Caucus cites British ‘spying’ on Irish America
Posted By: September 14, 2016
OLDEST IRISH AMERICAN NEWSPAPER IN USA, ESTABLISHED IN 1928
Echo News–September 14-20 , 2016, page 7
Caucus cites British ‘spying’ on Irish America
By Irish Echo Staff
Fr. Sean Mc Manus
It was a time rife with intrigue.
Now some of that intrigue has come to light with the release of long shelved state papers dealing with Northern Ireland in the 1980s, and British government attitudes towards Irish American activist groups.
“Recently released British/Northern Ireland Office State Papers have caused considerable interest, and have given further insight into how the British Embassy spied on Irish-Americans,” said the Irish National Caucus, one of those groups, in a statement this week.
The state papers were released by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), and cover the period 1980 to 1989.
The papers were released under the “30/20 rule which is the phased release of official documents that were initially marked secret for 30 years, but are to be released after 20 years.
“This time the papers are of particular interest for a twofold reason: they reveal how deeply worried the British government was about our
MacBride Principles campaign (which they accurately state is ‘largely instigated by the Irish National Caucus’ and the papers reveal how the British Embassy penetrated and spied on Irish-American organizations,” said INC founder and president, Fr. Sean McManus.
One of the released papers consists of a report dated October 10, 1985, by the British Embassy to the Head of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland at the time.
The paper gives a report on an Irish American Unity conference meeting in Philadelphia which took place August 23-25,
1985.
It explains how one of the IAUC members present was reporting ( the Fermanagh-born Fr. McManus uses the word “spying”) events to the British Embassy in Washington and that another member had proclaimed her “hatred” for Fr. McManus at the meeting.
Said McManus by way of response to the revelation: “I have a life-long policy of not responding to personal attacks.
“But I have to make an exception in this case as it is not really a personal attack, but one gloried in, and recorded by the British Embassy.
“It is sad and pathetic that at the height of the MacBride Principles campaign that the Brits could report that another Irish organization was spending its time in attacking me. How absurd and traitorous is that.”
And he continued in part: “However, I do not take all that stuff personally. Because of my life-long experience and background, I can figure out from whence come the constant, systematic attempts to sabotage my work.
“And it has always come, one way or another, from the British Embassy, and, at least in the early years, from the Irish Embassy.
“Thus it has always been. For example, I follow a rule of thumb, which is also a good religious principle: if one never had a personal confrontation or had personally offended a person, then an attack from such a person can never be ‘personal.’ Something else is always behind it.
“In all my 44 years in America, and in all my Irish activity, I’ve never had a personal fight or a nasty confrontation with any person on the Irish issue.
And even though I have received hundreds of thousands of letters, phone-calls and emails, not one person has ever outlined to me what they disagreed with in my work.
“And that is because no genuine Irish person could reasonably oppose the main pillars of my life’s work on Irish justice. However, any time anyone contacted me to make individual suggestions as to how I could do my work better, I always listened with great respect and attention. And I will always be eternally grateful for the huge and splendid individual and collective support I’ve received over all these years.
Fr. McManus concluded: “However, in all of this pathetic stuff, the central issue is: By what right and under what law is the British Embassy — or, indeed, the Irish Embassy— entitled to spy on Americans who are exercising their constitutional rights?
“What has the State Department to say about this? What if the Soviet/Russian or China embassies were spying and recruiting spies in the United States, would the State Department be silent?”
