Revolutionary socialist & anti-imperialist; Rebel Breeze publishes material within this spectrum and may or may not agree with all or part of any particular contribution. Writing English, Irish and Spanish, about politics, culture, nature.
You will not question the Leadership of the Organisation. That is disrespectful. Besides, they know better than you. They are more intelligent and/ or better educated or have been at it longer than you.
The Leadership are incorruptible and have suffered much along the way. That makes it disloyal to question them.
You don’t want to be disrespectful and disloyal, do you?
Let the Leadership do the thinking. Is that not easier?
You must not listen to those who challenge or criticise the Leadership. Those people are disloyal and disrespectful. Besides, some of the things they point out will make you uncomfortable. Put your trust and faith in the Leadership and be comfortable and at ease.
Those who challenge the Leadership are troublemakers. They seek to upset things. It is right that they be expelled and then things will return to the state with which we can be comfortable. If remaining inside the Organisation, they will create disorder. If they are outside the Organisation, their words should not be reported or their criticism printed. Their activities should not be publicised.
You know and your comrades know that you are not a troublemaker, or disrespectful or disloyal. But if you associate with those critics, the ones from outside or that left or were expelled, people will begin to suspect that you too are like them. You want the Leadership and comrades to trust you, to be at ease with you, don’t you? Best ignore the critics, not have anything to do with them.
Besides, what can they possibly have to offer, outside the Organisation?
Solidarity against the attacks of the enemy is a good thing, but not with the critics. They have forfeited any right to solidarity when they broke from or criticised the Leadership and the Organisation. They have brought all this down upon themselves.
Concentrate upon the path pointed out by the Leadership. Concentrate upon the tasks of the moment. All will be well. You are in good hands. The Organisation is in good hands. Everything is fine.
(Gaelic football team Sheares Brothers has been doing very well for a change. A reporter from the Irish Times is about to conclude his interview of the club’s Bainisteoir).
(Photo sourced: Internet)
Your club’s local nickname is “the Pats”, I’m told.
Yes, I’ve heard that too.
Is it true – what I’ve been told – that all your players, in your entire team, are called Patrick?
Well, now, many are named Patrick, right enough, but they are not all called Patrick.
[Reporter jots down in his notebook: ‘named not called – wtf???’] Does that not cause problems, though, on the field? I mean, it must be difficult at times for your players to know to which of them the Captain is referring when he shouts out: “Patrick”.
[The interviewer smiles. He has shown the ridiculousness of this situation]. (Fucking unbelievable that this team got as far as its current position in theLeague! he thinks)
No, not all. Sure if the Captain called out “Patrick”, he’d be referring to himself! That would be a strange thing to do, for sure, to be talking to himself! Well, when with the team, anyway.
(This man is an idiot. An idiot managing a ridiculous team. Still, get the interview done, file the story. Then the pub ….) Ok …. what if he wants to say, to indicate to a player, to pass the ball to the left midfielder? Would he just call the position – as in “Pass the ball to Left Midfield”?
Well, he might …. but he’d more likely say “Give Paudie the ball”. That’s Paudie’s usual position, you see.
Oh, right.
No, left.
(What a thicko!) I meant “ok”. Your left Midfielder’s nickname is “Paudie”?
Well, it’s the name he goes by anyhow. Paudie Whelan.
So are all your players called a variation on Patrick?
Pretty much, yes.
Fifteen variations on Patrick? And no repetitions? That’s not possible, is it?
It seems to be.
OK, all right …. what about say, your Centre Forward?
Pa. Pa Walsh.
Hmm. Left Forward?
Packy Ó Braonáin.
Right Forward?
Emm …
(Got you now!)
Sorry, he’s just back from an injury. Patchy …. Patchy Stokes.
Left Half-Forward?
Patchik Mulhearn.
Centre Half-Forward?
Paddy plays that position – Paddy McGuinness.
Right Half-Forward?
Patch Hennessy.
(Has to run out of them soon). Left Mid-Field?
You had his name already – Paudie Whelan.
(Smartass!) Yes, of course. Right Mid-Field?
That’d be Pád Óg Trainor.
That’s P, a, u, d ……
No. P, á, d; Ó, g.
Right.
Right Half-Back?
No, I meant just “Right” , as in “OK’.
Right.
(Is he taking the piss?) Well ….. where was I?
Midfield.
Yes …. thanks …. Right Half-Back?
I thought you said ….? Never mind …Paudeen Sullivan.
Centre Half-Back?
Pád …. Pád Carney.
P, a, u ….
No, P, á, d; C, a, r ….
I know how to spell Carney, thanks.
Oh, ok.
Left Half-Back?
That’s Patrick … our Captain. Patrick Burke.
Left Corner-Back?
Ah ….
(Have I got him?)
Ah, sorry ….
(Aha! At last!)
Pat Sheehan. His name slipped me mind there for a minute, sorry.
Oh …. Ah. Good. Full Back?
Páraic Ó Flaithearta. Will I spell it for you?
(Fucking smart-ass! I’ll get it from their website. Just let me run him out of Patrick variants first.) No, it’s ok, I know my koopla fokol, gurra mah hugut.
Muise, tá fáilte romhat. Bail ó Dhia ort.
Well …. let’s carry on. Right Corner-Back?
Pádraig. Pádraig Lehane.
(Got you now!) Pádraig. The same as the man next to him, the Full Back.
No, that’s Páraic. P, á, r, a, i, c.
Oh! Ok, yes, I see. My mistake. Goalie?
Patsy O’Farrell.
Yes. Well, thanks. Yes …. I don’t suppose your substitutes are called Patrick?
No, neither is.
Oh, good.
Sorry?
Good … good story, thanks. I must be going ….
Don’t you want to know their names?
The subs?
Yes.
OK, yes I suppose. Yes, please.
PJ Hanley and Packer Dunne.
I …. see …. ‘PJ’ as in ….. Patrick Joseph?
Dead on!
Um … Well …. Thanks for your time. All the best for your next game in the League. I don’t suppose, heh, heh, your Junior team are all variants of Patrick too?
Ah, not at all! Of course not. Sure, that would be awful confusing. No, there’s Michael Fitzgerald, Mick Smith, Mickey Doyle, Mícheál Connors, Micilín Seoighe, Mikhail ….
As Mayo began to prepare for a replay of the 2016 championship Gaelic Football final against Dublin, I stood with others on a very wet day in Dublin’s Croppies’ Acre to commemorate and honour Robert Emmet and the United Irishmen – an event replete with Mayo connections.
Eniscorthy Historical Reenactment Society inside the monument during the ceremony. (Photo: Paddy Reilly)
The event, organised by the Asgard Howth 1916 Society, was graced by the presence of the Enniscorthy Historical Reenactment Society, men and women in 1798 costume bearing pikes, including officer uniforms – they had travelled up from Wexford that morning to attend the event. Donal Fallon, historian, blogger, tour guide and broadcaster was to give the oration. Padraig Drummond, the organising persona, had asked me to sing two songs at the event, one near the start and the other near the end.
For the first song, I had chosen the Bold Robert Emmet ballad1 (originally known as The Last Moments of Robert Emmet2), a song that commonly sung more often a few decades ago but still reasonably well remembered. For the second, I was spoiled for choice of relevant songs: Anne Devlin, Boolavogue, The Croppy Boy, Henry Joy, The Irish Soldier Laddie. Kelly the Boy from Killane, The Rising of the Moon, Rodaí Mac Corlaí, Sliabh na mBan, the Three Flowers, The West’s Awake, The Wind That Shakes the Barley …… or I could finish learning some of which I knew bits, like the Sean Bhean Bhocht, General Munroe, Memory of the Dead (Who Fears to Speak of ’98?) or the Mayo version of An Spailpín Fánach.
Drawing depicting the trial of Robert Emmet in Green Street Courthouse, Dublin. (Photo source: Internet)
Though a beautiful song in lyrics and air, I felt Sliabh na mBan was too long for the event and cutting it would also feel wrong. Anne Devlin remembers an extremely brave comrade of the United Irishmen and gives rare acknowledgement to the role of women in the struggle for Irish freedom, which had me veering towards that choice. However, I eventually settled on Men of the West, celebrating the 1798 uprising in Mayo when a small French force under General Humbert landed to support them.
Diarmuid Breatnach singing “Men of the West/ Fir an Iarthair”. (Photo: Paddy Reilly)
MEN OF THE WEST
The Mayo connection in the forthcoming GAA final was one reason for the choice, another was that this time of year is that which witnessed the repression in Mayo after the defeat of the last rising of that year (and the last forever, the British and their Orange supporters may have thought, until Emmet came out five years later). And other reasons were that I could sing it as a macaronic song (with some of the verses in Irish and some in English), the song was not too long and it has a chorus in which participants could join.
Bartholomew Teeling, with the French who landed at Mayo, captured when they surrendered at Baile na Muc. Hung in Dublin and his body thrown into the “Croppy Hole”. (Photo source: Internet)
There were yet other reasons for the choice too – not in our culture of song and game, nor in the calendar, but in the ground under our feet, for somewhere under there in what was first called “The Croppies’ Hole” and later “Croppies’ Acre”, the mass grave of many United Irish, lie the bodies of the executed Matthew Tone — younger brother of Theobald Wolfe Tone (who was soon after to give his own life to the Rising) – and Bartholomew Teeling. The younger Tone and Teeling had landed with the French in Mayo, been taken prisoner after the surrender of the French at Baile na Muc, in Co.Longford, brought to Dublin and, despite their French Republican Army officer rank, tried as rebels and hung there.
And in researching background for this article, I came across even further Mayo connections.
The lyrics of Men of the West were written by William Rooney and put to the air of an Irish song called Eoghan Chóir written in turn — and also air apparently composed — by a Mayo United Irishman and songwriter, Riocard Bairéad (Richard Barrett3), who composed the even better-known Preab San Ól4.
The lyrics of Men of the West were later translated into Irish by Conchúr Mag Uidhir, who won a prize for that work at a Feis Ceoil in 1903 – again in Mayo. It was the lyrics of both these versions that I combined to make the macaronic version I chose to sing at the commemoration at Croppies’ Acre5.
THE DUBLIN SONGWRITER — BACKGROUND
While I need to do some research to find out more about this Mag Uidhir, quite a lot is known about William Rooney (Liam Ó Maolruanaigh). Born in the Dublin former red-light district known as “The Monto”6 in 1873, Rooney grew up in a what had been considered the second city of the British Empire but had declined in status with the abolition of the Irish (colonial) Parliament in 1800. The city contained the residence of the Crown’s representative in Ireland, a number of British army barracks and the administration apparatus of the colony, the latter in Dublin Castle. Dublin also contained a substantial loyalist population of the Ascendancy, in addition to “Castle Catholics”7. However, Dublin was also a focal point in Irish nationalist and separatist politics. Relatives and descendants of members and sympathisers of the United Irishmen of 1798 and 1803 lived in the city and the events were in the living memories of some.
William Rooney, journalist, organiser, Irish language revivalist and author of songs. (Photo source: Internet)
Irish Republicanism had seen a resurgence with the Young Irelanders of 1848 and some of their supporters were easily alive when William Rooney was born in 1873 and during his childhood. The founding of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1858 preceded Rooney’s birth by only 15 years and although the raid on the The Irish People newspaper took place in 1865, followed by the trial and conviction to penal servitude of Ó Donnobháin Rosa, Thomas Clarke Luby and John O’Leary, they would have been still talked about during Rooney’s childhood.
The following year, 1866 saw the failed rising of the Fenians in Ireland and also their shock invasion of Canada and, in 1867, the stirring freeing of the American Fenian prisoners in Manchester and the subsequent hanging of the three martyrs, Allen, Larkin and O’Brien. The spectacular rescue of escaping Fenian prisoners from Australia by the Catalpa and their celebrated delivery to the freedom in the United States took place in 1876.
Although these events were all over (or just occurring, in the case of the Catalpa) by the date of Rooney’s birth, their echoes remained – in living memory, in the cause of prisoners serving sentences in English jails or penal colonies and in agitation for a political prisoners’ amnesty. And God Save Ireland8, written to commemorate the Manchester Martyrs in 1866 by Timothy Daniel Sullivan would have been an extremely popular song among a wide section of the Dublin population during Rooney’s childhood, along with patriotic verses and songs by Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Thomas Davis (1814-1845) and James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849). Verse and songs by these poets were learned by ear and recited or sung but were also available in printed form, in songbooks, song sheets and nationalist publications.
Sullivan was a journalist, owning and editing the publications The Nation, Dublin Weekly News and Young Ireland. As a journalist, Sullivan published reports of meetings of the banned National League in December 1887, for which he was convicted and imprisoned for two months by the British administration. William Rooney was in his late teens at that time and Sullivan lived until 1914.
At the age of around thirteen William Rooney became acquainted with a leading Irish nationalist of his times, Arthur Griffith, through Rooney’s membership of The Irish Fireside Club, a literary discussion group. Both of them joined the Leinster Debating Society (which later became the Leinster Literary Society) which they soon led, Griffith as presidents and Rooney as Secretary. The early 1890s controversy surrounding Parnell’s relationship with Catherine O’Shea caused a serious disruption in the nationalist movement of the time and caused a serious split in the Irish Parliamentary Party of which the Leinster Literary Society became a casualty.
Rooney then formed the Celtic Literary Society in 1893, of which he became president; he also edited An Seanachuidhe (old spelling of “Seanchaí”, a story-teller, a relater of things past), the Society’s journal. The Society’s aims were the study of the Irish language, history, literature and music; it had branches in different parts of the country and its members included John O’Leary, Frank Hugh O’Donnell and Arthur Griffith.
AN GHAEILGE
William Rooney was fluent enough in the Irish language to write and to give orations in it and journalists of his times, after summarising a speech in English from the same platform, generally wrote only that he had spoken in Irish9. When he learned his Irish is not clear but he was teaching it in the offices of the Celtic Society. Then Eoin MacNeill got him to join the Gaelic League/ Connradh na Gaeilge after it was formed in 1893.
The Connradh was mainly concerned with promoting the Irish language and literature but also became a social focus in later years, hosting céilidhe (dances and occasion for songs, recitations). Patrick Pearse advocated a more political approach to promoting Irish culture and this accorded with Rooney’s opinion. On the other hand Rooney regarded Irish independence without the revival of the language and culture as meaningless and he castigated the Irish Parliamentary Party for its inaction on the Irish language.
Rooney gave an alternative example, traveling the country speaking publicly in Irish and in English on the need for Irish independence and for the revival of the Irish language.
JOURNALISM AND POLITICAL ORGANISATION
Building on his earlier writing in An Seanachuidhe, Rooney founded with Griffith The United Irishman newspaper in 1899 and his articles and other writings were published in a number of publications of his times:United Ireland, The Shamrock, Weekly Freeman, The Evening Herald, Shan Van Vocht and Northern Patriot (the latter two in Belfast).
Near the end of 1900, again in conjunction with Griffith, William Rooney helped found Cumann na nGaedheal. The former Fenian John O’Leary was president and the Cumann was intended as an umbrella organisation to co-ordinate the activities of a number of nationalist groups (it was merged with others in 1907 to form the original Sinn Féin).
As the centenary of the 1798 Uprising approached, there was something of a fever of preparation with many indicating an interest in participation. Rooney would see his 25th birthday during centenary year and becameof the most prominent organisers for the National Commemoration committee, if not, indeed, the main one.
The year 1898, somewhat similarly to the current centenary of the the 1916 Rising, saw commemorative plaques and monuments being erected, along with talks, meetings, lectures, articles and songs being written. According to historian Ruan O’Donnell, a feeling that the 1889 events had not reached an appropriate level led in 1903 to substantial commemorative events of Emmet’s rising in 1803. Many political working relationships were made during those years which were to survive into much more active days less than two decades since. Many of the songs we have today about the 1798 Rising were written during this period too and Rooney’s Men of the West was presumably also.
In the year of the 1798 centenary commemoration, one of the main centenary commemorations was held in Croppies’ Acre, attended by a reported 100,00010.Rooney was one of the main organisers and a stone was laid on the site which is there to this day.
Stone laid (or unveilled) during commemoration event in Croppies’ Acre in 1898, the first centenary of the Rising. The stone is on the ground near the north-west gate and corner of the park. (Photo: Paddy Reilly)
WILLIAM ROONEY IN MAYO
(The following text is taken from an article by Brian Hoban in the on-line edition of the Castlebar News for 22, Apr 2011)
William Rooney had visited Castlebar with Maud Gonne in 1898 for the centenary celebrations of ‘The Year of the French’. He gave a passionate speech in Irish in which he exhorted people to think for themselves, to educate themselves, and not to take their teachings from others.
He founded Castlebar’s first Public Library at the Town Hall, to which he dedicated his books. Three years later, at the early age of twenty-eight, William Rooney was dead, but the esteem in which he was held in Castlebar continued to grow. In 1911, a new Hurling Club in the town was named the ‘William Rooney’ in his honour. The following year “The Rooney Hall” was opened in Tucker Street. It became a local landmark for several generations, much used by various civic and voluntary organisations, including the PTAA.
The one surviving connection is in ‘Poems and Ballads’, a collection of Rooney’s poetry edited by Arthur Griffith and published in 1902, a year after his death. An original of this title is held by Mayo County Library where it can be consulted.
1798 Centennial Celebrations
William Rooney was one of the main protagonists in establishing the National Commemoration to celebrate the centennial of the 1798 rebellion. Only one month after its inception nationalists in Mayo formed the “Castlebar Central and Barony of Carra ’98 Centenary Association with James Daly appointed as president of the Connaught ’98 Centenary Council. On the 9th January 1898 a commemoration, which was presided over by James Daly, was held at Frenchill, near Castlebar. This was attended by Maud Gonne Mac Bride and addressed by James Rooney. ……………….
James Daly pointed out that the event was both about remembering dead patriots and undertaking “to abide by the principles of the men of ’98 until their country was free again and took its place among the nations of the earth.”
EARLY DEATH AND MEMORY
William Rooney died of TB in 1901 at the age of 27, shortly before he was due to marry. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
In 1902 the United Irishman published a collection of his writings and in 1908 a collection of his work edited by Griffith, Poems and Ballads of William Rooney, was published. The publication was reviewed disparagingly in the Daily Express that year by James Joyce but Yeats dedicated the 1908 edition of Cathleen Ni Houlihan “To the Memory of William Rooney”.A collection of his lectures and articles, from the United Irishman was published by M.H. Gill the following year.
Griffith described William Rooney as “the Thomas Davis of the new movement”. Brian Ó hUigín (“Brian na Banban” 1882–1963), editor for many years of The Wolfe Tonne Annual and himself no slouch as a writer of songs and verse, said of Rooney that “he blazed the trail to 1916 and gave his life for Ireland”.
And many of William Rooney’s songs are still being sung.
End.
Wreath being laid by Pól Ó Scannaill inside the monument on behalf of a number of groups. Padraig Drummond of Asgard 1916 Society MC of event. (Photo: Paddy Reilly)
APPENDIX
THE MACARONIC VERSION OF MEN OF THE WEST/ FIR AN IARTHAIR
(Arranged by D.Breatnach)
1.
Má mholtar le dán is le h-amhrán,
Na fir a bhi tréan agus fíor,
Donal Fallon, historian, blogger, tour guide and broadcaster who gave the main oration
‘Chuir clú agus cáil lena ndánacht
Ar shruthán ‘s gleann agus sliabh:
One of the panels inside the circular monument. (Photo: Paddy Reilly)
Ná fágaidh ar deire na tréan-fhir
Do chruinnigh ar phlánai Mhuigheo –
Nuair a ghnóthaí na Gail I Loch gCarman,
Said muinntir an Iarthair ‘bhí beo.
Chorus
I give you the gallant old West, boys,
Where rallied our bravest and best;
When Ireland lay broken and bleeding:
Hurrah boys, hurrah for the West!
(Photo: Paddy Reilly)
2.
The hilltops with glory were glowing
‘twas the eve of a bright harvest day,
And the ships we’d been wearily awaiting
Sailed into Killalla’s broad bay.
And over the hills went the slogan
To awaken in everyone’s breast
That spirit that’s never been broke’ boys
Among the true hearts of the West.
Curfá
Seo sláinte muinntir an Iarthair daoibh,
Section of Croppies Acre on a drier day, showing open circular 1798 monument in middle distance and Collins Barracks Museum in the far background. View is from SE gate on Wolfe Tone Quay. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Unknown author but sometimes credited to Tom Maguire (1892– 1993, famed leader of the Mayo Flying Column [yet another Mayo connection!] in the War of Independence, who later took the Republican side in the Civil War). On the other hand Zimmermann (1967) gives the song its earliest appearance as c.1900, when Maguire would have been around only eight years of age. For Tom Maguire credit see http://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blogs/robert-emmet and a number of other references, some of which state inaccurately that Emmet was “hung, drawn and quartered”; that was indeed his sentence but the British practice of cutting the body of “traitors and rebels”open while still alive to access the entrails had been discontinued for decades although the decapitation part was still practiced and was carried out on Emmet.
3In the very brief research I carried out on the Mayo songwriter, I came across another songwriter by the name of Richard “Richie” Barrett (1933– 2006), an Afro-American who was also a singer, musician and band promoter, involved with such famous rythm ‘n blues groups as the Chantels and Three Degrees. One might hope for a family connection ….
4Translated later into English, recorded by the Dubliners folk and ballad group under the title Another Round.
5For lyrics, see the Appendix after article body and Sources.
7A pejorative term to describe Catholics who cooperated with the colonial Ascedancy regime in Ireland and sought admission to their social circles (for example, to balls and receptions held at the Castle in the 19th Century). An even more contemptuous description for the behaviour of this stratum was the Irish “ag sodar i ndiaidh na h-uaisle” (‘trotting after the nobles’, i.e. like dogs or perhaps servants)
8He also wrote the All for Ireland! anthem, Song from the Backwoods and the Michael Dwyer ballad.
http://www.ainm.ie/Bio.aspx?ID=1038 (NB: I am not the Diarmuid Breathnach, joint author of this piece — please note the slightly different spelling of his family name)
O’Donnell, Ruan: Remember Emmet: Images of the Life and Legacy of the Irish Revolutionary Robert Emmet, National Library of Ireland (2003)
Zimmermann, Georges-Denis, Songs of Irish Rebellion: Political Street Ballads and Rebel Songs 1780-1900 (1967), Allen Figgis, Dublin; reprinted (2012) by Four Courts Press.
It was nearly ten o’clock at night when she approached me on a badly-lit street near Dublin’s North Circular Road. I had paused my bicycle to send a text on my mobile and I saw her coming towards me. I had the impression that, just before she made for me, she had been looking around as though to determine where she was – perhaps I had seen her doing that in my peripheral vision.
She had a handbag and was dragging one of those suitcases with an extending handle and trundling on little wheels. As she reached me, I asked her could I help her with directions, which actually interrupted her asking me for help. But that was ok, it worked against her being totally dependent, the asker – after all, I had asked too. She had a USA accent.
Yes, of course I would help if I could.
Did I know the whereabouts of a certain hotel? Well, the area in the hotel’s name I do know but I didn’t recall the hotel itself. And sometimes they give themselvess the name of somewhere known or popular even though their hotel is not near the place at all.
Did she have the street name? No.
The phone number? Somewhere in her bag (she meant her case).
I explained that I don’t have Internet on my mobile phone but she could look it up on Google map? She doesn’t have Internet access on her phone either.
Can she afford a taxi? Yes, of course.
Well, why not hail one? She has done that but they tell her the hotel is just down the road.
Well, why not ask them to take her there? She has, but they tell her it’s just down the road.
Hmmmm – a sliver of doubt entered my brain. Taxi drivers refusing a short drive fare on a weekday night? To an address with which they are familiar? And leaving a woman, clearly a tourist, on her own in that area on foot ….. Something is wrong with this story.
Still … what to do?
OK, so I’ll ride around on the bike and find the place (even if I have to stop a taxi and ask the driver, I was thinking). Then I’ll come back and tell her (and accompany her there too, I think to myself).
She is very grateful but I think it is not safe for her to wait for me here. Perhaps the courtyard of a pub a little further back? A well-lit one.
OK.
I walk the bike, she trundles the case. Talks about her plans for her two-week stay, which appear to be to arrive in Dublin and then figure out where to go from there. Relates having been booked into a Dublin hostel which another passenger on a bus told her was in a bad district so she didn’t go there. Something seems wrong about this story too.
We reach the pub – it is still in business hours and the courtyard, though deserted, is brightly lit. There are tables and chairs and and I ask her to wait there for me and I’ll be back in a few minutes. She agrees.
Three minutes later I have found the hotel and in four, five at the most, I am back at the pub.
But the courtyard is empty.
Oh, no! She just got up and went?!
Wait. Maybe she asked someone where it was and set off there on her own. But then I would have passed her on the way back – I couldn’t have missed her.
Maybe …. oh God! Maybe whoever she asked volunteered to take her there. And she went with them. Got into a car ….
Ah, Jayzus! What now? Call the cops?
But now I see her ….. coming out of the pub, pulling the case, carrying her bag, all of it awkward as she manages the door….. Maybe she didn’t feel safe out there on her own and went inside …. but no, she has a pint of lager in her hand.
I remind her that I asked her to wait and that I’d be back in a few minutes. I have found the place and was ready to accompany her there but now she has bought a pint. (I am hoping she will leave the pint but no chance).
She is so grateful and would like to buy me a drink.
It’s an offer I might well have accepted when I had got her to her hotel and she had checked in. Now, though? I show her where her hotel is, a straight walk down the road I point out to her, wish her well and ride off.
Asking for it – bloody asking for it! It’s a phrase that doesn’t usually mean someone wants something bad to happen, rather that their conduct makes that a likely outcome. Unfortunately it is used too often with regard to the victims of rape, when wanting it to happen is occasionally precisely what is insinuated – smearing the victim and exonerating the attacker. But usually, conduct with predictable bad results is what is indicated; for example, leaving your bag or laptop inside your car, visible to passers-by, is asking to have your car broken into. Leaving your bike unlocked in the open out of your sight is asking to have it stolen.
Surely it is not a healthy situation for a person to be walking around in a badly-lit part of a strange city at ten at night? And looking like a tourist, whom a predator might therefore assume to have some money and perhaps a camera, Ipad, etc? And a woman alone, considered a defenceless potential victim?
Surely one would want to get into one’s hotel as soon as possible? OK, I understand the appeal of the pint, particularly if one has been stressed out by travel and then wandering around looking for one’s hotel. But hotels have bars, where the worst that will happen to one (or the best, depending on one’s point of view) is that it will lead to sharing one of the hotel beds with a stranger. OK, if you want local colour with your pint, find a “typical” local pub after you’ve checked in. And be sure you know your way back.
But there she had been, wandering around a badly-lit street at night looking for a hotel (and walking further away from it when I met her). And someone goes to find her hotel and asks her to wait and in less than five minutes she’s bought a pint, which means she won’t be able to go to the hotel when the guy returns. And she blithely offers to buy him a drink.
Information picket (with table across the road) organized by Anti-Internment Group of Ireland in September 2014 at Thomas St./ Meath St. junction, Dublin.Palestinian and Kurdish flags at a Kobane solidarity rally in Trafalgar Square, London in 2014. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The flag of the ICA, flown over Murphy’s Imperial Hotel in 1916
I’m no shade of green,
though neath such flags I’ve oft times been,
and ‘neath the Plough in Gold on Green,
and some years back
Also the black,
aye and the red-and-black;
or Palestinian red and black and white and green,
Cumann na mBan, “Irish Republic” and Tricolour flags displayed at Dublin’s GPO by Moore Street campaign supporters. (Phoro: D. Breatnach?)
Or the Basque crosses white and green upon red …..
In solidarity I have flown all those flags I’ve said
But when all’s said and done —
though hard to choose just one —
from my heart and from my head:
I choose the workers’ Red.
Sept 2016
A number of the Basque flag, the Ikurrina, flying in Dublin during a solidarity protest. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Anarcho-Sindicalist and Anarchist black flags (Photo source: Internet)Bangladeshis on Mayday demonstration. (Photo source: Internet)
On Sunday in Dublin on my travels I conversed (about more than directions) on three different occasions with visitors from the United States and found a wide range of attitudes.
BOSTON, LARKIN AND THE COPS
The first of these was with an elderly couple outside Kilmainham Gaol Museum. The man had “Boston” displayed on his T-shirt and I started talking about Dennis Lehane’s novel “The Given Day”, which is set in Boston and which I had just finished reading. They had read it, really liked it and told me it was the first of a trilogy to which I responded that I would certainly be looking for the follow-ups.
Jim Larkin’s “mug shots” when charged with “criminal anarchism” in New York 1919 (he served time in Sing Sing penitentiary). (Photo sourced Internet)
I talked about Lehane’s slant towards the cops as opposed to the revolutionaries and how of course my slant would be the other way but that in any case Lehane had not done his research on Larkin, who figures in the novel with other revolutionaries and radicals. Lehane refers to Larkin’s “gin-breath” but Big Jim was well known as a teetotaler, which I explained to them.
Then I talked a bit about the Irish Citizen Army that Larkin had founded with James Connolly and others, how they grew up out of the 1913 Lockout/ Strike and that Larkin had served time in Sing Sing prison later as a punishment for his revolutionary oratory in the USA.
I didn’t get the feeling that I and the two Bostonians were in agreement with my revolutionary sympathies but certainly did when it came to the workers fighting the Lockout in 1913. We parted amicably as they went off to enjoy some more of their holiday.
(Photo sourced Internet)The Jim Larkin monument in O’Connell Street today (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Encounter No.2 took place in Cornucopia, into which I had dropped for a cup of coffee.
I took my ‘Americano’ to a vacant table. The one next to me became vacant for awhile and was then occupied by an elderly lady who left her handbag open next to me. I advised her that was an unwise thing to do in Dublin and she remarked. in US accent upon the Leonard Peltier badge that I had been unconsciously wearing all day, so we talked about his case for awhile. She didn’t seem sympathetic to the FBI and expressed horror at the treatment of Peltier, now approaching his 40th year in prison for an act of which he was unjustly convicted.
The lady asked me for advice about literary events in Dublin and as she was, sadly, leaving the day before Culture Night, all I could suggest was a visit to Books Upstairs, where someone might be able to advise her. After I jotted down the address and a rough map for her, I left.
THE DEVIL AND THE TRUMPETTES
It was my intention to attend later that evening the Song Central session, on their first night back after their summer break. Song Central is a monthly gathering of singers and listeners upstairs in Chaplin’s pub, across from the Screen cinema. But I needed to eat first and so headed for a burrito in Pablo Picante, a small place serving Mexican food in Temple Bar (well, at the western end of Fleet Street).
Sitting eating my burrito and facing out into the street, I noticed passers-by pointing at the window and laughing. I could have become paranoid except it was clear that they were pointing to an image painted on the window further to my left. Then a late 30s or early 40s couple who in their style looked kind of to the Left maybe laughed at the image and took photos. The female whipped out a lipstick and wrote something over the painting, then had the man take a photo of her next to what she had written.
Curiosity had me now and after they wandered off, I went outside and saw that the painting on the window was a caricature of US Presidential candidate Donald Trump and underneath it the artist had written in big letters “DIABLO”. Of course, that would be because Trump wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico due to the negative impact he accuses Mexican migrants of having on the US, which Trump wants to “make great again”. And he has also impugned a US Judge’s ability to rule impartially on his case, due to the judge’s Mexican heritage.
The painting in the window of the Pablo Picante burrito restaurant in Fleet St. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The woman had scrawled something along the lines of “He’s not, we love him” with a heart sign on a part of the painting – clearly far from being Lefties!
I went back inside, got a serviette, came outside and rubbed off her comment, then back inside to continue my assault on the burrito.
Not long after, I was not a little surprised to see the woman and the man standing outside again. She noticed the removal of her comment and commenced to write again. I went to the counter to tell the staff what was going on and returned to find the woman inside, leaning on my jacket on the window shelf and working on rubbing out the painting from the inside!
My challenge on what did she think she was doing elicited the response that Donald Trump was going to be (or might be?) their next President and that the painting was disrespectful. I stood between her and the painting, telling her that we have free speech in this country (which is not strictly true but as the nearest weapon I could reach ….) and just kept repeating it. Then the guy came in and told me I had “no idea”. He kept repeating that and I kept repeating the “free speech” stuff, alert in case he took his case into the physical arena (and he looked fit, too). I also wondered what I would do if instead, it was the woman who attacked me. But they left soon afterwards.
Soon after, a member of staff (Mexican, presumably) went outside and rubbed off her comment, returning with a wry smile.
SINGING THE USA
At the Song Central session later that evening, post-burrito and post Trumpettes, the theme happened to be about the USA, songs from there or about travelling there etc, it being the anniversary of the “9/11” attack on the Twin Towers. If I’d remembered about the theme, I’d have learned the Allende song recorded by Moving Hearts, or brushed up on the lyrics of “Hey Ronnie Reagan” by Christie Moore. Because “9/11” ( in 1973) is also the anniversary of the CIA-instigated military coup in Chile, which over time claimed the lives of 32,000 people.
Interestingly, most of the song contributions during the night that referred to the USA (and most of them did, though people are not obliged to follow the theme), were critical of the US state, whether because of its endemic racism towards blacks and Latinos or its genocide towards the First People, or because of its wars. One song I felt pretty sure would be sung – and it was — was about the firemen on 9/11 running up the stairs of the doomed building while occupants ran down – a powerful song about the heroism of a section of public service emergency workers.
Luckily I could remember some US song material and sang “The Ludlow Massacre” and “How Can I Keep From Singing”, both composed in the US: one written by a revolutionary and the other adapted in the US by a progressive singer.
I had set out that day without remembering the significance of the date for the USA and yet throughout the day had a significant level of engagement with people from the US and, at the end of the day, with the terrible event itself.
End.
Postscript:
On Tuesday, while taking a photo of the Trump caricature in the window to accompany this piece, another US couple began to talk to me. The man opened with: “The man IS a devil” (referring to Trump).
I remarked that Trump was not going to get elected but his role would be to make Clinton look good, then she could carry on bombing and invading countries if she got elected, no problem.
The woman told me they didn’t like Clinton either. They were from Boston and the man and his father before him had been union organisers. He was complained about the weakness of the unions nowadays.
We talked about cops breaking strikes in the USA in the 1930s and how the cops themselves went on strike in Boston during that period. He talked about what the cops are like nowadays against pickets and demonstrations, militarised ….
The Dublin Anti-Internment Committee organised an information table on Internment outside the Kilmainham Jail Museum on Sunday 11th September 2016. The purpose of the exercise was to make tourists and other visitors aware of the ongoing repression and civil rights abuse that is going on in Ireland which is internment by another name. As their leaflet points out, Republicans opposed to the British colonialism or to economic attacks on their communities and who organise against them are being targeted in a process that sees them arrested, charged with ‘terrorist’ offences, refused bail (or granted only attendant by ridiculous restrictions) and then, when the case against them collapses much later and they are freed, they will still have spent years in jail.
Anti-internment campaigners line up for a photo with clenched fists (Photo: Ian O’Kelly)
The Dublin Committee, affiliated to the Anti-Internment Group of Ireland, mobilised outside the former jail in the afternoon, displayed their banners and gave out leaflets to passers-by, tourists and visitors (not all who were from outside Ireland, by any means).
Kilmainham Jail is a Dublin prison with an important history. It was built before the Great Hunger and housed female and male prisoners, including children. Insurgents and political activists from the United Irishmen, they Young Irelanders, the Fenians, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War had been kept here, including those being deported to Australia. Robert Emmet and Anne Devlin were kept prisoner here, as were Charles Stewart Parnell and most of the Irish Parliamentary Party’s leadership. All fourteen of the 1916 sixteen executed were judicially killed in this jail and women activists were jailed here after the 1916 Rising and during the Civil War.
Campaign information table (Photo: Ian O’Kelly)Plaza in front of old Kilmainham courthouse, which is the new entrance to the Jail Museum. (Photo: Ian O’Kelly)
The Jail closed in 1924 and was falling into disrepair; the State invited tenders for its demolition but felt that those they received were too expensive and so just left the building abandoned to ruin. However a local restoration committee got going, raised some money and began repair and restoration work with volunteer labour, skilled and unskilled.
In 1966, in time for the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, the restoration committee handed over the building to the State which, since then, has seen a huge attendance with nearly 330,000 visitors last year. Recent works moved the front entrance of the museum to the former courthouse building next door and a reported €5 is being spent on revamping the facility.
end.
Some of the campaigners were younger than others (Photo: Ian O’Kelly)The emblem of the Unitied Kingdom on the courthouse roof — this remains on a number of buildings in Dublin from the centuries of British occupation of the city. (Photo: D. Breatnach)(Photo: Ian O’Kelly)
Closer view of the emblem of the United Kingdom on the courthouse roof (Photo: Ian O’Kelly)Side view of the front of Kilmainham Jail and some of the campaigners (Photo: D.Breatnach)Some of the campaigners with the Courthouse building stretching away from behind them.
The Irish state’s Ministry of Arts, Heritage, Rural, Regional and Gaeltacht Affairs is facilitating speculators’ plans to demolish the Moore Street 1916 Historical Quarte (with the exception of four houses) in order that they may build a giant shopping centre (mall). (Non-revenue copying and distribution welcome but acknowledgement of source expected)
Jean-Ann Day, who has just died, visited Dublin in January 2012 to help push an international campaign to free Leonard Peltier, also a warrior of the First People and longest-serving prisoner in the US after a travesty of a trial in 1977.
Jean-Ann speaking at picket on the US Embassy in Dublin in solidarity with Leonard Peltier. The photographer’s back is to the Embassy.Jean-Ann Day — photo placed with her official obituary on funeral home site
Due to a family tragedy hitting her contact here I had to step in as Jean-Ann’s contact but it was an honour for me. I progressed arrangements and took her to see Joan Collins TD and arranged for a radio interview with a program on Near FM.
I remember that on our way across the Liffey, Jean-Ann took a pinch of tobacco and offered it to the river with a prayer. The Gaels also thought of their rivers as divine, most of them goddesses. Although an atheist, to my thinking such belief systems seem greatly superior to those that think it fine to convert a river into a sewer or a toxic waste outlet.
On Saturday 4th February 2012 a small crowd of varied political backgrounds, including a significant proportion of independents, staged a protest outside the US Embassy in Ballsbridge as part of a world-wide week of protests seeking Peltier’s release. Jean-Ann delivered a simple speech there that I believe reached into the heart of every one of the participants as it did into mine.
Poster produced for the Dublin solidarity picket of the US Embassy (regret the name of the artist does not come to mind at the moment)
A small musical evening in Dublin organised by supporters was another occasion at which she appeared and I understood she went to Belfast and Derry too.
Jean-Ann, warrior for justice has walked on and left us her memory. Her former comrade, another warrior, Leonard Peltier, remains in jail in serious ill-health.
Peltier is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary of Coleman in Florida and given that he is 72 years of age and that his next scheduled parole hearing will be in July 2024, it is clear that the FBI and USA state want him leaving jail only in a coffin. Barring appeals, parole or presidential pardon, his projected release date is October 11, 2040.
Jean-Ann Day, Bear Clan of the Ho-Chunk Nation, age 65 of Stevens Point, Wisconsin walked on Sunday, September 4, 2016 at the University…
APPENDIX
Leonard Peltier Regarding the Passing of Jean-Ann Day
When I heard the news of Jean’s passing I was both saddened and surprised. I did not know she was ill. If I had known I would have reached out to her and tried to support her in any way I could.
Jean was a true friend to me for all the years I knew her. Her passing reminds me of so many things back in those days at Oglala so long ago.
She was a such a bright light and a young woman full of courage who came to Oglala without hesitation to join us in protecting the elders there. And she did so much work to free me from prison all these years. I am grateful to her for that.
Poster in the style of Jim Fitzpatrick’s famous Che Guevara poster (Regret artist unknown to me)
Over the years here I have thought of her often and in my dreams of freedom there were always a few faces I expected to see if I ever walked out of here. Jean’s was one of them.
I know she was doing wonderful work in the effort to bring healing and positive change to her Ho-Chunk people and I was always proud of her for that.
I regret that I could not be there for her ceremonies so I could offer comfort to her children and grandchildren, but I can only send these few heart-felt words.
You were a great woman and your life made a real difference to me… and to so many others.
Rest in peace, my dear friend. ‘Til I see you again.
Doksha,
Leonard Peltier
Part of the gathering at the Dublin US Embassy in solidarity with Peltier and seeking his urgent release in 2012
rebelbreeze 