Michael Smith wants a new constitution but meanwhile, apart from theoretically (!), is relaxed about whether judges inferring rights is democratic and useful.
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Stalker Nobbled
In his ril summing up, Lord Jusice Gibson conroversilly sed h he officers were “wholly blmeless” nd celebred h Tomn, Burns nd McKerr hd been brough o he “finl cour of jusice”
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By David Burke. This article was first published on 2 July 2021. It is republished to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Lord Widgery’s infamous report which defamed the victims of Bloody Sunday and exculpated those who murdered them. 1. Brigadier Frank Kitson subverts the law. Brigadier Frank Kitson of the British Army was a so-called counterinsurgency guru. He was sent to Northern Ireland in 1970 to tackle the IRA. The following year his astonishingly indiscreet book, ‘Low Intensity Operations’ was published. In it he explained that there were two ways of administering the law during a counterinsurgency, the first one being that: the law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of the legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible … The other alternative is that the law should remain impartial and administer the laws of the country without any direction from the government. [Kitson (1971), p. 69.] The first tribunal investigating the events of Bloody Sunday – Widgery – is a good example of how the law was used as “just another weapon in the government’s arsenal”. On Monday 31 January 1972, Tory Home Secretary Reginald Maudling announced in the House of Commons that there would be a judicial inquiry into the Derry massacre. That evening British Prime Minister Ted Heath and Hailsham, his Lord Chancellor, asked Lord Chief Justice Widgery to chair it. Widgery had been a surprise appointment as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales by the Tories the previous year. He was not viewed as a jurist of the first rank by his peers. His career was one which would ultimately descend into bedlam. Private Eye magazine would report that “he sits hunched and scowling, squinting into his books from a range of three inches, his wig awry. He keeps up a muttered commentary of bad-tempered and irrelevant questions – ‘What d’you say?’, ‘Speak up’, ‘Don’t shout’, ‘Whipper-snapper’, etc”. [Private Eye Issue 436, 1 September 1978.] These comments were published two years before he stepped down from the bench. The view expressed by the Eye is reflective of Widgery’s reputation for having been ‘difficult’ by members of the Bar in Britain. ‘Difficult’ in this context is a polite euphemism. Widgery was despised by the legal profession which viewed him as a second rate political appointee who strove to conceal his shortcomings in the traditional manner of the lower tier judge: by hectoring, pelting and bullying. 2. Judicial compromise The night before Heath asked Widgery to conduct an inquiry, he had expressed his belief to Taoiseach Jack Lynch that Kitson’s paratroopers had behaved properly in Derry. If Heath truly believed what he had said to Lynch, he had an unusual way of showing it. He chose Widgery – a safe pair of hands – and left him in no doubt that he was to pervert the course of justice. At the meeting on 31 January Heath told Widgery that it “had to be remembered that we were in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war”. It is hard to conceive of a more compromising comment made by a British prime minister to a senior member of the judiciary, let alone the man at its pinnacle. No matter what way one looks at it, the comment demonstrates a breath-taking lack of esteem on the part of Heath for the independence of the judiciary. Yet Widgery did not rise to his feet and leave the room in protest. Instead, he did what his master bid him to do. 3. An Allegedly Independent Judge pre-judges the Murder Victims by Attending a Meeting at which they were referred to as ‘the other side’ At the same meeting at which Heath had given Widgery his riding orders, the parties to the discussion had also referred to the victims as the ‘other side’. [Para (viii) of minute of meeting of 31 January 1972.] Moreover, according to confidential notes by a Widgery associate, the “LCJ” [Lord Chief Justice] could be counted on to “pile up the case against the deceased” even though the evidence provided “a large benefit of the doubt to the deceased.” [‘Hidden Truths’ (1998), p. 95. 4. Threats to Muzzle the Ever Compliant British Media In the days after the massacre, the journalist Murray Sayle and his colleagues completed a report which was submitted to the Sunday Times. There was internal opposition to its conclusion, namely that Colonel Derek Wilford, who had led 1 Para in Derry on Bloody Sunday, had set out to provoke the IRA into coming out into the open so his troops could wipe them out. Harold Evans, the editor of the paper, decided to ring Widgery. “I said we had done a great deal of interviewing and proposed to publish this Sunday. We also had compelling photographs. I told him I presumed contempt would not apply since nobody had yet been accused. It would be an exaggeration to say he was aghast, but he made it very clear it would be ‘unhelpful’ to publish anything and yes, he would apply the rules of contempt. .. I withheld the article, but that week I took the chance of publishing the shocking photographs by Gilles Peress of unarmed men being shot”. [Harold Evans, ‘My Paper Chase, True Stories of Vanished Times’ (Little, Brown and Co, New York, 2009), p 474.] On Sunday 6 February, the paper reported that, “The law is that until the Lord Chief Justice completes his enquiry nobody may offer to the British public any consecutive account of the events in Derry last weekend”. [Sunday Times 6 February 1972.] Heath’s press office rowed in declaring that anything which anticipated the Tribunal’s findings would amount to contempt. This was a highly contentious assertion without
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6 Ormond Quay Upper Dublin 7 D07H324 The Secretary An Bord Pleanála 64 Marlborough St Dublin 1 D01 V902 14 April 2022. By email only to bord@pleanala.ie, communications@pleanala.ie Re: the imperative of An Bord Pleanála pursuing a criminal complaint under Sections 147-149 and 156-157 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 (the “Act”) against Mr Paul Hyde, and acknowledging that he is no longer a member of its board Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing giving you information sufficient to ground a criminal complaint under Sections 147 and 148 of the Act which can be prosecuted by An Bord Pleanála (ABP) with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. I believe for ABP to prosecute would be appropriate in this instance in circumstances where the subject of this complaint is the deputy chairperson of ABP who has brought it into disrepute. I am attaching copies of all material in my possession relevant to this complaint. Background Deputy chairperson Paul Hyde has served as a board member of ABPsince 1 May 2014. He has also served as chairperson of the SHD division since December 2017. He has engaged in behaviour that cuts across his obligations under the Planning Acts , the criminal law and the ethics acts. Failure to declare interests Below is attached a list of developments where Mr Hyde had a conflict of interest. Land registry records attached indicate Mr Hyde is the owner of the following properties: 30 Lindeville, Cork; 4 Castlefield,Baltimore, Cork; Apt 30 Pope’s Hill, Blackpool, Cork; Apt 24 Pope’s Hill, Blackpool, Cork; 16 Watergold, Douglas, Cork; Unit 2 Maryborough Green, Douglas, Cork; land at Rathduff, Grenagh, Cork (co-owner) [see attachment]. Court and other records indicate receivers were appointed to dispose of Apartment 30 Pope’s Hill; 16 Watergold and the land at . There are pending transactions on two of the folios. There are no pending transactions on the land at Rathduff although it is currently advertised for sale. Mr Hyde also has a 25 percent shareholding in H20 Property Holdings Ltd a company incorporated in Ireland on 16 November 2001 (CRO 350179). It was previously named Fingerpost Builders Ltd.It formally changed its name on 17 May The other 75 percent shareholding is owned by Mr Hyde’s father, Stephen Hyde. According to land registry records, the company is the registered owner of Folio CK106589F, a two-acre, partially developed, plot of land at Pope’s Hill. There are no pending transactions on the folio. Mr Hyde declared he had no interests in his 2021 and 2022 declarations of interest to ABP (submitted in accordance with section 147 of the Act) [attached below] On 9 March 2022 Mr Hyde voted on an SHD application for a development in Blackpool, Part of the land of the applicant in that case is located less than 50 metres from the land owned by Mr Hyde’s company (H20 Property Holdings Ltd). Mr Hyde did not declare a conflict of interest at the board meeting as required under section 148 of the Act. The Law Section 147 of the 2000 Act states at (1): It shall be the duty of a person to whom this section applies to give to the relevant body a declaration in the prescribed form, signed by him or her and containing particulars of every interest of his or hers which is an interest to which this section applies and for so long as he or she continues to be a person to whom this section applies it shall be his or her duty where there is a change regarding an interest particulars of which are contained in the declaration or where he or she acquires any other interest to which this section applies, to give to the relevant body a fresh declaration. (2) A declaration under this section shall be given at least once a year. (3) (a) This section applies to the following persons: a member of the Board… Section 147(3)(b) requires a board member to declare “any estate or interest which a person to whom this section applies has in any land, but excluding any interest in land consisting of any private home within the meaning of paragraph 1(4) of the Second Schedule to the Ethics in Public Office Act, 1995” and “any business of dealing in or developing land in which such a person is engaged or employed and any such business carried on by acompany or other body of which he or she, or any nominee of his or hers, is a member”. Failure to comply with the foregoing is anoffence under section 147(11) of the Act. Section 148(1) provides that “Where a member of the Board has a pecuniary or other beneficial interest in, or which is material to, any appeal, contribution, question, determination or dispute which falls to be decided or determined by the Board under any enactment, he or she shall comply with the following requirements: (a) he or she shall disclose to the Board the nature of his or her interest; (b) he or she shall take no part in the discussion or consideration of the matter; (c) he or she shall not vote or otherwise act as a member of the Board in relation to the matter; (d) he or she shall neither influence nor seek to influence a decision of the Board as regards the matter”. Failure to comply with the foregoing is an offence under section 148 (10) of the Act. Section 149(1) provides that “proceedings for an offence under section 147 or 148 shall not be instituted except by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions”. Composition or arrangement with creditors Mr Hyde has clearly experienced compromising difficulties with several property investments since his appointment to ABP. According to The Ditch, in April 2015 Promontoria Aran took over the Ulster Bank mortgage on land in Rathduff, County Cork, owned by Mr Hyde and three co-investors. In March 2017 the distressed loan buyer issued High Court proceedings against Hyde and his co-investors but the
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Dolphin Square VIP sex abuse. Dolphin Square was opened in London’s Pimlico in 1936. It soon became a magnet for all sorts of scandal and intrigue: espionage, political, sexual, not to mention mysterious deaths. ‘Scandal at Dolphin Square’ provides a riveting account of the lives of a rolling maul of fascinating and complex characters. As publicity for the publication accurately proclaims, it was ‘a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century’. It was also a cesspit where Prince Andrew’s friend Lord Greville Janner abused children. The two most important chapters in the book, both of which describe the activities of members of a VIP child abuse network, have been ignored by the British press. Cut from the same cloth: the Russian and British press Consumers of the media in the UK, have no appreciation of the extent to which they are kept in the dark about British Establishment scandals. They are completely unaware of the role Buckingham Palace played in suppressing the Jeffrey Epstein scandal for years before it broke in the US media. See: Palace of Discord and Deception. [Updated] Prince William’s officials covered-up his uncle’s involvement in the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking scandal. By Joseph de Burca. At the moment, many in Britain are exasperated at the ignorance of the ordinary Russian citizen who is misled by a corrupt Putlin-led media spouting nonsense about Nazism in the Ukraine. If the average Brit knew about what has been going on in Ireland, he and she might not laugh with such disdain at the typically ignorant Russian newspaper reader. The Dolphin Square book will help open a few eyes in Britain about the wretchedness of their ruling classes. However, before I return to Dolphin Square, it may be helpful to look at a few examples from recent history to understand the wider picture which explains how the ordinary British newspaper reader has been left to wallow in ignorance about British establishment crimes in Ireland. The tactic is: injure, insult and ignore. There is a deep well of hurt in Ireland felt by many as a result of the lethal misbehaviour of the British army and intelligence services on this island, a history now more than fifty years in being. Fresh evidence of transgressions continue to emerge with depressing regularity. In recent times, they include reports from the Northern Ireland Ombudsman about collusion between Loyalist paramilitaries and the State involving the murder of Catholics, many of them non-combatants who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The murder of Irish citizens by British State actors is no more news in Britain than Putin’s war crimes in the Ukraine are for ordinary Russians. Astonishingly, there was little or no coverage of the fact that the State paid out £1.4 million to the families and survivors of the Miami Showband massacre. There has been – and continues to be – a pattern of State sponsored injury followed by insult. The insult takes the form of the cover-up after the event. If the cover-up falls apart, then the British press and TV go into ‘ignore’ mode. John Stalker who refused to back down when he discovered RUC-MI5 murder of a teenager. It cost him his career. The late John Stalker, the former Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester, investigated the RUC’s shoot to kill programme in Ireland in the 1980s. He discovered, for example, that the RUC and MI5 had murdered a teenage boy who had stumbled across an IRA arms dump in a hay shed. Stalker refused to back off and was stabbed in the back by his own side. The deepest wounds were those inflicted by his boss, James Anderton, a man who believed that God spoke ‘to him and through him’. In reality Anderton became an accessory after the fact to the murder of the boy at the hay shed. Stalker was smeared by a corrupt press in Britain, linked to criminality and taken off his inquiry. The killers got away Scot free as did all of those involved in shafting Stalker. Few in Britain could have cared less. Although he cleared his name, Stalker retired from the police early a demoralised man. Byron Lewis, intimidated and vilified for telling the truth about Bloody Sunday David Cleary (better known as Soldier F) was responsible for a large number of the killings which took place on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. Byron Lewis was beside him on the day of the massacre. Lewis killed no one – he was a radio operator. The journalist and broadcaster Tom McGurk conducted an investigation into Bloody Sunday and uncovered a written account by Lewis. He published it in The Sunday Business Post in Dublin. Privately, he supplied additional information to the Irish Government. This, finally, provided the ‘new evidence’ the British government required to establish a fresh inquiry. And what happened to Lewis? Although McGurk was careful not to name him, his identity was leaked – probably by the Ministry of Defence in London to a gang of soldiers who tried to persuade him not to talk to the Savile Inquiry. The soldiers found where he was living. In a case of mistaken identity, his housemate was beaten so badly he was taken to hospital. That same night Lewis’ life was threatened and he had to go into hiding. When he appeared at the Saville Inquiry, attempts were made to tear his character apart. Lewis has never emerged from hiding. And what of Cleary? The British government of Boris Johnson is presently trying to enact legislation so that he and others like him will not have to face murder charges. Fred Holroyd: smeared and vilified for exposing Robert Nairac and the Dublin and Monaghan bombers of 1974 When Fred Holroyd, a former undercover British soldier, refused to go along with MI5’s murderous collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries in
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The debate in Ireland about joining NATO, or some sort of an EU military arrangement, is now on the political agenda like never before. Pro-neutrality advocates argue that the country is sleep walking into a military alignment of one sort or another with Western military powers. They point to the fact that US air force planes routinely transport American soldiers to Europe and beyond via Shannon airport as an example of an erosion of our neutrality. The pro-NATO lobby must be encouraged by the acceptance of the activities at Shannon which contrasts sharply with the anger displayed against Russian naval exercises off our coast earlier this year. What is missing from the debate is a discussion about the fact that Ireland has been playing a key role in lethal US military operations for years. Village described them in an article in 2017 which is as relevant now as it was five years ago. The piece can be accessed here: Technology neutralises our neutrality
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In a whitewashed barn decked out with Ulster flags, Union Jacks and pictures of the Queen, their leader in charge of this meeting sat at an old table. He pressed a button on a tape recorder. A voice boomed out: I address you as the commander in chief of the organisation, Silent Defenders. Author Ciarán MacAirt investigates a shadowy Loyalist paramilitary group made up of former RUC Specials and British soldiers. He tracks the gang from a newspaper article in March 1972 through British military intelligence files and on to the streets of Belfast in the bloodiest month of the conflict. The paper trail leads to a sectarian gang of Red Hand Commandos, British soldiers of the Ulster Defence Regiment and a series of murders and attempted mass murders of teenagers in north Belfast. But all is not what it seems as there were other killer gangs on the loose… Who were Northern Ireland’s Silent Defenders as we stared into the abyss in the summer of ’72? Visit Paper Trail to find out >> https://www.papertrail.pro/northern-irelands-silent-defenders/
