Sinn Féin and their new King

By Dee Fennell

Alan Lundy is one of my best friends. As is his brother Daniel. I’m also lucky enough to count his other son Ciaran and his daughters Clare and Elizabeth as friends. Their mother Margaret is a lady. All of them are hard working, salt of the earth people that are not uncommon when it comes to working class families in Belfast - regardless of political or religious persuasion - and I count myself lucky to know the entire Lundy Family.

Their father and husband, also called Alan, wasnt someone I knew. Though I knew who he was. He came from the same street as my own father, Northwick Drive. A street that as well as the Lundys and Fennells had other good solid Republican families like the McCanns, Bradleys, Wilkinsons, amongst others. As kids running about the street he was just “Lundy’s da” if we seen him walking to and from his own parents in Northwick Drive to the next street in Strathroy Park where he was rearing his own family who he adored.

As well as being a family man, Alan was a good friend to many and very well respected. In conversations when he comes up, those that knew him invariably describe him as a “real gentleman”. He was a member of the local Shamrock Club. He was a fanatical Celtic supporter.

Alan enjoyed living life.

Alan was also an IRA Volunteer and a member of the local McCaughey/Saunders Sinn Féin cumann. As a long standing Republican activist he had also served time in jail. When it came to his trial, and despite a recent decision by the then Republican leadership to allow Volunteers to recognise the court, he didnt do so. “It wouldn’t be fair on the ones that went before me”, and he undoubtedly got an increased sentence for his decision. In fact, many said had he recognised the court he probably would have been acquitted.

Alan was also a plasterer by trade, and it was this work that fed and clothed his children. It was this, thirty years ago this Monday 1st May, that took him to the home of his friend Alex Maskey to do a bit of plastering work on a Saturday afternoon.

Alex Maskey, as a Sinn Féin councillor at the time, was a particular hate figure for pro-British death squads and was living under constant threat. His home was under constant surveillance by Crown Forces, with regular overt and covert patrols by both the RUC and British Army. This day was no different with them in the street all day from the morning, and as Alan worked in the family home right through to about 5pm. They then withdrew from the area at about 5.30pm

Half an hour later a loyalist death squad entered the Maskey garden and raked the home with automatic gunfire. Alan had stayed for some dinner and was struck and killed outright. He was 39 years old.

Alan’s murder was facilitated by the RUC and British Army, obviously hoping that Alex Maskey would be the victim but not caring if his wife, children or whoever else happened to be present were also killed.

The weapon used was smuggled in a consignment from apartheid-era South Africa by a British Army agent called Brian Nelson of the shadowy Force Research Unit. Nelson had been sent back to Belfast by the FRU to direct and arm the UDA/UFF. He supplied them with British Army intelligence documents, with weapons and ammunition. And he picked targets. All while under the control of the British State.

Alan Lundy was murdered by the British State. His wife was widowed by the British State. His children were left fatherless by the British State. None of his grandchildren ever met Alan. Because of the British State and their murder campaign in Ireland. And they are by no means a unique family, sadly.

To this day the British State, by way of the PSNI/RUC and the Ministry of Defence - not to mention MI5, continue to deny the Lundy Family the truth regarding the death of their father and husband. They have an ongoing case to prove collusion and are represented by leading human rights legal firm KRW Law. This seeks to get to the truth and expose State involvement in this case.

And the State is doing what the State does. Protects its interests. In this instance the touts and agents that pulled triggers, the agents that directed them. The handlers that gave them the go ahead, that protected them at the time. That continue to protect them now.

Alan’s two oldest sons are older now than he was when he died. Both from their teenage years have been victims of police harassment, beatings, malicious prosecutions, house raids and constant stop and searches. Alan junior has also been interned by remand as a Republican Prisoner. Their own children have experienced the reality of the British occupation since birth.

Alan’s 30th anniversary is this coming Monday. For his 20th anniversary the Lundy family and their friends organised a plaque unveiling at the family home. This year there will be a simple and dignified wreath laying there on Sunday 30th April at 11.30am. I dont know whether Alex Maskey will turn up. But thanks to a Sinn Féin statement today we know where he will be later in the week.

Alex Maskey will be at the coronation of the new British King, Charles Windsor. The new head of the British State that murdered Alan Lundy and countless others. This new head of the British Stare is also the Commander in Chief of the Parachute Regiment that killed so many people in Ardoyne and elsewhere. Including volunteers that have their name alongside Alan’s on the local Republican Roll Of Honour.

He will be accompanied by his party leader Michelle O’Neill, enjoying banquets literally fit for a king just a few short days after the anniversary of Bobby Sands and before that of Francis Hughes.

Along with the rest of the British Establishment, they will pay homage to an unelected parasite that is the personification of everything Republicanism is opposed to. Privilege, nepotism, slavery, colonialism, imperialism. They will do so willingly - not because they have to but because they have been well trained to do as they are told at this stage.

They will be surrounded by members of the British military hierarchy, adorned with medals “earned” by the slaughter of innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ireland and elsewhere.

Are these the actions of Republicans? Do Republicans stand for British monarchs when they are told, bow when they are told? Pose for pictures with those that have the blood stained crown upon their head?

No way. Not in my name. Not in our name.

Like any other Republican I would rather stand on a terraced street in silence with an unbowed and unbroken Republican family as they remember their husband, father and grandfather than stand in the presence of the enemy that murdered him as they crown their next leader.

And I think Alan Lundy would have done the same as me.

Urgent Appeal