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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I don't normally read political books, but after reading a review of this particular book by Irish crime writer, Sam Millar, I went out and bought. A brilliant, totally intriguing book that goes beyond Irish politics, and could be read by anyone looking a page-turner of a read. Full of little gems, but it is the interviews and ordinary voices in the book, make this stand out from the rest. Highly recommended.
17 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As an ex-IRA "blanketman," already imprisoned in his teens, interned for 17 years at Long Kesh, Anthony McIntyre knows his subject by having lived most of his life as a volunteer. After prison, he earned a Ph.D. in political science at Queen's. This Belfast native collects various articles and interviews from the past decade or so that list the deathbed rattles and defiant ralliery of Sinn Féin, the IRA, and the stalemated peace process after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The chicanery with which this deal was finagled to a rank-and-file previously misled about the continuation of their armed struggle led to McIntyre's break with the "Republican Movement" at least as constituted under the control of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and their devoted cadre.
Becoming a leading voice for those who disagreed, not for a return to the "physical-force tradition" but a renewal of the ideals which the IRA he and others joined had abandoned, Dr McIntyre combines two rarely encountered areas of expertise. As an insider, he betters the academics and reporters in relating the perspective of an Irish republican who's proven his credibility on the blanket. As a commentator, he's able to silence the "militant Republicans of the verbal type" eager to perch on barstools or boast to the naive their exploits, fueled with Dutch courage.
Admirably given his doctoral competence, McIntyre never lapses into jargon (although "etiology" escaped onto his keyboard once). He avoids sounding sanctimonious or overbearing. He, as with his model Orwell, manages to keep the human dimension within his sustained criticism of the IRA leadership that, for 320 pages, motivates his setting down-- with as much proof as can be summoned against an organization committed to double speak and clandestine councils-- the reasons why one can be principled, yet oppose the GFA packaged as "the peace process." Furthermore, he relates details to us in a calm, wry manner so that any newcomer can clearly understand the participants who support or oppose this intricate strategy.
Chapters cover the GFA, republican dead, The Colombia 3, Decommissioning, the 1981 Hunger Strikers, the supression of dissent, Robert McCartney's murder, informers "Stakeknife" and Denis Donaldson, comrades who speak out against the Adams-McGuinness party line, the dissembling by SF and the IRA in response, the Northern Bank robbery, policing under the PSNI reforms, and the strategic failure of the Republican Movement. Although all are collections of journalism at the time of the events, without the benefit of update or the ease of hindsight, they provide, from one who wrote what he heard and saw and thought in the West Belfast heartland for Gerry Adams of Ballymurphy, a counterspin to the PR machine that dominated so much of the media's attention during the past dozen years in the North of Ireland.
(The author's blog "The Pensive Quill" has information about how to obtain this volume, published by Ausubo Press in NYC.)
Becoming a leading voice for those who disagreed, not for a return to the "physical-force tradition" but a renewal of the ideals which the IRA he and others joined had abandoned, Dr McIntyre combines two rarely encountered areas of expertise. As an insider, he betters the academics and reporters in relating the perspective of an Irish republican who's proven his credibility on the blanket. As a commentator, he's able to silence the "militant Republicans of the verbal type" eager to perch on barstools or boast to the naive their exploits, fueled with Dutch courage.
Admirably given his doctoral competence, McIntyre never lapses into jargon (although "etiology" escaped onto his keyboard once). He avoids sounding sanctimonious or overbearing. He, as with his model Orwell, manages to keep the human dimension within his sustained criticism of the IRA leadership that, for 320 pages, motivates his setting down-- with as much proof as can be summoned against an organization committed to double speak and clandestine councils-- the reasons why one can be principled, yet oppose the GFA packaged as "the peace process." Furthermore, he relates details to us in a calm, wry manner so that any newcomer can clearly understand the participants who support or oppose this intricate strategy.
Chapters cover the GFA, republican dead, The Colombia 3, Decommissioning, the 1981 Hunger Strikers, the supression of dissent, Robert McCartney's murder, informers "Stakeknife" and Denis Donaldson, comrades who speak out against the Adams-McGuinness party line, the dissembling by SF and the IRA in response, the Northern Bank robbery, policing under the PSNI reforms, and the strategic failure of the Republican Movement. Although all are collections of journalism at the time of the events, without the benefit of update or the ease of hindsight, they provide, from one who wrote what he heard and saw and thought in the West Belfast heartland for Gerry Adams of Ballymurphy, a counterspin to the PR machine that dominated so much of the media's attention during the past dozen years in the North of Ireland.
(The author's blog "The Pensive Quill" has information about how to obtain this volume, published by Ausubo Press in NYC.)
10 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I imagine the author is almost certainly correct in describing how republicans were lied to, side-lined and over-ruled by Gerry Adams and his clique as they dragged the IRA and Sinn Fein down the constitutional route, and I can absolutely see how he and other republican traditionalists would feel cheated and betrayed by the peace process, so I have sympathy with him in that respect.
However this book, a collection of newspaper and magazine articles, is unfortunately chock full of hypocrisy, contradictions, and assertions for which no evidence is provided, which for a man so obviously intelligent and (self) educated is a little unexpected. It is also very repetitive, although that is always a risk where a collection of writings spread over a number of years are read consecutively.
More to the point, the author abjectly fails to provide an alternative. OK, so Gerry Adams and his crew betrayed republicanism. But they've brought peace (or at least more of a peace than the north has enjoyed for a long time, although admittedly only a very, very fragile one). Agreed, they've also brought themselves power and prosperity, sometimes at the expense of their former comrades who suffered so much. But, what would the author have realistically wanted? He maintains the belief that violence would not have solved anything, but makes no suggestion at all as to how peace may have been achieved had Gerry Adams and co not taken the route they did. Someone had to make compromises, someone inevitably had to betray their ideals, and that someone was Gerry Adams.
If he hadn't done what he did, the war would still be on-going, a never-ending unwinnable stalemate, destroying lives, families, neighbourhoods and the entire province.
The author has an understandable right to criticise, and to feel the way he does, but to fill a whole book with this, without a single suggestion of what possible better alternatives were available makes this work no more than a mindless rant that does nothing to aid the peace process or to aid understanding of the history or future of republicanism. Disappointing.
However this book, a collection of newspaper and magazine articles, is unfortunately chock full of hypocrisy, contradictions, and assertions for which no evidence is provided, which for a man so obviously intelligent and (self) educated is a little unexpected. It is also very repetitive, although that is always a risk where a collection of writings spread over a number of years are read consecutively.
More to the point, the author abjectly fails to provide an alternative. OK, so Gerry Adams and his crew betrayed republicanism. But they've brought peace (or at least more of a peace than the north has enjoyed for a long time, although admittedly only a very, very fragile one). Agreed, they've also brought themselves power and prosperity, sometimes at the expense of their former comrades who suffered so much. But, what would the author have realistically wanted? He maintains the belief that violence would not have solved anything, but makes no suggestion at all as to how peace may have been achieved had Gerry Adams and co not taken the route they did. Someone had to make compromises, someone inevitably had to betray their ideals, and that someone was Gerry Adams.
If he hadn't done what he did, the war would still be on-going, a never-ending unwinnable stalemate, destroying lives, families, neighbourhoods and the entire province.
The author has an understandable right to criticise, and to feel the way he does, but to fill a whole book with this, without a single suggestion of what possible better alternatives were available makes this work no more than a mindless rant that does nothing to aid the peace process or to aid understanding of the history or future of republicanism. Disappointing.
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