Talk:James McCann (drugs trafficker)

IRA membership claim
Removed, at least for now. Other than Howard Marks (best classed as a primary source) who isn't even consistent about McCann's status, everyone else seems to disagree. Anarchy in the UK describes him as a "phoney IRA member", The Post makes no mention of him being in the IRA (and says he "mixed with unsuspecting IRA men", which suggests he wasn't), this newspaper says he was an arms dealer involved with the IRA but "did not claim to be a member of the IRA", the Irish Independent don't say he was in the IRA, and Tim Pat Coogan describes him as a "man once prominently associated with the IRA" (note the meaning of the words, that's very different from "a former prominent IRA member" or anything similar. Although I probably wouldn't use it as a source in the article, this is good for pre-escape info on McCann. He wasn't in prison for IRA activity, he was an anarchist who firebombed a university common room. 2 lines of K 303  12:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Indented line Having read your citation, I really don't see how you conclude that McCann was an anarchist in those days. Take this long quote:


 * Indented line The basic bones of the story are that McCann in the company of Felix de Mendelssohn, Joseph Stevens and Peter McCartan, all working in one way or another as journalists, met him at Queen’s on the promise of an exclusive, or perhaps after some drinks and goading from McCann. They were then treated to the spectacle of a Molotov cocktail attack on Queen’s Common Room, a chase by a passing plainclothes RUC patrol and an armed standoff, before McCann surrendered his sawn-off shotgun and the unlikely quartet were arrested and remanded to Crumlin Road gaol. After some pre-trial theatrics and four months inside, McCann, who spent his term informing his Provo cellmate that the jail hadn’t been built which could hold him, he broke out of the prison by sawing through the cell bars. The escape was the first since December 1960 and gained McCann some, largely self- generated, notoriety as the ‘green’ or ‘shamrock pimpernel’ and the original ‘border fox’. McCann’s subsequent escapades are well-documented by dope dealer Howard Marks in his autobiography, Mr. Nice, but basically he took up cannabis-smuggling and re-used a proportion of the profits to send arms and explosives to the Provisional and/or Official IRA, and was allegedly involved in the bombing of a British Army barracks in Germany in 1973.


 * Indented line None of this, of course, amounts to ‘anarchist’ activity and McCann was quite rightly seen as simply a fellow-traveller of the IRA who used libertarian ideas to justify a private business enterprise labelled criminal by the state.(24) His fellow-accused in 1971, Felix de Mendelssohn (who was acquitted with the others), had been a genuine anarchist involved with a group in Oxford in the early 1960s, and remembers Jim McCann as ‘anarchic’ but certainly no anarchist, merely ‘a psychopath who used political labels where they suited him’. De Mendelssohn is now a professional psychoanalyst so can speak with some expertise in the area of McCann’s mental make-up, and while he was impressed with McCann’s escape, this does not affect his overall assessment of him as ‘one of the craziest and most dangerous men I have ever met’.(25)


 * Indented line After his arrest in 1979 and beating from the IRA prisoners in Portlaoise prison for the embarrassment of being caught with a large marijuana haul, McCann moved on to involvement in various capitalist ventures across the globe and has continued to evade conviction to the present day.(26) It is unclear how McCann became identified or associated with anarchism and in many ways it doesn’t really matter, but the appearance of such maverick characters claiming to be anarchists has occasionally occurred over the years and caused no little damage to anarchism. It may well yet occur, and although other crude adventurists and crackpot dictators have claimed the socialist mantle from time to time, anarchism often appears to be judged more harshly whenever freelance lunatics attach themselves to it.

I think the conclusion from this is that McCann was no anarchist, and that the writer is correct when he describes McCann as a psychopath and opportunist who hung about the radical tourist circles looking for a way to make money from the situation. And he did, but largely through associating with the IRA through his arms smuggling, and the world of "ordinary decent crime" through his drug trafficking. --Mardyke (talk) 08:07, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Article moved to James McCann (drugs trafficker). fish &amp;karate 12:56, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

James McCann (Irish republican) → James McCann (drugs trafficker) – The disambiguator "Irish republican" is generally reserved for people who are notable for being Irish republicans, and see the section above for the problems with calling him a member of the IRA. I don't mind any other disambiguator that anyone wants to suggest such as "criminal" or anything similar, but the current title is a no-go as far as I'm concerned. 2 lines of K 303  12:53, 3 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Support move; the article does not make clear that he was a member of the IRA, and it is clear he is well-known as a drug trafficker, not an Irish republican. ---  RepublicanJacobite  TheFortyFive 02:06, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. There is nothing in the article about politics. Kauffner (talk) 02:55, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Very brief IRA details were in the article until I removed them per my reasoning in the section above, just so there's no confusion. 2 lines of K  303  11:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment. Shouldn't it be "drug trafficker"? Jenks24 (talk) 04:21, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Going by a quick look at recent articles on Google News, drugs trafficker seems, for reasons best explained by grammar experts, to be the preferred option in British English (which Ireland uses, or a variant of), whereas drug trafficker is used in American English (which Ireland doesn't use), although a few UK media outlets seem to use the term as well. I've no real preference for either, I didn't pick one over the other I just assumed "drugs trafficker" was correct as that's what I'm used to seeing. 2 lines of K  303  11:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Drugs trafficker is correct. He smuggled drugs, plural. JonC Talk 13:09, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you're going to stalk me, at least get your facts right. How many guns do you think a "gun-runner" smuggles, one at a time? 2 lines of K  303  12:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't flatter yourself. I was agreeing with you, anyway. JonC Talk 13:26, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In American English, it is always "drug trafficker". This seems to be the more common form in British English as well. Compare here and here. Kauffner (talk) 15:58, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Why would we have an article about him if he were just a drugs smuggler? Surely the notable thing about him (if any) is his alleged connections with the IRA and supposed involvement in arms smuggling for them. If we think the sources are sound as regards those allegations, we should make that the emphasis of the article, and the disambiguator "(arms smuggler)" or something. If we're not prepared to talk about that, then there seems no reason to keep the article at all.--Kotniski (talk) 13:27, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * He's generally more well known as a cannabis smuggler, albeit it one with supposed arms smuggling one the side. I've no objections to inclusion of the supposed links between him and the IRA, I do however have a major problem with stating he was in the IRA as other than Howard Marks nobody else seems to agree. The problem with McCann is that he's said a lot of things, often contradictory, and also been accused of various things, not many he's actually been charged or convicted with. Even with his possibly most well known arrest, the 1979 arrest in connection with a lorry-load of cannabis detailed in Coogan's book linked in the section above, he was actually found not guilty when it went to trial. That said, from memory his defence in court was that he did take part in the shipment but only to try and entrap Howard Marks and keep Ireland free from drugs (despite the fact that none of the shipments McCann or Marks was involved in ended up on Irish streets, it's generaally a common Marks/McCann defence tactic to distort the facts as much as possible). It will be difficult to write an article about McCann that's compliant with BLP and asserts notability. I think AFD at the moment might be a bit of a non-starter though, people will point to the sources and say he's notable. So it might be an idea to have a stab at writing a BLP compliant article, then see what we end up with? 2 lines of K  303  12:45, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

OPPOSE MOVE: His case seems to be the exact opposite of that of Martin McGuinness, who denies ever having been a member of the Provo IRA but is commonly listed as such. McCann claimed membership, but as the IRA didn't (don't?) have member lists his claim can neither be proved nor disproved. However, as his entire career is bound up with a mythos of having been at the very least an IRA associate, and he did smuggle weapons to the PIRA in the early 70s, and he is on an Interpol watch list for terrorist activity, and he was accused of bombing the BA HQ at Rheindalen in Germany in 1971 and twice faced extradition proceedings for that, then treating him as merely a drug trafficker is as erroneous as treating him as just another IRA volunteer. He was involved with the Citizens Defence Committees in Belfast in the early 70s which preceded the revival of the IRA and his sympathies were entirely republican. So what do we do? Change the title to 'Irish republican and drugs trafficker'? Mardyke (talk) 10:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It would appear your self-styled stance as "THE expert on James 'Jim' McCann/Kennedy" (your emphasis) has just crumbled. The IRA were not attacking British military targets in 1971 or at any other time in the early-mid 1970s (they did not attack targets in Germany until the late 80s), no reliable sources on the IRA make such a claim. However the Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhof Gang were, who McCann just happens to be linked with. Note the second link says the extradition warrant was even about links to a Baader-Mainhof attack, not the IRA. 2 lines of K  303  12:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Mardyke (talk) 15:08, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Afraid you're wrong, there, Hackney. One, both of your references are incorrect, with one merely picking up and repeating the first story. The German extradition warrant made no mention whatever of the Baader-Meinhof group, not did the German authorities plead any such connection in court. Granted, they denied any political connection whatever as in those days the political defence was still a valid legal reason to refuse extradition, and McCann benefited from it when the German request was refused, with the judges specifically stating that the act, if he had done it, was a poltical act in furtherance of his Irish republican political convictions.
 * Second, the IRA was most certainly attacking British Army targets in the early 1970s. In 1971 and 1972, lengthy gun battles between IRA and BA in the streets of Belfast and other cities in NI were a regular occurrence. Granted, IRA did not adopt overseas attacks, including Britain, as part of its strategy until much later. If McCann was involved in this attack, and he has never been tried for it, it was a maverick action. But it did occur and the court's view was that it was connected to the Northern Ireland conflict, not the Baader-Meinhof group.
 * Second, the IRA was most certainly attacking British Army targets in the early 1970s. In 1971 and 1972, lengthy gun battles between IRA and BA in the streets of Belfast and other cities in NI were a regular occurrence. Granted, IRA did not adopt overseas attacks, including Britain, as part of its strategy until much later. If McCann was involved in this attack, and he has never been tried for it, it was a maverick action. But it did occur and the court's view was that it was connected to the Northern Ireland conflict, not the Baader-Meinhof group.
 * Second, the IRA was most certainly attacking British Army targets in the early 1970s. In 1971 and 1972, lengthy gun battles between IRA and BA in the streets of Belfast and other cities in NI were a regular occurrence. Granted, IRA did not adopt overseas attacks, including Britain, as part of its strategy until much later. If McCann was involved in this attack, and he has never been tried for it, it was a maverick action. But it did occur and the court's view was that it was connected to the Northern Ireland conflict, not the Baader-Meinhof group.

And, to state the obvious, you don't have to be a member of the Provisional IRA to be a republican, which is the title description. Think of Saor Eire, Officlal IRA, IRSP and INLA, etc etc. In fact, McCann could be a perfectly devout republican without having any membership card in any organisation. Mardyke (talk) 10:06, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I was looking through the news archive and I have to agree that the subject's notability is as an IRA operative. The article was seriously whitewashed in this respect. All the same, "Irish republican" is a poor disambiguator. It is McCann's criminality, not his political beliefs, that make him notable. I gather the IRA disowns him now, supposedly because of the drugs. That gives his drug smuggling a resonance for today's readers that it might not have had back in the day. Kauffner (talk) 11:25, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Um, no. Read the sources in the section above. None of them say he was in the IRA, quite the opposite. 2 lines of K  303  12:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think he's really easily described as a drug smuggler and more than Irish republican seems to be totally correct, much more notable for his links to the Republicans. Off2riorob (talk) 12:00, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Which sources talk about his links to the Republicans without mentioning his smuggling? None I'm guessing, since it's his smuggling that links him to Republicans in the first place, and it didn't usually have anything to do with them. 2 lines of K  303
 * He seems more notable as a gun runner for the IRA and a petrol bomber to me reading the citations. Off2riorob (talk) 12:09, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well that's the thing. The petrol bombing was carried out when he was part of an anarchist group. It also doesn't logically follow that someone who supposedly smuggles for the IRA agrees with their politics, many arms smugglers do it for money not because they have any ideological reason for doing so. 2 lines of K  303  12:13, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a fine distinction to make. The Calgary Herald identifies McCann as a "suspected IRA activist". The Glasgow Herald calls him an "IRA activitist." How do you think you get the IRA's gun running concession? I don't think it goes to the smuggler who gives the lowest quotation. Kauffner (talk) 15:18, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought the IRA rejected him as damage limitation and beat him up and threw him out when the drug connection was exposed. I would really prefer him at just James McCann - but that doesn't seem possible? Its perhaps my personal weight I apply to the smuggling of hash (a low class drug smoked by many and legal in some locations) and gun smuggling and bombing (aids in the killing of people and is illegal everywhere) - anyway - I made a small alteration to my comment above (hope you don't mind I don't think it changes much - I removed my oppose comment I will move along and allow experienced users in the topic to work it out. Regards. - Off2riorob (talk) 12:24, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In any case, he was not a member of the anarchist group in question, which was a London group. He showed up one day at the editorial offices of Frendz magazine in London, attacked them over their coverage of events in Northern Ireland, made much of his republicanism, and ended by inviting them to come and witness the Belfast fighting. They accepted, he arranged the petrol bombing for their delectation, and they were swept up by the police in the arrest. All were eventually released or acquitted as non-participants, except McCann, who had escaped from the Crumlin Road jail while on remand.
 * In any case, he was not a member of the anarchist group in question, which was a London group. He showed up one day at the editorial offices of Frendz magazine in London, attacked them over their coverage of events in Northern Ireland, made much of his republicanism, and ended by inviting them to come and witness the Belfast fighting. They accepted, he arranged the petrol bombing for their delectation, and they were swept up by the police in the arrest. All were eventually released or acquitted as non-participants, except McCann, who had escaped from the Crumlin Road jail while on remand.

Mardyke (talk) 15:08, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, difficult. What hobby gave him the most "name and fame" and what hobby gave him the most years in prison?  Night of the Big Wind  talk  09:32, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support move Know more for drugs than any supposed IRA connection. Mo ainm  ~Talk  10:11, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Ehm, why so quickly this move? The original reguest was hardly 9 hours old when the move came. A bit more time for discussion would not have been a bad idea... Night of the Big Wind talk  13:03, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * 9 hours? The request was made on 3 October. fish &amp;karate 05:51, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Who made the decision? I ask because it certainly appeared to me that there is considerable room for further discussion. For example, here's another source.


 * Most of these conflicting references come to down to what the particular author believes. There are no membership records. Both McCann himself and Howard Marks say he was an IRA member (but they would, wouldn't they?). The IRA say he was not (but they would, wouldn't they?). It's not actually something that is open to a Wiki editor decision.


 * Seems to me that the most obviously knowledgeable of the sources quoted above, Joe McAnthony of the Irish Independent, who actually met and interviewed McCann and who followed his story for several years [source], has him down as the biggest and most effective supplier of weapons from Europe to the IRA in the 1970s until Muammar Gaddhafi took over that role.


 * Certainly, he was lot more effective than IRA chief of staff Dáithí Ó Conaill, who went on buying trips to Czechoslovakia with his lover, British spy/IRA volunteer Maria Maguire, who later morphed into Tory councillor Maria Gatland (could you make this stuff up? No...), thus ensuring that IRA money went down the tube and 4.5 tonnes of weaponry were seized at Schiphol before starting the last leg of their journey to Ireland.


 * My point is that the 'disambiguator' drugs trafficker is no more unambiguous than the previous disambiguator, Irish republican. May I return to my earlier suggestion in the discussion that he be described as 'Irish republican and drugs trafficker'. After all, we are sure of his republican sympathies and his activity as an arms supplier to the IRA. We just don't have his membership card.
 * --Mardyke (talk) 07:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Mardyke. As an univolved administrator working through the backlog of requested moves, I made the decision. There were 4 users calling for a move and only one (yourself) opposing it.  If you have a better suggestion then by all means please do follow the process at Requested moves and start a new discussion.  James McCann (Irish criminal) might be a more succinct alternative than your suggestion. fish &amp;karate  08:49, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Drugs conviction
Do we have a source that says he was actually convicted of drugs trafficking at some time and place? The only concrete arrest I can find was in Ireland in 1979, and it appears he was acquitted or let off on that occasion.--Kotniski (talk) 13:12, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, we do. The problem is that the source is not online, or readable in an archive only if you have a subscription, so we cannot make a link. For example, on Saturday 18 May 1991 The Irish Times carried a story 'Man known as "The Fox" held by German police', detailing how McCann had been arrested in Dusseldorf on the previous 3 March and would now face trial on charges of smuggling 1.5 tonnes of hashish from Morocco to England in 1989 as well as on several more minor charges. On Saturday 27 June 1992 the same paper carried a long piece in its Weekend section entitled 'The Fox and the supergrass' detailing the progress of the trial. The Sunday World covered the trial comprehensively, aided by the fact that it was strung out over a long period of 18 months, and on 17 January 1993 reported a December 1992 guilty verdict by the court in Dusseldorf of involvement in a drug smuggling enterprise and a sentence equal to 'time served'.


 * This shipment was carried out in conjunction with Howard Marks and Marks's logistics expert, William Roger Reaves, who was a witness against McCann during the trial.
 * The Irish Times charges €395 per year for access to its archive. The Sunday World online crime archives go back only to January 2010. I cannot find the related Irish Independent stories online either.
 * How do we handle this? I have PDFs of all the relevant pieces with the newspaper masthead and date visible in each. All are available at the national Library, Ireland, and elsewhere. Surely that qualifies them as authentic sources? Most of the history of the world would have to be excluded from Wikipedia if we are restricted to online sources...
 * How do we handle this? I have PDFs of all the relevant pieces with the newspaper masthead and date visible in each. All are available at the national Library, Ireland, and elsewhere. Surely that qualifies them as authentic sources? Most of the history of the world would have to be excluded from Wikipedia if we are restricted to online sources...
 * How do we handle this? I have PDFs of all the relevant pieces with the newspaper masthead and date visible in each. All are available at the national Library, Ireland, and elsewhere. Surely that qualifies them as authentic sources? Most of the history of the world would have to be excluded from Wikipedia if we are restricted to online sources...


 * Can I upload these PDFs to somewhere on Wikipedia so that we can link to them?
 * The same question applies to the official UN Climate Change document showing James Kennedy McCann as a member of the Belarus delegation to a Convention in the Netherlands. There is a link to that, and it most certainly was 'our' James McCann in a foray which eventually led to the founding of the company Greenfield Project Management Ltd and a (failed) attempt with a Dutch partner to set up a bioethanol plant in Belarus between 2005 and 2010.
 * The same question applies to the official UN Climate Change document showing James Kennedy McCann as a member of the Belarus delegation to a Convention in the Netherlands. There is a link to that, and it most certainly was 'our' James McCann in a foray which eventually led to the founding of the company Greenfield Project Management Ltd and a (failed) attempt with a Dutch partner to set up a bioethanol plant in Belarus between 2005 and 2010.

As a newbie, I would appreciate some guidance rather than the sneers I have received from 2 lines of K303


 * Mardyke (talk) 14:45, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * There's no requirement that sources be available online. If you have the published newspapers, then you can add the information, with references to those newspapers (giving name, date, page number). If someone doesn't believe you, you could upload an image of the pages.--Kotniski (talk) 15:06, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Kotniski, will do... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mardyke (talk • contribs) 15:12, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hello, looking for advice on my response to above advice from [User:Kotniski|Kotniski]. Here is my suggested text for McCann's conviction on drugs charges in Germany, 1992:


 * Criminal convictions


 * While accused of many offences, McCann was convicted of only one serious offence since coming to prominence in the 1970s, before which he had been convicted only of a string of minor offences, such as passing dud cheques and or breaking and entering, in Britain in the 1960s.
 * On Saturday 2 March 1991, McCann was arrested in a hotel in Dusseldorf, Germany, under the name of Robert Gustave Baehr. Identified by his fingerprints as James McCann, he was charged with being a member of a criminal gang, with smuggling 1,528 kilogrammes of hashish from Morocco to England in March 1988, and with possession of two false passports and small quantities of cannabis and cocaine at the time of arrest. [1]
 * At his trial before the Dusseldorf Amtsgericht, evidence was given that McCann had joined with Howard Marks and an American, William Roger Reaves, to supply the hash as part of a shipment on board a motor vessel, the Telmo, organised by Reaves and destined for the London market. Reaves and others had already been convicted in German courts. Marks, extradited to the USA on other charges, was never tried for this offence. [2]
 * In December 1992, after 21 months on remand, McCann was found guilty of participating in “a criminal gang whose purpose was to traffic in considerable amounts of narcotics” and of possession of false passports and quantities of cocaine and cannabis.
 * McCann was sentenced to three years for the drugs trafficking charge and six months each on the other charges, six of which were concurrent. As he had already served almost half the 42-month sentence in detention, he was released shortly afterwards and returned to the Netherlands. [3]
 * [1] Irish Independent, Friday May 17, 1991. Front page and P 10. Irish Times, Saturday 18 May, 1991, P 3.
 * [2] Sunday World, September 13, 1992, P 6. Sunday World, September 20, 1992, P 12. Irish Times, Saturday 27 June, 1992, P 31.
 * [3] Sunday World, January 17, 1993, P 8.
 * McCann was sentenced to three years for the drugs trafficking charge and six months each on the other charges, six of which were concurrent. As he had already served almost half the 42-month sentence in detention, he was released shortly afterwards and returned to the Netherlands. [3]
 * [1] Irish Independent, Friday May 17, 1991. Front page and P 10. Irish Times, Saturday 18 May, 1991, P 3.
 * [2] Sunday World, September 13, 1992, P 6. Sunday World, September 20, 1992, P 12. Irish Times, Saturday 27 June, 1992, P 31.
 * [3] Sunday World, January 17, 1993, P 8.
 * [2] Sunday World, September 13, 1992, P 6. Sunday World, September 20, 1992, P 12. Irish Times, Saturday 27 June, 1992, P 31.
 * [3] Sunday World, January 17, 1993, P 8.
 * [3] Sunday World, January 17, 1993, P 8.


 * I'd appreciate advice on whether this fits the bill.

--Mardyke (talk) 07:41, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

A small remark from one who has met James McCann a few times
I grew up with James visiting us during the summers, back then he went by Kennedy as surname. Last time i met him was about ten years ago. He is a very hard man to label. He can be extremely civilized in one moment and make surprisingly crude comments in the next. He will tell you one crazy story after the other and its always impossible to verify what is true and what has been conjured up to improve the story, and the stories are generally very good! I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the Howard Marks movie as it gave an interesting explanation to some of James´s irratic behaviour back when i was young. We always suspected he was into some really crazy stuff but never quite realized what it was. Sorry! I realize that was slightly off topic HOWEVER: One thing that has always been very clear and in no way in any doubt for anyone who has spent time with James is this: The man is extremely polarized in his views on the whole Northern Ireland issue. I doubt i have ever heard him utter a positive sentence describing anything english. Instead its always the "f-n english", "english bastards" and so on. No matter if he actually was part of the IRA or not, my best guess is that much of the motivation for any alleged criminal activity involving guns and drugs moved into or through Ireland would be political. That doesn´t mean I do not think he made any personal profits in the process; the man does like the good things in life! But reducing him to a mere drug, or drugs, trafficker and ignoring all the rest because the IRA hasn´t produced a list of members with him on it is just silly. He is a man who no doubt believes in the concept of a unified Irish Republic and who has, in his own crazy adventurous way, acted to promote that idea. So why not label him "Alleged drugs trafficker inclined to support the Irish Republic"? If it talks like a duck, looks like a duck and walks like a duck its probably a duck! MarcBirc (talk) 22:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

You are so right, MarcBirc. As someone who also knows James and has spent years following his career and studying him, I have been arguing the same points with the editors here for a couple of years now. Earlier versions of the Wikipedia entry got it more or less right. The present truncated and bowdlerised entry, while not entirely inaccurate, is a misrepresentation.

For example, the sentence "He was imprisoned at various times in Germany, France, Canada, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland on drug- or political violence-related matters[5]" gives a very false impression. Most readers would think he had been convicted of some crime, for which he was then imprisoned, in all these places, which is just not true. One of the major points about McCann, and why he was called the 'Shamrock Pimpernel' by Irish media, is that he always escaped in some way — either by jailbreak, by acquittal, by deportation, or by winning his case against extradition. The fact is, except for minor convictions for forging cheques and the like in Britain in the 1960s, the only crime he has ever been tried and found guilty of was the Telmo drug scam.

This truncated entry is, oddly enough, largely the result of Irish Republican sympathisers such as 2 lines of K303 and RepublicanJacobite wanting to cleanse their movement of any association with McCann. However, the fact is that McCann was an active member of the Belfast Citizens Defence Committee, the precursor to the revived IRA of the 1970s, and a close friend of Martin Meehan, later Belfast Brigade O/C, and other stalwarts of the IRA in the city. The IRA was certainly very happy to accept the shipments of weapons he smuggled through the port of Greenore in Ireland, at least until Muammar Gaddhafi became their main benefactor.

Mardyke (talk) 15:45, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Broken link in citation
The link http://www.howardmarks.name/multimedia/audio.asp in citation number 4, "Howard Marks interview" is broken. Page says it no longer exists. I would fix it if I could find an alternative link, but I could not.

--Mardyke (talk) 07:41, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Numerous violations of biographies of living people removed from article
This article contains, in places, numerous violations of WP:BLP.

To begin with, the final three paragraphs detail, and in places state as fact, that McCann perpetrated a fraud. The Dutch source would need updating to this link, except for the problem that as this article says Dutch prosecutors never had enough evidence to prosecute McCann. Since he was never charged, never mind convicted, the inclusion flies in the face of WP:BLPCRIME which says a living person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Since McCann was never charged, I am removing all mention of this. If anyone would like to use the Dutch source to write something that is 100% compliant with WP:BLPCRIME I may have no objection, I don't speak Dutch and I don't want to use automatic translation tools for information relating to serious allegations about living people.

Secondly, this is in direct violation of WP:BLPSPS as it is hosted on wordpress, and is part of an attack site on McCann no less. It can't be used under any circumstances.

Thirdly, this is in direct violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY, which says "Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person. Do not use public records that include personal details, such as date of birth, home value, traffic citations, vehicle registrations, and home or business addresses".

Lastly, this (it is listed in the footnotes twice, as #8 and #9) would appear to be also in violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY. All it really does is confirm his attendance at a conference, which would appear to be a meaningless standalone fact once the WP:BLPCRIME violations above have been removed. To that end, I don't see the relevance and have removed it. MarcoMrNicePolo (talk) 10:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)