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Inspired by the principles of Malcolm X / Malik El-Hajj Shabazz. A 'Third Worldist' perspective focusing on the increasing pace of south-south co-operation which is challenging and defeating US hegemony, and the struggles of those oppressed by neo-colonialism and white supremacy (racism) who fight for their social, political and cultural freedom 'by any means necessary'
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
THE EDL CHALLENGE TO ANTI-RACISTS AND BLACK COMMUNITIES
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Monday, 25 October 2010
BRIXTON, LONDON - GENTRIFICATION IS RIPPING APART OUR COMMUNITIES
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It's ironic: Brixton, like Harlem in New York, is feted as a cultural hub just as its identity as a black neighbourhood dissolves
I have always felt that Brixton, London is the centre of the world for people of colour. Now that London's Heritage Lottery Fund and Lord Mayor have unveiled a plan to build the UK's black cultural archives there at a cost of £5m, I have even more reason to think so.
A collage of ethnicities form on Brixton's high street in the middle of any given day. As a newly-minted immigrant from Jamaica, it was here that I first saw a woman in a hijab driving a doubledecker bus. This is the site of Amy Winehouse's tryst in her song "Me and Mr Jones". Brixton: a veritable metropolis for south London's outer boroughs and neighbouring inner cities.
Brixton bears the weight of a chequered history – notoriously, for race-related riots in the 1980s. The names of streets – Coldharbour Lane, Electric Avenue, Acre Lane, to name a few – carry an edginess that captures the stories of generations of Brixtonians. The themes have remained consistent through the years: from Coldharbour Lane describing basic accommodation offered to rough travellers in the 1800s; to Electric Avenue conveying the excitement of being the first street to be lit by electricity in London. This is an area that is defined by progressive change alongside material deprivation.
If that vibe is endemic, it is perhaps not surprising that Brixton became a popular home for the first set of African and Caribbean immigrants who sailed to the UK on the Empire Windrush in 1940s, as well as for succeeding generations. Over the years, it has borne all the contradictions of immigrant communities – unemployment and high levels of crime, with wells of creative brilliance. For many outside looking in, Brixton seems like the unpredictable distant cousin.
The BBC reported this summer that Prince Charles and Camilla visited Brixton market – recently named a listed building of historical interest. The royal couple would have missed a face of the neighbourhood that would not be evident in a midday visit during the business day. They wouldn't have seen the clumps of suited City types who barrel into the subway in the morning, to return at night; and the spattering of early evening joggers darting pass couples walking ornamental dogs on their way to Brockwell park.
Predominantly white and middle-class, the newest residents are the face of a resurgent Brixton, who are mostly taking advantage of the area's proximity to the city. As property prices soared in London's last boom, many homeowners in the area sold and moved further south into the suburbs. The pattern of homeownership has changed dramatically – in favour of the more affluent.
Comparisons with New York City's Harlem are, therefore, appropriate. Both Harlem and Brixton are alike for their large black populations and historical significance. They both have seen periods as a sought-after cultural centre, as well as decades of social and economic decline. The decision by President Clinton to make Harlem the home for his post-presidency office and foundation, and the attendant rise in property values in the area – pricing out many of the neighbourhood's longstanding African American residents – has become emblematic of the gentrification debate.
Does it matter when increased commercial activity leads to radical changes in the ethnic and cultural makeup of communities?
I moved out of Brixton last week, further south into a neighbouring suburb. The recession, and redundancy, made it prudent for me to find a flat elsewhere. One morning about a month ago, as I raced toward the underground – the smell of incense wafting in the air and a street preacher blaring the news of the next coming of Jesus Christ – I looked up to see a fully operational Starbucks coffee shop. It had sprung up so quickly: people were milling around inside as if it had always been there. If there was ever any doubt that Brixton's gentrification is well-advanced, the argument had just closed. I smiled wistfully and descended into the subway.
It would be ironic if Brixton's recognition as an iconic black space in Britain comes just at the point when there is a mass exodus of its black residents.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
PALESTINIAN MAN TELLS BANKSY TO "GO HOME"
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Thursday, 21 October 2010
MUSIC: 'F**K DA GOVERNMENT' - SONS OF MALCOLM SALUTES THE FRENCH, AND WONDERS IF THE ENGLISH WILL EVER LEARN?
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Saturday, 16 October 2010
BRING THE RAGE FOR JIMMY MUBENGA, JOY GARNDER NEVER FORGOTTEN
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Monday, 27 September 2010
THE 1990s, COMBAT-18, AFA & THE SWP
LINKS:
Doc-Films on AFA:
Sunday, 19 September 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
'OUR BOYS' EXPORTING BRITISH VALUES IN IRAQ AND DOING THE NATION PROUD
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Sunday, 12 September 2010
VIDEO AND REVIEW OF BANGING NEW LOWKEY TRACK - 'TERRORIST?'
Lowkey is on a serious roll at the moment – everything he is putting out is lyrically, musically and politically on point. The latest video from his forthcoming (and much-anticipated) album ‘Soundtrack to the Struggle’ is called ‘Terrorist?’, and it explores the true meanings of the concepts ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’.
Lowkey starts off by quoting the dictionary definitions as follows:
Terrorist: the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coersion.
Terror: violent or destructive acts such as bombing, committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands.
He proceeds to compare some of the people that are labeled in the media as ‘terrorists’ (ie. Iraqis and others using primitive explosives against colonial domination) with the powerful states and corporations that are terrorising millions on a daily basis.
What’s the bigger threat to human society,
BAE Systems or home-made IEDs?
Remote controlled drones killing off human lives
Or man with home-made bomb committing suicide?
Although the ‘terrorist’ label has primarily been used to describe Muslims, particularly since the twin towers attack, Lowkey points out that resistance to imperialism isn’t limited to any one religion or racial group, and that all oppressed people are united by their opposition to the empire.
This is very basic
One nation in the world has over a thousand military bases.
They say it’s religion, when clearly it isn’t
It’s not just Muslims that oppose your imperialism.
Is Hugo Chavez a Muslim? Nah, I didn’t think so.
Is Castro a Muslim? Nah, I didn’t think so.
He brilliantly exposes the hypocrisy of western colonisers describing anybody as terrorists:
Lumumbah was democracy
Mossadeq was democracy
Allende was democracy
Hypocrisy, it bothers me
Call you terrorist if you don’t wanna be a colony
Refuse to bow down to a policy of robbery
The song is summed up by its beautiful, haunting chorus:
They’re calling me a terrorist
Like they don’t know who the terror is
When they put it on me I tell them this
I’m all about peace and love.
They’re calling me a terrorist
Like they don’t know who the terror is
Insulting my intelligence
Oh how these people judge
All in all, another very powerful track from Lowkey, with excellent production by the ever-reliable Red Skull and a highly professional, innovative video by Global Faction. Please spread the word!
Sunday, 29 August 2010
GARY YOUNGE'S EXCELLENT HISTORY OF THE NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL
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The Politics of Partying
Gary Younge
Guardian
As 1958 drew to a close, a despondent mood drew over the offices of the West Indian Gazette in Brixton, south
The Gazette's founder-editor, Claudia Jones, had had enough. "We need something to get the taste of Notting Hill out of our mouths," she said. "Someone suggested we should hold a carnival," says Donald Hinds, who was in the room at the time. "We all started laughing because it was so cold and carnival is this out-on-the-street thing. It seemed like a ridiculous suggestion." But Jones had other ideas and set about making arrangements.
A few months later, on January 30, 1959,
More than 40 years on, a bright array of oversized peacock feathers made its way down the Mall towards the royal family. Along with the household cavalry in plumes and gleaming breastplates, and the Red Arrows streaking the sky red, white and blue, Notting Hill carnival took pride of place in the Jubilee celebrations. This was a legacy of Empire with a difference, not an exhibition of how much has been preserved but a demonstration of how much has changed.
"There was more military involvement last time," said Michael Lewington, 62, standing in almost the same spot he took for the Silver Jubilee in 1977. "I certainly don't remember calypso bands." Here was an irrefutable sign of black people's permanent presence and cultural contribution in
contested in the 1950s.
Notting Hill carnival's journey from a response to race attacks in 1958 to pride of place on the Mall in 2002, passing revelry, riot and resistance en route, is both powerful and painful. It is the tale of how a marginalised community built, protected and promoted what is now the largest street party in western Europe, using the radical cultural politics of the Caribbean to confront
Either way, it starts with Claudia Jones, a Trinidadian communist who came to
Jones was a turbulent character, manic in her energy, masterful in her skills as a political organiser and chaotic in her personal life. A lifetime of illness, engendered by poverty and exacerbated by prison, was further compounded by overwork.
"She was so full of energy, she exhausted everyone, including herself," recalls Corinne Skinner-Carter, one of Jones's closest friends. "She used to chain-smoke but I never saw her actually finish a cigarette. And she talked liked she smoked."
Her journey across the
In March 1958, Jones launched the West Indian Gazette, attempting in part to cohere these disparate groups around their common experience of racism. In many ways it was a period that echoes our own, with the sparks of popular prejudice fanned by a bigoted press while a complacent and complicit political class allowed the consequent flames to rage.
On August 18, 1958, the Ku Klux Klan sent a letter to the Gazette addressed to "My Dear Mr B Ape". "We, the Aryan Knights, miss nothing," it said. "Close attention has been paid to every issue of this rag and I do sincerely assure you, the information gleaned has proven of great value to the Klan."
A fortnight later, Majbritt Morrison, a Swedish woman, was spotted by a gang of white youths. They had seen her the night before, arguing with her Jamaican husband Raymond outside
"1958 was a big moment," Hall recalls. "Before that, individuals had endured discrimination. But in that year racism became a mass, collective experience that went beyond that."
This was the taste Jones wanted to get out of her mouth. Only she, says Marika Sherwood, author of Claudia Jones: A Life In Exile, had the combination of new world confidence and political maturity to launch carnival under those circumstances. "Her experiences of campaigning against racism and McCarthyism in
Trevor Carter, Corinne's partner and stage manager of the first carnival, agrees. "Claudia, unlike the rest of us, understood the power of culture as a tool of political resistance. The spirit of the carnival came out of her political knowledge of what to touch at a particular time when we were scared, in disarray."
There had been concerns that the unruliness of carnival would not translate from the outdoors of
The evening itself went excellently. There was calypso singing, dancing and lots of souse, peas and rice and other
Thus began
"The histories of these carnivals are both independent and interlinked," says Sue McAlpine of the Kensington & Chelsea Community History Group. "They were linked by their motivation and the constituencies they were seeking to motivate."
Laslett, born in the
Steel band player Russ Henderson was among those roped in. Laslett's partner, Jim O'Brien, knew him from the Colherne pub in Earl's Court - a favoured West Indian hang-out - and Henderson had played at the first event in St Pancras organised by Jones. At the Notting Hill event, he was playing alongside a donkey cart and a clown, and he felt things were getting flat. "I said, 'We got to do something to make this thing come alive.' "
"With the music, people left everything and came to follow the procession," O'Brien says. "By the end of the evening, people were asking the way home."
In the evening, Michael X - radical, hustler and firebrand - turned to Laslett, pointed to the throng and said, "Look, Rhaune, what have you done?"
"I was in a state of shock," Laslett said later. "As I saw the huge crowds, I thought, 'What have I done?' "
During the years Laslett ran the carnival, it was identified more with Notting Hill than with the Caribbean, though as word got round, more and more Caribbean people started coming. The numbers had grown to around 10,000, and O'Brien says a mixture of police interference and the growing assertiveness of black power meant too many different groups had vested interests. "It was something we didn't want to have responsibility for," he adds. "The police didn't want it because they thought they were losing control of the streets for the day, and we'd had enough. So we decided to hand it over to the community."
Carnival, Trinidad-style, with no entry fee, is truly open to everyone. Blurring the lines between participant and spectator, it thrives on impulse as well as organisation. With its emphasis on masquerading and calypso, it takes popular subjects of concern as its raw material for lyrics and costumes. Massive in size, working-class in composition, spontaneous in form, subversive in expression and political in nature - the ingredients for carnival are explosive. Add to the mix the legacy of slavery and it soon becomes clear why so long as there has been carnival, the authorities have sought to contain, control or cancel it.
In 1881, Trinidad's former police chief, Fraser, submitted a report on the carnival riot in
"Carnival had become a symbol of freedom for the broad mass of the population and not merely a season for frivolous enjoyment," wrote Errol Hill in The Trinidad Carnival. "It had a ritualistic significance, rooted in the experience of slavery and in the celebration of freedom from slavery. The people would not be intimidated; they would observe carnival in the manner they deemed most appropriate."
Similar tensions have emerged here in the
As carnival has outgrown its grass-roots origins, it has brought with it a constant process of negotiation and occasional flash points; there have been inevitable conflicts, over both its economic orientation and its political function. Carnival, wrote Kwesi Owusu and Jacob Ross in Behind The Masquerade, is "the most expressive and culturally volatile territory on which the battle of positions between the black community and the state are ritualised".
And so it was that, less than a century after the disturbances at the carnival in
The carnival's primary constituency had changed radically. In the mid-1970s, 40% of all black people in
It was a claim that, on the one hand, was increasingly under threat, thanks to the rise of the National Front and skinhead culture. But on the other hand, it was a claim constantly being asserted by the powerful role music was playing in shaping British youth culture, through reggae, then ska. Along with Rock Against Racism, culture had become a key battleground for race and there was no bigger racially-connoted event than the Notting Hill carnival.
"Carnival was their day," says one Metropolitan police officer in an off-the-record interview. "For the rest of the year, police would be stopping them in ones and twos in the street, where they would be in a minority. But for one weekend they were in the majority and they took over the streets."
The 1976 riot took most people by surprise. "I just remember seeing these bottles flying," says Michael La Rose, head of the Association for a People's Carnival, which aims to protect and promote carnival's community roots; he describes it as like watching a relentless parade of salmon leaping upstream. The police were ill-equipped and ill-prepared. Defending themselves with dustbin lids and milk crates, they were also outmanoeuvred. "That whole experience made the police very sore," one policeman says. "They had taken a beating and were determined that it would not happen again, so when the next one came about, there was some desire for revenge."
From then on, thanks largely to the press, carnival moved from being a story about culture to one about crime and race. For years after, carnival stories would come with a picture of policemen either in hospital after being attacked or in an awkward embrace with a black, female reveller in full costume. The following year, Corinne Skinner-Carter missed carnival for the first and last time, in anticipation of more trouble. There were indeed smaller skirmishes in 1977. At one stage, late on the Monday night, riot police were briefly deployed. The next day, the Express's front page read: "War Cry! The unprecedented scenes in the darkness of
Calls for carnival's banning came from all quarters. Tory shadow home secretary Willie Whitelaw said, "The risk in holding it now seems to outweigh the enjoyment it gives." Kensington and
As recently as 1991, following a stabbing, Daily Mail columnist Lynda Lee-Potter described the carnival as "a sordid, sleazy nightmare that has become synonymous with death". By this time, however, its detractors were in the minority. Like the black British community from which it had sprung, there was a common understanding that it was here to stay. Latest police figures suggest attendance of one million; organisers say it is almost double that.
In west
This is the first of the heats running up to the carnival itself. The standard is higher than a karaoke bar, lower than the second round of Popstars. But the evening is more fun than both - accessible, unpretentious, raucous and, above all, entertaining.
Earlier that day, at the Oval House Theatre, south
The preparations started the year before. The riots in Bradford and
On the day of the Golden Jubilee celebrations, designer Clary Salandy had trouble getting to the Mall. The police wouldn't let her and the rest of her mas camp over the bridge, even though they were supposed to be leading the procession. Chipping down the Mall - that slow shuffle-cum-toyi toyi of the masquerader - filled her with pride. "I'm not a monarchist, but this was a recognition by the establishment that we have made an artistic contribution and took carnival to people who would never go to it."
In the Harlesden offices of her company, Mahogany, in north-west
Her favourite costume that day spoke the language of defiance: one person armed with several huge, multicoloured shields defending his back. "It's called Protector Of Our Heritage," she says. "It was there to defend carnival."
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
BRIT STATE-SPONSORED KILLING IN IRELAND / EXCLUSIVE SERIES OF INTERVIEWS FROM IRELAND FOR SONS OF MALCOLM
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Introduction
I went to Belfast this summer because as an aspiring community activist, socialist and anti-imperialist, I am aware that there are precious few parties in the West that have successfully mobilised working class communities along these lines, and in my view, Sinn Fein is one of those precious few.
I am also painfully aware that unless we in such communities here start organising and fighting for our rights, we are shortly going to be plunged into poverty and degradation on a scale unprecedented since the Second World War. I wanted to know how Sinn Fein are responding to the crisis, and to see their form of community politics in action to learn whatever lessons could be of use to those organising in Britain.
At the same time I wanted to discuss and publicise the ongoing struggle for justice of those who lost relatives to
If we are serious about mobilising our communities for the problems ahead, we are going to need the same level of honesty and commitment I saw in
COLLUSION: The greatest untold story of our times
Exclusive interview for Sons of Malcolm by Dan Glazebrook
Interview with Robert McClenaghan of An Fhirinne.
18 August 2010
On 8th July 1981, on the Falls Road in
If the rule of law had prevailed in
Cases such as these are the tip of the iceberg. McClenaghan estimates that around 1100 people have been killed by loyalists as a result of collusion with the agencies of the British state. “In our opinion we could put what the British state has been doing for twenty or thirty years on a par with what happened in
Eight years ago, hundreds of the relatives of those murdered joined forces to create An Fhirinne, a united campaign to discover the truth about how and why their loved ones were killed; to discover, as they put it, “not just who pulled the trigger, but who pulled the strings”. An Fhirinne, which is Gaelic for “the truth”, now represents over 250 families. Their struggle has not been easy: “At the start we were dismissed as republican propaganda: the attitude was ‘how dare you try to assert that the British government could be involved in murdering its own citizens?’ But bits and pieces of evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, began to come out and it got to the point where the British couldn’t hold it back anymore.”
The result was the Stevens inquiry. After eleven years of investigations, Sir John Stevens, former head of the Metropolitan Police and “hardly a republican sympathiser”, concluded that collusion had indeed taken place. “From about a million pages of evidence” explains Robert, “he was only allowed to publish twenty. But those twenty were damning”. Stevens concluded that he had amassed enough evidence to mount 25 prosecutions – including against senior RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary – the police), special branch and British military intelligence personnel. He handed this evidence to the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions). Years passed, until finally, in 2007 – four years after being handed the files – the DPP announced that there would be no prosecutions. The state institutions would protect their own, no matter how great the evidence of their crimes. As Robert put it; “this was the British state covering up the mass murder of its own citizens”.
State cover up of murder is something of which Robert has personal experience. On December 4th 1971, McGurks Bar was blown up by a UVF bomb, causing the biggest single loss of life of the ‘Troubles’ until the Omagh bombing. His grandfather was amongst the fifteen killed. At the time, he says: “we hadn’t a clue about media, about press statements or anything else, we just knew our grandfather was dead. He was blown up, at 75 years of age, and within hours he was being called a bomber in the media. The British army, the RUC, the unionist politicians were all issuing the statement that this was an IRA bomb which my grandfather and the others had been making when it exploded prematurely. You’ve no idea the impact it had on my grandmother or my father. It’s hard enough to deal with a death, especially a brutal death like murder. But then on top of that to be told lies by the police…”. Six years later, whilst being interrogated over an unrelated murder, a UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) member named Robert Campbell admitted to being the getaway driver for the bombing that day.
In the early 1970s, this type of collusion – the institutions of state covering up loyalist killings – was the norm. What we now know is that both the RUC (the police) and the UDR (the army) were also arming the loyalist militias and providing them with intelligence: “This isn’t us whose saying this, this is a British government report that was unearthed in the public records at
What Stevens’ inquiries had unearthed, however, was that by the mid-80s collusion had shifted from this type of informal (albeit widespread) collaboration amongst people on the ground to a crucial plank of British state policy. Loyalist death squads had effectively become integrated into the British chain of command.
Finding the fingerprints of Brian Nelson, a leading member of loyalist militia the UDA, on British army documents, Stevens’ team had Nelson arrested. During his time in prison, Nelson admitted he was a British agent, and that far from being placed in the UDA to disrupt its operations, he was in fact there to facilitate them. Nelson, it emerged, had been given access to army intelligence files to improve the UDA’s targeting and assassinations, and had been aided by MI5 in facilitating the import of a huge arms shipment in from apartheid
However, the idea that Nelson and his handlers were simply ‘bad apples’, out of the control of the higher military and political authorities, says Robert, is demolished by what happened after Nelson was arrested: “Two weeks away from his trial, there was an extraordinary, unbelievable meeting that took place here in Belfast. At the meeting was the British Prime Minister, John Major; the head of all the six county judges, Brian Hutton; Basil Kelly, who was due to be the trial judge; the Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew who later became Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; the head of the DPP at the time, and the head of the RUC. They didn’t want Nelson to get into the dock and blow their cover about how all these murder gangs had been allowed to proceed. So they came up with a plea bargain that was put to Nelson: If he would plead guilty to lesser charges, they’d ensure he didn’t spend too long in prison”. The multiple murder charges against him were dropped, and instead he was given a ten year sentence for conspiracy in a court case that lasted less than a day. He served less than half this sentence, and was announced dead the day the Stevens Inquiry report was published. Robert finds this hard to believe: “My gut instinct is that he is in
Nelson’s handler was a man named Gordon Kerr, of the Forces Research Unit, established under Thatcher essentially to professionalise collusion. His subsequent career demolishes the ‘bad apple’ theory even further: “He actually left the north under the cloud of being a mass murderer and involved in all these killings – but then went on to become British military attaché in
More evidence was unearthed by the 2007 report of the police ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, into the killing of a young Protestant, Raymond MacCord jnr, by the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force): “This case blew the lid off everything. She found that there was a UVF gang headed up by Mark Haddock which was responsible for almost 20 murders and he had his own special branch handlers who were using him and letting him do this. The first person he killed was a woman, a Catholic woman called Sharon McKenna. These people were being paid from the public purse – an allowance every week by their special branch handlers. And after he killed Sharon McKenna, he got an increase in the amount of money his handlers were paying him.” Shortly after releasing her report, O’Loan was replaced by a new ombudsman, Al Hutchinson – “in my opinion he is seen by the British government as a safe pair of hands, whose not going to rock the boat. He’s not measured up at all.” Last month,
Nevertheless, the evidence of collusion continues to mount, and the British government has adopted ever more contorted positions to avoid it coming out. A number of key cases, including Finucane’s and that of another solicitor Rosemary Nelson, were raised by Sinn Fein as part of the political negotiations with the British government at the
That collusion was taking place, however, has never been doubted by republican communities, as it was manifestly obvious in their daily lives, as Robert explains: “It was common knowledge at the time. We had 30,000 British troops on our streets. Now, the British army’s just fought a war in
Robert is like a walking encyclopaedia on these issues. The dates, the names, the places, roll off his tongue with ease. In the two and a half hours I spent with him, there is the basis for a book, never mind an article. Neither is what he is telling me hidden knowledge – it is public and openly available. And the enormity of it is staggering: “the biggest modern story of the British state” as he puts it: the state running death squads against its own citizens; and the personnel involved now doing the same thing around the rest of the world. And yet, “this story has never impacted in
But then, the media’s servility towards British policy in
“The idea of collusion is like a spider’s web. At one end you have the assassins who are provided with weapons, provided with information, and are then allowed to come into an area which has been full of military and is then cleared. The military are brought back to barracks, the death squad comes in, sledgehammers the door down, has a map of the house, goes up and does the killing and drives away. The police then arrive, and there is no proper investigation: no ballistics, no forensics - and no adequate prosecutions. In the case of John Stevens, he had twenty five files on some of the most senior police and army which he gives to the DPP on a plate. And they sat on it from 2003-2007. So that implicates then the DPP’s office, which implicates the whole of the legal and judicial system, not to mention the media. So if we are talking about collusion, we try to paint this picture of a spider’s web. Everybody, whether it’s MI5, RUC, special branch, police military intelligence, the civil servants, the media, the courts, the prosecution service, they’ve all at one point or another failed to do what they’re supposed to do.”
The answer? “We want some sort of independent international inquiry that’s independent of the British and Irish governments but will have the authority to subpoena witnesses. Not just republican, but loyalist or British cases as well. The British government try to portray this image to the world that they were peacekeepers trying to keep two warring factions apart, to stop the Catholics killing the Protestants and the Protestants killing the Catholics; instead of saying this was our colony and we were actively involved as combatants and participants on one side, namely the pro-British loyalist side. And what that meant in reality is that they armed the loyalists, they gave them information and then they let them loose on our community over a generational period and killed upwards of 1000 people. So they can’t then be the people that sit in judgement. We don’t want British judges coming over and bringing republicans and loyalists in, and saying 'tut tut that shouldn’t have happened, now do you want to tell your story?' And then the British state gets off scot-free.”