Re-reading and interesting article of Dominic Óg McGlinchey

In McT N the answer is clear for the headline of this old article. You are wearing a uniform of a colonial police force working to implement the policies of the Empire but more important to control the native population and repress the national insurgency or resistance.

This article is interesting, worth reading it. But is the conclusion that is very interesting and very intelligent thinking in McT N opinion.

Patriot Or Traitor?

Dominic Óg McGlinchey

 There are times in life when one should know to hold one’s tongue. Surely this was the case last week when Joe Brolly took it upon himself to raise the plight of Peadar Heffron currently living in exile from his native parish as a direct result of joining a British paramilitary police force in the occupied six counties.
 Joe who supposedly loves the Gaelic sporting culture has now endangered the lives of many club members along the shores of lough Neagh. It’s not as if they hadn’t seen enough murder at the hands of loyalist death squads at the behest of those who shared the uniform which young Peadar came to wear. One does not need to look too far for the tell-tale signs that those who killed Bellaghy GAA chairman Sean Brown used these very roads and hinterlands to make good their escape during that particular sectarian murder.
 British security services have been turning on and off this murder tap for many years. The people of the area stretching from Staffordstown all the way to Mid Ulster knows this only too well. This countryside is littered with family names, Davys, Gallaghers, O’Hagans, Caseys, Stratherns, Ryans, Browns and many, many more who suffered as direct result of this campaign. This campaign also led to communities living in absolute fear. Citizens within these communities were shunned in pubs and social clubs for being seen to be friendly with republicans and in turn might have seen you being targeted for murder.
 Special credit must go to Mr Brolly for giving loyalists the information, which usually comes from the mouth of the very reverend William Mc Crea, alleging that members of the Creggan community might be complicit in the attack on Constable Heffron. We only know too well that those loyalists during the sectarian fest of the summer will need little or no excuse to kick some poor Gael to death for wearing a Creggan football top. Will Joe attend the house and carry the coffin? Will he offer his apology to the family for his loose allegations?
 Creggan GAA are a wonderful club built in a community who are no strangers to the violence of loyalists or the police. The tradition of Irish nationalism stretches right the way back to the young men who left Cargin and Creggan to go and fight for Irish freedom in the GPO in 1916. There members and former members have had family die as a direct result of the occupation of Ireland by the British.
 Peadar Heffron grew up in a republican community with many of his family being very active in republican politics. He had numerous friends who became prominent members of the republican movement. He also has family who are at the very top of the republican leadership within Sinn Fein. Peadar attended Irish republican folk nights along with his friends and cousins, banging bottles and singing songs in Cargin club and other locations. He also attended family weddings in which prominent members of the Movement where present and who report orders having been sent down that Peadar was not to be touched at the function because he had joined the police. Bear in mind that this happened long before Sinn Fein endorsed policing.
 People who now sit and selectively review the past through rose tinted glasses would need to look at what happened 15 years or more ago through the lens of the people who were actually there. What it looked like to the naked eye was that this man had betrayed community, a way of life and a tradition going back hundreds of years. In their search for redemption they might also stumble across a truth that they might not be able to handle. What we have known for years is that the British government have been complicit in the killing of its own citizens in the northern state. Their DNA is imprinted on countless killings. They also have been up to their necks in killings carried out by republicans using agents as proxies to carry out the dirty work.
 The story of Peadar Heffron makes for sorry reading like many other stories that have been told across this island since the occupation of our country. A blind man in a storm can see what happened. Are people’s memories so short that they don’t see it every time; Kitson type strategies are alive and well.
 When Joe and Peadar meet up for dinner at Christmas they might well put a little thought into current and past strategies by British intelligence services in the North, places like Kenya and the middle east. They might also ask who pushed a young easy led lad with an ego as big as a house to allow himself not only to join the police but to be prominent in the promotion of the Irish language and Gaelic Football within the force. That all said, the biggest question that stands out is who gave him the go-ahead to move home to an area in which republican activity persisted. Bearing in mind that his home where the device went off was only a few miles from where an attack took place on the British Army less than a year before which resulted in the only loss by the occupying colonial military since the Provisional ceasefire. British Intelligence are all over this. The spider's web has been well spun. One just has to look closely enough.