"A legalised Death Squad" - Killing For Britain, 2016 edition

Another of our authors, an ex-SAS soldier who was in the MRF in Belfast in 1972, actually said to me, "we were a legalised Death Squad." 

(Killing For Britain 2016 edition is published 12th March on Kindle for the first time)

Killing For Britain 2016 on Kindle

John Black was a former UVF member from Belfast. I interviewed him dozens of times over a two-year period in preparation for publishing Killing For Britain, his own account of his time in Belfast in the early 1970s.  

Black lived quite close to me around 2006 and I got to know him very well. It was hard to believe that the frail man approaching old age could have been involved in an organisation that committed terrible crimes in early 1970s Belfast. The UVF were by no means alone in committing terrible crimes against civilians. The IRA, the UDA and others were responsible for the deaths of civilians as they prosecuted their wars. The responsibility for the creation of these wars will provide debate from now to eternity. But that civilians, as always, bore the brunt is indisputable. And, what is becoming clear as research into Collusion (between British Army and Loyalist killers) continues decades later, is that the British Army not only killed civilians "by accident" but actually planned the killing of civilians as a tactic. This is why, according to John Black, the army's secretive MRF (Military Reaction Force) used loyalists to target Catholics in Belfast in the 1970s.  

The idea was to put pressure on Nationalist communities to stop them either supporting or tolerating the IRA. The logic was that if Nationalist suffered enough bereavement and grief as a community then they'd insist the IRA ceasefire. This is not a uniquely barbarous method of madness. This is a common military tactic when armies seek advantage over enemies, not that this fact is ever used in recruitment ads. War is brutal so no one should be surprised by its brutality.

This was the context for British Miltary Intelligence to approach loyalist paramilitaries like John Black and convince them that they were aiding the British army by carrying out "dirty actions" in the dirty war. As I said on George Galloway's Press TV show some years ago, if it wasn’t John Black, it would have been John Brown, or Fred Brown, or whoever. The actions would have been performed regardless because they were planned.

Collusion was a dirty word when the first edition of Killing For Britain was published in 2008. In my own research I came across former members of the MRF from that period. One of them described the unit he worked in then as a "legalised death squad".

There was a Panorama documentary on the Military Reaction Force a few years later and one of the participants was one of the MRF members I'd discussed the period with. So, there is no doubt that the unit existed and targeted various people for extra judicial executions. It’s hard to write off these claims off as "Republican Propaganda" when terms like "legalised Death Squad" was the description of the MRF by one of its own members.

British Military intelligence utilised the MRF and other strands of activity relating to putting pressure on the IRA and Nationalist communities. It is our contention that the term MRF was used by John Black's military contact ("Mike") as a handy tag to pin on their activities, like a brand name almost for much of the "secret squirrel" activities which ran concurrent to the MRF activities in the Panorama documentary.

John Black's claims benefited from our research finding the "Mike" character in the book - at least, that is our certain belief. See the extract from the book below this blogpost.

Killing for Britain is a harrowing account of murderous times and none of the participants, Loyalists, Republicans, or the British Army, can claim to have clean hands.  The author was traumatised by the events, although not as traumatised as innocent victims of the period, a fact he readily agreed with. While the author will always be a committed loyalist, his hope was that the awful events and attitudes highlighted in the book would make anyone thinking of following in his footsteps think again. 

Extract from 2016 edition of Killing For Britain, by John Black

"Initially, the author's claim having been taken out in uniform by the British Army on Bloody Sunday was considered doubtful but, on consideration, it had to be either the truth, or a downright lie – there was no in-between regarding this claim. The author would therefore benefit from receiving some corroboration. As well as the author himself, the other main personality in the book is the author's British army contact, "Mike". Post-publication of the first edition of this book we made attempts to locate the now infamous "Mike".

IN SEARCH OF "MIKE"

British army sources had, upon reading the manuscript, suggested a likely profile of “Mike”: a senior NCO, late 20s, early 30s, certainly with specialist weapons training, and probable Special Forces involvement.

The author had described “Mike” as being around 6ft with "a decent head of hair", capable of affecting an “Ulster” accent, one from "out in the country somewhere”, rather than from Belfast. “Mike”, according to the author, had claimed to be Irish originally and had moved to England as a child and grown up in the North East of England before joining the army there. British army sources further suggested that “Mike” was unlikely to have been officially connected to the MRF but was in fact more likely to have been involved in some concurrent operation, one that felt it convenient to use the tag, or catch all “brand name”, of the MRF. Sources further suggested that “Mike” may have been what they called a “secret squirrel”. (Admittedly, other sources though, who were in the MRF in Belfast at that time, deny ever knowing a character such as “Mike”. However, they didn’t have an overview of all Military Intelligence options in play at the time). The shots allegedly fired by "Mike" in the book are clearly those of an uncommonly skilled marksman.

The book was published before we had found “Mike” but with having a firm belief he existed. We believed most of the other claims (apart from the Bloody Sunday ones) could be stood up. Concerns regarding the sheer scale of the amount of so-called OOBs (Out Of Bounds orders) were put to British army sources who responded that if “Mike” existed, there was nothing to stop him claiming to the author that OOBs were in place when none actually were. It was suggested that “Mike’s” job may have been to convince people like the author that their activities were approved of, and supported by, official security forces. In other words, “normal”. This is not unusual where a colonial power has co-opted and encouraged the murderous impulses of “reliable natives”, many of whom develop feelings of doubt, then guilt and then become “unreliable”. Reinforcing their belief that they were in some way, however abstract, part of the army’s efforts stemmed guilt and doubt. It also reinforced their belief that they deserved to be the dominant community. The author’s claims of an OOB being in place are based simply on “Mike” telling him they were. Sources suggested the term OOB might have been a corruption of various terms. It was also suggested that “Mike” could have called them anything he wanted. As far as the author was concerned “Mike” was the army. It must also be said that some sources indulged in something like a campaign of misinformation when responding to our queries.

In the text the author describes being briefed at Palace Barracks. He mistakenly IDs an officer’s rank, misreading his “pips”. The author’s lack of knowledge of the ranking system or emblems does not mean his claims are not real. It just means he never studied rank.

The author claims the Palace Barracks compound was walled by a “wooden fence”. It was in fact walled mainly by corrugated iron fencing. Post publication of the first edition we put this to him. He replied that his memory struggled here but he was certain that it was at least some combination of both. Subsequently, we were shown photos from the period by an army source, who was there at the time, showing the wall to be indeed corrugated iron but with some wooden supports at points.

Post publication we believe we found “Mike”.

Warrant Officer Michael Norman was a sniper of exceptionally high skill to the point that he ended up a sniper instructor at Warminster. He had served in Ireland during the period covered in the book. He was 62 years old in 2005, making him late 20s early 30s in the early 1970s. From North East England, he’d spent time in Ireland as a child where his family had land in Roscommon (according to his ex-wife). He’d joined the Coldstream Guards, as other Geordies had done. Michael Norman was an anonymous witness called by the Bloody Sunday Enquiry, surely only because he was there on that fateful day.

Michael Norman had in his possession photographs relating to the Springhill Massacre when he was found shot dead in his car not far from a police station in Hounslow in April 2005, around 6-8 months after he’d met the author in Ayr, Scotland, in an effort to dissuade him from writing his book. Detectives initially suspected foul play (a so-called IRA “revenge squad” being suspected). Scotland Yard took over the investigation, reportedly “due to the sensitive nature” of Mike Norman’s “work in Ireland”. His death was eventually ruled suicide.

Initial reports stated that a 9mm pistol was found in the car when the body was discovered. However, a police source told us in 2010 that the weapon was actually a shotgun which had been registered to Mike Norman and that he’d shot himself in the stomach. The same source stated that there had been NO photos of the Springhill Massacre in the car at the time, contrary to initial reports on the public record. The source added that Norman had become a quite unstable in later life. It seemed this source might be trying to discredit Norman.

Questions

1. Why would a renowned weapons expert decide to maximise his suffering by shooting himself in the stomach, and with a shotgun at that?

2. Was Mike driving to a police station?  If so, why do that with a shotgun, or, for that matter, a 9mm?

3. Why was the weapon changed from a 9mm to a shotgun in different reports? It’s not like they are similar.

4. Why was the presence of photographs from the Springhill Massacre initially claimed at all if they had not been there. As one police source said, “it’s a strange thing to report in the first place if it wasn’t true.”

5. Why was Michael Norman called to give evidence to the Bloody Sunday Enquiry?"

ENDS

      

We've Got To Talk About Billy

Silence speaks volumes, often saying something unintended to the wrong people, encouraging them to think that silence is tacit approval.

The near silence of the traditional Scottish MSM on bigotry seems to empower many (on all sides) who seem slow to tackle it. This undermines the argument that silence helps defuse the issue. In fact, events intermittently remind us that the issue stays on a slow burner, exploding every now and again, such as last month, when the casualties included two journalists, Graham Spiers (who wrote an article condemning bigotry in songs sung at Ibrox) and Angela Haggerty (who tweeted solidarity for Spiers), whose services The Herald dispensed with after complaints from The Rangers.  The Herald's legal advice was that a contention made by Spiers could not be defended with any guarantee of success in court. 

Graham Spiers alleged that someone at the club had suggested The Billy Boys was a great song (the words to the version sung by Rangers fans being originally sung in the 1930s in praise of Glaswegian razor-gangster Billy Fullerton, a member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and indeed the founding member of the Ku Klux Klan in Scotland).

The melody of this song was originally the tune to Marching Through Georgia, a marching song celebrating the 1860s American Union Army’s marching through and liberating Confederate Georgia, freeing slaves.

The catchy tune was popularised and adopted by others all around the globe as far as Japan, India and the UK. It was adopted then its lyrics adapted by followers of Billy Fullerton’s razor gang in Glasgow in the 1930s. It was they who introduced the song at the football ground they attended, Ibrox, home of Glasgow Rangers. The song subsequently spread through the crowds there over time until it became one of the main Rangers anthems, despite it containing the line, “up to our knees in Fenian blood”.

Because many in the Rangers tradition have an affinity with Protestant King William of Orange who, in their view, saved Ireland (and indeed Britain) from Catholic King James 11 in 1690, the song The Billy Boys is presumed by many to be a celebration not of a 1930s sectarian, fascist-supporting razor gang, but rather the monarch of 1690s Britain and Ireland. So, it is argued by many Rangers fans, that The Billy Boys is not about fascists or the Ku Klux Klan member at all, but about King Billy.

(NB. The Ku Klux Klan past of Billy Fullerton is where The Klan references on social media come from. The term Klan is arguably fairly used when it is describing anyone with an expressed sympathy of Ku Klux Klan member Billy Fullerton through song. That he was a member of the KKK is a matter of historical record. Klan is never a term that should apply to all Rangers fans by any stretch. Indeed, journalist Angela Haggerty has made this good point many, many times, as has Phil Mac Giolla Bhain. It’s ironic too that many complaining about the use of the term Klan are disturbingly comfortable using the term Bheast, often using it to describe all Celtic fans, somewhat diluting the validity of their moral outrage felt at the use of Klan).

Many Rangers fans among my family and closest friends genuinely had no idea about the Billy Fullerton connection of The Billy Boys anthem. But that wasn’t their trouble with the song. Regardless of which Billy it is about, it still contains lines of sectarian hatred. Hence, it is deemed legally offensive.  Hence, it is not sung approvingly by anyone with genuine disgust of sectarian hatred.

The tune to this song is undeniably rousing and almost tailor made for being sung by a crowd. If anyone had been praising this element of the song then that would simply be a matter of musical taste and uncontroversial. Indeed, a Rangers friend wondered perhaps if someone originally praising it might subsequently deny doing so for fear their appreciation of the tune being mistakenly taken as sympathy with the lyrical content in the adaptation sung by a subsection of (i.e. not all) Rangers fans.

The Rangers is not the only club with a problem with a subsection of its fans. All clubs have to employ the most effective deterrent with offensive or sectarian songs – and that’s self-policing. This subsection however is vocal, as anyone who’s heard The Billy Boys being sung at Ibrox can attest. One can imagine the looks a fan next to a large crowd of other offensively-singing fans might get if he/she suggested politely that they desist from the singing when it is in full flow.  Yet it is people willing to make that suggestion to their fellow fans that need the support of the club, and fans groups. That same principle (of clubs & fans groups supporting those willing to self-police) applies throughout football to all clubs.

Unhelpfully, a number of Rangers fans who one might imagine would be keen to take a lead in confronting anything that reflects badly on their club, including sectarian singing, appear to be in denial that The Billy Boys is being sung after years of it being more or less absent from Ibrox (due to some good under-the-radar work by the old Rangers). Some disingenuously even contended that the words Fenian Blood were replaced by the term EBTs (a reference to the side deals the old Rangers paid some players with), that last denial embarrassing even some Rangers fans who were there. If the term EBTs was being used, it appeared to have been drowned out those not sticking to that script.

Some fans have put a lot of energy and activity recently into chasing down folks considered to have spoken out unfairly in their view about the issue of sectarian singing, and thereby damaging their club. One can only hope then that an equal amount of energy and activity is going into calling out the actual singing of sectarian songs and the attitudes behind it which are as damaging as anything.   

Why An Opinion Is Not A Lie

Graham Spiers will never need me to defend him. He's proven very capable in that regard. Nevertheless, its important for fans of all clubs or even anyone who cares about freedom of speech, to voice support. 

Spiers cannot be regarded as any kind of extremist, or "bampot". Clearly a writer of uncommon ability, with an able analytical mind, and obvious human decency, he’s been measure and reason personified when people of my temperament felt a more robust approach was necessary on many issues.

So, the witch-hunt against him recently has been disturbing to witness. I’m not certain Mr Spiers and I would agree on very much, except that we’d agree that any suggestion that he is a liar is frankly bizarre. In my opinion, there is no possibility the man lied.

It’s almost an Orwellian scenario, where someone forms an opinion based on conversations had, and then having that opinion called a lie. Expressing an opinion is not the same thing as telling a lie. The avalanche of angst directed against Spiers for having the temerity to express an opinion, widely shared, that Rangers could do more to confront the bigotry witnessed by all, for instance, at the recent Rangers-Hibs game, was undeserved. Its worth noting the track record of accuracy or otherwise among many of his current detractors.

The Rangers have made considerable progress over the last 15 years or so (testified by the fact that The Billy Boys was not heard at Ibrox anywhere near as was previously the case. A lot of Rangers work against bigotry is under the radar. Sometimes that is the best way to get results, as one Rangers fan said to me this week.

But sometimes the need for such work and the challenges involved should be highlighted. That’s in effect all Mr Spiers was doing. The campaign against him seems to be led by people who claim to represent ALL Rangers fans. They may represent the most vocal. But that’s not necessarily the same thing.

The charge of ‘liar’ put to Spiers also pertains to his assertion that a director of The Rangers believed The Billy Boys was a great song. There are many interpretations that could be made here. For instance, the director in question may have defended this by saying the tune was catchy but the words are vile. It may be that in the storm that followed these comments someone feared that the nuance may have been lost and it was therefore easier to deny ever saying that. There’s more possibility of that in my mind than Spiers ever telling a lie.

Why has Mr Spiers not named the director, his source for the story? I do not know any journalist who would betray a source. Whatever short term gain might be made would be to the detriment of the journalist’s reputation and ability to gain and maintain the confidence of any sources in the future. I think that would be pretty obvious.

There’s been much support for Mr Spiers. But there should have been a whole lot more. The silence has been deafening from some quarters. Now, there is such a valid democratic tool as People Power. That’s valid. Pressure can be put on public figures and organisations by financial pressure etc. But like all tools, it needs wielded carefully, sensitively and only with good reason. Without these elements, People Power is reduced to a mob. The fear of the mob is prevalent among working journalists, and with good reason. When an opinion and the desire to protect a source becomes reasons to be hounded out of making a living then we are indeed in a Joe McCarthy wet dream.

One wonders if half of the the powerful energy against anyone pointing out the need to tackle bigotry had been directed to … err … tackling bigotry, then this whole issue might be a thing of the past. 

Corbyn Versus the Cosy Elites

Watching or reading UK media you'd have thought the Cabinet re-shuffle was an evil device invented by Jeremy Corbyn. You'd also be forgiven for thinking Corbyn was the only party leader who wanted a cabinet of people willing to accept cabinet responsibility. There was nothing like this level of biased and even factually incorrect reporting when Cameron was reshuffling his cabinets.

There is nothing new about internal opponents of a party leader using resignations in order to maximise the damage to said leader. It is how politics work.

However, unique elements here include the hand in glove coalition of Labour malcontents and the media. Sure the media wants stories. And internal divisions in any party create stories. Nothing sinister about that. But what is concerning is that the media, in is hunger for stories, is helping to create these stories rather than just reporting them. It helps them that the Labour Party members refusing to accept the decision of the Labour membership to elect Corbyn and the media share a naturally anti-Corbyn agenda.

For instance many senior personnel in the UK media establishment, such as Head of BBC News, James Harding, BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg and Andrew Neil etc. have distinctly conservative with a small ‘c’ attitudes. This is typical of any establishment. It’s how it maintains its, well, establishment. It’s a state of mind it shares with the Labour Party establishment – and of course the Conservative Party establishment. This creates both a conscious and unconscious “acceptable range” of debate. Alex Salmond referenced this when he called the BBC “unconsciously biased”. Anyone presenting ideas outside this ever-narrowing acceptable range of debate is, sadly, unlikely to be treated with the same respect and objectivity reserved for those within the cosy framework of “approved” debate.

We have the clearly staged drip drip drip of Labour Party resignations, planned by the remnants of the defeated and nationally discredited Iraq war-apologists of the Labour right, slavishly reported by their establishment pals in the media. Doubtless, those who are resigning have been promised career uplifts in any new regime. Doubtless, those not offered anything are pinning their colours to the anti-Corbyn party in the hope the new regime, if the coup is successful, will reward them. Nothing new here. Politics since the Stone Age has worked like this. But please, don’t pretend that this is free, fair or democratic. Call it what it is. Small-minded self-interested political pawns being bribed to gnaw away at the wood of the ship in the hope that when it sinks they can scuttle onto the new ship.

Prepare for disingenuous statements from these people, saying that they like Jeremy but they don’t believe he is electable. Really? There’s really no market in the current British political landscape for an anti-austerity anti-war, anti-trident political message? Facts confront this. The SNP electorally annihilated the post-Blair/Brown Labour Party because Labour shilly-shallied about austerity, was pro-Trident, and was seen to be allied with the Tories at every turn.

Then, hundreds of 1000s of political voters, alienated by Labour being pulled to the right, returned to the party both during and after the election of Corbyn. Are we in Labour really to be expected to only vote for Murdoch-approvable candidates? Is that what passes for “electorally viable”?

The establishment, which includes many on the Labour right, seem to want a Soviet-style system, whereby you can stand as a candidate as long as you don’t want to change the system. The so-called centre of the Tory party, the Lib Dems and the right of the Labour party seem to have created a Soviet-style consensus. Consensus is good. It’s desirable. But the consensus of the people at large is at variance of the consensus of the elite. Always has been and always will be. The ‘threat’ of Corbyn is that he’s actually representing the people’s consensus, not lobby groups, not vested interests and not media barons.

There is an obvious desire among the electorate for an end to the massive fraud of austerity, the waste of Trident, the butchering of civilians in oil-related wars and the immunity of those who caused the financial collapse. That desire should be being tapped into by the people’s natural representatives, The Labour Party. By trying to win Murdoch et al, Labour lost Scotland, a whole country! Did that make electoral sense? Well, it did if your goal was to wreck the Labour Party. Sadly there are those unrepentant Blairites who would not mourn the death of Labour because if they can’t control it, the party has no value to them.

So you have the media banding around terms designed to label anyone out with this cosiness as “extremist”, or otherwise unattractive terms like “Hard Left”. Words like “Hard” jar with most people when compared to something comforting like “moderate” or “centrist” or “soft”. So, who decrees which label gets applied? Why, the self-proclaimed “centrists” of course.

We recently had the Kafkaesque scenario where “Moderates” were all for bombing a country without regard to the danger this put innocent women and children in, and the “extremists” were those opposing the inevitable massacres of civilians, no matter how “smart” our bombs were.  In fact, not only were those opposed to war described as “extreme”, “cowards”, “terrorist sympathisers”, but also described by the Orwellian-sounding phrase, “toxic pacifists”.

If the UK media and establishment had any intention of living up to its proclaimed ideals of objectivity, reasoned debate, respect for opposing views, respect for democratic will of an organisation’s members, then ours would be a genuinely democratic country. However, the desire of both the political and media establishments (who are intrinsically linked by friendships, family, educational background, familiarity and proximity) is to discredit anyone wanting actual change, anyone who might threaten their cosiness. And we are left wondering what a genuinely free, fair and democratic society might look like.

The Case for Jeremy Corbyn.

Everyone has been, over the last decade or so, bemoaning the disengagement of ordinary folk from politics. Suddenly we have had two historic examples of the masses being motivated to join political parties en masse.

 

Firstly the SNP’s campaign for a Yes vote energised a nation and indeed the subsequent reaction to the UK parties now infamously broken Vow (which persuaded many undecideds to vote NO at the last minute) saw the membership of the SNP treble in a couple of weeks, with it now standing at approx. 115,000 members. Now, that’s engagement. Was it welcomed? No. because the established political class do not really want mass political engagement as it threatens to take the reins of power from their hands and actually change things that political leaders only pay lip-service to changing. God forbid the 99% gain power, eh Tristram Hunt?

Then we had the astonishing Jeremy Corbyn affair. A man who was considered so out of touch by the Labour Party grandees that they felt comfortable to condescendingly allow him onto the list for leadership of the Labour Party.  Wow. Talk about out of touch? Due to his inclusion ordinary members of the public joined Labour in an unprecedented surge. Why? Because, for the first time since John Smith, here was a figure who, when he spoke, spoke for people long discarded by the New Labour Project, discarded in favour of Tony and Peter’s new rich and powerful friends whom they considered capable of delivering more votes by editorial support than the committed Labourites could manage by persuasion.

 

But, as the subsequent events illustrated, these were shallow votes, votes that could disappear in an instant because while Labour might have won the votes it did not win the hearts. These were votes at a high moral price. These were votes at the editorial mercy of a man (Murdoch) who supported fully the illegal invasion of Iraq. And to those who complain that Iraq was over 12 years ago, I say, well, it’s not 12 years ago for the people of Iraq. They are still living every moment of every day with the consequences.

Many true Labour people left the party or ceased considering Labour a party worth voting for after that. Many of those who remained did so only because Labour was the least bad option. How inspiring, eh. Iraq however was just one factor. Remember the troubling scenes when an old party member was bodily lifted out of a Labour Party Conference for heckling the platform? The party members thrown out the party in the late 1990s purge? The support for Tory party policies and the surrendering of Labour party principles?

The doffing of the cap days were not only not fought against by the Blairites but actually sought after as somehow being the best protector of working people’s living standards. Let’s suspend judgement for a moment and suppose this was a misguided attempt to lessen the blows on the working class in the post-Thatcher world. Resistance was now unfashionable. Bowing to the supposedly inevitable was in.  Many who argued against this narrative were misrepresented, marginalised, excluded, maligned, defeated.

Then came Corbyn. A man who had never left the party and whose party credentials were impeccable. A man who opposed the war. A man who never ceased challenging all the weak and superficial narratives that were spun and now were unravelling. A man who garnered support from many of the people who had ceased voting years ago.

Russell Brand was castigated for daring to point out the obvious - that there was very little to choose from electorally between the main parties. In fact, there were ironically similarities with our new politics and Old-Style Soviet political system in that you could stand for election as long as you didn't challenge the status quo, the allusion suggesting that Labour and Tories were now just two wings of the same establishment party.

And now here came a man who offered an option. An opportunity for Labour to reach out to the millions it had considered unworthy of the party's attentions, to those it had forgotten, and to the millions who simply had not voted for decades. Here came a man who offered these people something that had been forbidden them for a long, long time. Hope. Hope that their environment, employment prospects, wages and conditions might be once again on the table. Hope that trillions wouldn’t be wasted on pointless weapons and wars and hope that mass murder would no longer be committed in their name. A man who is as we speak is inspiring thousands to go back out into the rain for Labour, to argue a case that has not been properly argued for a long time – the case for Labour.

Wearing of the Poppy

Militarism in all its forms is saddening. At best it is legalised barbarism, at worst it is pathetic machismo. It’s significant that some of the most sustainable progressive reforms have been influenced by fearsome opponents of militarism rather than military power. Suffragettes, Ghandi and Martin Luther King come to mind. War doesn’t achieve anything talking doesn’t. That’s why, after war, they always have to talk anyway. So why not fast forward to the talking bit?

I oppose para-militarism as well as so-called legal armies but I do not accept that any armies have moral superiority. All armies commit atrocities, whether by accident or design. All armies kill civilians, no matter what technological or moral safeguards our leaders claim are in place.

See, our leaders are not like you and me. They are playing geopolitical games where their own aims and reputations are far more important to them than mere human life.  In this military-political moral twilight, politicians become psychopaths in that they suspend all empathy with mothers of babies, of children with parents, brothers with sisters as they prepare to force a path through human life in pursuit of their sacred aims which usually are presented as “saving civilisation”, the same civilisation they are reducing to rubble and grief.

This gives some understandably a problem when it comes to the poppy. For many, especially victims of militarism, the seeming worshiping of the poppy is alienating as those telling us to wear poppies are often (though not always) unconditional supporters of British militarism. If your family or community has been abused, maimed or killed by an army supported by poppy wearers then naturally you’d feel that you were not part of the same society that has institutionalised support of the poppy.

But it depends on what the poppy means to the wearers, of which I am one. The thought that my wearing the poppy signifies support for an increasingly jingoistic war machine disgusts me. It is also obscene for a poppy to be used as a weapon by ultra-British nationalists as a weapon to beat everyone else into fealty to “our boys” and “our country”.  This was a feature of British nationalism in Ireland for many years and sadly it seems to be seeping “over the water” as Bullingdon-led Britain seeks to ensure that near worship of the Union Jack becomes a prerequisite to being considered a ‘good citizen’.

I don’t wear my poppy for those cynical hypocrites most of whom, tellingly, have never seen battle in their lives.  To me the poppy symbolises not just remembrance of loved ones passed but also of wanton waste of life, the folly of war and the need to never again let a generation of the world’s youth be buried in mud in another land far from home in pursuit of imperial aims. When I wear my poppy I am thinking of poor terrified young men being forced over the top to near certain death at the behest of a class who seemed to glory in war like it was a game.  

I’ve no beef with being British. Several close relatives of mine, generations in fact, have served in British forces. Those I was fortunate to know personally were thoroughly decent men who believed they were making the world better. They would not be approving of this co-opting of a symbol of remembrance for comrades and family being tainted as it is now when it is used as pseudo-moralistic battering ram against people reluctant to worship slaughter. 

Another ill-founded attack on writer Phil Mac Giolla Bhain

Gordon Dinnie's retort to Phil Mac Giolla Bháin's OpEd piece in the Belfast Telegraph contains several disingenuous remarks.

http://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/debateni/attack-on-rangers-is-hateful-bile-34147053.html

Regarding full disclosure I have published Phil’s last two books; ‘Downfall; How Rangers FC self-destructed’ (2012) and ‘Minority Reporter. Modern Scotland’s bad attitude towards her own Irish’ (2013).

That people of all colours and creeds are welcome at Ibrox is a welcome development - and a development it is, for it was not always so. Pointing out facts such as Rangers having previously operated a sectarian signing policy (admirably dispensed with in the 1980s - thus it existed for mere decades) is rarely welcomed.  Rangers (1872-2012) were also unique in not having a Republic of Ireland international in their first team in modern times. At this point, their fans were singing the racist ‘Famine Song’. Phil pointed out this inconvenient truth many times. Certainly, let the past be the past and not obsess about it.. And absolutely we must recognise the pretty dramatic improvements on the Ibrox terraces. But also, let's not forget the past completely either.

Forgetting that historical, racist and sectarian ethos is often difficult when one is around some fans of Rangers. By 'some' I don't mean a few stragglers from the past, but a sizable rump of Rangers supporters who sing racist and sectarian songs, hurl bigoted abuse, and whose default retort when annoyed by anything is citing the ethnicity or religion (real or imagined) of the object of their displeasure.

It’s in the DNA of a 'subsection' of Rangers people. This is obvious to everyone in Scotland and Northern Ireland unless they are among those who consider themselves some kind of self-appointed Praetorian Guard for what they see as "Rangers values". My decent law-abiding Glaswegian grandfather was a proud Rangers season ticket holder all his life and I know he never related to the sectarian bloodlust at all.

'Subsection' brings us to another of Mr Dinnie's disingenuous remarks, namely, Mac Giolla Bháin regularly describes these normal, law-abiding football fans as "the klan", "Herrenvolk" and "a fascist underclass".

This is not true. Mr Mac Giolla Bháin is clear that his target, when using such admittedly pejorative terms, is not the Rangers support as a whole. Indeed, he has made this point explicitly several times. He is, as he has often stated, referring to the unreconstructed bigots who rarely, if ever, admit to previous wrongdoing by their club, whether it be a racist/sectarian signing policy or arguably dodgy dealings from various high heid yins in the Ibrox boardroom. 

When some claim that Mr Mac Giolla Bháin is demeaning normal, law-abiding football fans it’s as if they are seeking to co-opt the decent Rangers support into a charge towards not just Mac Giolla Bháin but also towards anyone who dare utter obvious truths. Mac Giolla Bháin's target has never been normal decent law abiding people no matter who they support. His target, which is clear in any objective reading, is the nutty rump. Every club has a nutty rump. Celtic has a moronic, unreconstructed subsection too. Most big football clubs do. My own club Aberdeen has an atavistic element too. The difference with the old Rangers was that for decades this rump's views were encouraged - indeed institutionalised - by a signing policy and an all-pervading ethos. Happily, that changed and credit must be accorded appropriately.

Mr Mac Giolla Bháin was a lone pioneer in openly discussing the likely fate of the then Rangers, which other so-called 'proper journalists' refused to say out loud or to think even, for whatever reasons. It's ironic that many Rangers supporters groups belatedly hold Craig Whyte and Charles Green in bad esteem years after being warned by Mr Mac Giolla Bháin that they were not at all what they seemed.

Mr Mac Giolla Bháin represents the modern age and as such is held in disdain by some who long for the time before independent thought could reach the minds of thousands every day without being filtered. Reporters in many fields can become too cosy with their subjects and they do not want to jeopardise "access" or the "scoops" that promises.  Online journalists are independent and not beholden to vested interest. This is refreshing and it is why millions read such journalists every day all over the world.

It is worth noting that award-winning journalist Alex Thomson, of Channel 4 News, wrote the foreword to ‘Downfall’ in which he stated that the book was “a tale of our times brilliantly told”.

Mr Dinnie seems disdainful of the fact many well-read online journalists seek donations in order to sustain their work. In fact, he calls requests for donations begging. Every newspaper has a price and every newspaper is begging to be bought from a newsstand. So, what exactly is Mr Dinnie's point? Being paid by readers for your work directly is a bad thing?

Mr Dinnie talks of wild claims. Well, many would prefer to trust the judgement of the one journalist who got it right last time around.