torrens Knight, after he was released early from multiple life sentences under the terms of the GFA. Is it true? Who authorised payments to him, said to total £50,000 a year?
Certainly not some sergeant. That kind of disgraceful misuse of public money can only have been sanctioned by a very senior official. Do you think this is the only instance of such corruption of the administration of justice? How many more are there?
Now the hopeless consequence of this state of affairs is that John Dallat, the SDLP's Lone Ranger in East Derry, is left complaining bitterly about police inaction in the case of Knight. His very indignation shows that the PSNI is not accountable through the Policing Board and thereby makes Sinn Fein's case.
Oh yeah, sure, the quick answer is that the Ombudsman is inquiring into this mess, so wait until her report comes out later this year. Not good enough.
Why couldn't the Policing Board get anything done on its own initiative? Just wait until that Ombudsman's report is published. What a stinker that will be.
Wouldn't Sinn Fein have looked sick sitting on the Policing Board demonstrating their own impotence?
Finally and perhaps most serious of all, is the incredibly stupid decision to hand control of intelligence over to MI5. As if they ever lost it? This plan will reduce the PSNI to the arresting arm of MI5 just as RUC Special Branch was. MI5 are completely unaccountable to anyone in the north and have precious little accountability to anyone in Britain. Now, why would Sinn Fein endorse policing here any time soon? They're not daft.
Father Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus P.O. Box 15128 Capitol Hill Washington, D.C. 20003-0849 202-544-0568
CAPITOL HILL . Tuesday, February 21, 2006 --Irish-Americans --- concerned about the double-standard that has been developing, of late, in American policy on Northern Ireland -- are looking to President Bush for re-assurance as St. Patrick's Day approaches.
Fr. Sean Mc Manus, President of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus , raises the following question :
"What is wrong with the following picture?
Gerry Adams has spent the last ten years of his life making the Irish peace-process possible. The Reverend Ian Paisley has spent the last ten years trying to wreck the Irish peace-process, and he has spent the last sixty years of his 80-year life trying to keep Catholics in Northern Ireland at the back of the bus.
Yet President Bush puts restrictions on Adams's visa, but gives Paisley carte blanch. Is that fair? What could possibly explain it? Is President Bush doing a favor, again, for the Bob Jones University, Paisley's main American sponsor ?
Or, God forbid, could it be a modern-day example of anti-Catholicism, which the famous American historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. has termed ''the deepest bias in the history of the American people".
Only President Bush can answer that. President Bush, please say it is not so".
END
Fr. Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus Capitol Hill Washington, DC 20003 202-544-0568
The Irish Echo is to be congratulated for it's Editorial, " Celebrating the Rising" (February 15 -21) in which it, oh so refreshingly, stated: "One of the best things about Irish Americans is their self-confidenceŠ Irish-Americans rarely suffer from the inferiority complex that still exists in Ireland. The "post-colonial cringe" is a stranger here. Š That is why the current debate in Ireland about whether it is appropriate for the Irish government to celebrate the 1916 Easter Rising seems almost amusing from this side of the Atlantic."
I love that phrase " post-colonial cringe".
Some years ago, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in an article in the NY Daily News reminded us that theorists of colonialism point out that it can take up to three hundred years for oppressed people to shake off what the oppressor had brain- washed them with --- the oppressed can subconsciously internalize the demeaning lies of the oppressor (which may be the worst part of oppression).
I just thought it was rather ironic for Moynihan to be pointing this out, as I always saw him as a perfect example of the " post- colonial cringe". That is why, while essentially agreeing with your statement, "Irish-Americans rarely suffer from the inferiority complex that still exists in Ireland", I would , based on my experience, have to add, ' except for some Irish Members of the Congress and some Irish members of the U.S. Catholic Hierarchy, especially at the beginnings of The Troubles.'
Cringing Members of Congress
When I came to the United States in October 1972 and started lobbying Irish Members of Congress and Irish members of the U.S. Catholic Hierarchy (which I naively thought would be the two most obvious " constituencies"). I was stopped in my tracks, set back on my heels, by the " colonial cringe". Apart from some honorable exceptions, many of these folks did not want to know. They were fearless on many other international issues, but when it came to "Mother England" they were silent. Now admittedly the shameful stance of the Dublin governments in those early years made it easier for them to be silent."Father Sean, how can I be more patriotic than the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic" was Tip O'Neill's favorite dodge. " That wouldn't be hard", was always my response to him. However, it must be said that Tip was never as bad as Moynihan. Some of the obvious Irish names in Congress were blackmailed into silence lest in criticizing the British they would be cast as IRA supporters
That is why in the early days we had to reach out to the non- Irish Members of Congress -- to Biaggi, Fish, Gilman, etc. God bless them. And of the three named here, only Biaggi was Catholic.Thank God for the Black, Jewish and Protestant Members of Congress.
Cringing Bishops
And the U.S. Catholic Hierarchy might as well have been a bunch of heretics because they simply, in practice, ignored the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding justice and peace, when it came to Northern Ireland. To remind you, the Church teaches: " Action on behalf of justice Š is a CONSTITUTIVE DIMENSION OF THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL'. (Justice in the World. World Synod of Bishops. November 30, 1971).
There were, however, honorable exceptions: the late Bishop Thomas Drury of Corpus Christi, Texas; Bishop Mark Hurly, Santa Rosa, Ca.; and Cardinal O'Connor of New York, to name some. (Cardinal O'Connor famously refused to be silenced by the pro- British lobbying of Garret FitzGerald).
Here, too, it must be admitted, the shameful position of the Irish Hierarchy ( Cardinal O'Fiaich excepted)regarding British injustice in Northern Ireland made it easier for the U.S. Bishops to dodge the issue. Let me give an example that perfectly illustrates this point:
In August 1979, the Irish National Caucus led a successful campaign to have a ban put on the sale of U.S. weapons to the RUC. Later on in January 1981 a delegation of top Bishops met President Reagan to urge him to continue the ban on military aid to El Salvador.
I wrote to them, urging them to also urge President Reagan to continue the ban on the sale of US weapons to the RUC. They responded: "Š We have known of your position [on the RUC] for some timeŠ In the case of El Salvador, we have been encouraged to take what action we have taken by the local hierarchy. We have not, at this time, received such encouragement from the Irish hierarchy on the subject you have brought to our attentionŠ"
Needless to say, the Bishops took no action... It was enough to make a man become Protestant!
Father Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus P.O. Box 15128 Capitol Hill Washington, D.C. 20003-0849 202-544-0568
Michael McDowell Silent As British Duplicity Exposed
Michael McDowell Silent As British Duplicity Exposed
by Eoin Ó Murchú Village. Ireland's Current Affairs Weekly Thursday, December 29, 2005
As our political parties jostle each other to show who is the most anti-Sinn Féin of them all, in the real world the battle is being lost. The Good Friday Agreement is going under.
Wasn't it curious that Michael McDowell, the stalwart defender of the state's integrity and self-proclaimed champion of its republican ambitions, had nothing to say about the Stormontgate affair, an episode that shows the British government as hopelessly duplicitous or haplessly unable to control their security apparatuses?
This is not a clever point: it's a very serious issue. How can the British be trusted if this is the way they behave?
Of course, Sinn Féin have been hammering this point for three years, denouncing the securocrats, as they call them. And the more they have denounced them and called on the British government to impose control over them, the more have Sinn Féin been derided, and the more stentorian has become Michael McDowell's bark in blaming the republicans for all the problems of the peace process.
On top of that, there is the current US administration urging the British and the unionist parties to refuse to re-establish the institutions until Sinn Féin accept the "legitimacy" of a police force that behaves in such a partisan political way.
Does it really matter that there's a feud going on between the RUC Special Branch and the MI5 intelligence service? Does it matter that Hugh Orde is outside the loop? But surely it matters when the normally voluble Michael McDowell gives Hugh Orde a polite hearing for his ridiculous efforts to justify the unjustifiable?
We do know that if a republican agent in the ranks of British intelligence had been unmasked, the heavens would be shaking still with Michael McDowell's denunciations.
The question is what is more important to Michael McDowell - to see Government policy on the establishment of the Good Friday institutions brought to fruition, or to wage his own private war against Fine Gael for the anti-Sinn Féin vote?
And even still, despite these revelations that show that Britain has not played with a straight deck, none of the parties can bring themselves publicly to denounce this perfidy, while all are at pains to insist that they won't share coalition power with Sinn Féin after the election.
Sinn Féin's policies are certainly more radical and leftwing than Labour's, but it's only a matter of degree - and perhaps of integrity in being willing to insist on them. Their policies on liberal issues are indistinguishable from those of the liberal wing of Fine Gael. Yet both Fine Gael and Labour have categorically ruled out Sinn Féin as potential government partners. They have not so ruled out the PDs, a party with less than 40 per cent of the support that Sinn Féin enjoys, a party that puts party before country, as their reaction to the Donaldson revelations show, that squeezes the poor to make the rich better off, and that openly boasts of its Thatcherism.
Meanwhile, as the parties jostle each other to show who is the most anti-Sinn Féin of them all, in the real world the battle is being lost. The Good Friday Agreement is going under.
Bertie Ahern still insists that he has a special relationship with Tony Blair, and that, angry as he is about the Donaldson and Stormontgate affairs, it would be foolish to place that relationship in jeopardy.
But a cursory examination of the unionist position shows that for them Blair is already yesterday's man. They are preparing their positions for the advent of Gordon Brown, and where will he stand?
It's wishful thinking on their part to imagine that Brown, as a dour Scottish Presbyterian, is inclined the unionist way. He is more likely to be tired of paying these ingrate spongers for a higher standard of living than they earn themselves. It's very easy to see Brown pulling the financial plug on them, though the unionists are so sunk in sectarian hatred of Catholics that even that might not concentrate their minds.
But if Brown is to play a more positive role, and be an active proponent of a way forward that culminates logically in a British withdrawal from Ireland, then we will have to work for that, and our political parties will have to start arguing for it.
For Gordon Brown can recognise hypocrisy and political humbug as well as the next, and he will only get interested in the Irish question if he has no choice. For Brown has always asked one simple question: do the Irish people want reunification, and are they prepared to pay for it? I believe the Irish people do want reunification, but I don't believe that the parties, apart from Sinn Féin, do. And I certainly don't believe that either the Government, or Rainbow options, are willing to pay for it.
But when Brown succeeds Blair, Britain is going to slowly start turning the tap off. Already under Hain, Britain is trying to shift more and more of the costs of running the North away from the British Exchequer to the people of the North. Superficially this looks like privatisation; in fact it's an "Ulsterisation" of policy that has profound implications for all the people of Ireland, North and South.
But our political leaders can't see that. They are too busy attacking Sinn Féin.
Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity
Father Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus P.O. Box 15128 Capitol Hill Washington, D.C. 20003-0849 202-544-0568
Many of us wish your support for the PSNI were a little bit more critical and cautious. It would be a pity if your good work for Ireland became overshadowed by your exuberant and uncritical support for a police service about which there are still many profoundly disturbing questions. Remember how the good work (however belated) of JFK and LBJ for Civil Rights came to be overshadowed in the African- American community by the nefarious work of the wretched J. Edgar Hoover and his racist FBI?
If you have not already read it, I would strongly recommend you read "Racial Matters: the FBI's secret file on Black America, 1960-1972" by Kenneth O'Reilly (The Free Press. New York. 1989). Permit me to give you a quote from this very important study:
During the March on Washington, SNCC Chairman John Lewis wanted to know which side the federal government was on. In 1979, fifteen years after Freedom Summer, a group of movement veterans gathered in Jackson, Mississippi, to reconsider those times and to try to answer Lewis's question. When one of them railed against "the subversion" of the movement by "the self-styled 'pragmatism' of those splendid scoundrels residing in the Camelot on the Potomac," he received " a cheering, standing ovation". One of the persons in the audience, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, said he came expecting a celebration of amazing change but instead found bitterness directed not at "the old segregationists of Mississippi but Northern liberals and, especially, the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. (page 356).
No Catholic from Northern Ireland can read that quote without profound resonance.
I feel it is very important that you avoid any appearance of a double-standard. So I urge you to speak out on these matters so that your good work for Ireland will not be overshadowed by headlines like "PSNI the best in Europe" (and, yes, I know you don't write the headlines).
It would be a profound tragedy if the honest-broker title of the Special Envoy for Northern Ireland came to be replaced by that of "Recruiting-Sergeant for the PSNI".
Thank you,
Sean Father Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus P.O. Box 15128 Capitol Hill Washington, D.C. 20003-0849
No Kidding... The British Constitution Provides The Excuse For Orange Bigotry Irish News. Friday, January 27, 2006 Letters By FATHER SEAN McMANUS CATHAL Mc Glade - 'Who cares anymore if the British monarch is a Catholic?' (January 24 2006) - seems to think that separation of Church and state doesn't matter and 'constitutions' are unimportant. Who cares if there was a provision in the US constitution that forbade a black person becoming president? Cahal would not... but I would. For the same reason I care - and all democrats should - that the British 'constitution' mandates that a Catholic cannot become monarch. The anti-Catholic Act of Settlement 1701, still operative today, has a provision that only a Protestant can succeed to the British throne and that, if the monarch becomes a Catholic or marries a Catholic, he/she forfeits the throne and - I kid you not - "the people are absolved from their allegiance". While this law may mean little to the average Englishman in the street, it has always been of deep importance to Protestant/Unionist/Orange extremists in Northern Ireland. It provides the ideological and philosophical underpinnings for their bigotry and sectarianism. The deadly logic goes: if a Catholic by law can't get the top job, then Catholics are not equal to Protestants and it is therefore okay to discriminate against them. Just as a provision in the US constitution forbidding a black person to be president would have had fuelled the flames of racism, I believe this inherently sectarian law has helped to fuel the fires of anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland. After all, the Reverend Ian Paisley and the Orange Order have often affirmed that their loyalty is not just to the British Crown but to the Protestant succession. What do you think that's all about? Furthermore, an increasing number of people in Britain are shamed by this archaic and anti-Catholic law - which is incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 - and are demanding its repeal. Included are: the British attorney general, more than 150 MPs, the cardinal of Scotland, the cardinal of England and The Guardian paper. Sadly, Tony Blair - the only British prime minister I've been able to respect regarding Ireland (apart, maybe, from Gladstone) - has refused to join the repeal ranks. Father Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus P.O. Box 15128 Capitol Hill Washington, D.C. 20003-0849 202-544-0568
