|
I
can recall last Thursday being a busy day but why
it was so I can no longer remember. Nothing in particular
stands out. Other days that week saw me doing ten
mile jaunts in preparation for a sponsored walk on
behalf of Palestine, attending a SEA conference in
Derry, or meeting with the Green Party to exchange
ideas. So when Geordie McCaul rang me to say that
he wanted to be interviewed by the Blanket,
I was relieved that he didn't want to do it there
and then. I told him we could meet the following afternoon
to which he suggested we should hook up outside Kelly's
Cellars in the town at 5pm. Not having met him previously,
I asked for a description. It is embarrassing going
up to someone only to find out they are not who you
thought, and then they look at you as if you have
some contagious illness. He then told me he was in
the company of Bobby Tohill and asked if I wanted
to say 'hello'. I half-groaned. Bobby had spoken to
me on the phone a few weeks earlier, seeking to have
himself interviewed by the Blanket. It had slipped
my mind and now I felt guilty. Bobby had been in the
news lately as a result of conflict with Provisional
nationalists and was eager to present his side of
the story. I told Geordie, 'put him on.'
Bobby Tohill is a rapid fire speaker and my capacity for absorption
had to call on its reserve stock to keep up with him.
The gist of his concern was that he had been contacted
by a reporter from the Andersonstown News who
had told him that his name and considerable personal
details were on a loyalist website, and the paper
wanted to talk to him about this. He aired the view
that the Provisionals were setting him up for assassination.
I suggested that he be careful but explained to him
that I would be meeting with Geordie the following
day and if he wanted to drop by for a few minutes
he would be more than welcome.
When
I reached Kelly's Cellars the following afternoon
I almost accosted a guy on crutches, thinking that
he must be Geordie who, I imagined, would still be
showing the signs of injuries sustained as a result
of being shot in the legs in his mother's Twinbrook
home last month. As he walked on by, ignoring my importuning
eyes and probably thinking I was about to tap him,
I scanned the street for a sign of the next man with
a limp. Only minutes passed before Bobby and Geordie
emerged from Kelly's. Both had a drink or two taken
but neither were drunk. Geordie suggested that he
and I head for McDonald's restaurant to do the interview.
Seemed reasonable enough to me, as long as we did
not have to break any lefty picket lines outside it.
Besides, the pungent aroma of joints wafting from
the Cellars convinced me that were I to sit in there
I would emerge more stoned than knowledgable.
Before
we set off, Bobby explained his predicament. He had
given a lengthy interview to the Andersonstown
News just an hour or two earlier in which he claimed
to have told the paper that the Provisional movement
was setting him up to be murdered and make it look
as if the loyalists were responsible. What was the
evidence for that I pressed him? He then reiterated
what he had said the previous day, referring to the
loyalist website. I suggested to him that it sounded
more likely that the cops or loyalists were stalking
him - how could the Provos upload material onto a
loyalist website? He was not reassured. I then cautioned
him about drinking in Kelly's Cellars if he genuinely
felt that the Provisionals wanted him dead. He was
defiant: 'what am I supposed to do - hide away from
them?' We then slagged him that they would wait until
he was full drunk some night and run him over with
a car, pretend it was joy riders and then turn up
to carry his coffin and pronounce him a strong supporter
of the peace process. He winced but laughed. We shook
hands, he returned to the bar while myself and Geordie
headed across Royal Avenue to McDonalds.
An
hour later, interview completed, I was walking up
Castle Street. I passed a security cordon at Millfield
and saw a car sitting in the middle of the road with
its doors ajar. The PSNI were swarming the place and
with exaggerated authority were directing vehicles towards
the centre of town and away from the area of the seemingly
abandoned car. I walked on thinking to myself, 'Real
IRA, freeing Ireland again with useless bomb scares.'
Ten yards became twenty but hardly any more before
I got a call from Geordie McCaul who had just reached
Kelly's. His voice was excitable as he explained to
me that drinkers in the bar had told him the Provos
had came in, battered Bobby to a pulp and put him
in the back of a van which had them been stopped by
the PSNI at Millfield. All of this while we were sitting
in the alcohol free environment of an upstairs table
in McDonalds. It was hard to take in. There was a
sense of the surreal to it. The Blanket had
interviewed Geordie in order to highlight an attack
on him which he insisted was the work of the Provisionals.
And in the course of that interview a man we had been
speaking with just an hour earlier and who had expressed
fears for his own safety, was apparently hauled from
a bar after having been ferociously beaten. It seemed
we were on a treadmill, using all our energy to go
forward but ultimately ending up where we started.
Media
reports since then, in particular the graphic detail
provided by the Andersonstown News, have conjured
up mental pictures of a mafia bar scene assault in
the film Goodfellas superimposed on a subway
attack by droogs from the film A Clockwork Orange.
It should have reminded me more of gangland London
during the reign of the Kray twins than republican
Belfast under the halo of the peace process. But it
didn't. Regrettably, intimidation, beatings, shootings,
assaults and to a lesser degree killings have been
a feature of life in republican communities since
the ceasefires of the 1990s. While not all of it can
be laid at the door of the Provisional IRA, the notion
that the organisation does nothing other than exist
is the belief of the unwary and naive.
Since
Friday evening, Bobby Tohill has confirmed and then
denied Provisional IRA involvement in the attack on
him. Sinn Fein have disputed claims that the IRA was
involved. The IRA has issued a statement claiming
that it authorised no operation against Tohill. The
problem for the Provisionals is that their accounts
are finding few takers. And in the media world Sinn
Fein spokespeople are allowing themselves to be depicted
as possessing all the credibility of Iraq's Comical
Ali.
Four
men have appeared in court charged in relation to
the events at Kelly's Cellars. Public pronouncements
that the IRA as an organisation is responsible for
the attack on Tohill cannot be extended to a presumption
of guilt on the part of the individuals arrested at
the scene. Their case is now sub-judice and their
right to a fair trial is paramount. The need to ensure
that they are protected from the violence of the Northern
Ireland Prison Service is equally as pressing. Punishment
beatings are not unknown to Maghaberry Prison, where
in 1996, 36-year-old Jim McDonnell died after being
attacked by prison staff.
The
assault on Bobby Tohill has left one man badly beaten
and four others in prison. Who or what gains from
the infliction of pain or the deprivation of liberty?
Certainly nothing that is just. Are these communities
any better off with one in hospital and four in jail?
They are certainly no safer.
Index: Current Articles + Latest News and Views + Book Reviews +
Letters + Archives
|
