11 June 1998 Edition
Editor's desk
We received a call this week from Ian Richard, an independent nationalist city councillor in Swansea, South Wales. He pointed out that the RUC is the only police force in these islands with Royal in the title.
He suggested that it should be renamed `The Ulster Regional Defence Service', or TURDS for short. Anyone fancy getting a petition together to support this name change for submission to the policing commission?
#160;
Isn't it strange that the RUC are opposing the mandatory declaration of members' interests - that is, membership of the Orange Order or other such bigoted bodies?
A look at the history of its forerunner, the Royal Irish Constabulary, from which the RUC founding and guiding principles were taken in 1922 shows, according to ATQ Stewart (Michael Collins, The Secret File), that applicants had to ``keep the peace, and not join any political or secret society unless the Society of Freemasons''.
The new requirement would therefore be no more than a reversal to founding principles coupled with an exposure of Freemason membership.
#160;
While on the subject of the RIC, Alex Maskey, Sinn Féin's guru on policing, should consider the character criteria sought of applicants to the Irish Constabulary (1836) and later Royal Irish Constabulary (1867). They were to be ``under the age of 40, fit and able-bodied, and able to read and write. They had to be of good character, possessing qualities of `honesty, fidelity and activity'. Gamekeepers, tithe collectors, owners of public houses, and certain other occupations were ineligible.''
David Trimble should take note, former freedom fighters or demolition experts are not amongst the occupations listed.
#160;
I've heard of blowing one's trumpet, but Kathy Johnston takes the biscuit. Imagine reviewing your own book.
As author, sorry collaborator, ghost writer, whatever, of MI5 puppet and darling of anti-republicans Sean O'Callaghan's she would probably be in a better position than anyone else to review the book, being well-versed in its every word, yet she has doubts.
While saying ``I have no doubt that his revelation are absolutely true'' she repeats O'Callaghan's assertion in court recently that ``he had not told the truth to one person consistently in the last 10 years''.
Kathy, the partner of arch story-teller, journalist Liam Clarke who works for MI5's favourite paper the Sunday Times, does not explain why her collaboration with O'Callaghan ``ended before the book [The Informer] was published''.
#160;
Kathy has toned down her writing a bit from the days she wrote in flowery language about Volunteers ``whose phallic finger is destined to stroke the clitoral trigger of his phallic rifle''.
In a review of Danny Morrison's book West Belfast in the Stickies theoretical magazine, Making Sense, disguised as a discourse on ``semiotics (the study and decoding of signs)'' Irish republicanism was to her:
``Superficially an ideology of liberation, the roots of its imagery are both deeply conservative and deeply pessimistic: the supreme icon of the heroic IRA Volunteer is the hunger striker Bobby Sands, who, in a distorted mirror image of Christian asceticism, lived without clothes for four years before starving himself to death rather than submit to his oppressors.''
Yes, the perfect collaborator for the bould Sean.
He suggested that it should be renamed `The Ulster Regional Defence Service', or TURDS for short. Anyone fancy getting a petition together to support this name change for submission to the policing commission?
#160;
Isn't it strange that the RUC are opposing the mandatory declaration of members' interests - that is, membership of the Orange Order or other such bigoted bodies?
A look at the history of its forerunner, the Royal Irish Constabulary, from which the RUC founding and guiding principles were taken in 1922 shows, according to ATQ Stewart (Michael Collins, The Secret File), that applicants had to ``keep the peace, and not join any political or secret society unless the Society of Freemasons''.
The new requirement would therefore be no more than a reversal to founding principles coupled with an exposure of Freemason membership.
#160;
While on the subject of the RIC, Alex Maskey, Sinn Féin's guru on policing, should consider the character criteria sought of applicants to the Irish Constabulary (1836) and later Royal Irish Constabulary (1867). They were to be ``under the age of 40, fit and able-bodied, and able to read and write. They had to be of good character, possessing qualities of `honesty, fidelity and activity'. Gamekeepers, tithe collectors, owners of public houses, and certain other occupations were ineligible.''
David Trimble should take note, former freedom fighters or demolition experts are not amongst the occupations listed.
#160;
I've heard of blowing one's trumpet, but Kathy Johnston takes the biscuit. Imagine reviewing your own book.
As author, sorry collaborator, ghost writer, whatever, of MI5 puppet and darling of anti-republicans Sean O'Callaghan's she would probably be in a better position than anyone else to review the book, being well-versed in its every word, yet she has doubts.
While saying ``I have no doubt that his revelation are absolutely true'' she repeats O'Callaghan's assertion in court recently that ``he had not told the truth to one person consistently in the last 10 years''.
Kathy, the partner of arch story-teller, journalist Liam Clarke who works for MI5's favourite paper the Sunday Times, does not explain why her collaboration with O'Callaghan ``ended before the book [The Informer] was published''.
#160;
Kathy has toned down her writing a bit from the days she wrote in flowery language about Volunteers ``whose phallic finger is destined to stroke the clitoral trigger of his phallic rifle''.
In a review of Danny Morrison's book West Belfast in the Stickies theoretical magazine, Making Sense, disguised as a discourse on ``semiotics (the study and decoding of signs)'' Irish republicanism was to her:
``Superficially an ideology of liberation, the roots of its imagery are both deeply conservative and deeply pessimistic: the supreme icon of the heroic IRA Volunteer is the hunger striker Bobby Sands, who, in a distorted mirror image of Christian asceticism, lived without clothes for four years before starving himself to death rather than submit to his oppressors.''
Yes, the perfect collaborator for the bould Sean.