[Article]Shinners talk balls

More on Sinn Féin's duplicity in this affair and their attempts to discredit the courageous McCartney sisters:



The sisters are coming home… and Sinn Fein is planning its revenge

By Jenny McCartney - No relation

Behind its forced smiles and strained professions of concern, the Sinn Fein leadership has always been furious at the McCartney sisters for daring to protest about the murder of their brother, Robert, by IRA men in a Belfast bar. Since last week, however, it has made an increasingly bad job of concealing its rage.

While the five McCartney sisters and Mr McCartney's fiancée, Bridgeen Hagans, were being welcomed by President Bush in the White House on St Patrick's Day, Gerry Adams - formally exiled from the Washington A-list - was glumly touring the dwindling number of US Friends of Sinn Fein. Even Senator Ted Kennedy cancelled his meeting with Adams: the Senator had an important subsequent engagement… with the McCartney sisters.

Sinn Fein wants the sisters to disappear, and it has already tried hard to make that happen. Even the IRA, however, realised that its most obvious strategy - that of terrorising the women and their families into silence - might backfire horribly. So instead it offered a compromise: that it would shoot four of the IRA men involved in the McCartney murder.

After the sisters declined this offer of bloodletting, Gerry Adams tried to schmooze them into silence. He invited them to the Sinn Fein annual general meeting, with a special front row seat right next to him. And yet the McCartneys, although staunch republicans all, still refused to melt wholly into the smothering Sinn Fein embrace. The women remained stubbornly bent on pursuing the trial and conviction of their brother's IRA killers.

At that, Martin McGuinness's tone changed. He warned that "the McCartneys need to be very careful" that they didn't "step over the line into the world of party politics", which would "dismay and disillusion an awful lot of people". I'll translate that. It means: "Shut up while you're still ahead, if you know what's good for you, and leave the talking to us."

The McCartneys, of course, are not affiliated to any political party, and their financial resources are minuscule, especially when compared to Sinn Fein's overflowing coffers. Yet what they are doing is certainly political in the most basic sense of challenging an established, overweening power: in this case, the IRA's stranglehold over the people in working-class Catholic areas of Belfast.

Adams and McGuinness have indeed called for witnesses to Mr McCartney's murder in Magennis's Bar to approach a solicitor with information. But they don't repeat publicly the rider which is certainly added in private: "…and make sure you tell them nothing."

This is the account that Cora Groogan, a young Sinn Fein candidate, gave of her evening in Magennis's Bar on the night Mr McCartney died: "I got to the bar about 10pm that Sunday. I was there for a short while. There was a commotion in the bar but I witnessed nothing and left shortly after 11pm."

What exactly was this "commotion" which barely caused Miss Groogan to look up from her drink before concluding that all was well with the world? It was the noise of an intense argument followed by the sound of Brendan Devine, Robert McCartney's friend, being held down by IRA men who then cut his throat.

Shortly after, the men set upon Mr McCartney, a bodybuilder, and battered and stabbed him to death on the street immediately outside the bar. There would have been terrible yelling, and an ocean of blood, not to mention the extensive IRA clean-up operation afterwards. Hard to miss, you might think, but maybe Ms Groogan's favourite song was playing on the jukebox and she got distracted.

The same thing must have happened to Deirdre Hargey, an aspiring Sinn Fein councillor, who was also present but similarly didn't see "the fracas in the bar, or the incident outside the bar". In fact, all of the 70 people who were in the bar claim to have witnessed nothing: most say they were in the lavatories. Is it any wonder that Paula McCartney has concluded that the whole thing "stinks of a cover-up"?

The coming months back in Belfast will be hard and bitter for the McCartney sisters and Miss Hagans. They will be subjected to the full force of Sinn Fein's PR machine, which will attempt to smear them and their motivations.

That machine could already be heard cranking up last week, with aggrieved "republican critics" calling Belfast radio stations to observe - in tones drenched in suspicion - that "one of the sisters actually studies politics at Queen's University, she knows what she's doing". Another alleged that "a republican family wouldn't be in America today trying to destroy the republican movement": in other words, if you're a republican who is abused by the IRA you had better not go to the authorities, otherwise people will start hinting that you're a closet Unionist.

This is all pretty predictable stuff, but it is still depressing to hear those who should know better joining in. On Radio 4's Today programme last week, the film director Ken Loach - who can deliver such moving dramas about downtrodden Mexican women in America - somehow couldn't bring himself to give even a brief pat on the back to six working-class Catholic women who have displayed tremendous courage.

He argued that the story's prominence was simply an example of "how the news is spun" and complained that many Catholics murdered by loyalists never received such publicity.

No, and nor did many Protestants murdered by the IRA. And nor did many Protestants murdered by loyalists. And nor did many other Catholics murdered by the IRA. But the point is that this McCartney campaign is now acting as an inspiration to everyone - Catholic or Protestant - who believes that the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries should not have the right to act as executioners and enforcers in working-class areas.

In 1998, an IRA gang murdered a 33-year-old Catholic man called Andrew Kearney. I remember meeting his mother Maureen, a life-long republican who had begun a spirited campaign against her son's IRA killers. In the absence of any other redress, she asked Sinn Fein to pay for his funeral. Eventually, Gerry Adams visited her house and told her to leave the matter in his hands: he promised to return in three weeks, she said, after a trip to America. He never came back.

In August 1999, Mrs Kearney died: the priest at her funeral said it was of a broken heart. Sometimes justice arrives too late, or not at all. But the McCartneys have already changed Northern Ireland, simply by demanding it.

Daily Telegraph (Filed: 20/03/2005)

Lemming wrote:

Sadly that would appear to be the game that SF/IRA are playing. They wont even spin it as a glorious victory rather than quietly forget it and threaten the knee-caps of anyone who ever mentions the surname "McCartney"

That maybe true in the areas of the north labouring under the control of Sinn Féin and the IRA but in the parts of Ireland where people are still free to voice their opinions the McCartney name will hopefully never be forgotten.

I think there is an onus on the democrats in Ireland to ensure that Robert McCartney did not die in vain. That from this barbaric murder a glimmer of light may emerge. The Republican Movement may have taken his life and denied his family justice but if nothing else this death should stand as a chilling reminder to the hypocrisy at the heart of the Sinn Féin project. In future, whenever the spiel about 'truth and justice' is preached by the party and its apologists let one name cut down the lies and expose tyranny. This legacy, I think, might offer some consolation to a family cruelling robbed of its loved one while in the prime of his life.

For that matter, maybe the two governments could chip in and create a fund for justice to aid the brave sisters campaign. It could disburse financial support to all those berieved struggling to hold paramilitary brutality to account. Does the 'Robert McCartney fund for truth and justice' have a ring to it?

Right on que from the party's youth wing - and if I were being suspicious, conviently timed to coincide with the death threat - the sisters are censured:

Family dismiss Ogra SF letter allegations

Darran McCann

The sisters of Robert McCartney have dismissed a letter from Sinn Féin's youth wing claiming they should be thankful to the IRA for having done "all that is in their power" to get justice for him.

The letter to The Irish News, signed Pierce Gormley, Ogra Shinn Féin, also claims the sisters have "seemingly turned the tragic death of their brother into a political showcase, instead of seeking justice for their brother".

Mr McCartney's family last night (Sunday) insisted that it was republicans who were damaging their own cause by failing to do anything to allow them achieve justice.

The letter had said: "The true face of the McCartney sisters seems to have come to the surface; their campaign has turned political.

"They state that they are at war with the IRA. The IRA did not order or sanction the murder of their brother.

"(The IRA) have done all that is in their power to try and get justice for Robert McCartney, and instead of thanking the movement for their efforts, they have used the death of their brother as a stick to politically beat Sinn Féin and also they have given a weapon to the enemies of the nationalist communities in the six counties, to prevent equality, justice and independence."

It added that the McCartneys should now "live up to their responsibilities and seek justice for their brother, not allow themselves and the tragic death of their brother to be used as a political football".

However, Gemma McCart-ney rejected the letter, saying: "These comments are to be expected."

"Eighty or 90% of the people in the bar that night were Sinn Féin or IRA members, which is why the whole thing has proven so difficult to resolve," she said.

"We are not the ones beating the republican movement with a big stick. It is these individual members who are refusing to come forward – despite their leader's command – who are dragging down the name of the republican movement.

"There have been no witnesses who have gone to the police. If anybody has made this a political football it is the people who were in the bar at that time. These are people who are potentially going to be government ministers in a few years."

Meanwhile, Ms McCartney also said she had learned that former Sinn Féin candidate Cora Groogan, who revealed last weekend that she had been in Magennis's bar on the night of the murder, had attended a rally in Short Strand calling for witnesses to come forward.

Irish News March 22, 2005

I think this paragraph simply has to be repeated (I've highlighted what must stand as one of the most arrogant and hypocritical comments ever made in Irish politics):

"(The IRA) have done all that is in their power to try and get justice for Robert McCartney, and instead of thanking the movement for their efforts, they have used the death of their brother as a stick to politically beat Sinn Féin and also they have given a weapon to the enemies of the nationalist communities in the six counties, to prevent equality, justice and independence."

So there you have it. Straight from the movement itself, the version that will soon become the official and only acceptable account of this affair in Republican areas throughout the north. The IRA seemingly didn't do anything to harm Robert McCartney - it would be interesting to know here if the members of Ogra Sinn Féin actually believe the man's dead, or is this all a lie orchestrated by British dirty tricks. No, instead the peace loving souls have merely been struggling to attain McCartney some good old Republican justice. For taking on this heavy burden the IRA deserves the thanks of these ungrateful sisters. I mean with the amount of complaining they've done you'd think the IRA had killed the man, er... wait a minute.

Finally, in one of the sickest of metaphors the 'truth and justice' lovin' youth wing accuse the sisters of using their dead brother as a stick to beat Sinn Féin with. Its not as if their own armed wing did anything as barbaric as beat and slice the poor bloke to death. But of course, iron bars aren't sticks, you know... that's only Brit propaganda.

Finally, the coup de grace. In time honoured fashion, like countless other uppity berieved relatives, the McCartneys are accused of treachery to the nationalist community. 'Can't you see folks, in trying to bring the killers of their brother to justice these women are preventing equality, justice and independence.' Ah, now I understand - the IRA are yet again the good guys, Robert McCartney simply vanished, but the IRA have struggled to attain him justice for for some reason, his bastard sisters are traitors attempting to prevent justice and oppress the nationalist people and I've suddenly become a Dutchman.

Honestly, you couldn't make it up. Where's George Orwell and Monty Python when you need them?

If this party propaganda and rewriting of the truth wasn't so disgusting it'd almost be humourous. Sadly, however, there'll be no more laughter from Robert McCartney.