Left-wing trust accused of funding terror-linked ‘charity’

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, funded by the famous Quaker chocolate family, is being investigated for donations to a charity in Northern Ireland which has been linked to dissident republican terrorism.

JRCT has given substantial grants over the years to the ‘anti-fascist’ organisations Searchlight and Hope not Hate. The latest controversy involves two sets of donations in Northern Ireland. Since 2014 the Trust has made regular grants to Teach na Failte, founded by the Irish Republican Socialist Party, political wing of the brutal terror gang Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Teach na Failte even shares an office with the IRSP in Falls Road, Belfast. IRSP has close connections to the violent anti-fascist group ‘Red Action’, scrutinised last weekend by the Sunday Times.

In 2014 the Rowntree Trust gave Teach na Failte £149,915 followed by a further grant of £125,000 in 2017.

Other controversial donations by the Rowntree Trust involve a housing charity Conflict Resolution Services Ireland, whose Belfast offices have twice been raided by police investigating ties to the dissident republican terrorist group Oglaigh na hEireann, a splinter group from the Real IRA which was itself a breakaway from the IRA.

The chairman of trustees at CRSI, Gerry Ruddy, is on record describing the INLA’s murder of Conservative MP Airey Neave in 1979 as “a legitimate exercise”.

Gerry Ruddy, a leading official of the IRSP, political front for the INLA who murdered Airey Neave and many others, is chairman of the CRSI ‘charity’ trustees.

Earlier investigations of CRSI have suggested that (unlike Teach na Failte) it is not a straightforward front for hardline republicans linked to terrorism. CRSI’s situation is more complicated. There are allegations that it has worked to move people up the queue for local authority housing in Ulster in a racket helping to manufacture supposed ‘threats’ from paramilitaries (both republican and loyalist), and that not only the various IRA splinter groups but also drug dealers shamefully using the banner of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) have been involved in this corrupt abuse of publicly funded housing.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, official investigations involve not only CRSI but a government-funded service called ‘Base 2’ which ostensibly helps families to be rehoused if they have been threatened. Working at the CRSI’s Belfast office is Sean O’Reilly, once given a 30-month jail sentence for his role in a botched ‘punishment shooting’ on behalf of a republican terror gang.

 

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