Annual NUJ conference says British and Irish Govts must take action on murder of investigative journalist Martin O’Hagan
April 27th, 2025
The National Union of Journalists has called on the Irish Government to engage with the UK authorities more effectively in tackling egregious Legacy cases, including the murder of campaigning investigative journalist Martin O’Hagan, a quarter of a century ago.
Members passed the motion at their annual delegate meeting in Blackpool, England, this weekend, saying it provided an opportunity to ensure impunity ‘does not endure’ for perpetrators and was in line with the Council of Europe’s Platform on Safety of Journalists decision last October to take fresh action on the case.
Speaking in support of the motion Kathryn Johnston, on behalf of the NEC and as ‘a very proud member of the Belfast and District branch NUJ said, ‘I always like to start with a quote. John Donne, ‘each man’s death diminishes me’.
‘President Michael D Higgins, after Lyra McKee was murdered almost 6 years ago to the day, said an attack on a journalist anywhere in the world is an attack on truth itself.
‘It is nearly 24 years since Marty was shot dead.
‘Marty gave me my first commission in journalism in 1986. It was on links between the international far right and unionist politicians and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
‘That was an interest he pursued which would ultimately result in his death.
‘He was secretary of my branch, Belfast and District, and Lyra was also a member.’
Why so little action?
‘Many years ago I asked a very senior member of the RUC why there was so little movement on pursuing the members of the LVF responsible for Marty’s murder.
‘After all, he named his killer to his late widow Marie as he lay dying.
‘The answer: The inertia behind the Martin O’Hagan case is intelligence led.
‘In other words, the first casualty of war is truth.
‘We need action here.
‘Lyra McKee foreshadowed her death when she wrote years ago. “If I die through my work, will there be a fuss? Or will everyone simply go on ahead and say what a shame, she was a lovely woman.”’
Quoting the Palestinian photo-journalist Fatima Hassouna, killed in Gaza 11 days ago, Johnston added that, ‘As Fatima said, “If I die I want a loud death”.
‘I urge you to support this motion and not just to support it, to do all you can to promote the cause of justice for our dead brothers and sisters.
‘Silence is not an option’
‘The Irish and British governments must get these and other cases fully investigated.
‘If no-one has anything to hide in relation to collusion and cover up, why the obfuscation?
‘I’m wearing a badge today, I fought the law and the law won. Not today, colleagues, not today.
‘And I hope the NI Justice Minister, Naomi Long, hears these words today. It is ironic that she can continue to delay urgent action on Marty's murder.’
‘To quote Lyra, silence is not an option.
‘Shout it out loud and strong comrades.
‘No more Marty O’Hagans.
‘No more Lyra McKees.
‘No more Fatima Hassounas.’
Tribal unease and practical ineptitude is a lethal mix for Sinn Féin in the North
Sam McBride, Sunday Independent and Sunday Life, April 27th, 2025
Michelle O'Neill's party is being outsmarted, with unrest among some of its backers
Last weekend, Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O'Neill both addressed republican commemorations in Tyrone. This might seem unremarkable at Easter, but behind it lies brewing discontent in O'Neill's backyard.
Having become Northern Ireland's first republican leader, the Mid-Ulster MLA promised to be "a First Minister for all”. Even before the end of the DUP's Stormont boycott meant she could assume the role, Sinn Féin's Northern leader had undertaken several groundbreaking steps, the most significant of which involved attending Queen Elizabeth II's funeral and King Charles III's grand coronation.
For a while, this strategy was an unblemished success. Unease among some republicans at the party's rapprochement with the royals was offset by the discomfort of unionism which was in perpetual chaos.
Not only did the DUP go through leaders as a child goes through sweets, but the Irish Sea border appeared to be a major reversal for the union, while an increasingly vocal campaign for Irish unity was growing.
Being the bigger person was easier in a context where Sinn Féin's rivals were in disarray. Over the last year, the position has altered. The DUP has steadied itself and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly has, according to opinion polling, overtaken O'Neill in popularity.
In that context, the cracks have started to show. One senior Sinn Féin figure said O'Neill had "got a bit carried away by being First Minister”. There is a growing sense that Sinn Féin's Stormont team is being outsmarted by its DUP opposite numbers, and is losing far too many technical tactical battles to the party it displaced at the top of the Executive.
What was once veiled criticism is becoming increasingly explicit.
Doing very little is not an option
Siobhán Fenton, until a few months ago a senior Sinn Féin press officer in Dublin, recently wrote that "Sinn Féin has stumbled into a trap; it has been able to hold on to the position of First Minister only by virtue of doing very little with it”.
Not many republicans will yet publicly put their name to such criticism. For some of them, the tipping point was O'Neill's attendance at the Cenotaph in Belfast for the first time. While she laid a laurel wreath rather than the traditional poppy one, to a section of those hitherto supportive of her party this was a step too far.
For some reason, this jarred far more than what appeared a bigger step — Sinn Féin's increasingly warm relations with the royal family. The party has shown remarkable respect for a monarchy it ideologically loathes and who its IRA allies once targeted for murder.
Going to Queen Elizabeth II's state funeral was itself an enormous step, even allowing for the Irish tradition of not speaking ill of the dead and showing respect at a time of mourning.
Going to King Charles III's coronation was something else altogether — a decision which pushed the boundaries of what any republican in any nation might be able to reconcile with their opposition to such a system of inherited privilege.
When I asked one republican why the Cenotaph attendance had elicited more opposition than the Coronation, they said: "It's commemorating the Black and Tans and all British actions. The night before she was commemorating Hugh Gerard Coney who was shot coming out of Long Kesh — and then the next day she was commemorating the people who shot him.”
Sinn Féin has got to where it is by being ruthlessly adept at shedding current supporters if a change in stance can attract new supporters. It has judged that most northern republicans, even if unenthusiastic about such gestures, are at least willing to tolerate them.
Polling doesn't show any collapse in the party's support, despite the rumblings.
Deja vu?
Sinn Féin has been here before. A few months before the party collapsed Stormont in 2017, it saw a small slip in electoral support amid a growing sense from its voters that it was losing too many battles with the DUP.
Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams didn't want to pull down power-sharing but, after repeated delays, ultimately found themselves choosing between that and voters turning their fire on the party.
As Sinn Féin's demand for a 2030 border poll now looks hopelessly unachievable, and with the Taoiseach openly dismissing it, this pressure will intensify.
A constitutional distraction only works if it's believable. Now theparty is stuck defending its day-to-day decisions without much hope of a sudden united Ireland just round the corner.
In Dublin, it has more leeway as the main party of opposition. In Belfast, the buck stops with a party which is now at the top of the Executive.
O'Neill hasn't done a proper sit-down interview with any journalist for more than a year, relying instead on glitzy PR videos for social media in which awkward questions are avoided or hurried doorstep questions where, if things get awkward, the First Minister can just walk off.
Increasingly, that's jarring as her party presides over a shambolic system in which basic public services are crumbling.
Houses and factories can't be built in large swathes of Northern Ireland because of a sewerage crisis, yet the party which controls that government department is insistent that the funding model for NI Water isn't broken.
Sinn Féin runs the Department of Finance yet is choosing to not only maintain but defend a system whereby the poorest homeowners north of the Border subsidise the property tax bills of the wealthiest, living in multi-million pound mansions.
Avoiding DUP’s mistakes
This confluence of tribal unease and practical ineptitude is acutely dangerous for the party.
Some people, both inside and outside Sinn Féin, believe that the normal rules of democratic politics don't apply to the party and its Northern voters will back it regardless.
They're wrong. In any democracy, what goes up ultimately comes down, no matter how long that might take.
Almost invariably, pride goes before that fall. The DUP provides the template for that arrogance surviving for years, but finally being punished by a fed-up electorate.
And what happens in Belfast matters in Dublin too. Senior Northern republicans were despatched south to key roles in November's General Election.
Having reversed the party's sliding support in the Republic, its stock has risen because it has got results.
But its handiwork in the North shows a gulf between getting votes and governing.
A comment on Sam McBride 's article about tribal unease and political ineptitide...
The arguably far more significant issue is not the obsession with who's winning the continuing culture wars, but who is demonstrating real zeal in governing better. Sadly, political success - and political coverage - are not much measured in terms of the latter. Ironically the divided public pays as more attention to the scheming of the other side than to its own. Unionism is convinced that Sinn Fein is winning the culture war as a vital steps towards a united Ireland. Whereas on the republican side, traditionalists are gibbing at gestures towards Britishness without an obvious response from across the divide .
Despite signs of nervousness identified by Sam McBride, these issues are unlikely to seriously affect SF support or reduce the gap with the DUP. Sinn Fein has no obvious competitor ready to outflank them, unlike their Unionist partners. Theoretically this ought to create space for SF to present itself as the leading party for more effective government in the common interest. But while they are not totally passive in this direction, it remains the Holy Grail that eludes both sides.
Perhaps SF's failure to win a place in government in the South has revealed its electoral limitations as continues to pose as fit for government on both sides of the Border and this, in turn, discourages further progress in that direction in the North.
The roles of FM and dFM have become Janus-like instruments of gesture politics like constitutional monarchs, rather than government leaders working to create the collective responsibility without which effective government cannot thrive. Neither O' Neill or Little-Pengelly behave like leaders with wide independent discretion. Real leadership remains vested in the largely unaccountable shadowy democratic centralist structures within both parties. They run a system designed not for them but for the emergence of a centre ground created by moderates who undertook the heavy lifting of the GFA but were rapidly superseded by the forces released by tensions over arms decommissioning.
SF seems convinced that "making the Assembly work " yields them little political dividend in spite of public support for it, away from elections. With all respect to Alliance, no major constituency has yet emerged to seriously challenge the still dominant, crippling sectarian divide in our politics or the crying need to develop an ideology based on common interest.
Currently the main inhibitor is the nationalist clamour for a united Ireland sooner rather than later and unionism's problems in defending the Union in the post-Brexit political climate. Is this becoming an increasingly binary choice between constitutional change and having an effective Assembly?
Sinn Fein has not yet made the choice, but the pressure to make it seems to be increasing. And the DUP is doing little to discourage their opponents or broaden the appeal of the Union to the wider public. The creation of a fully effective Assembly seems as far away as ever.
TUV challenges O’Neill’s right to represent Northern Ireland at funeral of Pope Francis
By Philip Bradfield, Belfast News Letter, April 25th, 2025,
The TUV has challenged First Minister Michelle O'Neill’s credentials to represent Northern Ireland at the funeral of Pope Francis - on the basis that she attended commemorations of violent IRA events at Easter.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill has praised Pope Francis’s “unwavering commitment to justice and peace” and confirmed she will travel to Rome to join leaders from across the world for the pontiff’s funeral on Saturday.
On Saturday April 19th, she appeared at a commemoration at a Republican plot in Coalisland Cemetery, Co Tyrone.
She was pictured making a speech next to the graves of IRA men shot and killed by the SAS in Clonoe in 1992, minutes after they’d pumped 30 rounds of armour-piercing tracer ammunition from a Soviet-made heavy machine gun into Coalisland police station.
The UK Government is “choosing weapons of war over people and public services”, Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill has said.
The case made headlines this year after a coroner ruled the army weren’t justified using lethal force against the gang – a situation that earned the ire of Unionists.
Addressing a crowd of around 50 at the cemetery, the First Minister said they had come together to remember "all of those who have struggled for our freedom” and “honour the sacrifices that were made by those during Easter week of 1916, but also in every generation before and since”.
It was understood to be the first time she attended a Republican Easter commemoration in Northern Ireland since becoming First Minister – and her decision to speak next to the Clonoe gang’s graves was slammed by both the TUV and DUP.
Reflecting her on planned trip to Rome this weekend, the TUV reflected on the public appearances she made over Easter.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill has praised Pope Francis’s “unwavering commitment to justice and peace” and confirmed she will travel to Rome to join leaders from across the world for the pontiff’s funeral on Saturday.
‘Wicked deeds’
A TUV spokesperson said: “Michelle O’Neill - who spent the Easter period commemorating the wicked deeds of the blood-soaked IRA - will never represent tens of thousands of people in Northern Ireland regardless of the folly of some in elevating her to the position of First Minister in a Protocol implementing Executive.”
The Sinn Fein vice president cut short a family holiday to attend the funeral.
Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly will not be in attendance.
Ms O’Neill said: “I am proud to be attending the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, paying my respects on behalf of everyone at home who cherished his leadership and looked to him as a spiritual and moral guide.
“Pope Francis will be remembered as a leader of deep humility, compassion and courage, with an unwavering commitment to justice and peace.
“His passing is deeply felt in Ireland and across the world, leaving a legacy that continues to inspire millions.”
Ms O’Neill will join political leaders including US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Ireland’s premier Micheal Martin at the ceremony.
Ireland’s president Michael D Higgins, Irish deputy premier Simon Harris, Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin and Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell will also attend.
The Pope’s funeral is expected to begin at 9am UK time on Saturday.
Ms O’Neill will travel to Rome later on Friday.
The Northern Ireland Assembly, which is currently on Easter break, will hear tributes to Francis when it returns on Monday.
Francis died on Easter Monday aged 88 after battling illnesses including pneumonia in recent months.
On Easter Sunday, he had blessed thousands of people in St Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
