Enoch Burke is The Prisoner

Any empty place at the Burke table this year. Perhaps all spaces will be empty as I’m sure they’ll spend their Christmas protesting somewhere (with no one paying attention)

It's in his own hands. The only person keeping Burke in prison, is Burke.

He can leave prison at any time he wants. The judge repeated that again today.

All he has to do is give an undertaking to stay away from Wilsons Hospital School.

"Convicted felon"?

That's an american term, it is not used in this country.

No, he has not been convicted of any criminal offence, as to date this a civil matter, and he is in civil contempt.

But that could change.

He will never be returning to WHS no matter how much he fantasizes about it (and probably any other school in Ireland, for that matter).

No it wouldn’t. You’re being silly now.

Imprisonment for contempt of court is a coercive punishment basically to show you what you’re doing isn’t going to work. Make you rethink your behaviour.

Hanging someone is barbaric and murder. You can’t teach a lesson to the dead.

Honestly these kinds of arguments are so stale and tired by now. He’s not been jailed by a commie government for speaking out he’s been jailed by the High Court for endlessly refusing to abide by their orders.

he’s a role model for anarchy and injustice. His continued existence in mountJoy goes to demonstrate that even in Ireland you won’t get away with breaking the law forever. That you cannot defy the rule of the second highest court in the land and prance about freely to do so.

Burke has on the other hand demonstrated that he feels above the law and can simply shout or talk his way out of any situation he finds himself in. I’ve met people like him who have no regard for the law and feel like the best approach is to go to court, abuse judges, cry corruption and campaign and be loud.

Incidentally, those individuals, Burke included are— or were at one point in prison.

Throughout their time there I understand they still lived convinced of being hard done by and unfairly jailed by a corrupt system. That said their saving grace was a custodial, time limited sentence. Burke may well spend the rest of his days in prison and it will be no one’s fault but his own.

Think about it like.. he’d rather be in jail than just not go to the school. Fair enough he thinks he shouldn’t be fired & God bless, but there’s a process to follow and he just refuses to do so. How can you justify this behaviour honestly?

the only acceptable explanation really is he knows he’s never going to be reinstated & at this stage he’s likely to be removed from the teaching council register. Like Ammi I think he’s trying to form some sort of notoriety in order to attempt to remain relevant.

I do not suspect he will be in prison indefinitely either. I imagine eventually the court will stop having the check in hearings every few months and at that point I suspect he will, quietly no doubt, purge his contempt.

i suspect he will not do so before— or during a scheduled hearing in order to “save face” in the media.