Introduction to my book "Where Silence Is Golden".
Towards the end of 1976 I was shocked when Down District Council refused to take seriously my complaint of a serious and dangerous coal-smoke nuisance entering our almost new home at 56 Carlisle Park, Ballynahinch, Co. Down, from the fireplace of the house next door through what should have been a solid party wall dividing one house from the other and wasn't. I did not know at the time that all four owners of this block of four terraced houses, 52, 54, 56 and 58 Carlisle Park had already made the same complaint.
What has shocked me even more in all the years since 1976 is the fact that not only have Down District Council absolutely refused to deal with this public nuisance and its cause as they are bound to do by law, but every agency within the jurisdiction of the British Government within Northern Ireland, is literally frightened of challenging this corrupt little Council's cover-up of what has turned out to be a massive house-building fraud throughout Northern Ireland including a substantial number of defective houses within the city of Belfast!
Voltair said, "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
"WHERE SILENCE IS GOLDEN"
is my story of fraud, institutional corruption and political thuggery in local Government in Northern Ireland in its handling of
THE CARLISLE PARK AFFAIR
When I blew the whistle on a major house-building fraud over 34 years ago, I was amazed at how many professional people including lawyers, politicians and highly-paid Government department officials rushed in to cover it up. Just how big is this fraud and who are all these professional people protecting?
My story also exposes the horrible culture of abuse my (Catholic) family and I have had to suffer especially at the hands of politicians belonging to the (Catholic) 'power-sharing' Social Democratic and Labour Party, the SDLP, who have done everything in their power for 34 years, yes, thirty-four years, to prevent me from getting justice for my family. To this day, no SDLP politician in Northern Ireland has taken up my case on an on-going basis. The one individual, a lady SDLP councillor, who did start an investigation, was ruthlessly stopped. Another lady councillor belonging to the Women's Coalition party, Councillor Anne Carr, who publicly supported this first lady, then left the Council altogether. Another SDLP lady councillor from Banbridge District Council, Councillor Catherine McDermott, who later asked her male SDLP Down District counterparts questions about this fraud during the Annual Party Conference in Newcastle, was told to mind her own business.
Incredibly, absolutely incredibly, now in 2011 and after trying to get a firm of solicitors to take my case against Down District Council during these past 34 years [thirty-four years] no solicitor has had the guts to take my case on to a conclusion. A number of lawyers did start investigating it on my behalf, for even up to two years, but always found an excuse to refuse to carry it on.
Here is a view of a good, thick, solid, legal brick. This is the type of brick which the building law contained in Housing (Owner Occupation) Regulations (Northern Ireland)1956 specified for the walls, all the walls, of the block of houses at numbers 52, 54, 56 and 58 Carlisle Park, Ballynahinch, when they were built in 1971/1972 under the auspices of the former East Down Rural District Council.
Here is what the building section of the Housing (Owner Occupation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1956 states about how the walls in these houses should have been built.
The only other material, alternative to good thick, solid brick as specified in the written regulations, which could have been legally used and was even specifically included by the architect in his Specification for the Carlisle Park Development, were good, thick, solid concrete blocks.
A Terralux block consists of a half inch shell of very porous and brittle burnt clay. Terralux blocks were used for saving concrete in the floors of multi-storied commercial buildings, schools, hospitals etc and served to create soundproofing between one floor and the next. Imaginative farmers used them for draining water from fields and also for the floors of pig-houses for keeping pigs' feet warm. Unfortunately, equally 'imaginative' corrupt local politicians and corrupt civil servants colluded with equally corrupt building contractors to cause Terralux blocks to be used in the building of dwelling houses in the 1960s and 1970s in Northern Ireland instead of good thick solid bricks as required by the building laws at the time. The building professionals, ie bricklayers, plasterers and joiners, aptly named Terralux Blocks "biscuits". When necessary, bricklayers were able to cut legal, solid bricks to size with a bolster (broad chisel) using a heavy hammer. If a bricklayer had tried to cut biscuits to size using these implements, the biscuits would have shattered into little pieces.
Plasterers could not use ordinary plaster on walls built with biscuits because biscuits dried the ordinary plaster too quickly causing the plaster to crack up. Plasterers had to be trained to mix a special formulation of plaster which would dry more slowly.
Joiners were tortured fitting doors and window frames into walls built with biscuits. They had to risk breaking the biscuits apart as they made and hammered wooden wedges into the large holes in the biscuits to nail the doors and window frames into.
Party walls in attached houses where the walls are built with biscuits are not fireproof walls as required by law. Nor, as I found out to my very great cost, are biscuit-built party walls smoke-proof.
Here are three different views showing the ridiculous disparity between the size and shape of these two materials, the solid legal material which was only used on the outside wall of all four houses in the above-mentioned block of four houses for all the world to see, and the useless material, terralux, which ALL the inside, load-bearng walls were built with instead of the good solid material as required by law, which the outside wall covered up.
This is what the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints' architect had to say about this 'arrangement'.
This is what Down District Councillors allowed or commanded the former Acting Chief Building Control Inspector McCord to state in writing, dated November 4th 1986, to a leading member of my team following our meeting in Down District Council headquarters. Such blatantly confused and confusing rubbish is unworthy of a senior government official.
This is what Down District Council's Chief Executive Officer wrote to the former Prime Minister.
This is the result of the criminal work of corrupt and corrupting men in high places who are still escaping punishment through the corruption of our keepers of law and order in Northern Ireland.
Abraham Lincoln said, "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
"I thought that I had a duty to help those that weren't as lucky as me."
So stated John Hume - in the beginning.
(photo of John Hume courtesy of http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1548704.stm)
Why then did John Hume, later to become MP and MEP, and then to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, refuse to answer my letters for help in protecting our large family? So Who Silenced John Hume?
An Open University Moderator called my website content 'a gem'.
Who made Stephen McGonagle change his Commissioner for Complaint's Report CC 19/78?
I am so grateful and thankful to the BBC for their BBC2 programme about the end of February 1991 that made such an impact on my life at the time but I have to ask the question - why did the BBC Radio Ulster presenter, David Dunseath, later deliberately cut my wife off the air on the live BBC Radio Ulster phone-in programme "Talkback"? Councillor Carmel O'Boyle is a member of Mr. Hume's party, the SDLP, who was, and still is in 2011, a Down District Councillor, and even though Councillor O'Boyle was a full-time teacher, wife and mother, she made the time to find out what was going on in my case. Mr. Hume stated in his letter of acknowledgment to me that he would get in touch with 'his people' in Downpatrick and get back to me. Mr. Hume never did get back to me. Please read Councillor Carmel O'Boyle's strenuous attempts to cause her Council to do their duty. I am presently updating this information. On November 28th 2006 I sent this letter to the British Prime Minister Mr. Tony Blair. "Dear Mr. Rice, Here you can see the full Report of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints/Ombudsman in 1979. Some weeks before this report was issued, a man who was teaching my children at the time in a local school and was also a senior member of the SDLP called with my wife and me and in a whisper, smilingly told us that the Commissioner's Report was coming out in our favour. Just after the Report was issued some weeks later, and was against us, this same man called with us again and was profusely apologetic saying that he did not know what had happened! The worst of the Troubles is over in Northern Ireland but a much bigger mess has yet to be exposed and cleaned up. Unfortunately the people who are responsible for this exposure and clean-up actually belong to the government bodies who have been and are creating this mess.
Please go to Chapter 1 of my book "Where Silence Is Golden".
Gandhi said that injustice must be made visible. Please help to make this injustice visible by telling your friends about it.
Why also, did the BBC's reporter Maggie Taggart make fun on air (I didn't think it was funny) of my standing in the 1979 General Election in South Down against those whom I believed to be responsible for my family's suffering?
Councillor O'Boyle's strenuous efforts to help me were eventually halted in a manner which I have recently learned to have been exceedingly corrupt, collusive and an outstanding example of the "criminal activity" which the RUC Fraud Squad officers told me they found after they had studied my large file on this matter. Not even the police will take any proceedings to expose this fraud. Why? Are the police afraid of the same 'ogre' as John Hume?
On 25/4/2009 I had the following letter published in the Mourne Observer.
My letter was acknowledged stating that it would be sent to the Northern Ireland Office.
I didn't get any acknowledgement from that Office but received this letter from the Department of the Environment dated January 17th 2007.
The Clerk and Chief Executive of Down District Council, Mr. John McGrillen who is mentioned in the above letter, is a relative of mine. His grandmother and my mother were sisters.
I received this reply from Mr. McGrillen dated February 12th 2007.
I am retyping Mr. McGrillen's letter here for ease of explaining its total inconsistency with the facts of this matter. The emphasis in blue and links are mine.
Re: Houses Built with Terralux Blocks
I have been asked by the Department of the Environment, Local Government Division, to respond to your letter of 28 November 2006 to the Prime Minister.
The houses to which you refer where (should read 'were') built under the Bye Laws made by Downpatrick Rural District Council in 1958. The terralux blocks used in the construction of these houses complied with those Bye Laws.
They had widespread acceptability and were used by various Housing Authorities, including the former Northern Ireland Housing Trust.
Currently, Down District Council is not in receipt of any complaints from the owners / occupiers of the houses in question.
Yours sincerely
John McGrillen
Clerk and Chief Executive"
Every political party in Northern Ireland is aware of my situation, but, while a few individual members of those parties have tried to get it exposed, their party machines will have none of it. Why?
Please email this page to a friend.
Thank you.