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THIRTEEN years ago this week, Francisco Notarantonio was murdered on
the orders of the British state. Last Friday his grandson was murdered
in the same street.
Joseph O’Connor (26), father-of-three, was a republican. Our stringent
opposition to the Real IRA, of which he was a volunteer, in no way minimises
our abhorrence towards his political assassination.
He was part of a wider republican spectrum which exists in opposition
to the Stormont regime. It was primarily his disagreement with the regime
that cost him his life. It is not our purpose to sensationalise the circumstances
surrounding this political assassination. We are aware of the knock-on
effects of spurious allegations and alarmism.
But we shall not be intimidated, bribed or blackmailed by the imperatives
of the peace process whereby we would emulate many in the media and politics
who endlessly speculate about who might be responsible but ultimately avoid
saying anything that ‘might not help the peace process’.
In the wake of the attack the Irish republican writers’ group was asked
to begin the unenviable task of interviewing people who, in one form or
another, had knowledge of the event.
Also interviewed were relatives of Joseph O’Connor. Despite the sensitivity,
the writers’ group felt compelled to probe, press and challenge, declining
to accept anything that was speculative. As a result there is no room for
doubt.
We state publicly that it is our unshakeable belief that the Provisional
IRA carried out this assassination.
BBC Panorama’s exploration of the Omagh bombing issue helped create
a climate of moral anathema which was taken advantage of by those who killed
Joseph O’Connor.
It was subsequently made easier for them to assassinate a member of
the Real IRA rather than other republicans opposed to the Stormont regime.
The real purpose of the killing was not merely to kill a member of
the Real IRA but also to kill off any semblance of alternative republicanism,
even that which is exclusively peaceful in its opposition to the Stormont
regime.
Whatever reasons given by the IRA leadership to its volunteers who
were involved in the operation, this murder is a state killing, perpetrated
by a movement that is deeply entrenched in the apparatus of government
at Stormont.
When a branch of the executive has at its disposal a private militia
capable of and willing to politically assassinate republicans in nationalist
communities we are left with Brown-shirtism.
We are forced to ask what has really changed? Is the protection of
a republican’s life from state murder a mere privilege determined by their
attitude to the state?
We repudiate this political assassination, and we repudiate the motivations
behind it. We reject totally any call for revenge and state unambiguously
that there are no circumstances in which Real IRA activity against republicans
or others could be justified. We call for an open inquiry monitored by
international observers.
We cannot abide the tragedy of this country’s history repeating itself
in the murder of Irishmen by Irishmen in accordance with the needs of the
British.
What difference is there between the Free State murder of Rory O’Connor
in defence of the 1922 British treaty and the murder of Joseph O’Connor
in defence of the 1998 British treaty?
Are the politics of Stormont republicanism so insecure and suspect
that murder of republicans is required in their defence?
Assassination of republican by republican can never lay the foundation
for a just and lasting peace. We do not believe actions such as the murder
of Joseph O’Connor will lead us into a united Ireland, transitional or
otherwise.
We do not think the threats and intimidation that have surrounded republicanism
prior to Joseph O’Connor’s death and those threats sure to come indicate
any hope for justice or freedom.
Friday’s murder has fuelled our increasing doubts as to whether our
part in this war has been worth it. What did we fight to achieve? The state
murder of republicans in order to secure political cleansing and impose
conformity is not what our war was waged for.
It is a most dishonourable outcome to an honourable struggle. We will
never support the politics or politicians that this type of killing serves.
We shall confront them at every turn through a strategy of relentless
open critique.
Armed only with the moral force of our ideas we shall promote republicanism
and intellectual freedom against the now malign physical force of their
guns.
Republicanism should never again use guns in pursuit of its ideals
but if we are unwilling to face guns in defence of those ideals we shall
have neither ideals nor dignity.
a.. Is it true that erstwhile Republicans now supporting the GFA and the new Stormont administration shot Joseph O'Connor dead?
b. Did the BBC's recent Panorama programme isolating the RIRA influence the timing of the assassination of Joseph O'Connor?
c. Why was the RUC so quick to confirm that the deceased was a 'key RIRA activist'?
d. Why did the RUC initially credit the assassination to dissident feuding?
e. Was the RUC raid on the RSF Belfast office, at or about the time of the shooting, done to deliberately sow doubt as to the perpetrators' identities?
f. Why did SF Councillor Sean McKnight mention 'pre-existing tension' in his statement, who did this tension exist between, and what, if any bearing did it have on the murder?
g. Unlike previous occasions, why did Alex Attwood of the SDLP refuse to speculate on the identity of the perpetrators?
h. Is it a coincidence that the family at the centre of a public debate regarding state collusion in the murder of Francisco Notorantonio should be subject to murder again?
All of these questions raise the frightening probability that Joseph O'Connor was the victim of a political assassination carried out by forces loyal to the Stormont regime. In short, the execution of Joseph O'Connor may have the same rationale as that which led to the execution of Rory O'Connor in 1922. That is - the killing of an Irish republican in order to cooperfasten an anti-republican treaty.
The IRWG believes that it is imperative that a thoroughgoing and credible inquiry be held to determine the truth of this case and that a report be published of its findings. Such a report should be coupled with recommendations to prevent further bloodletting.
Irish Republican Writers Group
http://rwg.phoblacht.net/
Statement from Anthony McIntyre and Tommy Gorman
(This statement ran in the Irish News, 10.17.00)
http://rwg.phoblacht.net/
By Sharon O’Neill
THE mother of a murdered republican dissident chief last night accused the Provisional IRA of waging a campaign of intimidation in west Belfast.
The accusation comes after former IRA prisoner Tommy Gorman appeared to backtrack from a statement blaming the Provisionals for the murder of Real IRA man Joseph O’Connor.
The homes of Tommy Gorman and Anthony McIntyre, who set up the writers’ group ‘Fourthwright’, were picketed on Thursday evening by residents with placards reading: “Speculation costs lives.”
Mr Gorman said last night: “Having spoken with friends and neighbours, I am now aware of the distress caused by the statement issued by myself and Anthony on Tuesday October 17 and carried by the Irish News.
“Our purpose was not to cause distress and it was certainly not our intention to endanger anyone.
“Unfortunately, the statement has resulted in making many people in the Ballymurphy and Springhill areas feel vulnerable. This we deeply regret.
He added: “Our only concern was to prevent further blood-letting. We have no wish to grant moral justification to anyone to carry out further acts of violence...”
However, Mr O’Connor’s mother Margaret claimed the IRA, who denied any involvement in her son’s killing, is trying to intimidate the family.
“On Thursday evening they came into the area like thugs. They drove down our street and went to other streets. To me that is blatant intimidation,” Mrs O’Connor said.
“The kids were screaming and we were so afraid we had to lock the door. They’re trying to frighten us because we are speaking our minds and telling the truth.”
Mrs O’Connor claimed members of her family had received threats, allegedly made from her dead son’s lost mobile.
“We got one on the day my son died and on the day of the funeral. Another brother got one on the night of the funeral to say my nephew was next... are they that sick?”
Appealing for no retaliation for her son’s murder, she said: “They are trying to provoke a reaction to justify Jo Jo’s murder, but it’s not going to happen.”
A Sinn Fein spokesperson said the party had not organised protests.
“There has been no campaign against the O’Connor family. The IRA has
denied involvement and Sinn Fein has called for calm. There is no reason
for republicans to get involved in such a campaign.”
A Cháirde,
I write to draw attention to a very dangerous event in Belfast last Friday October 13 - Joe O'Connor, a republican, was killed in Belfast.
His mother Margaret says the Provisional IRA were responsible: "They killed Joe because he would not toe their line and opposed them going into Stormont" (The Observer October 15 2000).
The Observer correspondent Henry McDonald says Joe O'Connor was a member of the Real IRA.
Joe O'Connor was a relative of Francisco Notarantonio, an innocent man killed by the Ulster Defence Association in 1987. Last month the British government Defence Minister Geoff Hoon tried to gag newspaper allegations that this killing was organised by British Intelligence agent brian Nelson to protect a high level IRA informer code named "Steak Knife". The Notarantonio family recently met Sinn Féin MP Gerry Adams in pursuit of their campaign for an enquiry into the Francisco Notarantonio killing.
After Joe O'Connor's murder Victor Notarantonio, Francisco's son, says "we always voted for Adams, but never again".
All the facts so far released about this killing back up Margaret O'Connor's statement.
It is essential to draw a line here - political differences among republicans are one thing, but killing political opponents must be rigorously and actively opposed. It is essential to mount a political defence of the elementary right to hold opinions that differ from the Provisional leadership. I understand the Irish Republican Writers' Group has called for an independent enquiry into the killing of Joe O'Connor - this should be supported.
Other political initiatives must also be taken - I call on independent activists to make their voices heard on this issue - support for the right to politically "dissent" should extend well beyond the very small number of people who agree with Joe O'Connor's criticisms of the provisional leadership.
Independent activists who support the GFA (or who may be sympathetic to aspects of it) have a particular duty to speak up at this time.
Nothing could be worse than the starting up of a military republican feud - now is the the essential time for political activists to speak up and act.
At the same time socialist, democratic, and republican political opponents of the GFA should point out that there is a hideous logic in this killing - the dangers of the situation were analysed in the article below, written in February 1999.
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An article critical of the Good Friday Agreement in The Red Banner magazine contained this warning :
"A more immediate worry is that the Provisionals will become unofficial police officers of potential dissidents. We know that the Official IRA played this role as they began to politically degenerate in the 1970's. There is now a pattern of incidents indicating the current IRA could go the same way." (Hard Truths after the Good Friday Agreement, Red Banner Number 3, November 1998)
Perhaps some readers doubted this pessimistic analysis - they might have considered the "visits" to the homes of several republican dissidents nothing to worry about; in any case the RIRA and its sympathisers deserved criticism and ostracism in the wake of the Omagh atrocity.
The case of Paddy Fox should focus people's minds. He is a recent victim of a Provisional kidnapping and beating.
Fox is a former IRA Volunteer who was sentenced to ten years' jail in 1992 for carrying an IRA bomb. Both his parents were killed by the loyalist paramilitary group the UVF as he began his jail term. Fox is linked by marriage to two other legendary Tyrone republican families; between the three families (the Foxes, the McKearneys and the Grews), eight members have lost their lives either as victims of Loyalists or at the hands of state forces while engaged in republican activity.
Paddy Fox went on the run in mid-January 1999, not from state forces or loyalists, but from the Provisionals.
He explained the reasons in an interview with Henry McDonald of "The Observer" (Irish Edition, January 31 1999). "I have no interest in talking to them (the IRA). I don't want to sit with a bag over my head for six hours. That seems to be the price of dissent inside the republican movement these days, or even worse".
Three masked men and a driver who was not disguised tried to snatch Fox near his home in Dungannon. Fox says the driver is "a local supporter of the Good Friday Agreement".
At 3 am on January 31 the Provisionals made a second successful kidnap attempt : six men snatched Fox from a Monaghan hotel. Although he was released battered and bruised hours later, Ed Moloney reports that ""Few in the family believe that but for the publicity surrounding a previous kidnap attempt he would possibly have suffered a worse fate" (Sunday Tribune, February 7 1999).
In his Observer interview Fox said that "this has to stop. People have the right to speak out and dissent". He himself "stayed in the party up the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, but now believes it is a sell-out of basic republican principles and that the IRA and Sinn Féin have signed up to a pro-unionist settlement".
A few days later all the major media outlets in Ireland ran with a story that the IRA had "admitted" (in a statement carried by the Sinn Féin weekly An Phoblacht/Republican News[AP/RN]) that some of its weapons had been stolen by republican dissidents. This appeared to be their response to the criticism building up among their own supporters of the Fox kidnapping. Three days earlier Maggie O''Kane reported a different assessment from an "IRA source": "This is nothing to do with Sinn Féin. I doubt if Adams or McGuinness (the SF MP's for West Belfast and Mid-Ulster) would have known much about it. The crackdown and the lifting of Paddy Fox is much more to do with the appointment of a new IRA chief of staff - they know there's going to be pressure to decommission so they have to come down hard on people like Paddy Fox. Tighten up the discipline. It looks bad for Sinn Féin but they don't give a fuck about that" (Guardian, February 1 1999)
No mention there of stealing arms - raising the justifiable suspicion that the IRA statement was a cowardly attempt to excuse the inexcusable. A "Tyrone source" confirmed to Ed Moloney that the kidnapping went down badly in the county and "smacked of Free Statism". [This is a reference to the despised supporters of the 1921 Treaty with Britain who set up a partitioned 26 County State "Free State", brutally suppressed republican opponents in the following Civil War, and abandoned the nationalist minority in the North-Eastern 6 Counties to decades of Unionist misrule].
All serious analysts know there is no real risk of a major republican armed campaign at the present time. However, such a thing would suit the various forces that have thrown so many resources into the "Peace Process". That is why we are reading hysterical Fleet Street reports of a possible dissident bombing campaign - aided and abetted, it has to be said, by a wretched Continuity IRA video of what looked like a grenade launcher, broadcast on British TV's Channel 4.
All this is an ironic inversion of the mainstream media's role during the IRA's armed campaign. Hostility to the provisionals in Ireland was so intense that both imposed and self-censorship flourished in most media outlets. The same forces - fear of being labelled as in favour of violence and seeing your career disappear - are at work in favour of the peace process. Most journalists give Sinn Féin leaders like Gerry Adams an easy ride over incidents like the Paddy Fox kidnapping, and muddle it up with dubious stories about the stealing of weapons.
Sinn Féin may even have made this a part of their strategy. When the IRA announced its August 1994 ceasefire, the journalist they used to convey the message to the world was Charlie Bird of the Irish State Broadcasting organisation RTÉ. A few years before Bird resigned from the journalists' union, the NUJ, after it announced it was challenging the Irish censorship legislation (Section 31) in European Courts.
The message was clear : the provos were going respectable and it was OK for respectable journalists to deal with them.
John Meehan, 9 February, 1999
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