Thank fuck for valium. It's a high-threat situation. Her father sits in the visitors seats glaring pure hate at me from an angry, violent face. She's giving her testimony, fear and terror with all of the usual hysteria that characterises her performances. I look from her to the furious street thug and know another beating is on the way. I can win here, but it doesn't end here. It ends out there where the cops new best friends have Free Reign and Official Sanction.
"Tell me, Constable Cassells, on the day you cautioned my client, had he voluntarily come down to Donegall Pass Police Station?"
"Yes"
"He had come to report an assault on himself by the complainant's boyfriend?"
"Yes"
"And this was a very severe assault indeed?"
"Yes"
He's squirming.
It passes like a dream. I'm giving testimony. I'm there, but I'm not there. The menace goes away, and in it's place; the challenge. We go through the witness statements. My disagreements with the prosecutor are balanced, measured, calm. My barrister talks me through the articles from my blog. We discuss the context and content; the death of the community; the need to rehouse most, give soundproofing to others and imprison no more people in that place.
I deconstruct Tony's article; the call to build no more public housing but make the homeless rent from Rachmans. Katrina could not have written it. The dense technical jargon is beyond her limited wit. Yet she sat in the witness box and claimed to have been it's author.
"The police instructed you to write no more about her on your blog." Counsel for the State has to make the point. "She is upset that you do so."
"You're aware of the cartoonist Steve Bell in the Guardian?"
"No"
I don't believe him, but the magistrate knows where I'm going. He nods to me.
I continue. " Should it matter to him how Tony Blair, Maggie Thatcher, Gordon Brown, and, this week, Boris Johnston feel about his wonderfully grotesque, funny and apt caricatures of them? Yet Steve Bell's not in the dock, nor is any other journalist. This is the first time in the United Kingdom that someone has been prosecuted for criticising a public figure. This is, in fact, a test case."
"'It may be", says the magistrate, "but I don't care."
I'm learning to like him.
"But", says the prosecutor, "she does not want you to do so."
"I consider it my obligation as a journalist, and bloggers consider themselves to be journalists, and indeed the obligation of every citizen to hold to account those who claim to speak and act on our behalf. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
In his summing up, the magistrate agrees with that. However, it has been a close call. My witnesses, credible, articulate and upstanding, demolish her account of the residents' meeting. Her performance, product of a lifetime of practice, is emotive. Without my witnesses she would have won. Only I can counter her claims about the "looking incident" at the Ormeau Bakery, but it fails to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Her performance has impressed the Judge, but it's not enough.
Justice prevailed and Free Speech won, but the perfidy of the cops and their plaything came dangerously close to succeeding. On the day of the day of the trial they tried to introduce three more alleged "incidents". What they are I don't know. They could have had the trial adjourned until September and then out of a total of six allegations they would have to win only two. Dirty tricks and thugs on the ground; the RUC haven't gone away you know.
Postscript.
The issue is discussed in these links:-
http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/power-of-arrest
-used-against-belfast-blogger/
http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/holylands-
blogger-cleared-of-harassment-charges/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/06/
northernireland.civilliberties
http://modoherty.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/save-the-blog/
About Me
- belfast samizdat
- A half-breed from West Belfast who went to Sullivan Upper, Discovered Homelessness (and James Connolly),settled in the Holylands before it went shitfaced, Took up studying, and got his heart broke by Academia (And a few Women), Someone who knows he can survive even a near fatal beating, and has learned to face death with equanimity. Never forgets a bad turn. Stands by his Class and above all his friends.
21 comments:
Was glad to hear you got off. The whole sorry incident sounds like a corrupt and complete abandonment of the fundamental principles of justice.
well done man - as a fellow blogger and belfast lad its great to see this result. Please tell me you did the whole ' you cant handle the truth' in the court room!
Ps, Now i can call everyone a bastard without fear of consequences :-)
I found your blog via the Observer article, and I'm shocked at what the Queens University students are getting away with. Good luck with your campaign.
Exellent result for justice valium and yourself, well done sir it's good to see the lambs not so silent!
Now I hope you fully intend to sue for false arrest and harrassment yourself Mr.Murry
If the shoe was on the other foot your opposition and state boot-boys wouldn't hesitate.
Clean the bastards out
It was actually a close call due to dirty tricks. I have to thank a magnificent barrister and two witnesses who's bravery and honesty helped justice prevail against serious odds.
Congrats on your win. I live in Drumcondra in Dublin and there are quite a few student lets in the area. I live in a terrace and one of the immediate neighboring houses is a student let. They are from the country and they don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. They feel like going out in the street at two in the morning mid week for a drunken game of hurling then they do just that. The residents grumble and complain among themselves but I am the only one to confront these guys (and girls) and consequently suffer even more direct grief. I wish the landlord would let the house to an immigrant family or a bunch of Polish workers. I don't say that flippantly, I really wish he would. An immigrant family would have some vested interest in the area and Polish workers actually work and like the rest of us are generally too tired to party every bloody night.
These Irish culchie students are the lowest of the low and I say that as an Irishman. Each year the occupants change but the behaviour does not. At least in Northern Ireland this is a live issue, down here it is an unspoken menace. I have yet to see a single news item about the impact these wretches have on the communities they afflict.
Best of luck with your campaign.
Well done mate, glad you got the only legitimate response from the courts, no, as a previous poster has suggested, get a lawyer to clean them out.
Dublin man get organised make a stand, don't fuck about like we did in the rugby road/holyland letting wankers run a residence association who thought they knew what they were doing, when in actual fact they knew fuck-all.
After 23 years in Rugby road my wife and I are getting out because no one stood up and said fuck this lets protest properly.
Our silly residence association made dicks out of all of us, we must have looked like completely stupid cunts to the landlords and the universities because they just pished all over us.
1) Get organised
2) Don't let anyone remain in a post for more than one year.
3) Bring direct protest to the universities front door with the T.V cameras present (that'll get results)
4) Collect all rubish and dump it in the front garden of the Landlord that owns the messy property
5) Disrupt their little graduation days (that'll let their families know they were bastards)
6) Never ever expect help from the law
I think we're getting a bit side tracked here in the whole legal argument thing.
September's rapidly approaching and now the resident numbers are lower than ever.
I've been giving thought as to ways to combat student anti-social activity however so far I've not been able to think of anything that hasn't been done before: Complaints to university, police, media attention, directly challenging students etc
The crusades against anti-social behaviour need a bit of a revamp this coming term...anyone got any ideas?
Excellent. We also ran a piece on your run-in with the police over this and have added your blog to our role of honour.
http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/brave-blogger-cleared_09.html
We are so glad you were cleared.
Kind regards.
Robin
I am a student living in the holylands area. I am not one of the noisy ones but even still some of the comments on this blog worry me a little. Any voilence against students or threats of voilence will be met tenfold so i advise residence and local scallys to be careful. Students are young, strong and usually extremly drunk so there not the kind of people you want to intice.
My advice to you all is to just leave. You are fighting a battle that has already been lost.
you live in a fantasy. You are loving all the press and attention you are getting from this. Just because your university career has been a failure doesn't mean you should have a continued chip on your shoulder about students. A number of students who live in the holyland come from working class backgrounds like myself. I pay my own way through and i dont sit around crying like you do. So dont tar us all with the same brush.
A reply to the comment:
"threats of voilence will be met tenfold so i advise residence and local scallys to be careful. Students are young, strong and usually extremly drunk so there not the kind of people you want to intice.My advice to you all is to just leave"
Let's see...I've had many a physical encounter with a student...defending myself albeit...a few times there's been a few students and I've defended myself and been the one standing. I do not however in any way advocate the use of violence.
However there is also the fact that the area is filled with local shady people...and they're dumb. They'll do time for a student without batting an eyelid...because they're fucking stupid...they don't care.
I'll certainly be laughing my ass off when the inevitable happens: you "Hide" violent criminals in the holylands and then introduce naive students to them in september...dear dear... I can see the headlines in the Irish News now!
Alan has left the Holyland. Technically speaking there is no body left capable to take this issue forward. In this case I think Malthusian Economics will kick in.
Readers confound the estate agents, make bids on properties, fuck up the property market in the Holyland. Create confusion, hit the bastards in their pockets, let "nature" take its course.
I've had to reject a few comments because they were pushing the boundary of free speech and had entered into the realms of incitement. I do this with great reluctance, but it is the price we pay as bloggers. We can criticise, insult, ridicule etc. We can even publish articles from the Gown Newspaper gloating at the death of a resident and the obscene contributions from the "Student Body" dancing on his grave and telling all residents to get the fuck out. However, running a sweeps stake on the prospect of violence against "students" and calling the possible death of a "student" a "laugh riot" are clearly incitement to violence up to and including murder and are unacceptable. One would be rightly prosecuted for publishing them. I may consider the "Student body" to be a despicable waste of time and taxpayers money. Violence against them and their property may be inevitable, but it cannot be encouraged and celebrated. It can be discussed, and the horror that inevitably leads to it can be exposed, but it cannot be condoned.
Congratulations on the result, Alan. I hope you sue the SOBs.
Just to ask a question on one of your earlier blogs. who is Suzzane Breen?
moron if you such a hard liner for for freedom of the holylands why did you run away and leave you so called friends at the the first time of asking to shameless or do you intend to roam the streets at night on a one man crusade to wright the world ofall its wrongs???????
"moron if you such a hard liner for for freedom of the holylands why did you run away and leave you so called friends at the the first time of asking to shameless or do you intend to roam the streets at night on a one man crusade to wright the world ofall its wrongs???????"
hahahahaha this guys a retard. Ever heard of a full stop. Freedom lol.
Has anyone else noticed how multi-cultural the holylands seems during the summer. Its probably the only area of belfast where you could see the likes of indians having a family party, or huge crowds of chinese people meeting up. Maybe one day it will be like the areas of asian areas of leeds.
When the orangemen came down agincourt on the twelth i saw loads of black and asian people watching on in curiousity. Unaware of the bigoted and racist views of the men.
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