Shafting Jersey

What is the image above? That will become clear at the end of this post.


We'll start by setting the scene on the island of Jersey, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of France.

Despite its proximity to the French coast it is British, a British Crown Dependency. It is sort of independent and originally answered directly to the British Monarch who was responsible for its good governance. The monarch has since delegated this function to her UK Justice Minister.

The island has been marketed to English speaking tourists as a bit of France without the language problem, and so it is. If you dig down a bit you will find a French dialect, Jèrriais, which is still spoken by a few people none of whom are monoglots. When I lived there, those English speakers who were aware of its existence, referred to it as patois (a slightly condescending term meaning local dialect).

Idyllic scene in St. John parish

All in all, a romantic little spot.

Until you hit the dark side.

This is the story of a vulnerable lady abused by a churchwarden who had somehow managed to escape his leash. The case was not generally known until it surfaced when her cause was taken up by Jersey's only independent media, the bloggers. It has now become a cause célèbre which threatens not only the island's administration and its relationship with the UK, but also the position of the Jersey branch of the Church of England, which is a sort of established church of its own on the island.

The lady in question is mildly autistic but very articulate and self-aware. She had a very difficult family upbringing on the mainland and was at least twice abused, including by an officer of the Church of England. She came to this "idyllic" island and all was going well until she ran into the churchwarden, who, unknown to her, was supposed to be always chaperoned when in the company of women due to his previous abusive behaviour.

When she tried to complain about his abusing her, she was not listened to. After all, the man was a churchwarden and the brother of one of the most important figures on the island. So she made more and more of a fuss and the Church decided that she would be better off in police custody where she would be "looked after".

The Dean of Jersey

So, early one Sunday morning, acting on the basis of a complaint from the Dean of Jersey, the island's senior churchman, the police arrived at her accommodation and took her down to the station. She was eventually brought before a magistrate and remanded in custody, which was to last for two weeks, until they saw fit to bring her to court.

It appears the court effectively offered her a choice of returning to prison or leaving the island. In fact they seem to have contrived to get her lawyer to make the "voluntary deportation" suggestion in the first place.

Don't forget that her autism combined with her earlier experiences made it difficult for her to relate to people or to trust them, so the prospect of returning to the horrors of her prison confinement was just not on.

There is absolutely no reason why she should have been kept in the prison for two weeks other than to soften her up for the "deportation" deal. She had a job and accommodation and could have been bound over to keep the peace and remained on the island. It was claimed that her landlady would not have her back on the premises after her arrest, but, when subsequently contacted, the landlady said this would not have been a problem had she been told what was going on.

In any event, the lady was flown to Southampton on the mainland in the night attire she was in when arrested and, to all intents and purposes, simply abandoned there, forbidden to attempt to come back to the island for three years.

That was all three years ago and she has been living outdoors for most of the time ever since.

When the case broke a while ago, the island establishment launched into a disgusting spin campaign.

Oh, she was known to have made complaints about the church on the mainland before she ever came to Jersey. So a victim's complaining about abuse was somehow a reflection on them. An awkward troublemaker perhaps? Jaysus.

The poor woman was mentally ill. She had mild autism and suffered from post traumatic stress but that did not make her mentally ill. She might justifiably have been angry after what was done to her. She might have been a bit withdrawn due to her autism. But mentally ill she was not and she has the reports to prove it.

However, the island's establishment (church/state) was now in a panic after the failure of their first attempt to brush her under the carpet and they were now making a second attempt. And these guys are good at this.

You have to remember here that there is a huge child abuse problem rumbling away under the covers in Jersey. Decades of institutional abuse have been systematically covered up. One false move and the whole edifice could come tumbling down. And this was before all the Savile and related stuff broke.

Former minister now in prison

As I said, good at it. They had dismissed the Health Minister when he started poking around the delicate area of child abuse and refused to go along with the prevailing wisdom that everything in the garden was rosey. They sacked the Chief of Police when he wouldn't go along with getting involved in the sacking of the Health Minister. There were other reasons too for that but that's another story in itself. They systematically smeared the policeman who was in charge of the investigation into the abuses. The former Health Minister, turned blogger, is currently in prison for revealing abuses on his blog and two members of the island's parliament are in the course of being bankrupted in order to take them out of play. In the view of the oligarchy that runs the place, these people are "shafting Jersey". A rational outsider might think that the "shafting" was in the condoning and covering up of child abuse rather than in its revealing and attempting to hold those responsible to account.

As I said, these guys mean business, big business. The reputational damage which would result from full revelation of earlier abuses and the ongoing coverup could undermine Jersey's current status as a tax haven and a safe place to keep your money out of the hands of the relevant revenue authorities. Were it to become clear that there is no more respect for the law in Jersey than in some hicksville in the Wild West in days gone by, the island's financial standing and resulting income would be in some serious difficulty.

Deputy Chairman of Jersey Financial Services Commission

So all the stops are pulled out to keep the show on the road.

Even the Bishop of Winchester, in whose diocese Jersey sort of is, has had his knuckles rapped by the islands oligarchs.

When the lady's treatment at the hands of the authorities, and in particular the church in the person of the Dean, were revealed to a wider audience, the Bishop suspended the Dean, who had by then been severely criticised in a report commissioned by the Diocese. But the Bishop got his comeuppance when it was pointed out to him that the Dean held his office under letters patent from the Monarch, who is also head of the Church of England. And the Dean has an ex officio seat in the island's parliament. So really the Bishop could not sack or suspend or do anything else to him.

So the Dean was reinstated, after apologising for some understandable lapses, and the Bishop commissioned another report to look into how the young lady had been dealt with. A neat piece of footwork ensured that this was undertaken by a friend of the oligarchy and although it has not yet been published, the Bishop has said that there will be no question of any disciplinary action being taken against anyone. Then, to cap it all, someone has made a legal complaint against the publication of the as yet unseen report and the Bishop cannot publish it. The oligarchy has steam coming out its ears at the non publication of this carefully orchestrated report, which did not even interview the lady at the centre of it. And all hell is breaking loose.

Bishop of Winchester, in a delicate position

This is a personal, political, religious and constitutional mess which has implications right up to the Monarchy which in the past has steadfastly refused to face up to its responsibilities to ensure good governance on the island. As I have said elsewhere, there is no separation of powers and the legislature, government and judiciary are just one big maw. No checks and balances, everyone scratching everyone else's back and no one minded to shout stop, except those few who have subsequently been discredited, and a handful of bloggers who are chipping away at this awful edifice.

So, back to the picture at the top of the blog. This is the default avatar in Twitter and I have chosen it as a tribute to the lady in question and as an indication of her tenacity in fighting all comers even in the face of her own adversity. She has kept her dignity in the face of vicious verbal and physical onslaughts and a life mainly lived outdoors on the streets. She has been bounced, or fled, from one location to the next, but she is fighting back. She has a lot going for her. She is articulate and determined. She is beginning to blossom in the social media world of blogs and tweets. She is forgiving, which is more than I would be in her place, and she just wants to be left alone to hack out some sort of a life for herself.

But she has now become a pawn in a bigger game. The clash of the Titans, the crash of the tectonic plates between Jersey and the mainland. The mad scramble to keep the cover-up under wraps. The lowering of the portcullis and the pulling up of the drawbridge.

Mont Orgeuil Castle
View from Haut de la Garenne (1961)

However, this castle is built on sand and the sand is starting to shift.

Someday soon she will hopefully get the justice she deserves.

And as for serenity, well she's working on that herself.

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If you want some more background or want to stay in touch with developments in this area in Jersey, you won't get the stories in the island's mainstream media. The links below may be of some help.

I have done a backgrounder and an evocation of the Nazi occupation on this blog.

Below are some of the Jersey bloggers that I follow. If you read their blogposts, and the (generally informed) comments that go with them, you should be able to stay up to date with what's happening on the island in this contentious area.

Stuart Syvret  Neil McMurray  Rico Sorda  Trevor Pitman  Bob Hill

Stuart's blogposts and comments stop on 4 November 2013 when he was arrested and thrown in prison. However, he has posted some very important material over the last few years and you should find this both informative and entertaining. [Following Google taking down Stuart's blog, he is now blogging from a new site and I have amended the above link accordingly. Ed. 26/3/2014]

Neil's blog is very incisive and he has specialised in doing very high quality video interviews with various players in the Jersey tragedy.

Rico is an independent investigator who has gained the trust of honest people to the extent that they are now leaking him documents which he publishes, and comments on, on his blog.

Trevor is a member of the island's parliament, but, if the oligarchy manage to declare him bankrupt over the next while, he will be chucked out of the parliament and his blog's future may be in doubt.[Trevor is now out of the States (parliament) and has been declared bankrupt which means he cannot go up for election in October 2014. His blog is still there but not very active. Ed. 22/7/2014]

Bob is a former policeman and a former member of the island's parliament. His blog covers a wide span of issues but in recent times he has come to champion the cause of the lady in the above blogpost.

And, having spoken today to the Lady concerned, she has graciously allowed me to link to her Tweets and Blog Posts. Good on ya girl.

You might also like to listen to recent (27/11/2013) interviews by Peoples Voice TV with Lenny Harper (the policeman in charge of the abuse investigation), Trevor and Shona Pitman (who are being bankrupted by the oligarchy) and John Hemming the UK MP who has been supportive of those who have spoken out in Jersey and who has an Early Day Motion tabled in the UK House of Commons calling for a proper enquiry into governance in Jersey. Sound quality is not great and the interviewer is a bit over the top, but the content is well worth a listen.

And if you think all this is getting too much for you, you might like the distraction of a few relevant cartoons.

Anne Frank

There is an Anne Frank exhibition at the Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse Street. It is short and to the point. Anne was arrested and murdered because she was a Jew. No other reason.

It is not surprising then, that in a talk he gave on Anne Frank: an Irish Dimension there on Thursday, Yanky Fachler was was upset at what he saw as the politicisation of the memory of Anne Frank both by the official website and others who had begun to omit the fact that she was a Jew from their publicity material. He even instanced the leaflets at the exhibition which contained the Anne Frank set of commitments, pointing out that they did not mention her Jewishness. He put these things down to pressure from the pro-Palestinian anti-Zionist lobby in Europe.

I have looked at the Anne Frank house site which now does make it clear that she was Jewish and that the Nazis were bent on exterminating the Jews. I am glad to see that glaring omission rectified though I cannot understand for the life of me how they got away with omitting this kernel of the story in the first place.

In any event, Yanky's talk was very interesting. He was basically drawing connections between Ireland's Jewish community and WWII, particularly the concentration camps.

He mentioned Ettie Steinberg, the only member of the Irish Jewish community to have been exterminated in the camps. He told the story of Tommi Reichenthal, who survived the camps and eventually came to settle in Ireland. He reminded us of Chaim Herzog, raised in Bloomfield Avenue off the SCR who, as an intelligence officer in the British Army, was one of the first to enter Bergen Belsen concentration camp during the liberation. He mentioned Dr Bob Collis, a Dublin doctor who ran a children's hospital in Belsen after the liberation and who "smuggled" some Jewish children into Ireland on his return.

He was particularly critical of the refusal of the Irish government to accept Jewish refugees from the Nazis both before, during, and, to a lesser extent, after WWII. He also reminded us of our pro-Nazi Ambassador Bewley in Berlin at the time.

He told us that, according to recently unearthed documents, all of the roughly 4,000 Jews in Ireland were earmarked for the gas chambers by the Nazis.

Yanky has written a book, Kaleidoscope, containing short pen portraits of 100 characters who helped shape the Irish-Jewish community. You will probably recognise many of the names in it and, in many cases, be surprised to find they were Jewish. The Jewish community in Ireland has certainly made a more than proportionate contribution to the life of the nation.

He mentions Raphael Siev, with whom I had some slight contact. Raphael was for a number of years a legal advisor in the Department of Foreign Affairs and subsequently curator of the Jewish Museum in Portobello. Raphael was quite convinced that the Nazi bombings of Terenure and the SCR were purposely aimed at the synagogues and Jewish communities in those areas. These views are lent some weight by Raphael's own standing and German plans to exterminate the Irish Jews.

That the later North Strand bombing does not fit into this pattern does not make it any the less likely. Accidents do happen too.

In the Q&A after the talk, I mentioned that I had been reading the children's visitors' book at the exhibition outside and was encouraged to find the entries very positive, though one child had written "Hitler Sucks", not exactly positive, but on message, nevertheless.

I contrasted this with what I had seen reported about the Israeli state sponsoring Jewish children's visits to the concentration camps and using this to effectively reinforce negative feelings towards the Palestinians (as in: this is what they will do to you if we don't sort them out now). I was making the point as a sort of counterweight to the politicisation of Anne Frank referred to earlier. I don't think it went down too well and perhaps I did not nuance my point sufficiently. I think it was taken to mean that one should forget the Holocaust and not visit the camps.

I do not think one should forget the Holocaust. It is a graphic illustration of man's inhumanity to man and a reminder that "eternal vigilance is the price of peace". I was, myself, very affected by my visit to the Dachau camp in the 1970s.

My point referred to the political use made of the visits by an Israeli state which is, to all intents and purposes, behaving like a war criminal itself.

I look forward to dipping into Yanky's book and putting some flesh on what have to me been mostly only names over the years.

Polyester Poppies

As Poppy Day again approaches I find my blood rising at the sight of everyone on all of the UK TV channels wearing the poppy, some even from mid-October. This polyester patriotism is nauseating. Others have written better about it than I could.

It is enough to say that in my youth I would never wear a poppy.

In the first place it was British and on the wrong side of the fight for Irish freedom. I later realised how it had been hijacked by the Northern Ireland Unionists to be flaunted in the face of the Nationalists on Remembrance Day. Once, at a checkpoint on Lifford Bridge on the Border, I was faced with a British soldier, rifle in one hand and poppy can in the other. Perhaps he noticed the car registration, but he never approached me on that score.

Later, in following up my family history, I found that my uncle John had died on the Somme in 1916. So, in order to honour him and, in part, to reclaim the poppy from the Unionists, I took to wearing one for a few years. I have recounted this elsewhere.

Then the sheer sick political correctness and exploitation behind the push to wear the poppy got to me. Wearing it has become obligatory in the UK as a sign of patriotism, including support for more recent illegal invasions of other countries and the slaughtering of their civilians with weapons of unspeakable horror, which weapons are banned by international conventions signed up to by the invading states.

So, having done my bit for my uncle, I will no longer wear the poppy.

Instead, today, I will remember the deaths in WWI of two very different men.

Rifleman John P Dwyer
1893 - 1916

John Dwyer was born in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, in 1893. He seems to have had some Irish language or nationalist leanings, having won a book prize at the 1903 Mayo Feis. By 1914 he was working in the Civil Service in London and by 1916 he was serving with the Civil Service Rifles on the Somme. He died that year in the offensive on High Wood, a victim of the arrogance of the British High Command.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial and in the Mayo Remembrance Park in Castlebar.

Further details on my website

Lieutenant Richard Gardiner Brewster
1892 - 1918

Richard was born in D'Olier St., Dublin, in 1892. He was the son of William Theodore Brewster, then an accountant, but subsequently to become manager of the Irish Independent. Richard was renowned as a fine horseman and in 1912, after a period as a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, he joined the South Irish Horse Regiment. He had two stints at the front in WWI and it was during the second of these that he died, in March 1918.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the memorial in Pozières and on his family's gravestone in Kilbarrack Cemetery, Co. Dublin.

Further details on my website
Today these two men lie beneath French soil, separated by a just a few kilometres.

John Dwyer was my uncle.

And my connection with Richard Brewster?

Well, in 1946, Richard's brother, Gordon, died in my mother's shop in Howth, Co. Dublin. As a result, I was conscious of Gordon Brewster from an early age. You can read about that on the excellent blog of the National Library of Ireland. When I started rooting out my own family history in recent years I decided to check out Gordon's as well. And that is how I came across Richard.

How sad that these two young soldiers died in vain.

Today, let us at least honour their memory.

Reflection

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Credits
Portrait: Lemuel Francis Abbott & 10 Downing Street
Head: Dublin City Library & Archive (and in particular Andrew RIP)
Text: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Subject: Horatio Nelson, late of O'Connell St., Dublin.

Beddy Byes

Click on any image for a larger version

The Harcourt Street railway line, which ran from Harcourt St., near St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, to Bray, in Co. Wicklow, was closed at the end of December 1958, and the tracks were removed in 1959 and 1960. The closure followed recommendations in the 1957 Beddy Report, hence the title of this post.

I came across some photos I had taken around 1960/70 of Shankill Station, which was on that line, and thought they might be of interest for old times sake.

You will see that the track has been removed. The first one, above, was taken from the top of the semaphore signal and through the light hole.

This one is just to remove any doubt about where we are. Note the unusual Irish language spelling of the name.

This is a ground level shot to complement the first one. It's taken from the other end of the station.

I'm not sure if the Luas line to Bray will come through here. At the moment it only goes as far as Cherrywood, about 1km north-west of here.

Corbawn Lane in days gone by

For the following 20 years Shankill was without an operating railway station until, in 1977, a new station was opened on the coastal line, about half way between the old station and the sea. This coincided with the development of the area for housing, and Corbawn Lane, which in my day was a lane (above), was developed into something more like a road, though motor access to the cliffs from the lane has not been possible for the last 80 years.

This lack of motor access to the cliffs above the sea, was bad news for Edward Ball who, in 1936, attempted to drive right down to the cliffs' edge in his mother's car and dispose of her bloodied body into the sea. As it turned out he had to drag the body the last hundred yards, leaving a trail of blood and cut hair. Earlier that day, he had murdered her with a hatchet at her home in Booterstown.

Ironically, the lane was also known as Lovers Lane from the couples who used to drive to the cliff end of the lane for an oul court, or often a little more besides. On the night in question, Edward had to wait for hours for one hyperactive couple to clear off before he could start to drag the body to the cliff edge to finally dump it in the sea.

My interest in him arises purely from his having been one of the first babies born in 1916 in the Fitzwilliam Nursing Home then run by the Misses Foodies. I was born in this same house nearly 30 years later.

So, next time you visit Shankill, you can add a bit of colour to your visit with remembrances of things past.

Hairy Baluba

Click any image for a larger version

I was looking through some of my old photos when I came across these of the funeral of the Irish soldiers killed in the Niemba ambush on 8 November 1960. The troops were part of a UN mission to de-Belgianise the Congo and retain its integrity against secessionist province Katanga. As the 53rd anniversary of the massacre approaches I thought it appropriate to post them.

The photos show the funeral passing the General Post Office and Nelson's Pillar in Dublin's O'Connell St. on the way to Glasnevin cemetery. They are taken from the roof of the building which housed the Irish language newspaper, Inniu, which was directly across from the GPO.

The shot above shows the van which preceded the military vehicles bearing the coffins. Click on any image for a larger version.

This is the carriage bearing the coffin of the leader of the Irish troop, Lt. Kevin Gleeson from Carlow.

This is one of the army lorries bearing the coffins of the remainder of the dead soldiers, with the exception of Tpr. Anthony Browne from Rialto whose body was not recovered until two years later.

These soldiers were: Sgt. Hugh Gaynor from Leixlip, Cpl. Peter Kelly, Templeogue, Cpl. Liam Dougan, Cabra, Pt. Matthew Farrell, Jamestown, Dublin, Tpr. Thomas Fennell, Donnycarney, Pte. Michael McGuinn, Carlow, and Pte. Gerard Killeen, Rathmines.

These are some of the carriages bearing the wreaths.

Those who were alive at the time will remember that the killings convulsed the nation, which, as the photos show, turned out in great strength to honour its dead.

It was a time when a Baluba immigrant would not have come out alive from Collinstown or Dún Laoghaire and when the term Baluba became one of abuse among the youth of the day. Hence the title of this post. No offence intended.

Ministerectomy

Click on any image for larger version

This month's cover on Phoenix reminded me of a previous occasion when a minister for health was cartooned as a patient at the mercy of the medical profession.

Today it is James Reilly. Then it was Barry Desmond and he was being lampooned by another minister, Ruairí Quinn, then Minister for Enterprise and Employment, or whatever it was being called at the time.

I have done a cartoon of Ruairí doing the cartoon of Barry and set it in the Place du Tertre in Paris, below.

The actual cartoon itself that Ruairí did in 1986 is below, and if you want to see some more cartoons of the current cabinet go here.