If you don’t already know, Patrick Murray is the Belfast solicitor younger brother of Sean Murray Jnr – the film-maker who made the film “Unquiet Graves” recently described by me as Not Balanced FilmMaking but instead a film that may be legitimately regarded as IRA propaganda.
Patrick also goes by the Irish language version of his name, Pádraig Ó Muirigh, and his solicitor’s firm is Ó Muirigh Solicitors.
In “Irish News” sports reports he also goes by plain Paddy Murray.
I only clarify this name matter because recipients of legal letters alleging the defamation of Sean Murray Jnr by way of Twitter comments [in relation to Sean’s film “Unquiet Graves”] were unaware that Ó Muirigh Solicitors – the senders of the letters – were none other than Sean Murray Jnr’s younger brother Patrick/Pádraig – a relationship not vouchsafed in the letters.
It is my personal opinion that it is not advisable for a solicitor to represent a sibling in a case of alleged Defamation because the blood relationship may blur the solicitor’s judgment potentially leading to a disastrous outcome – it must surely always be better for a solicitor related to a plaintiff to advise the use of a different solicitor to avoid an obvious conflict of interest and possibly unbalanced advice.
Of course, this opinion may never apply to the possibly different category of ACTIVIST Solicitors/Lawyers to which Patrick/Pádraig believes he belongs.
[While Patrick’s father is the infamous IRA gangster and convicted terrorist gaolbird Sean “Spike” Murray (regularly written up in the press as a member of the IRA’s Northern Command and Army Gang Council), Patrick has a right to be viewed as his own man unencumbered by his father’s terrorist gang activities and proclivities and I uphold Patrick in this. If I later refer to IRA Spike, it will only be in relevant context.]
Patrick/Pádraig refers to his convicted terrorist father Sean Spike as having been a “political prisoner” during the 1980s – either Patrick/Pádraig is prone to memory lapse or else he is taking political Activism a bridge too far.
Sean Spike Murray was captured in possession of two ‘beer keg bombs’ (related to TWO TONS of other explosives discovered by police) while evidently on his way to bomb somewhere in Belfast city centre and was later convicted and sentenced to 12 years penal servitude – but in his case, the Brits were donating 50% remission for good behaviour and Sean Spike availed of this gift, spending only 6 years in prison for the attempted bombing.
It is difficult to believe that a Northern Ireland solicitor would refer to a convicted terrorist bomber as a “political prisoner” when that term would usually only ever apply to non-violent prisoners of conscience – those who were imprisoned solely for their political opinions.
Sean Spike Murray was an IRA terrorist bomber plain and simple.
Let me make one or two small admissions of interest in relation to Patrick’s chosen profession – the law.
Not every family has at least one solicitor – mine did – and I had some difficulty choosing between Law and English when appying to Trinity many years back, somewhat influenced by my experience of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six cases which in my own way I championed to Gareth Peirce and many others from Wormwood Scrubs, Long Lartin, Gartree and other prisons on behalf of my friends.
However, after the prison years, and at the last moment I chose instead to study Single Honour English and after that Computer Science and it was not for a few years that I once more looked into the maw of The Law, working alongside my solicitor brother for a year but once more turning away from Law for more exciting opportunities elsewhere.
But it was the Law of Torts that had been my interest since before Trinity and it is the Law of Torts that will detain us briefly here.
You don’t need to have studied Law academically to have taken an interest in Defamation – I know people who can converse intelligently about Defamation because they have for many years read about it in detail in newspaper reports of more famous cases – those that succeeded and those that failed. I mean, it ain’t Rocket Science.
So it is entirely possible for the average intelligent and interested citizen to have an informed opinion about a Defamation case and how it might have been handled or mishandled by – in the first instance – a solicitor and in particular a solicitor who claims a “specialism” [sic] in Defamation as Ó Muirigh Solicitors does on its Web site.
Ó Muirigh Solicitors’ declared “specialism” in Defamation resulted in Master Evan Bell of the High Court declaring Gerry IRA Kelly‘s case as “completely untenable” and an effort to “abuse the law” to intimidate and silence a critic. It was “scandalous, frivolous and vexatious” according to Master Bell.
This is by any measure a devastating judgment of a case which, evidently in the opinion of Master Evan Bell of the High Court, should never have been undertaken – and the plaintiff, convicted terrorist bomber Gerry IRA Kelly, should never have been given to understand that he had a reputation that could be sullied after boasting of his IRA terrorist exploits in various venues over the years.
Another admission – I don’t now live in and never have lived in Belfast and I don’t pay much attention to local Belfast solicitors – well at least not since 1975 when I was briefly represented by the IRA-friendly solicitor who smuggled messages out of Crumlin Road Gaol for me when I was the IRA Battalion Intelligence Officer in there for a few months responsible for debriefing newly-arrested IRA volunteers about their police interrogations.
I never paid any heed to Patrick Murray/Pádraig Ó Muirigh/Ó Muirigh Solicitors until the period when I published my own detailed interpretation of Sean Murray Jnr’s “Unquiet Graves” film which – as we have already noted – Sean Murray Jnr convinced me was IRA propaganda.
You may read that blog article here if you wish.
I never received any legal correspondence arguing that my published research Defamed Sean Murray Jnr.
Sean Murray Jnr has made no bones about his pro-IRA views:
The partisan political opinion expressed above by Sean Murray Jnr is that convicted IRA terrorist bomber Tom McElwee – who died voluntarily on IRA hungerstrike – was not a criminal – even though he was convicted of terrorist bombings in the courts and self-identified as an IRA terrorist.
McElwee planted a number of fire bombs in Ballymena in 1976, one of which burned 26 year old Protestant mother Yvonne Dunlop to death moments after she shouted a warning in the clothes shop where she worked.
On October 9, 1976 one of his fire bombs killed Yvonne Dunlop from Ballymena who died while working in her father’s boutique, Alley Katz.
She was checking a shopping bag left by two girls when the fire bomb went off.
She only just had time to shout a warning to her nine-year-old son to escape before she was caught in the fireball and was burned to death.
Her mother said later: “Yvonne knew I would soon be arriving to take over from her in the boutique. She had just gone to the back of the shop when she shouted: ‘There’s a bomb, get out’.
“Then suddenly the whole place burst into flames. Her son escaped with just his hair singed but my daughter didn’t have a chance.”
A list of targets was found in a coat in McElwee’s car.
He pleaded guilty to owning the coat and the bomb and was jailed.
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/hunger-strikers-last-words-were-to-ask-forgiveness-after-killing-young-mother-3339865
McElwee was so ashamed of his IRA “job” that he broke the IRA rules of the time and not only recognised the British Court’s jurisdiction but also Pleaded Guilty – this behaviour would have automatically placed McElwee in a less trusted category among IRA prisoners who had upheld the rules of the time in Not recognising the courts and Not pleading guilty thereby Not receiving shorter prison sentences.
McElwee’s SHAME was evident in his last written message before his hungerstrike death – seeking forgiveness for his crimes.
Sean Murray Jnr’s view that McElwee was Not a Criminal is an extreme partisan view in light of McElwee’s killing of a young woman civilian – a young mother – but also in light of McElwee’s own view of his crimes for which he himself begged forgiveness – a long way from the Sean Murray Jnr notion that he had nothing to repent.
A number of Twitter users told me that their rather ordinary robust comments regarding Sean Murray Jnr’s “Unquiet Graves” film – nothing like the vile commentary by Sinn Féin-organised and run extremist Trolls – had earned them threatening letters from Ó Muirigh Solicitors – I say “threatening” in the sense of carrying a threat of legal action in the courts if certain conditions were not met.
It would appear that Sean Murray Jnr – who made use of Freedom of Opinion and Freedom of Expression in the wild world of accusatory activist filmmaking without expecting to be the recipient of Defamation letters – complained to his brother, Patrick/Pádraig, that some Twitter users were criticizing him for – more or less – having some kind of association with or support for or leaning toward the IRA.
In the above Tweet, Sean Murray Jnr openly DENIES that the IRA was criminal and/or terrorist which is about as much support as the IRA desires and often doesn’t even receive from citizens or even from its own supporters.
I mean, even born-again Sinn Féin supporter Brian Feeney claims that Sinn Féin and the IRA amount to nothing more than a criminal terrorist Mafia-style conspiracy and he coined the phrase “pinstripe terrorists” to describe Republicans in general:
As recently as 2015, Brian Feeney thundered in “The Irish Times” that governments should attend to the IRA’s illegal proceeds of terrorism and crime amounting to nearly half a billion euros.
Feeney described the IRA’s ‘War Chest’:
In 2005, the Department of Justice estimated the IRA’s global assets at €400 million.
Since then it has been privatised, with individual IRA members holding property portfolios and businesses in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the US in trust. Who controls it all? How?
For some reason, both governments and unionists seem obsessed that individual IRA men killing a former IRA man is a terminal threat to political stability in the North, yet ignore the implications of the IRA’s clandestine financial empire.
Ten years ago, Michael McDowell also said that demanding the IRA disband was pointless without demanding its war chest be emptied. Apparently that was a needless complication.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/british-and-irish-governments-should-focus-on-ira-s-400-million-global-assets-1.2332550
For all Feeney’s presumably libellous (?) description of Republicans/Sinn Féiners as “pinstripe terrorists“, he went on to sign the election papers of one such Feeney-described “pinstripe terrorist” none other than John Finucane – and so eager are Sinn Féiners to have the approbation of former SDLP members that Finucane overlooked Feeney’s libellous (?) insult and praised Feeney for bestowing his gracious signature:
So it would appear perfectly possible for a Sinn Féin supporter to regard Sinn Féiners as criminal Mafia terrorists and to publicly label them “pinstripe terrorists” without ever triggering the attention of Activist solictors such as Ó Muirigh Solicitors.
Indeed, that low level of “support” – believing them to be “pinstripe terrorists” – can gain one a John FInucane signature offer at election time.
So, how much more must the IRA leadership view as welcome and supportive the views of Sean Murray Jnr who denies Feeney’s claim that IRA members are criminals and terrorists.
I mean, who is viewed by the IRA as the greater supporter – Feeney with his “pinstripe terrorists” claim while signing John Finucane’s election papers or Murray with his DENIAL of such claims?
And yet – in layman’s terms – the nub of the legal letters issued by Ó Muirigh Solicitors was exactly that any association with or for the IRA put upon Sean Murray Jnr the likeness of “criminal” or “terrorist” character.
The basis of the legal complaint was that being framed to any degree in the likeness of the IRA necessarily cast “criminal” and “terrorist” likeness upon Sean Murray Jnr – the very opposite of Sean Murray Jnr’s own views since he did not himself believe the IRA to have been CRIMINAL or TERRORIST.
So it must therefore be a belief of Ó Muirigh Solicitors that any association with the IRA must always infer CRIMINAL and TERRORIST character, even though Patrick/Pádraig Ó Muirigh declared his terrorist father to be merely a “political prisoner”.
Needless to say, Ó Muirigh Solicitors is unable to overcome Sean Murray Jnr’s own explicit support for the IRA as expressed in social media.
More confusingly, Sean Murray Jnr has been at pains to argue that THE IRA HAS GONE AWAY and nothing of it remains except old shadows [presumably the likes Gerry IRA Kelly] now manifesting in Sinn Féin:
So the Ó Muirigh Solicitors threatening letters have been based on claims that Sean Murray Jnr has been “defamed”, has suffered “distress”, “embarrassment” and/or “upset” at being associated in any way with the GONE AWAY NO LONGER EXISTING IRA which Sean Murray Jnr believes was never CRIMINAL or TERRORIST anyway but which O’Muirigh Solicitors have claimed inferred “CRIMINAL” OR “TERRORIST” activity on Sean Jnr by the merest usage of the GONE AWAY term “IRA” in Tweets!
While Ó Muirigh Solicitors did successfully issue threatening letters by email, in one specific case Ó Muirigh Solicitors commanded an individual to personally attend the home of Austin Stack (a total of three times) whose father was murdered by the IRA.
The individual – a summons’ server with a clear Northern Ireland accent – was lurking around the property of Austin Stack in Portlaoise for a number of hours – three times in one day – to personally serve Austin Stack at his home address in relation also to remarks similarly referring to Sean Murray Jnr’s support for the IRA – a support Sean Murray Jnr expressed openly on social media while also declaring the IRA had not existed for some considerable time.
Patrick Murray has described himself as more than a solicitor – he has described himself as an ACTIVIST solicitor, but also affecting the term “lawyer” and “Human Rights lawyer” – a term more usually associated with barristers in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland.
It is the ‘Activist’ label he has chosen which, I believe, has had a deleterious and limiting effect on his concepts of victims and offenders.
For all Patrick Murray’s stated attachment to Human Rights, he studiously and carefully avoids references to the IRA’s many Human Rights atrocities and Victims in the Ballymurphy/Clonard/Belfast areas.
Patrick is a solicitor who almost cannot give an interview without namedropping The Ballymurphy Massacre victims and digging deep into their atrocity – and yet never managing to mention the IRA’s youngest ever Ballymurphy Torture and Murder Victim – 15 yrs old Bernard Teggart, son of one of the Ballymurphy victims.
And while Patrick almost cannot give an interview without namedropping murdered solicitor Pat Finucane and digging deep into his murder, Patrick unaccountably never mentions those other Officers of the Court – a number of them Nationalist Catholics – murdered by the IRA also in front of their families – even while coming out of Mass – even alongside their murdered wives and daughters and children…
These Officers of the Court – some of them fulfilling the demands of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement that Catholics should be represented in the judiciary – were cruelly murdered in front of or alongside their family members by the IRA – and yet Republican solicitors and Republican “Human Rights” groupings cannot bring themselves ever to mention their names or to highlight their atrocious murders by the IRA.
And even with prominent self-identified IRA leaders living locally in Republican communities, Republican solicitors and “Human Rights” groupings don’t appear to have been able to bring themselves to investigate or depose these terrorist gangsters about their well-known Human Rights atrocities – or to sue them in Civil proceedings for their many heinous murders of Nationalist/Catholic citizens if not for their murders of Protestant Unionist citizens?
But what is most troubling about Ó Muirigh Solicitors commanding the “in person” service of papers at the home of Austin Stack – with [an admittedly Covid-masked] man lurking around the property three times in as many hours – is that the decision to serve Stack in this manner entirely lacked any victim empathy…
Such “in person” service at Stack’s home in the Repubic of Ireland a long way from Belfast lacked any empathy that Austin Stack was ever a 14 year old child victim of the IRA’s heinous murder of his father – a victim in the same vein as John Finucane Jnr was – who gets oceans of Republican empathy over and over.
Austin Stack evidently felt so threatened by such “in person” service at his home that he informed the police – An Garda Síochána – that he perceived a threat by such behaviour on the part of Ó Muirigh Solicitors.
It’s not like Northern Ireland solicitors are UNAWARE of the threat posed by the publication of a home address:
Several law firms were singled out, including
KRW Solicitors, founded by Kevin Winters, and
O Muirigh Solicitors, run by Padraig O Muirigh.
The paper published photos of solicitors, including
Kevin Winters, and featured details about his
home.Niall Murphy is a solicitor at KRW, one of the firms
identified by The Sun. Because of the article, he
has been “extremely distressed and concerned for
my safety and the safety of my colleagues and
employees. The articles have caused great
distress within my immediate family….”For O Muirigh and many others, the
https://humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/A-Troubling-Turn.pdf
murdered lawyers are inspirational figures.
O Muirigh’s father is a high-profile Republican
who knew Pat Finucane and chatted with him
regularly. “I recall one of those occasions when I
was present. It wasn’t long before Pat was killed. I
would have been 12 years old.”
I mean – Patrick Murray/Pádraig Ó Muirigh must have sufficient empathy and self-awareness to realize that for Austin Stack – a 14 year old child victim when his father was murdered by the IRA – a service of papers at his home was akin to the effective publication of his home address – formerly a matter of some security and privacy to Austin Stack.
Furthermore, in the light of his father’s murder by the IRA, such invasion of Stack’s home space on such a trivial matter of an opinion expressed on Twitter brought with it the fear of the overarching Pater of the Murray family – the IRA gangster and convicted bomber father Sean Spike Murray Senior – a man who has for years been described in the press – without a single defamation claim – as so senior in the IRA hierarchy as to be on the IRA’s Northern Command and Army Council – a ‘Council’ of gangsters that authorised and oversaw all of the IRA’s many murders and bombings and which the Police Service of Northern Ireland still believes exists and oversees the Republican Movement.
The empathy to foresee that a 14 year old child victim of a cruel bloody IRA murder would later feel this degree of fear, threat and endangerment at this home invasion – a needless “in person” service of papers since others were successfully served at the same time by email – this empathy was entirely lacking on the part of Patrick Murray/Pádraig Ó Muirigh/Ó Muirigh Solicitors and one has to wonder why empathy is entirely lacking for victims of heinous IRA murders while Republican victims are bathed in empathy.
One reason for this perceived lack of empathy for some victims, for this perceived lack of balance in his judgment, may be Patrick Murray’s self-declared sense of “Activism” – when asked by Sarah Henry during her podcast how he maintained balance, Murray entirely brushed off the relevance of balance in favour of activism:
“I don’t try and find balance… I don’t try to look for a balance… I do my job – I’m very proud to do it…”
In my opinion, Murray’s decision to invade the home of IRA murder victim Austin Stack with a prowling, lurking masked man serving papers – when social media provided less invasive and more sensitive opportunities for service – is a clear proof that he has diminished empathy for victims of the IRA and his sense of Activism or Mission obscures his sense of what is an appropriate and proportionate response to a few words passed on Twitter.
In my opinion, Pádraig Ó Muirigh/Ó Muirigh Solicitors owes IRA murder victim Austin Stack a profoundly sincere apology for this unnecessary and insensitive invasion of his home space especially since Northern Ireland solicitors have assured interested American parties that any publication of THEIR home addresses did indeed carry an obvious and automatic threat.
I look forward to Irish Legal News reporting and elucidating the “completely untenable”, “utterly unjust”, “scandalous, frivolous and vexatious” Gerry Kelly V Malachi O’Doherty case which was in the first instance initiated by Pádraig Ó Muirigh/Ó Muirigh Solicitors who advised and represented Gerry Kelly.
Was it the proclaimed “Activist” quality in Pádraig Ó Muirigh/Ó Muirigh Solicitors that blinded it to the potential for the case’s disastrous outcome as detailed by Master Evan Bell?
The Irish Peace Process 