We look back at the stories that were making the headlines in the Andersonstown News this week in 1981
‘Meter milkers’ are sacked
AN EXHAUSTIVE internal investigation by the Northern Ireland Electricity Service has revealed a substantial incidence of meter ‘milking’ by its own employees.
The investigation was started by the Service’s chiefs, when it came to light that a number of employees had greatly deflated electricity bills. The two month investigation was carried out in the Belfast area, by a team of outside special investigators and revealed that some employees had been bypassing their meters for some time.
As a result, eleven people have been sacked on the spot pending criminal proceedings and a similar number are under investigation. The employees involved come from all sections of the service and are not confined to the ‘technical’ side such as electricians or meter men. Some of those sacked have long years of service with the Electricity Board, and will lose all pension rights as a result of the sacking.
Mr Hugo Patterson from the Electricity Service, admitted that the number of people involved was worrying, but stressed that this figure should be set against the 200 electricity fraud cases currently pending in the courts, and all involving the general public in the greater Belfast area. He also stressed that the very fact that this internal investigation had taken place showed the electricity service’s determination to vigorously pursue the electricity ‘meter milkers’ and prosecute were possible.
The steep rise in electricity charges in recent years has resulted in a massive falling off in the use of electricity. The oil crisis and inflation have played a part in this, but some experts feel that the multi-million pound capital expenditure involved in the building of the Ballylumford Power Station has put such a strain on the electricity service’s finances that it can’t possibly become economically viable.
On top of this is the overall feeling that Ballylumford is not really needed at all since the consumption of electricity has not kept pace with the projected predictions of the early seventies. The Ballylumford ‘white elephant’ shall continue to wreak financial havoc on the service well into the 1980s. The present wave of ‘meter milking’ prosecutions is looked upon by some experts as something of a ‘panic’ measure which could in no way eleviate the serious financial trouble of the electricity service.
Mickey Gallagher presents a set of jerseys on behalf of Frank Allen Amusements (Kennedy Way), to Joe Boyle, trainer of Arlington Under-12 Gaelic Football Team. Giovanny Morelli at centre back row
EDITORIAL
AFTER the rí-rá of the British general election, whose outcome changes nothing, several points emerge which are of interest to us and to all who seek a solution to the Irish/British problem.
Firstly; only those politicians who take a strong Republican line can hope to have the support of the majority of the nationalist people. This is shown by the fact that only half the nationalists in West Belfast voted; that the Workers’ Party managed to muster the votes of only their most ardent followers, a mere 10,000 votes (the Irish Independence Party, not yet two years of age, polled over 20,000); the SDLP men with strong republican leanings, like Paddy Duffy and Séamus Mallon, polled very heavily; Frank Maguire, who makes no secret of his republican sentiments and his contempt for Britain and her parliament, polled more than 23,000 votes and cut the limb from beneath Austin Currie.
Now to Britain; a very important factor in the Labour debacle was the Irish vote. Traditionally this goes to Labour; and in the 1970 election, a poll carried out by the Irish Post showed that 79.4 per cent of the Irish in Britain voted Labour and 13.6 per cent voted Conservative. A survey carried out last week by the same newspaper revealed that only 22 per cent of the Irish vote would go to Labour and 19.5 per cent to the Conservatives. In other words, the Irish in Britain abstained to a large extent, and Labour lost the election.
We are reminded that Fianna Fáil have the biggest majority in Dáil history because enough people wouldn’t stomach the pro-British, anti-Irish policies of the Coalition Labour’s repressive policies along with their blatant buying of Unionist support, cost them the Irish vote and the election.
There’s a lesson in these figues for all of us – the traditional aspirations of the Irish people cannot be ignored; and if they are, the war will go on, and on. Anyone with an eye to history, recent and not so recent, knows that. SDLP, Humphrey Atkins, etc, please note.
Maura Connolly Irish dancers at the Kerri Inn Lá Bealtaine concert
First Blanket Man set to be released
KIERAN Nugent will be released from the infamous H-Block in Long Kesh tomorrow morning after two years and eight months ‘on the blanket’.
Kieran, who is 21, stated that the only way they would get him to wear prison garb, would be to nail it to his body and he went ‘on the blanket’ instead of becoming a criminal and serving just half his sentence.
His first appearance will be at a press conference on Friday and there will be a victory march on Sunday next, 13th May on the Falls Road. After that Kieran is expected to appear at a rally in Dundalk on the 19th May, and then tour major cities in the Free State. A tour of Denmark and Holland has been turned down and even though the United States are crying out for him to tour, all trips abroad will be postponed until he has undergone both physical and psychological tests to ascertain his fitness to carry out exhaustive tours abroad.
Mr and Mrs Nugent from Leeson Street, who received the Andersonstown News Award last January on behalf of the ‘Blanket Men’, will meet him as he is released from Long Kesh tomorrow. His parents have not seen him since he went on the blanket in 1976 as he refused to wear prison clothes even for half an hour per month to receive a visit.
Kieran, along with two Ardoyne prisoners and a prisoner from Derry, took the Northern Ireland Prison Service and the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg last August for alleged violation of nine articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Malone children at the Kerri Inn Lá Bealtaine concert 
