SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR NOT KILLING....
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 06:37PM The impossible happens. A politician linked to the IRA murder machine has resigned!
"A council education chief quit today after admitting she worked with the IRA in the 1970s. Conservative councillor Maria Gatland resigned as a cabinet member on Croydon Council after being exposed as the author of a "kiss and tell" book about the provisionals. The book described how, among other tasks, she acted as an interpreter for the movement on an arms-buying trip to Europe. The council appears to have been unaware of her past because the book was published in 1973 under her maiden name, Maria McGuire. A spokeswoman for Croydon Council said today: "The council has been advised that Maria Gatland has resigned as cabinet member for children, young people and learners. This follows emerging news of her connection to the Provisional IRA - which has come as a complete shock to Croydon. Officers understand she has been urged to resign from the council. It is also understood that urgent steps are being taken to replace her as cabinet member."
Ms Gatland's book - To Take Arms: My Year With The IRA Provisional - was described in a review in Time magazine in 1973 as a "kiss and tell story" about her relationships with the movement. It was written after she became disillusioned with the provisionals, and fled to England. The turning point was apparently when 20 bombs were detonated in Belfast on July 21, 1972, killing 11 people and injuring more than a hundred. "Almost for the first time, I wondered about the crippled and the widowed and the lives that had been changed forever," she wrote.
She is believed to have been sentenced to death by the IRA as a result.
Think about that last line. She realised just how barbaric the IRA was and she fled it. She was sentenced to death for not continuing to kill. That's Irish republicanism in action for you. I believe Mr Adams was quite senior in the IRA even at that time, perhaps he could confirm Ms Gatland's tale?
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Reader Comments (11)
She is believed to have been sentenced to death by the IRA as a result.
She was sentenced to death for not continuing to kill
Spot the difference.
Feworange - LOL!
I''ve read the book. In it she says how she was thought to be linked to the seizure of a large arms shipment ie they thought she was an informer. Nowhere in her biography soe she say she was "sentenced to death" because she was disillusioned etc.
As these sort of confessionals go, it wasnt a bad read. She was clearly disillusioned with the Provisional campaignbut still came across as republican/nationalist. Interesting to see she turned up as a Tory!
sorry "soe" should say "does".
BTW re: Adams. I dont think he was that senior in the IRA at the time - I think he was important Belfast wise, but the main people she mentions in the book are Southern based republicans like O'Connell, Bradaigh and even englishman Sean McStoifin
Investigative author Martin Dillon, no friend of Republicans, in his authouritive early nineties work The Dirty War portrays Maguire as a callow, besotted fantasist
“Maria Maguire, who some Provisionals believe was a British agent, fled Ireland with the aid of an Observer journalist and wrote her account of the year that she spent with the IRA. The book, To Take Arms was a poorly written, naïve and sensational account of her infatuation with O’Connell and Republicanism. In her absence she was court-martialled, and to this day the Provisionals say she will be executed if she is ever located. As she admits at the end of the book there are very few places left for here”
http://books.google.com/books?id=Kc1jtzUNiFAC&pg=PA389&lpg=PA389&dq=daithi+oconnell+maria+maguire&source=web&ots=PIbpPuZgwT&sig=9wTfshDrjmhZVpKu6L2PXOJ8AUI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA391,M1
"She realised just how barbaric the IRA was and she fled it. She was sentenced to death for not continuing to kill"
Yep, that would seem to fit properly with Maguire's sensationalism.
'Yep, that would seem to fit properly with Maguire's sensationalism.'
She must have been terrified- the way she kept out of the public eye!!!!
There are some interestign anecdotes in the book, and most have the ring of truth to them. For example, the tales of the hardened fighters from Belfast who came down South on leave, wrecked from the stress of carrying on a guerrella war and living on the run (this was in 1971/72), or her account of the arms-buying trip to Europe (she went alone with Daithi O'Connell and had an affair with him).
She was not sentenced to death for not continuing the campaign. Her sin was to write a book personally damning to McStiofain just after he'd become leader of the Provos.
Dylan speculates that she was working for the British, that she had deliberately sabotaged the arms deal and that this was the reason for the death sentence.
"She was sentenced to death for not continuing to kill"
I thought that one had to start killing before they could stop it. Are yu suggesting that this Tory councillor is in fact a murderess David?
>>Dylan speculates that she was working for the British, that she had deliberately sabotaged the arms deal<<
Was this in:
"You're the kinda woman I jus' don' understand
You took all my money, you give it to another man!"
(from You’re No Good)
God's teeth, I can't believe that I used the name Dylan and didn't see that one coming.
:^)