Did the SNP Throw Glasgow NE?

So now we’ve had two Scottish by-elections in twelve months with suspected electoral fraud. And, if true, both perpetrated by the same party running the government of the United Kingdom.



It appears that Glasgow’s Labour-controlled Council added nearly 2,500 new voters to the electoral role in October alone. In addition, over 6,000 applications for postal votes were received. Postal votes are one of the easiest ways to commit electoral fraud in Britain.

It gets worse. From The Scotsman:

It emerged last night that police were called to two polling stations, St Dennis's and Alexandra Parade, yesterday, after voters arriving to cast their ballot were told their names had already been crossed off. The ballot boxes were handed over to the police, but the disputed ballots were still counted last night. Officials at Glasgow City Council said only three ballot papers were involved.

If things are as bad as they seem, Glasgow NE may turn out to be another Glenrothes, surely the most single minded act of political will in history. In case you have forgotten: a year ago, and with no assistance from any political party activists whatsoever, the good people of Glenrothes painstakingly filled out nearly 6,000 postal voting forms in the privacy of their own homes before carefully mailing them at their nearest letter box personally. The post office then conscientiously delivered them by normal mail to be counted on election day in the counting room. And, rather than reflecting the same spread of votes for all the parties reflected at the polling stations, every single one of them was for Labour.

Imagine that.

Humbled by the unanimity of the Glenrothes postal voters’ rejection, the SNP chose not to make a legal challenge at the time, thereby avoiding the accusation of sour grapes.

Or it may have been because the marked-up electoral register from the by-election went mysteriously ‘missing’ and, lacking a record of who had actually voted, it would have taken too long to prove what had happened and by which time nobody would have cared. Over a year since the by-election, it has still not been reconstructed.

The point is this: the SNP suspected Labour of massive electoral fraud at Glenrothes, but the hard evidence went missing.

Fast forward six months to May this year. The Commons Speaker Michael Martin resigns for expenses irregularities, and Glasgow is due another by-election. Having already proved that they could unseat Labour in Glasgow East in 2008, the SNP could afford to lose it. There was less to be gained from winning such a by-election at all costs, six months out from a UK general election in which Labour are facing annihilation. With Gordon Brown expected to hang on for as long as possible, an SNP victory would not have brought this day one second closer.

Think about it. In the coming UK election, the head of Scottish Labour – the present UK Government – will be removed from its shoulders regardless of how many seats the SNP wins at Westminster in May. After the election, UK Labour will be an irrelevance, regardless of how many seats it has on the opposition benches.

And regardless of whether London is ‘dancing to a Scottish jig’ or ‘hung by a Scottish rope’ after May 2010 – even if the SNP wins every single Scottish seat in Westminster – Scotland would still be no nearer getting its referendum over the line. In fact, if the SNP starts calling the shots in a hung Tory government, the present constitutional arrangement may well start to look remarkably beneficial for Scotland.

Which might make it preferable for many to independence.

So, what am I saying? That the SNP deliberately threw the Glasgow NE by-election?

No. But they did certainly did not throw everything at it.

Until independence, the SNP main game will be the referendum. It needs four things for it to succeed: a Holyrood budget to fund it, the parliament to allow it to happen, a cleaned-up electoral system for a fair run at it and, of course, the political will of the Scottish people to vote for it.

When the Glasgow NE By-election was called, SNP was faced with a dilemma: fight Labour tooth and nail for several grueling months for a by-election that changes nothing, or put up a high profile candidate with enough credibility to once more draw out Labour’s suspected electoral fraud machine, which would be mobilised to make damn sure Labour did not lose its second safest seat.

The SNP strategists knew Labour would fight dirty. A hard-won by-election would have sapped the SNP of funds with no return on investment other than being one voice louder on Westminster’s opposition benches for the next six months. In the event, Salmond chose to keep his powder dry for the referendum, running a by-the-numbers by-election and saving party funds for when it mattered. David Kerr was the bait and Labour took it.

Whole.

Kerr should feel no sense of shame or failure for how he performed. He may even be aware of why he was running. He is certainly no fool.

In the event, Labour won by 8,111 votes over the SNP’s 4,120. The irony being that electoral fraud – if indeed it was committed – was unnecessary, and Labour might have still won had they chosen to campaign cleanly. Or, at least, by only telling outright lies and utter fabrications about the SNP record in Glasgow.

So what was the point of all this?

The Scottish Government desperately wants to clean up the Scottish electoral system before the referendum on independence. However long it takes. With the evidence now gathered from possibly the second fraudulent by-election in twelve months, steps can now be taken to neutralise Labour’s suspected electoral fraud machine in Scotland.

Unless another marked-up electoral register going missing.

The Scotland-UK Coalition of Unionist Propagandists (SUKCUP)

The campaign by the Scotland-UK Coalition of Unionist Propagandists (SUKCUP) to discredit the Scottish Government for its compassionate release of Mohmed Al-Megrahi continues apace.

First we had The Herald telling us that the whisky industry would collapse as a result.

Then we had Glen Campbell's BBC Scotland coverage of the release exposed as partisan and rabidly anti-SNP.

Imagine the surprise.

Continuing the pattern, last week The Scotsman ran with this piece on Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill. Apparently, his criticism of Labour hypocrisy on the matter was somehow deemed to be taunting the families of the Lockerbie dead. The Sun would be proud.

Then just yesterday, and plumbing new depths in so-called Scottish journalism, The Scotsman reported that ‘Megrahi outlives six other criminals released on compassionate grounds.’

Think about what this last one means.

Somewhere in The Scotsman offices there is a journalist with a computer spreadsheet listing all the prisoners released on compassionate grounds from Scottish prisons, alongside the number of days since they were released. Each time one of them dies, Al-Megrahi moves up the list and this journalist punches the air and shouts ‘Yes!’, exchanging ecstatic thumbs-up with his boss in the corner.

The SUKCUP minions are now praying he lives as long as possible, if only to prove the Scottish government was incompetent in its decision to release him. Preferably not long enough to clear his name, but maybe just till the referendum, when his on-going ability to breathe will no doubt be useful as an argument against independence.

This continuing campaign on Al-Megrahi got me wondering. Given all these dire predictions about what would happen to us as a result of the release, just how has the decision affected Scotland?

First, and contrary to widespread expectations, it would appear not to have led to US carpet-bombing of Scotland with B52s after all.

Nor, apart from the FoxNews whack-job minority, has it led to much animosity towards Scotland in the US. In fact Susan Boyle seems to be doing just fine.

Nor indeed has it led to a US boycott of Scottish goods. Luckily, no one knows the oil is ours. (Just think how much we would have lost if it were. Whew.) Similarly, our salmon is still in huge demand, and Scotch whisky sales have not plummeted. Considering that the majority of export whisky sales are to non-US markets – with France our biggest customer and China our fastest growing market – this should come as no surprise.

Not that business should have anything to do with such matters. Those worried about the whisky industry should be more concerned about London-based multinationals closing their Scottish whisky plants. The whole Diageo saga - and many others like it - might have been averted had Scotland been independent and able to offer concrete tax benefits for corporations to remain in Scotland. But I digress.

The point is this: not one of the their predictions has come to pass, and yet it continues.

So what is going on?

If it wasn’t clear before it should be now: the distress the SUKCUP flunkies felt most about Al-Megrahi’s release was not that the Scottish Government made a bad call and released a convicted bomber, nor that it didn’t do as the White House demanded and let him rot, not even that it forced UK Labour’s Scottish branch into mental contortions as it condemned what its London masters secretly desired in order to close Tony Blair's dodgy deal in the desert.

As we knew all along, the true source of their discomfort was the fact that the decision was left to Scotland at all.

Once you understand this thinking it all makes sense. You realise that had the decision gone the other way, we would now be getting regular updates on the health of a dying man in Greenock Prison, the Scottish Government would have been portrayed as callous Presbyterians lacking in compassion, but simultaneously labelled as weak for having caved into US pressure to keep him locked up.

That’s the problem with the Scottish Unionist media: they’ve forgotten how to think for themselves. Servitude and obsequious grovelling to London, combined with knee-jerk opposition to everything the Scottish Government does solves every problem.

What these gits don’t get is that fewer and fewer people are listening. If the answer to everything is simply ‘it's the nationalist government of Scotland wot did it,’ people anticipate what you’re going to say before you open your mouth, compensate in advance and work it out for themselves.

It's not working any more.



Coming soon: the Federal UK Coalition of Unionist Patriots.

Nine Ways to Stop Scotland Breaking Free

As Scotland’s minister for the Constitution, Mike Russell’s job is to deliver a successful independence referendum in late 2010. This will not be easy. In the second part of this series, we look at what he will be up against, and what tactics PM-to-be David Cameron might use to hold together what’s left of the remnant of Empire we call the UK of GB & NI.


Over the next two years, the fate of Scotland will be decided in the following three polls:


A. The next British General Election on or before June 3rd, 2010.

B. The planned referendum on Scottish independence, planned for late 2010, and

C. The next Scottish parliamentary elections on May 5th 2011 - if indeed there is still a devolved Scottish parliament by that date: if the above referendum goes ahead and is successful, there won’t be any more elections for a devolved Scottish parliament. The electoral cycle for a newly independent free and democratic Scotland will have begun.


Getting a referendum bill through the Scottish Parliament will be no easy matter. It will be met by the full arsenal of British Unionist resistance: the combined opposition of the British Unionist parties in Edinburgh (Labour, Tory and LibDem), the relentless pro-Union bias of the foreign-owned Scottish media, the death throws of the out-going Labour administration in London, the continued surreptitious spoiling tactics of Britain’s faceless minions in Whitehall, and the full might of the next Tory government at Westminster with its massive English majority.

But now that Labour is facing annihilation at the next British election, surely the task facing Scottish nationalists becomes simpler? Won’t there be a Scottish backlash against the Tories, once they take power at Westminster?

You would think so, but we can’t write off Labour yet. Their plan is to hang on long enough to fire off their last deadly Parthian shot: proportional representation in UK elections. With the prospect of at least a dozen years in power, the Tories will oppose it, but Gordon Brown (or his unelected Labour successor) will push it through as the only thing standing between his party and utter oblivion.

How will this affect Scotland? The referendum is the key, but with an impotent Tory administration in Westminster (as a result of a new PR system), there might not be the backlash against the Union that the SNP is counting on in the coming referendum.

The signs are indeed ominous, and Scottish nationalists might be getting a strong sense of déjà vu. Haven’t we been here before? For those too young to remember, current events bear more than a passing resemblance to 1979, with the SNP calling for the dissolution of the British parliament, Scotland being dragged down by the UK’s increasingly precarious finances, the IMF breathing down the British Government's neck, the Labour Party on the ropes, the Tories waiting in the wings of Westminster, and a referendum on Scottish nationalism in the pipeline.

When the '79 referendum was finally held, Scotland voted YES in a contrived question that would have granted an almost meaningless form of devolution, only to be told the answer was NO on a trumped-up technicality.

It was Europe that eventually forced London to concede real devolution to Scotland via another referendum in 1997 after – despite Tony Blair’s claims of spontaneous generosity – a secret group of Scottish nationalists had pointed out to Council of Europe diplomats that Brussels was in no position to dictate forms of democracy to Eastern Europe when those self-same forms were being denied within Scotland. London was promptly told to get its house in order. Quickly.

It was the supreme irony of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. Having lobbied for full EU membership for the emerging democratic states of Eastern Europe (to counter attempts by the French-German axis to create a ‘United States of Europe’) her actions led to Scottish nationalists then using her success to seek the same levels of democracy, levels she had been so instrumental in preventing in Scotland.

So what can we expect this time around? Another loaded question in a fixed-up referendum? Twenty more wasted years? What tactics will the combined might of the British establishment use this time to hang on to Scotland for the few remaining years it needs to extract the last of her oil?

To answer this question, and to anticipate the desperate Unionist rearguard action about to be unleashed on Scotland, I’ve decided to put myself in David Cameron’s shoes - assuming he wins the next election. What follows is a step-by-step battle plan, ready to roll for the newly elected Prime Minister of this morally and financially bankrupt British state:

1. Announce English votes for English laws. This should head off English demands for devolution and act as a good band-aid for the inherent unfairness of England not having her own parliament.

2. Make ‘Respect for Scotland’ the Tory mantra north of the border. Buy off the Scottish elites and nationalist-leaning Scottish entrepreneurs with knighthoods and peerages. Move some of the nuclear subs from Scotland to ports in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Re-form the Scottish regiments. Divide et impere.

3. Strict Scottish media management. Control the flow of all non-internet information. Pull the plug on award-winning Newsnight Scotland. Encourage pseudo-intellectual Scottish writers to attack the idea of Alex Salmond’s ‘arc of prosperity’ while ignoring the stunning success story of Norway (1), the closest match to Scotland, and the complete meltdown that is UK Inc. Continue to support blanket pro-Union media coverage via the BBC and the Scottish press. Spoon-feed ‘lobby journalists’ with inside stories, ostracising any journalist – English or Scots – with nationalist leanings. Increase funding to BBC Scotland for pro-Union news and current affairs programming. This could never happen in England, but with Scotland’s well-established, anti-SNP, rabidly pro-Union press and media, it would be business as usual, with a new piper calling the tune.

4. Derail economic arguments for full Scottish independence. Avoid granting full fiscal autonomy, allowing instead the Calman Commission recommendations on Scottish government borrowing. Then go further and announce a fair share of all taxes raised on oil revenues will now be paid directly to Scotland, proportional to its current ratio of the UK population: 8.5%. (2) The nationalist Scottish Government will appear greedy as it condemns the niggardliness of the windfall while spending it on hospitals, roads and schools. The Scottish people will probably settle for this as an acceptable result, allowing the British Government keep the rest for IMF repayments, more London infrastructure, the Olympics and the replacement of Trident.

5. Form an unholy alliance with Labour in Scotland to get access to its up-and-running electoral fraud machine. They too will be playing an end game for their survival as a party, just as you will be for the British state. They will hope to stage a comeback from their old Scottish heartland, and will be willing to try almost anything. Imaginary Scottish Labour supporters voting for the Union in a referendum are better than real ones.

6. Once all this is in place, announce a British-run referendum on Scottish independence to take place before the Scottish Government one, with the pretext that you want to make sure it is run fairly, being such an important issue.

7. Make the referendum question loaded, something along the lines of: ‘Should Scotland break all ties and separate from the rest of Great Britain, or remain within the United Kingdom?’ YES – break all ties; NO – remain in the United Kingdom. The psychology of this is that most referendums tend to vote ‘No’, regardless of the issue, when it is contrived as a vote for the status quo. (3)

8. Hold the referendum on a work day or, even better, a holiday weekend so that the aged and unemployed – those currently dependent on British government handouts – will be over-represented, and more independent professional people will be too busy to vote, or away on holiday. (4)

9. Once the NO vote occurs – as it surely will if all these steps are taken – declare the matter of Scottish independence closed for a generation, at least until well past peak oil, when an asset-stripped Scotland can finally be cut loose.


In this way, despite the unprecedented levels of autonomy granted to Scotland, you, David Cameron, will still be able to claim that you are Prime Minister of a UK that includes the land and seas of Scotland. The UK will then retain its relative importance within Europe, its geopolitical importance in the world, and its seats on the UN Security Council, G8, and NATO, allowing you to continue with the myth that Britain is still a world power.(5)

This will also give your government continued access to 91.5% of Scotland’s oil revenues, essential if bankrupt Britain is to have any chance at all of paying off the unprecedented levels of debt accrued on the watch of your predecessor, the unelected Scottish Unionist Prime Minister, James Gordon Brown.





UPDATE
Brown signals end to ‘first past the post’ voting at Westminster



References

(1) “On the government's estimates, the [2009 Norwegian Government] surplus will more than halve as a share of GDP from 18.9% to 7.4%. That would still be a remarkably good outcome in comparison with the budgetary problems being faced in other European countries, although it is also dependent to some extent on the revised macroeconomic assumptions underlying the forecast.”
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13709932

(2) The current proportion of the UK population living in Scotland is 8.5%, taking Scotland’s latest population as 5,144,200, and the UK as 60,943,912.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/uk.html
http://www.scotland.org/about/fact-file/population/

(3) This has been the case in Australia, where the option for change has always been tied to the YES choice in any referendum. In this way only 8 out of 44 referendums have been carried since Federation in 1901.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Australia

(4) Labour tried this in Glasgow East in 2008 and still lost. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7522153.stm

(5) Jack Straw revealed the true value of Scotland to the UK during BBC Question Time, September 28 2006: “A broken-up United Kingdom would not be in the interests of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but especially not England. Our voting power in the European Union would diminish. We'd slip down in the world league GDP tables. Our case for staying in the G8 would diminish and there could easily be an assault on our permanent seat in the UN Security Council.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/5388078.stm

Free and Fair Elections in Scotland

As Scotland’s minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, Mike Russell’s job is to deliver a successful independence referendum in late 2010. This will not be easy. In the first part of this series, we look at some of the obstacles that lie in his way as he charts the path for Scotland out of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The UK Situation

As she stands today, Scotland is still part of the UK, which has so far refused to hand over the running of Scotland’s elections to Holyrood. Scotland must therefore continue to endure Britain’s easily corruptible electoral system, which has already been the subject of an investigation by the Council of Europe.

Against protests from the British Government, two representatives arrived in February 2007 to investigate claims of fraudulent aspects of the UK electoral system. They spent two days meeting a cross section of people with first hand experience of the true extent of British electoral fraud: representatives from the Electoral Commission, Amnesty International, the Police, the Electoral Reform Commission, and members of the judiciary, among others.

In its report of January 2008, the EU’s Venice Commission concluded (1) that:

• Handling of postal votes by party activists must stop.
• The “arcane” system of household voter registration must go.
• "It is still childishly simple to register bogus voters on the voters’ list”.
• "The use of postal voting is the key to using these bogus voter identities to vote. It’s not so easy in polling stations.
• “None of the 2006 changes to the electoral code (2) addressed the vulnerability of electoral fraud by means of bogus entries on the voters register”.
• The outcome of a general election can still be changed by these means, if a party is sufficiently organized.
• “the checking of personal identifiers on 100% of the returned postal ballots [should be] made mandatory by law in all of Great Britain before the next elections take place.”
• “Countering the public perception that electoral fraud was widespread was an important objective in its own right.”

Interestingly, they noted that the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act of 2002 rendered Northern Ireland’s system vastly superior to that of the mainland, principally by the use of rigid identity checking at both voter registration and actual voting. [Note: without ID cards.]

The report then went further, questioning “the reluctance, or even refusal, of the current British government to introduce individual voter registration with personal identifiers, despite strong recommendations to the contrary by the Electoral Commission.”

Astonishingly, given the weight and number of findings, the Council of Europe still declined to initiate mandatory electoral monitoring of future UK elections:

“Despite the vulnerabilities in the [British] electoral system, there is no doubt that elections in the United Kingdom are conducted democratically and represent the free expression of the will of the British people … We can therefore not recommend opening a monitoring procedure with respect of the United Kingdom.”

So even though they had met with people who had provided clear evidence of systematic electoral fraud - and there were criminal convictions on the public record - their conclusion was that the electoral loopholes had not been sufficiently exploited to be a concern, UK elections were essentially free and fair, and no monitoring of the UK’s elections would take place.

In other words, a whitewash. A slap on the wrist at most.

Was a commitment given by the UK government to avoid a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon in return for a lenient finding? Or a threat made to hold one if the findings were unsavoury?

What we can be sure of, after the democratic travesty of Glenrothes, is that the Labour Party has not changed its ways and indeed has no intention of eliminating electoral fraud before the next general election.

Notes

1. Opinion of the Electoral Law of the United Kingdom (Venice Commission), Opinion no. 436 / 2007, Strasbourg, Jan 9, 2008. http://www.assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2008/electoral_fraud_UK_E.pdf

2. UK Electoral Administration Act, 2006 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060022_en_1

Is Salmond Up To It?

Compare if you will the Ireland of 1798 to that of 1920. Or the India of 1857 with 1947. The rebellions on the earlier dates (1798 & 1857) were doomed to fail, taking on a British Empire at the peak of its power. The latter dates (1920 & 1947) were the culminations of successfully orchestrated struggles, using concerted colony-wide campaigns of obstruction and resistance to disable Britain’s ability to rule each region.

Both colonies were ultimately successful at gaining independence, although by very different means. Both of Ireland’s rebellions were violent. In contrast, after the suppression of the 1857 rebellion, Indians realised they could not leave the Empire by force of arms and eventually adopted Gandhi’s policy of non-violent resistance.

In contrast, the successful twentieth century rebellions were both begun while Britain was engaged in fights for its very existence.

This is again the case today.

Britain is now undergoing the worst financial disaster in its history. Its self-appointed political super-class has managed to mire the pseudo-state in unprecedented and almost unimaginable levels of debt. Its banking system is falling apart at the seams with a run expected on sterling, hyperinflation a possibility, and talk of the IMF intervening.

Make no mistake, Britain is on the ropes.

If there ever was a right time for Scotland to walk out of this Union, this is surely it.

The question is this: is Alex Salmond is up to the task of leading her out?

Because if Whitehall tries to delay, prevent, annul, or nobble Scotland’s independence referendum - as it almost certainly will - there may well be a groundswell of popular democratic outrage, but if the moment is not seized, the opportunity will be missed altogether.

We all know Alex loves a curry, but is he up to being Scotland’s Gandhi?

MI5 in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland was on a path to peace and prosperity until someone recently had other ideas. This post seeks to discover who is behind the current bloodshed and to determine their strategy. It asks the question ‘why now?’ and argues that the British government itself might be pulling the strings.

It was with great sadness that I read of the first security force members to be killed in Ulster since 1997. At this terrible time, my thoughts are with the grieving families and friends of the men who died. I remember when a close family member was killed there in the 1970s, and how it shattered the lives of everyone who knew him – his mother, wife, young children, brothers and sisters.

We can only hope the war-weary people of the Province keep cool heads and avoid escalating this to another pointless cycle of tit-for-tat revenge.

I say I was saddened to hear about the deaths, but I was certainly not surprised. Let me tell you why.

If Northern Ireland can stay on the path to peace, it would surely be only a matter of time before a peaceful Ulster begins to build more substantial ties with Dublin. Whether because the loyalists look over the border and see a more prosperous Ireland, or because the IRA’s American donors dried up after September 11 (1), paramilitaries from both sides have taken concrete steps to retreat from the brink. Nearly two years ago, Protestant groups declared that they were renouncing violence(2), and the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) reported six months ago that “[the Provisional IRA’s] Army Council by deliberate choice is no longer operational or functional.”(3) The IMC’s next report in November 2008 went so far as to say that the “people [in Northern Ireland] are generally confident that there will not be a return to the former troubles.” (4)

The Provisional IRA knows that peace on both sides of the border is a necessary precondition for unification to occur. Given time, they would seem to be happy to wait till the two regions drift together in peaceful coexistence and prosperity. They are in no doubt whatsoever that if the killing times return the troops would be back on the streets, and Ulster’s ties to London would be re-established for another thirty years, by virtue of the troop presence alone.

The tone of British press has been predictably superficial: that the murders are the acts of “cornered animal” paramilitaries whose thuggish existence is threatened by a successful peace process.(5)

Threatened by peace after twelve years of peace? Something doesn’t add up. What on earth is driving these fringe republicans back to violence?

Things have been underway for some time. First, in a spectacularly provocative move, it was quietly arranged that MI5 would take back the counter-terrorism activities of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the bipartisan police force that succeeded the RUC as a result of Good Friday Agreement of 1998. MI5 is deeply despised by the nationalist population, and stands accused by Sinn Fein of collusion with loyalist death-squads.(6) With no official announcement, the handover occurred on October 10, 2007. Word got out that it was happening and the wisdom of the move was seriously questioned in the weeks before the handover – not only by nationalist politicians, but by the local NI Police Ombudsman and the Policing Board.(7)

As Margaret Gilmore, Senior Research Fellow at the British security think-tank Royal United Services Institute reported a year ago:

“The PSNI has been responsible for national security in the province. But on 10 October 2007, the police relinquished that responsibility, passing it instead [back] to MI5. The handover took place without any official document… That apparently innocuous yet historic document has never been published and even getting anyone to talk about the shift is extremely difficult.”(8)

She goes on to highlight a stark difference in the way MI5 would operate to its predecessors:

“MI5 is also uncompromising on the thorny issue of how much of its work will focus on republican dissidents and how much on loyalists. Security sources admit MI5 officers in Northern Ireland will focus almost exclusively on republican dissident groups that they deem a threat to national security, while they believe loyalist dissidents are more a law and order/serious crime problem, and thus should be dealt with by the police.”(9)

So MI5 took back surveillance activities of terrorist activities from the police force created by the Good Friday Agreement, but only to monitor dissident republican groups? Understandably, this caused a huge outcry of resentment among the nationalist population. Who would be protecting them? In the four and a half years up to the October 2007 handover, the civilian murder rate by loyalist paramilitary groups was almost twice that by dissident republican groups.(10) Loyalist groups still retain their arms caches to this day.(11)

Not long after the decision to redeploy MI5 was taken, the fires were stoked still further: two months later, MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans cut the ribbon on the Service’s new £20million office in Ulster, easily its biggest regional office outside its Thames House facility in London. The size of the facility caught many in Northern Ireland off guard and caused yet more alarm among local politicians.(12)

Its purpose was not immediately apparent. By February 2008, it was revealed: far more than a regional surveillance office, it would be a second headquarters for MI5, capable of relocating 400 staff in the event of a terrorist attack in London. As Jamie Doward wrote in the Observer at the time: “The opening of the base is in danger of widening rifts in Northern Ireland. (13)

Dolores Kelly of the Northern Ireland Policing board summarised the danger the new centre presented:

“We worked hard for two years to get agreement around two ground-breaking accountability mechanisms which made possible a new beginning in policing – the Policing Board and the Police Ombudsman. MI5 operates outside the control of these mechanisms and as far as the ordinary public and voters are concerned it is a law unto itself. Whose national security they are going to protect? Certainly all through our dirty war, they were curiously blind to the threat coming from the loyalist community. The British Government declared more than a decade ago that it had “no selfish or strategic interest in Northern Ireland”, but clearly this is no longer the case given the massive spy centre they have built at Holywood.”(14)

The new facility is therefore a clear signal that Britain is renewing its strategic interest in the Province, and nationalist politicians can no longer make the case to the fringe elements of the republican paramilitaries that the peace process will lead to a united Ireland.

The change of policy had the desired result. Surveillance indicated an immediate surge in activity among dissident republican groups who actively began to recruit.(15) Several police officers were wounded in fifteen attacks in seventeen months.(16) Republican political leaders struggled desperately to calm the situation.

Meanwhile, the Catholic nationalist populations' simmering sense of betrayal was maintained and nurtured by MI5’s continuous surveillance of republican communities, while offering not one iota of protection from loyalist paramilitary groups. MI5 have been operating completely beyond the reach of any Northern Ireland government oversight(17), their very presence a violation of the Good Friday Agreement and everything it sought to achieve.

Two months ago, intelligence showed the government campaign of sustained covert nationalist provocation might finally bear fruit. An announcement was made by Evans that trouble was expected, and that the threat from dissident Irish Republican groups had “significantly increased in recent months”.(18)

To ensure the threat was consummated, the tension was ratcheted up one more notch. The masterstroke was on March 6th when, apparently to counter the imminent threat, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) were deployed, a composite unit drawing men from the SAS and other special forces regiments. This group had a fearsome reputation in Northern Ireland and would also report to MI5 command directly. Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, was forthright in his condemnation of their deployment:

"The history of the North has shown that many of these forces have been as much a danger to the community as any other group.” (19)

The rest, as they say, is history. Two days later, sappers Mark Quinsey and Cengiz Azimkar were killed at Massareene army base after stepping out to pay for a pizza delivery. The same weekend, PSNI officer Stephen Carrol was killed on night patrol in Craigavon.

This is the security background to the recent murders, the blame for which must be laid squarely at the feet of the British Government. By its actions over the past 17 months, Whitehall has sent a clear message to the dissident republican paramilitaries that the Provisional IRA has been foolish to negotiate with the UK, that the peace process will not lead to a united Ireland, and that Britain is reasserting its strategic interest in the Province. The recent murders were the end result of careful planning by key people in the UK government, elected or otherwise, who by sustained incendiary measures have repeatedly poured fuel on the dying embers of Irish republican violence to incite fringe groups to attack the security services. Regardless of whether outside observers find these actions sufficiently provocative, the point is surely that the dissident paramilitaries of Northern Ireland evidently did.

And so it begins again.

Orwellian doublespeak seems to be the rhetorical device of choice. Protestant leaders have stated that “the attack vindicated the police decision to call on the army intelligence specialists” (20); while the Sunday Herald described the predictable knee-jerk reaction of the authorities:

“Police estimate there are around 300 dissident republicans intent on wrecking the Northern Irish peace process. They claim to have identified many of them and say they are moving to put them behind bars,”(21)

and the Daily Mail is openly canvassing its readers about whether the troops should be sent back to Northern Ireland to restore peace.(22)

So why now? And who is behind this? The candidates who stand to gain the most are:

1. Hardline Ulster Unionists who believe that the peace process will lead to the reunification of Ireland.

2. An unpopular British government with low standing in the polls, needing to be seen acting with resolve in a crisis.

3. MI5 bosses facing budget reductions if Irish operations are wound down completely. As a percentage of its total budget, Irish republican counterterrorism is already down from 23% three years ago to just 17% a year ago.(23)

4. Elements of the British establishment who feel - like Jack Straw - that Britain’s seat on the UN Security Council would be jeapardised if its territory were in any way diminished.

Mr. Straw unwisely let the last cat out of the bag in 2006 when asked about Scotland. His answer was clear and unambiguous:

“A broken-up United Kingdom would not be in the interests of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but especially not England. Our voting power in the European Union would diminish. We'd slip down in the world league GDP tables. Our case for staying in the G8 would diminish and there could easily be an assault on our permanent seat in the UN Security Council.”(24)

So here we have a coincidence of interest between the party in power, its unelected leader, those who wish to maintain Britain’s structural integrity and global standing, the British security services, and the hardline element of the local loyalist population.

The strategy has clearly been to provoke dissident republican paramilitaries into violence, the goal being to recreate and sustain a level of bloodshed sufficient to justify a return of the troops to the streets in a de facto occupation.

A further goal, and I’m possibly crediting whoever is behind this with more foresight than they deserve, is to remobilise the feral ranks of Scottish Unionism, increasing the tension steadily until 2010 when a resurgent body of Unionist flag-waving bigots can sway the looming referendum on independence London’s way.

Think about it: if Scotland becomes independent, England and Wales plus Northern Ireland would be a strange beast indeed. The Province’s main cultural links lie with Ireland to the south and via Ulster’s historical, religious, linguistic and cultural connections to Scotland farther north. Of the other three nations of the United Kingdom, England would be the country farthest from Ulster, and with the least in common. Perhaps Ulster might even end up being jointly administered in friendship by an independent Scotland and Ireland together, to assuage Ulstermen’s fiery pride.

Whatever happens, the point is this: if London loses Scotland, so too probably Ulster. But if the Troubles can be rekindled, Ulster would be held by the presence of British troops alone, while Scotland – the real prize in this great game with the leverage she gives to England’s world power status – might be held by a sense of ethic and religious solidarity with her beleaguered neighbour. Scotland would still be British soil, held by the “acceptable level of violence” across the North Channel in Ulster.(25)

Two birds with one stone.

Whatever the reason, the resumption of violence in Northern Ireland has become Britain’s strategy to retain the Province. Especially now that Tony Blair, so crucial in steering the Good Friday agreement through, is out of the way. Rogue forces within the British government are now free to unravel what he helped achieve. (26)

His successor Gordon Brown has himself been directly and heavily involved with current Northern Ireland policy. The Times reports:

“He taken an increased interest in the past year, with several visits to Northern Ireland. When the peace process hit trouble over policing towards the end of last year Mr Brown spent much of one week deeply involved.”(27)

But surely Britain could never afford another major troop deployment to Ulster? Isn’t the UK almost bankrupt?

Apparently so, but street patrols in Northern Ireland do not require the vast supporting infrastructure of a remote foreign war. Most of the expense would be fuel for vehicles, surveillance, and in soldiers’ wages, which are due whether the soldiers are sitting on their backsides in their barracks or patrolling the streets of Belfast. Nor would the conflict need heavy artillery or advanced weapon systems. What passes as inadequate equipment in the Middle East will do perfectly well for Northern Ireland. British troops returning from Iraq will be available just in time.

And, of course, an army’s wage bill isn’t so hard to meet when you’re printing money by the truckload, as the British government plans to do.

The British strategy is already paying dividends. A weekend poll showed that after his visit to Northern Ireland, Gordon Brown and the Labour Party have begun to climb in the polls.(28)

And this week the Belfast Telegraph reports that, after two years of cutbacks, MI5 has at last been successful in getting its budget increase approved:

“MI5 is preparing to boost spending on intelligence activities in Northern Ireland in an effort to track down a hardcore of Republican extremists committed to violence. The Security Minister, Lord West of Spithead, said the security services' budget for the province would be reassessed.”(29)

More staff have already been dispatched to the new facility.(30) Perhaps the increased budget and personnel will allow MI5 to monitor the loyalist paramilitary groups now too. They have some catching up to do. After ignoring them for so long, they will have no idea of their activities, or when or where they will strike.

Expect a great deal of violence from both sides before this fire is put out. You can be certain that whoever is behind it will do whatever it takes to keep it smouldering.

How to Stop This?

It is quite clear that the British government has done its level best to provoke this violence. It is therefore a matter of the utmost urgency that Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox demand answers from Defence Secretary John Hutton on the following:

1. Do you have any idea what MI5 has been doing in Northern Ireland for the past 17 months?

2. What and when did MI5 hear about these IRA dissident groups’ plans?

3. What security measures were taken in response?

4. What knowledge, if any, does MI5 have of the activities of Ulster's paramilitary groups?

5. What, if any, security resources have been allocated to monitor future activities of Ulster paramilitary groups?

References

(1) Kaya Burgess, “9/11 attacks ‘helped to secure peace in Northern Ireland’,” TimesOnline, October 18, 2008. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4965700.ece

(2) Mary Jordan, “N. Ireland Protestant Group Vows to Renounce Violence”, Washington Post, May 4, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050302321.html

(3) From the Nineteenth Report from the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) of Northern Ireland. IMC Report#19, © Crown Copyright 2008, Sep 3, 2008, p8 http://www.independentmonitoringcommission.org/documents/uploads/ACF1599.pdf

(4) The Twentieth Report from the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) of Northern Ireland also recommended that it was time for the complete devolution of policing and justice. IMC Report #20, © Crown Copyright 2008, p32 http://www.independentmonitoringcommission.org/documents/uploads/Twentieth%20Report.pdf

(5) “Northern Ireland terrorists are like a 'cornered animal'”, claims Sir Hugh Orde,” TimesOnline (no author), March 15, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5912123.ece

(6) Jerry Adams, “No room for MI5 in the North”, November 9, 2006, http://cryptome.info/mi5-out-ni.htm

(7) Margaret Gilmore, ‘MI5 in Northern Ireland,’ Monitor, March, 2008, p7 https://www.rusi.org

(8) Ibid.

(9) Ibid., p8. My emphasis.

(10) Between March 1, 2003 and August 31, 2007, there were 13 verified loyalist murders of civilians, versus 5 verified republican murders. None of those killed were members of the security forces. IMC Report #20, Op. Cit., © Crown Copyright 2008, p18

(11) Dan Keenan & Gerry Moriarty, “Time running out for UDA and UVF to decommission”, Irish Times, March 16, 2009 https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0205/1233787117494.html

(12) Gilmore, Op. Cit., p6

(13) Jamie Doward, “MI5 plan to use Belfast bunker in emergency,” Observer, February 24, 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/24/uksecurity.northernireland

(14) Gilmore, Op. Cit., p8

(15) IMC Report #20, Op. Cit., © Crown Copyright 2008, Nov 10, 2008, p5

(16) John F. Burns, ‘Irish Assault Raises Specter of Brutal Day,’ New York Times, March 8, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09ulster.html?_r=1

(17) The MI5 website says that “The Prime Minister is responsible for the UK intelligence machinery as a whole,” but that “The Home Secretary is regularly briefed by the Director General, who is directly accountable to him.” MI5 is not accountable in any way to the local security structure put in place following the Good Friday Agreement.

(18) Joseph Daily, “Dissident IRA Threat on the Rise: Most people think it's all over in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately it is not,” WorldNetDaily, January 13, 2009. https://www.wnd.com/2009/01/86031/

(19) David Sharrock, “Row breaks out over return of Army to fight splinter IRA terrorists,” TimesOnLine, March 6, 2009. Sharrick reports: “The regiment’s expertise lies in intelligence gathering and surveillance. Special forces, including the SAS, were withdrawn from Northern Ireland after the paramilitary ceasefires in 1997.”

(20) John F. Burns, New York Times. Ibid.

(21) Chris Watt, “Petrol bombs on Ulster’s streets as police arrest five,” Sunday Herald, March 17, 2009.

(22) MailOnLine Debate: Should the Government send more troops to Northern Ireland?

(23) Gilmore, Op. Cit., p6

(24) Jack Straw, BBC Question Time, September 28 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/5388078.stm

(25) A term first used in December 1971 by Reginald Maudling, then British Home Secretary. https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/glossary.htm

(26) One of the few things Tony Blair can be said to have helped achieve. As the Downing Street Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell noted, “the heroes of this story are Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and the party leaders in Northern Ireland”.” From Max Hastings’ review of “Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland,” TimesOnLine, March 23, 2008.

(27) Michael Evans, Philip Webster and David Sharrock, “Northern Ireland shootings: MI5's response,” TimesOnLine, March 11, 2009.

(28) Reuters UK, “Brown cuts opposition opinion poll lead,” March 18, 2009. https://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKTRE52G35D20090317

(29) David McKittrick, “Police 'making progress' in hunt for gunmen who killed soldiers,” Belfast Telegraph, March 10, 2009. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/police-making-progress-in-hunt-for-gunmen-who-killed-soldiers-28469992.html

(30) Evans, Webster and Sharrock, Op. Cit.