BRITIRA

Ireland has a particularly bloody history, that involves eight centuries of British invasion and occupation, which includes, genocide, holocaust, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. In the interest of fairness, every story has at least two sides, and so it is with Irish history. The problem for the native Irish, is that few are aware of their side, because, to a large extent Britain dominates the English narrative of world media, and usually the victor, gets to write history. The other difficulty with outing the truth, is that the ruling class in both parts of the currently divided island, have a vested interest, in preserving the status quo, which is based on mentored privilege, dishonesty, covert censorship and oppression.

This writer believes, that the truth of Ireland's Cause, taken to a sufficient number of people worldwide, and to the International Criminal Court, can achieve national freedom, without recourse to violence, reserving all armaments, for strictly defensive purposes. However, this will require the same organization, commitment and concerted effort, that traditionally was used in Ireland's armed struggles. Reactionary violence has proven to be self-defeating, time after time in Ireland's history, and the events of limited success, hves been followed, by sell-out, self-serving, native leadership. Irish Republicanism has traditionally been the Cause of the People of No Property, or as James Connolly, one of the principal leaders of the 1916 Rising, who was taken for execution in a wheelchair, said, the Cause of Ireland, is the Cause of Labour, and the Cause of Labour, is the Cause of Ireland. Irish hearts are passionate and discipline, to refrain from reactionary, violence, difficult, but as one of our more intelligent martyrs, Mairead Farrell recently said, before her execution, our head is our best weapon. I believe enlightened leadership in Ireland, needs to release all political prisoners, with an undertaking, to this course of action, rather than violence. Genuine traditional Irish Republicans, are both fair-minded and people of honour, who keep their promises, unlike their political British counterparts, as history has proven. You can come to your own conclusion, if this is the case, in the McGuinness story below. The Truth will set Ireland Free, but we need your help, to get it out there, as it is mostly, censored. Below is a reliable article, borrowed from the Broken Elbow, a blog I recommend, to help you come to your own conclusions.

Martin McGuinness & Frank Hegarty

The story of how Martin McGuinness allegedly lured Derry IRA informer Frank Hegarty back from England, promising his mother – on bended knee according to accounts – that he would not be harmed, only for Hegarty to end up on a lonely country road with a bullet in his head has been told here, here, here and here.


Doubtless it will figure again in the course of the Presidential campaign and will be used by his opponents and enemies as evidence of the man’s flawed character and unfitness to represent the people of Ireland in the Phoenix Park.


I am not going to rehearse the story here but I thought it might be useful to place the McGuinness-Hegarty tale in the context of the time it happened, 1986, and the politics of the then IRA leadership. That way it might be possible to understand why it happened.


The story begins in February 1978 when Gerry Adams was arrested and charged with IRA membership just a few days after the awful La Mon tragedy when a botched firebombing of the hotel on the outskirts of east Belfast killed twelve people, all Protestants, who were incinerated to death, and injured thirty more, some horribly.


The move against Adams was done to placate angry Unionist public opinion, understandably, but the charge of IRA membership was impossible to sustain – short of self-incrimination membership charges were never successful. But it did keep Adams off the streets for the best part of a year. He had been released from Long Kesh a year or so earlier and had set about implementing the re-organisation he, Ivor Bell, Brendan Hughes and others had plotted in jail. So placing him in the remand wing of Crumlin Road jail removed a key player at an important moment.


Changes in security policy introduced after the lengthy but ineffective ceasefire of 1974/75, especially the use of Castlereagh interrogation centre, had brought the IRA to its knees and close to defeat. Adams’ re-organisation, principally the introduction of a new Northern Command, was beginning to revive the IRA when La Mon happened.


With his arrest Adams automatically lost the post of Chief of Staff, which he had just taken from Seamus Twomey, and so Martin McGuinness, then Northern Commander, replaced him. The subsequent three or four years were to provide dramatic evidence that the IRA was indeed back in business and while not the force it had been in 1972, it was nonetheless strong enough to sustain the ‘long war’ crafted in Long Kesh. It was during these years that the rank and file trust in the Adams-McGuinness leadership was created, a trust that would prove so valuable when the peace process began.


By the summer of 1982 however the IRA was set on a different path. The hunger strikes of 1981 had created an opportunity for Sinn Fein to enter electoral politics. Owen Carron had replaced Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, a council seat had been won in Carrickmore, Co. Tyrone but the big test, Sinn Fein standing in a Northern Ireland-wide election, was yet to come. That October it did when the British held elections to a new putative power-sharing Assembly, a body doomed to failure by the result which saw Sinn Fein win ten per cent of the vote and stun the Irish political and media establishment.


Martin McGuinness badly wanted to stand in that poll. He knew he was popular enough in Derry to win a seat and such was the level of post-hunger strike Nationalist anger in the city that he might even give John Hume a scare. The problem was that he was Chief of Staff and others on the Army Council bridled at the thought of their commander holding a seat at Stormont, even on an abstentionist basis.


So McGuinness was obliged to give up the post, handing it to Ivor Bell, one of Gerry Adams’ closest colleagues in the Belfast IRA. Less than a year later however Bell was also arrested and briefly held on charges based on evidence given by Belfast Brigade supergrass Robert ‘Beano’ Lean. Although Lean later retracted, Bell lost the Chief of Staff job which went to Aughnacloy man, Kevin McKenna. (A few years later Bell was forced out of the IRA altogether when his unease at Sinn Fein’s political direction and anger and suspicion at the deprioritisation of the IRA combined to persuade him to launch a tilt at Adams which failed). It is around this time that the Frank Hegarty story really begins.


During his tenure as Chief of Staff, Ivor Bell had dismissed Frank Hegarty from the IRA. A member of the organisation since the early 1970’s, Hegarty had risen to the post of Northern Command Quartermaster (QM) by 1982, a significantly important job. But he was also having an affair with the wife of a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment, the mostly Protestant militia created in 1970 to replace the B Specials. Someone in the IRA found out about Hegarty’s dalliance and reported him. Clearly his liaison made him vulnerable to blackmail and since he was now regarded as a potential informer Hegarty had to go.


Some time after that Hegarty was approached by the Force Research Unit (FRU), a British Army agent-running unit with headquarters at Thiepval Barracks, Lisburn and persuaded to rejoin the IRA which he did. How no red flag was raised in the IRA at Hegarty’s return would become one of the divisive issues in the affair, especially as he also managed to inveigle his way back into the Northern Command quartermaster’s department.


The Force Research Unit had ambitious plans for Hegarty telling him, as the IRA learned when they eventually interrogated him, that they wanted him to rise as high as he could, even as high as Quartermaster General (QMG). The FRU would remove his bosses, one by one, to facilitate his ascent.


By the end of 1985 Hegarty had been seconded to work on attachment to the QMG’s department to help shift weapons which were beginning to arrive from Libya. A year or so earlier Libyan Intelligence and the IRA had struck an audacious and ambitious deal. The Libyans would supply hundreds of tons of weaponry and millions of pounds if the IRA pledged to make life for Mrs Thatcher’s government uncomfortable, something the IRA had no difficulty agreeing. It was Libya’s revenge for the expulsion of their diplomats after the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher while the IRA then laid plans for a major military offensive, based on the Vietnamese ‘Tet’ offensive, designed to sicken British public opinion with Northern Ireland and perhaps force the British to take counterproductive security measures such as internment.


Hegarty was part of a squad that moving some 80 AK-47’s smuggled in from Libya in August 1985 to dumps in the north-west. The weapons were stored in two temporary dumps in Roscommon and Sligo when they were discovered. The Garda Special Branch were ultimately responsible for everything that happened afterwards. Eager for a coup against the IRA the Garda insisted on raiding the dumps, ignoring British advice to ‘jark’ the weapons instead, that is bug them so they could be followed to their destination.


Hegarty had been told that the weapons had come from Europe and the presence of some Belgian rifles in the dumps seemed to authenticate that. Nonetheless British & Irish intelligence had come very close to discovering the Libyan arms smuggling venture at a very early point.


Realising that his past expulsion from the IRA would surface when the IRA investigated the arms seizure and that he would then be the prime suspect for betraying the weapons, Hegarty fled to England where MI5 housed him at a secure location. Homesick and missing his family Hegarty contacted them by phone, the Provos found out and at this point Martin McGuinness entered the story. He was enticed back home, naively believing McGuinness’ assurances about his wellbeing, interrogated by the IRA’s Internal Security Unit and then killed.


So why did Martin McGuinness go out of his way to cajole Hegarty back to Derry? It was, after all, a high-risk enterprise. He must have known that Hegarty had no chance of surviving and that he would be killed. He also knew that Hegarty’s family would be angry with him for so blatantly misleading them and that in all likelihood they would make their feelings known publicly and blame him for the killing. His name and reputation would be sullied for ever. He could have sent someone else to lie to the Hegarty family but he knew that Hegarty would accept assurances from no-one with less clout and authority in the IRA than himself. It was, we can then conclude, enormously important for McGuinness not just that Hegarty be brought back to Derry but that McGuinness be known as the man who brought him back. Again the question, why?


The answer might well lie in the intense rivalry and mutual dislike between Martin McGuinness and Kevin McKenna and the vying between them for the Chief of Staff job. According to IRA sources who knew the two men well and observed them in action, a deep loathing characterised the relationship.


For his part McKenna, a very private, publicity-shy figure, deeply resented constant media reports that McGuinness was the real Chief of Staff and more so that, as someone who was one of the more media-friendly Provo leaders, he had done very little to discourage that impression. McGuinness on the other hand, according to former colleagues, harboured ambitions to get his old Chief of Staff job back, especially so when the Libyan deal was struck. If there was an IRA ‘Tet’ offensive, Martin McGuinness wanted to be known as the man who led it. And McKenna stood in his way.


By late 1985, Kevin McKenna had been Chief of Staff for just two years but already there had been some bitter clashes between them at leadership meetings. At one Army Council meeting McGuinness launched such a powerful assault on McKenna’s stewardship of the IRA that it seemed as if the Chief of Staff might be forced to offer his resignation. Only the intervention of ‘Slab’ Murphy to show support for McKenna stopped that happening.


The Garda swoop on the Libyan arms dumps and Hegarty’s flight to England brought a new and deadly intensity to the rivalry. The first question was how on earth Frank Hegarty had got back into the IRA? Since both McGuinness and Hegarty were Derry men who had been in the city’s IRA units together in the 1970’s & knew each other, and since McGuinness was now Northern Commander and Hegarty was attached to Northern Command then surely, McKenna and others asked, McGuinness must have known that he had got back into the IRA?


The question was full of unspoken menace and danger for McGuinness. The IRA knew full well that when British intelligence wanted to infiltrate and advance agents inside their ranks they would sometimes use other agents to smooth their path. If McGuinness had allowed Hegarty back into the IRA knowing his past, then this made McGuinness a suspected British agent. McGuinness denied, according to these IRA sources, knowing anything about Hegarty’s re-instatement and initially said the informer must have been someone else (during his interrogation by the IRA Hegarty claimed that McGuinness had in fact known and approved his return to the ranks. This sparked another blazing row between McGuinness and McKenna but Hegarty’s assertion was unprovable).


One way of clearing his name, or at least going some way to doing so, would be if McGuinness were to play a leading part in luring Hegarty back to Derry and to his death. It wouldn’t settle the matter since the IRA was well aware that British intelligence would have little compunction in sacrificing one, now useless informer to protect another active and more valuable one but it would suffice until some more compelling evidence against McGuinness emerged, if it ever did.


None of this means that McGuinness was an informer. But it does suggest that he was frightened of being labeled one and that if he didn’t act to clear his name, his arch-rival Kevin McKenna would triumph and his IRA career might be so clouded with doubt and suspicion that it would be effectively over. As it was the Frank Hegarty affair killed off any chances that McGuinness would oust McKenna and replace him as Chief of Staff. McKenna would serve as Chief of Staff for another eleven years until he was replaced in 1997 by ‘Slab’ Murphy. He was the Provisional IRA’s longest serving commander. McGuinness survived and has prospered so well that he is now a contender for the Aras.


Postscript: Frank Hegarty’s FRU handler was Ian Hirst, better known as Martin Ingram and the man who outed Freddie Scappaticci, the notorious British agent in the IRA’s Internal Security Unit whose codename was Steaknife. Handlers often get very attached to their agents and there’s no doubt that Ian/Martin was deeply affected by Hegarty’s death. I have often wondered if his understandable anger at McGuinness for coaxing Hegarty to his death led him to make his own, later allegations that McGuinness worked as a double agent for MI6.Intriguing stuff, but will we ever get definitive answers to all these questions?

RIDING THE GOAT KIDS

A

When Father Rode The Goat
The house is full of arnica
And mystery profound;
We do not dare to run about
Or make the slightest sound;
We leave the big piano shut
And do not strike a note;
The doctor’s been here seven times
Since father rode the goat.
He joined the lodge a week ago —
Got in at 4 a.m.
And sixteen brethren brought him home
Though he says he brought them.
His wrist was sprained and one big rip,
Had rent his Sunday coat —
There must have been a lively time
When father rode the goat.
He’s resting on the couch to-day!
And practicing his signs —
The hailing signal, working grip,
And other monkeyshines;
He mutters passwords 'neath his breath,
And other things he'll quote —
They surely had an evening’s work
When father rode the goat.
He has a gorgeous uniform,
All gold and red and blue;
A bat with plunges and yellow braid,
And golden badges too.
But, somehow, when we mention it,
He wears a look so grim
We wonder if he rode the goat
Or if the goat rode him.

by Greg Campbell

Riding the goat, as everyone knows, is a fundamental part of Orange Order culture, indeed the Orange State of Occupied Ireland is based on it. When I was being interrogated in Gough Barracks by the British, I noticed in the photographs thrown in front of me, that several of the goats raped, were in fact kid goats, and while I try not to be judgemental, I was frankly disgusted. So you can imagine my reaction, several years later, when a very expensive inquiry, in the Blueshirt state of the south of Ireland, found that there was systemic human kid rape in that state also. This is part of the horrific history of the Island, since the foundation of the two scum states, founded by Britain, to look after it's interests by proxy, as in their Commonwealth, after their limited official colonial departure. The secrecy around both human and goat kid rape, served British interests well, in that it is an excellent tool, to manipulate the political, judicial, media, etc., instruments of state, with secret blackmail and mentoring. Grooming and manipulation are essential parts, of the dark art of kid rape, cultivated for centuries, by the secret state of Whitehall in London. 

Let there be no mistake about it, the history of John Bull is a brutal bullying one, of extreme sadism, cultivated in his public schools and executed primarily, in Britain's first colony Ireland, over eight centuries ago. The size of Ireland relative to England, is similar in size but Ireland's total population, is today, one tenth of their neighbour. We can factor in all sorts of equations into this reality but at it's core is the fact, that at the minimum, more the equivalent of Ireland's population today, were victims of British genocide, somewhere in the region of seven million people, which any honest researcher, can confirm for themselves independently. This core fact, is just one of the truths, that can set Ireland free, when exposed, at the International Criminal Court and elsewhere uncensored. If Irish Republicans, put half their co-ordinated energy, into exposing these facts, in our modern age of communication, rather than engaging in reactionary violence, we will liberate ourselves and our people. Of course, it is much easier for me to write this, in my current location with detachment, far from the immediate trauma of conflict, rather than those current victims, caught up, in the web of British Dirty War brutality in Ireland.

Take for example, the many current POWs (Prisoners of War) in Maghaberry, Occupied Ireland. Two days ago the British sent in their Orange sectarian thugs, in the uniform of a riot squad, to quell a peaceful protest, by prisoners, in horrific conditions of incarceration. These sectarian thugs in British uniform, danced on the heads of Irish prisoners and battered them, to the point of serious injuries, then leaving the prisoners, locked up in their cells, in agony, with serious physical injuries, unattended to. They then as usual, sanitized their behaviour, with their considerable PR machine, excusing it on the basis of some graffiti, written on a toilet wall, threatening the prison administration. Now I don't know the complete truth of the graffiti, it could have been written by anyone, but I do know, that the wives and children of the prisoners are currently distraught with worry, about the condition of their loved ones. The communities of the POWs are enraged about this incessant British brutality and bullying. There were protesters from all over Ireland, outside the prison gates in a state of fury about all of this. The families and lawyers  of the POWs are not allowed to communicate, with any of their loved ones, or ascertain their condition, as they are in total lockdown. Now you don't have to be Einstein to figure, that this is not by any means, peace process procedure or to figure out, where this recipe is all leading.

The bottom line is, that Britain is ignoring EU Law, with regard to the treatment of prisoners, indeed I would suggest, they are being purposely and intentionally provocative, to hide even further, behind the provoked fog, of their Dirty War in Ireland, while excusing their own criminality and bullying in Ireland. They have signed up to European Law and are obliged to honour their commitments, both to that Law and a 2010 Agreement with Irish POWs. Now, once again, they are going down the Thatcher route, and Irish Republicans know from, decades of experience, exactly where that is leading. Having being through the trauma of the last 10 Hunger Strike deaths of Irish POWs already, Irish people, never want to experience that trauma again. It is a life changing event for whole communities. The fact is, that the island of Ireland is a very sick place, as a result, of centuries of all of this, coupled with, corrupt, proxy, administrations, based on kid rape. International help is badly needed, to help resolve these issues and help people recover from the damage British genocide has done to the Irish psyche. Other than the International Criminal Court, this writer, cannot see any other honest broker, who can help resolve this, in the absence of any honest, native, politicians who seem to be all dehumanized, but I am more than open, to any other possible solutions, wherever they come from, that are realistic and considered.

I recommend you check the video link below.

The War Prayer


By Mark Twain

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst,

Video Markos Production

Twain dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.

Video Link

DEMONIZING IRISH CHE & IRISH WATER PROTESTS

As a festival celebrating Cuban culture kicks off in Kilkee, Richard Fitzpatrick talks to artist Jim Fitzpatrick, who created the iconic image of Che Guevara, about his meeting with the revolutionary

Jim Fitzpatrick met Che Guevara in the Royal Marine Hotel bar in Kilkee, Co Clare, in the summer of 1961. Fitzpatrick was 16 years old at the time, and had travelled down to the seaside village to work in the hotel while on holidays from Gormanstown College, Co Meath. The hotel’s owners set up a mattress in a barn for him to sleep on for his first couple of nights’ stay. He was put working behind the bar.

“I was an instant barman — no experience whatsoever,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind, but I was a pioneer, totally opposed to drink and still am.” It was after Mass one morning, while Fitzpatrick was working in the bar, that the encounter happened.

“It was a beautiful sunny morning. I was working in the bar on my own. There was a guy there called Sam, who was in there every day, a lovely man. I was chatting away to him. There were two other people in the bar, regulars. And in walked these three, very interesting looking men. All that was needed was Clint Eastwood saloon doors because they came into the bar through swing doors at the side entrance to the hotel.

“They had green-coloured, London Fog raincoats with epaulettes. I recognised him immediately. Who the other two guys were was a mystery. One guy was very curly-haired. I said something like, ‘What brings you here?’ He laughed. And I said, ‘I recognise you. I follow the Cuban revolution.’

“The Cuban revolution was probably the most exciting thing that ever happened. For me, he was a world figure. We watched Pathé News and all the revolutionaries coming into Havana, sitting on top of tanks with their long hair and beards. He would have been as famous as Maradona today. People of my age idolised him.

“We talked for a few minutes once he realised that I knew who he was. His English was faltering, but he could make himself understood. The first thing he said was, ‘You know I’m Irish. My father was Guevara Lynch.’ I was taken aback by that because I didn’t know that at all.”

Guevara’s Irish roots stretch back to the Lynchs of Galway, one of the county’s 14 tribes. He was a descendant of Patrick Lynch, who left Galway in the mid-1700s and became a substantial landowner in Argentina’s Rio de la Plata region.

Jon Lee Anderson, who spent five years writing Guevara’s biography, says: “He was first and foremost a Latin American but I think his Irish roots were important to him. His father was very much a Lynch of Galway and knew the family history. That part of the family had done extremely well in Latin America.

“On both sides of the family, he had pretty illustrious ancestors. Part of the family folklore is that a great great-aunt may have been Eliza Lynch, the mistress of Francisco Solano López in Paraguay who in the late 19th century declared war on Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay and devastated the country, from which it never recovered.

“Che read his James Joyce. When he was a young lad he began keeping a philosophical dictionary. He didn’t write or speak much about the Irish rebellion, but it’s my understanding that he was certainly aware of it, and aware of the idea of the Irish rebel, which appealed to him very much.

“His father definitely had a little bit of the bard in him. He was a great spinner of tall tales. There was always a recognition in Che of that, and the difference between his mother and father — his mother being very much of Spanish blood, and of his father as a Lynch and the connection with the old country.”

Back in Kilkee, Guevara asked Fitzpatrick for a suggestion as to what to drink. “Obviously in Cuba, they drink rum, and I suggested rum. But he said, ‘No.’ He wanted an Irish drink. I recommended a whiskey. I said, ‘If you’re not used to it, I wouldn’t drink that quick. You need to put a mixer in it.’ He asked me what mixer and I said, ‘ginger ale or water.’ He took a glass of water, a glass of Power’s whiskey and he sipped it.

“I asked him what he was doing. He was on a Aeroflot flight — from Moscow to Havana or Havana to Moscow; I don’t think I was told — that got fogbound in Shannon. They wanted to see the coast. They hired a driver, and it was one of those old Ford Prefects — it wasn’t a flash car. They parked it outside. He said he was proud of his Irish ancestors; that the Irish brought down the British Empire. He sat down in a corner, chatting with his friends. They just had minerals.

“When it was announced he had been murdered in 1967, the next day his father was quoted in the Evening Press — I have the paper — as saying, ‘The blood of the Irish revolutionary ran in my sons’ veins’.”

-The annual Che do Bheatha Festival is taking place in Kilkee, Co Clare today and tomorrow.

Model of youthful defiance

Students and celebrities — such as Johnny Depp and Prince Harry — love to wear T-shirts adorned with Che Guevara’s image, while Mike Tyson and Diego Maradona have prominent tattoos of him on their bodies. He is a contentious figure, however.

When a Labour Party councillor, Billy Cameron, mooted the idea in 2012 of erecting a statue to the Marxist revolutionary in Galway, he was criticised by Declan Ganley, among others. The businessman and political activist described Guevara as a “mass murderer” and said the monument “would shame the people of Galway and Ireland”.

Jon Lee Anderson, Guevara’s biographer, disputes the charge that Guevara was a mass murderer, and explains his appeal: “Che’s face, extrapolated from that famous 1960 Alberto Korda photograph, which showed him at his height, his almost mystical anger and indignation. He had long hair, the very image of a rebel, angry, looking off to the far horizon. Already, he is a figure of legendary repute, as the guy who was backing the insurgencies that began to pop up everywhere. It became the defining image of an age.

He represents youthful rebellion and defiance of the status quo. That’s why it’s a universal image. By holding up his face, you’re sticking it to the man.

Story by Richard Fitzpatrick

A FEW GOOD IRISHWOMEN UNITE IRISH REPUBLICANS

Irish Republican News · March 9, 2012
 

Marian Price campaign gains momentum


A packed meeting in Belfast on Thursday night heard prominent speakers denounce the continued internment of veteran republican Marian Price.

Organised in connection with International Women’s Day, the meeting was addressed by human rights activists Monsignor Raymond Murray and former Westminster MP Bernadette McAliskey.

Despite an unexpected last-minute change of venue, organisers said the meeting at Conway Mill was “a fantastic success, such was the size of the crowd that attended that people had to stand in the corridor looking in”.

The crowd heard appeals for increased public activism around her case.

Marian is a lifelong republican and was secretary of the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association (IRPWA) at the time of her detention. She has now been interned without cause for nearly a year.

Over the past eleven months her mental and physical health has severely deteriorated until she was recently moved to Hydebank Women’s Prison.

According to the IRPWA, Marian has not been transferred to Hydebank prison but rather the hospital wing there. “She will not be criminalised and will resist all attempts by the British government to treat her as a criminal”, they said.

But there is growing concern for her well-being as result of her isolation.

“Her removal to the hospital wing at Hydebank is the inevitable result of a regime of neglect and isolation she has been forced to endure,” the IRPWA said.

It also rejected a claim by British Direct Ruler Owen Paterson that she is in jail because her licence has been revoked.

“Marian was never released on licence and the British government are fully aware of this. They claim to have mislaid her pardon. This is quite simply an unbelievable excuse for the continuation of her illegal detention.”

Last week, a group of former women prisoners mounted a protest in Belfast before handing a letter into the Six County Justice Ministry.

Former INLA prisoner, Gina McElroy, said: “We know what it’s like to be women in jail but our situation was so much better than Marian Price’s.

“We were young women prisoners freely able to mix with our comrades. She’s a 58-year-old woman with serious health problems who has been held in isolation for almost a year.

“She’s being detained without charge so she doesn’t even have a release date.” McElroy said it was a “disgraceful situation that shames the British government”.

She added: “It’s a clear abuse of human rights. The UN says solitary confinement should rarely be used and never for more than 15 days. If this were happening anywhere else in the world, Britain would condemn it.”

There have been new concerns over Marian Price’s current incarceration at Hydebank. The following report about her plight was provided by the ‘Justice for Marian’ website (http://www.freemarian.co.nr/)



The new regime she has been placed under is worse than she experienced in Maghaberry and would seem to be designed to de-personalise and further criminalise Marian Price.

She is now being held in one of three observation cells at the end of a corridor. The area is screened from the view of other prisoners who call to the centre for medication. There are monitoring cameras in the three cells two of which are locked. She has been told that the one she occupies has had the camera switched off, she has no way of knowing if this is true or not. The area is very restrictive and cramped. There is no unsupervised access to fresh air. The “Health Care Centre” is staffed by a combination of nursing prison officers who carry keys and some agency personnel. It is NOT a hospital wing. We would urge those in a position of influence to visit the prison and look beyond the visiting area.

Marian has a shower in her cell and without going into detail she has no privacy. A constant stream of prison staff enter her cell leaving her feeling like an exhibit at a time when she is feeling extremely unwell.

When I asked for a description of Marian I was told she looks physically drained, she has suffered a dramatic weight loss and is very pale - she looks extremely ill. She is also very agitated and appears to be under extreme pressure. Not surprising really given she has endured ten months of what the experts have clearly defined as torture.

To add to her hardship she is being constantly hounded to become involved in “activities” when she is so clearly unwell that she cannot. A written time-table of inane activities was given to her on Friday the 2nd of March which she considered insulting and calculated. This timetable is designed to dictate how she should spend her day from what time she should get dressed to what time she should read a book (Marian can no longer read books as she is unable to concentrate).It has been suggested to Marian that she can avail of the kitchen facilities to cook when the other prisoners are locked up. Marian’s hands are completely deformed with chronic arthritis, therefore cooking is a strenuous a task not therapy. In what is quite clearly an attempt to humiliate her Marian has been told as a treat she can be brought to the kennels to visit the sniffer dogs used in searches.

A very worrying aspect is the constant hints and suggestions of “interaction” with other prisoners. Family members witnessed this and pointed out to the governor the sensitivities involved. Marian has to constantly repeat that she is a SEGREGATED PRISONER and not a CRIMINAL. It is clear that this treatment is adding to the deterioration in Marian’s health.

It is obvious for all to see that attempts are being made to normalise what is evidently an abnormal situation. No-one appears to be taking account of the fact that Marian has been (and continues to be) held in isolation for 10 months.

I have been told Marian feels like she is “in a zoo” with so many unwanted “visitors”. She is isolated in an environment of constant interruptions which is totally unsettling. People arrive into her cell unannounced and the lack of privacy is degrading. The truth of this charade under the guise of a “health care package” must be exposed for what it is... a contrived public relations exercise to disguise the isolation and torture of a woman in need of urgent medical intervention.


Organise, Agitate, Educate! (2/3) from Spartacus on Vimeo.




PASS IT ON ! SHARE IT ! RE-TWEET ! TAKE ACTION NOW ! HTTP://TWITPIC.COM/8XWLQN


Bobby Sands “There are praises of flowers who epitomise the unconquerable spirit of Irish womanhood. Let no man dare to scorn these women and let your weeds of indifference and sleeping roses blush in everlasting shame."

Take Action NOW ! One letter, one phone call! There are several useful links below and I ask you to take time to go through all of them and decide what action you can take including a comprehensive site at;
http://www.freemarian.co.nr/

Because of British Cover Up, Censorship(this author on facebook} and dis-information the CAUSE of Marian Price had to be divided into 8, it also needs you to re-share and re-tweet any material you want to overcome censorship. you are very welcome to do so.

CARE signatures: 76 @ http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/free-the-irish-marian-price/

Join the 4,037+ Petitions on International Women's Day FREE INTERNED MARIAN PRICE ! http://bit.ly/InternedMarianPrice

101 MEMBERS


BBC DEMOCRACY LIVE MARIAN PRICE DEBATE IS SECTARIAN BIGOTRY | http://bit.ly/BIGOTSdebate

253 MEMBERS



FREE PRICE in British Occupied Ireland -http://bit.ly/CensoredFreePrice

441 MEMBERS




BRITISH MEDIA CENSORSHIP OF IRELAND & MARIAN PRICE -http://www.causes.com/PriceOfPeace

305 MEMBERS




FREE INTERNED INNOCENT IRISH ANGEL IN BRITISH OCCUPIED IRELAND | http://bit.ly/CENSORINGmarianPRICE

609 MEMBERS




BRITISH CENSORED CAUSE TO STOP TORTURE OF MARIAN PRICE 1,549 MEMBERS RISES AGAIN -http://bit.ly/CENSOREDcause

544 MEMBERS




STOP THE xxxx OF MARIAN PRICE |http://bit.ly/CENSOREDMarianPrice

1,708 MEMBERS


Please Take Action NOW ! One letter, one phone call!

https://sites.google.com/site/freemarian2012/