Article

Foster and Gillespie, Paisley and McCrea, Beattie and Poots jailed at weekly intervals

(Report from ‘The Burning Bush’ of February 1988)

On Tuesday 12th January at 10.15am Rev Ivan Foster was arrested at his church and taken to Belfast Prison on the Crumlin Road. The following day, Ald Roy Gillespie from Ahoghill, Co Antrim was likewise incarcerated.

Because they came in on different days they did not meet up with each other until Thursday afternoon. They shared a cell for their last night in prison.

Alderman Gillespie was glad to be in the more respectable (only just) company of Rev Foster as he had spent the previous night with two provos who had been arrested for possession of explosives.

Having been in the Crumlin Road prison on three previous occasions Mr Foster was quite familiar with the routine. (more…)

An article by Rev. Ivan Foster 

(Written for a ‘pre-digital’ edition of The Burning Bush shortly after a third spell in jail in April 1986) 

Rev. Ivan Foster was arrested at his church in Kilskeery in Co. Tyrone on Monday 21 April (1986) and taken to Crumlin Road Jail to serve a sentence of 14 days for refusing to pay a fine imposed upon him for his part in a protest against the R. U. C. carrying out Dublin’s orders to ban the Protestant parade in Castlewellan last July (1985). With full remission of sentence, and, because the Prison does not have weekend releases, Mr. Foster was set free on Friday 25 April.

To have a prison record was not exactly the main ambition of my life. Yet it has now happened to me three times.

Of course I could have avoided all three imprisonments but only at the cost of grieving my conscience. In 1966, 1969 and now in 1986 I chose to go to prison rather than willingly comply with the punishment meted out to me by the courts. Each time I forced the authorities to imprison me as a protest against the betrayal of our civil and religious heritage. (more…)

Here is a report in today’s “Irish News” of the death of Mrs Ethel Smyth, who was a Christian in her late eighties. She was a lady who fearlessly battled against the evils of Sinn Fein/IRA in her days in politics.

In truth, she was a little too hot for the DUP back when she was active in local politics.

I attempted to take part in the Castlewellan protest mentioned in this report. A friend and I were stopped at a RUC checkpoint and prevented from entering Castlewellan and joining the protest. We were taken to court on the false evidence of a police constable. His evidence against me was utterly demolished by the cross examination of Mr Jim Allister QC. It was so clear that he was telling falsehoods that the Resident Magistrate, trying the case, angrily dismissed him from the witness box. (more…)