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    Hospital better than prison, for injured innocents

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    An inquest into the death of an Omagh woman who was a domestic-violence victim heard evidence of major failings in Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) handling of events, and of how the the police have subsequently changed their procedures in dealing with persons who reported being assaulted. Thirty-six-year-old Mairéad McCallion died in hospital on February 24th 2014, the day after she told police that her partner Noel Knox grabbed her by the hair and knocked her head against a wall before throwing her out of the house. Knox then called the police because McCallion and another man were outside. It was a very cold day, and she was wearing neither shoes nor coat – and wanted Knox to give them to her. When police arrived, Mairéad McCallion reported the assault. Police saw clumps of hair had been torn from her head. They arrested Knox, and brought McCallion to the custody suite at Omagh Police Station for examination. A senior police officer told the inquest that procedures had now changed. Chief Superintendent Karen Baxter said that all victims should now be taken to an accident and emergency unit. “The custody suite is not a place of safety – it is a place of detention”, she said. Constable Catherine Kilkie, to whom McCallion had reported the assault, said she did not tell the Forensic Medical officer (a police doctor) who examined Mairéad about the blow to the head, or that Mairéad said “her head was a bit sore”. Kilkie told the inquest she did not pass this on as “the doctor usually takes an account from the victims themselves”. There was conflicting evidence as to whether Dr Paul Alleyway, who examined her in the police station, asked her if she had sustained a head injury. Alleyway said “on direct questioning, she denied having a head injury”. Civilian Custody officer Linda Carson who was present during the examination said “I just can’t recall” this question being asked. In his notes, Alleyway recorded having asked the question. These notes were completed on the following day. After the examination, the Custody Sergeant thought it necessary to bring in a domestic Violence officer to deal with McCallion. However, it was a Sunday, no-one was on duty, and he was denied authorisation to bring one in on overtime. There was conflicting evidence from two police officers about McCallion’s condition on the afternoon of the alleged assault. Constable Gareth McCrystal said McCallion’s face was “sloped like she had a stroke” when he first saw her outside the house. When he later returned after taking Knox to Omagh police station, he was “concerned she had changed so much from what I’d seen three hours or so previously” but not enough to call an ambulance. She was slumped in the reception area. Kilkie told the inquest she believed McCallion had deteriorated because she hadn’t taken her medication, and her difficulties in walking were due to wearing heels. In mid-afternoon McCrystal and Kilkie drove her away from the police station in a police car. They were taking her to a friend’s house. She only had the clothes she stood in, and none of the medication she needed. Kilkie gave evidence of only ringing the friend when they were on the way. The friend could not keep Mairéad. During the journey, McCrystal said McCallion was “not speaking but making noises in the back of the car”. When they reached the friend’s house, Kilkie went inside. McCallion began making retching noises. McCrystal asked her “if she could, could she please be sick outside the car”. By this stage, she was not speaking. He rang Kilkie, who contacted paramedics. Paramedics treated her on the scene, then took her to the South West Acute Hospital in enniskillen, where she died of a catastrophic brain injury. It would have been impossible to survive this injury. Mairéad McCallion did not fit the stereotype of a domestic-violence victim, or of an alcoholic. She had been a straight-A student at her grammar school, then went to university in Scotland. There she suffered mental-health difficulties and had to leave. Returning to Omagh she began training as an accountant. Then, in August 1998 she arranged to meet her friend Julia Hughes in the town centre one Saturday afternoon. The Omagh bomb exploded that afternoon: Julia was killed. This was another blow to Mairéad’s health. However, she continued to work. She moved to Coleraine and bought her own place. unfortunately, her depression and drinking worsened. Her mother died, and shortly after she moved back to Omagh. McCallion was unemployed. She drifted into a circle of alcoholics who gravitated around drinking houses in a couple of housing estates. She tried to fight her demons, and enjoyed periods of sobriety. She also formed a relationship with Knox, an unemployed alcoholic about a dozen years older than her. It was a controlling relationship. They lived together in Knox’s brother’s house, but she did not have a key. Knox has never been convicted of assaulting McCallion. He was charged with her murder, though the charges were subsequently withdrawn. Evidence was given that the screensaver on his phone was a picture of her with a broken nose and two black eyes; and that, when he rang her, this picture came up. Police logged five complaints from McCallion that Knox had assaulted her, though all were withdrawn. on one occasion she obtained a barring order against him. Under cross-examination during the inquest, Knox accepted physically putting her out of the house the day before she died. He admitted she fell in the front garden and may have hit her head on the grass, or on a metal manhole cover. That day, in the police station, she spoke to Linda Carson about being a domestic-violence victim. McCallion said “she was going to do something about it this time”. Her sister Josie and half-brother Marcus both told the inquest of seeing bruises on her. Josie said that one time: “it was obvious she had been beaten up, there were

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    Haughey cleaned up his own mess

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    The author is a senior lecturer in the department of Modern History at Liverpool’s hope University. He has carefully mined the available documentary sources to produce a book that covers Haughey’s, much disputed disposition and policy instincts on Northern Ireland. Given the longevity and impact of Haughey’s career this, by definition, involves a painstaking trawl through a variety of sources. His cautious conclusion is that “Northern Ireland, it seems, was only one of a handful of issues to which Haughey left a positive legacy”. However, even this tentative conclusion is set against the view of the haughey critics who saw his actions as opportunistic and maladroit. The Arms Trial is of course the defining event in Haughey’s career. Stephen Kelly goes a great distance to establish that Haughey was, however unwittingly, the person who most facilitated the emergence of the Provisional IRA as a terrorist organisation in the years that followed from the upsurge of violence in Northern Ireland following the events of 1969. He states that Haughey’s “subversive involvement in the distribution of monies, guns and ammunitions” indirectly facilitated the yet to fully emerge Provisional IRA. The only issue I can see with this line of argument is that it suggests that Haughey was in fact subversive when in fact most of the testimony, research and evidence suggests that the arms importation was part of a fully authorised, albeit covert, operation of state. There is little or no doubt, at this remove of time, that Haughey was part of a plot to import arms for nationalists in Northern Ireland and that this operation was initiated at the highest levels of government and was supervised, quite deliberately, by army intelligence as opposed to that other security arm of the state the Special Branch. The lack of co-ordination between the two agencies meant the importation was badly managed. Kelly appears to give credence to the line, pursued by the Jack Lynch faction, in the wake of the Arms Trial, that Blaney and Haughey were in effect usurping their mandate from government and foisting their own policy on Northern Ireland. The problem in sustaining this argument is firstly the actual jury verdict in the trial which concluded that the accused persons did have a government mandate for their action. The second difficult issue is the copious evidence from military intelligence officers that the operation was run with the active involvement of a variety of ministers including the Minister for Defence. Stephen Kelly does well when covering Haughey’s subsequent efforts, when in power as Taoiseach, to develop policy on Northern Ireland and the famous early summit with Mrs Thatcher. His mishandling of Mrs Thatcher over the Falklands war and its consequences for Anglo-Irish relations is well covered. This book also gives a valuable insight into Haughey’s early approval of contact between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fáin as well as the careful cultivation of Fr Alex Reid, the Redemptorist priest, who became a crucial interlocutor in what has become known as the peace process and the ending, by way of formal ceasefire, of the IRA’s campaign of violence. In may 1987 Haughey, who had become Taoiseach, was presented with a 15-page letter from Fr Reid. The contents of the letter were groundbreaking. Contained within were the terms of a proposed IRA ceasefire, seven years before the end of hostilities in August 1994. Apart from his secret dealings with republicans, it was also Haughey who first won concessions from John Major, Margaret Thatcher’s successor as prime minister, on Northern Ireland. In December 1991, following three years of discussions between Adams and Hume, Haughey presented Major with a draft of a model joint British-Irish government declaration, known as ‘Draft 2’ which would later become the ‘Downing street Declaration’. Stephen Kelly has set himself a hard task. John Bowman produced his definitive De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917-1973 with the benefit of a PhD thesis and a lifetime of topical interviews with some of the key people through his work as a broadcaster before he produced his book. Kelly has produced something that will be of great value to others who may wish to write full biographies of haughey in the future. A book yet to come from Vincent Browne is much anticipated. My only other quibble with stephen Kelly is his claim in a footnote that my biography ‘Haughey – Prince of Power’ is a hagiographical work. I might humbly suggest he re-read the book. Perhaps the best part of this book is its description of the build up to and the contents of Haughey’s ground breaking summit with Mrs Thatcher in December 1980. Stephen Kelly rightly gives the credit on the British side to two senior Whitehall mandarins namely Sir Robert Armstrong and Sir Kenneth Stowe. Persuaded by Haughey’s persistence in demanding that there be an Irish or Dublin role in relation to the North, and a personal belief on Armstrong’s part that a united Ireland was inevitable, the two civil servants shifted Thatcher on this issue. This is rightly attributed to be the beginning of a series of agreements that brought both Dublin and London closer together. My father was hugely energised by the Dublin Castle meeting and told me afterwards, on the basis of conversations with Armstrong, that the British had given up the ghost on staying on in Ireland. The process begun at Dublin Castle was a move towards a joint British-Irish stewardship of the Northern Ireland issue. ‘A Failed Political entity – Charles Haughey and the Northern Ireland Question 1945-1992’ by Stephen Kelly is available from Merrion Press. Conor Lenihan

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    Dissidents and dissenters

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    While focus over the past year has been on Loyalist alienation, there is also a significant level of nationalist alienation in the North. Dissident Republicans have small but real support. Far beyond their circles, there is a discontent: a feeling that the Assembly has not delivered, and that the DUP is running government: of dissent. There is no possibility, in the foreseeable future, of either the dissidents or the dissenters significantly eating into Sinn Féin support. A small trickle of recruits is joining dissident groups – despite their weakness on all fronts. Those who claim such groups have no support refuse to recognise a reality they dislike. The dissident groups can operate in a small pool. Support is underestimated because many people will not openly admit to holding an unpopular view. This is analogous to the way that opinion polls understated electoral support for Sinn Féin (and to a lesser extent the DUP) in the past. An older generation of dissidents came from Sinn Féin. To become the largest nationalist party, Sinn Féin dramatically moved to the centre. Its electoral strategists recognised that this meant shedding more hard-line voters. The loss was counterbalanced by taking votes from the SDLP. The more republican voters who left had nowhere to go: the votes taken from the SDLP have reduced that party. The older group which left Sinn Féin is now mostly inactive. Of more current significance is an angry section of Catholic working-class youth which has never accepted Sinn Féin. The dissidents have recruited among them. However, even some young Catholics with jobs consider themselves dissidents. Over the last few months, I have met a scatter- ing of young people who call watch your backs – both of you “ themselves Republicans, but disagree with the strategy of Sinn Féin. Some are in organisations, others not aligned to any. A Real IRA member once explained to me that the peo- ple they were recruiting had been active supporters rather than former members. Most now come from the post-ceasefire generation, tending to be between 20 and 40. Most are from deprived areas, but by no means all. Among dissidents convicted here have people with skilled and white-collar jobs. Militarily the dissident organisations are weak, and riddled with agents. Partly because of what Northern society went through during the Troubles, their military campaign is unpopular. Importantly, the dissidents do not have a cause to mobilise around. There are, though, always dangers of a British government blunder. However, three contentious issues have been resolved. Sixty-three year old Martin Corey from Lurgan has been released: he was a former Republican life-sentence prisoner whose licence was revoked and who was jailed for three years without facing any charges. A dirty protest by prisoners on the Republican wing in Maghaberry prison has been settled. The seriously ill Marian Price, who was a remand prisoner, was released on bail. Dissidents are active on the issue of marches by the Loyal Orders through perceived Catholic areas. These are resented by most residents in those areas, even many who would not call themselves Republicans. Dissidents have members in some of those areas, and oppose the somewhat conciliatory approach of Sinn Féin. There are wider symptoms of discontent than the small dissident groups. ‘1916 Societies’ have developed. These developed first in East Tyrone, the traditional heartland of Northern Republicanism. Initially they attracted an older generation. More recently, they have attracted numbers of young people from the post-Troubles generation. They are a loose network whose only clear policy is promoting Irish unity on the lines of the 1916 Proclamation. Members disagree with Sinn Féin for often conflicting reasons. They disagree on the central issue of Republican tactics: whether or not there should be an armed campaign. They are a network for ex-members of the IRA and Sinn Féin. More generally, there is discontent in the wider Nationalist community. All sections of the community feel the Assembly has not delivered on its initial promise. Among Nationalists, many feel Martin McGuinness is too conciliatory to the DUP. Despite the DUP having moved towards the centre there is a deep distrust of it in the wider Catholic community. Projects which many Nationalists saw as symbolic gains for them like the Maze/Long Kesh Peace Centre and the A5 dual carriageway from Ballygawley in Co Tyrone to Newbuildings, south of Derry City, have been cancelled. All this will have political implications. Of the Nationalist parties, the SDLP’s long decline continues. As Sinn Féin becomes a mainstream party, its active membership has decreased. Could it, like the SDLP ear- lier, lose contact with its electorate, and if so what would the consequence be? Anton McCabe

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