Zionist Melanie Phillips voted Bigot of the Year by gay rights group Stonewall in 2011.

How the Brexit crisis reveals in four great social and political corruption scandals the illegitimate nature of both states that were founded in the early 1920s in Ireland.

By Gerry Downing

Melanie Philips, the Zionist bigot, wrote a column in the Times of London on 7 March saying that “the claim to unite Ireland is tenuous since Ireland itself has a tenuous claim to nationhood, having seceded from Britain as the Irish Free State in 1922.” Ireland as a modern nation has existed since 1798 at least, there are two states in Ireland, both of which are illegitimate because the Irish nation has not yet been able to assert right to self-determination in the whole Island.  Of course, now, as back in in the early years of the last century, the question of the relations with global imperialism is of the first importance, but that we must leave to a later article.

The four scandals are:

1. the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, the ‘Cash for Ash’ scandal in the north of Ireland. Only the latest of a series of appalling corruption scandals engulfing the ruling Democratic Unionist party (DUP). The main concern of the UK government is to prevent exposure of all these scandals and the emergence of the political conclusion that this is an illegitimate state. The scandal was a supposed ‘green energy’ subsidy scheme which resulted in, for example, one supporter of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) getting a payment of £1 million simply for heating an empty barn. Some £490 million were or will be lost in this way. It is impossible to conclude that this was a ‘mistake’ but Arlene Foster, the leader of the DUP, who refused to resign as First Minister until Martin McGuinness, her deputy and leader of Sinn Fein resigned, forcing the collapse and the new elections. The outcome left the DUP on 28 seats and Sinn Fein on 27, with the looming crisis of the exit from the EU, where the south of divided Ireland will remain in hanging over all this.

Previous DUP First Minister, Peter Robinson, was continually mired in scandal after scandal. His wife, Iris, had an affair with a teenager and it was claimed he knew Iris got £50,000 from two developers for her lover in exchange for contracts. A police investigation found him innocent of all wrong doing, naturally.  Then TD (south of Ireland member of parliament) Mick Wallace alleged he had benefited financially from the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) properties sale from corrupt speculators seized by the Irish government following the 2008 financial crisis. Allegedly payments were made to him and others from ‘US investor’ who mopped up the properties with their political assistance.  Again, the missing millions were explained away by a less than rigorous inquiry. He eventually went in January 2016 amid all these scandals to be replaced by Arlene Foster, who was almost immediately embroiled in her own corruption scandal.

2. The Garda (Irish police) Sergeant Maurice McCabe (above), ‘whistleblower’ scandal ongoing from 2012 in the south. He was a station sergeant in Bailieborough, County Cavan

Basically, this blew up from a realisation by McCabe that there was widespread corrupt practices in the Gardai including the scrubbing of points from driving licences for speeding and other traffic violations of those who were politically ‘important’ or who were prepared to pay. Attempts to stop the practices landed McCabe in an increasing desperate cover-up that went right to the top of force and thence to the top of the Irish political establishment. He was hounded and victimised, false allegations, including an entirely false one of child rape, were fabricated against him to shut him up.

On 30 December 2012 two senior officers visited him in his home in Cavan and directly instructed him to cease his criminal investigations. Wiki tells this all resulted in 1. the resignation of Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan in March 2014. 2. the vindication of Gemma O’Doherty, the journalist fired by the Irish Independent for her pursuit of the story. 3. the resignation of the justice minister Alan Shatter in May 2014 and 4. The Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny has conceded that he will resign over the next few months as a consequence of the cover up.  Again, the continuing cover-up is a determination to limit the fallout to prevent any questioning of the legitimacy of the state itself revealed in these corrupt practices and the state cover-up that followed.

3. The Catholic order of Nuns, the Bon Secours Sisters Mother and Baby Home scandal; between 1925 and 1961 in Tuam, County Galway they illegally buried of up to 1,000 babies, many of whom did from malnutrition, in a septic tank in the grounds. Women who had babies out of wedlock were sent there by the Church with the families, the babies were taken off them and they were often confined as slave labour in Magdalene Laundries for the rest of their lives. It is rumoured that many of the babies were sold to childless couples in the USA. Many died through ill treatment and malnutrition, in fact murdered, and were buried in the grounds of the homes, in the Tuam case, in a disused septic tank, without official death certificates or their families being informed.

This is only the latest of scandals involving the Catholic Church in Ireland and internationally. The attendance at Sunday Mass has dropped dramatically, even in rural Ireland, over the past few decades and the ‘vocations’ to the priesthood have almost ceased – an increasing number of African priests are moving to Ireland to take up the slack. Their attitude to women and children, was and still is, truly shocking and this is no longer acceptable in modern Ireland.

Most notorious among many paedophile priests was Brendan Smyth, born in Belfast in 1927 whose abusing spanned 40 years and involved at least 143 children in Belfast, Dublin and the USA. The Roman Catholic hierarchy were aware of his activities and shielded him, thus ensuring he continued to abuse over the most of those latter years. The Irish government fell in December 1994 as a direct result of the case.

The social attitude of the Catholic Church to women were not confined to that organisation as the Kerry Babies case which became known in 1984 showed.  Joanne Hayes had a child out of wedlock, who died in childbirth. She concealed the body. A second dead baby was discovered in a beach close to her home. The Garda Síochána charged her with killing the baby on the beach, assuming without evidence it was hers. It was not the evidence proved but the Gardaí now attempted to prove she had killed her own baby, again without any evidence but the Kerry Babies Tribunal supported the false allegation. Left wing journalist Nell McCafferty wrote a book about the case called A Woman to Blame and John Barrett co-authored My Story with Joanne Hayes, all blaming the Gardaí for their appalling treatment of Joanna. But the judges got in on the act of defending the corrupt state, they found for four Gardaí and a settlement was forced on the authors of €127,000. Both cases, and what obviously lay behind them, contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and the marginalisation of the malignant influence of the Church on the Free State in the south and north of Ireland.

There are fourteen such mother and baby homes in Ireland, all of whom may have their own pits full of the bones of children murdered by these ‘holy women’ with the assistance of Bishops and Cardinals, and the Irish government’s main concern now is to prevent all these homes being investigated and the murderers prosecuted.

Daniel McConnell and Fiachra Ó Cionnaith in the Irish Examiner report 20 January 2017:  Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan (above) has removed the final roadblock to publishing two key HSE reports into the ‘Grace’ foster abuse sex scandal. The HSE has for several years refused to publish two expert reports detailing what happened and who was responsible, with the decision resulting in a year-long delay to a promised State inquiry.The refusal to publish was, it said, on foot of a request from gardaí who said that releasing the reports could jeopardise ongoing investigations.

4. The physical abuse and rape of a mentally disabled young woman, “Grace” scandal for over 20 years. She was lodged in a foster home in 1975 and was physically abused and raped continually for over 20 years there, despite consistent reports to the authorities of what was happening from 1981. She was one of a great many other victims and the main efforts of the Irish government now is to prevent all the other cases being exposed.

On 2 February 2016 Enda Kenny apologised to all the families of the abused mentally disabled people: “The question is, in ticking its boxes, was the system blind, was the system deaf, did the system possess so little awareness, so little accountability, that it could become a stone to Grace, to her abject experience, to her desperate need?” The Health Service Executive Director General Tony O’Brien also apologised and revealed that at least 47 families were involved in this whole affair. And he pledged as the Journal.ie reports:

When asked if anyone involved in the case was still working with children, O’Brien said:

 “I would not ‘make his life easier’ by publishing the reports that would prevent any convictions in the future.I will not give them a get out of jail free card by putting these reports out in the public domain… the reports are horrendous. Nobody will get convicted, nobody will get disciplined… I have to hold the line on that and take criticism here today because of it. I will not do it, if the consequence is there will be no accountability. I just won’t do it.”

It is obvious from this, that like the three other cases, here there is an ongoing investigation and in the end, no one will be prosecuted and jailed for the most horrendous of crimes, because it is not in the ‘interests of national security’ to bring these criminals to justice. But due to the dogged persistence of whistle-blowers and campaigning journalists these cases were forced into public consciousness and the resistance of the clerical, administrative and political establishment was overcome.

In the case of Ash for Cash the constant political campaigning of ‘dissident’ republicans and leftists groups like Eirigi and People before Profit forced the hand of Shin Fein to protect their republican and radical base. In the McCabe case the determination of the man himself and Irish Independent journalist Gemma O’Doherty, whose persistence cost her her job.

In the Bon Secours Sisters scandal in Tuam from 2012, historian Catherine Corless documenting the deaths of 796 babies and toddlers there from infectious diseases and marasmus-related malnutrition; i.e. small babies were not kept clean and allowed to starve to death. That is called murder. On 7 March 2017, the President Michael D Higgins commended Catherine for exposing the scandal. She was practically on her own in 2012 and Higgins nowhere to be seen or heard.

On the physical abuse and rape of the mentally disabled young woman, “Grace” it was explained that there were three levels of authority in the HSE, the primary and secondary levels regularly reported the abuse of Grace and many others. The top level routinely binned their reports. These are more criminally responsible than the abusers themselves and should serve very long prison sentences. We will not hold our breaths awaiting that outcome.  And this is not history, this is now or only the recent past.

These four scandals are only the most public and latest of a long series of similar affairs which continually attest to the truth that the states that emerged in 1920 and 1922 were and are equally illegitimate and the imposition on Ireland of a neo-colonial status following the defeat of the Republican forces in the Civil war in 1923 was a vicious counterrevolution which led Ireland to this sorry state. Melanie Philips, and many of the commentators on her diatribe, have no idea what a nation is and how it differs from a ‘country’ and a ‘state’. Ireland is a country and a nation but it holds two illegitimate states, neither of which represent the ‘nation’.