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AN OPEN LETTER TO KEIR STARMER
Keir a chara,
Congratulations on your election as British Prime Minister. I wish you well in the many challenges facing you and your government. The world is very divided at this time with many violent examples of injustice, poverty, hunger and violence. I hope you will use your office in a positive and progressive way. From the Middle East to get ceasefires and stop the genocide against the people of Palestine to Ukraine and other troubled places.
The last time the British Labour Party was in Downing Street, Ireland was one of those places.
Now the conflict in Ireland has ended but many of the underlying causes remain. Your predecessor Tony Blair played a leading role in the effort to bring peace. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was the result of his efforts and An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, most of the local parties and President Bill Clinton with the support of others in the international community.
Tony Blair told me once that he could not have done what he did in Ireland except in the first heady days of his premiership. I believe that. This is why I am writing to you so soon after you take up office and before the system and the pressures of other challenges distract you from your obligations to deliver on commitments on Ireland.
Your election has created an opportunity to implement the Good Friday Agreement fully, to repair the damage done by fourteen years of Tory rule and to create a better relationship with the people of Ireland represented by the Irish Government and the Northern Executive.
I note you describe yourself as a unionist. This is unfortunate. It is your union, not ours. The Good Friday Agreement has set out the way to end the union if that is what the people decide. You are obliged to uphold this and to uphold the Good Friday Agreement by ensuring that its political, legal, and constitutional guarantees are respected and implemented.
As a co-guarantor of the Agreement the British Government must embrace principles of rigorous impartiality, and the right to self-determination and constitutional change toward Irish reunification.
I note that your government has committed to repealing the Tories Legacy Act. There is also a responsibility on you to tackle the serious underfunding of public services in the North as a result of the austerity policies of the Tories and Brexit.
You have also committed to assisting the effort to build the Gaelic Games Stadium at Casement Park. As a human rights lawyer you may know that Roger Casement, who the stadium is named after, was a champion of human rights.
He was knighted for his work exposing human rights abuses in the Congo and in Peru. Later, after a show trial in London he was hanged for his part in the 1916 Rising. Other leaders were shot to death after court martials in Dublin. At his trial Casement argued that he should be tried by his peers in Ireland. He said, “This is the condemnation of English rule, of English-made law, of English government in Ireland, that it dare not rest on the will of the Irish people but exists in defiance of their will: that it is a rule, derived not from right, but from conquest.”
That was true then. It remains so. You now have the opportunity to undo that conquest. This may be too much to expect. But perhaps you might surprise us?
Casement also said, “Self government is our right, a thing born to us at birth, a thing no more to be doled out to us by another people than the right to life itself, than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers or to love our kind.”
You certainly have the chance to usher in a new era of Anglo Irish relations based on equality and respect as set out in the Good Friday Agreement. So as I wrote at the beginning of this letter, I wish you well. But those of us who have had to endure London rule and partition will judge you on how you accept our right to rule ourselves and on how you use your influence to bring this about.
Great progress has been made against all the odds. Let's finish the process.
Le gach dea-mhéin
Gerry Adams
A GOOD ELECTION
Well done to everyone who worked in last week's election, especially candidates and their families. The success of Sinn Féin is due to the diligence and commitment of the candidates and all the activists who mobilised the republican voters and to the voters who showed great clarity and vision by voting Sinn Féin. I enjoyed immensely my interaction with many of those voters in West Belfast on polling day. The banter and craic was mighty. Their endorsement of Paul Maskey and the effort they made to vote for him was inspirational. Older people, quite a few in their nineties, turned up alongside droves of first-time republican voters. The future is bright. Thank you one and all.
TRUTH IS THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR
We are now into the tenth month of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the extension of its brutal occupation of the west Bank. The human cost of this in lives lost is appalling. Almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed. Of these 15,000 are children. The real number of deaths is higher given the numbers missing and of bodies buried beneath the rubble.
It is a well established maxim that ‘truth is the first casualty of war.’ That was true in our own place where British state control of the media was accepted practice from the beginning in controlling the narrative. The British state and its allies were the good guys – the republicans were the bad guys.
General Frank Kitson who was the British Army’s self proclaimed counter insurgency ‘expert’ established the framework by which this could be done. He called for the judiciary, the law, the police and the media, to become part of a coordinated strategy. In its Land Operations manual the British Army defines psyops as ‘the planned use of propaganda or other means, in support of our military action or presence, designed to influence to our advantage the opinions, emotions, attitudes and behaviour of our enemy, neutral and friendly groups.’
And so it is with Israel today. Through its own media and with the co-operation of the corporate media in most western states it has worked to control the narrative in defence of its criminal actions against the people of Palestine. Part of this has involved the deliberate targeting of journalists working within Gaza and the West Bank and the denial of access to Gaza by journalists from international agencies.
Last week in one day five journalists in central Gaza were killed by Israel. Bringing the total number of journalists killed to 158. In addition Israel has shut down Al Jazeera in Israel while an estimated 50 journalists have been arrested while many more are victims of harassment, threats, and assaults.
On Sunday the Foreign Press Association based in London said:
“The Foreign Press Association expresses its shock and profound disappointment that nine months into a devastating war, Israel continues to bar independent access for the international media from Gaza.
Never before has Israel enforced such a long and strict information blackout. It has repeatedly rejected our appeals for access, fought us in court to uphold this draconian ban and offered just a handful of highly controlled "embed" opportunities for a small number of our members.
At the same time, Palestinian journalists inside Gaza continue to face unprecedented threats and restrictions on movement as they courageously try to cover this story. It raises questions about what Israel doesn't want international journalists to see.
We once again call on Israel to allow international journalists unfettered and independent access to Gaza.”
The reality is that this demand for press freedom will be ignored by Israel. The onus therefore falls on all of us and especially governments opposed to Israel’s actions to demand open access to the occupied territories to report truthfully on events there. Information is key to understanding what is happening and to finding solutions.
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