“In this way the English Establishment hopes to discredit and remove the top tier of the RUC/PSNI and integrate the Special Branch into the renamed structure, thereby making the new police arrangements more acceptable and getting the Provos’ active support as well. ”

THE Provisionals four British MPs were granted use of Westminster facilities on December 13. While the four, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and Michelle Gildernew, will not be allowed to take their seats in the House of Commons they will be allocated offices in Westminster and have access to the British parliaments research department. They will also get allowances to cover the running of their offices.

The move by Tony Blairs British Government was welcomed by the Provos who have been calling for this since 1997. They denied that their move to Westminster would lead to an end of their abstentionist attitude to the British Parliament.

Responding to the latest Provisional move towards acceptance of British rule the Republican Sinn Féin President, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh said:

“When the Provos take up the offices at Westminster allocated to them by the British Government they should cease using the name ‘Sinn Féin’ which they have usurped. Sinn Féin was founded almost a century ago to withdraw the Irish representation from the English parliament and set up a 32 county parliament here at home to rule all Ireland.

“The Provisionals have violated that basic founding principle of Sinn Féin. Now with one foot in the British Parliament they have forfeited all claim to that historic title.

“As they are absorbed deeper and deeper into the British system they should at the very least have the honesty and decency to renounce the name ‘Sinn Féin, as did Cumann na nGaedheal/Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta and the Workers’ Party. “Using the name ‘Sinn Féin’ while participating in the British parliament is a total contradiction.”

THE US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, listed a number of groups on December 7 which would be banned from entry or fundraising in the United States.

The groups were the Continuity IRA, the Orange Volunteers and the Red Hand Defenders, which is in fact a cover-name for the UDA and LVF. People who the US authorities consider supporters of these groups will be banned from entering the States. Supporters of these groups found in the US can be deported. The listing also gives the US the power to freeze assets which it believes to belong to one of the groups.

Meanwhile on December 16 the Continuity IRA was believed to be responsible for a bomb blast at a British customs post in the Killyhevlin industrial estate in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. The blast blew out the windows in the unmanned post. Following the blast in Enniskillen a hotel in nearby Ballinamallard was evacuated following a bomb warning. The area was later declared safe.

“Concerns voiced by the Dublin administration about low voter turn-outs are a joke. How many people are going to turn out to vote at referendums if it emerges that the electorate are in fact not allowed to give the ‘wrong answer’?”

DEMANDS continue to be made on the Gaelic Athletic Association. Not content with the abolition of Rule 21 in the teeth of opposition from five of the Six Counties where it had meaning, it is now being required of the Association that the Irish Tricolour and National Anthem be abandoned and that GAA clubs and grounds be no longer named in honour of Irish patriots.

An assistant Deputy Chief Constable of the renamed British police in Ireland -- who was himself expelled from the GAA in 1970 for breaching Rule 21 -- has been to the fore in all of this and demands that the Association renege on its essential ethos ie Irish and Gaelic.

Republican Sinn Féin has made an appeal to its members and supporters not to withdraw from the Association and cede the ground to this cultural takeover. “There is work to be done here and we must continue our resistance to cultural assimilation,” the organisation said.