In Northern Ireland, the implications of the Masonic laager mentality, isolationism and inflexibility is repulsive.  By the early 1980s there were about 560 Masonic lodges in Northern Ireland out of a total of 700 in the whole of Ireland.  There are lodges in, what are known as, the Masonic Provinces of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Londonderry (as Derry is known to those who prefer to connect the English "London" to Derry), Donegal, Meath, Metropolitan Area, Midland Counties, Munster, North Connaught, South Connaught, South Eastern, Tyrone and Fermanagh, and Wicklow and Wexford.

It seems strange that although Masonry's strength in Ireland is predominantly in the North, the Grand Lodge of Ireland is in the Republic in Dublin, 17 Molesworth Street D02 HK50 LINK.  The irony does not end there.  One can find a Protestant Cathedral in Dublin but has to go north to Armagh in the six counties to locate the see of the Catholic primate of all Ireland.  Not that I would dare suggest that Freemasonry is compatible with any Christian church.  As opposed to accepting Christian doctrine, the higher ranks of, for example, the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, the inner sanctum of the inner sanctum, if you like, of all Freemasonry, reconcile themselves with Satanism and Luciferianism, á la, Albert Pike LINK, Giuseppe Mazzini LINK and Adriano Lemmi LINK.

Lacerating the sinuses of democracy in Northern Ireland, the Brotherhood makes representative government a misnomer.  Not that "democracy" in itself is necessarily an admirable form of government.  As opposed to republicanism with an in-built Bill of Rights or Constitution, democracy is invariably rule by an elective dictatorship, which generally lacks any moral or principled leadership, similar to what we in Britain are subjected to today.  It is democracy in form only, but oligarchy by any other name.

As opposed to the earlier organisations of Masonic lodges in the British Isles, the Grand Lodges came later.  The United Grand Lodge of England was the first founded (1717) and its headquarters is at Freemasons' Hall, Great Queen Street, London.  The present Grand Master is the Duke of Kent.  There is also a Grand Lodge of Mark Masons of England and Wales, founded in 1856, headed by the Duke of Kent's brother Prince Michael of Kent.  It meets alternately at Freemasons' Hall, Great Queen Street, London, and at Mark Masons' Hall, 86 St James's Street, London.

The next founded was the Grand Lodge of Ireland (1725), based at Freemasons' Hall, Molesworth Street, Dublin.  The Grand Lodge of Scotland was founded in 1736.  The Grand Master until his death on 30 May 2013 was Michael Evan Victor Baillie, the Lord Burton.

Burton was saddened when he lost his right to take his hereditary seat in the House of Lords after the 1999 Act cut the numbers of hereditary peers at Westminster.  He lost his for using his influence in the Lords to raise concerns about Lord Cullen's dubious inquiry into the massacre of 16 schoolchildren and their teacher in Dunblane Primary School, saying: "The inquiry into the Dunblane massacre was a massive cover-up [and] Lord Cullen’s official probe suppressed crucial information to protect high-profile legal figures ... [who] may belong to a secretive 'Super-Mason' group called The Speculative Society." LINK   (It should always be remembered that in Grand Lodge only the first three basic degrees are practiced.)  Burton told the News of the World: “I tried repeatedly to raise concerns about the inquiry during my time in the Lords, and I was bullied and threatened by powerful peers loyal to the Conservative Government of the day, who warned me of dire consequences if I continued to embarrass them."  The Masonic Lord Fraser of Carmyllie was one such powerful peer. LINK  The Grand Lodge of Scotland's headquarters is Freemasons' Hall, 96 George Street, Edinburgh. LINK

These lodges are all in amity one to the other.  For instance, the Duke of Kent and the Earl of Donoughmore, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, were made honorary members of the Grand Lodge of Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland.  The Marquess of Donegall was made an honorary member of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1987.

Irish and English lodges, as a rule, are not as large, numerically, as Scottish lodges.  Ireland's Grand Lodge is alone in taking care to completely avoid the use of printed ritual.

Like the Grand Lodges of Scotland and England, the Irish Grand Lodge periodically sends delegations to fish for favour and feast at the tables of their Sister and District Grand Lodges all over the world.

During 1994, the Grand Lodge of Ireland received notification that their Grand Representative at the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia, Right Worshipful Brother, J James Kinley, had been appointed Lieutenant Governor of the State of Nova Scotia.  A letter of congratulations was sent to Brother Kinley.  A colour picture, which was taken in August 1994, appeared in the Spring 1995 edition of the Grand Lodge of Ireland's Newsletter shows him and Mrs Kinley with Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh  in Government House, Halifax, Nova Scotia. LINK

It is widely recognised that relations between Masonic lodges and Orange lodges rouse a certain amount of rivalry and resentment.  There was a character in the Lochend area of Edinburgh, James G MacLean, who was the proverbial cuckoo who had no compunction to lay eggs in both nests.  In the early 1980s he was the secretary of what was known as the Edinburgh Loyalist Coalition.  In 1988, the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland banned the 400-member Loyalist group.  The Grand Secretary, David Bryce, told the 80,000 strong Orange Order that "membership of the Edinburgh Loyalist Coalition is incompatible with membership of the Orange Order", describing the Coalition's image as "extremely aggressive".

During the summer of 1988, the Edinburgh Loyalist Coalition had twice hit the headlines when they organised counter-demonstrations in Edinburgh at the same time as planned marches and rallies to honour the great Edinburgh-born socialist, renowned trade unionist, and one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, James Connolly.  The earlier controversies led to Lothian Regional Council imposing an almost blanket ban on all similar events during that year.

After the Loyalist Coalition was banned by the Orange Lodge, James G MacLean revealed that half the members of the Coalition, himself included, were also members of the Orange Order, adding that the ruling would be discussed at a special Coalition meeting the following Sunday, 11 December 1988.  The group that day decided to disband rather than lose their membership of the wider Orange Order.

But MacLean was one of those queer birds who nested not only in the Edinburgh Loyalist Coalition, the Orange Lodge and the Masonic Lodge but he was also a member of the Apprentice Boys of Derry and the Loyal Black Preceptory of the British Commonwealth, known as just "the Blacks", which is the smallest but the most senior of the Orange Orders.

The Masonic lodge to which he was affiliated was Lodge Waverley No 597, of the Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland, where he was Senior Deacon on the General Committee.  Lodge Waverley is based at Elgin House, 6 Easter Road, Edinburgh.  According to the Grand Lodge Year Book of 1994, he was also Proxy Master of Lodge Hollet Amm (Transvaal, Orange Free State and Northern Cape) No 1476.

MacLean aired his prejudices over many years through letters' columns in newspapers and also through the radio medium on Radio Forth's David Johnston's Sunday phone-in programme (11.am to 12 noon).  At one time he was phoning in on an almost weekly basis.  Needless to say, his tunnel vision never permitted him to address any topic outwith "The Troubles" in Ireland.  On Sunday 7 May 1989, a caller phoned to reveal that, apart from his memberships of secret societies, James G MacLean had yet another dark secret: he was a snooper for the Department of Social Security.

This was verified to this author by a close friend who had returned to Edinburgh after nearly two decades working abroad in South Africa and who had, for social reasons only, joined both the Masonic and Orange lodges.  While working as a temporary employee with an agency, he worked under MacLean within the snooper department of the DSS.  He told me the office was full of Masons or Orangemen and they freely discussed their operations in front of him.  He was confided in because he was a member of both organisations, but in name only, because being back home he no longer had a need to socially visit their clubs.  His allegiance to his friends far exceeded any affinity he had for dubious societies that required bloodcurdling, impious oaths to join.  MacLean had personally told him that he loved catching Catholics and would happily sit outside a Catholic's house a whole weekend if he thought he would catch him breaking the rules by going to work while claiming unemployment benefit.  Such was the poison he visited on himself.  This indicates that Masonry is infused with Brotherly Hate, Resentment and Lies, while claiming the opposite is the case.

In March 1994, a group of seven Brethren from the Grand Lodge of Ireland, headed by Right Worshipful Brother Sam Boyle, Past Provincial Assistant Grand Master of Down, flew to Malaga and motored down to visit the Irish Masters Lodge No 915 in Gibraltar.  It was hoped that an annual visit could be arranged.  One could be forgiven for thinking the annual visits would be to celebrate the SAS's extra-judicial murders in Gibraltar six years earlier on 6 March 1988 of unarmed IRA volunteers, Sean Savage, Mairead Farrell and Danny McCann.  Who would doubt that both the execution of the opration by British Army savages and the ensuing judicial cover-up during the inquest had undisclosed support from figures in the Gibraltar lodge?

Since the lodges in the British Isles are all in amity one to the other, the three lodges in Gibraltar affiliated to the Grand Lodge of Scotland, Lodge St Thomas No 576, Lodge Al Moghreb Al Aksa No 670, and Lodge Coronation No 934, all based at 47a Edward Road, Gibraltar, would no doubt also lend undisclosed support for the cover-up.

Just over a year after the shootings, i.e., 15 March 1989, Spanish police revealed that British Intelligence knew the IRA members were not carrying arms or explosives at the time.  The council for civil Liberties and the New York-based International League for Human Rights  reported on 6 April 1989 that the Gibraltar Inquest was flawed. [Aren't they all! LINK]  The report written by barrister Hilary Kitchin, who observed the 19-day inquest, claimed "there is a serious doubt as to whether the UK law on the use of force meets international standards."

She wrote that normal police procedures were forgotten at the scene of the shootings.  Also, there were serious failings in the investigation in preparation for the inquest.  Ms Kitchin's report detailed that the soldiers who testified at the inquest used concepts like "minimum force" and "economy of force", concepts that have "no basis in law" and "may blur the minds of soldiers, government and public as to how much force is justified."  Claiming that the coroner Felix Pizzarello should have questioned witnesses more fully, the report also says that the Government lawyer who was responsible for representing the public interest, was instead "representing parties with a definite interest in the outcome of the inquest."

It noted that there were contradictory reports of Spanish-British cooperation in tracking the trio's movements.  "It is a matter of concern that the contradictory Spanish accounts, which were already in the public domain, were excluded from consideration at the inquest," the report explained.  And no testimony was taken from witnesses who might have thrown light on a controversial description of a man shooting Savage and then pumping additional bullets into him.  Kenneth Asquez, a Gibraltar bank clerk, had given that account to a television crew, but retracted it at the inquest with an "unsatisfactory" explanation, the report said.  The coroner also misdirected the jury into thinking the only choices it had was ruling that the killings were either lawful or unlawful.

The campaign of disinformation by the British Government started only an hour and five minutes after the 3.40pm killings were perpetrated.  At 4.45pm on Sunday, 6 March 1988, the Ministry of Defence issued the following statement: "A suspected bomb has been found in Gibraltar and three suspects have been shot by civilian police."  At 9.00pm an expansion on that statement was issued: "Security forces were involved in the shootings and military personnel dealt with a suspect bomb."  The following morning the Armed Forces Minister, Ian Stewart said on Radio 4's Today programme that a large bomb had been defused.

All British national daily newspapers heavily reported that day that a car bomb had been placed be the IRA in Gibraltar.  Eight out of eleven reported that the bomb was 500lbs.  Of the remaining three, one had it at 400lbs and one at 440lbs with the Sun claiming it was simply a "massive car bomb".  A number of papers also reported that the three people who had been shot were armed, and that there had been a "shoot out" before they were killed.  Even so-called responsible newspapers, including the Guardian and the Telegraph, along with television news bulletins from ITN and BBC, reported that the bomb had been defused.  Before the concocted sequence of events were exposed, Lt Col George Styles, a retired bomb disposal officer, said that anyone with the smallest experience can tell by looking at a car suspension whether it carries a heavy load.  A significant bomb in a car would be easily identified from a distance; the pressure on the tyres would be unmistakable.  And if the bomb was in the boot, the car would not be "on the level", but visibly lopsided.

Despite the enormity of the cover-up, a mild form of justice eventually prevailed.  On 27 September 1995, the European Court of Human rights in Strasbourg condemned Britain for violating Article 2 of the Convention, which states: "Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this Article when it results from the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary ..."

Presiding judge, Rolv Ryssdal, concluded that the shootings were in fact "unnecessary", and awarded expenses in favour of relatives of the murdered victims.  But without Freemasonry's grip on senior politicians, civil servants, and other bureaucrats in every government, and in the European Court of Human Rights, such glaring murders could not be so blatantly covered up.

In places other than Gibraltar, delegations from the Irish Grand Lodge are sent to fish for mutual compliments and to feast at the tables of Sister and District Grand lodges further afield.  There are also trips to places like the De Goede Hoop Masonic Hall in Cape Town.  Cape town is one of three Irish Masonic Provinces in South Africa.  the others are Johannesburg and Durban.

In Adelaide, Australia, the Duke of Leinster Lodge No 363 has a welcome-on-the-mat for Irish Brothers.  The Kgale Lodge No 918, the first Irish lodge in Botswana, was constituted in March 1994, named after the Kgale Hills near the City of Gaborone.  There are also Irish lodges in Hong Kong, which now hold a full schedule of meetings to "realise their full potential".

Most people accept by now that many injustices were perpetrated by the British legal system against innocent Irish men and women.  The ones who were probably given the most publicity in more recent times became known as the Birmingham-Six, the Guildford-Four and the Maguire-Seven.  With regard to the first named, on 7 October 1993, it was announced that the case was dropped at the Old Bailey against three police officers accused of perjury during the Birmingham-Six trial.  This impelled this author to write to the editor of The Herald, formerly called The Glasgow Herald.  It was published in the Letters page a week later, 14 October 1993 in the following terms:

That letter was written within constraints dictated by what one must judge may or may not be acceptable by the editor for publication, so the letter was written with these constraints in mind and was curtailed by me accordingly.

An inquiry began in 1984 by John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester, England, into the killings of six unarmed men in 1982 by RUC special units in Northern Ireland.  The inquiry was halted with Stalker suspended from duty in 1986.  Although he was later reinstated, the inquiry did not reopen, and no reason for his suspension was given.  Stalker had to publish a book to vent his frustrations before he could reveal the truth behind the lies, that lie behind the lies behind the truth.  As it transpired, Stalker had met many Masonic subverters in the course of his forlorn duties while investigating allegations of the shoot-to-kill policy.  He was fishing too close to the shores of truth, on the brink of exposing a Masonic conspiracy in the RUC, when the brethren started tripping over their cloaks and falling on their daggers - or in Masonspeak, poniards.  The elitists of the silent network then cast their paternosters and reeled Stalker back to Manchester.  A genuine investigation was then replaced by a varnished review.

It is crucial, therefore, that we have a system, not only in Northern Ireland but also in Britain and every other country, in which those who operate in the obscene world of frequently illegal matters can be brought under a proper system of control.  Unfortunately, it is never likely to happen because it would not be in the interests of the financial moguls who control Freemasonry, thus society in general.

The mere thought of the dark Masonic power in the hands of an outside suppressive agency, practised at uniting assorted groups or dividing them to suit any given occasion, unearths to rational people a bacterial dimension out of control.  Or is it controlled chaos?

Catholics, Protestants, Masons and non-Masons would do well to recognise that Freemasonry is an anathema to all the people of Northern Ireland, forcing them to be dominated by British financial elitists.  They could do a lot worse than unfetter themselves from that tumorous control.  All constituencies in the six counties would experience more desirable representation in the Dail Eireann than in the racist, British Houses of Parliament.

In the centuries before the Treaty of 1921, Ireland's situation exemplified the scenario of the conqueror humiliating the conquered.  It was also a perfect example the English "taking the piss".  What made it possible was the Masonic foothold in Ireland, implanted by the British.  For example, the Englishman who introduced Freemasonry to Italy in 1733, Lord Sackville, for far too long violated the main street in Dublin with his name.  It sojourned there until the Irish Free State renamed "Sackville Street", "O'Connell Street", after Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), the so-called great patriot and champion of Catholic Emancipation.

But lo and behold, it turns out that Daniel O'Connell was also a Mason.  Even though he had many successes as an advocate defending oppressed Irishmen, and he battled to repeal laws that excluded Catholics from Parliament, he nevertheless always fought within the English constitution, eventually taking his seat in the House of Commons in 1829.  It was possibly late on in life that O'Connell became a Freemason because it was not until he was imprisoned for seditious conspiracy, agitating between 1840-43 at large public meetings for the repeal of the Union that he performed an atypical U-turn.  After his conviction was reversed on appeal he fell back upon federalism  (i.e., Home Rule or Devolution).

O'Connell's reserved and wavering leadership and conservative outlook on social questions alienated his most active supporters, who broke away and formed the Young Ireland movement, founded in 1840 with the object of uniting both Catholics and Protestants, while rejecting O'Connell's nonviolent policies.  They rose against him more strongly than ever for watering down his earlier stance of unmitigated independent nationalism.

As an imperative, therefore, Irish nationals should henceforth ask of themselves: "Why should we be hoodwinked into damning even our dirt roads with the names of foreign Freemasons like Sackville, or even, for that matter, homebred Masons like O'Connell?"

Lord Sackville's father, Charles Sackville, 1st Earl of Middlesex and 6th Earl of Dorset, was an MP for East Grinstead in Sussex.  He joined the first English oligarchy when William III of Orange and his wife Mary II (James II's daughter) was invited to be joint sovereigns, and he in turn was invited to be Lord Chamberlain from 1689-1697.  (William III's mother was James's sister, Mary, and he married his first cousin, Mary, James's daughter.  James was therefore William's uncle-cum-father-in-law.)

Sackville junior may have taken Freemasonry to Italy, but five years earlier (1728) a Roman-Catholic Irish politician and orator, presided over the first Masonic lodge in Spain.  Philip Wharton was earlier rewarded with an English dukedom in 1718 for his services to the British Government.  He ensured that in his time in the House of Lords he was a conspicuous opponent of the administration.

Strange though it may seem, although Wharton was Grand Master of England from 1722-23, he travelled on the Continent the following year, 1724, curiously becoming entangled with James Francis Edward Stuart, the mistermed "Pretender".  Like Viscount Bolingbroke before him, the Duke of Wharton feigned allegiance to Stuart.  And like Viscount Bolingbroke, Wharton engaged in covert schemes with the "Pretender" so to be in an influential position in the event that James Stuart might once again arrive on the shores of Britain in another attempt to make his rightful claim to the throne.  Wharton knew that if a re-restoration of a Stuart court materialised, he could personally ensure that the catenarian arch of Freemasonry remained intact.

By 1727, three years after his involvement with Stuart, the Duke of Wharton wormed his way into Spain's confidence.  He was among the Spanish ranks during their hostilities with England over Gibraltar - for which Spain renounced its right on 9 November 1729.  Eight months earlier, 9 March 1729, a lodge was constituted in Gibraltar, the first "English" lodge to be constituted outside England.  an earlier lodge was in operation in the intervening year, 1728, when the Duke of Wharton presided over the first Masonic lodge in Madrid.  It was set up in his apartment and attended by Englishmen only.  In April 1728, the Madrid lodge applied to the English Grand Lodge for entry on the English register as a regular lodge.  This application was followed by many others in the early 1730s after lodges in France, Germany and the Netherlands were set up.

Although Wharton was only feigning allegiance to any country he could infiltrate, it was necessary, in order to protect his Masonic connections, "in the interests of the public", for England to convict him of high treason.  It happened in his absence, allowing him, rather conveniently, to spend the remainder of his life with his feet up in France and Spain.

Philip Wharton's Father, Thomas, the Marquess of Wharton and British politician, had corresponded with William, the Prince of Orange.  In 1686, the Marquess wrote Lillibullero, a scurrilous revolutionary ballad attacking Catholics.  More so than all his politics, Lillibullero helped to bring about the abdication in 1688 of James II.  In 1708, the Marquess became lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, a post he held until 1710.  As a Puritan he was also regarded as a precisian, strict in matters of religion and morality within the Church of England.

For the student of history, the immediate family of James Francis Edward Stuart produced three British monarchs.  They were James's father, James II and his two elder sisters, Mary II and Anne I.  In monarchical terms, it was those who designated him the "Pretender" who were in fact the real pretenders - or hoodwinkers.

Of all the atrocities in which the British Government has been involved regarding Ireland, the falsely designated Great Potato Famine must top the list.  As mention in, "Lord Palmerston Grand Master", Lord Palmerston held the post of Foreign Secretary from 1835-41 under Viscount Melbourne, but found himself in opposition between 1841-46 when Sir Robert Peel formed a government.  Then on the fall of Peel and the accession to power of Lord John Russell in July 1846, Palmerston came back to his old post as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.  This was at the height of the so-called Great Famine in Ireland (1845-50) and at a time when the British held authority over the whole of Ireland.  The Whig government of Lords Russell and Palmerston and the previous Tory Government under Sir Robert Peel had little interest in or sympathy for the victims of the "famine".

For some years Peel had been moving slowly towards the belief that the Corn Laws should be repealed.  The Corn Laws amounted to a "bread tax" and nothing else, levied principally on the lower classes.  The evil proponents of "free trade" preferred to "freely" trade only when it suited them.  But by the imposition of the Corn Laws the lower classes were compelled to pay 40 per cent more than they ought to have paid had their been a free trade in corn, with cheaper foreign imports available on the market.  But free trade, it seems, is commendable only when it benefits the elite that dominates the market.

To give the Premier, Sir Robert Peel, a modicum of credit at the beginning of the "famine", he actually relaxed the Corn Laws in Ireland and in November 1845 arranged for the Government to purchase £100,000 worth of corn to be shipped to Cork.  Peel believed that if it was sold cheaply it would keep the general price of food down in Ireland.  But despite Peel taking the initiative to ship the grain to Cork, control of its distribution fell largely into the hands of Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury.

The "First Lord of the Treasury" was at one time the title given to the Prime Minister.  Although that position has long been referred to as Prime Minister, it was not given official recognition until 1937.  Long ago Prime Minister was considered a term of abuse, applied to describe the chief minister of a despotic monarch, carrying overtones that the position was merely a lackey of the Crown.  And although the Treasury Secretary was sometimes referred to as the First Lord of the Treasury, it was a misnomer because he was merely the Assistant Treasury Secretary.  To this day the title "First Lord of the Treasury" still adorns the brass plate outside the front door of the Prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street.

However, to return to 1845, the outlook of the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Charles Trevelyan, was dominated by the prevailing laissez-faire philosophy and gave the impression that he was more alarmed in case the Irish should be demoralised by receiving too much help from the Government than they would if they died from starvation through not receiving enough help.  Even when one of his agents reminded him, "You cannot answer the cry of want by a quotation from political economy," the warning fell on deaf ears.

Relief was considered an infringement on the free market by Sir Charles Trevelyan, who became the dictator of Irish "relief".  In June 1846, he demanded that all relief centres be closed down, in an expression of what today is called in doublespeak "donor fatigue".  Trevelyan wrote: "The only way to prevent people from becoming habitually dependent on government is to bring [relief] operations to a close.  The uncertainty about the new crop [there were signs of a second year of potato blight] only makes it more necessary. ... These things should be stopped now, or you run the risk of paralysing all private enterprise and having this country [Ireland] on you for an indefinite number of years."

The accession to power by the Whig Government in July 1846 saw the beginning of the deaths by starvation.  The Freeman's Journal, an O'Connollite newspaper that rarely found much good to say about any conservative, and Sir Robert Peel least of all, was to pay him a retrospective tribute in 1847: "No man died of famine during his administration and it is a boast of which he may well be proud."  A Mason defending a Brother's character in his absence as in his presence!  But that merely illustrates that the charitable concern was in even shorter supply under the Whig administration by the likes of the old school of Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston than it was under Peel, which is a sorry indictment on British politicians in general but on Government Ministers in particular.

Trevelyan was still the treasurer and dictator of Irish "relief" under the Whig Government.  In 1847, he wrote: "The problem with Irish overpopulation being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure had been supplied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence."  That same murderous pathology prevails in the British Foreign Office up to the present time.

Any aid afforded by the British government to the Irish was overborne by a callous disregard for their suffering.  There were potato blights elsewhere in Europe but other Governments banned exports of food to provide acceptable levels of sustenance for the affected nationals.  Even when a British Viceroy in Ireland, Lord Clarendon, wrote to Prime Minister Lord John Russell saying, "I don't think there is another legislature in Europe [other than the British] that would coldly persist in this policy of extermination", the British Government still refused to impose an embargo on the export of food from Ireland.  Even at the height of the "famine", grain and meat were being steadily exported for profit from Irish ports.  This more than offset the token gesture of the earlier slight relaxation of the Corn Laws.

The "famine" was not caused by the potato blight, but by the fact that, under the rubric of "free trade" the British rulers of Ireland refused to aid those whose primary means of sustenance  - the potato - was no longer available.  The British refused to allocate any food surplus to Ireland's starving population because that would disturb the food market.  The Prime Minister Lord John Russell told the House of Commons: "We do not propose to interfere with the regular mode by which Indian corn and other kinds of grain may be brought into Ireland."  In point of fact, the markets were so undisturbed that British troops were sent to guard the loading of ships bound for England with corn, wheat, barley, and oats grown by Irish farmers, bound for the "free market".

There were potato blights in the US and all over Europe at the time but only in Ireland did people die of starvation.  Many people, even in Ireland, refer, wrongly, to the period as the “Irish Potato Famine” when it should more properly be referred to as the “Irish Holocaust”.  The Irish did not starve from lack of potatoes; they starved for the lack of “food”.

There were over seventy British food-removal-regiments based all over Ireland, while British excise steamers, coastguards and warship sailed close to Irish ports to ensure that the food was safely exported while people were dying of starvation.  British soldiers forcibly removed food from its starving Limerick, Clare, Kerry and Galway producers.  They seized from Ireland's producers tens of millions of head of livestock; tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products; enough to sustain 18 million persons.

From Cork harbour on one day alone in 1847 the AJAX steamed for England with 1,514 firkins of butter, 102 casks of pork, 44 hogsheads of whiskey, 844 sacks of oats, 247 sacks of wheat, 106 bales of bacon, 13 casks of hams, 145 casks of porter, 12 sacks of fodder, 28 bales of feathers, 8 sacks of lard, 296 boxes of eggs, 30 head of cattle, 90 pigs, 220 lambs, 34 calves and 69 miscellaneous packages.

Not only were the Irish starved of food then, they are starved of their history today; so, as no Jewish person would ever refer to the "Jewish Oxygen Famine of 1939-1945", Irish people should never ever refer to the Irish Holocaust as a famine.  I am reluctant to make comparisons, but a larger percentage of the Irish population died as a result of the "Irish Holocaust" than Jews did as a result of the Holocaust during World War II. (See the map of the mass graves of Ireland and where the British strategically placed their military to ensure food was exported. LINK)

Robert Kee, in his documentary Ireland a History, exposed this to the full by revealing documents of the vulgar amounts of food being shipped out of Cork as people in the Irish Province of Connaught died in their homes, on track roads, in fields and in ships that were sailing anywhere, trying to escape the potato blight.  In the space of three years there were a total loss of 25 per cent of the population due to one million starving to death and another one million emigrating.  The sombre conditions on the boats sailing the Atlantic were also death traps for half the emigrants.

One of the major results of the British "policy of extermination" during this time was the clearing of the land.  Up to the time of the potato blight, the land was, for the most part, in the hands of Anglo-Irish and Scottish-Irish landlords.  The Irish tenants paid rent with their cash crops and then eked out their potato subsistence on tiny plots.

In 1847, Ireland's landlords went belly-up, caught out in speculative land schemes that came to nothing.  At this point the landlords tried to evict all the tenants they could in order to reduce the number of locals destitute on their lands, since their tax rate was computed by the number of tenant-heads on their land.  At this point thousands of families were simply thrown out onto the roads.

The landlords started pressing criminal charges against the tenants for lack of rent payment, landing fathers of families in jail.  It was this latter measure that played a major part in sparking off the mass migration from Ireland - an outflow that has never ceased.  Ireland never recovered from the misnamed "Great Potato Famine", which resulted in institutionalised emigration.  Today the population stands at under 5 million, over 3 million less than in 1845.  Among the Irish immigrant population of Massachusetts in 1847, the average life expectancy was 13.4 years, with 60 per cent of those under five years dying.

The heartless indifference to human suffering had long been the British trademark, which continues to be stamped around the globe today.  If the British establishment, can be so callous to people who are governed directly through its administration, as the whole of Ireland was at that time, we can imagine the beggarly concern that is afforded to our foreign friends around the world.  What rankles most is that these evil bastards - for that is what they are - know in their tiny little diseased minds that they have the power to create such pandemic misery.  As they exult over the starving displaced multitudes barely clinging to life, awaiting for their souls to depart, the Malthusian disciples continue to think it is just a game, one at which they enthusiastically excel.

It would be foolish to ignore that even to this day Freemasons will be quietly but enthusiastically cementing their "catenarian arch" in the Irish D'ail and in all the Irish national institutions.  With Masons installed in many important positions in Ireland, I suspect their Trojan horse has long been urinating in the River Liffey and laughing at the past two names that have been given to Dublin's main street, named after Freemasons.  It ought to revert back to its earlier 18th century name of Drogheda Street.

More recently, fraternal commitment and loyalty to secret societies in Northern Ireland is a national tragedy as the commitment supersedes any other.  It is more tragic because that commitment incorporated British soldiers, officers in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), prison officers, politicians, paramilitaries, and members of the public.  All the eloquent expressions of denial could never alter that grievous implication.  For instance, after the Halloween massacre in the Rising Sun pub in Greysteel, Derry on Saturday, 30 October 1993, Ulster Unionist MP, John Taylor, spoke of "former British Arm personnel with great ability and experience, and therefore all the more dangerous, being responsible for the recent spate of killings."  Four gunmen, Torrens Knight, Jeffrey Deeney, Stephen Irwin and Brian McNeill were all jailed for life on Friday, 24 February 1995 for the murders in the Rising Sun.

From the beginning of 1988, there was an upsurge in the number of attacks on innocent Catholic citizens in Northern Ireland.  It coincided with the arrival in the Six Counties in January 1988 of a third of a huge shipment of South African arms, shared by the UFF, UVF and the Red Hand Commando.  This shipment arrived with British Intelligence approval and support.  It contained 200 AK47 automatic rifles, 90 Browning 9mm pistols, 500 Czechoslovakian fragmentation grenades, 30,000 rounds of ammunition and 12 RPG7 rocket launchers.  Some of these weapons are known to have been used in 67 of the 147 sectarian killings since the shipment landed - that is from January 1988 up until just over a week before the Halloween massacre at the end of October 1993.  It is almost certain that the vast majority of subsequent killings, including the Halloween massacre, were also carried out with South African munitions,

The RUC abandoned its earlier practice and began refusing to disclose forensic details of weapons used by Loyalists for fear they could be traced to the South African shipment.  By contrast, the RUC, along with the royal Irish Regiment and the British Army, neither abandoned their earlier practice of keeping files on almost every Nationalist household, nor of supplying thousands of them to Loyalist paramilitaries.

The death figures became even higher after both the SDLP leader, John Hume MP, and the President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams advanced a peace plan to the British and Irish Governments.

Exercising their veto with murder, the Loyalist gunmen at first made it easy for John Major to reject the plan.  Murdering innocent Catholics can somehow be "squared" by Loyalist paramilitaries with loyalty to the British Government.  If john Major had been truly looking for peace at that time he would have ended censorship much sooner and committed his government to open dialogue with Sinn Fein.

After three IRA bombs exploded, one massive, in the heart of London's financial centre on Saturday, 24 April 1993, causing an estimated £300 million damage, the British Government was reluctant to prolong the status quo.  The status quo was the type of situation that would increasingly have a destructive effect on the British economy ad infinitum.

The secret talks between the Government and Sinn Fein officials, which had been going on since 1990, appeared valueless as they had failed to produce anything constructive.  So on 28 November 1993, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, admitted publicly that contacts had been going on with the IRA for three years, despite prior denials by the government to the same accusations.  The following day, Ian Paisley was banned for five days from Parliament for not withdrawing his accusation that Sir Patrick Mayhew and the Prime Minister were liars as they had previously denied that negotiations through certain links with the IRA had taken place.  Of course, Ian Paisley was perfectly within his rights to call them liars because negotiations had taken place.  Accusations of that nature should occur in Parliament whenever appropriate, which would probably be on a daily basis.

On 20 January 1994, history was made in Dublin at 12.00am when the voice of Gerry Adams was heard for the first time on the airwaves in the twenty-six counties  after the Independent Radio and Television Commission availed itself of the new guidelines to operate without Section 31, which prevented Sinn Fein members from being broadcast.  This obviously had London's blessing, if not its prompting.

On 19 May 1994, the British Government promised a referendum on a united Ireland if a peace process was put into effect, and Sinn Fein was assured of a place at all-party talks three months after a ceasefire.

Two weeks later, the helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre, 2 June 1994, (the 41st anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation), resulting in the deaths of twenty-nine irreplaceable senior army, RUC, and civil service anti-terrorist personnel, made it necessary for the British Government to consider seriously the peace proposal advanced by the Adams/Hume initiative.

I suppose that with the menacing probability of more bombs exploding in the heart of London's financial centre, threatening to push insurance premiums through the ceiling, coupled with the loss in the helicopter crash, the British Government found itself in a very uncomfortable situation.  Many had long thought that the Government's underlying attitude to all their geopolitical activities was that they shed only crocodile tears for their expendable squaddies but touching their pouches was just a bridge too far below the belt.

On 31 August 1994, illustrating that its objectives have always been political, as opposed to sectarian, the IRA magnanimously declined to make military gain out of this advantage and announced a unilateral cessation of military operations, effective from 12.00am on 1st September 1994.

With the suddenness of the announcement, the British Prime Minister, John Major, was left dragging his feet and the 25-year excuse of being in Northern Ireland to "keep the warring factions apart" would soon become apparent for its insincerity.

Let us look at the type of person from whom the British Government draws its justification for substituting one precondition for another stalling tactic.  The type of cringing sycophant of the British Establishment who appears malevolent towards his fellow countrymen: Conor Cruise O'Brien.  This Irish politician and journalist served as a Labour member of the Irish Parliament from 1969 to 1977, when he became a senator until 1979.  From 1977 to 1981 he was editor of the Observer newspaper.  Less than two weeks into the IRA ceasefire, his British State-induced foresight had him telling The Times on 12 September 1994: "To suppose that the IRA has turned its back on violence is a dangerous illusion," and urged John Major to "Thwart IRA secret plot for civil war."

The British "fawner" picked up a nice wee earner that day for writing a chronology about the likely sequence of events.  It is repeated below along with the events as they really happened:

So much then for Conor Cruise O'Brien's perception of the peace process.  But with this type of garbage being enthusiastically popularised by Britain's national so-called responsible daily newspapers like The Times, is it any wonder that middle-class Britain is so out of touch with the political, economical and social aspirations of Irish republicans and their awareness of Irish history.  That vast majority of the British public are happy to place their trust in what appears to be a balanced and dispassionate view of a person who, on the face of it, is a respectable journalist and ex-member of the Irish Parliament.

What did nothing to help after the British Government's agenda of treachery and pettiness towards the peace process was the decision on 27 September 1995 by the European Court of Human Rights to condemn Britain for the murders of the three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar, and to award court costs and expenses in favour of the relatives of the victims.

On 24 January 1996, the Mitchell Commission determined that it was impractical to expect paramilitaries to decommission weapons ahead of all-party talks.  One member of the Commission said: "What is really needed is decommissioning of mind-sets."  How appropriate!  The British propaganda machine, with people like Conor Cruise O'Brien on board, had persuaded the British public into believing, by constant meaningless rhetoric, that decommissioning was a valid issue.  But it was a non-issue as an examination of John Major's earlier statements and promises bear out.  What knocked the British Government out of kilter was the fact that the IRA was honouring its ceasefire promises.

No sooner had the Mitchell Commission submitted its report than john Major tried to bluff his way with the veto card.  It was like throwing his last deuce on the table, on the retreat, while claiming to the House of Commons that he was coming up trumps.  Deuces must have been floating.

On a suggestion by the leader of the Official Unionist Party, John Trimble, Prime Minister Major deemed it a prerequisite to hold elections in the north of Ireland before all-party talks could ensue.  The introduction of a talking shop in Stormont was obviously planned to ensure that a Unionist majority would have the same "democratic" total control that it has had since the artificial six-county statelet was first set up in 1921.  With the Tory Party's precarious majority in the House of Commons, John Major needed the Unionists' vote to shore up his Government.  In other words, he was using arithmetical devices for personal political gains in what was a constitutional, epoch-making issue.  Here we had a small-minded little man making decisions in an almost trivial manner about an issue that could have monumental consequences for millions of people for centuries to come.  He did not seem to grasp the enormity of the political arena in which he found himself.

On 8 September 1995, this author has a letter published in The Scotsman outlining honest fears about the Government's handling of the peace process.  The final paragraph carried the message: " ... if the peace process is now allowed to be scuppered by [the Government's] insincerity and procrastination, history, internationally, will hold Britain eternally responsible."  Events since then proved just how well-founded those fears actually were because on 9 February 1996 the IRA called off the ceasefire as of 6.00pm that day.  At 7.01pm a massive bomb exploded on a lorry parked at London Docklands' "Isle of Dogs".  Ample warning was given to clear the area but the security forces acted dilatorily, resulting in two deaths and many comparatively superficial injuries.  Damage to buildings was estimated at £150 million.

History, internationally, would never have forgiven John Major's Government if the IRA had been forced to continue military operation due to its political representatives being refused to enter all-party talks, resulting again from the British Government's intransigence and treachery.

Partitioning Ireland by force and encroaching upon the liberty of the Irish people with as much ruthlessness as it could muster, has evidently not diminished Britain's arrogance.  An unabashed Government still tries to sidestep the reality that Northern Ireland is a colonial situation.  Yet it cannot be disputed that the IRA was a by-product of British policy in Ireland.

Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister who was personally involved in the negotiations in the years leading up to and during the Treaty, announced in the House of Commons on 22 December 1919, that partition was planned and that, apart from having two self-Governments, a Council of Ireland would be set up as a forum and a nucleus of a United Parliaments of the future.  The Treaty was ultimately signed at 2.30am on Tuesday, 6 December 1921, and was based on an understanding almost identical to Lloyd George's announcement in the Commons two years earlier.

A united Ireland of the future is as inevitable as night follows day due mainly to the higher birth rate of republicans in the North.  But surely common sense dictates that compromise from a negotiated settlement on the shape of tomorrow's political configuration is infinitely better than forcing a minority into a situation that is unacceptable to them.  That has proved to be unworkable from time immemorial.  People are more important than any land borders.  Similarly, people living indigenously will prosper better looking after their own affairs, but not through servility to an alien power.  (Remember Yassar Arafat's speech of freedom to the Palestinian people: "I completely refuse any controls by anybody on Palestinian autonomy except by the Palestinians themselves. We didn't finish military occupation to get economic occupation." LINK)  The alien power, in not only an Irish context but in a universal context, is the power held by those who creep around in the inner sanctum of the inner sanctum of Freemasonry.

It is about time the people of Britain were asked by way of a referendum if they are prepared to continue having vast amounts of money wasted on keeping Northern Ireland part of the United Kingdom.  Billions of pounds were spent on repairs to bombed buildings, but just like in other places like Iraq, Libya and other similar wretched countries, the contracts to repair the massive damage done are given to inner sanctum moguls.  Billions more are spent on security measures, paid for by the British taxpayer, to profit only the moguls.

If people were made aware of what it has cost to retain the satellite state in the six counties, the whole island of Ireland would be under the control of the Irish Republict.  And if the knife-and-forkers of Blue Masonry in Ireland knew how much it costs to swan off the likes of Right Worshipful Brother, J James Kinley, to Nova Scotia LINK, and were made aware that their leaders adhere to the morals of that dog, Albert Pike LINK, they would hopefully rewrite their own morals and dogma.

At the time Conor Cruise O'Brien's diatribe was published in The Times on 12 September 1994 LINK, a few Office-Bearers in the Irish Grand Masonic Lodge would no doubt be quietly wallowing in the faux pas, people such as Darwin H Temple, the Grand Master; R Eric Fenelon, Deputy Grand Master; Kenneth J G Patterson, Assistant Grand Master; Richard E Gray, Senior Grand Warden; William W Hughes, Junior Grand Warden; W Charles McCollum, Grand Treasurer; Arthur D S Moran, Grand Registrar; and Michael W Walker, Grand Secretary.

There is no doubt that the part of Ulster that is the six counties has more than its fair share of James G MacLean-cuckoos snooping around with their bitterness in the nests of both Masonic and Orange lodges. LINK  If only their politics were strictly economic and not sectarian, the issues that most countries in the free world face would be challenged around a negotiating table with diplomatic arbitration as a means and not automatic rifles and Browning pistols.

Common sense will eventually prevail, but only when future generations shake off their forefathers' negative bitterness and bury the ghosts and demons of hatred and historical myths that were passed down to them.  Only when they find the courage to think for themselves and graduate from the British, six-county satellite state will the people of Northern Ireland discover a better world.

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