The Green Ribbon

Is Johnny Mercer actually a non-exec at Crucial Academy?

The Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View has been in the news a lot lately as a key backbench hold-out on Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement, one who has accused the Tory whips of seeking to dig up dirt on him in order to secure his vote.

However, a BBC story on Wednesday suggests that he does face issues which merit substantive scrutiny.

MP Johnny Mercer's salary funded by failed bond scheme marketing agent

By Chris Quevatre & Tom Palmer

A company that marketed a failed bond scheme that lost savers £236m has been funding an MP's private salary.

Johnny Mercer receives £85,000 from Crucial Academy, a company ultimately funded by Surge Financial Limited.

Surge Financial Limited took 25% commission for marketing bonds by London Capital and Finance (LCF), which is now in administration.

Mr Mercer - who is facing calls from investors to quit as an MP - said he had done nothing wrong.

The Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View is a non-executive director of Crucial Academy, which trains military veterans and aims to find them employment. (Full story)

One intriguing issue here is the status of Mercer's non-executive directorship. Here's the declaration that Mercer made last year to the Commons Register of Member's Interests:

 From 14 Sept 2018 until further notice, Non-executive Director of Crucial Academy Ltd, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AB, for which I will receive £85,000 per annum. Hours: 20 hrs a month. (Registered 18 September 2018).

Mercer also refers in his response to the BBC to 'working as a non-executive director of Crucial Academy.'

Yet, as Alex Harrowell points out, it's difficult to find a record of this directorship at Companies House. It doesn't seem to appear on the Crucial Academy entry or on the page where Mercer's own consultancy is listed. While there may be a valid explanation, at first sight, it does raise questions about Mercer's judgement and what exactly his role was.

Brexit Party MEP candidate 's business boosted by cheap UK assets and sterling weakness

The Brexit Party has today announced property developer Ben Habib as a candidate for the European elections. At the launch event, Habib argued for keeping a no deal Brexit on the table.

Habib's involvement is an intriguing data point for those who think a influential fraction of Brexit supporters are driven by an appetite for cheap assets. 

Here's how his views were reported after the referendum in 2016: 

There are company bosses fearful of the prospects posed by Brexit.

Ben Habib, chief executive at commercial property investor and fund manager First Property Group PLC isn't one of them.

He sees market instability after the UK vote to leave the EU as a big opportunity for a small firm like First Property, and means (for currency reasons) an immediate injection of profits in the short term and later, a chance to buy more UK assets at cheaper prices. [ProactiveInvestors]

The weakness of sterling after the referendum was a particular boon to First Property because of the repatriation of euro-denominated profits from Polish and Romanian investments.

As recently as February, the Investors Champion podcast reported that First Property 'is currently sitting on cash so that it is ready to buy assets if the UK property market crashes in the wake of a no deal Brexit.'

No Deal would no doubt mean more cheap assets, and further sterling weakness, precisely because of its impact on the wider economy. It's fair to ask whether the interests of hard Brexit backers like Habib, are aligned with those of the wider British public.

 

Supreme Court strikes down Finucane inquiry

The UK Supreme Court has today ruled that the British Government has failed to meet its obligation to hold a human rights compliant inquiry into the 1989 murder of solicitor Pat Finucane. The court ruled that the De Silva review, which established substantial state collusion in the killing, did not meet this test because it was unable to cross-examine witnesses.

Some early press reports nevertheless interpreted the ruling as a defeat for the Finucane family because the court declined to directly order a new public inquiry. However, in a statement, the family's solicitors said the Government would now be left with no alternative but to order a new inquiry, to meet it's obligations under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The women picking up the pieces of Northern Ireland politics

Picture by Adam Jogee.

The men have left Northern Ireland politics in a mess, with Brexit and a stalled assembly, and it’s the women who have been left to sort it out. That was the response of leading women politicians from the North to a cheeky audience member at Hammersmith Irish Centre on Friday, who argued that a female Northern Ireland Secretary and female party leaders in the DUP, Sinn Fein and Alliance were presiding over political crisis.

If there was unity on that point however, there were significant differences on the way forward, notably on the prospects for the restoration of the Stormont Executive in the shadow of Brexit.

The DCIs: Britain’s intelligence chiefs in the Northern Ireland Troubles (Working Draft)

The new year is a good time to think about the best way of using my Patreon. While some of the posts there give a good flavour of my research, I've been thinking for some time about following the example of writers like Kevin Carson, who post the full working draft of their books online.

Over the past year, I have narrowed the focus of my draft book to tell the story of British intelligence in Ireland through profiles of individual intelligence chiefs. I've now reached the point where I have a full timeline of office-holders for the period I want to cover, and full profiles of some of them.

Be warned, however, that there is a lot of work still to do, and some parts of the text are a mass of unassimilated notes, while others still need to be fully referenced. At the moment, the profiles on Herbert, Rowley, Cradock, Doyne-Ditmas, and Deverell are most complete. There is a lot of unassimiliated material in relation to Eastwood, Payne, and Ranson. There is relatively little at the moment in relation to Parker, Ferneyhough and Knight, but I have made some progress here in recent months and should be able to update these shortly.

In every case, I have been able to link names appearing in Northern Ireland Office files, to those of known intelligence officers in other sources, most importantly the 1980s MI5 order of battle included in Stephen Dorril's The Silent Conspiracy.

With all of the above caveats, the current draft is now avallable to my Patreon subscribers here. Look out for future updates.

Will Stakeknife Inquiry defy the Stalker precedent?

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, of Bedfordshire Police, said this week that he has evidence to bring a number of prosecutions in relation to the activities of the alleged British Army agent inside the IRA known as 'Stakeknife'.

According to the BBC, the Stakeknife investigation, Operation Kenova, could recommend the prosecution of members of the IRA, MI5 and the Army's Force Research Unit.

It's worth recalling that this wouldn't be the first time that a police investigation had recommended prosecutions of MI5 officers in Northern Ireland.

Military Reaction Forces, Mobile Reaction Forces and 'FRED' Force

Researcher Ciarán MacAirt has done sterling work in the past few years in dismantling the official story in relation to the 1971 McGurks Bar bombing in North Belfast, an attack which security forces claimed at the time was an IRA own goal.

Ciarán's latest research at Paper Trail reveals that the British Army's undercover Military Reaction Force was active in the area of the bombing:

Paper Trail can now prove that the MRF operated with the resident 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (2RRF) which attended the scene of the massacre in its immediate aftermath. The archives evidence, in fact, that the MRF was active in the area the day and night before the attack but is absent from 39 Brigade Operations Logs on the day of the bombing.

Therefore, the families have been correct all along to query where was the MRF when their loved ones were killed as they have questioned whether its operatives were involved either directly or through agents it ran within the UVF paramilitary bomb team. Successive investigations by the British state up to the present day have either failed to locate the MRF in North Belfast at this time or have hidden the information from the families.

The mention of agents in the UVF refers to the Army's practice of this time of running agents recruited from paramilitary organisations, known as 'turned terrorists' or 'Freds'. Rory Cormac's recent book on British covert action, Disrupt and Deny, argues that the Freds were run separately from the MRF, but were taken over by its successor organisation, the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) formed in late 1972.

When I put this conclusion to Margaret Urwin, author of a pamphlet on the MRF and SRU, she was sceptical, pointing out that it was a leak from 'Freds' that led to the IRA targeting the MRF in the Four Square Laundry incident, one of several controversial episodes that contributed to the MRF's replacement by the SRU.

Ciarán took a similar view, tweeting a document in which then MOD Minister Ian Gilmour referred directly to a 'turned terrorist' within the MRF.

I decided to go back to Cormac's source which he very kindly confirmed was a file in the National Archives. The relevant document is a minute of 17 November 1972, from the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Michael Carver to the Defence Secretary Lord Carrington, entitled Special Reconnaissance Squadron - Northern Ireland.

The opening paragraphs read as follows:

You are aware of the request made by HQ Northern Ireland for an organisation to command and control what have been called 'FRED' force and 'Mobile Reaction Forces' both of which have been employed for surveillance patrols, consisting of soldiers in plain clothes, in some cases also being used to effect arrests.

2. You will recall that, after the 4 Square Laundry incident, I issued orders, on your instructions, governing the employment of soldiers in plain clothes. It was recognised then that these two forms of plain clothes patrol needed to be brought under closer, ore coordinated and more centralised control; that the soldiers employed on them should be more specifically trained both for the task and for their personal security; and that their administration should be regularised.

On the face of it, this justifies Cormac's statement that 'Freds and MRF's were separate plain-clothes units lacking proper co-ordination', but there is still the question of how this can be reconciled with the other evidence.

My guess is as follows:

A. There were two distinct types of team conducting separate patrols, army plain-clothes soldiers and 'Freds.'

B. There was a single unit within each of the three army brigades in Northern Ireland responsible for both types of team.

One might posit that the army patrols at A. were Mobile Reaction Forces and the units at B were Military Reaction Forces, but this is probably to neat a conclusion. The picture of wheels within wheels and MRFs within MRFs may owe as much to the cowboy atmosphere of the time as to army security.

Perhaps the most interesting implication of Carver's statement is that FRED force was operating its own plainclothes patrols. This doesn't sound like a description of an informant in the back of an armoured car, and might even be taken to suggest that Freds were not just individual agents but operating in groups. Accounts such as Martin Dillon's The Dirty War have suggested that Freds did not associate freely with each other, although Dillon notes that one Fred, Seamus Wright was able to identify another, Kevin McKee, to the IRA, which secretly killed and buried both men.

The question of what form FRED force patrols took leads us back to the issues raised by Ciarán MacAirt . Was FRED Force part of the MRF activity in North Belfast around the time of the McGurk's Bar bombing?

Update 17/12/18: Margaret Urwin of Justice for the Forgotten suggests that simplest explanation for FRED force patrols is that individual Freds were being escorted by plainclothes soldiers in unmarked cars.

Tory MP declarations and the outlook for tonight's no confidence vote in Theresa May

Election Maps UK has a crowdsourced list of declarations by Tory MPs of how they will vote in tonight's vote of confidence on Theresa May's leadership of the Party. This should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the vote itself with a secret ballot. It's currently running 170-80 in May's favour. This would see her surviving, but politically wounded, the more so if her opponents can get towards the 100 mark.

It would take a simple majority of Tory MPs to defeat May and see nominations for the leadership opened. If more than one candidate gets sufficent votes, the contest would go to the Conservative Party in the country, the first time a Prime Minister has been chosen in this way. This would greatly increase chances of a new leader prepared to opt for a 'No Deal' Brexit over Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement. This would put pressure on the Grieve/Soubry wing of moderate Brexit-critical MPs to find some way of avoiding a No Deal outcome, potentially risking the Government's majority.

Conversely, in the more likely event that May wins, the Government's majority is still at risk. The DUP will continue to oppose the Withdrawal Deal, but may nevertheless choose not to support a vote of no confidence in the Government. This political paralysis would leave the UK on course for a No Deal Brexit by default.

Thus, all paths at the moment seem to lead to new pressure on moderate Tories to find a way to avoid a deal. Their key strategist, Dominic Grieve, has much to think about.

In coming weeks, however, there are also risks for the DUP,  if opposition MPs start to cave in to Theresa May's position rather than risk No Deal. If the backstop is forced on them, the DUP may feel that they can tell their supporters they have done all they could, but would that be true if they have been sustaining the Government in the meantime? Labour's unionist-friendly rhetoric of last week may have been intended to raise that question.

A look at the Commons votes for a Labour Referendum motion

Back in October, I wrote a post looking at how MPs were likely to vote on Theresa May's EU withdrawal agreement. A number of publications, including the New Statesman and Buzzfeed have since undertaken similar, no doubt better informed, exercises. Since my last update in mid-November, it's become conventional wisdom that Theresa May is likely to lose the withdrawal agreement vote on 11 December.

So I thought I'd take a look at what happens after that point. There are basically four options.

1. Accept the Withdrawal Agreement, possibly with changes to the accompanying (non-binding) Political Declaration and/or new or changed policy commitments by the UK Government.
2. Re-negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement. This looks unlikely as it has been ruled out by the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk.
3. No Deal Brexit. There is unlikely to the be a majority for this outcome in the House of Commons, it could happen by default if Parliament can't agree any of the other options.
4. Remain in the EU. This is unlikely to happen without a referendum, which Theresa May has ruled out but to which to the EU and the Labour Party have left the door open.

A referendum vote in the Commons is unlikely to succeed without Labour support, and the chances of Labour having to follow through on its promise to keep a referendum 'on the table' are rising. Labour has ruled out options 1 and 3 and the EU has ruled out option 2. That leaves option 4.

The New Statesman's Stephen Bush reported a few days ago that Labour would put down a motion for a referendum which it expected to lose because Labour rebels against a referendum would outweigh Conservative rebels in favor of one. He has since suggested that judgement may need to be revised following the resignation of Universities Minister Sam Gyimah on Friday.

So here's a rough sketch of how the numbers might look if Labour did back a referendum. Beyond the basic state of the parties, all of these numbers are very provisional, especially the figures in brackets for potential rebels. Paul Waugh suggests that both Tory and Labour rebellions could end up at around 30 votes, cancelling each other out and therefore favouring the government.

For a referendum

Labour 257 - Labour rebels.

SNP 35. (I think this is most likely in the event, but see Patrick Maguire for a qualification. New Statesman, 29 Nov 2018).

Lib Dems 11. Most Lib Dems have signed up to back the People's Vote campaign (iNews, 28 November 2018).

Plaid Cymru 4.

Green Party 1.

Jared O'Mara (Independent) (Statement 16 Oct 2018).

Likely Conservative rebels (10)

Heidi Allen - Guto Bebb - Damian Collins - Justine Greening - Dominic Grieve - Jo Johnson - Philip Lee - Anna Soubry - Sarah Wollaston (New Statesman, 29 November 2018.) - Sam Gyimah

Against Referendum

Conservatives 315 - Conservative Rebels.

DUP 10.

Frank Field (Independent)

Kelvin Hopkins (Independent)

Charlie Elphicke (Independent)

Andrew Griffiths (Independent)

Likely Labour rebels (14). Stephen Bush suggests the Labour rebellion on the EEA amendment as a likely baseline. (New Statesman, 28 November 2018).
Dennis Skinner - Laura Smith - Gareth Snell - John Spellar - Graham Stringer - John Mann - Kevan Jones - Ronnie Campbell - Kate Hoey - Mike Hill - Sir Kevin Barron - Rosie Cooper - Jim Fitzpatrick - Caroline Flint

Doubtful/Uncertain/More information needed

Stephen Lloyd - a lone Lib Dem who is backing May's Withdrawal Agreement. New European, 22 November 2018.
Independents:

Lady Hermon - Likely to vote for May's Withdrawal Agreement.

Ivan Lewis - Undecided. Twitter 18 Nov 2018.

John Woodcock - tweeted favourably re. People's vote. Twitter 27 Nov 2018.

My first back of a fag packet run through these figures sees a government majority of 30. To overturn this would take another 16 Tory rebels emerging along with one more for every Labour rebel.

It's very likely that the Conservative rebellion will grow, but it's also unlikely that I've accounted for all Labour rebels, so the People's Vote campaign has a lot of ground to make up in coming weeks.

The Walker report: How MI5 shaped RUC Special Branch

The 1980 Walker report on RUC Special Branch has been something of a holy grail for documentary researchers of the Troubles. After a long-running campaign, the Committee for the Administration of Justice has published a redacted version (PDF) released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The Rights NI blog has a valuable analysis of the document by Brian Gormally:

All in all, the Walker Report is a blueprint for how to turn a police force into a conflict-fighting weapon where victory against the “subversives” is the overriding priority and traditional functions such as preventing crime and upholding the rule of law are sidelined. 

As Gormally notes, there is no mention in the report of Walker's own organisation, MI5. 

Justice for the Forgotten to speak on Troubles Legacy in London

The legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland is unusually high on the Westminster agenda at the moment, so it worth taking note of a very timely meeting being organised by the Labour Party Irish Society next Monday:

 We want to alert you to an extremely important event we are organising for MONDAY 2 JULY, 7:30PM at the IRISH CULTURAL CENTRE in Hammersmith. 

Margaret Urwin of the Justice for the Forgotten campaign will be our speaker. Margaret is a founder member of the group, which represents the victims and families of the bombings of Dublin and Monaghan in the 1970s.

In recent weeks there has been much debate and discussion about the legacy of the troubles and the correct response to achieving truth and justice for all involved. Margaret is coming over to speak to LPIS members about JFF and to inform and educate from the perspective of the families of those innocents killed in these particular terrorist attacks. Margaret has published a book about the investigations into the bombings and state collusion: ‘A State in Denial’.

LPIS is proud to be supporting Margaret during her visit, which will include meeting MPs, many who are LPIS members.

For more information, please visit http://www.dublinmonaghanbombings.org/home/

Please let us know if you are attending by emailing labourirish@gmail.com

The head of steam building at Westminster around legacy prosecutions of British soldiers was illustrated today by the publication of a House of Commons Library Report on the subject. Patrick Maguire of the New Statesman recently suggested that the issue was part of a cocktail of defence concerns amongst Tory backbenchers that could even cost Theresa May her position as Prime Minister.

That pressure may explain why May has repeatedly made false statements from the despatch box, claiming that only members of the security forces were facing legacy investigations.

Against that backdrop, the victims of state violence in Northern Ireland have gone largely unheard in the Westminster debate. The demise of the SDLP as a parliamentary force is one factor in this. Sinn Fein are remarkably active at Westminster within the constraints of 'active abstentionism', but that policy intrinsically limits their impact on the Commons. 

Many Labour MPs with an interest in Ireland have also been constrained by elevation to the frontbench, leaving a handful of backbenchers with deep knowledge of the issues to speak up in a difficult political environment.

Hopefully, next week's event will be a step towards redressing that balance.

Trump-Russia and Tory Think Tank churn

In recent months, the conservative think-tank Policy Exchange has been at the forefront of efforts to ensure that Brexit is not constrained by the Irish border issue. Just this week, it hosted a conference on the Union, accompanied by new, albeit questionable, opinion polling, that downplayed the risk of Irish unity in the event of a hard Brexit.

 

Oddly, on the same day as this high profile event, many past associates of Policy Exchange were attending the launch of an apparently rival think-tank, Onward.

 

The Deputy Political Editor of The Times, Sam Coates, reports that 'modernising Tories say they are just not quite as comfortable with the securocrat turn PX has taken.'

 

But has there really been a turn? A neoconservative approach to security issues, driven by current director Dean Godson, has been a key feature of Policy Exchange since its inception. David Miller, Tom Mills and I examined this aspect of the think-tank's record as far back as 2011 in the Spinwatch report, The Cold War on British Muslims. 

 

Coates suspects that 'the answer lies partly in who funds PX now and what they want from it. Just a hunch.'

 

Spinwatch noted in 2011 that the majority of Policy Exchange's funding from individuals and corporations was difficult to trace, but that a smaller proportions came from foundations, which can be found in US and UK charitable filings.

 

Even this is not always possible. In 2013, Policy Exchange credited the Blavatnik Family Foundation with 'generous assistance' to a report entitled The Fog of Law. This pamphlet co-authored by Conservative MP and former Military Assistant to the Chief of the Defence Staff Tom Tugendhat, attacked what it saw as legal encroachment on the actions of soldiers in the field. Tugendhat, incidentally, is now a key political backer of Onward.

 

The Blavatnik Family Foundation is headed by industrialist Sir Leonard Blavatnik. I have been unable to find any filings from the foundation in UK Charity Commission or US foundation filing databases. Inside Philanthopy had no better luck for their profile of the billionaire.

 

Blavatnik's donations to US Republicans have already caused PR issues for some of his foundation's beneficiaries. The dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford denied in a letter to the Financial Times last month that Blavatnik was a Trump donor, stating that he 'donated to the Republican National Committee and the bipartisan Presidential Inaugural Committee, not to the Trump campaign'.

 

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that a business associate of Blavatnik's, Viktor Vekselberg had been interviewed by prosecutors working for US special counsel Robert Mueller. The same story noted that Blavatnik had donated £1 million to Trump's inauguration, which Vekselberg also attended.

Ron Kampeas sums up Blavatnik's 'Trump factor' this way: 

Gave more than $6 million in the 2016 election cycle, virtually all to Republicans, after a pattern of relatively modest donations to both political parties. Longstanding business ties to Viktor Vekselberg, the oligarch allegedly linked to secret payments to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.  Blavatnik donated $12,700 last year to a Republican party legal fund that has helped to pay Trump’s lawyers in the Russia inquiry.

In the absence of funding transparency from either Blavatnik or Policy Exchange, it's impossible to know for sure if Policy Exchange's apparent problems are analogous to Oxford's. What is clear is that Mueller's investigations of high-level donors in the US are likely to have implications for the more opaque corners of UK politics.

The Good Friday Agreement, Twenty Years On

Lewes Labour Party very kindly invited myself and Professor Mary Hickman to speak on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement this week. Below is the text of my prepared remarks, which I think bears some resemblance to what I actually said!

 

I'd like to talk a little bit about where we are with the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, twenty years on, and how that has become entwined with politics at Westminster, because of Brexit in the first instance, and because of the DUP deal later on. 

 

There have always been problems when it came to actually implementing the Good Friday Agreement. The Agreement was based on three strands 

• Strand One: The status and system of government of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, which was the important one for unionists, who wanted to stabilise Northern Ireland’s place in the union, and also to get back their old devolved government.
• Strand Two: The relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which was the important strand for nationalists, who wanted a closer relationship and ultimately a united Ireland.
• Strand Three: The relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

The big difficulties in the early years were about Strand One, about getting unionists and nationalists and republicans into devolved government together, at a time when the IRA had not yet left the stage, and had not yet decommissioned its arms. 

 

That was part of a bigger complex of security issues, which included demilitarisation and policing. Demilitarisation was a particularly big issue in the border area, and that is something that obviously informs a lot of the current concerns about a hard border as a result of Brexit.

 

All of those issues led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly four times by 2002, with the last suspension lasting until 2007.

Equal marriage bill is big test for Theresa May

After being moved in the Lords by Lord Hayward on Tuesday, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) (Northern Ireland) Bill passed its first hurdle in the Commons yesterday. The bill secured first reading without objections after a powerful speech by St Helens North MP Conor McGinn, which concluded:

This Bill is not just an instrument to advance LGBT rights in Northern Ireland; it is a litmus test on the will of this House to uphold equality and fairness. It is high time we acted, and I hope that today will be the first step on what must be a short road to bringing about equal rights for our fellow citizens. It is a matter of fundamental inequality and unfairness and a denial of rights that same-sex couples in other parts of the UK and Ireland are allowed to marry, but that Cara McCann and Amanda McGurk are not. Cara and Amanda have a civil partnership ceremony booked for Valentine’s day next year. My Bill would pave the way for them to be married instead.

Cross-party support previously been demonstrated by MPs who met with campaigners at Westminster Hall earlier in the day. However, a more ominous portent  came during Prime Minister's Questions when Theresa May gave a cool response to a question from Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP Ged Killen:

LGBT rights in Northern Ireland are in limbo. The Assembly has already voted for equal marriage and public support for it is overwhelming. Will the Prime Minister stop hiding behind the Democratic Unionist party and take this opportunity to put on record her support for the Bill being brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn)? 

The Prime Minister:

I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises this Government’s record in relation to LGBT rights. We have taken up and championed the issue. He will find that previous legislation—I think actually under the previous Labour Government—ensured that it would be dealt with as a devolved matter, and we hope that a Northern Ireland Executive will be in place soon and be able to address these issues.

Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley had previously promised a free vote on the issue in the Commons, but May's non-commital response remains significant. BBC parliamentary correspondent Esther Webber noted that the bill was 'unlikely to become law with no govt support' because 'without govt making time it's likely to run out of time before the end of the session.'

Equal Marriage Bill shows limits of DUP leverage

Belfast Pride 2009, picture by Flickr user Nuttycam.

Conservative peer Lord Hayward will introduce a bill on equal marriage in Northern Ireland in the House of Lords on Tuesday, with Labour MP Conor McGinn set to introduce an identical bill in the Commons on Wednesday.

It's a significant demonstration of cross-party support and there's every prospect that it reflects the will of a majority in both Houses of Parliament.

In 2015, a majority in the Northern Ireland Assembly voted to support equal marriage, but was blocked when the DUP invoked the petitition of concern mechanism, which requires legislation to have majority support in both communities.

Following last year's assembly election, the DUP no longer has the votes to invoke a petition of concern on its own, but the issue has not been tested because of the breakdown of devolution.

The DUP's confidence and supply agreement with the Conservatives represents powerful leverage at Westminster, but its limits have already been shown on social policy. 

As the Belfast News Letter's Sam McBride told a debate in Hammersmith last month, DUP indifference to metropolitan opinion received a sharp jolt last year when an amendment by Stella Creasy ensured that  Northern Ireland women would get access to NHS abortions in Britain.

Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley, who herself voted for equal marriage in Britain, has said that the Government will allow a free vote.

That will probably ensure a majority in the commons, though a private members bill might still face filibustering from the DUP and its allies. That would set in stone the DUP's reactionary image in Britain. 

It's an interesting dilemma for DUP MPs. Some may privately be glad to be shot of responsibility for the issue. Others may have religious convictions of their own or concerns about TUV inroads in their constituencies.

With the ongoing decay of devolved institutions, there will be increasing attempts to deal with other logjam issues via Westminster. The Labour Party last week raised the Government's disgraceful use of inquest funding as a political bargaining chip, for example.

Such legacy issues are likely to find fewer friends on the Tory backbenches than equal marriage. Nevertheless, if some urgent issues can be resolved via Westminster, it will help to clear the decks for the renewed negotiation on devolution that will have to come sooner or later.

Sinn Féin brings unity call to Irish in Britain

Do the Irish in Britain have a role to play in bring about a united Ireland? That was the theme of a one-day conference hosted by Sinn Fein at the TUC in London on Saturday.

Such conferences have been a regular feature of Sinn Fein's engagement with the diaspora, but the latest event came at a particularly febrile moment in British-Irish relations.

That was underlined by the opening address from the party's new president Mary Lou McDonald, which called on the Irish Government and the EU to stand firm against a hard border on the island of Ireland. 

A subsequent panel discussion featured some lively disagreement over the impact of Brexit on the terms of debate in Northern Ireland. Professor Peter Shirlow argued that the result of the post-Brexit Assembly election in 2017, which saw unionism lose its absolute majority for the first time, had been over-interpreted. 

"It didn't change anybody's attitude on the constitutional question," he said. "It didn't change it at all. What actually happened was [the number of] unionists who gave transfers to nationalism and to Sinn Féin actually declined. The election actually brought more voters for both national identities." 

He added that there was a more cross-community support for the union than for a united Ireland. "The majority of people in Northern Ireland support staying in the union. There's a significant share of the Catholic population that wants to stay within the union. We have to understand and appreciate more the reasons for that. " 

Shirlow's analysis was challenged by commentator Patricia MacBride, who said: 'There has been a change in attitudes in the unionist community in my experience, regarding attitudes to a united Ireland. It's not a sea change. It's about being much more open to how would it look, what would it be like?' 

'Those conversations are happening and another thing that is happening is that people are becoming more fluid in how they identify' she said, pointing to recent surveys showing a rise in the number of people who identify as Northern Irish rather than British. 

Sinn Fein Vice-president Michelle O'Neill struck a conciliatory note in the following keynote, saying 'It is our task to listen to unionism. We must persuade those people, sectors and communities why it’s in their political and economic interests to share a United Ireland.' 

A second panel looked at  the role of the Irish community in Britain. Writer Geoff Bell compared the current scene to previous phases of mobilization, and noted that no organised campaign on the issue of Irish unity currently exists in Britain. 

Professor Mary Hickman gave an overview of the demographics of the Irish community. She argued that all political parties in Britain should be looked at as potential vehicles, and said that lessons needed to be learned from the Irish4Europe campaign, which had failed to engage older settled immigrants who were more open to the case for leaving the European Union. 

Older immigrants were also those most attached to the case for Irish unity, she noted, while younger immigrants had been mobilized around single issues such as Brexit, equal marriage and abortion, the latter a question on which she challenged Sinn Fein to move further.  

Kevin Meagher, author of A United Ireland: Why Unification Is Inevitable and How It Will Come About, gave a tightly focused account of the case for his thesis. "British parties should make a clear and unambigous manifesto commitment to facilitate an Irish border poll in the next parliament, a referendum on Northern Ireland's constitutional status. This is not to take sides necessarily but simply to recognise that all the available evidence suggests that five years from now, British ministers will be legally bound under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement to call one. Let's get ahead of the curve.' 

Closing the event former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams picked up on earlier discussions: 'Geoff Bell said there's no organised campaign here. That's a question for all of you. I don't live here. There's an organised campaign in Ireland. If I lived here there'd be an organised campaign here. I don't say that in any vainglorious way, but I think that's a challenge for you all.' 

It remains to be seen what response that call will meet with, but the current turmoil in the British-Irish relationship perhaps makes it clearer what role the Irish in Britain could play. The argument for unity ultimately has to be won in Ireland, but when that time comes there may need to be pressure on the British government whose commitment to other aspects of the Good Friday Agreement is already open to doubt. 

Hooded Men ruling risks new era of torture

Last year I wrote for the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) on documents which raised questions about the role of MI5 in the handling of internees in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s.

 

I had some hope that this material might be examined if the European Court of Human Rights reviewed its 1978 ruling that a group of internees known as the 'Hooded Men' had been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment but not torture. The Irish government had applied for such a review based partly on archival evidence uncovered by the PFC, which suggested that the British Government had misled the original court.

 

Sadly, that application was rejected today.  We can only hope that there will be an appeal to the court's Grand Chamber. The danger is that if this outcome stands, it will strengthen those forces around the world which have sought to interpret the 1978 ruling as a blueprint for legally permissible torture.

Donor data underlines DUP-Tory alliance

The Electoral Commission has today released its first ever figures for party donations in Northern Ireland. Thanks to the DUP-Conservative alliance in the Commons, the figures do not cover the Brexit referendum. Despite an extensive investigation by openDemocracy, we still do not know who made the mysterious $435,000 donation to which the DUP used to fund Brexit advertising in Britain. 

Almost all of the funding released comes from public sources or from donations by political representatives. The single exception is a 2017 donation of £4,999 to the DUP's North Antrim Westminster Association. This is the constituency of Ian Paisley Jr, where the DUP has been the subject of some publicity recently over its fundraising practices at constituency dinners that have been attended by senior Conservatives.

The North Antrim donation came from 'Gross Hill Properties Ltd', which seems to be identical with the 'Gross-Hill Properties Ltd' which in the same year made donations of £30,000 and £25,000 to the Central Conservative Party, and of £4,999 to Conservatives in Norfolk, North West, the constituency of Sir Henry Bellingham. 

Latest border plan: A bad idea from the bad old days

Today's Independent carries some very worrying reporting about the British Government's latest Brexit plan for the Irish border:

People crossing the Irish border would have to register in advance to avoid checks and delays after Brexit under a hugely controversial plan being considered by No 10.

Anyone without “fast-track movement” clearance would have to use approved crossing points or would be “considered to have entered the state irregularly”, the study suggests.

As the Irish Government told the Independent, it's hard to see how this proposal squares with the agreement on Ireland reached in December.

I came across some very similar ideas last week, when I took a spare moment at the National Archives to look some old Northern Ireland Office files on border crossings.

During 1979, Security Policy Meetings chaired by Sir Maurice Oldfield considered introducing a specific offence of bypassing a road-block in conjunction with a programme of border road closures.

Selective closures were seen as an alternative to controlling the full length of the border by an 'impractical' physical barrier or by 'massive reinforcement far beyond the Army's capacity.' They also offered 'the political advantage of being seen to take positive, constructive action.'

War Stories of Willie Whitelaw's intelligence chief

In my last post, I discussed the circumstances in which MI6 provided the first intelligence chief at the Northern Ireland Office in 1972. I now want to add a little bit of what we know about the officer who filled this post, whose offical title was Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence Northern Ireland (DCI NI).

The official history of MI5 does not name this officer, but offers a striking pen picture: 

His Security Service successor remembers him as 'the right man really to establish the post': 'He was there for a year and he did it in tremendous style. He lived like a king, he entertained like a king, he used to drink with Willie [Whitelaw] all night.' (Chistopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 2009, p.621.

The Security service successor was probably Denis Payne. The MI6 officer was almost certainly Fred Rowley, whose Times obituary includes a very similar anecdote: