The Strange Story of the UDA, the President's Husband and £10 million

Plus: Raytheon pull out of Derry. And Cardinal Cahal Daly – what he really knew...

Eamonn McCann, 11 Feb 2010

On January 12th, Raytheon, third largest arms manufacturer in the world and main supplier of precision weaponry to Israel, announced its departure from Derry.

Nine of us from the Derry Anti-War Coalition had occupied the Raytheon premises and smashed up their computer system in August 2006. At the time, Raytheon bombs were obliterating southern Lebanon.

Nine women occupied the plant again last January 2009, as Raytheon GBUs (guided bomb units) rained down on Gaza. The second occupation seems to have been the last straw for company bosses.

Raytheon had set up in Derry in 1999, presented as part of a “peace dividend” arising from the previous year’s Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. The irony was jaggedly obvious. We had the campaign launched literally within hours.

No mainstream party or media outlet supported it. But in the end, we did the biz, by maintaining the momentum of protest and disruption until the company cottoned on we weren’t going to go away until they did.

The lesson, in the immortal words of the Redskins: keep on keeping on.

Next stop: Shannon.

Arising from last issue, I am asked how I could know that the late Cardinal Cahal Daly had been aware in 1990 of a case of child rape by a priest and done nothing about it.

I have read a letter to the Cardinal from the family of the raped child describing what had happened in harrowing terms, and read also the reply from Dr. Daly promising to pray for the child but giving no advice as to what the family should do or suggesting any action which he or anyone else in the Church might take.

If Bobby Charles had never written anything other than ‘See You Later, Alligator’, he’d be remembered forever. Few phrases ever entered the language so swiftly to become a permanent part of our discourse. My grand-daughter Rosie, 7, giggles it every time we say goodbye.

Charles, 14, shouted the phrase by way of goodbye to friend in a diner in Abbeyville, Lousiana, in 1952. “After a while crocodile”, came the response. So he wrote ‘Later, Alligator’ (a better title) for his band at school.

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