Sandy Boyer says:
I was dismayed and disappointed that Brooke Gladstone never challenged Jack Dunne when he labeled Anthony McIntyre a criminal.
It was made clear in the interview that McIntyre was imprisoned for his IRA activity. Federal courts have ruled that the IRA campaign was a political conflict over who should rule Ireland. On the basis of this finding they have refused extradition (Desmond Mackin) and withheld deportation (Sean Mackin.)I find it very difficult to believe that Brooke Gladstone would have let a similar charge against a Cuban or even Palestinian prisoner go unchallenged.
AM says:
7:12 PM, February 05, 2014Reply
Michael,
Bangers & Mush
what a title for an article that would make. Must plunder it on you!
Robert says:
7:31 PM, February 05, 2014Reply
Anthony,
http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m7Kb_iLLOy3ejyxg9FBy7mg.jpg
Michael Mahoney says:
8:03 PM, February 05, 2014Reply
AM
These titles just fall from the sky, feel free to put it in your pocket for future use. All for the cause of pushing back a little, if not a lot. Ain't no fun getting thrown under the bus, that's for sure.
AM says:
9:24 PM, February 05, 2014Reply
Funny Robert!
Michael,
it will be used, believe me!!
Tain Bo says:
10:54 PM, February 05, 2014Reply
Something comical about Jack Dunn and his obvious lack of knowledge on the subject he feels free to condemn and at the same time props up the fiasco of the Boston College defense.
Jack you are right there is cultural differences but with the amount of information on the web that hardly allows for your ignorance.
You mouth off that Anthony has a long “criminal” record but offer no explanation as to why an esteemed college would hire and manipulate one of disrepute in the first place.
You go on and perhaps it is through your own stupidity cite that Danny Morrison is a reliable source to back up your criticism.
Did you are your colleagues do a wee bit of research into Danny Morrison or since Anthony and Morison belonged to the same group are you calling Morrison a more trust worthy better class of criminal?
Did you read Morrison’s shite about “touts” if not I suggest you do as your nervous interviews wreaks of cowardice as your College tucked its tail between its legs and ran off before the legal battle begun.
Your copout conspiracy theory could be put to bed by a simple look at those involved and if there had have been anyone from the Adams camp willing to participate without being found out and executed then they would have been more than welcomed to tell their story.
Gerry Adams himself neither was nor is worried about the project so why try and state it was just some grand conspiracy to bring him down.
What is criminal is the damage your college has done to oral history projects and if there is any lesson learned any future projects should give a wide birth to American academic institutions and seek out a safer harbour elsewhere.
Happy for America that your ilk where not around at the time of the Boston Tea Party it wouldn’t take much to suggest if so the Union Jack would be flying over America today.
The Making of a Tout
by Danny Morrison
Recently, a log was brought to my attention in which the dissident republican Anthony McIntyre, links me to the killing of a 26-year-old Shankill Road, Protestant man, Samuel Llewellyn. Back then, in July 1975, at 22, just out of internment and living under many aliases and stilll on the run until that year’s ceasefire, I had just been made editor of theRepublican News. But, I had nothing to do with the killing of this innocent man who was killed after a car bomb attack close to ourRepublican News offices.
Having read what Anthony McIntyre said about me , my lawyers have told me that I am now the subject of arrest by the Historical Enquiries Team. Given that I never met Anthony McIntyre until my imprisonment in the H-Blocks in 1991, could it be that his allegation is related to something that has been said in one of his Boston College research interviews which he is now inadvertently/subconsciously referring to?
Anthony McIntyre and Ed Moloney have yet to reveal what they were paid for producing the ‘Belfast Archive’, to which, apparently, Moloney has exclusive rights, allowing him to profit from the confessions of veterans as they die. How the archive was hatched is still the subject of ongoing media scrutiny.
Moloney never served a minute in jail but Mackers served a million, though he has since squandered every second on behalf of the British state, out to historically undermine our integrity, motivation, our choices and decisions, however difficult, complex and perplexing, but informed by the circumstances we found ourselves in.
Anthony McIntyre served a long time in jail, including years on the blanket which would earn one a lot of respect. He has disagreed with the republican strategy for many years and provided a voice of opposition. But he has lost the run of himself, for whatever reason, and has now struck a new low which he will have difficulty in explaining.
I have criticised the fact that he and Ed Moloney possibly misled participants in the collection of the Boston College archive in that their interviews about their IRA activities would not be released until after their deaths.
I cited the fact that I and a dozen others were charged in 1978 in relation to an allegedly sealed archive in the Public Records Office which was seized by the RUC, and my belief that Antony and Ed would have been aware of that case. He has had months to deny that he was aware but I take it from his silence that he knew about our prosecution.
For the past fifteen years, if you read his writings, Anthony has been obsessed with Gerry Adams and this informs his views and responses. It makes for a sad life. This obsession may also have been a factor in his involvement in the Boston College archive. It is also likely to be replicated in the choice of people he interviewed or those willing to have been interviewed.
The only example we have about the nature of these interviews is that provided by Ed Moloney in his book, ‘Voices From The Grave’, where he quotes from the archive the late Brendan Hughes making allegations about Gerry Adams and the IRA.
Throughout this lazy book many other republicans are named and implicated in this and that. My complaint is that none of these republicans were ever given the right of reply because, of course, that would have required a bit of work and might well have undermined Brendan Hughes’s account so substantially as to have rendered him an unreliable witness.
Some months ago it emerged that the British authorities, supported by the US Department of Justice, have issues subpoenas to seize the tapes for their alleged evidential worth in unresolved killings, presumably involving the IRA. However, instead of refuting on ethical grounds the attempt to seize the material – which could still be potentially used to indict the interviewees or those they have implicated – Anthony and Ed’s first instinct was to run with the red herring that if the tapes were handed over they could be killed by the IRA (the IRA that sold out and was infiltrated up to its black berets – according to Anthony, when it suited him!).
I took umbrage at that nonsense and wrote so.
It was what Anthony McIntyre said next that shows the depths to which he has sank. After a long rant, during which he ignored every valid point I made, he then wrote the following about me:
“Does this deceitful hypocrite seriously expect to raise a head of steam against those involved in the Boston College project? More chance that he will raise Sammy Llewellyn from the dead. Pennies for your thoughts on what Sammy might tell.”
The only possible reading of this – unless Anthony has an explanation I haven’t thought of – is that he is insinuating that I had something to do with the 1975 sectarian killing of Sammy Llewellyn, who was known as the Good Samaritan. As I said, after a loyalist car bomb attack on the Falls Road, Sammy Llewellyn and other workers from the Housing Executive came out to board up windows. Sammy was from the Shankill Road, was kidnapped and shot dead. Republicans lost a lot of support after this innocent man’s killing.
Never, in the dozens of times that I came through Castlereagh was I ever asked about or linked to Sammy Llewellyn’s death (because, of course, I had no hand or part in it).
But Anthony McIntyre, presumably on the basis of a rumour, or more dangerous still (only he can clarify), possibly quoting one of those he interviewed for the Boston College archive, links my name to a sectarian killing and has set me up for arrest by the HET. In the old days there was a name for such activity.
What his impetuous remark does show, if its provenance is to be found in the archive, is that he has inadvertently brought to the public’s attention the potential dangers inherent in this archive. Was he quoting from an interviewee and abusing allegedly sealed information, however inaccurate? What was his motive? How would he describe what he has done? How would he justify it?
Increasingly we discover that the Boston College Belfast Archive is not an innocent historical academic project but a politically-motivated venture. It has placed not only the participants in danger but others who would only discover after the deaths of participants that those who politically disagreed with them had slandered and vilified then, leaving them with no one to challenge.
What a mess, what a disgrace.
10 comments:
I 've got to ask you however regarding Jean mcConville what else could be done with her? The whole disappearing lark is counter-productive nonsense acting more like the mafia than a revolutionary army, but regarding touts what else could be done? We all know now the one ordering the executions were the biggest touts, but back then how where the volunteers who carried out their orders supposed to know that?
while as a human being I have greatest sympathy with any grieving family members, I just think given the circumstances your generation faced you all had to face serious moral dilemmas, which for what its worth I thought the p.i.r.a volunteers handled well.
Volunteers will always be heroes in my eyes and i think in the quest for justice noble as it is, we could demonise our own. Cause lets face it mein furher will never be held accountable.
It is a thorny issue which I think on the whole you handle well and bravely, I just worry that in our quest to show what the leadership was actually like we could make problems for past volunteers who I think should be treated with the greatest respect, that's my bit for what it's worth
you are right. In conflict of this type spies get killed. Although we now know that the spy catchers contained more than a few spies in their midst. And many of those killed on the basis of what real spies judged them to be, can no longer be regarded as spies. Or at least they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Could republicans ever risk relying on that treacherous combination of Stakeknife and P O'Neill?
Given Jean McConville's circumstances they could as easily have put her out of the country.
The war crime dimension of it lies in the process of secretly burying her and keeping her disappeared for decades. So there is no way the allegation of war crime could be levelled at all involved.
Outside of wanton cruelty I can think of reasons for that, but none that would be compelling.
And there is always the dilemma that comes with applying a peace time moral calculus to actions carried out during a war.
On this type of matter I have never reached a position I am comfortable with. I put out views here and people come along and challenge them and if I find them as having merit they act as a form of corrective to my thinking. There are no gurus here nor do we want there to be.
While I might have arrived at it very late in the day I think there is an onus on us to avoid war rather than seek to wage it just because we can.
on the matter of bias, while your point is sound, there will be more shortly that will help explain this and give the lie to the Dunn rubbish.
you mean as stupid as Jack Dunn to have ever cited him to begin with? Of course he will be that stupid. I will bet my house on it. And then I will watch his house fall like a deck of cards.
But keep watching this space!
You and Ed must feel a terrible sense of betrayal at the hands of Boston College with its "pushover professors" and O'Neill, the head librarian who forgot to make some rather essential enquiries. Protected clergy you certainly are not, just unholy historians and journalists. I wonder if any American institution of higher learning would have had the guts to reject attempts by the PSNI to snatch tapes from your highly sensitive collection. Doubtful. If Boston College was embarrassed, as you say, so be it. Boston, and the whole country for that matter, has all but forgotten the arrogant grip of the British and the sacrifices necessary to create a republic: a highly flawed, unwieldy republic, but a republic nonetheless. As for Northern Ireland, politics has indeed trumped justice. Would that it were otherwise, but that's the reality, and maybe the necessity, at this juncture, at this time which allows more dispassionate consideration of what was most definitely a war.
It's extremely difficult to avoid a certain bias in qualitative research. It's only in the last year or two since 'Clean Language' techniques have been adapted and applied in research interviews that the potential to avoid all bias has been achieved, I'm of the opinion some bias is unavoidable unless 'CL' is used.
With regards to the featured article, there is some bit of 'ad hominem' misdirection in JD's comments, not so skilled in masking his own biases or prejudices, is he?
3:14 PM, February 05, 2014Reply
Michael,
and to add insult to injury Dunn is now calling us criminals. What a cretin.
The Canadian academics could teach them a lesson. Some good work coming out of there. If you don't push back in these issues you will get pushed under the bus as my wife says.
HJ,
I wonder if too much is lost as a result of clean language. My view of oral history is that it should be a conversation and ultimately the listener has to be able to hear it all rather than just a sanitised version of what the researcher wants to put out. The listener can then decide how much the interviewer shaped the interview. I think any question by definition has to be leading. It must lead somewhere or there is little point in asking it. That would be different from a loaded question. I think you are right to say it is 'extremely difficult to avoid a certain bias in qualitative research.' I wonder should we even try.
As for JD, when you and other readers read these so called leading questions and what Kevin O'Neill actually wrote you are free to make up your own mind about Dunn's use of Kevin O'Neill.