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Villager June 2018

by Village 26 June, 2018

Harris asleep Young Simon Harris seems to think the women of Ireland will stay loyal to him if he just puckers up and adopts the mantra that it was all an honour and done for Mná na hÉireann. The night before the referendum he tweeted in what is being seen as a ‘Song of the Camino’ moment: “will sleep tonight in the hope of waking up to a country that is more compassionate, more caring and more respectful. It has been an honour to be on this journey with you and to work #togetherforyes. See you all tomorrow!”. Unfortunately no-one cares how well the Minister for Health sleeps, they care how well the mistreated patients under his aegis sleep. And Villager has been struggling to get the image of the eager nightcap-topped and pyjama-ed Simon out of his fevered head. Sinna Gáel Sinn Féin’s new leader Mary Lou McDonald has said it wants to form a coalition government after the next election with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. “I want to lead the party into government. I want to do that from the strongest possible position. I want us to discuss, debate, agree with others a programme for government”, Ms McDonald told The Irish Times in an interview. All those years, all that effort, pretending Sinn Féin wasn’t just Fianna Gael for slow learners. The view from Dalkey David McWilliams, a metaphorical bow-tie wearer, sometimes gets a hard times in these columns but his Irish Times Saturday feature packs an economic punch and is always accessible and often entertaining and there’s no worthy ideology he won’t eventually come around to or at least promote. But he’s what Villager’s primary teachers used to call a notice box and he’s often wrong. Recently he said Dublin needs to be like Belfast in its policy on high buildings in its historic centre, to avoid a housing crisis. No expert says height is a solution to the housing crisis. The real problem is one of density in Dublin’s suburbs not height in its uniquely-human-scale city centre. Indeed fiddling around with heights sows confusion and is partly responsible for inertia in the city centre as developers wait for ever greater flexibility in standards and correlative extra profitability for their hoarded sites. McWilliams also said people are emigrating because of housing. But Ireland has net immigration. Armchair planning. The view from Dublin’s South Inner City The ascendant Press Up group has outbid several property developers to buy the Celtic Revival style headquarters of New Ireland Assurance on Dublin’s fast-rebeautifying Dawson Street, a more elegant counterfoil to the jaded global offering of next-door Grafton St. The group led by Paddy McKillen Junior and Matt Ryan is paying €38 million for the two interlinking five and six-storey office blocks. Despite helpful suggestions from the Irish Times’ veteran property correspondent, Jack Fagan, Press Up won’t demolish the buildings, but instead will convert the ground floor into restaurant and other retail uses and to add the usual greedy extra office floor to bring the overall office content to 70,000sq feet. In his day Paddy McKillen liked nothing better than a bit of façade-retention but Junior is cornering the market in historic refurbishments with Roberta’s and Dollard in the former Temple Bar printers that Senior (and Bono and Edge) wanted to demolish a decade ago, and the exquisite Art Deco Stella Cinema in Rathmines for which demolition permission had been granted. A bit of authentic taste will get you quite far in sophisticated Dublin now. And if it’s not real, Pressup can elegantly fake it – as with the (actually newish) Vintage Cocktail Club on Crown Alley, and the ye olde Peruke and Periwig pub on Dawson St and Lucky Duck on Aungier St. No pub paraphernalia for these whizzes, as they reportedly prepare for a stock-market otation, but not, Villager is certain, for a downturn. Weird Norman defines normal Norman Tebbit, the former Chairman of the Conservative Party, has announced that he will be boycotting religious services at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, whenever the Reverend Canon Joe Hawes officiates, because the Rev is gay. Lord Tebbit has described him as a “sodomite”, an offensive term. Tebbit, who has been worshipping at the cathedral for nine years, has explained that he finds “it difficult to accept a sodomite as a member of the clergy who will, for example, be called upon to conduct marriage services. I will struggle to attend if he is officiating”. Lord Tebbit discovered that Hawes, aged 52, is in a civil partnership with another cleric, the Reverend Chris Eyden, from a newsletter last March and that he was destined to become the cathedral’s most senior official. “The cathedral has taken this decision and I disapprove of it but I do not wish to damage the cathedral in any way. I will maintain my financial support for it every year because it will be there long after the dean and I are gone”. Tebbit is part of a dwindling generation that deems loving relationships between adults of the same sex to be offensive. What is really sickening is Tebbit’s toleration of an actual sinner, Sir Peter Morrison MP, who served as his Deputy Chairman back in the 1980s. Morrison was a violent child rapist. We need look no further than official British archive records for proof of Morrison’s proclivities. The archives show that on 4 November, 1986, Sir Antony Duff, Director-General of MI5, wrote to Sir Robert Armstrong, Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet Secretary, after allegations of child abuse had been made by separate sources against Morrison. Morrison had been accused (entirely accurately as it transpired) of child abuse. Duff opined that Morrison was only a minor “security danger”. After the Morrison memo came to light in July of 2015, Armstrong (famed for his use of the phrase “being economical with the truth”), defended his inaction thus: “Clearly I was aware of it…but I was not concerned with the personal aspect of it, whether he should or should not be

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Equality over freedom

by Village 25 June, 2018

Politics is a continuum from equality to freedom. If freedom is the vertical axis of a graph and equality the horizontal axis, every society – and every citizen – decides where the balance should be. A libertarian society tending towards survival of the fittest will not foster equality; an egalitarian society may need to be enforced by a strong state to the detriment of individual licence, and so on. Philosophers from Tocqueville to Hayek to mainstream liberals accept there is a trade-off. Village tends to the egalitarian end of the scale: truly free equality, after education and reflection – precise processes for which have been touted by many modern philosophers – is a mature and more stable goal than equal freedom. Workaday politics can be charted and defined on the graph. However, the same political action can be justified by different points on the graph. Issues like divorce, gay marriage, and abortion can be deemed imperatives of either freedom or equality. In this respect the language used is not a definitive indicator of the politics. A campaign can claim to be about equality but in fact on analysis be defined by positions only of freedom. Any campaign fronted by Simon Harris or Leo Varadkar – agents above all of the propertied, of the status quo for the wealthy – is unlikely to be rooted in any real substantive equality. It is perfectly legitimate to campaign for gay marriage or abortion because you want yourself or others to exercise rights to freedom to get married or have an abortion. Telltale signs if you do so you may include that you are less likely to make common cause with campaigns for others suffering discrimination of all sorts. You may ignore issues like racial equality, Travellers rights; you may express no concern about economic, social and educational inequalities. It is legitimate but it is not Village’s political motivation of preference. For Village recent referendums reached the right solutions but were disappointingly rooted in the politics of freedom rather than that of equality. The egregious wrongs in Irish society are best resolved by solutions driven by equality. This society above all facilitates those who are economically adroit. It provides opportunity for people who are strong; worse still it provides opportunity for them to make mistakes (trashing the environment is the one posterity will most register). It provides very little vision as to how they should exercise their freedoms. – this is in part the problem of 100 channels but nothing on the television. But on a societal scale. It is now time to move on to new agendas that are really radical. These include: agendas of radical redistribution of wealth in society, of radical changes to the opportunities available to those who have suffered traditional discrimination, including (still) to women and to those of minority sexual orientations, to racial minorities including Travellers; of educational opportunities facilitated by positive discrimination so even (or especially) the poorest in society can be whoever they want to be; of redistribution of power so it is exercised at the lowest, most local, most democratic levels; of attenuation of property rights so they are exercised in the common good. The goods in society should be distributed by that society so those least well off are most compensated. Everyone in society is morally equal, they should be treated by society in a way so they can participate in the fruits of the earth equally. It is a myth that the fruits of the earth are distributed in accordance with merit – they have been accumulated largely by force and luck. The idea that in 2018 a child’s future is determined by the time it reaches two years old is an abomination. Ireland is growing up politically. Ireland has waved good-bye to the invidious influence of an unrealistic Church and voted the right way on divorce, gay rights and abortion. However, these are really liberal causes focused on issues of identity. It is time we addressed the issues of endemic inequality enshrined down the generations. As regards the Constitution we do need to abolish Article 41 which recognises the woman’s life within the home, so devaluing women who choose not to work within the home; and to eliminate the part of the preamble which invokes the Constitution “in the name of the Holy Spirit”. Indeed the Constitution’s premises relate to another era and the whole document should be reconceived. More generally, materialism, capitalism and competition have had their day, it is time to welcome in a new agenda – of equality of outcome/condition: equality of wealth and power, of quality of life, of environment, of education, of fulfilment and happiness, of respect and opportunity. This should be achieved through politics and laws. The constitution should be amended to reflect it too. The most radical change would be to enshrine equality of outcome/condition as a constitutional imperative across the range.

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Unturning the stones on murder

by Frank Connolly 20 June, 2018

See below: The Press Council has affirmed a decision of the Press Ombudsman upholding part of a complaint that Village magazine breached the Code of Practice of the Press Council of Ireland. The complaint was made under Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy) of the Code of Practice. Other parts of the complaint are not upheld. Article by Frank Connolly Among the issues that have delayed the restoration of power-sharing government in the North is the failure of the DUP and the British government to honour previously-made agreements to deal with what are known as legacy issues. These include a promise to establish some form of historic truth commission to investigate the role of the British state and its security forces in the killing of hundreds of people during the conflict. A documentary film, ‘No Stone Unturned’, examines the deaths of six Catholic men in the Heights bar in Loughinisland, County Down, in June 1994, just three months before the first IRA ceasefire in August 1994. The men were shot dead while watching the Republic of Ireland play Italy in the World Cup on 18 June, when two masked loyalists walked into the bar and one fired indiscriminately at the customers and staff. Those murders were the subject of a 2016 report by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland which found, following an earlier whitewash by the same office, evidence of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) collusion in the protection of Loyalist paramilitary informants, who may have carried out the murders. While he found no evidence that the police knew in advance about the murder plot, the Ombudsman was heavily critical of how the RUC Special Branch handled informers, and failed robustly to disrupt the activities of UVF paramilitaries operating in south Down and to share intelligence with detectives investigating this UVF gang. He claimed there was a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” approach. The 160-page report by Dr Michael Maguire also found police informants at the most senior levels within loyalist paramilitary organisations were involved in the importation of guns and ammunition. In the film, made by Oscar-winning director, Alex Gibney, three loyalists who were involved in the attack are identified, while it is claimed that the automatic rifle used was among a large consignment imported into the North with the knowledge of the RUC Special Branch and MI5 in the late 1980s. One of those named, Ronald Hawthorn, and his wife Hilary, were among those arrested following the massacre, but have never been charged, while another loyalist, Gorman McMullen, is named in the documentary as the getaway driver. A second attacker is also named and is believed to have left the North in the late 1990s and re-settled in England. The film claims that Hilary Hawthorn identified the gang members, including her husband, in two calls she made to an anonymous police phone line in the wake of the killings, and in an unsigned letter sent to a former SDLP councillor. Her voice was recognised by police officers with whom Hilary Hawthorn worked in an RUC station, while in the anonymous letter she also claimed to have been involved in the planning of the attack. Ronald Hawthorn was arrested and questioned in August 1994, just weeks after the atrocity, while his wife was detained a year later. Neither was ever charged in connection with the killings. The documentary explains that Ronald Hawthorn was only named as ‘Person A’ by the Police Ombudsman, Dr Michael Maguire, who did not disclose the names of the three suspects, in a detailed and shocking report published in 2016. Another confidential and unpublished report prepared by Office of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland (PONI) identified the suspects by name. It was subsequently sent anonymously by post to journalist Barry McCaffrey, who has spent years researching the Loughlinisland killings and who helped to make ‘No Stone Unturned’. The PSNI is currently investigating the leaking of this confidential document to McCaffrey. The published PONI report by Dr Maguire sets out how the killings were carried out by the UVF which directed its members in Down and Antrim to organise attacks on nationalists following the killing of three of its members on the Shankill Road by the INLA in early June 1994. The Ombudsman concluded that there was collusion in the Loughinisland killings involving unnamed members of the RUC. He found that the VZ58 rifle used in the attack and subsequently used in a wide range of loyalist murders was part of a consignment imported from South Africa by police and MI5 informant, Brian Nelson, in late 1987 or early 1988. Maguire wrote: “My conclusion is that the initial investigation into the murders at Loughinisland was characterised in too many instances by incompetence, indifference and neglect. This despite the assertions by the police that no stone would be left unturned to find the killers. My review of the police investigation has revealed significant failures in relation to the handling of suspects, exhibits, forensic strategy, crime scene management, house to house enquiries and investigative maintenance. The failure to conduct early intelligence-led arrests was particularly significant and seriously undermined the investigation into those responsible for the murders”. During the attack, Maguire said, “one of the masked men crouched down, shouted ‘Fenian Bastards’ and opened fire indiscriminately with an automatic assault rifle. Both men then fled the scene in a waiting Triumph Acclaim car driven by an accomplice. The car was driven in the direction of Annacloy and found the next morning abandoned in a field on the Listooder Road between Crossgar and Ballynahinch. The car was destroyed while in possession of the police in 1995”. The Ombudsman recorded how the families of the victims complained at the time that the vehicle should have been retained for potential future examination, especially in light of advances in forensic science. They state that police “wilfully destroyed” this exhibit, which they viewed as “wholly unsatisfactory and unreasonable”. Dr Maguire said: “In addition, investigative opportunities were undermined by the

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Unturning The Stones On Murder

by Frank Connolly 20 June, 2018

See below : The Press Ombudsman has upheld part of a complaint that Village magazine breached the Code of Practice of the Press Council of Ireland. The complaint was made under Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy) of the Code of Practice. Other parts of the complaint are not upheld. Among the issues that have delayed the restoration of power-sharing government in the North is the failure of the DUP and the British government to honour previously-made agreements to deal with what are known as legacy issues. These include a promise to establish some form of historic truth commission to investigate the role of the British state and its security forces in the killing of hundreds of people during the conflict. A documentary film, ‘No Stone Unturned’, examines the deaths of six Catholic men in the Heights bar in Loughinisland, County Down, in June 1994, just three months before the first IRA ceasefire in August 1994. The men were shot dead while watching the Republic of Ireland play Italy in the World Cup on 18 June, when two masked loyalists walked into the bar and one fired indiscriminately at the customers and staff. Those murders were the subject of a 2016 report by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland which found, following an earlier whitewash by the same office, evidence of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) collusion in the protection of Loyalist paramilitary informants, who may have carried out the murders. While he found no evidence that the police knew in advance about the murder plot, the Ombudsman was heavily critical of how the RUC Special Branch handled informers, and failed robustly to disrupt the activities of UVF paramilitaries operating in south Down and to share intelligence with detectives investigating this UVF gang. He claimed there was a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” approach. The 160-page report by Dr Michael Maguire also found police informants at the most senior levels within loyalist paramilitary organisations were involved in the importation of guns and ammunition. In the film, made by Oscar-winning director, Alex Gibney, three loyalists who were involved in the attack are identified, while it is claimed that the automatic rifle used was among a large consignment imported into the North with the knowledge of the RUC Special Branch and MI5 in the late 1980s. One of those named, Ronald Hawthorn, and his wife Hilary, were among those arrested following the massacre, but have never been charged, while another loyalist, Gorman McMullen, is named in the documentary as the getaway driver. A second attacker is also named and is believed to have left the North in the late 1990s and re-settled in England. The film claims that Hilary Hawthorn identified the gang members, including her husband, in two calls she made to an anonymous police phone line in the wake of the killings, and in an unsigned letter sent to a former SDLP councillor. Her voice was recognised by police officers with whom Hilary Hawthorn worked in an RUC station, while in the anonymous letter she also claimed to have been involved in the planning of the attack. Ronald Hawthorn was arrested and questioned in August 1994, just weeks after the atrocity, while his wife was detained a year later. Neither was ever charged in connection with the killings. The documentary explains that Ronald Hawthorn was only named as ‘Person A’ by the Police Ombudsman, Dr Michael Maguire, who did not disclose the names of the three suspects, in a detailed and shocking report published in 2016. Another confidential and unpublished report prepared by Office of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland (PONI) identified the suspects by name. It was subsequently sent anonymously by post to journalist Barry McCaffrey, who has spent years researching the Loughlinisland killings and who helped to make ‘No Stone Unturned’. The PSNI is currently investigating the leaking of this confidential document to McCaffrey. The published PONI report by Dr Maguire sets out how the killings were carried out by the UVF which directed its members in Down and Antrim to organise attacks on nationalists following the killing of three of its members on the Shankill Road by the INLA in early June 1994. The Ombudsman concluded that there was collusion in the Loughinisland killings involving unnamed members of the RUC. He found that the VZ58 rifle used in the attack and subsequently used in a wide range of loyalist murders was part of a consignment imported from South Africa by police and MI5 informant, Brian Nelson, in late 1987 or early 1988. Maguire wrote: “My conclusion is that the initial investigation into the murders at Loughinisland was characterised in too many instances by incompetence, indifference and neglect. This despite the assertions by the police that no stone would be left unturned to find the killers. My review of the police investigation has revealed significant failures in relation to the handling of suspects, exhibits, forensic strategy, crime scene management, house to house enquiries and investigative maintenance. The failure to conduct early intelligence-led arrests was particularly significant and seriously undermined the investigation into those responsible for the murders”. During the attack, Maguire said, “one of the masked men crouched down, shouted ‘Fenian Bastards’ and opened fire indiscriminately with an automatic assault rifle. Both men then fled the scene in a waiting Triumph Acclaim car driven by an accomplice. The car was driven in the direction of Annacloy and found the next morning abandoned in a field on the Listooder Road between Crossgar and Ballynahinch. The car was destroyed while in possession of the police in 1995”. The Ombudsman recorded how the families of the victims complained at the time that the vehicle should have been retained for potential future examination, especially in light of advances in forensic science. They state that police “wilfully destroyed” this exhibit, which they viewed as “wholly unsatisfactory and unreasonable”. Dr Maguire said: “In addition, investigative opportunities were undermined by the way in which information relating to those involved in the

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Right to buy means right for landlord to buy you out

by Éilis Ryan 16 June, 2018

The myth that Irish people have a historically-rooted preference for home ownership is a long-standing cornerstone of Irish housing policy. The story goes that Irish people will always have an innate preference to own their homes, regardless of how attractive, secure and affordable renting is made. In the middle of the country’s worst housing crisis, this myth has, extraordinarily, justified yet another round of Council-housing sell-offs, with the 2016 Tenant Incremental Purchase Scheme. Tenants are given a discount of up to 60% in the market value of their home, if they choose to buy it from the Council. It then disappears from Council stock and, a generation later, is sold onto the private market. If there is limited evidence to support the myth that the Irish have an in-built preference for home ownership, what is clear is that government policy in the last half century has done everything in its power to grant preferential treatment to the purchase of homes. What is touted as an ‘innate preference’ for home ownership has in fact been carefully incentivised and manufactured through decades of developer-driven housing policy. Margaret Thatcher, Ireland and the ‘right to buy’ In 1980, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed legislation granting a legal right to all Council tenants in the UK to buy their homes. It was the culmination of her philosophy that the freedom to accumulate profit was the foundation of all human freedom. Speaking about the scheme in 1984, she said that “Spreading the ownership of property more widely is central to this Government’s philosophy, because where property is widely owned, freedom flourishes”. Any freedom gained by those who managed to buy their Council home was temporary at best. As with all public goods that are privatised, Council-built homes were transformed into commodities to be bought and sold for profit. Now, it’s estimated that 40% of ex-Council homes are owned and let by private landlords. The Tory Minister behind the scheme, Michael Heseltine, once said that the major victory of the “Right to Buy” scheme was “the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people”. If by “the people” he meant “wealthy landlords” – then yes, he was probably right. Otherwise the darling of one-nation Toryism needs a rethink about his party’s victories. Astonishingly, successive Irish governments’ commitment to selling off social-housing stock pre-dated, and has arguably always been stronger than even, Maggie Thatcher’s. Provisions had been in place since the 1930s to enable tenants to buy their Council house in rural areas, and from 1966, with the introduction through the Housing Act of a nationwide ‘right to buy’, there was a surge in the numbers of publicly-built homes which were sold off. As in the UK, the temporary benefits of home ownership have not provided security for further generations. Over time our housing stock, particularly in sought-after areas closest to the city, has been commodified just like the in UK. House built by the Council in places like Marino and Cabra regularly sell for €400,000-€500,000. Working-class estates are under threat of becoming gentrified enclaves. Home ownership has never been affordable – so the State had to introduce schemes to make it so A critical point justifying subsidies to home ownership is that they are designed to somehow rectify temporary problems in the housing market. Lack of affordability is blamed on a temporary market malfunction (for example, lack of adequate supply), and temporary extraordinary measures are deened necessary to enable access to that market. In reality, however, these measures will be required forever – not just to rectify one-off market malfunctions. Michelle Norris has outlined how, in the 1960s, it was possible for a buyer to recoup up to a third of the purchase price of a house through various government subsidies. In the 1970s and 1980s, a hundred thousand Council-built houses were sold to tenants at knockdown rates, ostensibly as a way to make home ownership affordable. And as recently as 2004, the National Economic and Social Council was highlighting that:“The high entry costs of home ownership have conferred advantages on those whose families have housing equity and disadvantages on those who do not have access to ‘parental gifts”. In fact there has been no time when home ownership was ‘affordable’ in the sense of a majority of the country’s population being able to afford to purchase a home on the open market, unassisted by the government. Any ‘affordable housing’ initiatives delivered by this or future governments, will simply be the latest in a long cycle of state subsidies to the private market. Is it a good use of money for the State to subsidise home ownership? Fundamentally, what the debate about ‘right to buy’ and ‘affordable housing’ comes down to is whether it is a good use of public money to subsidise ‘home ownership’. As debates and inaction over the housing crisis rage on, a demand for public housing is being gradually subsumed into a broad and amorphous call for “social and affordable housing”. The notion is that some people will always want to buy their own home, and that they have a right to State support equal to that of those who rent from the State in secure, affordable publicly-owned housing. But what is being lost in this conflation of public housing and affordable housing, is that, unlike investment in public housing for rent, when the government subsidises ‘affordable home ownership’, the investment serves only one generation. The home can then be sold on to the chaotic, unjust and uncontrollable private housing market. “Affordable home ownership” – whether through land, or through ‘right to buy’ schemes selling off Council houses – keeps the property market bubbling. It suits the developers, solicitors and estate agents who benefit from increasing house prices that the state funnels money into pushing more and more workers into that market. But it does absolutely nothing to tackle the housing crisis. The real solution When considering how we invest public money to tackle the housing crisis, we need to look

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Stalin’s Englishman On Trial in Ireland

by Joseph de Búrca 14 June, 2018

The paperback edition of Andrew Lownie’s highly regarded Stalin’s Englishman is now on sale with updates which did not appear in the hardback version. It is a riveting biography of the notorious Eton- and Cambridge-educated British spy and traitor Guy Burgess, bristling with new information based on first-hand sources including hitherto unpublished letters and files. Significantly, a careful reading, between the lines, reveals a lot for the discerning Irish reader about a hidden and deeply murky aspect of the Troubles here. RECUPERATING IN IRELAND, BURGESS-STYLE Burgess was a frequent visitor to these shores. One of his trips landed him in the dock of the District Court. Lownie describes how Burgess had tumbled down two flights of stone steps after a drunken midnight wrestle with a friend called Fred Warner, as the pair was leaving the Romilly Night Club in London in early 1949. Burgess smashed his elbow, slightly cracked his skull and dislocated three ribs. Warner pushed him into a taxi, bleeding profusely, and took him back to his rooms from where he telephoned without avail, every doctor whom he knew by name or repute. He received no reply and he remained there all night, with Burgess groaning on the bed. In the early dawn, he found a doctor who took Burgess off to the Middlesex Hospital. Some rest and recuperation were advised and, after ten days in hospital in London, Burgess went with his mother, with whom he often holidayed, first to Wicklow and then for a few days at the Shelbourne hotel in Dublin. In Dublin Burgess met the writer Terence de Vere White. Lownie’s recalls how de Vere wrote how Burgess was “travelling with his mother, a quiet lady. He took the centre of the stage. He was dark and bright-eyed and was either an old-looking young man or a young-looking middle-aged man, I was not quite certain which . . . He was in the Foreign Office and was taking a rest in Ireland on account of an accident in the Reform Club [sic], where he had fallen and bashed his head on the stairs. As a result of this, he was under doctor’s orders to keep off alcohol and if he disobeyed the rule, the result was a complete blackout, lasting for more than a day. I noticed that he drank tomato juice, which seemed out of character”. ON TRIAL AT THE DISTRICT COURT IN DUBLIN True to his reputation, Burgess was actually drinking incessantly. He and de Vere White parted ways after an hour as Burgess was off to enjoy a play at the Abbey Theatre. Shortly afterwards, on 4 March, de Vere White was contacted by phone and asked if he would give evidence for Burgess in the Dublin District Court. Burgess, he learnt, had been charged with “driving a car while drunk, driving without reasonable consideration, and dangerous driving” two days before, on Grafton Street. “Confronted with the most positive medical evidence of a shaky walk and alcoholic breath, Burgess was invited by the Justice . . . to explain how he reconciled this with his story of complete teetotalism”. He responded “with a most affable air” suggesting his tomato juice might have been doctored and pointed at de Vere White who was forced to give an account of the evening. Burgess’s old friend from Eton, Dermot McGillycuddy, now a lawyer with an office on Kildare Street beside the Oireachtas, was brought in as his defence solicitor and managed to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The case was dismissed, with the judge describing Burgess as “a man of brilliance who appeared overwrought and nervous…a man of cultivated tastes” – he had been returning from seeing a play at the Abbey Theatre when the accident took place. According to the doctor, a friend of McGillycuddy, who examined Burgess at the police station, “There was no smell of drink which witnesses could detect from his breath. He was smoking continuously, his speech was confused and when witnesses asked him to walk in a line, he was definitely unsteady and limp”. DRUGS FIT FOR A HORSE Burgess continued his excessive proto-rock star lifestyle while in Dublin. The tumble in London had left him with bad headaches and insomnia which he treated with Nembutal to put him to sleep and Benzedrine to wake him up. He managed to secure his supplies from a vet. The dosage was fit for a horse. A friend quoted by Lownie wrote later that, “Drugs, combined with alcohol made him more or less insensible for considerable periods in which, when he was not silent and morose, his speech was rambling and incoherent” to the extent he “seemed, hardly capable of taking in whatever it was one was saying to him”. A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE TROUBLES Reading between the lines of Lownie’s book, there is a lot to be gleaned about the dangerous and seedy side of the Troubles. Burgess, of course, was an MI5 and MI6 officer who worked secretly for the Soviet Union as part of the infamous Cambridge Circle of traitors which included Sir Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross. Village has described aspects of the Anglo-Irish paedophile network of which Blunt and Burgess were members on a number of occasions over the last two years. Burgess knew some of the more senior members of the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring. The ring had probably existed in one form or another for generations but was reorganised on a systematic basis after WWII with access to orphanages and care homes in NI for paedophiles. It survived until at least the mid-Troubles, if not long afterwards. The British Establishment is still engaged in an ongoing cover-up of its activities. Survivors are hopeful that at least some of its Irish branches will be put under the microscope by the London-based Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). The wider ring included friends of Burgess such as his fellow traitor Sir Anthony Blunt; the poet Brian

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Non Disclosure

by Gemma O'Doherty 13 June, 2018

A fortnight ago, I gave evidence at the Disclosures Tribunal. I spent almost four hours in the witness box in Dublin Castle over the course of two days. Most of what I said was the subject of a blackout by the establishment media, as I suspected it would be. For some time, I have been an outspoken critic of RTÉ and the Denis O’Brien media because of their close relationships with government and the Gardai which are so harmful to democracy and the public good. In 2012, before Sergeant Maurice McCabe came to public prominence, I got a call one day at my office in the Irish Independent from his father. He asked if I would be willing to look at allegations his son was making about corruption in the force. At the time, I was the newspaper’s Chief Features Writer and had been working on a number of cases of garda corruption, mostly unsolved murders. Mr McCabe explained this was why he had contacted me. My investigation into the 1985 death of Fr Niall Molloy had just led to the ‘re-opening’ of the case and my stories were generating interest among citizens who were having their own difficulties with the Gardai. Most of them were bereaved families who believed their loved ones’ deaths had been covered up by the force. My questions to the Garda press office and the Department of Justice about these cases were routinely ignored and I had become a thorn in the side of Commissioner Martin Callinan and his headquarters in the Phoenix Park. I was increasingly alarmed at the depths Garda management seemed willing to go to cover up serious crimes to protect powerful individuals and deny citizens their right to justice and the truth. So when I heard that a serving member of the force had finally decided to speak out, I was intrigued and relieved, and agreed to meet Sergeant McCabe shortly afterwards. Over the course of several weeks, I got to know him and his colleague John Wilson and found their testimonies solid and compelling. They were courageous, honest and driven by nothing but a desire to expose wrongdoing in the force and try to clean it up. All of their efforts to date had failed. I began my own investigation into abuses of the penalty points system, focusing on a number of high-profile individuals who had had speeding fines quashed. One of them was Martin Callinan. By then, it had emerged that certain judges, state solicitors and crime reporters had had penalty points cleared. But now there was proof that the person with overall responsibility for implementing our road safety laws had also evaded them for his own personal gain. At the time, Independent News and Media (INM) was undergoing a period of enormous transition as Denis O’Brien became the largest shareholder. Stephen Rae, former editor of the Garda Review, took over the reins at the Irish Independent. Almost overnight, a wave of fear seemed to sweep through the newsroom. The new regime was planning big changes and there was a strong sense that those of us involved in adversarial investigative journalism might be about to have our wings clipped. It was in this period, I came into possession of a Garda PULSE document identifying a Martin Callinan as the recipient of speeding points that had been quashed. My source believed this to be the Garda Commissioner but knowing my lawyers at INM would not accept this as sufficient proof, I went to the address on the printout to make sure the information was correct. I had a cordial conversation with Mrs Callinan which lasted no more than a few seconds. I told her who I was and asked her if the Garda Commissioner lived at the house. She said he did but that he was away. I jumped back into my waiting cab, looking forward to getting my story published. Little did I know it would lead to the end of my 17-year career at INM. Shortly afterwards, I had a call from Stephen Rae’s then-deputy at the paper, Ian Mallon. He was very hostile and said the Commissioner was furious and had made a complaint of harassment against me. In the days that followed, there was little appetite to publish my story about Callinan and I was subjected to a barrage of criticism and intimidation. I also learned that the then Managing Editor at the paper had been ordered down to Garda HQ over my story. One afternoon shortly afterwards, I was bluntly informed that my job was gone but that every effort would be made to make my departure as financially attractive as possible. When I said I would not be bought off, I was told I could stay on at the paper as long as I withdrew from the work I was doing on Garda corruption. I refused and was forced to take three legal actions against the company which resulted in a High Court apology from the company and compensation. When the Disclosures Tribunal was established in 2017 to investigate an alleged smear campaign by Garda management against whistleblower Sergeant McCabe, I wrote to the chairman Justice Peter Charleton and offered myself as a witness. I believed my testimony would be of interest to it and the public, as it would help to reveal the incestuous links between INM and Garda HQ, and the lengths they were willing to go to to harm those backing up Maurice McCabe’s claims. I have never been in any doubt that my support for his work led to the end of my career at the company. And as I told the Tribunal in early June, it is also my belief that the smear campaign against McCabe intensified after Callinan was exposed for having his points terminated. Shortly after that story was published in April 2013, the repugnant rumours that McCabe was a paedophile started to surface. The ‘Miss D’ allegations emerged and a file was created by TUSLA –

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Suffer little children

by Joseph de Búrca 7 June, 2018

Eric Witchell is a serial paedophile. In the 1970s he ran Williamson House where he preyed on pre-pubescent boys and young teenagers. He and his accomplices drove at least three of them to commit suicide; and another two to attempt it. One of his charges was supplied to Enoch Powell MP, for abuse. A select few were transferred to the notorious Kincora Boys Home when they reached 14 years of age. At Kincora they became fodder for MI5 ‘honey trap’ blackmail operations. THE ENOCH POWELL STORY IS CONTAINED IN PART 2 OF THIS ARTICLE. Part One: Williamson House A WOLF IN A MONK’S HABIT Eric Witchell, a serial paedophile, was a key figure in the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring about which Village has been writing for the last two years. He is currently living in London aged 70, safe in the knowledge that a succession of senior MI5 figures have gone to extraordinary lengths to cover-up what he and his associates did in Belfast, London, Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere as they – MI5 – benefited from the existence of an Anglo-Irish paedophile network of which he was a key member. In Northern Ireland (NI) MI5 exploited the network to gain leverage over influential Loyalists, including members of the DUP. Witchell, who hailed from England, was born in 1948. He became a Franciscan at the age of 19. Before his appointment to Williamson House, he had been a housefather in an English boys school attached to the Franciscans. He became the Officer-in-Charge (OiC) of Williamson House in May of 1975 at the age of 27. The small boys Witchell abused were abandoned, vulnerable and powerless waifs. A select few were later sent to the notorious Kincora Boys Home where they were used as bait in MI5 ‘honey trap’ blackmail operations. Sir Michael Hanley was Director-General of MI5 at the time. Ian Cameron ran MI5 operations on the ground in NI for Hanley from his office in Lisburn. Witchell betrayed the trust bestowed upon him by Belfast’s child welfare authorities but also by the Anglican Franciscan Order of which he was a member. He was, however, a godsend to Hanley and Cameron. The Williamson House scandal is worse than the outrage at Kincora insofar as younger children were abused at it. Witchell’s sordid branch of the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring supplied very young children to VIPs including Enoch Powell MP. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) was set up to investigate allegations of child abuse by VIPs including Westminster MPs. There is no indication yet that Witchell will be questioned by IICSA which is based in London despite the fact that Witchell is one of the most important living witness to the existence of a VIP vice ring and lives in London. Witchell did not appear before the Hart Inquiry. Had he done so – and told, or been made to tell, the truth – Judge Hart would have reached a wholly different conclusion to the one he published in 2017. Hart denied the existence of any sort of vice ring beyond the walls of Kincora Boys Home. WHO PAVED THE WAY FOR WITCHELL TO TAKE OVER WILIAMSON HOUSE? Witchell secured the post at Williamson House despite the fact his tutor at the National Children’s Home Training College in England had advised the appointment panel of Belfast‘s Welfare Department that at “this stage I would have some doubt in commending him to be the Officer- in-Charge… I would commend him to you for employment, but I would not commend him to you for employment as Officer-in-Charge”. It was fortuitous for MI5 that Witchell became OiC despite this because he was the vilest sort of paedophile, someone who was prepared to farm out the children in his care to a wider network of child molesters. This suited MI5 because it enabled them to manufacture blackmail opportunities and ensnare Loyalist politicians, paramilitaries and Orangemen and force them to do their bidding. After Witchell became OiC at the home, he moved into an apartment in the attic. It had a TV, sofa, sleeping quarters and a drinks cabinet. This was where he abused the young boys. He would usher his chosen victim upstairs and lock the door behind them. Physically, he was tall, thin and imposing. He wore glasses and had black longish hair. He was an exceptionally cruel and violent man with an insatiable sexual appetite. His preference was for prepubescent boys but he assaulted teenage boys too. His taste ranged from masturbation to anal rape. At least three of his victims would never recover from the assaults he and his associates perpetrated, and committed suicide; another two attempted to kill themselves. Officially, he held the post of OiC at Williamson House until 1 March 1980 but he actually left before then as the RUC and MI5 were losing control of the secrecy surrounding the scandal. WITCHELL’S ACCOMPLICES By the early 1970s MI5 had probably gained control over all of the key figures in the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring including Councillor Joshua (Joss) Cardwell, a Unionist politician and paedophile, who was also Chairman of Belfast Corporation Welfare Committee. The Committee was responsible for both WH, Kincora and other homes in Belfast where sexual violence was commonplace. Cardwell was also a friend of Joe Mains, the Warden of Kincora. Together Cardwell and Mains supplied boys from Kincora to England and Scotland. As Village reported last February, it was Cardwell who instructed Joe Mains to send Richard Kerr, who had been at Williamson House but was now residing at Kincora, to London in the mid-1970s. He was abused by a high-profile TV star there: a man still well known to the public, so much so that his photograph recently appeared in an Irish national daily newspaper. On another occasion, while still at Kincora, Kerr was sent to be abused by a Tory MP in London. Another Kincora boy, Stephen Waring, was also sent to the UK from Kincora. He committed suicide in 1977 by jumping into the sea